He is yours, Meffraye.
Meffraye’s fingers clutched his throat, and toxic saliva dripped onto his face.
“Do you remember, little Faustusss?” she asked. “Why did you run away so soon, back then? The two of us had so much fun together. So much fun!”
Johann was still weakened from the fight with Henriet and the exertion of opening the sarcophagus. He tried to reach his belt with a shaking hand, but Meffraye was sitting right on top of him. She licked her lips and moved her hips back and forth as if making passionate love to him, all the while strangling him like a puppy.
“So much fun,” she purred. “Come to La Meffraye, my little one. Let us ride to the master together.”
It wasn’t even so much La Meffraye’s force that nailed Johann to the floor but his horror. Old memories rose up in him, memories from that night near Nördlingen.
Small, twitching bundles in the trees.
Panicked, his hand searched for anything that might serve him as a weapon. Dust, stones, splinters. Suddenly his fingers clasped the handle of the pickaxe. Above him, La Meffraye was grinning and he smelled her rotten breath, breath that came straight from an endlessly deep swamp.
“Kiss me, Little Faustusss.” She leaned over his throat and he saw her sharpened teeth. “I will kiss you like no woman has ever kissed you before. Like I used to kiss those sweet little things . . . so much fun, so much—”
Johann screamed as he lifted the pickaxe and swung it hard.
La Meffraye screeched like a bird as her face exploded into a cloud of blood, bone, and brains. For an instant Johann thought he could still see one single eye staring at him.
Then the witch tilted to the side and was finally silent.
Johann just lay there for a long while, listening to his own breathing and the chirping of the birds outside the chapel. The first slanted rays of sunshine fell through the windows. When he finally stood up with shaking knees, he avoided looking at La Meffraye’s face, as if he feared the lunatic grimace would still smirk at him. But he knew she was dead. And that there was no more smirk and no more face.
La Meffraye would haunt him only in his nightmares now.
Infinitely tired, feeling more dead than alive, he staggered across the chapel. Poitou, Prelati, Henriet, La Meffraye—he had vanquished them all. Now only Tonio and he were left.
The small silver globe rested by the wall, like a marble some children had left behind after playing. Johann picked it up and slipped it in his pocket.
With his last remaining strength, he pushed the grave slab back in place, put the pickaxe and the saw away, and sat down on the stone steps outside the chapel. With trembling fingers he opened the globe. The sun had risen by now, bathing the cemetery in warm light while the birds tried to outsing one another. The two halves were as easy to unscrew as if they’d only been waiting for Johann to take a look inside.
At the innermost core of the world.
Inside, folded into a tiny square, lay a flimsy piece of paper. Johann carefully drew it apart and found that it was nearly as long as his forearm, but very narrow. He had to read the scrawled black letters several times in order to decipher the mirror writing. Some words were smudged or simply a mystery to him, but gradually he began to comprehend. Despite the daylight he used his lantern, as his eyes were tired. But eventually he understood what Leonardo da Vinci had invented and what Tonio longed to possess. The last line on the paper sounded like an ominous prophecy.
Death and perdition will befall the world.
And in that moment Johann knew that the master could never get his hands on the tiny document—not for any price in the world.
Not even for the life of his daughter.
A shudder went through Johann’s body. He wanted to cry, but no tears came, only hoarse sobs. Too great was his grief.
Greta is lost.
Shaken by cramps, battered, bruised, and at the end of his rope, Johann Georg Faustus collapsed on the steps of the chapel—the most intelligent and the loneliest man in the world.
Act IV
The Whore of Rome
19
TOULOUSE, IN SOUTHERN FRANCE
18 JULY, AD 1521
TWO YEARS LATER
SOMETHING CLINKED IN THE BOWL, AND THE BEGGAR IN the dirty torn rags eagerly pulled the vessel closer, hoping to see a coin or at least a piece of stale bread. Karl’s mouth watered; he had hardly eaten in days. But when he reached inside, it was just a pebble. Children laughed, and quick little footsteps ran off. Before the beggar could throw the stone at the brats, they had vanished around the nearest corner.
“Dirty riffraff,” muttered Karl weakly. “Dirty little riffraff. May God punish you.”
The small pebble still in his hand, he leaned back into the shade of the house’s wall, where the sun wasn’t burning quite as mercilessly. He put the stone into his mouth and sucked on it, easing the worst of his hunger and thirst. A corpulent woad merchant clad entirely in blue strutted past Karl and cast a look of disgust. He kicked at the dented bowl, cussing vociferously in Occitan, apparently because Karl was in his way. Karl lowered his head demurely and made the sign of the cross so that the man wouldn’t set the guards on him. Flies buzzed around his head, but he no longer noticed them; they were his constant companions, just like the lice and fleas living in his long shaggy hair and beard.
Toulouse was one of the wealthiest cities in France, having grown prosperous through the trade
