“So you already know that she went to Rome?” asked Karl abruptly.
“What did you say?”
“I think I remember now. She wanted to go to Rome—she told me so herself.”
“To . . . to Rome?” The cup slipped from Johann’s hands and banged loudly on the ground. “Greta is dead. She burned with the others at Tiffauges—there couldn’t have been another way. I . . . I had nothing to bargain with, and so she had to burn with the other heretics.”
“She went to Rome.” Karl closed his eyes, thinking hard. “I remember now. Lahnstein must have offered her a deal. He needed her alive. I don’t know why . . .” He broke off. There was something else Greta had told him down in the dungeons, but Karl couldn’t remember for the life of him. Now he clearly saw Greta before him again, extending her arms to him and giving him one last kiss on the forehead.
I’m going to Rome, Karl.
“Greta isn’t dead,” whispered Johann, more to himself. He gave Karl a pleading look. “Are you certain?”
Karl nodded. “That was what she told me. She was going to Rome, that much I remember. I’m guessing it must have been she who brought me to the Benedictines—”
He stopped when he noticed the doctor was crying.
Tears streamed down his face as he muttered the same words over and over. “Greta is alive. My daughter is alive. I had given up hope.”
For the first time, Karl thought he could see the old Johann Georg Faustus behind the shaggy beard.
The man he still loved.
Hundreds of miles away, a solitary man was standing on a terrace high above the city the people called Urbs Aeterna.
The Eternal City.
He gazed down on houses several stories high, on churches, crumbling temples, ruins, and newly erected palaces, spreading in all directions. In the haze beyond lay fields, villages, and the Alban Hills; the stinking brown Tiber cut through the city like a knife. In one place the river took a sharp turn to the west, and that was where the man stood atop a mighty round building. Up in this lofty terrace the air was fresh, despite the muggy summer heat, and a light breeze carried the scents of mistletoe and chestnut. The man sniffed and thought he could smell a thunderstorm.
He loved thunderstorms.
The man raised his arms and let the energy flow through his body, the crackling atmosphere that preceded every great storm. The place upon which the building stood was old, ancient; from before the first Roman emperors, yes, even before the shepherds led their goats across the seven hills, this place had been a powerful one, drenched with blood and filled with screams. Perhaps that was why Emperor Hadrian chose it as the site for his tomb. Later, the building was besieged by barbarians, who were struck down by the statues of Roman gods that were flung at them. Now the building served the pope as a place of retreat and domicile. The man chuckled softly when he thought about the name of the building.
Castel Sant’Angelo.
The castle of angels.
A name had never been better chosen.
The man bared his teeth like a wolf, pointing his nose into the wind. Everything was going basically to plan, even if it went much slower than originally anticipated. But what did a few years matter when one could think in eons? They had thrown him from the heavens, but he would come back. Stronger and more powerful than ever, as a ruler over a burning world that had doomed itself. Chaos, not order, was the mother of all that was.
Because everything that is deserves to perish.
Yes, there had been setbacks. Faust hadn’t come to him, and the doctor hadn’t given him that which he longed for so desperately. But he sensed that the final word hadn’t been spoken.
They always had to come voluntarily.
One of them was nearly ready, and Faust, too, would soon return to him. The disease had been nothing but a gentle kiss, a reminder that their pact was still valid. And little Faustus had paid—at least a first installment.
The man on the terrace only had to wait.
Because he had in his control that which the doctor loved the most. And love had always been man’s greatest weakness.
Lightning flashed across the sky, and then the first drops of rain fell on the face of the master. He leaned back his head and opened his mouth wide, and there was a hissing noise like from a giant snake.
The bells in the many churches of town chimed for eventide.
During the next few days, Johann was torn by impatience and insecurity. He felt like he had been sleeping for years and needed to make up for lost time quickly. How could he have believed that Greta was dead?
He was riding an old donkey because the money hadn’t been enough for a horse. Karl Wagner, his former assistant, was walking beside him, occasionally smacking the stubborn beast across the backside with a stick. Both men were freshly shaved and wore new, if poor, clothes and wide-brimmed pilgrims’ hats. They looked determined and somewhat transfigured, their faces haggard. The people who passed them thought they were ascetics, pious pilgrims on their way to Rome in search of enlightenment.
And they weren’t entirely wrong.
Three days ago Johann and Karl had left Toulouse and headed east. For the first time in a long time Johann felt the wind, the rain, and the sun on his skin. The news that Greta might still be alive had rejuvenated him. The old thirst for action was back, the perpetual restlessness, the eternal dissatisfaction. He needed to get to Rome as fast as humanly possible. Rome was where his daughter’s trail had ended, but he would pick it up again. He needed to beg Greta’s forgiveness, explain everything to her. Maybe then they could be together again.
For two years Johann had wandered aimlessly through France, like Karl.
