“Don’t touch me!” she hissed, and as she recoiled from him, the bowl of pills slipped out of her hands and crashed to the ground, the pills scattering in all directions.
Johann squatted down and started to pick up the pills alongside Greta, under the curious looks of the apothecary. When they were finished, Johann handed her the bowl.
“You will see that I’m right,” he said. “Hopefully before it’s too late. I love you, Greta. You and my grandson. I won’t allow him to fall into Tonio’s hands.”
Without another word he turned away and walked out of the courtyard, trying his best not to shake.
In his pocket, his fingers clutched cool metal.
She’ll notice, he thought. She must. She’ll call for the mother superior at any moment.
But nothing happened.
Johann hadn’t really expected Greta to believe him. He had racked his brain for hours about how he might get into Castel Sant’Angelo without Greta’s help. His plan had been nothing but a faint hope, but it had just come true. A long time ago, before Johann became the famous Doctor Faustus, he had been a talented juggler and trickster. Among many other things, Tonio had taught him sleight of hand.
A brief tug at the leather string around Greta’s neck was all it had taken. She hadn’t noticed because in the same instant, the bowl had slipped out of her hands. Now the ring of keys was safely hidden in Johann’s pocket—the same keys Greta had shown him as proof of Lahnstein’s trust in her.
The keys that would get him and Karl inside Castel Sant’Angelo.
Greta remained standing in the courtyard for a while, clutching the bowl of pills tightly. Tears streamed down her face, tears of anger and confusion. She cursed her father for coming to Rome, for coming and stirring up everything when she had finally found peace—peace with God and with herself. Even with the fact that her son was growing up with a mother who only visited him occasionally because she’d dedicated her life to God. And then her own father appeared and wrecked everything. He sowed doubts. That was how the devil worked. Hadn’t he whispered in Jesus’s ear, when he was in the desert, that he would make Jesus the ruler of the world?
One had to resist. Pray. Confess.
Nonetheless, Greta could feel her wall of confidence cracking. Partly because of the strange premonitions that continued to hit her out of the blue. Only this morning she’d had another one. She had dreamed of her son, his tiny body pinned to the ground by needles, like a butterfly being studied. Inside a pentagram painted with blood-red paint. He had cried for his mother, but she hadn’t been able to hear him. His cries had been silent.
The devil sows doubts. Don’t listen to him. Pray, Greta, pray!
Still shaking all over, she wiped the tears from her face and carried the bowl of pills to the treatment hall.
She was deep in thought and didn’t notice that there was no leather string around her neck.
Johann placed the key ring on the table in their room at the inn, and Karl stared at him in bewilderment.
“How did you come by these so quickly?”
“Once I realized that Greta wasn’t going to help us, I spent the morning loitering outside Castel Sant’Angelo. Servants and clerics come and go all day. It wasn’t difficult.” He grinned. “One nudge, one garbled apology. The keys were on the belt of a papal scribe. He’s probably in a cold sweat as we speak, searching for them everywhere.”
Johann had thought long and hard about whether to tell Karl where he got the keys from but decided against it. Greta and Karl were close, and Johann didn’t know how Karl would take the news. All that mattered now was that they made it inside the castle in time, and to that end he had been gathering information all morning. It felt good to use his mind again. Damn it, he was Doctor Faustus, the cleverest and most cunning wizard in all the lands! How could doors stop him when he needed to save his grandson?
Karl picked up the bunch and studied the individual keys. They were of varying sizes and manufactured with complicated patterns, true masterpieces of blacksmithing. “And you really believe these will get us into the fortress?”
“Of course not! None of those are for the main portal. That is always guarded, and there are bolts, trapdoors, iron gates, and a drawbridge inside. These keys merely unlock a few chambers inside. But which ones, I don’t know.”
“Then I don’t see how your theft helps us at all.”
Johann sighed. He hated it when others were slow on the uptake, especially when it was a matter of life and death. Karl was a gifted painter and an intelligent scientist, but sometimes he lacked shrewdness.
“You drew a map of Rome,” said Johann. “Bring it here.”
Frowning, Karl fished a paper scroll from under his bed and unfolded it on the table. The map had become blotched with wine stains and candle wax but was still legible. Johann pointed at a spot near Castel Sant’Angelo.
“The Passetto di Borgo, the papal escape route,” he explained. “It’s a corridor that runs aboveground. If an enemy storms the Vatican palaces, the pope can escape to Castel Sant’Angelo via this passage. And the castle has never been conquered.”
“And you want to get in through there?” asked Karl, surprised. “The passage will be guarded just like the rest of the castle.”
“But not nearly as heavily as the main entrance, which is supposed to withstand any attack. I took a look at the tunnel this morning.” With his finger, Johann traced the line on the map that led from the Vatican to the fortress. The corridor was about half a mile long—far too long to keep every single yard under surveillance. “Parts of the corridor are completely out in
