My journey is coming to an end. One way or another.
“Hagen probably used this rope to climb down with Sebastian,” he said. “Which means this shaft leads straight to—”
He broke off when they heard something.
A soft whimpering.
“Oh God!” cried Greta. “Sebastian really is down there.”
She made to climb into the shaft, but Karl stopped her. “Greta, you’re hurt. If you climb down there, who knows if you’ll ever make it back to the surface. Maybe if just the doctor and I—”
“You expect me to wait here while my child is crying down there, suffering, trapped by a lunatic? Forget it!”
Karl sighed. “I didn’t expect anything else.”
“I will go first, then Greta, and then Karl,” decided Johann. “We have no weapons, but I doubt that weapons would be of any use down there. I only have this to bargain with.” He held up the small globe on the chain around his neck. “The deadliest weapon in the world.”
Johann picked up the rope, gave it a couple of probing tugs, and started his descent. He held the remainder of his torch between his teeth. It probably would only burn for another few minutes, but Johann felt certain that there would be plenty of light down below.
Hell is brightly lit.
As he slowly climbed down, Johann studied the walls of the shaft. It seemed to be natural and possibly used to serve as the cave’s vent. The stink of sulfur was increasing, as was the temperature, so that Johann soon began to sweat. He could also hear the child’s crying more clearly.
After a while Johann made out solid ground below. When he arrived at the bottom, he waved his torch to signal the others to follow. While he waited, he inspected his surroundings. He was standing at the end of a low tunnel that led to the west, and that was also where the glow was coming from. The wailing of the child sounded very close now—he couldn’t be more than a few paces away.
Then something strange happened. Something that was more unsettling than the crying.
It stopped.
Instead, the child began to chuckle—yes, now he whooped, giggled, and laughed. At the same time, Johann could hear the soft jingle of small bells.
Ding, ding, ding.
And in that moment Johann knew behind which devilish mask Tonio del Moravia had been hiding these past few years.
In some ways the devil has always been a buffoon, he thought. He laughs at God right in the dour face.
Greta now heard the laughing, too. She had climbed down the rope next and now stood beside her father. Her heart started to beat faster. The child laughing down the tunnel was definitely her son. But how could that be? Sebastian was being held captive—he had just been crying. Something jingled, and then she heard a faint voice at the end of the tunnel.
“Bumpety, bump, rider. If he falls, he cries out. If into the ditch he falls, he’ll get eaten by the crows.”
Greta thought of the raven that had led her to the shaft. The old nursery rhyme she herself had sung to Sebastian many times suddenly sounded gruesome and creepy, like the lyrics to an ancient demonic ritual.
“If he falls into the swamp, the rider, he goes plomp,” echoed the voice through the corridor.
Sebastian squealed with delight in the way only small children can.
“Who in God’s name is that?” whispered Karl, arriving at the bottom of the shaft.
“I believe I know,” said Johann grimly. “He’s been making a fool out of us, in the truest sense of the word.”
Greta could no longer bear it. She hobbled ahead down the tunnel, which took a bend after a few yards and ended in a grotto with a vaulted copper ceiling. The walls were covered in fading mosaics depicting a wolf mother and two infant boys. The center of the verdigris-covered dome was dominated by a large eagle, the symbol of the Roman emperors. In the middle of the grotto stood a stone fountain adorned with small statues of nymphs and fauns.
On its edge sat two crows and an old raven.
It was the same raven Greta had followed through the woods. The room was filled by a strange flickering and glowing whose origin she couldn’t make out. Greta squinted and saw another item at the grotto’s back wall.
It was a throne made of stone. But upon the throne sat no king, no emperor, and no pope.
On the throne sat a fool.
Greta froze. Viktor von Lahnstein had permitted her to watch some of Pope Leo’s spectacles. There had been music, jugglers, dancers, and a court jester. The jester was an ugly, hunchbacked fellow, playing pranks in front of the Holy Father’s chair and jingling his bells. Greta never took much notice of him.
Now he was sitting here, bouncing her son on his knee.
“Look who’s come to visit,” said the fool in a nasal voice. “Uh-oh, it’s your mother—now we’re both in deep trouble.”
The jester smiled a wolfish grin at Greta. The heat inside the cave had made his makeup run like streaks of blood. He was clad in a tight multicolored garment that spanned across the hump on his back. On his head sat a fool’s cap with bells that jingled cheerfully.
Sebastian shrieked happily and tried to catch the bells.
“The poor boy was hungry,” said the fool in the concerned tone of a nursemaid. “So I gave him something to drink. A very special juice. Now the child is satisfied.”
In the dull light Greta thought she could see some red spots around her son’s lips.
Red like blood.
“You monster!” she screamed.
She was about to storm up to the fool when he underwent a strange change. He bared his teeth like a wolf and hissed at her,
