Sitting upon the box seat, his face concealed beneath a floppy hat with a red feather, sits a man who has seen much: the human sacrifices of the Sumerians, Babylon’s arrogance and downfall, the pyramids of Egypt erected with the blood of thousands of slaves; he has watched Rome burn, seen the hordes of horsemen from the East and the demise of Constantinople. He has drunk blood from the skulls of the vanquished, has bitten through throats with his teeth, has raped, murdered, and laughed as he was doing so; he has loved a virgin and at her side liberated the city of Orléans from the English, and then watched her burn at the stake. He was the beginning and he would be the end.
Just then his name is Tonio del Moravia, and he likes it well. But he has borne many different names before: Imhotep, Circe, Judas, Simon Magus, Gilles de Rais.
Name is but sound and smoke.
A pretty young farmer’s wife is standing in the window, her breasts full and her cheeks rosy. He smiles at her and doffs his hat. He likes them young, because they smell so fresh, full of life—like freshly butchered lambs, steam still rising from their innards. He takes the girls into the hay, and they come willingly because they can sense the beast in him. Sometimes he lets them go afterward, and other times he slits them open and drinks their blood.
This young farmer’s wench will be the next.
They are as easily plucked as sweet, ripe pears. But this one is different, he can tell. A hunger gleams in her eyes, a mischief that he likes. “Take me with you,” she says when they lie side by side in the hay. “Anywhere, just away from this world that ends beyond the next brook, beyond the next fence!” He laughs and makes an egg appear for her, and from the egg hatches a warm chick. She pleases him, because he loves adventures and new beginnings. Stagnation is the business of the old man up top.
Because everything that exists deserves to perish.
In a clearing in the woods he finds a cave for them both. He etches his mark into the stone and takes her from behind like an animal. He enjoys it, more than usual. On a whim he lets her live—more than that, he woos her. “I will return,” he breathes into her ear, and she smiles. “Take me with you,” she whispers. “My dark prince, my wizard.”
But he disappears like smoke in the wind. He travels, sowing perdition here, watching a war arise there; he whispers, hisses, slaughters, and kills, always along the new post roads that cross the empire like veins.
Much blood flows in those veins.
When the man passes through Knittlingen again a year later, the farmer’s wife has born a child. “Take me with you,” she says again. “Me and the child!” But he shakes his head. “Then tell me, at least, what the future holds in store for my son.”
He picks up the boy’s little hand and sees something astonishing.
The boy is strong, very strong. Born on the day of the prophet.
Name him Faustus, he says. Because he is lucky indeed.
Again the years go by. When he comes to Knittlingen next, he meets the boy who is called Faustus as he had demanded. The boy is a bright fellow with the inquisitive eyes of his mother. The man reads in the boy’s hand and finds a puzzle. Even the devil can be amazed.
And the hope grows.
Never before had he fathered a child—it isn’t possible—he is not a mortal! But this boy, he senses, is different from all other people. He is never satisfied; he is restless, a renewer, a chaos bringer, a wrecker, a destroyer. He is someone who changes the world.
My son.
And I am his master.
When Johann opened his eyes, he thought the world was ablaze.
Where am I? Is this hell?
It was so hot! Fire licked above him. But then he saw that it was only shadows dancing across the cave ceiling. He was still inside the Lupercal beneath Palatine Hill. But where were the others? Karl, Greta, his grandson? He tried to sit up but was overwhelmed by nausea, and so he sank back down on the ground.
“So you have finally come!”
The voice booming through the cave was deep and familiar. It was the voice of Tonio, and yet it was different.
Much older.
“I have been waiting for you for so long,” continued the voice. “I have been holding my hand out to you, I have begged, pleaded, and sent you my most special kiss as a greeting. But you never came. Like a stubborn child you kept running away from me for all those years. But now you’re finally here. With me.”
Johann groaned. He remembered what Tonio had just revealed to him. Strangely, this knowledge didn’t fill him with terror, almost as if he had always suspected it.
I am the son of the devil.
Tonio had raised him, had been his mentor. Everything Johann knew—black magic, alchemy, reading the stars, chiromancy, yes, even the gift of foreseeing a person’s death—he had inherited from Tonio. Tonio del Moravia had been the man from the west who had visited his mother a long time ago and left her with child. Johann’s stepfather, Jörg Gerlach, had told him about this stranger just before Johann had left his hometown of Knittlingen at sixteen. What was it his stepfather had said?
A pale, black-haired fellow carrying a pack full of magic knickknacks. He put a spell on your mother, that’s what he did!
All those years Johann had been running from his real father. But now he was here with him.
At home.
Johann was lying on the stone floor at the rear of the cave. The
