“Of course!” In spite of himself, Karl started to grin. “Especially the wig. Dyed horsehair down to my hips.” He breathed deeply. The memories helped give a home to his grief. “Or the time the doctor held the fireworks at Frankfurt and declared he could fly into the sky on one of the big rockets.”
Greta laughed. “And all the while he was already upon the spire and all he had to do was wave. Or remember at Bamberg, when he used the laterna magica to make the prince-bishop and the collective delegates believe they were actually seeing the devil.”
“The laterna magica.” Karl sighed. “It’s a crying shame it was destroyed back then. All those lovely images I painted.”
“You could build another one yourself,” suggested Greta. “You spent years traveling the empire with the doctor and the laterna magica.”
“And why would I do that?” asked Karl. “It was always Faust who thrilled the crowds. I was just the assistant. If the doctor is dead, then . . .”
Greta gave him a questioning look. “What is it?”
“Nothing. I . . . I just had an idea,” replied Karl. He frowned as he continued his line of thought.
Faust isn’t dead.
“Let me sleep on it,” he said after a while. He shook himself and gave Greta and Sebastian an affectionate look. “And what are you two going to do?”
Greta shrugged. “I don’t know. I can’t go back to Santo Spirito.” She brushed Sebastian’s red hair from his forehead and squeezed him tight. “I am his mother, that’s all that matters for now. I will never leave my son alone again. Everything else will fall into place.”
“Everything else will fall into place.” Karl nodded and gazed toward the city that stretched in all directions. To the southeast lay the snowcapped Alban Hills. The wide, brown ribbon of the Tiber flowed toward the sea. To the north, fields and meadows stretched as far as the eye could see. If he looked very carefully, he could make out the Via Aurelia, the old Roman road winding its way through the frosty, sugarcoated landscape.
And out into the world.
“This life still has much to offer,” said Karl. “Behind every hill a new story awaits.”
He stood up and, alongside Greta holding little Sebastian by the hand, walked down the Palatine Hill and toward the bustling, noisy lanes in which every person every day tried in vain to rail against their fate.
In the crystal-clear sky above circled two lonesome crows and a raven.
Epilogue
SOMEWHERE IN THE ELECTORATE OF SAXONY
22 DECEMBER, AD 1523
TWO YEARS LATER
THE GIANT WORE A LONG AND SHAGGY BEARD THAT REACHED almost to the ground. He was clad in the stained robe of a monk, and his staff was as tall as a fir tree. The scoundrel’s head jutted above the crowns of the trees in the forest. A murmur went through the crowd in the hall, and some of the smaller children whined and clung to their mothers with their eyes pinched shut. But most of the spectators stared straight ahead as if spellbound by the sailcloth at the front, which billowed in the draft going through the room, making the giant on the fabric look alive.
“The mighty Rübezahl,” intoned the voice of the man standing next to the canvas. “I once met him during my travels through the Giant Mountains. He who mocks Rübezahl or wishes him ill will be met with thunder, lightning, and hailstorms. He who comes as a friend may visit his garden, where the most mysterious herbs grow. One of the herbs has the power to make you fly!”
The man beside the canvas raised his arms inside the wide sleeves of his black-and-blue coat. His face was hidden by a wide-brimmed, floppy hat. The image on the sailcloth changed, showing just that man flying through the clouds like a bird. The audience cried out with surprise.
“I was arguing with Rübezahl over the question of which of us was the most powerful wizard in all the land,” the man next to the canvas continued. “When he tried to smite me with his cudgel the size of a tree, I swiftly ate some of those herbs and flew away through the clouds. Then—”
“Pray, honorable Doctor Faustus, what . . . what’s it like, flying?” asked a portly older farmer’s wife in a trembling voice. “Isn’t it rather exhausting, flapping your arms like a bird the whole time?”
The man with the floppy hat gave her a look of impatience through the eye glasses on his nose, something only scholars wore. “That is not necessary, dear. You hover all by yourself. But it isn’t particularly, well . . . pleasant.” He shook his head as if a memory had just come to him. “Not pleasant at all! But let me go on with my tale. Once I escaped from Rübezahl, I came to the land of the creatures with legs growing straight from their heads and of man-eating panthers.”
The image changed again, and now it showed a big black cat ready to pounce. Some in the crowd screamed out with fear, others with excitement and awe. Three days ago, the famous Doctor Johann Georg Faustus had come to their small town, and since then no one spoke of anything else. The old folks told of the doctor’s manifold travels, pranks, and adventures; the doctor had visited the town many years earlier with his assistant. Now he had returned, and he looked like he hadn’t aged a day—on the contrary, he seemed to have grown younger. It must have been the healing herbs from the garden of Rübezahl, or perhaps the theriac that the doctor sold for three kreuzers a bottle. Doctor Faustus’s Original Theriac rejuvenated; helped with ailments of the eyes, constipation, limb pain; and even worked as a stain remover.
The town had given Doctor Faustus the dance hall in the best tavern at the square, and the people pushed together in close rows. This
