Once upon a time, he’d dreamed of becoming a painter like the famous Albrecht Dürer, but his father had intended a medical career for Karl—and then he’d been forced to quit his studies. Since then, Karl was painting not holy virgins or saints but backdrops and canvases. Sometimes he secretly drew pictures of naked young men, but when he was finished he burned them immediately.
Most of the powerful men of the Holy Roman Empire, along with several delegates from foreign countries and men of the church, seemed to be gathered in this great hall decorated with expensive damask and shining armor. Karl recognized the magnificent regalia of abbots and canons, saw representatives and patricians who had traveled a long way from the free imperial cities, clad in velvet jerkins and fur-collared coats. In among them sat aging swashbucklers and knights in polished cuirasses with swords on their belts, like emblems of a bygone era. But Karl couldn’t spot the French delegate Louis Cifre anywhere. The Bamberg prince-bishop was sitting in the first row on a wooden throne, surrounded by guards who were holding a kind of canopy above the clergyman’s head. Beside the bishop, in an equally imposing chair, sat the papal representative Viktor von Lahnstein with a sullen expression. The enormous Swiss mercenary stood behind him like a statue, his hands leaning on the hilt of his two-handed sword.
Karl’s excited anticipation caused him to sweat, and he struggled to breathe. They had given so many shows before, including performances in front of counts, barons, and bishops, but this here was something else. All delegates had arrived at Altenburg Castle by now, and deliberations had begun. The bishop had invited his guests into the great hall this evening as part of the entertainment, featuring the famous Doctor Faustus presenting the horoscope. Georg Schenk von Limpurg had promised a surprise, and so every pair of eyes in the room stared expectantly toward the stage. A few torches along the walls and one big chandelier dangling from the center of the ceiling illuminated the hall sufficiently for the audience to see.
“Are you ready?” whispered Johann to his companions. Karl and Greta nodded.
The murmuring stopped abruptly when Doctor Faustus pushed the tapestry curtain aside and strode to the front of the stage with his head held high. At the doors, Karl noticed, were posted additional guards, evidently belonging to Lahnstein’s men. He felt certain that it would take only a wave of Lahnstein’s hand to stop the show if even the faintest suspicion of escape arose. Karl entered the stage, pushing a table on wheels holding a copper box with a tube protruding from its front. Another tube stuck out the top of the strange apparatus.
Faust scanned the audience slowly. Karl knew that the dark, piercing eyes of the doctor always did the trick. And horoscopes were the latest fashion—even the pope had had one compiled, and allegedly, it wasn’t entirely in his favor.
“Your Eminent Highness the prince-bishop, Honorable Excellencies, venerable papal representative, it is a great honor to be received in such illustrious circles at Altenburg Castle,” began Johann loudly, his voice sounding much deeper and more menacing than usual. “My name is Doctor Faustus, and I presume one or two of you have heard of me before.” The audience whispered excitedly, and several church dignitaries made the sign of the cross. Karl tried to suppress a grin; the doctor knew what the audience expected of him.
“We all look with eager anticipation toward the coming year of 1519—a year that the great Albertus Magnus and the omniscient Hermes Trismegistus described as a fateful one. A year that will decide where God leads humanity. And it is my honor to tell you that the scholars were right! At the behest of the highly venerable prince-bishop, I compiled an extremely interesting horoscope.” With a theatrical gesture, he produced the horoscope from underneath his black-and-blue star cape.
Karl had earlier copied it in blood-red ink onto a scroll of parchment.
“Jupiter and Saturn are in the third house together, and Venus, too, inclines to the east, which suggests the occurrence of fateful events,” explained Johann with a grim voice. Then he listed a number of star constellations and Latin terms, which mainly served to impress the audience.
Meanwhile, Karl had pushed the laterna magica to the edge of the stage and placed it so that the tube at the front was aimed at the curtain. Faust pointed upward, and the eyes of the audience followed.
“Until now, the only way to see looming events was in the stars. We received the answers hidden inside complicated formulas and tables, wherefore the interpretation of the stars remained a mystery to laymen.” With a sweeping gesture, Johann pointed at the copper casing next to him, which glinted like a thing of magic in the light of the torches and chandelier. “With the help of this apparatus I’ve manufactured, it is now finally possible to display future events in a way that everyone can understand. We are bringing the stars down to earth!”
With those words, Johann tossed a handful of sulfur and a pinch of blackpowder into the brazier at the edge of the stage. There was puffing, cracking, and smoking, eliciting murmurs and cries of excitement from the audience. Hidden behind the fumes, Karl inserted the first glass plate and lit the oil lamp concealed inside the casing. They used to perform shows like this all the time, and each movement felt as familiar to Karl as if the last show had been only the day before. On Faust’s signal, the guards put out the torches in the hall, leaving the chandelier as the only source of light.
“Let the stars speak!”
A murmur went through the crowd when, as if by magic, a flickering image appeared on the tapestry behind the doctor, pale and translucent as if from another world. The image showed four riders on scrawny horses.
