“You really think Agrippa knows something about your mysterious disease?” asked Karl once he and Greta had caught up to the doctor. It was still raining, and the wet pilgrim’s outfit hung on Greta as if she had fallen into a stream.
“If not he, who else?” replied Johann vaguely. “Heinrich Agrippa is the greatest scholar of the empire—and knows it, unfortunately, and loves to hear it repeated.” He sighed. “The man is ambitious and loudmouthed and thinks very highly of himself.”
“Those traits sound rather familiar to me,” said Greta with a smile.
“I know. And perhaps that’s why we get on the best in writing, because no one can cut the other one off midsentence.” Johann turned to look at her. “Agrippa is like the lost library of Alexandria, a beacon of knowledge. Apart from that, we also need a safe place to stay for winter, outside of Rome’s reach and that of the bishop of Bamberg. Metz is a free imperial city near France. The burghers of Metz have never let anyone tell them what to do—no bishop, no emperor, and no pope. We should be able to hide there for a while.”
Greta hoped Johann wouldn’t have another fit like the one at Altenburg Castle. They made good progress for the first few days, and the doctor was merely pained by a few headaches. Their way led them west along old imperial roads, some of which were the same ones laid by the Romans. Grass and weeds were growing between the worn-down flagstones, and occasionally they saw milestones with Latin inscriptions. The roads, passing through the heart of the German Empire, were busy with travelers and merchants. Smaller and larger villages lined up like pearls on a string, and there wasn’t much left of the huge forest that once covered the entire center of Europe. Vast clearings and smoldering piles made by charcoal burners lined the roadsides; during the last few centuries, people had spread here like flies.
They gave the Episcopal city of Würzburg a wide berth so they wouldn’t run into soldiers or henchmen of the pope. They never stayed longer than one night in any place. If someone asked, they said they were pilgrims of Saint James on their way to Santiago de Compostela, a city in the faraway kingdom of Castile where the grave of the apostle Saint James was located.
Beyond Würzburg they followed the Main River toward the Rhine flats, and eventually they came to Mainz, the same city in which a certain Johannes Gutenberg had started to print books nearly a hundred years earlier. Greta would have liked to stay for a while, but just like Bamberg, Mainz was an Episcopal town and it was likely that they were wanted here, too. Outside the city gates, a delegation of the bishop’s soldiers had cast suspicious glances at them, and so the very same day they boarded a raft heavily laden with cackling chickens, blocks of salt, and stinking barrels of herring, taking them across the wide, lazy Rhine.
West of the river, the land became more sparsely occupied and rougher, and the few roads were so muddy that the three travelers were glad they’d left the wagon behind. They came to the Wasgau region, a seemingly endless hilly forest between the German lands and France. Derelict fortresses sat on the peaks of the hills like silent watchmen from a bygone era when the legendary emperor Barbarossa hunted these woods. The road led through shady vales, across narrow wooden bridges over roaring rivers and creeks; gnarled oak and beech trees spread their limbs in all directions. The trees were growing so closely together that hardly any sunlight reached the ground; it was forever twilight in these woods. Not many travelers were on the road in this no-man’s-land, and only rarely did they pass an almost-forgotten border stone where they had to pay a toll to wild-looking keepers.
And it was here in the Wasgau that Johann suffered another fit.
It was the end of November by now. The first snow was falling in watery gray flakes onto the bare trees. The travelers’ coats were permanently damp and cold, and Greta’s teeth wouldn’t stop chattering. Until then, Faust had only been shaking a little from time to time, but now it was growing more severe by the day. Greta and Karl looked after him, but no matter what they tried—a boiled brew of ivy with willow bark, dried Saint-John’s-wort, or wet bandages drenched with sulfur water—the shaking did not abate. Johann struggled to hold a spoon in the evenings; only in the mornings did his hands steady a little, sometimes for a few hours.
They had just passed through a ravine, and the next village was still many miles off, when a group of men stepped out of the woods, blocking their way. Greta could tell at once that they were highway robbers, which were common in this mountainous region. They wore torn trousers and shirts, their beards long and straggly, their skin covered in scabs. They might have been farmers once upon a time, before poverty and hunger forced them into the woods. Now they weren’t much more than wild animals.
“Your horses and your money,” growled the one at the front, a one-eyed, older man with yellow pus running out from under his eye patch. He was swinging a rusty dusack, the weapon of peasants and thieves, a sword suitable for harvesting as well as murdering. “Hurry up now! Then we’ll let you go.”
Greta looked at Karl and Johann, who had halted their horses; riding around the men was out of the question. They all knew that in spite of the leader’s words, they wouldn’t leave
