The meltwater rushing down the mountains in March made the roads muddy and at times impassable, forcing them to take detours and sometimes travel along narrow game paths. Agrippa had organized fast horses for them and instructed them on the route to the Loire Valley. The city where Leonardo lived was called Amboise, and there was also a castle belonging to the king. They still needed to be careful of being followed, and so they traveled under false names and wore the plain pilgrims’ garb they’d used on their way to Metz. They avoided hostels and thus went without warm nights and the Lorraine region’s seductive-smelling food.
Greta usually sat with Faust and Karl in forest clearings in the evenings, listening to her father’s tales while Karl turned the spit with a hare he had caught himself and stuffed with wild onion and herbs. There was so much she wanted to know, and Faust told her everything, even about the horrible events at Nuremberg, when Tonio del Moravia had used the fourteen-year-old Greta as bait to lure her father underground. Sometimes, as she stared into the crackling flames, images appeared before her mind’s eye, pale at first but growing clearer as Johann told her more.
A high-ceilinged room like a church, chanting that rises and ebbs, a cross hanging upside down behind the altar, a girl tied down on the altar.
Me.
Since the encounter in Metz, Tonio had returned to Greta’s life. And even if she didn’t like to admit it, she wanted to learn more about the man with the black eyes as deep as ancient craters. Tonio had lodged himself like a thorn in Greta’s and her father’s lives, and she wouldn’t have a good night’s sleep again until that thorn was removed.
And Greta heard everything about her mother, beautiful Margarethe.
Her father had known Margarethe since childhood. But his ambition and unscrupulousness had been the ruin of them both. It was Johann’s fault that Margarethe had to burn at the stake at Worms after she gave birth to Greta in the bishop’s dungeons.
“Your mother was the person I loved most in this world,” muttered Johann, staring into the flames as if he could still see Margarethe there. “Her laughter was the medicine that saved me, the only remedy that had the power to rouse me from my never-ending pondering. It was her laughter that protected me many times.” He looked up and smiled at Greta. “You are very much like her.”
“And I’m like you, too,” said Greta. “Even though I find it hard to admit.”
“Well, I’m not all bad, am I?”
Her anger with her father and Karl gradually evaporated; she had known them for far too long. Only a very small, smoldering part remained. Some days, things were almost the way they used to be—but only almost.
“This gift of foreseeing someone’s death in the palm of their hand—this gift I inherited from you,” said Greta hesitantly. “It is a curse nearly as great as the one torturing you now.”
“But death doesn’t always have to follow. I’ve experienced that a few times—not often, to be honest, but occasionally I ran into the person again later on. They were marked by great suffering, but they lived.” Johann took her hand in his, struggling with the movement because of the paralysis growing in his left arm. “Perhaps it is the same with me. If only I can succeed in stopping this accursed illness.”
Greta could feel his whole body shaking, as it often did in the evenings.
“We ought to seek out Leonardo da Vinci as quickly as we can so we can learn more about your disease,” said Karl from his place by the fire, leafing through his notes.
Karl had purchased a pair of those newfangled eye glasses in Metz. They were increasingly popular at monasteries and universities, and they gave him the air of a learned Adonis.
Greta surmised that his love for the doctor had prevented Karl from telling her the truth. She had reproached him bitterly at the start of their trip, and now their relationship had cooled off noticeably. But Karl was still the only friend she had.
“Although I still think Córdoba would have been better,” continued Karl. “There are excellent physicians there, and Leonardo da Vinci, as much as I admire him, is no physician. He’s an inventor and a painter.”
“But he appears to have the same disease as me,” said Johann. “Agrippa said that Leonardo knows something about it. Maybe even something”—he paused for a moment—“something about the curse.”
“So you still believe it is a curse?” asked Karl skeptically.
“Oh yes, I do.”
It wasn’t the first time Johann and Karl had had this conversation since their departure from Metz.
Karl set down his quill. “I still struggle to believe what Agrippa told us. Tonio is the devil himself? Where is the proof? If he really is the devil, then why doesn’t he just take you right here and now?”
“Even the devil must follow ancient rules,” said Johann quietly. “And Tonio aside, France offers us safety from the papal sleuths.”
“What secret might you have learned from Tonio or Gilles de Rais?” said Greta, staring into the fire, where blue flames danced like will-o’-the-wisps. “It must be something very special for the pope to take an interest.”
Karl nodded. “An interesting question indeed.”
“Whatever it is—I don’t know the secret,” said Johann glumly. “But either way, I’d rather have as many miles as possible between us and Lahnstein and his men.”
Greta jumped when a few branches cracked in the pitch-black forest behind them; something snorted. Little Satan, who was lying next to them chewing on a bone, pricked up his ears.
