The Devil's Pawn

by Oliver Pötzsch

  “John?” she asked, puzzled. She took a step back and looked at him. He was unshaven and pale, as if he’d been sleeping poorly. But other than that, he was just the same. Greta was so surprised that she forgot to be angry.

  John, too, looked confused at first, but then he gave a tired smile. “Look at that, the little princess. And I thought you lived at your castle with that old codger and your father, the dragon.”

  “And I thought you were somewhere on the Atlantic with your boat, en route to God-knows-where.” Greta crossed her arms. “After our abrupt goodbye two weeks ago, I came back to the harbor like we’d agreed. But you weren’t there.”

  “We . . . we must have missed each other,” he said evasively. “I had to be somewhere. Business has been going poorly.”

  “So poorly that you take off without a word? I haven’t seen your boat anywhere. And now you’re here at a church service. Are you praying for better weather?”

  “My men and I, we . . .” John hesitated. “We had differing views of where business was going from here. And so we went our separate ways.”

  “The crew took your ship and left you behind? You can tell that to your hussies and whores at the port. How dumb do you think I am?”

  “How dumb do you think I am?” John glowered at her. “You told me you were simple pilgrims on your way to Fontevrault Abbey. And then I find out that in truth, the man claiming to be your father is a magician, astrologer, and alchemist famous far beyond the borders of the German Empire. And then you take up lodgings at Leonardo da Vinci’s.”

  “I see you’ve been busy.” Greta took a step toward John and gave him a hard look. Apparently John didn’t know that she really was Johann’s daughter; her father had told no one but Leonardo. But he seemed well informed about everything else. “You’ve been watching me—admit it! What are you up to? Why are you spying on me?”

  John opened his mouth, about to say something, but then he dropped his arms. “What the hell. I’ll just tell you. It would have come out sooner or later.”

  Greta stepped even closer to him. Strangely enough, she wasn’t afraid; not of John. “Tell me.”

  He gestured toward the weathered stone steps in front of the church. Most churchgoers were on their way back to town; only a few older women still stood near the entrance, leading hushed conversations. No one took any notice of the young couple. Greta hesitated briefly, then she shuffled away from John and sat down on the cool, hard stone.

  John began awkwardly. “We . . . we never intended to take you all the way to Amboise.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Well, you must understand that we’re not merchants as such, but . . . but . . .” John kneaded his hands. “Well, people who don’t take the burden of taxation too seriously.”

  “You are smugglers?” asked Greta, astonished.

  “A harsh term.” John lifted his hands, seeming almost offended. “All we do is bypass the staple right. By law, all ships must offer their wares for sale at each larger town along the Loire and also pay taxes. Our wares, however, go straight to the Atlantic and are therefore much cheaper.” He winked at Greta. “Our cozy little Étoile de Mer is larger than she looks. She has a pretty fat belly.”

  “Then why did you take us?”

  “When I saw the three of you at Orléans, I thought you could be milked. Do you understand? Simple pilgrims, ha!” John gave a laugh. “I never believed you for a moment but thought instead that you were rich merchants with some kind of highly precious freight sewn into your garments, like jewels or pearls, something like that. We were going to clean you out at Blois and set off before dawn, but then . . .” He broke off.

  “What happened then?” asked Greta.

  “That night with you, damn it . . . Nothing like it ever happened to me before. I plead guilty, Greta.” John paused and looked down. “Guilty of falling in love with you.”

  She flushed and her heart began to race.

  John edged a little closer, and Greta suddenly felt hot. She should be angry with him—she should have slapped the faithless bastard and walked away. But she couldn’t. Greta smelled smoke, wine, and tangy sweat as if he hadn’t washed in a while. But, strangely, that didn’t bother her. On the contrary.

  “Yes, I’ve fallen head over heels in love with you,” he continued softly. “I still can’t believe it. Up in the castle gardens at Blois I felt like I was struck by lightning. And then . . . and then everything changed. I asked my men to hold off on the robbery. I needed time—time to figure out how it would go with . . . with the two of us. But then your father up and departed with no warning and you left me standing in the port like a dumb ox. We argued. My men were angry because they hadn’t received their fair share. I went and got as drunk as a lord while those goddamn bastards took off with the ship and left me behind. Since then I’ve been stuck at Amboise. And . . . and . . .”

  “You’ve been following me, haven’t you?” said Greta. “That’s how you know where we’re staying.”

  John lifted a hand. “Guilty as charged,” he said again. A little embarrassed, he ran his hand through his tousled red hair. “Although that part wasn’t hard to find out. Half the town is talking about the famous Doctor Faustus lodging at Leonardo da Vinci’s. Several times I came close to speaking to you, but I was afraid you would send me away. Because you found out what a piece of scum I am.” Suddenly he looked up and spoke with a firm voice. “No more lies, Greta. I stand before you as a smuggler, a thief, and a fool who is hopelessly in love with you.”

  “Things would have been a little easier if you’d told me all of this sooner,” she replied gruffly. But she felt her wall crumble. This was like a dream that was too good to be true—Greta only hoped no one would wake her.

  “By the way, you looked gorgeous at mass just then. Like an angel fresh from heaven.”

  John gave a big smile, and this slightly crooked, sheepish grin finally won her over. The space outside church was deserted now; it was just the two of them.

  Greta gave a little sigh and hoped John wouldn’t hear it. She remembered that not long ago she’d demanded of her father to always tell the truth. How could she judge John for doing just that? It felt so good to have him near her again. There was something familiar about him—it felt like they’d known each other for a long time. And there was something romantic about smugglers.

  “You . . . you selfish, dumb—” she began.

  The rest of the sentence drowned in a long kiss. Greta tried to resist at first, but then she returned John’s kiss with passion. John had kindled a fire inside her that had continued to smolder after his disappearance, and now it was flaring back up. But this time, she wouldn’t be the weak girl who was getting seduced. She turned her face away abruptly and stood up.

  “What are you doing?” asked John in surprise.

  Greta smiled. “There might not be anyone watching, but this here behind us is still a church. I know an overgrown orchard nearby. It’s not as magnificent as the royal gardens at Blois, but it’s at least as beautiful.” She pulled John up and led him by his sleeve, and he followed without protest. Arm in arm they walked down the narrow lane that led to the vineyards and gardens outside of town.

  That was why Greta didn’t see the old raven perched on the walls of the church, staring down at her with hateful red eyes.

  When Greta hurried back toward Château du Cloux with a spring in her step that evening, two other shadows followed her progress from one of the caverns in the tuff rock along the way. In the darkness of the cave, only the outlines of their bodies and the whites of their eyes showed, the one shadow towering above the other like a mountain.

  “There she is!” hissed Viktor von Lahnstein. “The doctor’s wench.”

  “Do you want me to grab her so we can question her?” asked Hagen, adjusting the long, bloodstained sword on his back. “It’s a good opportunity. For once she isn’t with that mutt.” He pulled the blade from its scabbard with a swooshing noise.
At his feet lay the dead beggar who had been unfortunate enough to sleep off the booze inside this cavern. At least he hadn’t felt much.

  Lahnstein considered, then shook his head. “No. We’d have to get rid of her afterward, just like this poor devil. And who knows if she’d spill anything at all. If she goes missing, questions will be asked—and the doctor would disappear. There must be another solution.”

  “We could take her as a hostage,” suggested Hagen. His Swiss accent sounded hard and gnarled, like creaking timber.

  “Blockhead!” snarled Lahnstein. Speaking was still difficult. A patch made of red silk covered the gash where his nose used to be. The wound still wept, and the patch was always a little wet. The pain nearly drove him insane, especially at night. Lahnstein had decided that all this must be a test from God. Whenever hatred threatened to get the better of him, he reached for the rosary hanging around his neck. Oh yes, God would reward him for resisting revenge for the good of the church.

  “Faust is a clever, ruthless fellow. The life of this girl probably isn’t worth more to him than that of a fly. She’s a nobody—just a servant, or perhaps his plaything. Besides, I doubt a stupid girl like her will know much.” Lahnstein adjusted his nose patch so that his speech was a little clearer. “No, let us wait a little longer. I want to know what the bastard is doing at Leonardo da Vinci’s. Leonardo, of all people—it can’t be coincidence!”

  Viktor von Lahnstein clenched his teeth and thought hard as darkness descended over the valley. It had taken them almost two months to locate the doctor. They had nearly caught him at Metz, but the papal soldiers had no sway in the free imperial city. Lahnstein had been forced to conduct secret negotiations with the authorities. And then Faust had vanished all of a sudden, just when Lahnstein had finally secured the permission for his arrest. It was enough to drive a man insane!

  They had picked up his scent again here in the Loire Valley. A traveling merchant had told them at Orléans that the famous Doctor Faustus had asked for an audience with the mortally ill Leonardo da Vinci. Lahnstein could hardly believe it at first—Leonardo da Vinci, the old heretic! Only a few years ago, Leonardo had been a guest of the pope, but the Holy Father’s dislike for the painter and inventor had eventually driven the man into the arms of the French king. There had been rumors of blasphemous dissections of corpses and similar heinous crimes. In addition, Leonardo was considered to be a sodomite.

  What in God’s name could Faust want from this shady old man?

  They had headed for Amboise as if the devil was after them, and Lahnstein had made inquiries. The girl had been the final clue that they had truly found the doctor.

  A cool breeze brushed Lahnstein’s cheek. Now, in April, it probably carried the scents of meadows and fields, but Lahnstein couldn’t tell because he had lost his sense of smell. In its stead was nothing but pain.

  And you will pay for it, Doctor! A thousandfold. But not now. The welfare of the church—of the whole of Christendom—is more important than my own.

  “We wait,” Lahnstein said eventually and retreated into the darkness of the cave. He turned to Hagen, who sheathed his sword with a grunt and dragged the body of the beggar to the back, where beasts of prey would soon find it and chew it down to the bones. No one could know about their presence here, least of all the French king.

  “I will write to the Holy Father. The letter must leave for Rome today. We need new instructions.” Lahnstein smiled grimly, which, together with his distorted face and the silk patch, made him look like a rare predatory fish from the deepest depths of the ocean. “I think Leo will be more than astonished to learn that Doctor Faustus is residing with Leonardo da Vinci, of all people. He will draw conclusions, just like I am.”

  10

  WHEN THE BELLS OF THE NEARBY VILLAGE CHURCH CHIMED midnight, three figures clad in black stood around a corpse by the light of a torch.

  Karl reached for the scalpel with a steady hand. He placed it between the collarbones and cut down the sternum all the way to the pubic bone, slicing through skin and flesh until he had exposed the rib cage. He put aside the scalpel, picked up a saw, and cut through the ribs. Gleaming below them were two pink flaps, which until recently rose and fell with every breath. Karl was once again wearing his eye glasses, which helped him greatly in the poor light.

  “The lungs look fresh,” explained Leonardo as he bent over the open torso, his necklace swinging like a pendulum. “Excellent blood flow. It is easy to tell that this body belongs to a young man. I remember dissecting an old man once, almost a hundred years old, at the Santa Maria Nuova hospital in Florence. The artery that feeds the heart and other body parts was all dried up, shriveled and withered like the brittle stem of a plant.”

  Johann, standing next to Leonardo, nodded pensively. “Age probably dries up the arteries in other places, too. It is possible that such dehydration leads to paralysis. What do you think?”

  But instead of replying, Leonardo addressed Karl. “Let us take a look at the heart now. Scalpellum minimum.”

  Johann handed Karl another one of those sharp knives that Leonardo had brought for the dissection and which had been laid out on a stool next to the body. Karl carefully cut out the lungs and put them aside.

  “Gently, please,” said Johann. “We want as little damage as possible.”

  “This isn’t my first dissection,” replied Karl. “I know what I’m doing.” He tried to sound calm and composed but couldn’t entirely hide his excitement. He hoped that in the light of the torch the doctor didn’t see the sweat running down his forehead.

  This might not have been Karl’s first dissection, but it was the first he conducted all by himself, and he was watched by the two men he admired the most. Because of their paralysis, neither Johann nor Leonardo was able to hold a scalpel steadily, so they acted as his assistants. The three of them were standing in the shed behind Leonardo’s mansion, the body of the stable boy on a wooden block covered with a wax cloth between them. Karl studied the corpse’s face, which looked as if it was made of wax. Until very recently this young, handsome lad had breathed, laughed, loved, eaten, and drunk, and now he was nothing but a shell, the shed skin of a larva.

  It was the middle of the night. Dressed in dark garments, the three had sneaked out of their bedchambers like thieves and met here. Groaning with effort, Karl had lifted the cold body out of the casket and onto the wooden block. They didn’t have much time; the grave diggers would arrive at first light to take the plain wooden crate to Saint Amboise Cemetery. The body already smelled strongly, forcing Karl to press his hand to his mouth and nose from time to time. Leonardo hadn’t yet told them why he wanted to dissect this body.

  Karl suppressed the urge to gag and cleared his throat. “How many dissections have you performed, master?” he asked Leonardo as he severed muscles and veins.

  “Oh, I don’t recall. Several dozen,” replied Leonardo, gazing into the distance. “Most of them at Florence, because people there are very open to this method of research. I believe dissections are as important for students of medicine and painting as the Latin roots of words are for grammarians.” He paused. “However, they didn’t like this way of thinking in Rome.”

  “What happened?” asked Johann.

  “It seemed I had a traitor in my own workshop. The pope found out that I skinned three corpses.”

  “So he sent you away?”

  “There was more than one point of conflict. I was asked to do . . . things that I wasn’t prepared to do. Thankfully the French king was kind enough to grant me asylum. I fled through the mountains in a simple cart.” Leonardo smiled. “And I’ve been here ever since. I was able to take my favorite paintings, including my beloved Gioconda. It wasn’t easy to get the girl across the Alps. The king lets me do as I please, more or less. To him I am like a jester who builds him a funny automaton or sets up fireworks. But he probably wouldn’t approve of this dissection. The king doesn’t want to offend the church.”

  Karl nod
ded. He and the doctor had also performed the occasional dissection. The bodies had mostly been those of executed men that no one claimed and who wouldn’t be buried in consecrated ground. The church considered the dissection of dead bodies a sin, and exceptions were only occasionally granted at universities. God alone created man, and His work oughtn’t be destroyed. The human body was a representation of the entire universe. But how should they understand God’s work if they couldn’t take it apart and study it? How should they find out what causes illness, suffering, and death?

  Leonardo leaned over the body again. “Now let us take a look at his heart.”

  “I very much hope we will get closer to an answer to our question,” muttered Johann.

  “It is just as Socrates once said,” replied Leonardo with a smile. “Teachers are often but the midwives of our answers. We must birth them ourselves.”

  With the doctor’s help, Karl gently placed the lung flaps into a tub. It was important that they didn’t leave any marks of their activity behind. Even a man as respected as Leonardo da Vinci wasn’t immune against a trial if it was about disturbing the dead. And Karl and Johann would definitely burn.

  Now they could see the heart in the stable boy’s opened torso. It was a muscle the size of a man’s fist and didn’t look much different from the heart of a pig. As Karl took a rag and wiped off the clotted blood, he could feel Leonardo’s eyes on him. It wasn’t the first time that Karl suspected that he and Leonardo had something very special in common. The colorful garments, the feminine gestures, Leonardo’s preference for young painters. They were brothers in spirit, without a doubt, but neither of them would say it out loud. Karl wondered if and when he would ever find the courage to confess his love to the doctor.

  Probably never.

  “There are two chambers here,” said Leonardo, pointing his knife to the inside of the heart, which was now exposed. Karl was grateful that the dissection distracted him from the feelings that washed over him like a flood. The old man’s fine voice soothed him.