The Devil's Pawn

by Oliver Pötzsch

  Father Sebastian Keuchlin stayed sitting in the confessional for a long while after the stranger had left. Cold sweat stood on his forehead. Who in God’s name had that been? Keuchlin had never experienced such a confession. Usually, God-fearing German pilgrims came to see him because they had broken the commandment of abstinence and spent their money on wine, women, and song instead of donating it to the mother church. Yes, even murderers and thieves had visited him before to confess their sins, but never a sinner like the one who had just been here. The man had sounded like a scholar, practiced in argument, a magister or doctor, perhaps. But something else had resonated from him, almost like a force of evil.

  Keuchlin shuddered. And what about those last words? Homo Deus est. They sounded like a battle cry. The fellow was not just a murderer but also a heretic.

  But something else bothered Keuchlin even more.

  The stranger had mentioned Viktor von Lahnstein.

  Sebastian Keuchlin wasn’t just a plain confessor. He was a member of the brotherhood of Santa Maria dell’Anima, a college of seven chaplains who were responsible for the well-being of the German pilgrims in Rome. In addition, Keuchlin was a close confidant of the papal curia. He had served under Johannes Burckard, the former papal master of ceremonies, who had introduced his young ward Sebastian to the higher circles. Circles also frequented by Viktor von Lahnstein. There weren’t many who personally knew the creepy inquisitor—known as “the pope’s mastiff” behind his back. In an accident, Lahnstein had lost his nose, making him look somewhat like a dog. Keuchlin shook himself with repulsion. It was kind of fitting for a Dominican—one of the domini canes, the dogs of the Lord, as those stern inquisitors were often called.

  In the last two years, Lahnstein had vanished almost completely from the scene while at the same time rising to be Leo’s personal adjutant—even though no one could say with certainty what it was that he did. And now a crazy stranger turns up and mentions his name. Was it supposed to be a threat?

  Sebastian Keuchlin respected the seal of confession, but he also knew what loyalty meant. Santa Maria dell’Anima Church wasn’t completed—funds were lacking since that awful Luther preached about the “whore of Rome.”

  Everything has its price.

  Keuchlin wiped the sweat off his forehead once more. The stranger wasn’t entirely wrong. The church had to make certain sacrifices for the good of Christianity.

  The chaplain squeezed his corpulent body out of the confessional, hurried down the dark nave, and waddled over to the hospice gardens, where his humble abode stood. There, he sat down at his desk and wrote a long letter to His Eminence the papal inquisitor Viktor von Lahnstein.

  He felt certain that it wouldn’t be to the detriment of the German church in Rome.

  21

  STEADILY THE CHARCOAL PEN FOLLOWED ITS COURSE, crosshatching here, filling in there, tweaking one line or another. The face of the Mother of God held all the pain in the world, and yet there was solace, too. Mary was holding her grown-up son in her arms like a babe, cradling him, singing him to sleep like an infant. A magical aura seemed to shine from both figures, soothing Karl, as art did for him so often. And this artwork in front of him was the most perfect he had ever seen.

  It was the most beautiful sculpture in the world.

  With a sigh, Karl put down pen and parchment and focused entirely on the almost life-sized marble pietà before him. He knew that he would never be able to create anything so beautiful, but the act of copying it with a piece of charcoal gave him a deep sense of satisfaction, putting him in a state of contemplation that, he guessed, monks achieved through prayer.

  The pietà stood in a side chapel of Saint Peter’s, concealed from the eyes of most believers who visited Saint Peter’s Square on a daily basis despite the construction work. The tomb of Saint Peter himself lay nearby. A Roman cardinal had commissioned the marble sculpture shortly before his death, requesting the artist create the most beautiful statue in Rome. Not an easy feat considering the large number of outstanding sculptures in the city.

  And yet the artist, a certain Michelangelo Buonarroti, had succeeded.

  Karl had heard about this Michelangelo before. During the last few years, he had risen to the top of Italian sculptors, just like Raffaello used to be considered the greatest painter in Rome, until he’d died unexpectedly the year before. Leonardo da Vinci had told Karl about Michelangelo and Raffaello. Leonardo’s grudging remarks had been tinged with the subtle jealousy typical of old masters faced with talented young apprentices. Looking at Michelangelo’s pietà, Karl could understand Leonardo’s envy.

  For weeks now Karl had been visiting the churches of Rome, drawing anything he laid his eyes on. He would have loved to own a pair of eye glasses like he used to have, but the specially cut pieces of glass were simply too expensive. Even so, drawing helped him to gradually regain his old life. Every day, with every stroke, more memories returned. And it took his mind off the unsolvable task before them.

  Greta, where are you? Are you still alive? Do you remember your old friend Karl?

  Karl’s hand went to the little guardian angel at his neck. Deep down, he had given up hope of ever finding Greta. No one had heard of her—no innkeeper, no pilgrim, not even the whores. Maybe he had been mistaken. Maybe she hadn’t traveled to Rome with Lahnstein. In some ways he had doubted the success of their mission since Toulouse, but had followed Johann to Rome nonetheless. Something tied him to the doctor that Karl couldn’t explain. Rationally speaking, Faust was too old to be physically attractive to Karl. It was something far greater than sexual attraction—something that went beyond human love.

  It was devotion.

  Karl still didn’t know what, exactly, had happened between him and Faust in the crypt below Tiffauges. It must have been something so terrible that his mind refused to this day to release the memories. As much as Karl loved the doctor, he also sensed that he was harming himself with this love. He had to leave the doctor before he became the end of Karl.

  The only question was when.

  The church bells started to toll loudly, startling Karl. He had completely forgotten the time. Today was the first of November, All Saints’ Day, and therewith the day of the papal procession they had been awaiting for weeks. So far, they hadn’t caught a single glimpse of the pope or his inner circle. But today the opportunity would finally arise. In honor of the saints, Leo X had organized a procession with his entire court from Saint Peter’s to the Lateran Basilica, where the popes used to reside before their exile at Avignon. Leo was well known for his spectacular processions, and there were rumors that coins would be tossed into the crowds. No wonder the streets along the procession’s route had been filled with people since the break of day. Johann and Karl had agreed to meet at the Sant’Angelo Bridge at the stroke of noon, and Karl knew how angry the doctor became when people didn’t keep appointments, especially in matters as important as this one.

  He quickly packed his drawing utensils into his small leather bag and hurried to the chapel’s exit. Outside, people thronged toward the procession in masses; evidently the event had already begun. Karl heard trumpets, drums, and scattered cheers. Cursing, he rushed across the building site, an obstacle course of scaffolds, cranes, sacks of lime, and rocks.

  He was about to turn onto the wide street that led down to the Tiber when he heard a soft whirring sound above, followed an instant later by heavy rumbling. Karl looked up. Several bricks in a freshly mortared wall had come loose, and at the same time a cascade of roof tiles came hurtling down from a scaffold higher up. Karl managed to leap aside just before the stones hit his head. A red cloud of clay dust rose up, and then he saw the toppled crane through the haze. It would seem one of the ropes of the pulley had snapped, setting off an avalanche of stone. Breathing heavily, Karl patted the dust from his shirt. He made the sign of the cross and uttered a prayer of thanks. The Lord had decided not to take him today.

  But it would seem someone else hadn’t been so
lucky.

  Karl heard high-pitched screams of pain that turned into a mournful whimpering. He looked around and spotted a small figure behind the pile of rubble. He rushed over and saw that it was a boy, no older than twelve, probably one of the many day laborers who lugged heavy sacks of lime in exchange for one warm meal a day. His face was white with dust, blood ran over his forehead, and a heavy beam lay across his chest. The boy’s eyes were wide open with fear.

  “Santa Maria,” he gasped in Italian. “Che dolore.”

  Karl spoke a little Italian, but it didn’t require knowledge of the language to understand that the boy was in severe pain.

  “Hang on, I’ll help you.” Karl grabbed the beam with both hands and pulled, but it was much heavier than he’d expected. As Karl pushed and pulled in turns, the boy repeatedly screamed out in pain. Karl was surprised none of the other laborers had come to their aid yet, but then he remembered that they’d probably all gone to watch the procession.

  Finally, Karl was able to pull the beam off the boy’s chest. He bent over him, listening and examining the wound like he had learned during his time as a student of medicine. He thought the boy was bleeding internally and certainly had a few broken ribs.

  “L’uccello nero,” murmured the boy over and over. “Con le ali nere.”

  “Black bird—black wings? What do you mean?” Karl helplessly dabbed the blood from the boy’s forehead.

  As Karl used one of his scraps of paper to wipe the boy’s face, he gazed down at him. The boy didn’t seem to be in his right senses, but he was handsome, with delicate features and long eyelashes, reminding Karl of—

  Karl winced.

  The boy’s face reminded him of the Savior from the pietà he had just drawn.

  “Con le ali nere,” repeated the boy. “Con le ali nere.”

  Karl desperately looked around. This injured boy badly needed a physician, a hospital. But the two of them seemed to be all alone; no one rushed to their aid.

  Karl reminded himself that he had studied medicine once upon a time. Maybe he could help the boy. But he would need water and wine to wash him and a quiet place to treat him. He could still hear the festive music in the distance, but it was growing fainter. Karl hesitated. He had promised to meet Johann. They wanted to keep their eyes peeled for any sign of Lahnstein or perhaps even Greta. It could be their last chance. But here was a small, fragile person in need of his help.

  “Mamma,” whimpered the boy. “Mamma mia.” Then he closed his eyes and stopped moving.

  Karl felt his pulse and found it still beat weakly. He made his decision; he lifted the injured boy; he was astonishingly light. Karl thought of the Mother Mary and how she had cradled her dead son in her lap, immortalized in Michelangelo’s pietà. He managed to heave the boy onto his back and carry him through the lanes, which, away from the procession, were all but deserted. The noise and music still sounding in the distance, Karl carried the boy over to the German quarter, pausing every now and again to catch his breath.

  After several more breaks, stopping to check if the boy was still alive, Karl finally arrived at the inn near the Piazza Navona. Apart from the half-deaf landlady, no one was in the taproom. Followed by the suspicious looks of the old woman, Karl climbed the stairs with his burden and entered the small chamber he shared with Faust. He gently placed the boy onto the bed and covered him. The boy briefly opened his eyes.

  “Il cielo?” he murmured.

  “You are too young to go to heaven,” whispered Karl with a smile. “All will be well. Sleep now.”

  The boy closed his eyes and lost consciousness again. Karl opened the child’s shirt and studied the wound more closely. The rib cage was definitely crushed, and bruises indicated there was internal bleeding. Karl cleaned the boy’s chest with brandy nonetheless. The rattling breath suggested that the lungs might be injured.

  No physician in the world could help this boy.

  Tears welled up in Karl’s eyes. The boy’s tragic fate suddenly made everything seem pointless—their journey to Rome, the search for Greta, his futile striving for recognition, for the doctor’s love. It was as if along with this boy, his hopes were dying.

  “Don’t go,” said Karl softly, stroking the boy’s pale cheek. “Stay with me. Don’t leave me alone.”

  Then the boy opened his eyes again and looked straight at Karl. He smiled tiredly.

  “Va bene. It’s all right,” he whispered in Italian. “She . . . she told me, back then.”

  “Who told you what?” asked Karl, fearing the boy would lose consciousness again at any moment. He focused wholly on the words that came across the boy’s lips with great difficulty.

  “La donna bianca,” breathed the boy. “The white woman . . . that time when I had the bad cough from the dust at the construction site. I . . . I asked her if I was dying. ‘Not yet,’ she said. But I . . . I could tell from her eyes that it would be soon. And now the time has come.”

  “No one can tell when it is your time to die,” said Karl. “Only God.”

  “Oh, but yes!” The boy smiled. “She knows. Everybody says so. The white woman can tell—she can see it in your hands.”

  “In . . . in your hands?”

  Karl’s blood ran cold.

  La donna bianca . . . The white woman.

  “Who are you speaking of?” Karl asked with growing excitement. “Who . . . who is this white woman?”

  And the boy told him.

  As Karl listened, he noticed once more how similar the boy’s face looked to that of the Savior of Michelangelo’s pietà.

  Johann stood in the first row of spectators, wedged in between the crowd of dirty, stinking people, trying hard not to collapse. The shouting, the noise, and the closeness to the rabble repulsed him. Squeezed together tightly, they waited for the pope and his retinue to pass by. From the nearby Tiber, wafts of feces, urine, and rot blew through the lanes. The sky was gray with heavy rain clouds.

  Johann had waited a long while for Karl before heading off on his own to find a spot in the front row. He couldn’t understand why Karl had failed to turn up. What had happened? Most likely he had simply forgotten the time, engrossed in his drawings, which had happened a lot lately. Johann had decided that he would have to look for Lahnstein by himself. After all, he had practically always done things by himself.

  Someone bumped into him, and Johann came close to hitting the perpetrator with his elbow. How he hated this crowd.

  “I heard Leo has grown even fatter,” sounded a voice right beside his ear. “And the ulcer on his ass pains him so greatly that he can’t ride his white horse any longer. That’s why he always looks so sour. He hardly leaves the palace anymore, just sits around like a warty toad.”

  Another man laughed. “Maybe that’s why he needs so many jugglers, fools, and minstrels. Whatever the case, his processions are fantastic, just like the fireworks at Castel Sant’Angelo.”

  “Yes, yes, and in the meantime, the little people starve in the streets. And after their banquets the cardinals toss their golden plates into the river.”

  “I wouldn’t mind if they threw a few golden plates today,” said the other one, a burly fellow who towered over Johann by a head and reeked of garlic. “Filled with roast pigeons, too! Ah, I think it’s time.”

  Cheers rang out, announcing the approach of the festive procession. Soon Johann saw the drummers and the musicians. They were followed by a hundred lance-bearing horsemen who gazed down grimly on the common people. Then followed the cardinals’ officials in their liveries, and other lower servicemen. Johann craned his neck and watched intently, hoping to spot Greta or Lahnstein. Other church dignitaries went past, carrying monstrances, smoking incense burners, and statues of saints, followed by the standard bearers carrying the coat of arms of the Medici pope: six balls on a golden background. The smell of the incense somewhat alleviated the stink of the Tiber. Johann frowned. Leo X truly was a master of showmanship. If a procession for All Saints’ Day was this specta
cular, then the feast for his inauguration must have been incredible. No wonder he had financial difficulties.

  Finally, accompanied by loud cheering, the pope arrived.

  The Holy Father sat on a gilded throne that was carried by four Moors dressed in golden livery. A baldachin sheltered Leo from possible rain. He wore a flowing robe of white silk, and over it a red coat lined with ermine. A red cap sat slightly crooked on his head.

  It was the first time Johann had seen the pope in the flesh—the same man who had searched for Johann for so long across the entire empire and beyond. It was true: Leo embodied everything the new Lutherans despised about Rome. He was incredibly fat, with a huge, spongy head; a short, fleshy neck; a red face; and bulging eyes, making him indeed look a little like a toad. His facial features were soft, like a woman’s, and his pale, ring-studded hands looked much too small for the bulky body. With those hands, the pope waved graciously to the crowd.

  Striding at his sides were men juggling balls, acrobats performing cartwheels, a muscular giant leading two fully grown panthers on a leash, and a hunchbacked fool. To the delight of the crowd, the fool scaled the backrest of the throne as nimbly as a monkey, peering over the crowd from directly behind Leo. He mimicked Leo’s gracious movements as if he were the pope himself. The Holy Father went along with the jest. The two panthers hissed and pulled at their chain as if they wanted to eat the fool alive.

  The people laughed and pointed at the hilarious fellow, clad in a red-and-green jerkin with a gugel and a mask with a long nose. It was shows like this one that Leo was famous for. The pope loved any kind of pomp, no matter how ridiculous, expensive, or bizarre. It wasn’t entirely inconceivable that someone like Leo truly believed a Doctor Faustus knew how to make gold. But still, Johann wondered who had given him the idea in the first place. Lahnstein? Or someone else?

  Like a ship at sea, the pope’s throne traveled past the rows of spectators. Now the fool and some of the jugglers tossed copper and silver coins into the crowd, causing people to scream out and raise their hands as if they were catching manna from heaven. The same people who had just been griping about the pope now cheered his name. The big fellow behind Johann gave him a shove, and Johann landed face first in the muck.