Frank Schätzing - Death and the Devil

She lifted up her head and looked around, trying to work out where she was. Rough masonry walls, huge beams, and the ceiling black with soot. A little light came in through a narrow slit. She saw Jaspar’s handcart.

She’d been brought here in the handcart. Where on earth was Rolof, then?

Motionless, the stranger watched her. Cautiously she tried to stretch her arms, but she was still bound hand and foot, incapable of moving.

“Where am I?” she asked in a weak voice.

Without a word, he came over to her and lifted her up until she was standing on her feet, legs trembling. Then he picked her up effortlessly and carried her over to one of the massive pillars supporting the roof.

“Please tell me where you’ve brought me,” she begged.

He leaned her against the pillar and started to tie her up, so tight she was almost part of it.

She felt a glimmer of hope. If he was going to all this trouble, he couldn’t intend to kill her. At least not immediately. It looked as if he was going to leave her here and was making sure she couldn’t escape. He must have something else in mind for her. Whether it would be better or worse than being killed was another question entirely.

He pulled the straps tighter and Richmodis gave an involuntary groan. He calmly stood in front of her, scrutinizing his handiwork thoroughly. Again Richmodis was filled with nameless fear at the void behind his eyes. What she saw was an empty shell, a handsome mask. She wondered how God could have created such a being.

Jacob had not ruled out the possibility it was the Devil. Could he have been right?

That means you must be in hell, she thought. What nonsense. Whoever heard of someone being taken down to hell in a handcart?

She tried again to get him to speak. “Where is Rolof?” she asked. The stranger raised his eyebrows slightly, turned away with a shrug of the shoulders, and went to one of the heavy doors.

“Why have you brought me here?” she cried in desperation.

He stopped and turned to face her. “I’d given up hope of hearing an intelligent question from you,” he said, coming back to her. “It’s not a particularly intelligent age we live in, don’t you agree? With whom can an educated person discuss anything new nowadays? The scholars at the universities have let themselves be made into lackeys of the popes, who themselves just slavishly follow Saint Bernard’s decree that there can be nothing new and that life on earth is of no significance. Fine, if that’s what he thinks, we can always open up the way to a better world.”

His fingers stroked her cheek. With a shudder, she turned her head aside, the only movement she was capable of.

He smiled. “I am not going to tell you where you are, nor what I intend to do with you.”

“Who are you?”

“Now then.” He wagged his finger playfully at her. “You had promised to ask intelligent questions. That is not an intelligent question.”

“You killed Gerhard Morart.”

“I killed him?” The stranger raised his brows in mock amazement. “I can remember having given him a push. Is it my fault he had made the scaffolding so narrow?”

“And you killed that girl, the girl in Berlich,” she said. “Why do you do things like that?”

“She was in the way when I took aim.”

“Who will be the next one in your way?” she whispered.

“That’s enough questions, Richmodis.” He spread his hands wide. “I can’t know everything. Life’s little surprises come all unexpected. As far as I’m concerned, you can live to be a hundred.”

She couldn’t repress a cough. A stab of pain went through her lungs. “And what do I have to do to earn that?”

“Nothing.” He winked at her, as if they were old friends, and brought out the gag again. “You must excuse me if I can’t continue our little conversation. I have to go. I have important business to see to and need a little rest. A holy work”—he laughed—“as someone might put it who was foolish enough to believe in God.”

It was strange, but for all that she hated and loathed him, for all the fear she had of him, the idea that he might leave her alone in this cold, terrible place seemed even worse.

“Who says God does not exist?” she asked hastily.

He paused and gave her a thoughtful look. “An intelligent question. Prove He exists.”

“No. You prove He doesn’t exist.”

She had listened to enough of this kind of discussion between Goddert and Jaspar. Suddenly a disputation seemed the one possible bridge to the stranger.

He came closer. So close she could feel his breath on her face.

“Prove to me that God doesn’t exist,” Richmodis repeated, her voice quavering.

“I could do that,” he said quietly, “but you wouldn’t like it.”

“Just because I’m a woman?” she hissed. “Gerhard’s murderer is not usually so softhearted.”

A frown appeared on his forehead. “There’s nothing personal about this,” he said. Oddly enough, it sounded as if he meant it.

“There isn’t? That’s all right, then, I suppose.”

“What I am doing, I am doing for a purpose. I don’t take pleasure in killing people, but it doesn’t bother me either. I have accepted a commission in the course of which the deaths of several people became necessary, that’s all.”

“That’s not everything by a long shot, from what I hear.”

“Remember what killed the cat, Richmodis. I’m going now.”

“Why do you make people suffer so much?”

He shook his head. “It is not my fault if people suffer. I bear no responsibility for their deaths. How many people die in whatever manner doesn’t concern me. It doesn’t make any difference. The world is pointless and it will stay that way, with or without humans.”

Fury welled up inside her. “How can you be so cynical? Every human life is sacred; every human being was created by God for a purpose.”

“God does not exist.”

“Then prove it.”

“No.”

“Because you can’t.”

“Because I don’t want to.”

“Prove it!”

“Why?” The look he gave her was almost pitying. “I know He doesn’t exist, but you have no right to demand I prove He doesn’t. If you insist on thinking I won’t because I can’t, I can live with that. You can believe what you like as far as I’m concerned.”

He lifted up the gag.

I’m losing him, thought Richmodis. I must learn as much as I can about him. There must be a spark of feeling somewhere inside him. “What did they do to you to make you like this?” she asked, surprised at her own question.

The expression froze on his face.

For a brief moment Richmodis thought she had managed to get through to him. Then suddenly he smiled again. “Nice try,” he said with a mixture of mockery and admiration, then quickly stuffed the gag between her teeth, turned, and headed for the door, his cloak swirling. “Unfortunately not quite good enough. Don’t worry, I’ll be back. I might even let you go. You’re safe here. Now neither the Fox nor your uncle will dare go around spreading stories about a supposed murder.”

The hinges creaked as he opened the door. Richmodis had a brief view of a courtyard with a wall beyond.

“Behave yourself, like a well-brought-up girl should.” In the fading light of the late afternoon he was just a shadow, a figment of the imagination, a bad dream. “And if you need proof of the complete absence of Divine Providence and the pointlessness of human existence, just think of me. One of millions.”

The door slammed shut behind him. She was alone with the rats.

Urquhart slumped back against the wall of the abandoned warehouse and closed his eyes. The images were threatening to return. He felt himself being dragged down into the red whirlpool of memories from which waves of sound rose up toward him, those strangely shrill tones he would never have thought a human being capable of producing.