Frank Schätzing - Death and the Devil

“They caught you,” said Tilman, not particularly surprised.

“They chased me all around Haymarket. I escaped along the Brook. Into the Brook.”

“And Goodwife Richmodis fished you out?”

“She’s not a goodwife.”

“What then?”

“A divine creature.”

“Good Lord!”

Jacob pictured her with her crooked nose and her buxom figure under her modest dress. “And she’s still available,” he added, as if he were announcing his engagement.

“Don’t fool yourself, Jacob.”

“And why not, I ask?”

Tilman leaned forward. “If I can give you a piece of advice, keep away from Haymarket as well as the Brook and stuff your belly somewhere else in future. They can recognize that mop from here to Aachen.”

“You’re just jealous. I had to pay for these clothes.”

“How much?”

“A lot.”

“Stop bragging. What have you got to pay with anyway?”

“Had. Three carrots and a beef sausage.”

Tilman sighed. “That is a lot.”

“Yes. And I almost got torn to pieces for it.” Jacob stretched and gave an immense yawn. “Anyway, how’s the world been treating you?”

“Very badly. I sat outside St. Mary’s Garden, but there were pilgrims there and they took all the pickings, God blast their eyes. The place was teeming with beggars from outside and tricksters faking deformities so that even the most softhearted put their purses away. What can a man do? There were others running around the town with rattles, collecting for the leper colony at Melaten. I left. I don’t want to catch leprosy and have my hand drop off when I hold it out for alms.”

“Quite right. Had anything to eat?”

“Well, naturally I was invited to the burgomaster’s. There were roast pears, wild boar, stuffed pigeons—”

“Nothing at all, then.”

“Brilliant. Do I look as if I’ve had anything to eat?”

Jacob shrugged his shoulders. “Just asking.”

“But I’m going to get a drink,” Tilman crowed. “Tonight in the Hen.”

“The inn?” Jacob asked skeptically.

“The very place.”

“Since when have you had money to drink at the inn?”

“I haven’t, have I? Otherwise I’d have spent it on food. But someone I know has. Don’t ask where he got it, I don’t want to know. But he wants to get rid of it. Says you can’t drink money, so he’s invited me and a couple of others to wet our whistles.”

“The man must have gone soft in the head. When?”

“Six o’clock. Why don’t you just come along? He’ll treat you, too.”

It was an attractive idea.

“Don’t know,” Jacob said, nevertheless. “I must get something solid down me first.”

“Aha! You’ve not eaten either?”

“Not a scrap’s passed my lips.”

“Why do you have to go for sausages? Why didn’t you pay Old Market Square a visit and persuade a few apples to jump into your pocket?”

“Why?” Jacob took a deep breath. “Because I had apples yesterday. Because I had apples the day before yesterday. Because I had apples before that. And before that. Because I’m starting to feel like an apple maggot.”

“You’re too choosy.”

“Oh, thanks very much.”

Once more they were silent for a while. The clouds were gathering. The afternoon was making its weary way toward evening.

“Not a bite to eat then.” Tilman’s summary was matter-of-fact. “As usual.”

He coughed.

It was the cough that did it. So casual and so terminal. Jacob jumped up and clenched his fists. “All right, you’ve persuaded me. Apples it is.”

Tilman gave him a long look. Then he smiled. “Apples it is.”

Matthias had strolled along the Rhine embankment, watching pepper, spices, and barrels of herring being unloaded from Dutch ships, past the Franks Tower and along the Old Bank before turning into Dranckgasse. This ran along the old Roman wall, part of which had been demolished to make way for the new cathedral. On the left in front of him the chapels surrounding the apse towered up into the sky and his heart was filled with misgivings.

He knew Gerhard’s plans. This—provided it was ever completed—would be the perfect church, the Holy City here on earth. The plans for the facade alone, with its two mountainous towers, had covered almost fifteen feet of parchment. Matthias had asked Gerhard whether he had forgotten he wouldn’t live forever.

Gerhard had patiently tried to explain that having a chancel with five aisles gave him no choice but to set out the whole massive church in one single design, following the precedent of Paris and Bourges. Even if he didn’t fully understand, Matthias took the architect at his word. His journeyman years had taken him to the scaffolding of Troyes and the new churches in Paris, including the much-praised Sainte Chapelle rising up in the courtyard of the Palace of Justice. By the time the choir of Amiens cathedral was being built his opinion was valued more highly than that of many a French colleague. Pierre de Montereau, the builder of the abbey church of Saint-Denis, had been his teacher and he was in constant contact with Jean de Chelles, who was supervising the construction of Notre Dame.

Oh, yes, Gerhard Morart had been through a good school, the very best, and above all he had managed to bring together a team of master craftsmen who were familiar with the new style.

For one brief moment he wished he could turn around and forget everything, but it was too late for that now. It had already been too late when the group met for the first time.

He cast his doubts aside and felt his usual calm return. His stoicism was his great virtue. Neither Johann nor Daniel was sufficiently pragmatic to carry their plan through in a businesslike manner. They were liable to outbursts of rage, pangs of conscience, and indecisiveness. The only one he felt at all close to was the old woman. Not emotionally close—God forbid!—but close in their attitude to life.

The bell of St. Mary’s-by-the-Steps beyond the cathedral building site struck five.

He quickened his pace, left the chancel of the new cathedral and the old Roman wall behind him, turned right opposite Priest Gate into Marzellenstraße and, after a few hundred yards, left up the lane to the Ursulines’ convent.

There was hardly anyone about. The convent grounds were surrounded by a twelve-foot-high wall and had only one narrow entrance, which was usually left open. Matthias went through the low arch into the long courtyard. The rather modest but pretty convent church on the right with its one spire corresponded more to Matthias’s own conception of what a church should be like. He knew that, as a person who relied on cold reason, he lacked the imagination to visualize the new cathedral in its completed state. It was a blind spot he at times regretted. At others, however, he saw the titanic enterprise as a symbol of his own ambitions. He would marvel at the way one stone fitted in with the next, obedient to the almost magic power of ruler, square, and plumb line, and watch how the windlasses allowed human muscle to raise a block of Drachenfels stone weighing tons high into the air for the masons to set it precisely edge-to-edge with its neighbor. The cathedral seemed to grow like a living organism, filling him with a sense of his own power and pride at what the future would bring.

Then the image of the old woman suddenly reappeared in his mind, replacing the cathedral with the vision of a gigantic ruin.

He leaned back against the wall, staring at the empty courtyard. Opposite the spire was a well. After some time two nuns came out of the convent building to draw water. They gave him a cursory glance.

If the man he had come to meet did not turn up soon he would have to go. A waste of time.