Frank Schätzing - Death and the Devil

He swore to himself.

“ Fiat lux ,” said Urquhart.

Matthias gave a violent start and scanned the courtyard. No one.

“Up here.”

His eye slowly traveled up the wall. Urquhart was sitting on the top, directly above, smiling down at him.

“What the devil are you doing up there?”

“Waiting for you,” Urquhart replied with his habitual mixture of politeness and gentle mockery.

“And I for you,” Matthias replied sharply. “Perhaps you would have the goodness to come down.”

“Why?” Urquhart laughed. “You can come and join me up here, if you like.”

Matthias’s face was expressionless. “You know very well—” He stopped as he suddenly registered the height of the wall. “How on earth did you manage to get up there?”

“I jumped.”

Matthias started to say something, but the words stuck in his throat. What was there to say? No man could jump twelve feet.

“Do you think we could talk?” he asked instead.

“Of course.” With a supple twist of his body Urquhart swiveled around and landed on his toes beside Matthias. He had put up his long blond hair in a kind of helmet shape, making him seem taller than ever.

“We’d better wait till those women have gone,” Matthias growled. He was irritated that Urquhart had kept him waiting longer than necessary.

His companion raised his eyebrows in surprise. “How complicated you make things! Isn’t openness the best disguise? If we were to behave like thieves, keep looking around shiftily and muttering in low voices, then we would deserve to end up in—what do you call that funny tower? Oh, yes, in the Weckschnapp. Just behave naturally. Let us show some courtesy toward the venerable servants of the living God.”

He turned to the nuns and gave them a gallant bow. “It’s going to rain,” he called out. “Better get back inside.”

The younger of the two beamed at him. “Rain is also a gift from God,” she replied.

“Do you still think that when you’re lying alone in your cell and it’s hammering against the walls as if the Prince of Darkness himself were demanding entrance?” He wagged his finger at her playfully. “Be on your guard, my little flower.”

“Of course,” she stammered, gaping at Urquhart as if he were every reason to leave the convent made all-too-solid flesh. Then she hurriedly lowered her gaze and blushed. Fifteen at the most, Matthias guessed.

Her companion shot her a sideways glance and hastily crossed herself. “Come,” she commanded. “Quickly!”

She turned on her heel and marched back to the convent with all the grace of a draught horse. The younger one hurried after, looking back over her shoulder several times. Urquhart gave her an even lower bow, combined with a mocking scrutiny from beneath his bushy brows. He seemed to find the whole business amusing.

They were alone in the courtyard.

“That got rid of them,” Urquhart stated complacently.

“Is that one of your tactics?” Matthias’s voice had a frosty note.

Urquhart nodded. “In a way. Openness is the best concealment, the best way not to be remembered is to make yourself obvious. Neither of them will be able to describe us, not even me. Had we turned away they would have wondered why we didn’t salute them and would have had a good look at our faces, our clothes, our posture.”

“As far as I’m concerned, I have no reason to hide from anyone.”

“But then you’re a respectable citizen.”

“And I don’t want to be seen together with you,” Matthias went on, unmoved. “Our next meeting better be somewhere more secluded.”

“You suggested we meet here.”

“I realize that. Now stop turning the heads of harmless nuns and tell me how you mean to go about your assignment.”

Urquhart put his lips to Matthias’s ear and spoke quietly to him for a while. The latter’s face brightened visibly with every word.

“And the witnesses?” he asked.

“Found and paid.”

A smile appeared on Matthias’s lips, the first in a long time. “Then I give your plan my blessing.”

Urquhart bowed his blond head. “If it is the will of the terrible God.”

Matthias frowned and tried to remember where he had heard the expression before, the Old Testament God of vengeance who is terrible to the kings of the earth.

He felt the excruciatingly slow drip of a bead of sweat running down his forehead. Disconcerted, he looked at Urquhart’s eyes. Were they really a dead man’s eyes, as Heinrich had whispered? At that moment the other gave him an amused wink and Matthias felt a fool. Urquhart was playing with words like a jester. The living were alive, the dead were dead.

“We shouldn’t meet at the same place twice. Understood?” he said icily. “Tomorrow at seven o’clock at Greyfriars church.”

“As you wish.”

“Don’t disappoint me.” Matthias walked off without a further word and hurried back the way he had come. Just to make it clear who was in charge.

It was only when he was back in Dranckgasse that he was suddenly overcome with the humiliating feeling that he had actually been running away from Urquhart.

It was a crazy idea, of course.

But Jacob had set his mind on getting hold of the most noble apples in the whole of Cologne and they happened to belong to Conrad von Hochstaden, lord archbishop of Cologne, who had commanded an army in the service of the emperor and also crowned the anti-king, Henry of Holland. A powerful gentleman and not one to be trifled with.

Getting at these apples necessitated a visit to the archbishop’s orchard, which was combined with his zoo. It lay between Conrad’s palace and the rising walls of the cathedral choir, or, to be more precise, somewhat behind them. Naturally it had a wall around it and locked gates. Fantastic stories about the animals could be heard in Cologne, for example that the archbishop kept lions and a legendary beast called elephantus with a diabolically long nose and legs like tree trunks. In fact, most of the animals lurking among the laden fruit trees were peacocks and pheasants, which were not only a fine sight, but also a fine adornment on the archbishop’s table. And that, apart from a dozen squirrels, was that.

The only way into Conrad’s private Garden of Eden was over the wall, and the only place where it was worth risking was Große Sparergasse. A misnomer, really. There was nothing “great” about the narrow alleyway, which was little more than a wormhole between the cathedral building site and the orchard. There were walls on either side, too high to climb without a ladder.

But no obstacle to Jacob the Fox.

At this point a few massive, ancient apple trees stretched out from the orchard across the alley and over the building site on the other side. The higher branches pointed straight at the cathedral, but lower, gnarled arms twisted down low enough over the alley for him to be able to grab on to them with both hands and pull himself up.

So he didn’t actually need to go into the orchard itself. On the other hand, nature had so arranged things that only an excellent climber could get at the apples. People kept on trying, but most of them ended up dangling from the branches like bats, unable to get their footing before the constables or the archbishop’s thugs came to pick them off. But despite the fact that this kept the loss of apples within limits, Conrad had recently announced severe punishments for anyone caught stealing them in the future. Since then the number of thefts had dropped to nil.

Jacob intended to change that.

He stood underneath the branches and waited. By now it was after seven; the sun was just going down. Although heavy rain clouds were approaching inexorably, the setting sun still left enough light in the sky. A gusty wind sprang up. The laborers and craftsmen on the cathedral stopped working and went home. There was no point in continuing once it started to get dark; they only made mistakes and would have to do it all over again the next day.