DEATH AND THE Devil

FRANK SCHATZING

TRANSLATED BY MIKE MITCHELL

Epigraph

Language does not veil reality, but expresses it.

—PETER ABELARD

Prologue

The wolf stood on the height, its gaze fixed on the ring of the great wall bathed in the gold of the evening sun.

Its breathing was steady. Its powerful flanks quivered slightly. It had been running all day from the castles of Jülich over the hills and down to this spot where the trees ended, giving a clear view of the distant city. Despite that, it felt no tiredness. As the sun behind it slipped below the horizon in a ball of fire, it threw back its muzzle to take stock of its surroundings.

The odors were intense: the river water, the mud of the banks, the rotting wood of ships’ hulls. It sucked in the scent of animals mingling with the smells given off by humans and their artifacts: fragrant wines and excrement, incense, peat and flesh, the salt on sweaty bodies and the fragrance of expensive furs, blood, honey, herbs, ripe fruit, leprosy, and mold. It smelled love and fear, terror, weakness, hatred, and power. Everything down there spoke its own pungent language, telling the wolf of life inside the stone walls, and of death.

It turned its head.

Silence. The only sound the rustling of leaves.

It waited, motionless, until the gold had gone from the walls and all that was left was a shimmer on the topmost battlements of the gate towers. In a short while that would be gone as well, leaving the day to oblivion. Night would come, clothing the valley in new, dull colors until those too gave way to a darkness in which the gleam of its eyes was the only light.

The time was close when wolves would appear in the dreams of men, a time of change, a time of hunting.

With lithe steps the wolf padded down the slope and disappeared in the tall, dry grass.

Here and there a bird started singing again.

10 September

OUTSIDE THE GATES

“I’m cold.”

“You’re always cold. You’re an arrant coward, that’s your problem.”

Heinrich drew his cloak tighter around him and shot his companion an angry glance. “You don’t really mean that, Matthias. It is cold.”

Matthias shrugged his shoulders. “Sorry, then. If you insist—it’s cold.”

“You don’t understand. I feel cold inside.” Heinrich threw his hands out in a theatrical gesture. “That we have to stoop to such means! As God’s my witness, there’s no man less inclined to violence, but—”

“God’s not your witness,” Matthias interrupted.

“What?”

“Why should God waste his precious time on your whining and moaning? To tell the truth, I’m surprised you managed to get on your horse at this time of the night.”

“Now you’re going too far,” Heinrich hissed. “Show a little respect, if you please.”