FOR THE next few days Krabat found the Master remarkably friendly, always giving him preference over his fellow journeymen and praising him for the most ordinary things, as if to show that he was determined not to bear any grudge. Then, one evening about the end of the second week after Easter, they met in the hall of the house while the others were still at supper.
“Ah, Krabat—I’m glad to have a chance to speak to you,” said the Master. “There are times when a man’s in a bad mood, as you know, and he’ll let himself say things he doesn’t really mean. In short, that talk we had in my room not long ago—you remember it?—well, that was a stupid business. Unnecessary too, don’t you agree?”
The Master did not wait for an answer, but went on in the same breath. “I’d be sorry if you took all I said that evening at its face value! I know you to be a very good fellow, my best pupil for a long time, and unusually reliable—well, you see how I feel!”
Krabat himself was feeling distinctly uncomfortable. What was the Master after?
“Not to beat about the bush any longer,” said the Master, “I don’t want to leave you in any doubt of my regard for you. I am going to grant you a privilege I have never given any of my pupils before. Next Sunday I’ll excuse you from work and give you the day off. You can go out if you like, wherever you fancy; to Maukendorf, or Schwarzkollm or Seidewinkel, anywhere you please. And so long as you’re back by Monday morning, why, that will be good enough for me.”
“Go out?” asked Krabat. “What would I do in Maukendorf, or some such place?”
“Oh, there are alehouses and taverns in the villages, where you could pass the time pleasantly—and girls to dance with . . .”
“No, no,” said Krabat. “I’ve no fancy for such things. Why should I be treated better than my companions?”
“Why not?” declared the Master. “I see no reason why I shouldn’t reward you for your industry and perseverance in your studies of the Secret Arts. You work far harder than anyone else.”
The next Sunday morning, when the miller’s men were getting ready for work, Krabat prepared to do the same, but Hanzo took him aside.
“I don’t know what’s up,” said he, “but the Master’s giving you the day off. I’m to remind you that he doesn’t want to see you back at the mill before tomorrow morning, and he says you know about the rest of it.”
“Oh, yes,” muttered Krabat. “I know about the rest of it sure enough!”
He put on his best coat, and while the other men went to work, as they did every Sunday, he left the house. He sat down on the grass behind the woodshed to think.
The Master had set a trap for him, that was clear, and now he had to see that he did not fall into it. One thing at least seemed certain; he could go anywhere he pleased but Schwarzkollm. He would have liked best just to stay sitting here behind the woodshed in the sun, idling the day away. But that would look too much as if he guessed the Master’s real intentions. “Very well then—Maukendorf let it be!” he thought. “And I’ll give Schwarzkollm a very wide berth indeed!”
But perhaps that would be a mistake too. Might it be wiser not to bypass Schwarzkollm, but go right through it, that being the shortest way to Maukendorf?
Of course, he must not meet the singer in Schwarzkollm. He would have to take precautions against such a meeting.
He recited his spell, and then spoke to the girl. “Singer, there is something I must ask you,” he told her. “I, Krabat, am speaking to you! You must not leave your house today, you must not step outside, whatever happens, and don’t look out of the window either. Promise me that!”
Krabat felt sure the girl would do as he asked. Just as he was about to set off, Juro came around the house with an empty log basket.
“Well, you don’t seem to be in much of a hurry to get away, Krabat! Do you mind if I sit down here with you for a bit?”
He fished a piece of wood out of his pocket and traced a circle around the place where they were sitting, adding a pentagram and three crosses, as he did on the occasion of their ill-fated horse trading venture.
“I dare say you’re thinking that this has nothing to do with gnats and midges!” he remarked.
Krabat admitted he had had his doubts before. “What you’re doing,” said he, “is making sure the Master can neither see nor hear us sitting and talking here, however near or far away he is. Am I right?”
“No,” said Juro. “He could see and hear us, but he won’t because he has forgotten us; that is the power of the circle. So long as we keep inside it the Master may think of anything else in the world, but he will not think of you and me.”
“Not such a stupid notion,” said Krabat, “not so stupid at all . . .” And suddenly, as if he had found the key to a problem, an idea shot through him. He looked at Juro in astonishment. “Then it was you!” he said. “The farmers had you to thank for their fall of snow—and Lyshko for his dream of the fierce hounds! Why, you’re not the simpleton we take you for at all, are you? You’re only pretending!”
“Suppose I am?” replied Juro. “I won’t deny that I’m not quite such a fool as everyone thinks. But as for you, Krabat—now, don’t be offended!—you’re more of a fool than you have any idea of.”
“I am?”
“You still haven’t realized just what is going on at this accursed mill! If you did, you’d know better than to study so hard, or at least you’d know better than to show it! Don’t you see what danger you are in?”
“Yes,” said Krabat. “I have a very good idea.”
“You have no idea at all!” Juro told him. Picking a blade of grass, he crushed it between his fingers. “I’ll tell you something, Krabat—I’ve played the part of a fool all these years. But if you carry on as you are now, you’ll be the next one at this mill to find out the whole truth. Michal and Tonda and all the others who lie buried out in the Waste Ground, they all made the same mistake as you. They studied too hard in the Black School, and they let the Master see it. You know now that one of us must die for him every year, on New Year’s Eve.”
“For the Master?”
“For the Master,” said Juro. “He has made a pact with the . . . well, let us say with the Goodman. Every year he must sacrifice one of his pupils to him, or else he will be taken himself.”
“How do you know this?”
“I have eyes in my head, and I can make sense of what I see. And then I’ve read the Book of Necromancy.”
“What, you?”
“I’m a fool, as you know—or as the Master and everyone else knows! They think me simple, only good enough for the housework. I have to clean and scrub and dust—and sometimes I have to clean the Black Room, and there the Book lies, chained to the table, safe from anyone who could read it. The Master wouldn’t like any of us to read it . . . there is much in that Book that could harm him if we were to learn it.”
“So you can read!” said Krabat.
“Yes,” said Juro, “and you are the first and only person I have told. Now there’s one way, only one, to get the better of the Master: if you know a girl who loves you, she could save you. If she will ask the Master to let you go, and if she can pass the test he will give her.”
“Test?”
“I’ll tell you about it another day, when we have more time,” said Juro. “For the moment, there’s only one thing you need know: make sure you don’t let the Master know who the girl is, or it will be Tonda’s story all over again.”
“Do you mean Vorshula?”
“I do,” said Juro. “The Master learned her name too soon, and then he tormented her in her dreams until she drowned herself in her despair.”
He pulled up another blade of grass and crushed it.
“Tonda found her the next morning. He carried her home to her parents’ house and laid her down at the door. It was after that his hair went gray. His strength was all gone—and you know the end of his story.”
Krabat imagined himself finding the girl from Schwarzkollm drowned one morning, waterweeds in her hair.
“What am I to do? Tell me!” he asked.
“What are you to do?” Juro picked a third blade of grass. “Go off to Maukendorf, or anywhere else you like—and try to lead the Master astray as well as ever you can!”
As he walked through Schwarzkollm Krabat looked neither to left nor to right. The girl kept out of sight. He wondered what she had told her family to explain why she was staying indoors.
Krabat turned into the village alehouse for a short rest, ate a piece of black bread and some smoked meat and drank a glass of spirits. Then he went on to Maukendorf, sat down at a table in the tavern there and called for beer.
That evening he danced with the girls, talked nonsense to them, turned their heads and picked a quarrel with the local lads.
“Get out of here, you!” they cried.
When they grew really angry and were about to throw him out by force, he snapped his fingers, and there they were, rooted to the spot, unable to move.
“You silly sheep!” said Krabat. “So you thought you’d set about me? You’d better fight each other!”
At that, such a brawl broke out on the dancing floor as Maukendorf had never seen. Tankards flew through the air, chairs were broken. The young men fought as if they were out of their minds, attacking each other blindly. The landlord wrung his hands, the girls screeched, and the musicians jumped out of the window to save their own skins.
“Good, very good indeed!” Krabat encouraged the young men. “Excellent! Give yourselves a good hiding! Keep it up, now, keep going, and it ought to last you some time!”