Prologue

In occulto vivunt.

The black ink sank into the parchment so that the full stop at the end of the sentence began to run. The scribe hurriedly blotted the ink, and then leaned back and closed his eyes.

They live in hiding.

The bare room in which he was sitting was scarcely lit by a few meagre candles. Everything was suffused with a deep stillness, save for the shadows of the flickering candles that danced relentlessly on the crudely whitewashed stone walls.

'Gratia, you can go now'. The crouching female figure stood up, hurriedly pulled up her coarse hood and hastened out of the room. The wooden door closed heavily behind her.

Wrapped in his own thoughts, the scribe took a gulp of red wine and stared into the darkness. How much time did he have left to chronicle the unspoken? How much longer would they be borne on sufferance? He put down his quill beside the inkwell and cast his eyes over the last entries of his chronicle. The Latin text was interspersed with illustrations depicting faces, hands and teeth, all of them horribly disfigured, marking the steady progression of disease .

The further he turned back the pages, the less pronounced the signs of the disease. He shook his head thoughtfully, then took up his quill again.

Just as he was about to dip it into the ink, a loud crash came from behind the massive wooden door.

The scribe's blood ran cold.

He could hear scraps of conversation, women and children crying, men shouting, their voices getting louder.

The hour had come.

The scribe closed his eyes and breathed out wearily. It had all been to no avail-the worst had come to pass. He turned to the most recent entry in his chronicle and dated it: November A.D. 1647. Then he put down his quill beside the mound of candle wax and closed the ornate, leather-bound book. The old man knew that henceforth nothing would ever be the same again.

He could hear footsteps approaching, menacing footsteps, and then the door was wrenched open.

A gust of cold wind blew out all the candles in the room.

Adventus

Tyrol,

Anno Domini 1703

I

Johann List had bashed his face hard and was lying in the mud, motionless. Blood from the gash dripped down over his eyes and mingled with the dirty water in which he had landed. His head hurt and things around him seemed muffled as they were swathed in a fog-the howling of the storm, the rain pelting down on his body, footsteps coming closer. Then everything became blurred and he closed his eyes .

Don't let yourself be cornered.

Johann listened to the voice inside his head as he had done so many times before in his life. With an effort, he rolled himself over onto his back.

Scarcely discernible in the pouring rain and the gleams of lightning was a figure standing over him, menacingly. The figure bent down towards him. Johann recognized the weasel-like face of the farmer he had lodged with for a few nights-and who had now just attacked him unawares with such cunning. Fury seized him at the thought of what had happened. He clenched his hands in the mud and painfully lifted himself up from the ground. The farmer grinned, then laid into him, pummelling Johann with blows.

Darkness descended on Johann.

The farmer kneeled over the unconscious man and searched his pockets with quick, practised fingers, his eyes sweeping over his victim's lifeless face again and again to see if he was stirring. Suddenly he paused; carefully he pulled an object out of Johann's trouser pocket. It was a knife, but not any old knife: from the fine silver chasing and the pristine blade it was clear that it had meant more to its owner than just a common or garden utensil.

'From now on you belong to me .' he whispered reverently.

'No it doesn't.'

By the time the farmer had heard Johann's voice, it was too late: he was grabbed smartly by the wrist and before he knew what was happening, Johann had jumped to his feet and twisted his arm. The farmer let out a cry of pain and dropped the knife in the mud. Johann kicked him straight in the stomach and the farmer fell onto his back and lay on the ground, moaning in pain.

Johann seized his advantage and cast about quickly for the knife, his fingers burrowing in the muddy ground. A flash of lightening lit up the sky so that for a second it was as bright as day and he caught sight of the knife lying in a puddle. Relieved, he reached towards it and picked it up when all of a sudden a searing pain pierced his side.

The farmer had rammed a pitchfork into his left flank.

Johann's legs gave way and he fell to the ground. As the farmer twisted the pitchfork and slowly pulled it out, it seemed to Johann as though his whole body was a burning mass of pain. He tried as hard as he could not to lose consciousness because he knew that it would be the end of him if he did- the farmer wasn't going to let himself be surprised a second time.

Johann pressed his left hand against the gash in his side which was bleeding badly and turned over onto his back.

The farmer came and stood over him, the pitchfork still in his hand. 'I've finished off tougher men than you, boy!' he caterwauled. He lifted the fork, grinning, preparing to lunge it into Johann's body one final time.

This gave Johann the split second he needed-he spun round with the knife in his hand and cut straight through the tendons of his opponent's left knee.

The farmer stiffened in pain, an almost comical look of surprise on his face. Nothing, but nothing, had gone according to plan. He looked down at himself and watched, aghast, as his left trouser leg gradually darkened with the blood that seeped through. He began to totter but before his leg could buckle, Johann sprang to his feet and grabbed him by the neck. The farmer's cry of pain stuck in his throat and Johann pushed him backwards again and again, right across the yard, until the farmer's back banged against the wall of the house.

He stared at Johann, wide eyed with terror. Johann raised his knife, ready to plunge it into him one last time.

'Have mercy!' blubbered the farmer.

Johann thrust in the knife.

The farmer closed his eyes, a reflex action. Then he opened them again. The knife was a hair's breadth from his head. He looked at Johann unsteadily.

'What do you know about mercy?' replied Johann. Sick with contempt, he wrenched the knife out of the blackened wood. He let go of the farmer who slumped to the ground and lay there whimpering.

Johann put the knife away and picked up the bundle containing his belongings, which was lying in the mud next to the entrance to the house. He pressed his hand against the wound in his side and made off in the direction of the forest without so much as glancing back at the farmer.

The treetops swayed violently in the fierce wind. The forest had little to offer him in the way of shelter against the pelting rain and the howling wind.

Johann tramped laboriously uphill through the rotten undergrowth. He was wet through and frozen to the bone, and his shirt and leather breeches were sticking to his skin. The laceration in his side had started bleeding badly again. Noticing it, he knelt down under a gnarled pine tree for shelter, pulled up one side of his shirt and tried in the darkness to make out the severity of his wound.

The cut was deep but seemed to be only a flesh wound with no organ damage. Johann let out a sigh of relief. He knew he would be safe from gangrene as long as he could stop the bleeding and keep the wound reasonably clean. He had seen men with worse injuries survive.

Johann opened his pack and took out his other shirt. He ripped off the sleeves, tied them together and wound them round his hips. The pain was agonizing but Johann clenched his teeth and pulled the knot as tightly as he could.

As he was tying up his bundle again, he was seized with a terrible suspicion. Quickly he searched through his few possessions, but it was gone.

The farmer had taken his money pouch.

All his recent pay was gone, all the money he had scrimped and saved. Johann felt a surge of rage and his hand closed instinctively round his knife.

Be merciful, even to those who are unworthy.

Those false commandments! If he could only .

A violent pain in his side brought him back to his senses. In his current state he was no match for the farmer. But he would return, and when he did, may God have mercy on him.

Johann breathed deeply. He shivered, and noticed for the first time how tired he was. He looked around, searching for shelter for the night. For a second, a bolt of lightning lit up the outline of an uprooted tree, invisible in the darkness. Johann spread out as much brushwood as he could carry and huddled under the massive roots.

Moments later he was asleep.

II

Johann woke up shivering. It was bitterly cold and his breath seemed to freeze in the icy air. The brushwood had been useless against the first night frost of the year, the cold had crept deep into his bones and his clothes were damp and stuck to his skin.

Still slightly dazed, he tried to orient himself. He...