The Dark Monk (3 page)

In spite of the heavy woolen coat he was wearing over his jacket and fur-lined leather gloves, he was miserably cold. Clumps of snow and ice had made their way under his collar and into his boots, melting there into a cold slush. When he looked down, he noticed a new hole at the tip of his left boot with his big, red, frozen toe peering out. Simon clenched his teeth. Why did his boots have to fail him now, of all times, in the dead of winter? He had already spent his savings on a pair of new petticoat breeches. But that was a necessity. He would rather a toe freeze off than do without the pleasure of the newest French fashion. It was important to observe the latest fashion, especially in a sleepy little Bavarian town like Schongau.

Simon turned his attention once more to the road. It had been snowing until just a few moments ago, and now, in the late-morning hours, a biting cold hung over the fallow fields and forests around town. The crust of snow on the narrow path through the middle of the road collapsed under his feet with every step. Icicles hung down from the branches, and trees groaned under the weight of the snow. Here and there the branches broke with loud cracking sounds and released their loads of snow. Simon’s perfectly shaven Vandyke beard and black shoulder-length hair had by now frozen solid. He reached up and felt his eyebrows. Even they were caked with ice. Once again, he cursed loudly. It was the coldest damn day of the year and here he was having to trudge to Altenstadt on behalf of his father! And all that just because of a sick priest!

Simon could well imagine what was ailing the fat priest. He had gorged himself again, as he did so often. And now he lay in bed with a bellyache, asking for linden blossom tea—as if his housekeeper Magda couldn’t make that for him! Probably old Koppmeyer had been out and about stuffing himself somewhere or had gotten involved with one of the whores in town, and now Magda had gone into a huff and Simon had to pay for it.

Abraham Gedler, the sexton of St. Lawrence’s in Altenstadt, had shown up at the Fronwieser house early in the morning and pounded on the door. He had been strangely pale and uncommunicative and said only that the priest was sick and the doctor should come as fast as possible. Then, without another word, he had run through the snow back to Altenstadt.

Simon had been lying in bed, as usual at this hour, his head still aching from the Tokay he drank the previous night at the Goldener Stern Inn, but his father had yanked him out of bed, swearing vilely, and sent him on his way with nothing to eat.

Again Simon broke through the crust up to his hips and had to fight his way out of the drift. Despite the dry cold, sweat was pouring down his face. He grimaced as he pulled his right leg out of the snow, almost losing his boot in the process. If he didn’t watch out, he’d soon have to doctor himself! He shook his head. It was crazy to tramp all the way to Altenstadt in this weather, but what could he do? His father, the city doctor Bonifaz Fronwieser, was busy caring for a fabulously wealthy alderman suffering from gout; the barber surgeon was bedridden with typhoid fever, and old Fronwieser would rather bite off his own finger than send the hangman to Altenstadt. So he sent his wayward son…

The scrawny sexton was waiting for Simon at the door to the little church located a little way out of town on a hill. Gedler’s face was as white as the snow around him. He had rings under his eyes and was trembling all over. For a moment, Simon wondered if Gedler, and not the priest, needed treatment. The sexton looked as if he hadn’t slept for several nights.

“Well, Gedler,” Simon said cheerfully. “What’s troubling the priest? Does he have intestinal obstruction? Constipation? An enema will do wonders for him. You should try one, too.”

He was heading for the rectory, but the sexton held him back, pointing silently toward the church.

“He’s in there?” Simon asked with surprise. “In this weather? He should be happy if he doesn’t catch his death of cold.”

He was heading into the church when he heard Gedler behind him, clearing his throat. Just in front of the entrance, Simon turned around.

“Yes, what is it, Gedler?”

“The priest…he’s…”

The sexton lost his voice and looked down to the floor without saying a word.

Seized by a sudden presentiment, Simon opened the heavy door. He was met by an icy wind a few degrees colder than the air outside. Somewhere a window slammed shut.

The medicus looked around. Scaffolding towered above them along the interior walls on both sides, all the way up to the rotting balcony. A timber framework higher up under the ceiling suggested that a new wooden ceiling would be installed there soon. The window openings in the back of the church were chiseled out so that a steady, ice-cold draft swept through the nave. Simon felt his breath on his face like a fine mist.

The priest was in the rear third of the nave, only a few steps from the apse. He looked like a statue hewn from the ice, a fallen white giant struck down by the wrath of God. His entire body was covered in a thin layer of ice. Simon approached carefully and touched the white, glittering cassock. It was as hard as a board. Ice crystals had even formed over the eyes, which had been wide open in the throes of death, giving an ethereal look to the priest’s face.

Simon wheeled around in horror. The sexton stood at the portal with a guilty look, turning his hat over in his hands.

“But…He’s dead!” the medicus cried. “Why didn’t you tell me that when you called for me?”

“We…we didn’t want to make a big fuss, Your Honor,” Gedler murmured. “We thought if we said anything in town, everybody in town would know about it at once, and there would be gossiping, and then maybe trouble with the remodeling here in the church.”

“We?” Simon asked, confused.

At that very moment, Magda, the housekeeper in the rectory, appeared at the sexton’s side, sobbing uncontrollably. She was the polar opposite of Abraham Gedler, round as a barrel, with fat, bloated legs. She blew her nose into a white lace handkerchief so large that Simon could see only part of her puffy, tear-stained face.

“What a shame,” she lamented, “that any man must go that way, let alone the pastor. But I always told him not to gorge himself like that!”

The sexton nodded and kept kneading his hat. “He overdid it with the doughnuts,” he mumbled. “He left only two. And it finally caught up with him here while he was praying.”

“The doughnuts…” Simon frowned. His fears had been confirmed—at least in part, except that the pastor was not sick, but dead.

“But why is he lying here and not in his bed?” he asked, more to himself than to the two of them standing there.

“As I said, he probably wanted to pray before he met his maker,” Gedler mumbled.

“In this weather?” Simon shook his head skeptically. “Can I have a look around the rectory?”

The sexton shrugged and turned around to leave for the neighboring building with the maid, who was still sobbing. Magda had left the door open, so the snow had drifted into the main room and crunched under Simon’s feet. On a table by the hearth stood a bowl with two greasy, glistening doughnuts. They looked delicious—brown, about the size of a palm, and coated with a thick layer of honey. Despite the recent encounter with the deceased, which was not exactly appetizing, Simon’s mouth watered. He remembered that he had not yet had breakfast. For a moment he was tempted to try one, then thought better of it. This was a death vigil, not a funeral reception.

Standing at the pastor’s bedside, the Schongau medicus retraced in his mind the pastor’s last steps.

“He must have gotten up and gone over into the kitchen to get a drink of water. This is where he collapsed,” he said, pointing to fragments of the mug and the sticky traces of vomit. The small room reeked of gastric acid and curdled milk.

“But why then, in God’s name, did he go out to the church?” he mumbled. Suddenly, he had a hunch and turned to the sexton.

“What was the pastor doing last night?”

“He…he was in the church. Till late at night,” Gedler added.

The housekeeper nodded. “He even took along a jug of wine and a loaf of bread. He thought he would be there a while. When I went to bed, he was still over there. I woke up again shortly before midnight, and I saw a light burning over there.”

Simon interrupted: “Just before midnight? What is a pastor doing at that time of night in an ice-cold church?”

“He…he thought he had to have another look at the renovation of the choir vault,” the sexton said. “It seemed in the last two weeks that the pastor was acting a bit strange. He was always over in the church, even in this cold!”

“The good man never left things for others to do,” Magda interrupted. “A bear of a man. He knew his way around with a hammer and chisel like no one else.”

Simon thought about that a while. The previous night had been the coldest in a long time. It was not for nothing that the workmen had stopped their work on the church now, in January. If anyone took up a hammer and chisel on such a night, there had to be a damned good reason to do so.

Without wasting any more time on the housekeeper or the sexton, Simon hurried back to the church. The pastor was still lying there on the ground, just as he had been when they had left. Only now did Simon notice that the corpse lay directly over a tombstone with a relief of a woman who looked like the Virgin Mary. The words of an inscription circled her head like a halo.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

“
Thus passes the glory of the world
…” Simon mumbled. “So true.” He had often seen this inscription on gravestones. As far back as early Rome, it was the custom for a slave to whisper these words to a victorious general on his triumphal march through the city. Nothing of this world lasts forever…

It almost seemed as if the pastor, in a final gesture, had been pointing to the inscription with his right hand. Simon sighed. Had Andreas Koppmeyer really fallen victim here to the desires of the flesh? Or was the gesture a final admonition to those still living?

A sound made him jump. It was Magda, who approached him from behind. She stared wide-eyed at the frozen corpse, then looked at Simon. It seemed she wanted to say something, but she couldn’t get the words out.

“What is it?” Simon asked impatiently.

“The…the two remaining doughnuts…” she started to say.

“What about them?”

“They are coated with honey.”

Simon shrugged, then stood up and wiped the snow from his hands. There was nothing more for him to do here, and he was about to go.

“Well? They also put honey on them at the Stern—delicious, by the way. Is that where you got the recipe?”

“But…I didn’t put any honey on them.”

Simon felt for a moment as if the ground were slipping beneath his feet. Perhaps he had not heard her correctly. “You…you didn’t put honey on them?”

The housekeeper shook her head. “Our honey pot was empty. I meant to buy more at the market next week, but this time I had to make the doughnuts without honey. Heaven knows who spread it on them, but it wasn’t me.”

Simon glanced at the frozen pastor and then looked carefully around the church. A cold draft passed through his hair, and he suddenly felt as if he were being observed. He left the church, Magda in tow, while the wind tugged at his coat as if trying to hold him back.

Once outside, he took the housekeeper by the shoulders and looked her straight in the eye. She was as white as a sheet.

“Listen to me! Send Gedler back to Schongau again,” he said softly. “Tell him to get the hangman.”

“The hangman?” Magda shrieked. Her face turned a shade whiter. “But why?”

“Believe me,” Simon whispered. “If anyone can help us here, it’s him. Now just stop asking questions and go—go!”

He gave the housekeeper a slap on her fat behind, then pushed the heavy doors, which closed with a loud squeal. The medicus quickly turned the bronze key in the lock and slipped it into his pocket. Only now did he feel a little more secure.

The devil was there in the church, and only the hangman could drive him away again.

A short time later, Simon was sitting in the drafty main room of the rectory chewing on an old crust of bread and sullenly slurping on some linden blossom tea that Magda had made for him. Actually, it was steeped from the dried blossoms that the medicus had brought for the pastor, who wouldn’t need them now. The odor of the greenish-brown concoction reminded him of sickness and hangovers.

Simon sighed as he sipped on the hot brew. He was alone. The sexton was on his way to Schongau to get the hangman, and Magda had run to the village to spread the dreadful news. She could have kept it to herself if the priest had simply eaten himself to death, but not if he had been poisoned. Tongues were no doubt already wagging among the common folk in town about satanic rituals and who might have prepared the poison. The medicus shook his head. How he wished he had a cup of strong coffee now instead of this miserable tea, but the hard brown beans were carefully stored in a trunk at home, inside a leather pouch. Not many remained from his last shopping trip at the market in Augsburg, and he would have to be sparing with them because coffee was an expensive, exotic product. Only rarely did merchants bring it with them from their travels to Constantinople or even farther afield. Simon loved the bitter aroma that made it possible for him to think clearly. With coffee he could solve the toughest of problems and now, more than ever, he needed some.

Simon’s musings were suddenly interrupted by a sound outside the window—a soft clicking or squeaking as if a rusty gate were slowly being opened. Carefully, he made his way to the door, opened it a crack, and looked outside. There was nothing there. He was about to step back inside when he looked down again and was shocked to see fresh tracks leading right to the front portal of the church.

The wide wooden door was open a crack.

Simon cursed. He reached into his coat pocket and could feel the cold steel of the church key. How in the world…?

Nervously, the medicus searched the room for a suitable weapon. His gaze wandered from the hearth to a large cleaver. He reached for it; it felt cold and heavy. Then he went outside.