The Dark Monk (46 page)

“It’s been a week, and Magdalena still isn’t back,” she lamented to Jakob, whose hand was still resting on her shoulder. “Something’s wrong.”

“Oh, come now,” the hangman grumbled. “I think she’s just having a good time in Augsburg. When she gets home, we’ll give her a good spanking and then everything will be all right.”

Anna Maria brushed her husband’s hand away and stood up abruptly. “I’m sure something’s happened to her. A mother can feel these things.” She gave the stool a quick kick, and it tipped over, landing with a crash in a corner. “And Lechner has you out in the forest hunting for robbers instead of looking after your daughter! Doesn’t he have bailiffs to do that?”

Jakob Kuisl remained silent. When his wife got wound up, there was no stopping her. The simplest thing to do then was not to fight it, but just to let the storm pass. The hangman’s wife could rage and wail for hours, but this time she quickly ran out of steam.

“It’s bad enough that you hang and break people on the wheel for Lechner and his fat burgomasters,” she shouted. “What a dirty job! Let those big shots bloody their own hands!”

Jakob Kuisl grinned. He loved his wife, even when she lost her temper. “At least I screwed things up for him with the Scheller execution.” He poured himself a mug of light beer and emptied it in one gulp. “And as for Magdalena, don’t worry. She knows how to take care of herself.” He brushed the dark foam from his lips with the back of his broad, hairy hand. “In contrast to Simon. He’s in real danger, and he doesn’t even know it.”

The hangman’s wife snorted. “Stop talking like a smart-ass. How do you know that?”

Jakob Kuisl picked up a loaf of bread from the table and turned to leave. “I know it, that’s all.” Without turning around, he marched out into the snow. “I’ve got to save Simon from doing something really stupid. I at least owe him that.”

The hangman stomped down to the bridge over the Lech, leaving his nagging wife behind.

“Isn’t that nice!” she shouted as he left. “Go and save the fine gentleman, but don’t give a damn about your daughter! Go to hell, you old fool!”

But Jakob Kuisl, who had disappeared in the drifting snow, didn’t hear a word of what she said, his hangover pounding in his head with every step he took.

Cursing under his breath, he hoped he wasn’t too late for the physician.

As Simon leaned over the colorful illustrated Bible, he knocked over his cup of coffee, and a brown flood surged across the walnut table onto the polished parquet floor.

“Damn!” he shouted. “I’m sorry, I’m probably getting tired.”

“Don’t curse,” Augustin Bonenmayr scolded, looking at the physician through his pince-nez. “God punishes every vice, even the smallest—even if there’s a good reason to curse. The Bible in front of you is worth many hundreds of guilders, so please handle it with great care.”

Simon nodded and carefully wiped the spilled coffee from the table with a parchment full of notes he’d taken. Since early that morning, he and Benedikta had been sitting in the Steingaden Monastery library, which they’d visited on their first trip. Together, they studied the Bible quotations and descriptions of landmarks in the Priests’ Corner, looking for the solution to the riddle they’d found in Rottenbuch. All around them, books, folios, and parchments were piled high on the tables they’d pushed together. Simon had even been able to get a closer look at Friedrich Wildgraf’s sales deed, but so far they hadn’t found anything to help in their search.

Augustin Bonenmayr kept coming back to the library to check on their progress. The last time he’d even done Simon the favor of having the kitchen brew a cup of coffee from the physician’s supply of beans. But whereas the black brew usually spurred Simon’s thinking, it didn’t work this time.

The physician was also having trouble concentrating because the two monks, Lothar and Johannes, who were sent to guard them, didn’t even once leave their posts at the library door. The Steingaden abbot had made good on his threat and didn’t let Simon and Benedikta out of his sight. They’d traveled to Steingaden in complete darkness in the horse-drawn sled, then spent the rest of the night in two monks’ cells, which were locked from the outside. Simon knew he and Benedikta would be regarded as nothing but church desecrators by the abbot until they had convinced him otherwise.

He had to solve this damned riddle, or they’d be condemned to death and drawn and quartered!

He returned once again to the words scribbled on the parchment in front of him.

Heredium in baptistae sepulcro…

“
The heritage in the grave of the baptist
…” he mumbled. “That doesn’t help us very much. I’ve never heard of a grave of John the Baptist, have you?”

He turned to Augustin Bonenmayr, who was standing next to him, leaning over his shoulder. The abbot frowned.

“There are supposedly such places in the Holy Land, but—”

“That wouldn’t help us, either,” Benedikta interrupted.

“The treasure must be here in the Priests’ Corner, not in the Holy Land. Is there any place around here that you could call ‘the grave of the baptist’?”

August Bonenmayr thought for a minute. “There’s no grave, no, just a few chapels and baptismal fonts dedicated to Saint John—every parish church has such things. So that can’t be it.”

Reaching for the sword in one corner of the room, he passed his fingers over the rusty inscription again. “Maybe there’s a second clue concealed somewhere on the sword.”

Simon shook his head in resignation. “I’ve examined the sword three times already. There’s nothing else there—no inscription, no hidden compartment, and the handle isn’t hollow. The solution must lie in this one inscription!” He sighed and rubbed his eyes. “I’m at my wit’s end.”

“Then I’ll have to hand you over to the authorities in Rottenbuch,” Bonenmayr replied, turning to the door. “Enough of these antics! I have more important things to do.”

“Just a moment!” Benedikta said. “May I have one more look at the sword?”

The abbot hesitated before turning around and handing it to her. Once more, Benedikta examined each word closely.

“There’s something strange here,” she said. “The words aren’t inscribed in typical fashion—there are such wide gaps between them.”

Simon shrugged. “No doubt the inscription was intended to cover the length of the entire sword, so whoever wrote it just left wide intervals between the words.”

“Possible,” Benedikta replied. “But the width of the intervals varies. Why? Perhaps…” she hesitated before continuing. “Perhaps because something belongs in these empty spaces…?”

Simon jumped up so suddenly that the cup of coffee nearly fell over again.

“Words!” he cried. “That’s it! There are words missing in between. That’s the solution, of course!” He sat down again, staring at his page of notes. “We just have to figure out where these missing words are…”

“I think we both know,” Benedikta said softly. “We just don’t want to consider that possibility.”

Simon exhaled softly and pushed the parchment away. There was a long pause before he replied. “On the second sword, the one belonging to Saint Primus—that’s where the other words are engraved. The last clue pointed to
both
saints, so the next clue is to be found on
both
swords. How could I be so stupid?”

Augustin Bonenmayr took the sword back from Benedikta. “There’s not much chance you can check your hypothesis now,” he said with regret. “The relics in Rottenbuch are probably better guarded now than the bones of the Three Kings in Cologne.”

“You’re right,” Simon sighed. “But perhaps we can figure this out anyway now that we know every other word is missing.” He took a long gulp of coffee, reached for the parchment and a goose quill, and wrote down the words from the first sword, this time with the ordinary spacing.

Heredium in baptistae sepulcro…

“Let’s assume that
heredium
is the first word. That would mean that the
treasure
of something is
in
something that belongs to the baptist and has something to do with a
grave.
”

“The first connection is easy,” Benedikta said. “It would probably be
heredium templorum
—in other words,
the heritage of the Templars.
”

Simon nodded. “Perhaps. But what is the connection with the baptist—and above all, which grave could it be referring to?”

Benedikta leaned forward to look at the lines. “The most famous grave in Christendom is the grave of our Savior,” she mused. “Judging from the spacing between the words, the word after
sepulcro
could be
Christi.
But that doesn’t help us either, because that grave is certainly not in the Priests’ Corner—unless I’ve overlooked some important lines in the Bible…Your Excellency?”

Benedikta looked over at Augustin Bonenmayr. His face had suddenly paled and little drops of sweat stood out on his brow. He began to polish his pince-nez excitedly.

“What are you thinking?” Simon asked. “Have you ever heard of such a grave?”

“Tell us!” Benedikta cried.

The abbot continued polishing his glasses without looking up. “It may be a coincidence,” he said, “but here, in Steingaden, there actually is a very old chapel modeled after the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.”

Simon felt his mouth going dry, and his heart started to pound. “And the name…What’s the name of this chapel?” he whispered.

The abbot placed his pince-nez back on the bridge of his nose and stared at him attentively. “That’s the strange thing,” he said, playing with the golden signet ring on his finger. “It’s called Saint John’s Chapel, and it’s right next door to our church.”

Simon groaned loudly. St. John’s Chapel! They had walked right past it that morning, never dreaming that the small, unimposing chapel might conceal a treasure! Once more, he went over in his mind the words engraved on the sword. He could finally make a guess at how the inscription might fit together with the words on the other sword.

He whispered the sentence in Latin. “
Heredium templorum in domu baptistae in sepulcro Christi.
”

The heritage…of the Templars…in the…house…of the baptist…in the…grave…of Christ.

The passage had to read something like that! The Templars’ treasure was secured in St. John’s Chapel, which was modeled after the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. If you knew that the two inscriptions belonged together, the riddle was easy. Simon couldn’t suppress a grin. How carefully Friedrich Wildgraf had constructed his riddle! The Templars’ seal at the ruined castle in Peiting also showed two knights in armor on horseback.

Two riders, two swords—everything had been grouped in twos.

Simon jumped out of his chair and rushed to the door. They were very close to solving the riddle! Soon the Templars’ treasure would be in his hands! The Steingaden abbot would release them; perhaps he would even give them a little money, a valuable brooch, a golden chalice…After all, they’d helped him solve the riddle, and…

Only now did he notice that Augustin Bonenmayr had made it to the door before he did.

“My compliments! You really did excellent work,” the abbot said, smiling. His bloodshot eyes sparkled behind his polished eyeglasses as if he had just enjoyed a good joke. In his right hand, he was carrying the Templar’s sword. “It’s time I introduce you to a true servant—perhaps you’ve met before,” he said, opening the door.

Simon was stunned. In front of them was a monk in a long black robe, the same monk from the Rottenbuch Monastery who, just the day before, had slit open the soldier like a bag of wine. He was wearing a scimitar on his belt and around his neck, a heavy golden cross.

“
Deus lo vult,
” Brother Nathanael whispered. “God himself led you here.”

As the Steingaden abbot held out his hand to the black monk, Simon noticed that Bonenmayr’s signet ring bore the same cross as the monk’s chain.

A cross with two beams.

13

I
SINNED, TOO
, when I stared at that handsome fellow, Peter, who works on the Huber farm, and just last week, I drank the cream from the top of the milk…and…And when I was a kid, I once threw a piece of horse dung at old Berchtholdt, and I never confessed to that…”

Magdalena was struggling for words. She was slowly running out of sins, and Brother Jakobus still showed no reaction to the poisons. Sitting alongside her in the pew, he bowed his head and only occasionally nodded or murmured his “
Ego te absolvo.
”

The monk sat completely still with closed eyes, lost in his narrow little world, soaking up her confession like a dry sponge and not reacting.

“Also, a week ago last Sunday, I was dreaming in church and made eyes at Simon, and during the hymns, I just mouthed the words…”

The hangman’s daughter continued confessing…on and on…But inwardly, she was cursing. Were the thorn apple seeds and dried belladonna too old? Had they lost their effect? Or did this monk simply have the constitution of a horse?

This was her last plan, and if it failed, she had no idea what to do. The monk kept nodding and mumbling his pious prayers.

“Dominus noster Jesus Christus te absolvat, et ego auctoritate ipsius te absolvo…”

Suddenly, something seemed to be happening to Brother Jakobus. Little beads of sweat were forming on his brow, and he licked his dry lips. Then he started rubbing his legs together as if he were trying to smother a raging fire between them. Finally, he cast a glance at Magdalena that made her blood run cold. His eyes were huge black holes, his pupils so dilated that he looked like an old woman slathered with makeup. Saliva drooled down from the corner of his mouth, and he reached out to grab her thigh.

“Oh, Magdalena, the sins!” he whispered. “The sins are overwhelming me again. Help me, Holy Virgin Mary, help me to be strong in the face of sin!”

Magdalena pushed his hand away, but moments later it was back, his fingers crawling up her thigh like a fat spider, toward her breasts, and his whole body beginning to quiver.