The Dark Monk (51 page)

The hangman’s daughter was losing consciousness. The acrid smoke burned her lungs, and like an army of ants, a sharp pain ran down her leg where her dress had caught fire.

Once again the black hole in his scorched face opened up. “Maria Magdalena, do not leave me! Stay with—”

Augustine’s
Confessions
struck Brother Jakobus on the side of the head like a brick. Simon delivered the heavy blow with both hands, then raised the heavy book again and again, pounding the charred body, flailing away even as the book caught fire.

A sooty, trembling hand reached up, seizing Simon’s wrist and pulling him relentlessly to the ground. Simon stumbled, and in a flash, the burning monk had fallen upon him as well. With horror, Simon stared into the monk’s face, which had congealed into a black lump, with only the whites of his eyes still ablaze. Charred fingers gripped Simon’s neck, choking him.

My God, how can he still be alive?

The monk’s face came closer and closer, his hands gripping him like glowing iron bars, cutting off his breath. His eyes bulged.

He’s killing me…A dead man is killing me…Oh my
—

Suddenly, a violent twitching ran through the monk’s body, he stared off into space and, with a last soft hissing sound like a flame being extinguished, slowly tipped over, his mouth wide open in a muted cry. Then all went silent.

Behind the monk Magdalena stood holding in her right hand a shining silver object that dripped with blood. She looked at it with bewilderment, as if realizing only now she had stabbed the monk with it.

“A…letter opener,” she said finally. “I took it from the library, thinking I might sometime be able to…use it.” She threw it to the ground and ran her hands down her soot-stained dress.

Coughing, Simon stood up and eyed her. The hem of her skirt was torn, holes were burned into her bodice, and her thick black hair was singed in places. Her whole body trembled as she stared off into space. But then she seemed to pull herself together. Simon was proud to be in love with this girl.

She’s a real Kuisl,
he thought,
and nobody’s ever going to intimidate her.

Magdalena kicked aside the charred mass that had once been Brother Jakobus. “He had some illness that slowly made him lose his mind,” she whispered. “What a horrible way to die…”

“Not any worse than what your father will do to me and the medicus when he burns us at the stake for desecration of holy relics,” Benedikta said. “Now let’s move along.”

They were still standing at the intersection of the tunnels. Simon looked around in every direction. “Where shall we go?” he asked.

Benedikta looked to the right, thinking it over. “This monk brought Magdalena something to eat and drink from the monastery every day. Certainly, he was trying to flee there now as well, but changed his mind. So let’s turn right.”

They followed her through the narrow passageway. This led gradually upward, and they were soon standing before a huge wooden door.

Benedikta grinned and bowed slightly. “
Voilà,
the entrance to the monastery!” Then she pressed the door handle down.

It was locked.

She shook it a few times and finally pushed against it with all her weight. The door creaked and shook, but it wouldn’t open.

“Are you crazy?” Simon hissed. “You’ll wake up everyone in the monastery!”

Benedikta looked at him angrily. “Is that so? Do you have better idea of how to get out of here?”

“Let’s first have a look at the other passageway,” Magdalena interjected. “We can always come back here and try to beat the door down.”

Benedikta nodded. “Not a bad suggestion, Little Hangman’s Girl. Let’s go!”

They ran back down the corridor to the intersection and took the other tunnel. In contrast to the first, this one had a low ceiling and seemed to go on and on through the darkness. Simon still could not bring himself to set fire to any of these books. Destroying the
Confessions
was his limit. And so he followed the two women, who lit the way with the burning parchment pages. If he’d looked closer, he would have seen that Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas had just gone up in flames, but he really didn’t want to know about that.

Finally, the corridor ended at a low door with rusty metal fittings. It looked much older than the door at the end of the other corridor. The door handle and lock were tarnished, and it seemed they hadn’t been used in years.

“Well?” Benedikta asked, with a gesture inviting Simon to have a look for himself. “Would you like to try your luck this time?”

That was when they heard voices and the sound of someone approaching from the other side of the door.

The theater stood directly on the eastern wall surrounding the monastery complex. It was not yet complete, but it was easy to imagine how it would look some day. At the corners of the second story, gargoyles with demonic faces looked down from tower-like oriel windows. Above the main entrance was the monastery’s coat of arms along with a relief of the comic and tragic masks.

Augustin Bonenmayr walked with such long, quick strides toward the building that the monks had difficulty keeping up. The theater was one of his most ambitious projects, one he had worked on a long time in order to gain the acceptance of his colleagues. Just like the Jesuits, the Steingaden abbot wanted to win converts to the true belief with light, music, and colorful scenery. The theater was a divine weapon in the struggle against the austere reformation, which was hostile to sensual feelings. It took a lot of imagination to realize Bonenmayr’s dream of the divine theater.

Without slowing his pace, the abbot pushed open the double doors to the playhouse. The torches that the monks carried bathed the auditorium in a dim light; shadows danced over the bare walls and balconies. In front was a stage, almost ten feet high and constructed from spruce, and in front of that a deep orchestra pit opened up. In place of scenery, bundles of cloth and piles of boards lay around, and ropes and pulleys dangled from the unfinished ceiling.

Augustin Bonenmayr turned to his cohorts as he hurried up the narrow steps to the stage. “Faster! Good Lord, faster! We’re almost there.”

The abbot pushed aside a bundle of cloth and stepped to the middle of the stage, onto a wooden square in the floor, almost invisible from the auditorium. Then he pointed to one of the pulleys on the wall.

“The lever on the right!” he called out to Brother Johannes. “Pull it and lower the rope slowly.”

As the others joined him on the square, Brother Johannes let out the rope, and the rattling, creaking platform moved downward.

“A trapdoor where the devil, the angels, or even the Savior himself can appear, or vanish,” Bonenmayr explained to Brother Nathanael, who looked around approvingly. A dreamy look came over the abbot’s face. “I’ve had pulleys installed everywhere. There will be scenery, curtains that can be rolled up and down, and even a cloud-making machine! Soon people will go out into the world after a performance here with the feeling they’ve met God! Paradise on earth, so to speak!
Ecce homo,
we are here…”

With a grinding sound, the platform came to rest on the stone floor of the cellar. The dark room they found themselves in seemed to encompass many niches and corners. Columns set at regular intervals supported the low ceiling, and weathered memorial slabs covered the walls and floor. The actual size of the vault was hard to estimate, as it was filled with moldy boxes, shelves, and trunks. A rotting statue of Mary leaned against the wall next to a pulley, and stone cherubs and gargoyles lay strewn around on the floor, worn by time, weather, and pigeon droppings. In the midst of all this were a few strange apparatuses whose functions were not immediately clear.

“We found this cellar during the construction on the playhouse,” Bonenmayr said as Brother Lothar handed him a torch. “An old vaulted cellar that probably served as a hiding place during the Great War and was then forgotten. At first I thought about moving the graves to the cemetery and sealing the cellar up, but then I thought I could use it for the stage machinery and as a storeroom for the costumes. And now…” He stepped over to a grave marker. Running his hand over it, he whispered, “I feel we’ve almost reached our goal.”

“And you think this is the old Saint John’s Chapel?” Brother Nathanael asked skeptically. “How can you be so sure? The Steingaden Monastery is ancient, and this could just as well be any other forgotten crypt.”

The abbot shook his head and pointed at the grave markers. “Just look at the inscriptions!” he whispered. “These are the graves of abbots and other religious dignitaries connected to the monastery. I’ve already taken a closer look at the dates of death, and the most recent entry is dated 1503. And the Saint John’s Chapel alongside the church was not built until 1511—that’s just eight years later. That can’t be a coincidence! I’m certain we’re standing in the crypt of the former Saint John’s Chapel. In the years that war was raging in this country, it was simply forgotten.” He started tapping on the grave slabs. “Now we must just find the entrance to the hiding place. I suggest—”

There was a soft creaking sound overhead, and the abbot stopped to listen. Then a thud followed, as if a heavy sack had fallen to the floor.

“Brother Johannes!” Bonenmayr cried out. “What in the world are you doing up there?”

The monk up above did not answer.

“Damn it, Johannes, I asked you a question!”

Again, silence.

The abbot turned to Brother Nathanael. “Please go up there and see what’s going on. We have no time for such childish nonsense.”

Nathanael nodded, clenching his dagger between his teeth, and climbed up the pulley rope to the stage.

Bonenmayr now inspected the plaques more closely. The reliefs depicted skulls, crossbones, occasionally a monk with his eyes closed and arms crossed, and Roman numerals indicating the year of death in each case.

Bonenmayr suddenly stopped in front of an especially weathered plaque.

“It’s strange, but I’ve never seen this inscription before,” he said, tapping his slender fingers against the plaque. “I have never heard of an abbot by this name.” He bent down and examined the name again through his pince-nez. “And the dates can’t be right, either.”

He wiped the dust from the inscription so that the letters beneath the crossbones were easily legible.

H. Turris. CCXI.

“What does that mean?” Bonenmayr murmured. “Perhaps an honorable Horazio Turris, born 211 in the Year of Our Lord? A Roman officer who found his last resting place here?”

Brother Lothar nodded obsequiously. “It’s just like you said, Your Eminence.”

“You ass!” The abbot looked at the monk disdainfully. “This monastery is old, but not that old.”

“Possibly the
M
for the number one thousand has simply been worn away,” Brother Lothar quickly added, trying to correct his error. “Couldn’t it be MCCXI—that is
1211 AD
?”

The abbot thought about this for a bit and shook his head. “Then the other numbers would be worn as well. No, there’s something behind all this. Quick! Give me your torch!”

The baffled monk watched as Bonenmayr took the torch and copied the letters of the inscription on the dust of the stone floor.

“
H. Turris. CCXI,
” the abbot mumbled, concentrating on the name and the year he’d scribbled beneath it. Suddenly an idea came to him. He started drawing the letters furiously in the dust, erasing them, writing them again.

Brother Lothar looked on, confused. “Your Excellency, what in the world—”

“Hold your tongue. Bring me some more light from the other torch over there,” Bonenmayr grumbled. Silently the monk held up the torch Nathanael had left behind and watched as the abbot continued sketching and erasing the letters.

Finally Bonenmayr stopped. His face partly obscured in the shadows, his eyes narrowed to slits behind his pince-nez. He grinned like a schoolboy, pointing at the letters on the ground. Beneath the name and the year of death there were now two new words.

Two very familiar words.

Crux Christi
…

“It’s an anagram,” Bonenmayr murmured. “
H. Turris. CCXI
is
Crux Christi,
” he said. “They have just moved the letters around…Those damned Templars and their riddles! But now, enough of this.” He pointed at the memorial stone. “Now smash this plaque.”

15

T
HE MUFFLED VOICES
behind the door became louder and louder, then suddenly fell silent. Simon held his breath. He was sure he’d heard the Steingaden abbot. Had the secret passageway perhaps led them to St. John’s Chapel? But they must have gone much farther than that…The medicus had lost all sense of direction. Placing his finger to his lips, he motioned to the two women to keep silent. After a while they could hear the sound of pickaxes. Someone on the other side of the door seemed to be pounding away at stone.

Carefully, Simon pressed down on the rusty door handle. The tarnished portal opened a crack, unexpectedly, and then jammed. Peering through the crack, Simon couldn’t make out more than a few shapeless pieces of rubble that blocked his view. He pressed against the low wooden door with his shoulder, and it opened, squeaking, bit by bit. The pounding on the other side continued, and now Simon could clearly hear the abbot’s voice.

“Faster, faster! There’s an opening behind it, you asses! Hurry up!”

Suddenly, a loud crash sounded somewhere up above. Something big and heavy must have fallen over in the room above them. For a moment, Augustin Bonenmayr fell silent, but then he continued, even louder: “I don’t care if the world is coming to an end up there! That must not stop us! Keep going!”

Finally, the crack was wide enough that Simon and the two women could slip through. Not far from the door, he spotted a tall, rotten shelf they could hide behind. But looking closer, he stopped short. The shelves were piled high with masks with crooked noses, dusty wigs, fake beards, and moth-eaten clothing. Beside the shelf, he saw a strange apparatus, something he’d never seen before: Standing upright on a small wagon was a barrel with a little handle sticking out of the side. The barrel itself was wrapped in a bolt of fabric. Simon rubbed his eyes. What place had they stumbled into? This couldn’t possibly be St. John’s Chapel, could it?