“What kind of witch?” With a pounding heart, Magdalena rushed over to the ring of stones, followed by Matthias and little Paul. Halfway around the circle she caught sight of an old woman in a tattered dress, stooped over as if carrying an enormous burden. When the white-haired woman turned to her, Magdalena could see from her empty, milky eyes that she was blind.
“The children,” the woman whispered, her voice sounding like the moaning of the wind. “The children are in great danger. Someone is trying to harm them—I can feel that.”
“What… what are you saying, woman?” asked Magdalena, moving closer to Matthias. “Who wants to harm my children?”
With angry grunts, the big, mute man strode over to the ring of stones and lifted Peter down from the rock. The boy, paralyzed by fear, couldn’t look away from the old woman in the tattered dress.
“Evil is everywhere!” the old woman wailed. “I’m guarding the entrance to hell, but evil long ago spread to our houses and homes, and I can no longer stop it. Beware, children. Beware!”
Blindly groping her way forward, the old woman staggered toward Matthias, Magdalena, and the children, reaching out toward Paul with her long, filthy fingernails. The knacker’s apprentice gave her a shove and she fell backward, landing in the wet leaves.
“Woe to you!” she screamed as if she’d completely lost her mind now. “Woe to you! Evil is reaching out: I can hear it rumbling in the bowels of the mountain, I hear its song every night—the end is near.”
Dazed, Magdalena took her children by the hand and walked backward, step by step, to the slope where they’d come down. “Listen, old woman,” the hangman’s daughter said, trying to calm her down. “We wish you no harm. I’m sorry if we’ve frightened you.”
Magdalena kept speaking in a soft, soothing voice as she continued to move away with the children. The woman was clearly insane, but crazy people often spoke curses that came true. That’s what older people had always told her, in any case; perhaps there was some truth to it.
The old woman was still wailing, but in the meantime her words had given way to an incomprehensible babble. She lay doubled up on the ground, and Magdalena only hoped Matthias hadn’t inadvertently injured her. Magdalena was about to walk back to the woman to see what was wrong when the knacker’s assistant took her by the shoulder and pulled her back with a growl. He gestured as if to say the woman was out of her mind and pointed back to the monastery. His gaze conveyed a clear warning—now void of any friendliness.
“Geout. Esser geout,” he stammered
“You’re right, Matthias,” Magdalena sighed. “We’d better turn around and get out before she does something to harm the children. There’s nothing more we can do to help here; she’s living in her own world.”
After a final anxious look, she turned and hurried back to the slope with Matthias and the children. She could hear the whining old woman for a while, but then only the stillness of the forest. The children were already beginning to laugh again, and in a few minutes, they seemed to have forgotten the strange encounter. In another quarter hour, they had struggled up the steep slope and now stood at the edge of the forest, looking out on the fragrant field of flowers.
Magdalena took a deep breath, feeling as if she’d awakened from a bad dream.
“Who in God’s name was that?” she asked Matthias, but the journeyman just shrugged and turned to point the way home.
The four hurried across the meadow toward the monastery wall, where new groups of pilgrims had been circling since early morning, praying loudly. In the midst of one such group, Magdalena spotted her father. This time he wasn’t wearing his monk’s robe, and he looked tired.
“Where in the devil have you been?” he growled, absent-mindedly patting his grandsons’ heads. “Simon and I have been worried.”
“I was in the forest with Matthias and the children,” she said, trying to reassure him. “You men were completely absorbed in your conversation.”
“Is that Graetz’s journeyman?” Kuisl took a careful look at the redheaded giant. “Well, then at least you weren’t unprotected. Nevertheless, I think it would be best for you not to go so far into the forest from now on.”
“Ah, I see. You want to lock me up, you and Simon?” asked Magdalena, regaining her self-confidence. “You can forget that,” she groused. “I’ll go where I want.”
For a moment she wondered whether to tell her father about the strange encounter with the mad old woman, but she decided to keep silent. In the present situation, it would just be grist for her father’s mill. Instead, she turned to him and whispered, “You’d better be careful Semer doesn’t see you out here, or he’ll get some dumb ideas.”
“Bah!” the hangman retorted. “I’m no more interested in Semer than I am in a used wad of tobacco.” He spat on the ground to emphasize his point. “Now for once, I want you to come where I want to go. Unlike you, stupid woman, we two men have been thinking.”
“Ah, and what came of that?”
“I’d rather discuss that with you in private, if possible, without the children present.” Once more the hangman looked Matthias up and down. “Do you think your strong bodyguard would be able to take the two kids down to the knacker’s house and keep an eye on them there?”
“Better than you and Simon together,” Magdalena snapped.
The children pouted, but when the knacker’s helper finally offered them two more plums, they followed willingly. After the children and Matthias disappeared around the corner, the hangman turned back to his daughter.
“Well?” she asked curiously. “What’s your plan?”
Grinning, the hangman unrolled the monk’s robe he’d been hiding under his cloak.
“Brother Jakobus and Saint Simon will pay another visit to the relics room,” he said with a sneer. “There’s something there I have to get a look at again. Do you think a weak woman like you can keep the priests off our backs for a while?”
“If you’re looking for a weak woman, you’ve come to the wrong place.”
The hangman sighed. “Then just a woman. The main thing is to keep them gawking at you and not watching us.”
With a smile, Magdalena joined her father and headed toward the church. It looked like he was finally onto something.
In front of the church they met Simon, who was awaiting his wife impatiently.
“Can you image how worried—” he started to say, but Kuisl cut him short.
“She was with Matthias, and she’s still alive; so let’s forget the matter.”
“With the mute Matthias, Graetz’s assistant?” Simon stared at his wife incredulously. “What are you doing around him?”
“At least he takes care of the two boys, whereas their high and mighty father prefers to stick his nose in books,” she groused.
“Just a minute. I’m only doing that because we have a murder to solve here. You said yourself—”
“Calm down, both of you,” the hangman interrupted. “You can fight all you want in Schongau, but we’re here now to help Nepomuk, and to do that I’ve got to get a better look at the holy chapel. Now, for God’s sake, let’s get in there.”
He opened the door to the church. At the noon hour, relatively few pilgrims were present. Around two dozen were kneeling and praying in the rear pews with their eyes closed, and closer to the front, near the high altar, a single monk was busy preparing for the next mass. To her horror, Magdalena recognized him as Brother Eckhart, the cellarer.
“Oh, great,” she whispered. “The old bastard snubbed me before, and I hardly think I’ll be able to distract him now.”
“You must at least try,” Simon whispered. “It will take us only two minutes to get up the stairway, across the balcony, and to the entrance, and if you can distract him that long, it will be enough.”
“Two minutes?” The hangman’s daughter raised her eyebrows. “That can be an eternity—but all right, I’ll do my best.” Magdalena dipped her fingers in the holy water from the font at the en
trance, crossed herself, curtsied politely, and moved toward the apse where Brother Eckhart was busy cleaning the communion cup with a cloth. Seeing the young woman approach, he turned away pointedly.
“Oh, Your Excellency…” Magdalena started to say, but the cellarer didn’t respond. “I wasn’t here for the offertory this morning,” she said, “but I’d like to donate something for construction of the new monastery.” At that, the fat monk raised his head.
“You can give me the money if you wish,” he answered haughtily, “and I’ll pass it along as a charitable donation.”
You’ll blow it on booze, you bloated winebag, Magdalena thought, smiling.
“As you wish, Your Excellency,” she replied in a naive tone. “But may I ask you something first?”
The cellarer gave her a distrustful look. “Are you the woman I chased out of the balcony recently?” he asked, “the one who wanted to know so much about our relics room?”
“Ah, yes,” Magdalena admitted after brief hesitation. “The relics… they… they mean so very much to me.” She beamed ecstatically. “I even dream about the relics. In my dreams, Charlemagne and Saint Elizabeth even come to my bed and speak to me. They tell me when the cattle are sick and when the milk will turn sour, and when I look in the pot the next day, the milk is sour. A miracle!”
“A… miracle, indeed. And now let me polish the chalice for the next mass.” Evidently the cellarer was accustomed to hearing such stories from the faithful, and his distrust vanished. Magdalena cast a surreptitious glance up at the balcony to see Simon and her father starting up the stairs to the monk’s choir. She had to think of something.
“This… this painting in the back of the church,” she giggled, pointing spontaneously at one of the paintings at the back of the apse, “there is a mouse on it crawling right into the priest’s stole.”
“You stupid woman. You really don’t know anything, do you?” Brother Eckhart descended the steps from the altar toward her, shaking his head. To her great relief, he followed her to the painting.
“What you see here is the famous mouse that led us back to the holy treasure long ago. See? It’s carrying a scrap of parchment in its mouth.”
Grateful for the diversion, the hangman’s daughter leaned in to examine the painting, graying now with age. In the picture, a tiny mouse scurried out from under the altar during mass, holding a piece of parchment in its mouth.
“After the destruction of the castle that once stood here, it seemed the treasure was lost,” Brother Eckhart continued. “Monks had buried it in front of the altar in the chapel of the castle, and the hiding place was forgotten. But a mouse pulled a piece of parchment with pictures of relics on it from the hiding place, and the relics were found again. That is a miracle.” He smiled sardonically. “Now give me your gift for the church and get back to your sour milk.”
“Ah, yes, my gift…” Magdalena smiled awkwardly, watching Simon and her father out of the corner of her eye. They were standing upstairs at the door to the relics room but were apparently having no luck opening it.
Damn. What are you doing up there? How long do I have to stand here looking like a dumb goose?
Magdalena leaned over and fumbled with her bodice as if searching for a few coins between her breasts. The cellarer stared back, absorbed by this unexpected sight. “Perhaps, uh… there are other ways you could be of service to the monastery,” he murmured, licking his lips. “And we could pay you. As cellarer, I have the key to the pantry, as well as to some other rooms farther down below where we store wine, bacon, and sausage. There’s also a little place there where just the two of us could be together.”
“To pray?” Magdalena batted her eyelashes.
The cellarer laughed. “You can also pray at the same time—that won’t disturb me.”
At that moment, the hangman’s daughter was relieved to see Simon and her father disappear through the open door. Immediately a change came over her face.
“Well, what is it?” Brother Eckhart asked lustfully. “Shall the two of us go away to pray?”
“You know what, Your Excellency?” she snarled, her ingenuousness vanishing. “You’re too old for me—and too fat and too ugly. And I seriously doubt you’re at all able to do that sort of praying anymore. I think I’ll just donate in the usual way.” She extracted a single rusty kreuzer and tossed it at the feet of the astonished cellarer. “And now farewell. Saint Elizabeth is waiting for me at her next audience.”
Turning on her heels, she sashayed out the door, but not without stopping to bow one last time before each of the statues of Mary.
When Simon pressed the handle and realized the door up on the balcony was locked, he suppressed a quiet curse. It looked as if their visit here was for naught.
“Of course it’s locked,” he whispered. “We should have expected that.” He looked down into the nave where Magdalena was just heading to the back of the apse with the cellarer. “We’d better retreat before my wife gets herself into even more trouble.”
“You can forget that,” the hangman grumbled. “Just make sure nobody sees us, and I’ll do the rest.” He pulled out a little coil of wire and began poking around in the keyhole. “I do this in the Schongau dungeon sometimes to unlock ankle chains when I’ve misplaced the keys,” he said as he slowly turned the wire back and forth. “This won’t take long.”
There was a soft click as the door swung open. “Well, what did I say?” he beamed as they slipped inside.
“That won’t help you to open the locks at the entrance to the holy chapel,” Simon said as they hurried up the winding staircase past the votive paintings. “That’s quite a different story.”
“Idiot! I know that. I don’t want to get into the chapel, just have a look at the vestibule.”
Simon looked at his father-in-law in surprise. “The vestibule? Why is that?”
“You’ll see in a moment.”
They entered the little room outside the holy chapel now. Subdued sunlight fell through a single locked window on the north side, and the air smelled stale and moldy. Unlike on Kuisl’s last visit, a heavy wooden bar and an iron-reinforced door blocked the entrance to the chapel. Knee-high, waist-high, and eye-level, each of the three bars was secured with a heavy lock.
Simon pointed at the three coats of arms displayed on the door. “The white-and-blue sign of the Wittelsbachs, an eagle and a lion for Andechs, and Saint Nicolas for the prior, holder of the third key,” he explained. “That’s what it says in the chronicle, but it’s still a mystery to me how anyone could steal anything out of such a room. Are there windows inside?”
Kuisl nodded. “Three of them, but they’re all covered with iron bars.”
“How in heaven’s name could anyone steal a heavy monstrance from such a room?” Simon asked, incredulous. “The locks were untouched, you said. And both the abbot and the prior insist their keys were never out of sight. The same is probably true for the count. Was witchcraft involved here?”
“Nonsense,” the hangman grunted. “Witchcraft is an invention of the devil used to hide things from our eyes. What we have here is man-made.”
“Then there are actually only two possibilities,” Simon replied. “Either someone managed to steal all three keys for a night, or the culprit is one of the three men. Then he would only have to get hold of two keys to break in.”
“Or perhaps there’s some completely different explanation.” The hangman carefully inspected the almost empty vestibule. The walls were covered with votive paintings of miracles, and on the left beneath the window stood a single iron-clad chest. Kuisl bent down and opened it.
“Empty,” he murmured, lost in thought. “Perhaps this chest is used from time to time to transport the relics.”
Simon nodded. “I read about that. Just during the Great War, the three holy hosts were sent to Munich several times lest they be stolen by the Swedes. Each time they were brought back again.”
“And now they’ve completely disappeared.” The
hangman closed the chest. “But I think I know now who has them.”
“What?” Simon fell silent, his mouth open in astonishment. “You know who has them?”
Kuisl grinned at his son-in-law. “And you don’t? If you can add two and two, the matter is as clear as day. Simon, Simon…” He shook his head regretfully. “I really don’t know what they teach at the universities. They certainly don’t teach you how to think.”
Simon rolled his eyes. It wasn’t the first time his father-in-law had teased him; the hangman really knew more about medicine than he did, even though Simon had studied it. It seemed Kuisl couldn’t get over the fact that he couldn’t attend a university due to his dishonorable status.
“Then at least be kind enough to let me in on what you’ve learned,” Simon said with a sarcastic edge. “Or must I die clueless?”
“There’s one thing I still have to check,” the hangman responded curtly. “After all, we want to find out if the thief is also responsible for the murders. Until I know that, you’ll have to wait.” He turned back to the stairway. “Now let’s clear out, before the fat cellarer gets it into his head to come up here to dust off the votive paintings. If anyone sees us up here in the balcony, we’ll just say I was praying and you came to find me, wringing your hands on account of a patient. After all, you not only have trouble thinking, but evidently in healing, as well.”
Kuisl stomped down the stairs, and even though his back was turned to Simon, the medicus was sure he wore a wide, satisfied grin. Grumbling softly, Simon followed. There were days when he wished he could put his father-in-law on the rack.
It would take Simon much longer than anticipated to finally hear Kuisl’s theory.
During the day, Simon continued to care for the sick with Magdalena. They were supported by Jakob Schreevogl, who’d paid a few undaunted day laborers to help them set up beds in an adjacent room. In addition, two maids from the village took charge of seeing there was always fresh water and the necessary herbs. Their only condition was that Simon would have the rooms smoked out with mugwort and St. John’s wort. Simon didn’t think this lessened the danger of infection in any way, but it was only under this condition that the men and women agreed to help the bathhouse surgeon. None of the monks had yet shown up to help.