“You forget the monstrance—it’s missing, too. People know what it looks like.”
Kuisl had to be sure the men behind the door were who he thought they were, so he bent down to the keyhole. Through the tiny opening, he could in fact see the old librarian rubbing his gout-ravaged fingers thoughtfully over his lips.
“The monstrance is in fact a bit of a problem,” he murmured. “It will be hard for us to find one just like it, but I’m sure nobody will notice in the hustle and bustle of the festival.”
“How can you be so cold?” Now Kuisl had a good view of the novitiate master, too, who was striding back and forth in the hall, wringing his hands. “Two men are dead, perhaps even three, and a monster is roaming about. We never should have used the cellars. Now it will all come out.”
“Nothing will come out if you keep calm,” Brother Benedikt said angrily. “In any case nothing can happen to us. Brother Eckhart and I personally sealed the entrance to the catacombs yesterday with heavy stones—just to be sure. Nobody will find out what’s down there.”
“You know there are other entrances,” Laurentius replied anxiously. “They’re recorded in the plans. Can’t we seal up those entrances, as well?”
Brother Benedikt shrugged. “That will hardly be possible. The plans have disappeared.”
“Disappeared?” Brother Laurentius raised his hands, and his face turned white. “Why in God’s name have the plans disappeared?”
“Damn it, I don’t know,” Benedikt replied gruffly. “I had them in my room, with many other books and documents, but when I went to look for them yesterday, they were gone. I suspected one of you, or perhaps Maurus—”
“Oh, God, do you think the abbot has found us out?”
“If that’s the case, then he’s holding back. Perhaps he’s just so distracted by everything else going on that he hasn’t been paying attention to it. All the better for us. And now listen to me…” Brother Benedikt poked the novitiate master in the chest with his gnarled finger so hard that Laurentius had to take an astonished step back. “You’ve always made a good profit from our little secret. You built your little love nest down there for Vitalis and always showed up when there were things to hand out. So now just hold your tongue. Whatever is down there will soon die of hunger or flee through one of the holes. Remember, we already have a sorcerer, and that’s Brother Johannes. Soon he’ll be dragged to the stake, the festival will be over, and then we can just keep doing as before. But only if you keep quiet. Do you understand? Only if you keep quiet.”
Brother Laurentius nodded reluctantly. “I… I understand.”
“Then go back to your little room and rest up a bit. You’ll see; you won’t hear any more music.”
“Perhaps you’re right. I… I’m tired. This is all a bit too much for me.”
Horrified, Kuisl watched as the latch moved down and the door slowly opened. He stepped back against the wall next to the entrance. The voices were now noticeably louder.
“I’m going back to the church now to say you’re sick,” the librarian said. “After that we can calmly—”
Suddenly he stopped. Kuisl didn’t notice in time that his big right foot protruded through the crack in the door.
“What the hell—” Brother Benedikt started, but at that moment, the door hit him hard in the face. Screaming, the monk fell to the floor, holding his bloody nose. The novitiate master also fell back against the wall and watched horror-stricken as a giant man rushed out of his cell toward the exit.
“Stop that man,” screamed Brother Benedikt. “Stop that fraudulent Franciscan! I knew from the start we couldn’t trust him. He’s the devil in human form.”
Brother Laurentius took a few cautious steps, but the librarian’s last words had clearly made him even more anxious than before. He fell to his knees, made the sign of the cross, and watched as the black-robed giant fled out the door.
After her meeting with the abbot in the monastery’s enchanted garden, Magdalena hurried back to the clinic. She couldn’t stop thinking about her conversation with Rambeck, his stories of ancient gods and rattling automata. She desperately needed to talk to Simon. Perhaps he’d find time to go for a little walk and she could leave the boys with Matthias for a while.
On entering the former horse stable, she quickly saw that even more sick people had arrived, among them some of the masons from Schongau. They rolled about, moaning, on their beds while Schreevogl went from one to the other dispensing cold compresses. The patrician had changed noticeably in recent days. His doublet, once so spotless, was smudged, and there was a long rip in his trousers, but he seemed nevertheless almost cheerful as he walked down the rows of patients. He looked up bright-eyed and greeted Magdalena as she entered.
“Oh, Magdalena,” he cried. “You’re surely looking for Simon.” Holding a steaming cup in his hands, he pointed toward the rear of the room. “He’s back there mixing some medicine, but I’m afraid he won’t have much time for you.”
“We’ll see if my husband has time for me,” she said, clenching her teeth. It came out angrier than intended.
Carrying both boys in her arms, she squeezed past several beds and finally found Simon in the back standing beside a table where he weighed various ground herbs on a little scale, then placed them into a pot. Concentrating, his eyes narrowed to little slits and his eyebrows twitched nervously. He had just carefully measured out the greenish powder onto the scale with a little spoon.
“Simon, I have to talk to you. The abbot—” she began.
The sudden sound made the medicus jump and spill the powder on the table.
“Damn, Magdalena,” he cursed. “How can you startle me like that? Look what you’ve done. Now I have to start weighing it all over again. You know yourself how precious angelica root is.”
“Forgive me for talking to you; I’m only your wife,” she replied snippily. “I thought the gentleman might perhaps have time to take a little walk with me and his children—if he even remembers that he has children. Here, may I introduce you?” she said, holding the two boys out toward him. “This is your father.”
Simon stared at her blankly, his thoughts apparently far away. “A walk?” he mumbled finally. “Do you have any idea what I’m doing here? If I can’t heal the count’s son, we’ll never take a walk again—because I’ll be dead. And at this moment his life—and mine—hang in the balance.”
“Simon,” Magdalena said, this time in a more conciliatory tone, “don’t you think all this is too much for you? The matter of my father and this sorcerer, the murders, all the sick people, and now the count’s son. A walk could do you a world of—”
“Once this is over, I’ll walk with you and the children to the moon, if you want.” He looked at her with tired, reddened eyes. “But until then you’ll somehow have to get along without me. I’m sorry, but this here comes first.” A brief smile crossed his face. “In the meantime, by the way, I’ve continued reading the book by Girolamo Fracastoro, and it’s extremely interesting. I think I’m almost at the point of solving the secret of this illness. If I only knew—”
“Master Fronwieser, come quickly. We have a new patient.”
Shrugging, Simon turned away and hurried toward the entrance, where Schreevogl was just bringing in an old woman who was barely able to stand. She kept mumbling prayers and was coughing heavily.
“Bring her back to me, Schreevogl,” Simon called. “Someone died here last night and there’s a bed free.”
With clenched lips Magdalena watched as her husband laid some dirty straw-filled pillows down on the bed and then returned to the table to resume his weighing.
“Three ounces each of barberry and buckbean, two ounces of angelica…” he murmured without looking up. He seemed to have forgotten Magdalena already.
The hangman’s daughter stood there silently for a while, holding one child in each hand. She squeezed them so hard they began to whimper. After a while, she turned away and led them toward the exit.
“Come, you two,” she said in a tired voice, staring vacantly ahead. “Papa has no time today. He has to help other people. We’ll see if Matthias can play with you.”
A dozen miles away in Weilheim, the torture began.
At noon the bailiffs opened the hatch to Nepomuk’s dungeon and let down a ladder. The monk briefly considered just refusing to go, but then they no doubt would beat him and drive him up the ladder rung by rung. He therefore decided to willingly climb up the blood-and dirt-soiled ladder toward the light.
Nepomuk blinked in the bright sunlight falling through the narrow windows of the tower. After his eyes had grown accustomed to the light he saw four guards and Master Hans. The Weilheim executioner brushed back the snow-white hair from his forehead and looked his victim up and down with piercing red eyes, as if trying to guess how much pain the criminal would tolerate.
“The Weilheim district judge wants to dispose of this matter as soon as possible,” he said in a pleasant voice that seemed out of character with a white-haired monster of a man. “That suits me; I’ll just get my money sooner. Take him away.” Master Hans beckoned to one of the guards carrying a pole almost fifteen feet long with a ring of iron spikes on front. Nepomuk had never before seen such an instrument.
“Since the monastery informs us you are a sorcerer, we will do everything necessary to make sure you can’t touch us,” Master Hans explained briefly. He opened up the spiked ring at the end of the pole, placed it around Nepomuk’s neck, and carefully closed it again. As soon as the spikes dug into Nepomuk’s skin, the first drops of blood appeared. The monk realized that if he put up the slightest resistance, the spikes would dig deep into his flesh and split open his throat like dried-out leather.
“Let us proceed,” Master Hans said, slamming the trapdoor over the hole. “The tongs are no doubt glowing red by now.”
As the guard tugged briefly on the pole, Nepomuk stumbled forward a few steps and almost fell into the spikes before catching himself again and staggering forward carefully behind the men like a yoked ox. They dragged him down a long corridor lined with dungeons behind whose doors he could hear wailing and moaning. At one point, Nepomuk saw a crippled hand with only three fingers waving to him through one of the barred openings.
Master Hans walked alongside Nepomuk, looking straight ahead and humming an old familiar tune that Nepomuk knew from his days as a mercenary.
“I was once a hangman in the war,” Nepomuk groaned as he stumbled forward. “I executed some deserters, one of them a witch—a crazy old woman. I never thought she was one, though.” He turned toward the executioner hopefully. “Look at me. Do you really think I’m a warlock?”
Master Hans shrugged his powerful shoulders. “What I think or don’t think is of no importance. The high and noble gentlemen believe it, so I will torture you until you finally believe it yourself.”
They were now descending a winding stone staircase. Through a window, Nepomuk could see the hills and forests outside Weilheim, covered with green beeches and oaks swaying gently in the summer breeze. The tower dungeon was at the west end of the city wall, so on the left Nepomuk caught sight of the Alps. It was a gorgeous day with a dry wind, the kind that gave someone the feeling he could see forever. Then the window disappeared and the stairway continued winding down into the depths of the fortress.
“I come from a hangman’s family in Reutlingen,” said Nepomuk, once again addressing the Weilheim executioner. “The Volkmars. It’s quite possible the same blood flows in our veins.” He struggled unsuccessfully to grin as the spikes cut into his neck. “After all, we dishonorable hangman are all related more or less, aren’t we, cousin?”
This time Master Hans didn’t even look up, but stopped suddenly, grabbing Nepomuk between the legs so hard that he doubled over, writhing in pain. The voice of the Weilheim executioner echoed through the rocky fortress. “Listen, sorcerer, you can whine and cry all you want,” Master Hans said softly, “you can shout your innocence from the rooftops or, for all I care, curse me up and down. But for God’s sake, stop kissing my ass. I don’t give a damn if you’re related to me or to a broomstick. I have a family to feed, and I’m saving my money one kreutzer at a time to buy my citizenship someday. So don’t expect pity from me.”
Master Hans let go of the monk’s genitals and gave the guards a signal to go on ahead. Then he started counting off on his fingers as Nepomuk lay on the floor writhing.
“For torturing you I’ll get a full three guilders,” Master Hans figured. “For burning you, ten. If I rip out your guts first, the council will certainly give me a bonus. And I can get good money for your blood, fingers, and eyes, too. I’ll make a powder from them that will offer protection from all kinds of magic spells. People pay good money for that.”
Finally a perverse smile passed across his face. “You’re my big prize, sorcerer, don’t you understand?” he hissed. “Something like you I get only once every few years. So shut your mouth and move your ass, and stop trying to be my friend, cousin.”
Master Hans spat on the floor, opened a heavy door reinforced with thick wooden beams at the end of the stairwell, and entered.
“You no doubt know most of the tools here,” he said matter-of-factly. “What luck that I can torture a colleague. That spares me all the explanation.”
Nepomuk looked around. His whole body began to tremble. A warm stream trickled down his leg, and he was overcome with shame.
They’d arrived in the torture chamber.
13
ANDECHS, THE MORNING OF SATURDAY, JUNE 19, 1666 AD
SULLEN AND BROODING, Simon hurried along the shortest path from the monastery to the clinic. He noticed neither the twittering birds in the trees nor the pious pilgrims singing. For the moment he’d even forgotten his argument with Magdalena. His thoughts kept returning to the count’s sick son.
He feared that if he didn’t come up with something soon, his career as a medicus would end soon on the monastery battlements.
He’d spent the entire morning at the bedside of the young Wittelsbacher, but the boy’s fever hadn’t receded a bit. Even worse, the medicus had discovered the same red dots on the boy’s chest that many of his other patients had and which Girolamo Fracastoro had described in such detail in his book. Simon knew that the likelihood of dying from the fever was especially high for children, and that this fact also dramatically affected his own life expectancy: Count Wartenberg didn’t seem like the type to retract a threat of hanging a convicted quack. Just to be safe, Simon left Schreevogl in charge of the sick boy and asked him to report at once any change in the boy’s condition.
The boy was not Simon’s only problem. As the medicus made his way through the crowds of pilgrims in the narrow lanes below the monastery, he couldn’t help thinking of his angry wife. Since their confrontation in the clinic yesterday, Magdalena had been as silent as a clam; she’d spoken with him as little as possible and otherwise devoted her time to caring for the children. Why couldn’t she understand that he had no other choice?
A sudden uproar near the clinic jolted Simon out of his gloomy reveries. The medicus quickened his pace and soon caught sight of a group of monks crowding around the entrance and wailing loudly. They were carrying something large, and soon Simon recognized it as the body of a man either dead or badly wounded. His colleagues struggled to drag him into the clinic like a slaughtered pig while a crowd of pilgrims in front kept growing, trying to catch a glimpse.
“Out of the way, people,” Simon cried, pushing the onlookers aside. “I’m a doctor. Clear out of here.”
Only reluctantly the people stepped aside and allowed the medicus to enter. Simon pushed the door closed and secured it with a heavy beam. Angry shouts and wild pounding could be heard outside.
“Has the golem found another victim?” asked an anxious voice through the door. “It was the golem, wasn’t it?”
“I’ve seen this man’s wounds,” a woman bellowed. “I swear to you, they weren’t inflicted b
y any worldly thing.”
“Go home, people,” Simon shouted, trying to calm the crowd. “When we know something definite, we’ll be sure to let you know. There are sick people in here; you don’t want to get infected, do you?”
This last argument seemed to silence the nosy crowd. After a few more angry shouts, the mob withdrew, grumbling.
The Benedictines heaved the injured man onto the closest empty bed, and Simon rushed to his side. The other patients stared fearfully at the new patient, and finally the medicus, too, was able to have a look. He started when he finally recognized who it was beneath all the dirt and blood.
It was none other than the novitiate master Brother Laurentius.
Simon realized quickly that the monk didn’t have long to live. His breathing was shallow, his cheeks sunken like those of a dying man, but most shocking, wounds covered his entire body. The robe had burned in many places, and beneath it were black patches of what had once been human flesh. Simon remembered seeing this kind of injury before, after some dark, immeasurably evil creature had attacked young Vitalis with that hellish phosphorus powder.
The burns were in fact so severe and numerous that the medicus wondered how it was possible that Brother Laurentius was still alive. He groaned softly and seemed to be trying to mouth some words. It took Simon a while to realize the monk was asking for water. Apparently he was still conscious.
Simon quickly reached for a flask of diluted wine and poured it carefully, drop by drop, between the lips of the injured man.
“What happened?” he asked the Benedictines standing around as they crossed themselves again and again and fell to their knees.
“We… we found him in the forest,” one of the Brothers whispered. “Down in the Ox Gorge in the Kien Valley, alongside… this thing.” He pulled out a torn sack covered with spots of dried blood.
“And?” Simon asked, pointing to the closed sack. “Have you looked to see what’s inside?”