“Deus lo vult,” he whispered, then fell to his knees to pray.
5
AN UNPLEASANT ODOR brought Jakob Kuisl back from his nebulous nightmares and into the present. A musty smell of dust and earth, somewhat moldy and damp, like in a trench, he thought.
Where am I? What happened?
The memory came surging back—and with it, the anger and pain. He had failed to notice the third man! He must have come down the stairway to the crypt behind him. The stranger, who smelled of violets, had nearly strangled him with a leather strap. Jakob Kuisl knew that people who were strangled lost consciousness in a minute’s time and that death followed just a few minutes after that. He knew this well, as he himself had executed some people in this fashion. Some of those condemned to death at the stake had paid him to strangle them and spare them the painful death by fire. In the heavy smoke, onlookers couldn’t see that the person in the flames was already dead.
Jakob Kuisl remembered the poison dagger that paralyzed him down in the crypt in a matter of minutes. Some interesting poison that he had never heard of. The plant or berry no doubt came from another part of the world. Carefully, the hangman tried to wiggle his fingers and toes. They moved—a good sign. The effect of the poison, whatever it was, had started to wear off, and for the first time, he was able to open his eyes now.
And saw nothing.
He blinked a few times. Was he blind? Had the men blindfolded him? Or was it really so dark in this cellar? He tried to reach up and touch his face.
He couldn’t.
After a few inches, his hand bumped into something cold and hard. He tried the other hand, but the same thing happened. He tried to sit up, but his head bumped into a stone slab. He broke out in a sweat, and his mouth felt dry. He turned this way and that, but on all sides there was nothing but cold stone. He felt his heart beginning to race and struggled to control his breathing.
They’ve buried me alive. In the sarcophagus…
Jakob Kuisl counted his heartbeats. He struggled to breathe regularly, and finally he felt how the time between heartbeats was lengthening until it was beating normally again. And then he began to scream.
“Hey! Can anyone hear me? I’m here!”
He sensed that his voice reached no farther than the stone slab, where it was completely swallowed up. Considering the huge weight of the stone, it was likely that even someone standing directly next to the sarcophagus would not be able to hear him. He had to help himself.
Perhaps Jakob Kuisl could have raised the slab with his strong arms, but the cover was so close to him that he couldn’t raise his arms any higher than his chest. Perhaps he could…
Taking a deep breath, the hangman pressed his whole body upward so that his broad forehead touched the slab.
It felt as if he were trying to push his way through a wall with his head.
The veins on his temples bulged, and blood surged through his head. He pressed and pumped, his muscles as hard as rock. He could hear his bones crack, but the slab was as unmoving as if had been cemented in place.
Then, finally, he heard a soft grating sound.
A ray of light appeared in a narrow crack—actually, not a ray of light at all, but a darkness not quite as dark as the interior of the sarcophagus. He continued pushing his upper body against the stone, knowing that if he gave up now he wouldn’t regain the strength to raise the slab again for a long time. Perhaps forever. His lower back felt like a mighty oak that was ready to splinter, but finally he moved the slab far enough that he could raise his arms to his chest and push them up against the cold stone above him.
With a loud cry, he pushed away the six-hundred-pound stone.
The slab hovered above him for a moment like a serving tray, then tipped to one side and crashed to the stone floor, where it broke into pieces. Like a corpse rising from the dead, Jakob Kuisl sat up in the coffin. His body was covered with stone dust and crushed bone. Human bones and scraps of cloth were scattered all over the room, and in one corner lay the slab with the inscription.
Jakob Kuisl climbed out of the sarcophagus and reached for the marble slab. Only now did he notice that he was still holding in his left hand a scrap of the black cowl he had seized just before losing consciousness. He held it up to his nose and smelled a fragrance of violets, cinnamon, and something else that he couldn’t quite place.
He would never forget this fragrance.
With the scrap of cloth and the marble tablet in hand, he climbed out of the crypt. They would find out that it was a mistake to pick a fight with the hangman.
Magdalena had a bad night behind her. She had waited a full hour in front of the St. Lawrence Church, but her father still hadn’t returned. Finally, three figures in dark robes had crept out of the same church window they had pried open before and disappeared into the darkness. Magdalena could hear from far off the whinnying and hoofbeats of their horses as they left.
Where was her father?
Finally, she hurried to the rectory to awaken Magda and the gaunt sexton. Together they opened the door to the church, while Magda, terrified, kept making the sign of the cross, praying, and staring up into the night sky. If someone was really still lurking around in there, the shock would probably kill both of them, Magdalena thought. But the church was empty. The stone slab above the crypt had been moved aside, but even after Magdalena had descended the stairway—despite Magda’s praying and moaning—she had not been able to find anything. Evidently, there had been a struggle in both underground rooms, which were littered with refuse. In the back room, the sarcophagus had clearly been examined again. Bones and scraps of material lay around the room, but the sarcophagus stood just as her father and Simon had left it, with its lid closed. A strange fleeting feeling came over her as she looked at the sarcophagus, but she couldn’t figure out what it was. It almost seemed as if she could sense the presence of her father. But he was still nowhere to be seen.
Fearful, she finally spent the night in the rectory and returned home early the next morning. Her mother was already up and standing in the doorway, her eyes red with tears.
“Where were you?” she asked. “And where is your father?”
For a brief moment, Magdalena was tempted to lie to her mother: She had been called to work overnight as a midwife in Altenstadt, and her father was sleeping off a night of carousing at Strasser’s Tavern. But then it all came out.
“I…I just don’t know,” was all she could say, sobbing, before burying her face in her mother’s bosom. Sitting at the table inside, Anna Maria Kuisl finally learned the whole truth about her husband’s uncertain fate.
“How often have I told your father not to meddle in other people’s affairs!” she scolded. “Don’t we have enough problems already? But no, he won’t listen. He pokes his nose in books and other people’s garbage, and now he’s putting his own daughter in danger once again! To hell with him!”
Anna Maria Kuisl’s unique method of conquering her fear for her husband was by scolding and cursing. The more she cursed, the more relief she got. In the end, she often told him just to drop dead—although she really loved him. Anna Maria Kuisl herself came from a family of hangmen in Kempten. Death and horror were nothing new to her, but no one could take away her fear for her family. On the other hand, she simply couldn’t imagine that Jakob had been killed and buried by three dastardly murderers who were just passing through. They couldn’t do this to Jakob Kuisl, the hangman of Schongau, that goddamned pigheaded smart aleck!
Of course, Jakob Kuisl picked the most unfavorable of all possible moments to return home. The door creaked and his broad frame appeared in the doorway, still covered with stone dust, dirt, and crushed bone. His forehead and arm were bleeding, his hands badly skinned, and every one of his muscles was painful and stiff as a board. No doubt that was the reason he couldn’t duck when the pot of porridge came flying through the air at him.
“You bullheaded clod! How often have I told you to keep your daughter out of this whe
n you go poking your nose around?”
Jakob Kuisl wiped the warm porridge from his shirt and stuck his finger in his mouth. “You got any more, or was that all for today? Doesn’t taste half bad…” he muttered.
A clay cup came flying through the air at him, but this time he was ready. Though his upper body was stiff, he managed to turn away so that the cup smashed into pieces against the wall behind him.
“How dare you even show up here,” his wife shouted. But her anger already seemed to have cooled somewhat. Besides, she didn’t have any more ammunition. “I’ve been worried sick about you two.”
The patter of little feet could be heard coming down the stairs. The seven-year-old twins, Georg and Barbara, stood there in their nightshirts, blinking at them from behind the railing.
“Mama, why does Papa have porridge all over his jacket?”
“Because Mama was scolding him.” Anna Maria Kuisl went up the stairs. “Because you have such a stubborn damned father. It’s outrageous. Now put some clothes on before you freeze to death.”
She disappeared upstairs with the children while Jakob grinned and pointed to Magdalena and to the pot on the floor.
“What do you say? Would you at least make me a pot of porridge? Or are you going to throw the spoon at me, too?
Magdalena smiled. “Well, Father, the main thing is that you’re back.” Then she picked up the battered pot, took it back to the kitchen, and put fresh water on to boil.
Early that afternoon, Simon Fronwieser stopped by the hangman’s house and reported what he and Benedikta had learned. The return trip from Steingaden to Schongau had been uneventful. Just after they’d left, they came upon an armed party of merchants who accompanied them to Schongau. The merchants hadn’t seen a trace of robbers. Perhaps they looked too well armed for them, Simon thought. Or they still remembered Benedikta and preferred to hide in the forest and lick their wounds.
Benedikta stayed at the Goldener Stern Inn, where she hoped to finish some important correspondence. Anna Maria Kuisl had taken the twins into the forest to gather firewood. She was still angry at her husband and, for that reason, was staying out of his way. Jakob knew that this would all pass over by the next day, at the latest.
Now Jakob and Simon were sitting at the table in the main room, thinking about everything that had happened the day before. A roughly mortared tile stove in the corner spread a pleasant warmth, and on the table a piece of wood was burning in a torch holder, bathing the low-ceilinged room in a gentle glow. Under the bench, a few chickens were scratching around in their cages.
Magdalena made an herbal broth that the men sipped morosely. Simon yearned for a cup of coffee, but Magdalena had refused to serve him the stimulating beverage. In his present condition, she said, a calming herbal drink would be just the right thing for him. In general, Magdalena seemed sullen and uncommunicative, and Simon had the feeling that she also refused him the coffee because he had traveled to Steingaden with Benedikta. At some point, when he touched her skirt, she retreated to the stove and avoided looking him in the eye.
Both the hangman and the physician had bandages on their foreheads. Jakob Kuisl had a bandaged hand as well, but that didn’t keep him from holding a cup in one hand and a smoking pipe in the other. He told Simon briefly about being attacked in the crypt, and now they were discussing what to do next.
“Let’s summarize what we know, again,” Simon began. “In the crypt under the Saint Lawrence Church are the bones of a Knight Templar; that’s at least what we can assume from reading the inscription on the sarcophagus.” He slurped listlessly on his herbal brew before continuing. “The church itself once belonged to the Knights Templar many years ago before the latter sold it to the Premonstratensians. The seller was a certain Friedrich Wildgraf, the local master of the Order of the Knights Templar in the German Empire. Benedikta assumes—”
“Oh, just stop already with this Benedikta!” Magdalena interrupted angrily. “Maybe you weren’t really in Steingaden until noon today; maybe you were making love in some stable, then showed up here holding hands this morning, and the whole story about the robbers is one big cock-and-bull story—”
“Be quiet, Magdalena, and stop talking such nonsense. Help us figure this out; that would be more helpful.”
Her father’s voice was calm and composed, but Magdalena knew she couldn’t take this much further. She and Simon had already had a heated argument earlier in the afternoon, and Simon had assured her that nothing had happened between him and Benedikta. But the way he looked down when he spoke to her made her fear the worst.
“Maybe the remains in the crypt belong to this Friedrich Wildgraf,” she suggested.
“That’s also what Benedikta assumes,” Simon replied, shrugging.
“Nonsense.” From a flask under the table, the hangman poured something strong into his cup of herbal brew. “This Templar sold the property. Why would he want to be buried there? Anyway, such a noble gentleman has certainly found a better place to bide his time until Judgment Day than in our dilapidated Saint Lawrence Church, of all places.”
Neither Simon nor Magdalena could argue with that.
“Whatever the case,” Simon continued, “what’s down there is certainly the grave of a Knight Templar. That old fart Koppmeyer finds it, talks too much, and suddenly he’s dead.”
“Probably poisoned by the three men that Magdalena and I saw in the church yesterday,” Jakob Kuisl grumbled. “They were looking for something there. What the hell could it be?”
“In any case, these men are still around here somewhere,” Magdalena added. “They have been wandering about here for days, talking in Latin with each other in the tavern.” Once more, she told them what she’d learned in Altenstadt. “Strasser, the tavern keeper, thinks they are monks,” she said, “refined, educated people. One of them stank of perfume, he said, like a whole gang of Frenchmen.”
“Damn! What was I thinking?” Jakob Kuisl said, slapping himself on the forehead. Then he pulled out the bit of cloth he had brought back from the crypt.
“I almost forgot. This is a piece of the cloak I tore off one of the thugs in the Saint Lawrence Church. I’m sure it’s from the same bastard who visited Lechner in the castle that morning. He nearly ran me down.”
“Are you quite sure?” Simon inquired.
“Just as sure as I am that the devil has a cloven hoof. It was the same perfume. Nobody can tell me different!” He kneaded the scrap of black cloth in his hand, as if he were trying to squeeze out its fragrance.
“Lechner—a part of the conspiracy that cost the fat priest his life…?” Simon shook his head skeptically. “The clerk may well be an unscrupulous schemer, but this doesn’t sound like him at all.”
“Anyway,” Kuisl grumbled, “he ordered me to stay out of this. As of tomorrow, I’ll be leaving to catch the gang of robbers in the Schongau forest.”
“You? Why you, Father?” Magdalena stood there with her mouth open.
“Because Lechner thinks I’m the only one who can do it. And because that way he can get rid of me.”
Jakob Kuisl told them briefly what the clerk had demanded of him.
“He wants to get me out of the way—that much is certain,” he grumbled. “But I can’t be put off that easily. I’m going to find the bastard who did this to me as sure as Jakob Kuisl is my name.”
Simon swallowed hard. He didn’t want to think about what the hangman would do with the three assassins if he actually caught them.
“Until the hunt’s over, you’ve got to be my tracking dog around here,” Kuisl said, turning to Simon. “I don’t give a damn about Koppmeyer, but now they’ve gone too far. Nobody locks the hangman inside a coffin, no one, and certainly not bums and beggars like these!”
With a sweeping gesture, Jakob Kuisl pulled out the marble slab, which he’d kept under the bench until this point.
“The solution is right here somewhere,” he said, tapping the slab with his bandaged finger. “This smart-aleck
knight hid something while he was still alive, and we’ll find it if we can solve this riddle. I’ll bet my fat ass on it.”
“But maybe it’s just an inscription, an epitaph, and nothing more,” Simon objected.
“Not at all!” The hangman was adamant. “The assassins were interested in the slab as well; in any case, it was no longer in the coffin. The solution is right here before our eyes!”
Once more, Simon looked at the strange inscription.
And I will tell my two witnesses to prophesy. And when they have ended their testimony, the beast that arises from the depths will fight, conquer, and kill them.
He racked his brain trying to figure out what these words might mean. If it referred to a place, then it had to be somewhere they knew about, and if there was ever a chance of finding it, it had to still exist today, three hundred years later.
Two witnesses…a beast that fights them and kills them…
Images passed through his mind, only to vanish again: warriors, knights, monsters, dragons. Suddenly, a new image came to mind, and this time, it stuck.
Two witnesses…A beast…
“I have it!” he shouted suddenly. “It’s so simple when you know. It was always right in front of us.”
“What do you mean?” Magdalena asked.
Simon hopped excitedly around the table. One of the cups fell over, spilling herbal brew across the table. The hangman, too, gave Simon a bewildered look.
“Come on now, tell us,” he said. “And please don’t act like the incarnation of Beelzebub.”
Simon paused, but he didn’t sit back down. “First…first, I have to check something,” he said gasping for breath. “Do you have a Bible here in the house?”
Jakob Kuisl stood up, went to his room, and came back with a well-worn book.
“God also has a place in the hangman’s house,” he growled, tossing the Bible to Simon. The physician leafed through it until he found the page he was looking for.