The Dark Monk

  “The…the same?” Nepomuk Biermann asked. “You know it’s hard to get, and actually, I’m not supposed to sell it. That…could cost me my business.”

  Magdalena could sense the pharmacist’s anxiety. Carefully, she stepped back against the wall in order to hear better.

  “I’ll pay you well,” the man said to the sound of jingling coins. “But I’m depending on it really working right this time! The last time death came much too fast. This time it has to be slow so no one notices, or else…”

  “You must always use it in small doses,” Nepomuk Biermann insisted. “If you use only small doses, no one will become suspicious, I swear by God!”

  “Then swear by the Savior,” the stranger said, and laughed raucously. “Deus lo vult.”

  Magdalena gasped when she heard these last few words—the same words the man in the crypt had spoken to her father shortly before they’d stabbed him.

  Was it perhaps the same man?

  Although Magdalena was aware of the danger she was in, she moved closer to the door. Sidling up to it, she slowly turned her head toward the front of the store. From here, she could see only a small section above the counter, but it was enough to cause chills to run up and down her spine.

  Magdalena glimpsed a black cowl and, dangling from a golden chain, a golden cross with two crossbars. Not until now did she notice that a new scent had joined the mix in the apothecary.

  Violets.

  “I need something else,” the stranger said, scratching his chest. “Quicksilver. As much as you can get hold of.”

  Nepomuk Biermann nodded. “I…understand. Give me until tomorrow—”

  “I shall be here tomorrow morning,” the man interrupted. “The other preparations I’ll take along with me right away.”

  The stranger reached out for a little silk pouch the pharmacist offered him, then without a further word, turned to leave, slamming the door behind him.

  Magdalena hesitated briefly, then gathered up the herbs that Biermann had already packed for her and stuffed them into her linen bag. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed other herbs lying out on the table. Quickly, she grabbed these as well and put them in her bag. Who knows what I might be able to use them for? she thought.

  With the bag in hand, she hurried back to the sales room and, from there, out the door.

  “Hey!” Nepomuk Biermann called after her. His face was as white as a sheet, and pearls of sweat had formed on his forehead. “What are you doing? You have to pay! Stay here. That man is dangerous! You don’t understand…”

  Whatever else he said was drowned out in street noise. Magdalena hurried after the priest’s murderer, past snowdrifts and astonished pedestrians. She didn’t know what she was going to do when she caught up with him, but she wouldn’t be a Kuisl if she allowed this chance to slip by.

  In Schongau the blizzard raged, too, and people stayed inside their warm houses, hoping they wouldn’t run out of firewood. In the surrounding forests, the howl of wolves could be heard now and then, and on the rooftops snow piled up, making the beams creak. Even the oldest Schongauers had rarely seen a storm like this, and it was certainly the worst since the Great War had ended.

  The streets and narrow lanes in town were empty except for a single figure making his way through the blizzard, up from the Tanners’ Quarter, toward the dungeon. Jakob Kuisl held onto his wide-brimmed hat with his right hand, shielding his eyes with his left and trying to see ahead through the chaos. He looked like a black giant in a sea of white. He cursed under his breath. His pipe had gone out in the blizzard, and though he needed it to concentrate now more than ever, it would no doubt take a long time for him to relight the wet pipe.

  Immediately after the council meeting, Johann Lechner had told the hangman he would send him out to hunt for the second group of thieves. This time, however, he would be allowed to pick out his men himself. The hangman decided to keep the company small. From what the robber chief told him, he knew that there were probably only four bandits roaming around out there, but they were all experienced fighters. Somehow they had managed to find out the planned routes of individual merchants, even though the victims all claimed they had discussed their plans only among themselves. Was there a leak somewhere among the Schongau patricians? Could one of them be involved in the raids?

  Matthias Holzhofer’s injured drivers had been questioned but revealed little. The attackers were disguised, they said, wrapped in black coats and armed with crossbows, muskets, and rifles. They were clearly a small but ferocious group and far superior to the ordinary highway bandits.

  To learn more about this mysterious group, the hangman decided, despite the blizzard, to visit the dungeon and question Hans Scheller again.

  There was no watchman standing guard at the door to the massive tower, and Jakob Kuisl assumed the bailiff was either in the tavern or inside the dungeon. Who could blame him in such weather? The hangman knocked loudly on the iron-reinforced door and heard steps coming from inside.

  “Who’s there?” a voice asked.

  “It’s me, Jakob Kuisl. Open up before the storm blows me away.”

  There was a grinding sound as a key turned in the lock. The door opened a crack, and the pinched face of the city bailiff Johannes peered out. “What do you want, huh? Your last visit cost me a fine of eight kreuzers and an extra day of guard duty. Lechner’s not happy when somebody crosses him.”

  “Let me talk with Scheller once more.” The hangman gave the door such a shove that the bailiff was pushed aside.

  “Hey, Kuisl, you can’t do that!”

  Kuisl tossed him a little bag. “Take this and be quiet.”

  The bailiff looked inside curiously. “What is it?”

  “Chewing tobacco. From the West Indies, where the snakes are as fat as the trunks of oak trees. Chew it, but don’t swallow. It will keep you awake and warm.”

  Withdrawing to a stool in the corner with his little bribe, Johannes sniffed at the dried weed. “Chew it, huh?” He looked at the hangman again. “But don’t crush Scheller’s other hand, or he’ll die on us in the dungeon, and it’ll be my fault.”

  “Don’t worry. I know what I’m doing.”

  The hangman approached the cells in the rear, where the robbers were detained. In contrast to his last visit, they appeared listless now. The men and women crouched in the corners on filthy straw. They had wrapped themselves in threadbare coats and tried to keep each other warm against the January cold. In their midst lay the feverish boy, trembling all over. The wind whistled through the barred window behind them. Alongside the robbers sat a bowl of moldy bread and an apparently empty pitcher of water. A bucket of excrement stank so badly that Kuisl had to step back. Hans peered out at him from behind the bars with an empty gaze, his small right finger festering like a bloated sheep intestine.

  “It’s you again,” he whispered. “What else do you want?”

  The hangman spun around. “What kind of a pigsty is this?” he shouted at the bailiff, who was still absorbed in the exotic, fragrant plant. “These people have nothing to eat or drink, and there are no blankets or fresh straw! Do you want them to die before they are executed?”

  The bailiff shrugged. “You can see for yourself what the weather is like outside. I’ve asked twice for food, but none arrives.”

  “Then go and get it yourself.”

  “Now?” Johannes looked bewildered. “But the storm—”

  “At once!” The hangman walked over to him, grabbed him by the collar, and lifted him off the stool so that his feet dangled in the air. His face turned bright red, and his eyes bulged.

  “That’s the way Scheller is going to feel soon,” Jakob Kuisl growled, “and so will you, by God, if you don’t do what I say at once. Fresh water, bread, warm blankets—do you understand?”

  The bailiff nodded, and Kuisl let him down again.

  “And now get out.”

  Without even turning around, Johannes rushed out. Snow and wind blew in through
the open door, but as soon as the hangman closed it, silence prevailed once more in the dungeon. The only sounds now were the soft whine of the baby and the distant howling of the wind. The robber chief looked at Jakob Kuisl in astonishment. Just as he was about to ask a question, the hangman spoke up.

  “Did the medicine I gave you help the boy?”

  Scheller nodded, still speechless about what he had just witnessed. “Why did you do that?” he asked finally.

  Jakob Kuisl didn’t answer. “I spoke with Lechner,” he said. “No torture on the wheel, a quick, clean hanging, and the women and children will be let go.”

  Scheller broke into a wide smile, but soon he turned serious again. “How long do we have?” he asked.

  Jakob Kuisl took a draw on his cold pipe. “If the weather permits, the trial will be in a few days. After that there will be three more days—that’s the custom. Semer, the tavern keeper, will serve you your last meal: bacon, dumplings, sauerkraut, and for each of you, a jug of muscatel to keep you warm on your last walk.”

  Hans Scheller nodded. “A full week, then.” He stopped. “It’s good it’s over,” he said finally. “This wasn’t really any way to live.”

  The hangman changed the topic. “There’s still something I have to ask you about the other gang of robbers. You said there were four of them. Four plates, four cups, four knives…”

  Hans Scheller nodded. “As I said, the fourth probably had just gone out into the woods to relieve himself.”

  “But the fourth plate,” the hangman continued. “Was it dirty? Did it looked used?”

  The robber chief stopped to think. “Now that you mention it…actually, no. You’re right…Three plates that had been used were around the fire, but the fourth was stashed away in one of the saddlebags along with a cup.”

  Jakob Kuisl chewed on his cold pipe stem, cursing to himself because it had gone out. “That must mean that the fourth man hadn’t been with the others for a while. Perhaps he was in town.”

  Hans Scheller shrugged. “Who cares where the fourth man was? Perhaps he had run away earlier.”

  The hangman told him about the town clerk’s suspicion that information about the merchants’ secret routes had been leaked to someone. The robber chief nodded.

  “I understand. The fourth man hangs around in town and informs his comrades about the routes. Then all they have to do is help themselves. After all, the wagons are not very well guarded, and the merchants are not afraid of anything. Not a bad plan.” He grinned, and Kuisl could see that almost all of his top teeth were missing. “Sounds like a plan I would make up.” Suddenly, he stopped. “I just thought of something.”

  “What is that?”

  “Alongside the leather bag that you have now, something else was lying there by the campfire—a little bottle made of blue glass. It looked quite valuable, and when we opened it, it smelled like the whole damned palace of the French kings.”

  Jakob Kuisl forgot about his pipe. “Perfume, you mean?”

  Scheller nodded. “Yes, exactly. It stank like a whole field of spring flowers.”

  “And this perfume…” The hangman chose his words carefully. “Did it smell like…violets, perhaps?”

  Scheller shrugged. “I don’t know anything about these things. We poured it over our horse. He smashed the bottle the next day in the cave, the stupid beast.”

  Jakob Kuisl contemplated this a few more minutes, then turned to leave. “Thanks, Scheller. You’ve been a lot of help to me. When we meet the next time, I’ll see to it that it goes fast. I promise.”

  “Kuisl.” Hans Scheller’s voice had a faraway, dreamy sound. The hangman turned around.

  “What is it, Scheller?”

  The robber chief seemed to be struggling for words. Finally, he began to speak. “Do you really want to know what I’ve learned, hangman?”

  “Tell me.”

  “I was a carpenter, a good one, down in Schwabmünchen. But then the Swedes came and raped my wife and cut her throat. They bashed my boy’s head against the door and set my house on fire. I fled into the woods, and now it all ends here.” He tried to smile. “Tell me, hangman. If you were in my shoes, what would you have done?”

  Jakob Kuisl shrugged. “You always had a choice.” He walked to the door, but then turned around again. “I’m sorry about what happened to your wife and the boy. At least you’ll be together again soon.”

  The door closed and Scheller remained alone with his thoughts. He would have cried like a little child if he hadn’t long since forgotten how.

  Outside, the blizzard lashed Jakob Kuisl’s face with sharp pellets of ice. He pulled his hat down and forged ahead through the wall of white. His head was spinning as if the storm were also raging inside him.

  A perfume that stank like a meadow in springtime…

  Had the man with the violet perfume paid a visit to the robbers? Or was he the fourth man? Magdalena told him that the stranger had been sitting with his friends in the Altenstadt tavern. Had they overheard the merchants’ conversations about the route? But even if that was the case, what did any of this have to do with the Templars’ treasure? The hangman cursed. He needed to finally put all those pieces together.

  Another day would pass before the good Lord would send someone to help Jakob Kuisl solve at least one of the riddles.

  The blizzard brought new patients, so Simon hardly had a moment to even think about the Templars or the Wessobrunn Prayer during the day. He and his father had been able to save only one of the two wagoners employed by the alderman Matthias Holzhofer. The other had quietly passed away the same evening.

  In other respects, too, Simon and his father never had a chance to rest. They passed the hours stirring new medicine, bleeding patients, and examining urine. Among the victims of the “Schongau Fever,” as the epidemic had come to be known, were a carpenter’s journeyman whose whole body had broken out in blue pustules, another patient whose foot was crushed by an oxcart, and a wagon driver with frostbite on both hands. The man had attempted to drive from Schongau to Landsberg in his wagon and was discovered lying in a ditch only a mile from town. He had been trying in vain to pull his wagon out of the snow when he was finally overcome by the cold. Simon and his father agreed that three fingers on the left hand would have to be amputated—a job that Bonifaz Fronwieser regarded as one of his specialties since his days as an army doctor.

  Old Fronwieser had traveled around with his family during the Great War, following the Bavarian foot soldiers. He had sawed off innumerable arms and legs that were riddled with bullets, and he cauterized the stumps. It was during this time that his wife died, so after the war, Bonifaz Fronwieser settled down in Schongau with his son. He’d never forgiven his son for dropping out of an expensive medical school in Ingolstadt a few years ago, partly because he was short of money, but also because he lacked the interest. Even back then, Simon was attracted more to the latest fashions and games of dice than to Hippocrates, Paracelsus, and Galen.

  His father became even more displeased when Simon started consorting with the Schongau hangman, borrowing books on medicine from him and often looking over his shoulder when he was treating patients. Simon then used what he had learned from the hangman on patients in Fronwieser’s own practice.

  Simon was also critical of his father during the amputation of the wagon driver’s three fingers, an operation Bonifaz Fronwieser could do in his sleep. They had sedated the patient with a bottle of brandy and shoved a board between his teeth. When old Fronwieser picked up his surgical pincers to nip off the black stumps that had once been fingers, Simon pointed to the rusty cutting blades.

  “You have to clean them first,” he whispered to his father, “or the wound will become infected.”

  “Nonsense,” said Bonifaz Fronwieser. “We’ll cauterize the places afterward with boiling oil—that’s what I learned from my father, and that’s the logical way to do it.”

  Simon shook his head. “The wound will become inflamed, believe m
e.”

  Before his father could answer, he’d taken the pincers and washed them off in a pot of boiling water on the stove, and only then did he start to operate. Watching silently, his father had to admit that Simon knew what he was doing and completed the job quickly. There was no doubt that the boy was talented. Why, for heaven’s sake, had he ever dropped out of school in Ingolstadt? He could have become a great doctor, not a run-of-the-mill barber surgeon like himself, but a doctor with university training, a learned, esteemed physician whom people would respect and reimburse with silver coins—not with rusty kreuzers, eggs from the farm, and worm-infested corned beef. A Dr. Fronwieser, a first in the family…

  Sullenly, the old man watched as Simon finally applied the white linen bandage. “Not bad work at all,” he grumbled, “but what are you going to do with the dirty pincers? Are you going to throw them away and buy new ones?”

  Simon shook his head and smiled. “I’ll wash them off again in boiling water and use them again; that’s what the hangman does when he clips off a thief’s thumb or index finger, and nobody has died on him.” He checked the wagon driver’s breathing. “Just recently Kuisl told me about an old remedy. He smears sheep dung and mold on the wound and says there’s nothing better for inflammation. The mold…” He stopped because he could see he had gone too far. His father’s face had turned a bright red.

  “Just cut it out with your damned hangman and his filthy drug collection!” Bonifaz Fronwieser shouted. “He just puts crazy ideas in your head. He should be forbidden from practicing! Sheep dung and mold—bah! I didn’t send you off to school to study that!” He walked to the other room and slammed the door behind him. Shrugging, Simon watched as his father left, then poured a bucket of water over the wagon driver’s face to wake him up.

  A few more hours passed before Simon finally found time again to delve into the world of the Templars and the Wessobrunn Prayer. At six o’clock sharp, as the bells tolled, he closed the office and went down to the marketplace. When he opened the door to the Stern, where he’d arranged to meet Benedikta, he was greeted with the warmth and stuffy odor of wet clothing. At this time of day, the tavern was full of wagon drivers and merchants stranded by the storm and whiling away the time drinking and playing dice. Under the low ceiling of the taproom, about a dozen men were milling about, most of them engaged in serious, muffled conversations.