Benedikta spit on the ground. She had clearly gotten her voice back. “Do you seriously believe he’d do that if he’s still alive? I’ll tell you what he’ll do. He’ll take the cross and watch with glee as the hangman breaks every one of our bones, one by one.”
“I’m not going to break any bones,” a voice boomed behind them. “At least not Simon’s.”
Surprised, the three wheeled around to see the Schongau hangman sitting astride an old gravestone. With his coat collar turned up to shield himself from the cold, he was blowing little puffs of smoke into the frigid January night.
Simon looked at Jakob Kuisl as if he’d seen a ghost. “How…how in the world did you get here…?” he stuttered.
“That’s just what I wanted to ask my daughter,” the hangman said, turning to Magdalena. “Couldn’t stand being away in Augsburg, hmm? Had to return to your sweetheart?” He grinned. “You women are all the same.”
“It wasn’t…exactly like that, Father,” Magdalena replied. “I was—”
“You can tell me all about that later,” Jakob Kuisl interrupted, hopping down from the gravestone. “But first tell me why the Steingaden abbot burned alive in there,” he said, pointing to the roaring fire behind him, his face glowing red in the light from the flames. “I can feel in my bones that you had something to do with that. Am I right?”
“So Bonenmayr is really dead?” Simon asked.
The hangman nodded. “As dead as a witch at the stake. So tell me—out with it!”
“It was all about the cross,” Simon began. “The Templar hid the True Cross underneath the playhouse. The riddles led us to this place…” He briefly told Kuisl everything that happened since they had last spoken.
Jakob Kuisl listened silently, and when Simon finished, he exhaled a huge cloud of smoke. “All that looking around just for a rotten old cross,” he grumbled. “And now the accursed cross has fallen victim to the flames as well. I saw it all…ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Probably, it’s best that way. That cross has brought nothing but death and misfortune.”
“Let’s get out of here,” Benedikta said, standing up from the drift of snow she was sitting on, “before the monks notice we’re here.”
“You’re not going anywhere, girl,” the hangman replied suddenly, “except perhaps to the gallows.”
“What are you saying?” Simon looked at Jakob Kuisl in astonishment. “This woman is a respectable lady from Landsberg. You don’t talk that way—”
“She’s nothing but scum.” Kuisl knocked out his pipe on a gravestone. “She’s not a respectable lady, and she doesn’t come from Landsberg.”
For a few moments, no one said a thing.
Finally, Magdalena spoke up hesitantly. “Not from Landsberg? I don’t understand—”
Her father immediately cut her off. “Perhaps she’ll tell us herself what her real name is. In Augsburg, she was Isabelle de Cherbourg; in Munich, she was Charlotte Le Mans; and in Ingolstadt, Katharine God-knows-what…But I doubt any of those is her real name.” Scowling, the hangman drew closer until he was only a step away from her. “Damn it, your name! I want to know—at once! Or I’ll jam glowing embers under your pretty little fingernails until you beg for mercy!”
Simon and Magdalena both eyed Benedikta as she stood there clutching a gravestone with both hands. Her eyes flashed and she bit her lips as she lashed out at the hangman. “How dare you slander me like that! If my brother were still alive, then—”
“Silence, you brazen hussy!” Jakob Kuisl shouted at her. “You have sullied the good name of our priest long enough! I found the courier’s letter pouch, and from there, I only had to do a little looking around. Your game is over! Do you hear? Finished!”
“Which letter pouch do you mean?” Simon asked.
The hangman took a drag on his cold pipe. Only after calming down a bit did he continue. “When we smoked out Scheller and his gang, I found a leather bag in the cave. It belonged to one of the couriers who deliver mail in our area. Scheller told me they’d taken the bag from another gang of robbers.” Again, he paused long enough to stuff his pipe.
Just as Simon was about to say something, the hangman continued.
“I had a look at the letters, especially the dates on them. They were all written around the time the fat priest must have written to his beloved sister, Benedikta. Now, if all these letters were stolen…”
“Then Benedikta in Landsberg could not possibly have received a letter from her brother!” Simon groaned. “But how then did she—”
“This is all pure coincidence and nothing more,” Benedikta said, smiling at Simon. “You don’t really believe this, do you?”
“I’ll tell you who this brazen hussy really is,” Jakob Kuisl interrupted. “She passes herself off as a wine merchant in cities all over Bavaria. She spies on merchants’ routes and passes the information on to her accomplices so they can rob the coaches.”
“Where did you ever come up with this nonsense?” Benedikta replied angrily.
“One of your partners told me so himself.”
“Rubbish!” Benedikta grumbled. “C’est impossible!”
“Believe me,” the hangman said, lighting his pipe with a glowing sliver of tinder. “Sooner or later, I make everyone talk.” He puffed until the pipe caught fire. “And after that, they don’t talk to anyone ever again.”
Horrified, Benedikta stared at him for a moment. Then she threw herself at him, beating her fists against his broad chest. “You killed them!” she shouted. “You monster, you killed them!”
Jakob Kuisl seized her hands and flung her away so hard that she bounced off a gravestone like a puppet. “They were robbers and murderers,” he said. “Just like you.”
The silence that followed was broken only by the distant crackling of fire and the cries of the monks desperately trying to save the adjoining buildings.
Incredulous, Magdalena eyed the self-declared wine merchant still crouching beside the gravestone, looking up at them with cold, scornful eyes. “Your gang robbed the courier and read the letter!” Magdalena shouted. “That must be what happened! They read that the fat priest Koppmeyer had found something valuable, and then you pretended to be his sister and spied on us.”
“It wasn’t only her, but her whole gang following us.” Simon buried his face in his hands and groaned softly. “The people I saw in the Wessobrunn forest were your accomplices, weren’t they? And it was your accomplices who started the fight with the monks in the Rottenbuch Monastery. How could I have been so stupid?”
The woman who just a minute ago had been Benedikta Koppmeyer smiled. It was a sad smile. She seemed to have lost all desire to fight and leaned against the gravestone like an empty shell. “They were there to protect us,” she said softly, “not only me, but you as well, Simon. We knew earlier than you did that there were others trying to get their hands on the Templars’ treasure. We knew they weren’t people we could trifle with.”
“Back there in the forest on the way to Steingaden, when we were attacked by robbers…” Simon murmured. “Those were your friends who helped me back onto my horse. Isn’t that right? I thought it was a dream, but the men were really there.”
The woman facing him nodded. “They always kept an eye on us.”
“Nonsense!” the hangman exclaimed. “They were there so the loot wouldn’t slip through their fingers. Wise up, Simon! If you’d found the treasure, her cronies would have slashed your throat without giving it a second thought, and she would have stood by and watched. That’s the reason I came to Steingaden—to warn you about this hussy!”
Simon stared at the redheaded woman with delicate features whom he’d for so long viewed as a refined ideal of the fair sex. “So you’re not from France at all?” he asked softly.
She chuckled, and for a moment, it seemed the old Benedikta had flared to life again. “Oh, but I am. I come, in fact, from an old Huguenot family, but even as a child I hung around on the streets. I wanted to be free—not
wind up the dutiful wife of some fat, conceited merchant.”
“Manslaughter, deception, and murder—that’s the life you chose!” the hangman growled. “I asked the burgomaster to find out what this hussy had been up to. The trail of her gang leads through all of Bavaria—Munich, Augsburg, Ingolstadt…She always pretended to be a fiery, temperamental merchant woman and managed to wrangle information from old moneybags in the taverns about the routes they would be taking. Later, one of her accomplices would come to the tavern and get all the information from her. And if the madam was so inclined, she even went on the raids herself.” Jakob Kuisl stepped up to the imposter. “How often did you have your hand in what went on in Schongau? Once? Twice? How many died because of you? Weyer from Augsburg? Holzhofer’s servants?”
The woman fell silent and the hangman continued. “In Landsberg, there is, in fact, a Benedikta Koppmeyer. She lives a very quiet, modest life there and first learned of the death of her brother from Burgomaster Semer.”
“So it was Karl Semer who gave you the final clue?” Simon asked.
“I should have known sooner,” Jakob Kuisl said. “Scheller told me about the perfume he took from the other gang. Even then, I suspected the monk with the violet perfume had something to do with it. Only later, on the gallows, did Scheller remember having seen something else at the campsite.”
“What was that?” Magdalena asked.
The hangman grinned. “A barrette. I’ve never heard of a man wearing anything like that.”
Simon collapsed onto a snow pile. He still couldn’t believe that he had been swindled. “What a fantastic plan,” he groaned, not without a trace of admiration in his voice. “The worldly woman hangs around in the taverns to find out which routes the wagon drivers will be taking. She knows where they’re going and how heavily they’re guarded. Her accomplices need only stand at the right crossroads and hold out their hands. And then, more or less by accident, they hear something about a fabulous treasure…”
“We robbed the courier because we hoped to find something of value in his bag,” the redhead whispered. “A bill of exchange, a few gold coins—but this time all we got were letters! I read a few of them out of pure curiosity and suddenly came across this incredible letter that mentioned a Templar’s grave and a riddle. In our family, the Templars were always the stuff of legend. When I was just a young child in France, my father told me about the legendary treasure. It could have been our last great exploit…” She stood up and brushed the snow from her charred dress. “Now what are you going to do with me?”
“First, you’ll go to the dungeon in Schongau,” Jakob Kuisl said. “After that, we’ll see. It’s possible they’ll put you on trial in Munich.”
The woman without a name bent down to wipe the snow off the hem of her dress. “Will you torture me in the dungeon?” she asked softly, as she continued brushing the snow from her boots. “Simon told me about the tongs and the brazier…”
“If you confess, I’ll see that not a hair on your head will be harmed until the trial,” Kuisl growled. “You have my word on that.”
Suddenly, the dainty little woman sprang up and threw a handful of snow in the hangman’s face. In the next second, she ran off between the gravestones.
“Stop, you bitch!” Jakob Kuisl shouted, wiping the snow out of his eyes. Then he looked at Simon and Magdalena standing alongside him, bewildered. “Why are you staring at me like two jackasses? Go after her! Her accomplices have killed people in Schongau!” The hangman ran after the fleeing woman as fast as he could.
Finally awakening from his paralysis, Simon set out after the hangman. He spotted a red shock of hair briefly above a gravestone, but then the woman disappeared again. The medicus turned left to run along the cemetery wall, hoping to cut her off if she tried to flee through the main gate. He reached the end of the wall, where he could see the hangman running through the crooked gravestones, but Magdalena was nowhere to be seen.
Arriving at the far end of the cemetery, Simon looked in all directions. The woman he knew as Benedikta had vanished from the face of the earth! He turned and started walking back slowly, checking behind the stones as he went. There was nothing there.
Perhaps it’s really better this way, he thought.
At that moment he heard a soft, muted sound off to one side, someone gasping for breath. He tiptoed along a narrow, snowy path leading to a family burial vault through an archway whose columns were entwined with ice-encrusted ivy. Atop the archway was a statue of the Virgin Mary, smiling down benevolently and keeping watch over the dead. Behind a rusty gate, a few stone steps led down to a marble slab sealing off the entrance to the crypt.
Simon looked down in front of him at fresh tracks in the snow. Made by dainty feet.
Climbing over the gate, he saw her cowering at the foot of the steps—the woman who, for a week, had been the wealthy merchant’s widow from Landsberg, Benedikta Koppmeyer. She had tucked her legs under her now and wrapped her arms around them. Trembling with cold, her tangled hair falling down over her face, her makeup smeared, she looked up uncertainly at Simon standing at the top of the steps. Her eyes seemed to be begging for mercy, and her narrow lips formed a thin smile, like a child asking for forgiveness.
Simon looked at her for a long time. Behind the genteel exterior, the vanity, the ruthlessness, and the greed, he saw her now as a human being and believed he grasped who she really was.
“Well?” a voice asked from far off. It was the hangman. “Did you find her?”
Simon looked the redheaded woman in the face again, then turned around. “No, she’s not here!” he called out. “Let’s have a look over there.”
After searching another half-hour, the three finally met again at the main cemetery gate. Not only Benedikta, but also her horse was gone as well; the swindler had clearly managed to flee.
Magdalena, who hadn’t joined in the chase, was leaning against a gravestone waiting for the two men to return. “I don’t want to take part in a chase like that,” she said. “Even if I couldn’t stand her, she didn’t deserve that.”
“You fool!” Jakob Kuisl scolded. “That woman is responsible for the cold-blooded killing of at least a dozen men! She’s a murderer! Can’t you get that into your head?”
“She didn’t act like a murderer with us,” Simon said. “On the contrary. Back in the forest, on the other side of Peiting, she even saved my life.”
The hangman gave him a long, piercing gaze. “Are you certain you didn’t see her somewhere here in the cemetery?” he finally asked.
“I thought I saw her,” Simon said, “but I was mistaken.” Then he stomped away in the snow toward the dark monastery.
16
THEY SPENT THE rest of the night with a farmer near Steingaden. Old Hans crossed himself three times when the Schongau hangman materialized in front of him, but he didn’t dare turn away the surly colossus with stitches in his face and a bloody bandage around his upper arm. So they remained till dawn in the warm farmhouse living room.
The entire night, Simon sat hunched over next to Magdalena on a narrow bench by the fire. He couldn’t fall asleep, not just because of the trumpet-like snoring of the hangman at their feet, but also because of all the thoughts racing around in his head. How had his judgment of Benedikta been so wrong? She’d used him, and he’d run after her like a trusting little puppy. But at the end, when he saw Benedikta cowering at the bottom of the stairs to the crypt, her eyes told a different story. Did she have any feelings for him, after all? At any rate, both of them would be sought now as fugitives, defilers of holy relics. Simon had no idea how he would ever get his head out of this noose. Worst of all, for the fleeting dream of fortune and happiness, he’d put his relationship with Magdalena at risk. The hangman’s daughter lay alongside him now as stiff as a corpse. He touched her once, tentatively, and she turned away, giving him the cold shoulder. But he could sense she wasn’t sleeping, either.
Shortly before daybreak, Magdalena sat bolt uprigh
t and glared at him, her eyes flashing furiously. Straw clung to her matted hair and a deep frown ran across her forehead. “So tell me the truth,” she hissed. “Did you sleep with her? Out with it, you shameless good-for-nothing!”
Pinching his lips together tightly, Simon shook his head. He was certain that, had he nodded, she would have taken a blazing log from the fireplace and killed him with it.
“There was nothing between us,” he whispered. “Believe me.”
“Swear to it, by all the saints!”
Simon smiled. “Let’s keep the saints out of this. I’m not on especially good terms with them right now. I swear by our love—will that do?”
Magdalena hesitated, then nodded earnestly. “By our love, then. But you must ask my forgiveness. Right now.”
Humbly, Simon closed his eyes. “I ask your forgiveness. I was a stubborn fool, and you knew better from the very beginning.”
She smiled and settled down next to him on a straw-filled pillow. Simon could feel her body had relaxed a bit, and he passed his hand gently through her hair. For a long while, they said nothing; the only sound was the hangman’s rattling snore.
“I could have had Philipp Hartmann,” Magdalena finally said softly, “the rich Augsburg hangman and his life of luxury. And what do I do instead? I fall in love with a skinny quack who flirts with other girls and whom I can’t marry in any case…” She sighed. “It doesn’t get stupider than that.”
“I promise you, we’ll get married someday,” Simon whispered. “Even without this treasure. We’ll move to another town where nobody knows you are the daughter of the Schongau hangman, and I’ll become a famous doctor, and you’ll help me with herbs and medicines, and—”
At this moment, she seized his hand and squeezed it so hard he almost let out a cry.