But would he also forgive her for murder?
Perhaps Brother Jakobus would not die, after all, but fall into a sort of rigid trance. She doubted that, though, given the dose she had in mind.
Standing on the altar was the communion chalice. Jakobus had gotten into the habit of celebrating Holy Communion once a day with Magdalena. At first she’d refused, but she finally shrugged and resigned herself to her fate. At mealtime the monk brought her nothing but bread, water, and a thin, tasteless porridge. The wine brightened her spirits at least, and she didn’t want to irritate Jakobus unnecessarily. By now Magdalena was certain the monk was insane. His behavior had to have something to do with his disease, but whatever the case, he was unpredictable.
Keeping an eye on the door, Magdalena poured the powder into the wine, stirred it with her index finger, then wiped her hand off on the altar cloth. The potion contained ten belladonna and just as many thorn apple seeds. She hadn’t dared use any more for fear Brother Jakobus would be able to taste the poison.
Finally, she knelt down in one of the pews, folded her hands in prayer, and waited.
Just as the noon bells rang, the door opened.
“I see you are praying, Magdalena. That is good, very good,” Brother Jakobus said. “If you make your confession to God, it will be easier to drive the demons out of you.”
Magdalena lowered her eyes. “I can feel the presence of God. Tell me, Brother Jakobus, may I receive Holy Communion again today?”
Jakobus smiled. “You may. But first let us pray.”
Magdalena let the mumbled Latin words wash over her like a warm summer rain, awaiting anxiously the moment they would approach the altar. Would Jakob taste the poison? And if he did, how would he react?
Would he force her to drink the wine herself?
Finally, the prayer was over. They knelt before the altar, and Brother Jakobus began the celebration of Holy Communion. Holding up the host and chalice, he mumbled the words of consecration.
“This is the cup of the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you and for many for the remission of sins. Do this in remembrance of me.”
Putting the chalice to his lips, he drank deeply. Magdalena stared at him as if in a trance, watching as little drops ran down from the corners of his mouth, over his unshaven, pimply chin, and dripped onto the altar. Jakobus wiped his mouth and handed the chalice to Magdalena.
He hadn’t noticed a thing.
The hangman’s daughter looked into the cup and froze—the powder hadn’t dissolved properly! A dark silt remained at the bottom, and besides that, Jakobus had drunk only half of the wine! Would the dose be enough just the same?
Magdalena smiled at the monk, took the cup, and acted as if she was about to sip it.
“You are so hesitant today, Hangman’s Daughter,” Jakobus said. “What is wrong with you?”
“I…I have a headache,” Magdalena stammered, placing the chalice back on the altar. “The wine makes me tired. I need a clear head today.”
“How so?”
“I wish to make my confession.”
The monk looked both astonished and delighted. “Right now?”
Magdalena nodded. The idea came to her out of nowhere, but it was just what she needed. She needed to detain Jakobus in the chapel for at least half an hour. What good would it do if he collapsed after leaving her in this prison? If her plan didn’t work, she’d slowly die of thirst and hunger down here, unnoticed and unheard, while the monk’s corpse lay rotting outside the door.
“We have no confessional here,” Jakobus said, “but that’s not really necessary. I’ll simply take your confession here in the pew.”
He sat down so close to her that his violet perfume couldn’t cover up the stench of his festering wounds.
“May God, who illumines our hearts, give you the true realization of your sins and of His mercy…” Brother Jakobus began.
Magdalena closed her eyes and concentrated. She hoped that enough sins would come to mind to last until the poison took effect.
“You pulled a fast one on me, Kuisl!” Johann Lechner shouted, jabbing his finger into the hangman’s broad chest. “And not only on me! You’ve been messing with every single citizen of this town! You haven’t heard the end of this!”
Jakob Kuisl, almost two heads taller than the angry clerk, looked down at Lechner, his arms folded. Nevertheless, when it came to anger and assertiveness, Lechner was any man’s match. The clerk had ordered Kuisl to report to his office in the palace right after the execution. He was still beside himself over the fiasco of Hans Scheller’s execution.
The robber chief hadn’t made a sound up on the wooden platform, not even a faint cry, even though the hangman had broken every single bone in his body! Lechner had heard the cracking and splintering, and it was only at the end that the hangman crushed the prisoner’s cervical vertebra. The crowd was furious. They had expected a bloody spectacle, and all they got was a bored hangman thrashing away at a lifeless body.
The clerk had been sitting right up in front in the first row and had thus seen the smirk on the lips of the robber chief. Scheller’s eyes were closed as if he were asleep, and his extremities limp, almost relaxed. The condemned man had escaped his just punishment, and Lechner was certain the hangman had something to do with it.
“I can’t prove anything right now,” the clerk snapped, walking back to his desk, “but you can be sure I’ll find out, and then God help you! I’ll get the Augsburg hangman to come and put you on the wheel, and this time it will be done right!”
“Your Excellency, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Jakob Kuisl remained calm. Only someone looking very closely would have noticed a faint smile on his lips, little dimples hidden behind his thick beard. “Often, condemned men faint out of fear and pain. There’s nothing I can do to change that.”
“Nonsense, you gave him a drug. Admit it!” Lechner took a seat again behind his desk and was busily scribbling notes in a document in front of him with his goose-quill pen. “It’s about time for me to take away your damned crucibles, potions, and salves. I can do that, you know.” His voice suddenly sounded threatening. “You have no right to give people medical care. Only the physician can do that. In other cities, they would have long ago revoked your permission.”
“Then I will no longer be able to brew the drink Your Excellency has ordered from me. I’ll just have to take the opium poppy I have at home and throw it in the Lech.”
“Oh, just stop!” The clerk seemed to have calmed down a bit. “I didn’t mean it that way. Turn your attention to this fever going around, and put a stop to it. If you can do that, I’ll let you sell love potions, toad eggs, and hangman’s nooses to your heart’s content. Now, beat it. I’ve got a lot to do!”
Kuisl bowed and disappeared silently through the low doorway. Lechner stared after him for a long time. What a stubborn old fool! He just couldn’t see what was good for the city and what was not. The clerk rubbed his temples and again studied the letter he was holding in his hands, which had arrived that morning. It demanded once more that he do whatever was necessary to make sure the hangman minded his own business.
Lechner cursed softly. What did the writer of this letter want him to do—watch over Jakob Kuisl like a nursemaid? And who the hell did he think he was, anyway, giving orders in Lechner’s city? Lechner took orders from Munich, from the elector personally, or from the elector’s representative, not from some church dignitary!
He picked up the envelope and looked at the seal of the church. Then he examined the inside of the envelope again. There were no coins in it, nor a promissory note like the last time.
He ripped the letter up into small pieces and tossed it in the fire. Let the gentleman pamper the hangman himself. He had more important things to do.
A short time later, Jakob Kuisl entered his house in the Tanners’ Quarter. Anna Maria was sitting at the kitchen table, rubbing her eyes.
“What’s the matter, wom
an?” the hangman asked. “Is it on account of the twins?” He placed his hand on her shoulder to comfort her, but suddenly he felt the effects of the alcohol and lack of sleep. “Pull yourself together. It’s probably not the fever.”
Anna Maria sighed. She’d been awakened again and again by the coughing of her two youngest children the night before and hadn’t been able to sleep. But she, too, thought it was just a simple cold. She was worried less about the children than about her husband, who, as so often before executions, had been drinking far into the night, mumbling and cursing about the evil in the world and the wickedness of the people of Schongau in particular. Anna Maria knew that, at such times, there was nothing she could do to help him, so she had lain awake thinking of Magdalena.
Magdalena, her eldest, the apple of her eye, stubborn and unrestrained like her father, and still not back from Augsburg.
Sitting at the dinner table, she was so burdened by grief she couldn’t eat a thing. She didn’t touch the bread, and even her husband couldn’t console her. Worry about her daughter made her look older than her forty years. The first strands of gray were beginning to show in the long black hair she’d been so proud of as a child and that she’d passed on to her daughter.
“It’s been a week, and Magdalena still isn’t back,” she lamented to Jakob, whose hand was still resting on her shoulder. “Something’s wrong.”
“Oh, come now,” the hangman grumbled. “I think she’s just having a good time in Augsburg. When she gets home, we’ll give her a good spanking and then everything will be all right.”
Anna Maria brushed her husband’s hand away and stood up abruptly. “I’m sure something’s happened to her. A mother can feel these things.” She gave the stool a quick kick, and it tipped over, landing with a crash in a corner. “And Lechner has you out in the forest hunting for robbers instead of looking after your daughter! Doesn’t he have bailiffs to do that?”
Jakob Kuisl remained silent. When his wife got wound up, there was no stopping her. The simplest thing to do then was not to fight it, but just to let the storm pass. The hangman’s wife could rage and wail for hours, but this time she quickly ran out of steam.
“It’s bad enough that you hang and break people on the wheel for Lechner and his fat burgomasters,” she shouted. “What a dirty job! Let those big shots bloody their own hands!”
Jakob Kuisl grinned. He loved his wife, even when she lost her temper. “At least I screwed things up for him with the Scheller execution.” He poured himself a mug of light beer and emptied it in one gulp. “And as for Magdalena, don’t worry. She knows how to take care of herself.” He brushed the dark foam from his lips with the back of his broad, hairy hand. “In contrast to Simon. He’s in real danger, and he doesn’t even know it.”
The hangman’s wife snorted. “Stop talking like a smart-ass. How do you know that?”
Jakob Kuisl picked up a loaf of bread from the table and turned to leave. “I know it, that’s all.” Without turning around, he marched out into the snow. “I’ve got to save Simon from doing something really stupid. I at least owe him that.”
The hangman stomped down to the bridge over the Lech, leaving his nagging wife behind.
“Isn’t that nice!” she shouted as he left. “Go and save the fine gentleman, but don’t give a damn about your daughter! Go to hell, you old fool!”
But Jakob Kuisl, who had disappeared in the drifting snow, didn’t hear a word of what she said, his hangover pounding in his head with every step he took.
Cursing under his breath, he hoped he wasn’t too late for the physician.
As Simon leaned over the colorful illustrated Bible, he knocked over his cup of coffee, and a brown flood surged across the walnut table onto the polished parquet floor.
“Damn!” he shouted. “I’m sorry, I’m probably getting tired.”
“Don’t curse,” Augustin Bonenmayr scolded, looking at the physician through his pince-nez. “God punishes every vice, even the smallest—even if there’s a good reason to curse. The Bible in front of you is worth many hundreds of guilders, so please handle it with great care.”
Simon nodded and carefully wiped the spilled coffee from the table with a parchment full of notes he’d taken. Since early that morning, he and Benedikta had been sitting in the Steingaden Monastery library, which they’d visited on their first trip. Together, they studied the Bible quotations and descriptions of landmarks in the Priests’ Corner, looking for the solution to the riddle they’d found in Rottenbuch. All around them, books, folios, and parchments were piled high on the tables they’d pushed together. Simon had even been able to get a closer look at Friedrich Wildgraf’s sales deed, but so far they hadn’t found anything to help in their search.
Augustin Bonenmayr kept coming back to the library to check on their progress. The last time he’d even done Simon the favor of having the kitchen brew a cup of coffee from the physician’s supply of beans. But whereas the black brew usually spurred Simon’s thinking, it didn’t work this time.
The physician was also having trouble concentrating because the two monks, Lothar and Johannes, who were sent to guard them, didn’t even once leave their posts at the library door. The Steingaden abbot had made good on his threat and didn’t let Simon and Benedikta out of his sight. They’d traveled to Steingaden in complete darkness in the horse-drawn sled, then spent the rest of the night in two monks’ cells, which were locked from the outside. Simon knew he and Benedikta would be regarded as nothing but church desecrators by the abbot until they had convinced him otherwise.
He had to solve this damned riddle, or they’d be condemned to death and drawn and quartered!
He returned once again to the words scribbled on the parchment in front of him.
Heredium in baptistae sepulcro…
“The heritage in the grave of the baptist…” he mumbled. “That doesn’t help us very much. I’ve never heard of a grave of John the Baptist, have you?”
He turned to Augustin Bonenmayr, who was standing next to him, leaning over his shoulder. The abbot frowned.
“There are supposedly such places in the Holy Land, but—”
“That wouldn’t help us, either,” Benedikta interrupted.
“The treasure must be here in the Priests’ Corner, not in the Holy Land. Is there any place around here that you could call ‘the grave of the baptist’?”
August Bonenmayr thought for a minute. “There’s no grave, no, just a few chapels and baptismal fonts dedicated to Saint John—every parish church has such things. So that can’t be it.”
Reaching for the sword in one corner of the room, he passed his fingers over the rusty inscription again. “Maybe there’s a second clue concealed somewhere on the sword.”
Simon shook his head in resignation. “I’ve examined the sword three times already. There’s nothing else there—no inscription, no hidden compartment, and the handle isn’t hollow. The solution must lie in this one inscription!” He sighed and rubbed his eyes. “I’m at my wit’s end.”
“Then I’ll have to hand you over to the authorities in Rottenbuch,” Bonenmayr replied, turning to the door. “Enough of these antics! I have more important things to do.”
“Just a moment!” Benedikta said. “May I have one more look at the sword?”
The abbot hesitated before turning around and handing it to her. Once more, Benedikta examined each word closely.
“There’s something strange here,” she said. “The words aren’t inscribed in typical fashion—there are such wide gaps between them.”
Simon shrugged. “No doubt the inscription was intended to cover the length of the entire sword, so whoever wrote it just left wide intervals between the words.”
“Possible,” Benedikta replied. “But the width of the intervals varies. Why? Perhaps…” she hesitated before continuing. “Perhaps because something belongs in these empty spaces…?”
Simon jumped up so suddenly that the cup of coffee nearly fell over again.
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“Words!” he cried. “That’s it! There are words missing in between. That’s the solution, of course!” He sat down again, staring at his page of notes. “We just have to figure out where these missing words are…”
“I think we both know,” Benedikta said softly. “We just don’t want to consider that possibility.”
Simon exhaled softly and pushed the parchment away. There was a long pause before he replied. “On the second sword, the one belonging to Saint Primus—that’s where the other words are engraved. The last clue pointed to both saints, so the next clue is to be found on both swords. How could I be so stupid?”
Augustin Bonenmayr took the sword back from Benedikta. “There’s not much chance you can check your hypothesis now,” he said with regret. “The relics in Rottenbuch are probably better guarded now than the bones of the Three Kings in Cologne.”
“You’re right,” Simon sighed. “But perhaps we can figure this out anyway now that we know every other word is missing.” He took a long gulp of coffee, reached for the parchment and a goose quill, and wrote down the words from the first sword, this time with the ordinary spacing.
Heredium in baptistae sepulcro…
“Let’s assume that heredium is the first word. That would mean that the treasure of something is in something that belongs to the baptist and has something to do with a grave.”
“The first connection is easy,” Benedikta said. “It would probably be heredium templorum—in other words, the heritage of the Templars.”
Simon nodded. “Perhaps. But what is the connection with the baptist—and above all, which grave could it be referring to?”
Benedikta leaned forward to look at the lines. “The most famous grave in Christendom is the grave of our Savior,” she mused. “Judging from the spacing between the words, the word after sepulcro could be Christi. But that doesn’t help us either, because that grave is certainly not in the Priests’ Corner—unless I’ve overlooked some important lines in the Bible…Your Excellency?”
The Dark Monk Page 35