Benedikta looked up at the church’s window frames, where workmen were just beginning to insert the new stained glass. The men were standing on a rickety scaffold, carefully raising the colorful windows on a pulley. Simon was certain that each window was worth a fortune.
“If the superintendent doesn’t open these coffins for us, we’ll just have to do it ourselves,” Benedikta said. “Primus and Felicianus could certainly use a little fresh air.”
“And just how do you intend to do that?”
Benedikta pointed again at the open windows. “We’ll pay a visit to the two dusty old gents tonight,” she said. “The glaziers certainly won’t finish their work today, and I can’t imagine that the church is guarded overnight. No doubt, the superintendent thinks that lightning will strike any grave robber and send him running.”
“How are you so sure that lightning won’t strike us?” Simon whispered. “Stealing religious relics is a sin that…” But Benedikta had already charged off.
Neither of them noticed the two figures hiding among the other monks. Like long shadows, they slipped away from the group and went back to following Simon and Benedikta’s trail.
In his cell in the Schongau dungeon, the robber chief Scheller was turning the poison pill in his fingers, looking out at the snow falling in front of his barred window. Behind him, many of his companions were dozing in expectation of their imminent deaths. The women whimpered and fathers said their farewells to their children in whispered voices, telling them about a paradise that was also open to robbers and whores where they would all see one another again. They spoke of a better life in another world and made the sick ten-year-old boy swear to God and to the Virgin Mary that he would lead a respectable life. They had robbed and killed, but now most of them had become penitent sinners. Some of them prayed. The next morning, the local priest would come and take their last confessions.
Hans Scheller stared at the little pill and thought back on his life so far. How had it come to this? He’d been a carpenter in Schwabmunchen with a wife and child. As a young boy, he’d witnessed the execution of the notorious murderer Benedikt Lanzl, who had screamed for two whole days while being beaten by the hangman. Tied to a wheel, the highway robber and arsonist had become the focal point of a spectacle unlike anything little Hans had ever seen before. At night, he could still hear Benedict Lanzl’s scream in his sleep.
Sometimes Hans Scheller could even hear it today.
Never did he dream that one day he, too, would stand up there on the wooden platform. But God’s ways were inscrutable.
Hans Scheller sighed, closed his eyes, and gave himself up to the memories that came flooding back. A laughing boy, his face smeared with porridge…his wife bent over the washtub…a field of barley in the summer, a good glass of beer…the smell of freshly cut spruce…
There was much that was wonderful about the world, and he could leave it behind without regrets. But he still owed the hangman something.
The night before, something occurred to him, a small matter he’d overlooked until then. But now, after everything Jakob Kuisl had told him, it suddenly seemed important.
He would tell the hangman the next day at the gallows.
Hans Scheller leaned against the ice-cold wall of the cell, fingering the pill, and whistled an old nursery tune. He was almost home.
He was called Brother Nathanael. This was the name the order had given him long ago-he’d long forgotten his real name. Where he came from, the sun burned brightly with a shimmering, unending heat, and thus the snow drifting down now in soft flakes seemed, to him, like a personal messenger from hell.
He was freezing under his thin tunic and black-hooded coat, clenching his teeth but not complaining. His former master had trained him to be tough. He was a guard dog of the Lord, and his command was to follow the woman and the man. And if they found the treasure, he was to kill them quickly and silently, retrieve the treasure, and report back to the brotherhood. That was his assignment.
Trembling with cold, he played with the dagger in his hand and pressed his back against the frost-covered wall of the monastery. Snowflakes melted as they fell on his brown, scarred face. He was from Castille, near the magnificent city of Salamanca, and his task at the moment seemed to him like a test from God. The Lord himself had sent him to this inhospitable, remote region and, as an additional punishment, had sent him Brother Avenarius.
The short, plump Swabian standing next to him and mumbling his prayers had been personally assigned to him and Brother Jakobus in Augsburg by the master. Brother Avenarius was second to none in his knowledge of the written word-he knew all about the treasure and was an expert in solving riddles-but as a comrade-in-arms, he was about as useful as an old woman. Once again, he started whining.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! Why can’t we go back to our quarters?” His thick Swabian accent sometimes drove Brother Nathanael crazy. “Who can say whether the two will really try to break into the church tonight?” the Swabian lamented. “And even if they do, we can catch up with them again in the morning! So what are we doing here?”
Nathanael ran the dagger along his fingers-from his index finger, to his middle finger, to his ring finger, and back, a little nervous routine he could repeat for hours. It calmed his mind.
“I keep telling you we can’t let him out of our sight! The matter is too important. Besides, if you’d only solved the riddle before they did, we’d be back in Augsburg by now!”
Brother Avenarius looked to the ground with embarrassment. “I’ll admit I underestimated the physician,” he grumbled. “Who would have suspected that the words primus and felicianus referred to the two saints? At least I figured out before he did that the inscription referred to the Wessobrunn Prayer.”
“And how was that of any help?” Nathanael was running the dagger through his fingers faster and faster. “We searched the entire damned monastery for the book, and it was in the bell tower!”
“But I had no way of knowing that,” Brother Avenarius whined.
Brother Nathanael let loose with a curse to heaven and went back to playing with his dagger. Things had not gone as planned. Everything had looked so simple at first. It was just two weeks ago that the local master had summoned him and Jakobus, telling them that the greatest treasure in all of Christendom had been found, not in some far-distant place, but right nearby. It was a sign from God; he was one of the chosen!
Never would he have dared to hope God would choose him for this task! Cast into this world as a filthy little orphan, Nathanael had found a home among the Dominicans in Salamanca, where his special abilities were soon recognized. He was intelligent and well read, but he’d also retained much of the toughness and smarts he’d picked up from his days on the street-qualities the other monks lacked. Soon the Brotherhood had come to him. They had often recruited soldiers from the Dominicans, and they needed people like him. Nathanael was something special-a monk and warrior, like the Templars who had once been the greatest enemies of the Brotherhood. There were many unbelievers to battle in the Spanish provinces, and the church needed people now and then to do its dirty work. That was Nathanael’s specialty.
A few years back, he’d been called to Augsburg, where the German Brotherhood had its headquarters. Much of the German Empire had fallen into the hands of the Lutherans, and many church treasures and relics were threatened by looting and desecration. Altars and shrines had been melted down, statues smashed, and in Konstanz, mobs of heretics had even cast the bones of St. Konrad and St. Pelagius into the Rhine! It was Brother Nathanael’s job in the Brotherhood to return these threatened treasures to the bosom of the Holy Roman Church, a job that occasionally demanded not just his intuition, but his dagger.
A few years ago, he had met Brother Jakobus, the right-hand man of the master of the German provinces, in Augsburg. Jakobus was a vain but extremely devout man who, like himself, made no compromises and knew only one goal: the defense of the true faith. Together they’d been able to save man
y of the church’s sacred objects from destruction-relics, pictures of saints, statues of Mary…
But never did Nathanael think that, after all these years of praying and waiting, they’d be the ones chosen to retrieve the greatest treasure in all of Christendom, a treasure the Templars had seized almost five hundred years ago, one believed to be forever lost. And then this damned hangman and his daughter got in the way, along with that smart-ass physician! Ever since then, everything had been going to hell.
Brother Avenarius was standing quietly beside him, mumbling his prayers and clutching a chain on his neck that held the cross with the double beams, the symbol of the Brotherhood. The tubby Swabian seemed to have resigned himself to standing a few more hours in the driving snow. With closed eyes, he recited the prayer for self-control from Holy Scripture.
“Who shall set a watch before my mouth, and a seal of wisdom upon my lips? Who will set scourges over my thoughts, and the discipline of wisdom over my heart?”
Nathanael sighed. At first, it seemed quite suitable for the Swabian monk to have been assigned to them. According to everything the master had learned from the letter of the pious Altenstadt priest, the Templars hadn’t made it easy for them. Friedrich Wildgraf’s heretical order was known for its secret codes and riddles, and Brother Avenarius was considered an excellent authority on the Bible, a bookworm who could put his finger on even the most obscure quotation and knew more about the history of the relics than anyone else. But up till now, he hadn’t been of much help to the group, and after the completion of this assignment, Nathanael would speak to the master and recommend his removal.
But for now, he needed him.
Especially now that Brother Jakobus had headed back to Augsburg to report to the master and obtain some new poison. Again, Nathanael wondered why his brother monk had been so quick to set out on the long trip back. Did it, perhaps, have something to do with the festering rashes that had been tormenting him for weeks? Jakobus had changed a lot recently. These sudden, furious outbursts, these muffled cries of pain in the night, his hair falling out…It was sad when a once-brave companion let himself go. In the end, one was always alone.
Nathanael looked around in all directions. Had he heard something? For days he’d had the vague feeling they were being observed. But by whom? Was someone else interested in the treasure, someone they didn’t even know about yet?
A short but unmistakable cry pulled him out of his thoughts. Two stooped figures approached the church. Snow lay ankle-deep over the church courtyard, muffling the sounds of their footsteps, but not the angry words of one of them. Nathanael grinned. This brash medicus would never learn to keep quiet.
So much the better.
The physician and his woman had approached the right-hand side of the church and were standing underneath the scaffolding. Nathanael gave Brother Avenarius a sign and set out after them. But suddenly, he hesitated. At first it was just a small movement he noticed out of the corner of his eye, but looking closer, he could see everything plainly.
On the other side of the church, where the memorial slabs were set into the wall, three figures emerged from the shadows. Like ghosts, they glided along the side of the church toward the physician and his companion.
Nathanael pulled down his hood, stuck the dagger back in his belt, and hunkered down to hide in the snow. His intuitions in recent days hadn’t deceived him.
It was time to find out who had been following them.
Simon glanced up at the icy scaffolding and gave Benedikta a skeptical look. “You want us to climb up there? We’ll slip and…”
But Benedikta had already boosted herself up onto the first level of the scaffolding. Once again, the physician was astonished at how agile she was. He was about to tease her, but then he resigned himself to his fate, pulling himself up, groaning, then continuing on to the second and third levels. From up here, he had a view of the entire snowbound monastery. In some of the windows across the courtyard lights were burning, but otherwise it was completely dark. For a moment, Simon thought he saw something move in the courtyard, but his view wasn’t good enough in the darkness and driving snow. Finally, he turned to the window frame through which Benedikta had already entered the church.
Her plan seemed to be working. The men hadn’t been able to complete their work before the evening, and the glass was still not installed in some windows. Simon sat in the opening, his legs dangling down, watching Benedikta tie a rope around one of the crossbeams and climb down hand over hand into the church. The medicus crossed himself and followed. Soon enough, his feet touched the cold stone floor and he could look around.
Even though the church doors were closed at night, the monks had left some of the altar and votive candles burning, and their flickering light gave a ghostly appearance to the entire nave. From up on the high altar, the skeletons of Saints Primus and Felicianus looked down at the intruders from inside their glass coffins, swords ever in hand and laurel wreaths on their bare skulls.
At this time of night, there was nothing sacred, soothing, or protective about the figures. In fact, Simon had the feeling that, at any moment, the skeletons would step down to throttle the two sinners with their thin, bony fingers. But they remained standing there, their bare teeth frozen in grins and their eye sockets dark and dead.
“Which of the two do you think it is?
“What?”
Simon was so wrapped up in the ghastly sight that he didn’t hear Benedikta at first.
“I mean, which of the saints could be concealing the message?” Benedikta replied. “We probably won’t have enough time to open both coffins.”
“Which one…?” Simon stopped to think. “Let’s take Felicianus,” he finally said. “Felicianus means ‘happy’ or ‘lucky,’ and the finder of the prize will be happy and lucky. And doesn’t it say in Matthew that the first-that is, the primi-will be the last?”
Benedikta looked at him skeptically. “From your lips to God’s ear.”
They approached the high altar until they were standing directly beneath Felicianus’s coffin.
“If you take me on your shoulders, maybe I can reach the coffin,” Benedikta said. “Then I’ll try to lift the lid.”
“But it’s much too heavy,” Simon whispered. “You’ll certainly drop it!”
“Oh, come now, it’s just made of glass, after all. And the skeleton inside doesn’t weigh any more than a few dusty old bones.”
“And what happens if it falls, anyway?”
Benedikta grinned. “Then we’ll just have to put old Felicianus back together again. You’re a doctor, after all!”
Simon sighed and knelt down so that Benedikta could climb onto his shoulders. Then, swaying slightly, he lifted her up. When the physician felt Benedikta’s thigh brush against his cheek, a pleasant tingling coursed through his body.
Wonderful, he thought. We’re desecrating the bones of a saint while I’m dreaming of the thighs of a naked woman. Two mortal sins at the same time.
Finally, Benedikta could reach the coffin. Reaching her arms around the lower part of the glass case, she whispered to Simon. “Now let me down-slowly!”
As Benedikta continued gripping the precious case, Simon knelt down slowly, bit by bit. The coffin swayed back and forth, scraped along the base of the altar, and finally touched the ground. Benedikta hopped nimbly down from Simon’s aching shoulders.
“And now let’s open it.”
Benedikta laid the coffin down on the ground gingerly and examined the cover. The edges of the glass were soldered with a gold alloy. She pulled out her knife and began to make a clean cut through the seam.
“Benedikta,” Simon whispered in a hoarse voice. “Are you sure we should be doing this? If we get caught, we’ll be put on trial, and our punishment will make Scheller’s torture on the wheel look like a walk in the park.”
Benedikta looked up from her work for just a moment. “I didn’t come all the way here to give up now. So come now and help me!”
Simon took out the medical stiletto he always carried with him, inserted it in the soldered crack, and pried open the seam, inch by inch. The alloy was soft and brittle, and it didn’t take them long to remove the lid.
“St. Felicianus, forgive us!” Simon mumbled, though he didn’t think his prayer would meet with much understanding in heaven. “We’re doing it only for the good of the church!”
A musty odor rose up from the open coffin, and Simon stared in disgust at the skeleton, which was covered in patches of green mold. The bones were tied to one another and to the glass coffin in back by thin wires. The dried laurel wreath atop the saint’s head had slipped down over the forehead, and between the bony fingers of his right hand, St. Felicianus held a rusty sword.
“The sword and laurel wreath,” Simon whispered, “are symbols of a martyr’s death and victory.”
Benedikta had already started examining the bones. She poked her fingers in the eye sockets and felt around the inside of the skull. “There has to be a message hidden here somewhere,” she mumbled, “a piece of paper, a note. Damn, Simon, help me look! We don’t have forever!”
Suddenly, something clattered behind them. Simon turned around but could make nothing out in the darkness. Shadows and light from the flickering candles at the foot of the Virgin Mary’s altar floated back and forth between the columns.
“Did you hear that?” Simon asked.
Benedikta was now examining the slightly moldy chest cavity. “A rat, a gust of wind-what do I know? Now come over here and help me!”
Once again, Simon gazed out over the nave. The columns, the altar to the Virgin, the flickering candles…
The medicus jumped.
Flickering candles…?
All along, the candles had been burning evenly. If they were flickering now, then-
“Simon, Simon! I’ve found it! I’ve found the message! Come and look!” Benedikta’s shout tore him from his thoughts. She had scraped some of the rust from the sword blade, and her eyes glowed as she pointed to her discovery. “It was underneath the rust! You were right!”
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