The Dark Monk

6

MAGDALENA STOOD IN the biting cold in front of the parish church and pulled her woolen shawl tighter around her shoulders. After her visit with the dyer woman, she had wandered aimlessly through the narrow streets. Where could she go? After her angry outburst, Simon would certainly be looking for her at her parents’ house. But even now, after her anger had somewhat subsided, she didn’t want to see him. Perhaps at that very moment he was standing in front of their house in the Tanners’ Quarter and worrying about her. As well he should! How dare he rave to her about this woman! It would be good for him to fret a little. Perhaps it would awaken his guilty conscience. Nobody could treat a Kuisl that way!

Deep in thought, she wandered across the market square. Night was falling and a traveling merchant was hawking scissors, knives, and all sorts of bric-a-brac. The fragrance of honey-roasted hazelnuts filled the air. Magdalena looked around, rubbing her hands together to keep warm. It was snowing lightly now, but at this time of day, there were only a few Schongau residents passing through the square, anyway. Wrapped in more or less ragged clothing, they walked stooped over so snow wouldn’t blow directly in their eyes. Magdalena looked into their empty, gaunt faces. The Great War had ended just a few years before and people were still suffering the consequences. The residents of the once-wealthy city had fallen victim to pestilence, sickness, and hunger. Even now, only the snow covered the crumbling masonry on the walls and the frozen piles of excrement in the streets. Interspersed among the houses were ruins of buildings whose roofs had caved in, silent witnesses to whole families wiped out by the plague. In recent decades, the city had lost more than a third of its inhabitants to the plague, and almost every family had mourned the loss of at least one member. As a child, Magdalena had often seen carts filled with dozens of corpses heading toward the new St. Sebastian Cemetery. The old cemetery by the parish church had filled up long ago and now this new fever had come over the city!

On the spur of the moment, Magdalena decided to go to Semer’s tavern. She still had a few coins in her pocket, and a warm drink would certainly do her some good after all the day’s aggravation. The very thought of it raised her spirits. Her hand was already on the doorknob when she glanced through the bull’s-eye window to the left of the entrance.

What she saw hit her like a slap in the face.

Behind the glass, slightly blurred, she could make out Simon and Benedikta sitting at a table. The two seemed engrossed in something or other, and in the dim light of the candles, she thought she could see Simon put his arm around her. Magdalena shuddered. At first she was tempted to tear open the door, grab a heavy mug off one of the shelves, and throw it at Simon. But instead, she just ran across the marketplace, unable to think clearly, tears running down her cheeks before turning to ice.

When she came to her senses, she was standing near the Kuh Gate. The midwife’s house was just a few yards away, and without giving it a further thought, she tore open the door and stormed in.

Martha Stechlin looked up in astonishment. She was sitting at a table in the main room, crushing some dried herbs in a mortar. She was about to give the young woman a tongue-lashing but changed her mind when she noticed how pale Magdalena was and how she was trembling.

“Girl, what is wrong with you?” she asked with concern. “This isn’t because of the Steigenberg woman, is it? You don’t have to worry; the child is well and you don’t have to…”

Magdalena shook her head, then broke down in tears again. The midwife guided her over to the table, sat her down gently on one of the wooden stools, and stroked her hair.

“What is wrong, my dear?” she murmured, handing her a cup of a hot peppermint tea, which had just been bubbling on the hearth.

Magdalena poured out her heart to the midwife in bitter words, and when she was finished, Martha nodded compassionately.

“That’s just the way men are,” she whispered, “never content with what they have. But sooner or later, they always come back. My Hans…God bless his soul…” Her voice broke and she wiped her eyes as if trying to brush away a tear.

“What about your husband?” Magdalena asked, happy to turn attention away from her own troubles. “You never told me about him.”

“He was always flirting with the girls,” Martha said. “He was never home; he always hung out in the taverns, the dirty swine…” A smile crossed her lips. “But I loved him. Even when we couldn’t have children and people began to gossip, we stayed together. No random strumpet was going to come along and change that.” She winked at Magdalena.

“What became of him?” The hangman’s daughter wiped the tears from her eyes as the warmth of the fire spread up her legs.

The midwife was staring off into space. “He caught the plague. I buried him more than ten winters ago, and since then, I have been alone.”

In the silence that followed, the only thing audible was the crackling of the fire on the hearth. Magdalena bit her lip. Why had she asked? Embarrassed, she sipped on the steaming cup.

Finally, the midwife arose and walked over to her shelves, which extended from the shrine in the corner of the room all the way to the hearth. “So be it!” she said. “Life goes on.” Her gaze wandered along the line of jars and pots on the shelves. The jars were all freshly glazed and labeled according to their contents. The midwife opened a few of them and shook her head.

“I’ll need some dried melissa,” she murmured. “And ergot, if nothing else works.”

“What for?” Magdalena asked, walking over to her. “Are you expecting another difficult birth?”

Magdalena had been Martha Stechlin’s apprentice for half a year, and in that time Magdalena had assisted in five difficult births. Only in difficult cases did people call for the midwife. Often women gave birth without help, alone, or with only the immediate family present, whether in a warm living room, in the stable, or sometimes even in the field. If Stechlin was looking through her jars now, there had to be another critical case pending.

“Frau Holzhofer…” Martha Stechlin started to say.

Magdalena gasped. “The wife of the second burgomaster?”

The midwife kept searching through the jars. “Holzhofer’s wife is already past due,” she said. “If the child doesn’t come by next week, we’ll have to give her ergot.”

Magdalena nodded. Ergot was a fungus that grew on rye and oats, a strong poison that caused the notorious St. Anthony’s fire, but in small doses could induce labor.

“And now you don’t have any more?” she asked.

Martha Stechlin had now arrived at the last row of jars. “No, no ergot, melissa, artemisia, or sundew. And your father has none left, either!” She sighed. “It looks like I’ll have to make a trip to Augsburg in this awful cold! The apothecary there is the only place I can get ergot or artemisia in the winter. But what can I do? If anything happens to his wife, Holzhofer will blame it on me, and then they’ll throw me out of my house or set it on fire…”

Suddenly, the hangman’s daughter had an idea. She smiled broadly at the midwife and announced, “I can go!”

“You?” The midwife made an incredulous face, but Magdalena nodded eagerly.

“I’d like to get away from Simon for a while, in any case. I’ll leave with the first ferry tomorrow morning, and we’ll see how he gets along without me.” The more Magdalena thought about it, the more she liked the idea. “Just write down for me what you need and where I’m supposed to go in Augsburg,” she continued, speaking rapidly. “My father certainly needs a few pills and herbs as well, so I can spare you both a trip.”

The midwife stared at her, mulling it over. Then she shrugged. “Why not?” she muttered. “After all, you want to become a midwife. It can only be a good thing for you to see what an apothecary looks like from the inside. And Augsburg…” She smiled at Magdalena. “Well, the city will take your mind off things. Just be careful that you don’t go haywire. You have never in your life seen so many people,” she said, clapping her hands excitedly. “But now, let’s get to work! The marigold leaves must be finely ground and the lard rendered, because Kornbichler’s wife wants her ointment this evening!”

Magdalena smiled and proceeded to pour the fragrant dry leaves into a mortar. The air smelled of hot goose fat, and Stechlin’s chatter sounded like a trickling watermill. Simon, her father, and the dead priest suddenly seemed far, far away.

When Jakob Kuisl opened the trunk, memories of a completely different life came flooding back.

The box had been stored for years in the attic of the hangman’s house, hidden behind rolls of rope and broken barrels where no one could see it. The hangman had carried it down into the main room of the house and opened it now with the key he had been keeping safe. Putting aside a folded, moth-eaten army uniform, he took out first the dismantled barrel of a matchlock musket, then its polished inlaid handle, a pouch of lead bullets, and a chain holding wooden powder kegs, also known among mercenaries as the “Twelve Apostles.” He pulled the bayonet out of its sheath and tested its sharpness with his thumb. After all these years, the steel was still just as sharp and shining as the executioner’s sword, which had been hanging in the devotional corner of his house for ages.

At the very bottom of the trunk lay a little cherrywood box. Jakob Kuisl unsnapped the lock and opened it carefully. Inside were two well-oiled wheel lock pistols. The hangman passed his hand over their polished handles and cool iron cocking hammers. These pistols had cost a fortune, but at that time, money was of no importance. In a drunken frenzy, you just grabbed whatever you wanted, helped yourself. Kuisl’s eyelids twitched. Suddenly, a shadow fell over his memory.

Legs wriggling up in the branches of a tree, a flickering fire, the crying of a little girl coming from the blackened ruins. The sound of laughing men playing dice around a mountain of bloody clothing and glittering trinkets…a charred baby’s rattle…

He had been a troop leader, a so-called “sword player” who always fought on the front lines with a double-edged sword, as his father had. He received double pay and the largest portion of the spoils.

He had been one of the best, the perfect killer…

A charred baby’s rattle…

With a shake of his head, the hangman tried to wipe away the memory. He closed the cherrywood box before any further dreams could pour forth.

Hearing the door squeak, he wheeled around as Magdalena came storming in, her face beet red. She had hurried back from Stechlin’s house just in time, before the watchmen closed the gates to the city. Now she was eager to tell her father the news.

“Father, I must leave for Augsburg tomorrow morning on an errand for Stechlin! Please allow me…” She stopped short when she saw the trunk. “What is that?”

“Nothing that concerns you,” her father grumbled. “But if you really want to know, they are weapons. Tomorrow the hunt for the robbers begins.”

Magdalena examined the bayonet, the soiled mercenary’s uniform, and the gun, all of them set out neatly side by side on the table. She stroked the copper-reinforced barrel of the musket.

“Where did you get these?”

“From before.”

The hangman’s daughter turned away from the weapons and looked her father in the eye. “You’ve never told me about before. Mother told me you were a brave soldier, is that right? Why did you go to war?”

Jakob was silent for a long time. “What do you want to do with your life?” he asked finally.

Magdalena shrugged. “Do I have a choice? As your daughter, I either marry a butcher or an executioner. You don’t have the choice of doing anything else, either.”

“War is cruel, you know,” the hangman replied, “but it makes people free. Anyone can kill, and if he’s smart about it, he can even become a sergeant or a sergeant major and will have more money than he can ever waste on liquor.”

“Then why did you come back?” Magdalena replied.

“Because with killing, it’s just like with everything else in life…Everything has its place.”

And for the hangman, that was the end of the matter-he had nothing further to say. He closed the trunk and gave his daughter a challenging look. “So you want to go to Augsburg? Why?”

Magdalena explained that the midwife needed some important ingredients and wanted to send her to the big city to get them. “And she wants me to get a bezoar for her, too!” she said excitedly.

“A bezoar?”

“A stone from the stomach of a goat, which helps with infertility and difficult births and-”

“I know what a bezoar is,” the hangman interrupted harshly. “But why does Stechlin need it?”

Magdalena shrugged. “The wife of the second presiding burgomaster, Holzhofer, is pregnant, but the child won’t come. She asked Stechlin for a bezoar.”

“The Holzhofer woman is going to have to fork out a heap of money for that,” the hangman grumbled. “A bezoar is not cheap, and that means you’ll have to carry a lot of money with you to Augsburg.”

Magdalena nodded. “Stechlin will give it to me first thing in the morning.”

“And what if you’re robbed?”

Magdalena laughed and gave her father a kiss on the cheek. “Are you worried about me? Don’t forget I’m the daughter of the Schongau hangman! People are more afraid of me than I am of them.” She smiled. “Please let me go! Mother said I’d have to ask you. I’ll take the ferry first thing tomorrow morning, and there will be a group of Augsburg merchants on board on the way back. What can happen?”

Jakob Kuisl sighed. It was always hard for him to deny his daughter anything. “Very well,” he said finally. “But only if you also bring something back for me. Let’s see what I need…”

He crossed the room, where, on the opposite wall, a huge cupboard reached right up to the ceiling. The drawers and shelves were overflowing with parchment scrolls and books, and some drawers were open, revealing countless pouches, crucibles, and phials. Though it was the middle of winter, the entire room smelled like summer-rosemary, ginger, nutmeg, and cloves. The hangman’s apothecary, passed down in his family from generation to generation, was known all around Schongau. Not even the midwife-to say nothing of the physician-had a collection of herbs, medicines, and poisons to rival the Kuisls’.

On a wobbly table in the middle of the room, a flickering torch smoked in a rusty holder. In its dim light, Magdalena noticed a few books open on the table, among them Dioscorides’s work on medicinal plants and a book she had never seen before in a foreign language.

“Are you looking up something because of Koppmeyer’s poisoning?” she asked inquisitively.

“Maybe.” Without another word, Jakob Kuisl examined his stock of herbs and powders and put together a list for Magdalena.

“I also need a few things you won’t get from an apothecary,” he said. “Dried belladonna and thorn-apple seeds. Also, some alum, saltpeter, and arsenic. I know the fellows there, and if you just hand them a few extra kreuzer, they’ll give you the stuff without any problems. And if they don’t…” He grinned. “Just say the Schongau hangman sent you. That has always worked.” Suddenly, his face darkened.

“But you’re leaving so suddenly…That doesn’t have anything to do with Simon, does it?”

Magdalena scowled. “I don’t give a damn about Simon. He can get along without me for once.”

Jakob Kuisl turned back to his list of medicines. “Well, if that’s what you think, at least you’ll miss all the killing.” His face darkened. “You don’t have to get pulled into all this, but it’s clear to me that we haven’t seen the end of it.”

Magdalena moved closer to him. “Do you know now who the men could have been who attacked you in the church?”

The hangman shook his head. “I’ll find out eventually, then God help them.” The candle cast flickering shadows across his face.

In moments like this, Magdalena feared her father. That’s the way he looks, she thought, when he wraps a noose around someone’s neck or breaks his bones on the wheel, one by one.

“I know that at least one of the men visited Koppmeyer before his death,” she said finally. She told him about her conversation with the dyer woman and the strange golden cross the woman had seen around the stranger’s neck. When she had finished speaking, her father shook his head.

“Templars, Latin verses, a golden cross with two crossbeams…The whole thing is getting more and more confusing!” He pounded his fist on the table so hard the pages of the book flew up. “In any case, Simon is going to the castle on the hill above Peiting tomorrow morning to see if he can find any clue there. Perhaps we’ll know more then about the people who are chasing us or about these confounded Templars who are making fools of us all.”

For a moment, Magdalena was tempted to reconsider her plans. What if Simon actually found a treasure up in the old ruins? Or if the strangers were lying in wait for him there? Wouldn’t he need her help? But then she thought about the trip on the ferry, the big city, the new smells and faces. She wanted to get away from everything-and from Simon, too.

She kissed her father on the forehead and went upstairs, where her mother and the twins were already asleep.

“Take good care of yourself, Father,” she whispered. “And of Simon, too.” Then she disappeared into her bedroom.

In the flickering light of the torch, Jakob Kuisl hunched down again over his books. Belladonna, nightshade, wolfsbane…There were many drawings of poisonous plants here, but none had an effect like the one that had made him as stiff as a corpse in the crypt. That preparation had to have come from some distant land-that much was certain. But how did those men get a hold of a poison like that? Did they themselves come from this distant place? Were they itinerant monks from a far-off monastery? One had spoken a peculiar dialect.

And Latin.

Suddenly, the strange words that he overheard in the crypt came back to him.

Deus lo vult…God wills it…

With a sigh, he closed the book and began cleaning the musket. He would have to get up early the next morning for the hunt. Johann Lechner had summoned the men to report to the marketplace on the ringing of the six o’clock bell. Young Fronwieser could go ahead and deal with the Templars, riddles, and assassins. Jakob Kuisl would chase the thieves; that was something the hangman could do better than anyone.

Leonhard Weyer cursed and whipped his horse. The animal whinnied, reared up on its hind legs, and pushed its rear hooves even deeper into the snow. Night was falling, and the Augsburg merchant had to squint to see through the heavy, blowing snow.

They were too late! They had left Schongau at the crack of dawn, but by noon, they should have known they would never make it to Füssen by nightfall. Weyer had decided to take the old road through the forest, which was longer but mostly unused, particularly now in wintertime. Bandits preferred to lie in wait along the broad military road along the Lech River, and the Augsburg clothier was certain that no bandit would sit here, freezing his ass off all day on the off chance he’d meet a solitary farmer with a wagonload of fodder for his livestock. Besides, Weyer had told only his closest friends in Augsburg and Schongau that he’d be taking this route, and in contrast to other times, he had taken just a simple wagon for this trip, leaving his comfortable well-sprung carriage behind in Augsburg. Who would ever suspect anything? Weyer felt safe, but that didn’t change the fact that night was falling and they still had not reached a village.

Around noon, snow had begun to come down harder, and his four servants made almost no progress getting the wagon through snow drifts that were three feet deep in places. Now, as night was falling, they could hardly see their hands in front of their faces. On both sides, the road was lined with tall pines that reached up like black fingers to the sky. Their two packhorses snorted and struggled to pull the wagon through the knee-high snow. Again and again, the servants had to climb down and push when the wheels got stuck in the slush and half-frozen puddles. The servants flailed away at the tired Haflingers, but no matter how hard they beat them, they wouldn’t move any faster. And now the wagon was stuck again in a drift. Shoveling and cursing, two servants tried to dig it out while the other two pushed the overloaded wagon from behind.

“Damn, can’t you go any faster? In an hour it will be pitch black here!”

While his gray horse pranced around nervously, Weyer stood there in his fur-lined mittens, panting and rubbing his cold hands together. He was wearing a snow-covered bearskin hat and a knee-length coat of smooth, shiny fur, but still, he was cold to the bone. His breath formed little white clouds in front of him and hoarfrost settled on his eyebrows and his freshly trimmed goatee.

He looked around anxiously. Like a black shroud, darkness had enveloped the pine trees at the edge of the road and was advancing slowly toward the small group. He cursed again and shouted at the servants, who were wearily pushing the wagon through the snowdrifts. It was at least half an hour to the nearest town! He had already given up on reaching Füssen that day and would be happy just to reach the safety of a cheap village inn. His plan had been perfect! Because of the bandits along the highway, no other large-business owner in Augsburg had dared to leave the safety of the city walls. When they did, it was in a large group guarded by dreadfully expensive mercenaries. Because Weyer had set out for Schongau alone, before everyone else, he would be able to dictate prices-if he ever got to Füssen. Nervous, he reached under his coat for the loaded pistol hanging on his belt. He had brought along four of his strongest men, and all were armed with sabers and clubs. Even the coachman was armed with a crossbow. But would all this be enough to hold off a ferocious, hungry band of highwaymen? Weyer shook his head. But really, would bandits be wandering around on such a lonely stretch of road? Nobody knew he was traveling here with such valuable cargo.

“Giddyap! Go, you damned mare!”

Joseph, his first servant, whipped one of the Haflingers so hard that it jumped and the wagon finally lurched forward, over the snowdrift. The journey could resume.

Wagon tracks with only a light covering of snow appeared on the road in front of them. Leonhard Weyer smiled. They would make it. He’d be doing business in Füssen before anyone else, and the profit would be considerable. Perhaps after he’d concluded this deal, he could finally retire and leave everything to his sons. A warm hearth, a good drink, a fat roast capon-what more could a person want?

A sound came from the right, a faint crackling in the icy branches. Leonhard Weyer squinted into the darkness in front of him, but all he could make out were the dense thickets of pines. His servants had heard something, too. They whispered and looked around warily in all directions. Something was lurking out there. Now Weyer heard a whistle from a tree nearby. Looking up in the tree, he could see branches moving as if they were alive, swaying back and forth in the almost windless air.

He noticed the eyes much too late.

They were gleaming white on an otherwise ashen face, and below the eyes, a crossbow was aimed directly at the merchant. Leonhard Weyer heard a soft click, then felt a searing pain in his right shoulder. Tumbling from his horse, he instinctively reached for his pistol but couldn’t find it. All around him, chaos broke out: There was shouting in the gathering darkness, shots, and the groans of men fighting. A shrill cry became a gurgle; then someone fell to the ground with a thud. He looked to the side and saw Joseph, his first servant, his eyes bulging in terror. Blood gushed from a broad wound across his neck onto Weyer’s expensive fur coat. The merchant gazed at the slaughter in disbelief. How was this happening?

Who, in God’s name, could know that we were taking the old road?

He pushed the corpse in front of him to one side and reached into his coat. The fur was so heavy he couldn’t find the opening. Where were his damned pistols? Finally, he felt their cold steel and slipped them out through the opening. He ignored the pain in his shoulder and sat up carefully. From this position, he could see that two of his servants lay bleeding on the ground and another was struggling with three robbers, one of whom struck him on the back of the neck with an ax. Out of the corner of his eye, Weyer noticed a shadow approaching from the left. He wheeled around to see a man running toward him. He had tied pine branches to his arms and legs, his face was blackened, and in his right hand, he held a polished pistol. He was short in stature, and his movements were sleek, like a cat’s. Despite the disguise, Weyer had the feeling he had seen this man before.

But where?

There was no time to think about it, however. Weyer pointed his loaded pistol at the bandit and pulled the trigger.

There was a click, nothing else.

Damn, the powder got wet, Leonhard Weyer thought. God help me!

The figure slowly moved closer, obviously enjoying this moment, and pointed the barrel of his pistol directly at Weyer’s forehead. Just before the cock came down, igniting the powder, Weyer finally recalled where he’d seen the figure.

Was it possible? But why…?

The sudden realization couldn’t help him now. The world flew apart into a thousand stars, and behind them was nothing but unending blackness.

They met on the market square before dawn, shadows in the darkness that only gradually took shape as Jakob Kuisl approached.

The hangman knew most of them: The gatekeeper, Jakob Rauch, was there as well as the powerfully built smith, Georg Krönauer, and Andre Wiedemann, an old war veteran leaning wearily on his musket, suspiciously eyeing the newcomers shuffling into the square in heavy overcoats, their breath turning into white clouds in front of them. Farther back, Kuisl saw the sons of aldermen Semer and Hardenberg standing with Hans Berchtholdt, whose father represented the bakers in the Outer Council. They whispered among themselves, pointed at the hangman, and played apathetically with their shining sabers. From time to time, as the remaining men arrived, Kuisl heard laughter coming from that group.

Nearly two dozen men had formed a circle around the hangman-aldermen, tavern keepers, and tradesmen, all honorable citizens, eyeing him with a mixture of distrust and hostility, as if they were just waiting for him to give them some reason to contradict him. Jakob Kuisl suddenly realized how futile Lechner’s plan was. He was nothing more than a dishonorable hangman, a torturer and butcher. How could he give orders to these people?

He cleared his throat and was about to speak when a voice rang out in the fog behind him.

“Gentlemen, I have some sad news for you all.”

Johann Lechner had appeared like a ghost out of the gloom. He looked as if he’d been awake for hours: Elegantly coiffed with a cleanly clipped beard, his jacket and coat neatly buttoned, he had the bearing of someone accustomed to giving orders. He directed his piercing eyes at the crowd.

“A few dead bodies have been discovered in the forest just on the other side of Lechbruck,” he continued. “They were the Augsburg merchant Leonhard Weyer and his servants, who departed from Schongau just yesterday morning.” He raised his voice, scrutinizing the men standing around him armed with scythes, flails, and rusty muskets. “The next time it may be one of us they rob and murder. My fellow citizens, it is finally time to crack down on this gang.”

There was whispering in the crowd and curses here and there.

“Quiet, please!” The clerk clapped his hands, and immediately, the crowd fell silent. “Kuisl was a mercenary in the Great War,” Johann Lechner began, pointing to the middle of the group, where the hangman stood completely outfitted with saber, rifle, and pistols. “An able and clever leader, as I have heard. He has had experience with these sorts of scoundrels, and he knows better than any of us how to handle weapons. I want you to follow his commands, for the good of us all.”

“And if we don’t want to, eh?” It was Hans Berchtholdt, the baker’s son, who struck a defiant posture across from the clerk. “My father thinks you don’t have any right to give us orders. This is still a free city! A Berchtholdt won’t be bossed around by a dirty butcher!”

A swish could be heard as Jakob Kuisl pulled his saber out of its sheath, gripping the handle tightly.

“Your father is an old fool.” The voice came from the right, where Jakob Schreevogl materialized out of the heavy morning mist. The patrician nodded in the direction of the clerk and Jakob Kuisl. “If you’ll allow me, I wish to join the group.” The young alderman put his well-oiled pistol back in his belt and took a stand next to the hangman.

“I’m pleased that another fighter has joined our ranks,” Johann Lechner responded with a smile. “And now, to your question…” He glared at the baker’s son, and Berchtholdt stepped back, intimidated. “The attack on the Augsburg merchant was a dastardly murder and thus no longer a concern of the town but of the elector,” Lechner continued. “I am the representative of the elector in Schongau, and I am directing the hangman to lead this group. Would you like to discuss this matter with me before the court in Munich?”

Hans Berchtholdt stepped back into the ranks again, and the two other patricians’ sons looked away, distraught.

“No…of course not. I…” Berchtholdt stammered.

“Good. Then we can finally begin.” The clerk turned to Jakob Kuisl. “The hangman will explain how we will proceed.”

Jakob Kuisl grinned. You could say what you wanted about Lechner, but he had a firm grip on his town. Grimly, the hangman rammed his saber back into its sheath, looking each of the men in the face, one after the other. Then he briefly explained his battle plan.

As Simon slammed the door behind him and set out to inspect the castle ruins in Peiting, he could hear his father cursing and carrying on behind him. It was just before eight in the morning, and the first farmers and tradespeople were up and about with their carts in the streets of Schongau.

Bonifaz Fronwieser had insisted that his son stay home to help with the patients who would be coming in for treatment. Just the night before, two more Schongauers had come to the house complaining of coughing and chills. The old doctor had talked them into buying a syrup of linden blossom extract and, for an exorbitant fee, also examined their urine. Then, with a few words of assurance, he had sent them on their way. Simon was so happy he wouldn’t have to watch this foolishness that day. They were so powerless! People were dying like flies, and the doctors here couldn’t think of anything better to do than to bleed the patients and administer enemas. In Paris, London, and in Leiden in the Netherlands, doctors were far more advanced. Some renowned scholars there even asserted that illness was transmitted from person to person-not by bad air and miasmas, but by creatures too small to be seen with the naked eye. In Schongau, they still thought snot was mucus draining from the brain and that a common cold could cause a person to wither up inside and become a zombie.

Simon cursed. Until just the week before, he’d held onto a bit of Jesuit’s powder, which was extracted from the bark of an exotic tree that grew on the other side of the Great Ocean. The fever was receding, but he’d used up the last bit of it now, and the next Venetian merchant would not be coming north over the mountain passes to Schongau until spring.

When Simon turned the corner onto Weinstrasse, he could no longer hear his father’s screams. No doubt, Bonifaz Fronwieser was already washing down his anger with a glass of cheap white wine. Simon hoped that by nightfall his father would have calmed down again, and that Magdalena would have come to her senses, too. He’d stopped by at her house the day before and banged on the door several times, but no one had answered. Finally, Anna Maria Kuisl dumped a chamber pot out the window, an unmistakable sign that his presence was not desired. In a few days, the blizzard would no doubt die down, and maybe by then he would have learned more about the riddles concerning the Templars’ treasure. Possibly, he might get a better idea that very day after his visit to Peiting.

As he was leaving through the Lech Gate in the frosty morning fog, a figure approached him that, until that moment, had been hidden behind the town wall. It was Benedikta.

“I think our conversation yesterday ended much too abruptly,” she said, smiling. She wore a woolen cap and a heavy, coarse woolen coat that didn’t quite suit her dainty figure. She must have bought the clothing in town after realizing that she would be staying a bit longer. Seeing the surprised look on Simon’s face, she shrugged apologetically. “My brother’s burial is not until tomorrow, so I thought I might come along with you. For your own protection…” She winked at him.

Simon could feel himself blushing. Protected by a woman. I hope the hangman never hears about this…

Only now did he notice a bulge under Benedikta’s heavy coat at about hip level. He suspected that was where she stowed the pistol she had used to finish off the robber.

“Why not?” he said. “But please, let’s not take horses this time. Every muscle in my body still aches.”

Benedikta laughed aloud and walked ahead, crunching through the snow so fast that Simon had difficulty keeping up with her.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I gave my Aramis a day off today. And in any case, it’s not far, is it?”

Simon nodded. He had caught up and was walking alongside her now. “Do you see the big hill?” He pointed across the Lech River. “Beyond that is Peiting, the closest town, and right next to that is the castle on the hill with the old Guelph ruins-at least whatever the Swedes didn’t destroy.”

“Doesn’t anyone live up there on the hill anymore?” Benedikta asked.

Simon laughed. “Just a few castle ghosts. It was once inhabited by the Guelphs, a family of princes that reigned here. But that was long, long ago. In the Great War, people took refuge up there, but the Swedes destroyed the last remnants of the castle. Now, you’ll meet only an occasional farmer up there looking for stones for building his walls or barns.”

“And do you think we’ll actually find something up there?”

Simon shrugged. “Probably not, but then, at least we’ll have tried.”

The path along the Lech climbed gently. Soon they were surrounded by trees. The walls and houses of Schongau could be seen intermittently over the tops of the trees, until finally they were enveloped in dense forest. Simon looked around carefully. Peiting was less than an hour’s walk from town, yet after everything that had happened in the past three days, Simon thought he could see a highwayman behind every tree. Except for a tired farmer driving an oxcart, however, they didn’t meet a soul.

When the first houses of Peiting were in sight, they came upon a narrow path leading up to the top of Castle Hill. Simon walked ahead. The snow here was significantly deeper and not yet packed down, so progress was slow and difficult. They kept sinking into the snow, sometimes up to their hips. After a while, they discovered a trail animals had made in the snow, and walking became easier. The path climbed steeply now and was lined by ancient oak trees, which at one time must have flanked a boulevard built by the dukes but had since been reclaimed by the forest. About half an hour later, they reached the crest of the hill and the forest receded, revealing a clearing where the ruins stood.

The Swedes had done a thorough job. The outer walls had been torn down, and all that remained of the once stately buildings were scorched black skeletons, sooty beams, and rubble covered in snow. Only the ancient keep towered up from the ruins, like an index finger warning the visitors. Eerie silence lay over the clearing, as if the snow up here, three feet deep in places, had swallowed every sound.

“Wonderful,” Benedikta said, rubbing her frozen hands together. “This Templar certainly couldn’t have found a better place to hide something.”

Shrugging, Simon surveyed the chaotic scene, not sure where to begin. “When the Templars still lived in Schongau, this must have been an imposing castle. But at some point, the duke disappeared, the castle fell into ruin, and then the Swedes arrived…” He climbed up to the top of a pile of rubble, trying to get a better view of the entire site. From up there, he could see Schongau, the Lech that flowed out of the mountains toward Augsburg, and in the distance, the peak of Hoher Peißenberg peering out of the morning fog. Directly beneath them lay rubble and ruins. Simon sighed and carefully climbed back down to join Benedikta. “It would be just as easy to find a needle in a haystack,” he said. “But since we’re here…”

They decided to split up. Benedikta would take the southern side and Simon the northern. He trudged through rubble, glancing into the buildings as he passed; though all that remained, for the most part, were the walls. Now and then, he stumbled over bones and grinning skulls dispersed among blocks of stone. In one corner, he found a skeleton wrapped in the ragged remains of a Swedish uniform. Twice he broke through the snow, and one of those times he struggled to free himself when his boot became wedged in a hidden fissure.

“Did you find anything yet?” he called out toward the place he thought Benedikta must be. Strangely, his voice sounded both loud yet muffled to him.

“There’s nothing here,” she shouted back. “Do you really think we should keep looking?”

“Just a bit longer!” He climbed over another large pile of rubble and saw the ruins of a little chapel on a rise in front of him. He continued over rocks and snowdrifts toward the ruins of the nave, where he guessed the Guelphs probably had come to pray. Now all that remained were bare, sooty walls. Even the lead-framed church windows had been broken and the lead likely melted down to make bullets. Snow drifted down through the remains of the roof truss onto the stone altar, and burned beams were strewn around everywhere in heaps.

On a whim, Simon entered the chapel and climbed over a pile of wood to reach the altar. The Templar’s previous two riddles had to do with churches-first the little St. Lawrence Church and then the basilica in Altenstadt. Perhaps that was the case here as well. He just had to-

With a loud crack, the beams under him gave way. Splinters ripped at his overcoat and jacket as he fell with a muffled cry into a deep hole. He tried desperately to break his fall by gripping a piece of wood that jutted out, but it gave way, too, and followed him, crashing down into the darkness.

The landing was hard and painful. He could feel hard stone and something thin splintering beneath him. As he struggled to his feet, he heard a whoosh above him. Instinctively, he threw himself to one side before a whole batch of beams crashed down, landing on the ground right beside him. A few feet farther to the right and he would have been buried beneath them.

Simon took a deep breath and carefully tested his arms and legs. Nothing seemed to be broken. His new jacket from Augsburg was ripped from his shoulder down to his hip, and a few tiny splinters had pierced his clothing in places, but otherwise he was unhurt.

Only now did he have the chance to investigate what it was he had fallen into. Reaching over to one side, he picked up a pale, broken femur, and between his legs a toothless skull grinned up at him.

Simon jumped up in horror and looked around. Decayed, partially discolored skulls and bones were strewn all across the floor. Apparently, he had fallen through the rotted flooring into the crypt. A few rays of light streamed in through an opening above him. On the western side of the crypt, a narrow stone staircase led to a trapdoor in the ceiling that no doubt was once used as an entrance. Plaques with inscriptions on them were set into the stone walls here, showing knights with swords and on horseback. Simon looked closer. The men pictured there were probably Guelph rulers or members of the House of Hohenstaufen, which had inhabited this castle after them. The physician remembered that the castle had once served the Romans, too, as a fortified tower. Just how old were these bones?

“Is everything all right?” Benedikta’s voice came from the opening above, where he could see her anxious face now. “I heard the crash and came over right away. What happened?”

Simon grinned. “I probably shouldn’t have helped myself to so many dumplings at the Epiphany feast. I fell through like a sack of potatoes.” He gestured to the plaques and the bones scattered around him. “With a little less luck I would be lying here along with the others.”

Benedikta looked down at him. The floor of the crypt lay about thirty feet below the church. “We’ll need to get a beam for you to climb up on,” she said, looking around.

Simon nodded. “Look over there on the right, by the altar. I think I saw some big boards there. But for heaven’s sake, be careful, or we’ll both be down here together.”

Benedikta smiled at him. “Is that the worst thing that could happen?”

She disappeared, and Simon could hear her cautiously walking across the rotting floor of the church. As the medicus waited for help, he examined the plaque closer. The Latin inscriptions gave the names of the deceased, and the stone reliefs showed knights in armor, standing, lying, and on horseback. One plaque even portrayed two knights on a horse. The physician stopped short.

Two knights?

Something bubbled up inside Simon, a fuzzy image, something that had lain dormant in his subconscious until that moment. Hectically, he fished the little guidebook by Wilhelm von Selling out of his jacket pocket and leafed through it. About halfway through the book, he found the solution.

Two knights. One horse.

“Benedikta! Benedikta!” he shouted, hoarse with excitement. “I think I’ve found something, the solution to the riddle-it’s here!”

Benedikta’s face appeared again in the opening. “What?”

“The Templars!” Simon shouted. “They must have been here. There’s a Templar’s grave plaque down here. The seal of the Grand Master always showed two knights on horseback. There’s an old illustration of it here in Selling’s book!”

Simon waved the book around as Benedikta carefully lowered a beam.

“For the Templars, riding horseback together was considered a sign of great confidence, a symbol that they shared everything, and for that reason, they put it on their seal. Now I can read the inscription.” He moved closer to the plaque and passed his finger over the raised letters along the edge of the plaque.

“Sigillum Militum Christi,” he whispered. “Seal of the Warriors for Christ. It is, in fact, their seal.”

In the meantime, Benedikta had slid down the beam and was standing alongside him.

“Another grave plaque,” she groaned. “This is getting boring.”

“There has to be something behind it.” Simon pulled out a stiletto that he occasionally used for minor surgical procedures and began to scratch away at the mortar along the edges of the plaque. Benedikta worked along with him for a good quarter hour until the plaque came loose and fell to the ground.

There was nothing behind it.

Only a bare wall on which someone had, in fact, chiseled a few lines into the rock. Unlike all the other inscriptions in the crypt, these sentences were in German, though in an archaic one. Simon quietly read them to himself.

“This is what I discovered among men as the greatest wonder, that the earth did not exist, nor the sky above, nor trees, nor mountains, nor any other thing, and the sun did not burn, the moon did not shine, and the beautiful ocean did not sparkle.”

“For heaven’s sake, what does that mean?” Benedikta whispered. “Another riddle from the Bible?”

Simon nodded. “That’s what it looks like. But I’ve never heard this passage before. And there’s something else remarkable…”

“What?” Benedikta looked at him questioningly.

“Well, if it’s from the Bible, it actually should be in Latin. At that time, so far as I know, there was no German translation-at least nothing sanctioned by the church. But the inscription is in German.”

Moving in for a better look, Benedikta pointed to a word in the second line.

“The word tree is all in capital letters. But why?”

Simon once more ran his index finger over the letters. “Perhaps this word is especially important,” he said. “Perhaps the treasure is buried under a tree.”

Benedikta scoffed. “But which one? It’s a forest out there.”

“It would have to be a very old tree, one that was standing here more than three hundred years ago. And there must be something special about it so you could recognize it again.” Simon hurried over to the charred beam and began to pull himself up. “Come, let’s have a look around. Perhaps we’re close to solving the riddle!”

Benedikta sighed and climbed up after him.

They searched all morning and half the afternoon for old trees, or unusual crippled trees, or oaks with something carved into the trunk, or beeches that stood apart, on hills. They looked for hidden signs and stone plaques on the ground; they searched in knotholes, in the crevices among roots, in old badger holes.

And found nothing.

After five hours of searching in vain, Simon sat down on a large snow-covered stone block that had fallen out of the wall, rubbing his ice-cold hands together. “This isn’t getting us anywhere,” he said, his breath turning to clouds of steam in the frigid air. “Even if the treasure, or whatever it is, lies hidden under a tree here, the ground is frozen and much too hard for us to dig.”

Benedikta sat down beside him on the stone block, her face chafed from the dry cold. “Do you still believe there’s a gold treasure buried up here somewhere?”

Trying to warm up, Simon stood and began pacing. “Perhaps it’s not money at all. It could be gold, jewelry, diamonds, something very small and valuable. But it could also all be rubbish, and I’m just getting carried away.”

Angry, he tossed an egg-size stone down the hill. It knocked over a little mound of snow, setting off a small avalanche that came to rest among the trees below.

“Let’s go home,” he said, turning to Benedikta. “You have to prepare for your brother’s funeral, and for the time being, I have had enough of these Templars.”

Together, they tramped back through the snow into the valley. Neither noticed the three figures hiding behind a wall, staring after them with spiteful eyes.

Brother Avenarius rubbed the thick bandage on the back of his head where the hangman had hit him with the club.

“It doesn’t look like they found anything,” he said in his Swabian dialect. “Perhaps the young man is not as smart as he thinks he is. Sapientia certa in re incerta cernitur…True wisdom is found in an uncertain situation.”

“He’s smarter than you, wiseass!” The man with the scarred face and the rasping voice fiddled with the curved dagger in his hand. “What have your erudite maxims done for us so far, eh? They’ve given us nothing but a dead priest and a heap of trouble!”

“I had nothing to do with the priest!” the Swabian shouted angrily. “He didn’t have to be killed right away. It would have been enough to…well, silence him.”

“Well, he’s silent now,” the scarred man replied. He threw his dagger and it lodged in a rotted stump, quivering.

“Brother Nathanael is right,” replied the third, a monk dressed in black who gave off a strong scent of violets, even here outside. He was as gaunt and haggard as a dried-out, cracked log. He was the only one of the three monks who hid his face under his cowl. “The priest was too dangerous. Deus lo vult!”

“Where’s all this leading?” the Swabian lamented. “First the priest, then the hangman…The Master didn’t send us out to do that!”

“The Master’s words were more than clear.” The tall, haggard monk leaned in to Brother Avenarius now. While the perfume nauseated the fat Swabian, Avenarius would never dare to say anything about it. The haggard man was their leader, even though he seemed to act stranger with each passing week.

“The Master has ordered us to bring the treasure back to where it belongs,” the man with the violet scent whispered. His mouth looked like a red spot in the depths of his black cowl. “Nothing else matters. In any case, the hangman escaped. He’s alive. I saw him just yesterday with the others at Saint Michael’s Basilica.”

“You what?” The monk with the scar jumped up, but the haggard one restrained him.

“It’s fine. God obviously did not want the hangman to die. He needs him still as some small part in His great plan. We can assume that his daughter, the hangman’s girl, got away from us for the same reason. An astonishing woman…” He stopped as if he were reflecting. “Her name is Magdalena. It’s strange, I once knew someone by that name…”

Suddenly, he clapped his hands. “Now let’s report to the Master.”

The gaunt man jumped over the wall and beckoned the others to follow. Seeing a disappointed look in the face of his scarred colleague, he tried to cheer him up. “If they really find the treasure, their work is done, Nathanael. God won’t allow the heretics’ sacrilege to spread again. We destroyed them once and we shall succeed this time as well. Every memory of it must be destroyed. Your time will come.”

The monk with the curved dagger nodded grimly; then the three set out like tracking dogs after a fresh scent.