The Dark Monk

1

SIMON FRONWIESER TRUDGED down Altenstadt Street through the snow, cursing his vocation. In weather like this, farmers, servants, carpenters, even whores and beggars stayed out of the goddamned cold and inside where it was warm. Only he, the Schongau medicus, was required to visit the sick!

In spite of the heavy woolen coat he was wearing over his jacket and fur-lined leather gloves, he was miserably cold. Clumps of snow and ice had made their way under his collar and into his boots, melting there into a cold slush. When he looked down, he noticed a new hole at the tip of his left boot with his big, red, frozen toe peering out. Simon clenched his teeth. Why did his boots have to fail him now, of all times, in the dead of winter? He had already spent his savings on a pair of new petticoat breeches. But that was a necessity. He would rather a toe freeze off than do without the pleasure of the newest French fashion. It was important to observe the latest fashion, especially in a sleepy little Bavarian town like Schongau.

Simon turned his attention once more to the road. It had been snowing until just a few moments ago, and now, in the late-morning hours, a biting cold hung over the fallow fields and forests around town. The crust of snow on the narrow path through the middle of the road collapsed under his feet with every step. Icicles hung down from the branches, and trees groaned under the weight of the snow. Here and there the branches broke with loud cracking sounds and released their loads of snow. Simon’s perfectly shaven Vandyke beard and black shoulder-length hair had by now frozen solid. He reached up and felt his eyebrows. Even they were caked with ice. Once again, he cursed loudly. It was the coldest damn day of the year and here he was having to trudge to Altenstadt on behalf of his father! And all that just because of a sick priest!

Simon could well imagine what was ailing the fat priest. He had gorged himself again, as he did so often. And now he lay in bed with a bellyache, asking for linden blossom tea-as if his housekeeper Magda couldn’t make that for him! Probably old Koppmeyer had been out and about stuffing himself somewhere or had gotten involved with one of the whores in town, and now Magda had gone into a huff and Simon had to pay for it.

Abraham Gedler, the sexton of St. Lawrence’s in Altenstadt, had shown up at the Fronwieser house early in the morning and pounded on the door. He had been strangely pale and uncommunicative and said only that the priest was sick and the doctor should come as fast as possible. Then, without another word, he had run through the snow back to Altenstadt.

Simon had been lying in bed, as usual at this hour, his head still aching from the Tokay he drank the previous night at the Goldener Stern Inn, but his father had yanked him out of bed, swearing vilely, and sent him on his way with nothing to eat.

Again Simon broke through the crust up to his hips and had to fight his way out of the drift. Despite the dry cold, sweat was pouring down his face. He grimaced as he pulled his right leg out of the snow, almost losing his boot in the process. If he didn’t watch out, he’d soon have to doctor himself! He shook his head. It was crazy to tramp all the way to Altenstadt in this weather, but what could he do? His father, the city doctor Bonifaz Fronwieser, was busy caring for a fabulously wealthy alderman suffering from gout; the barber surgeon was bedridden with typhoid fever, and old Fronwieser would rather bite off his own finger than send the hangman to Altenstadt. So he sent his wayward son…

The scrawny sexton was waiting for Simon at the door to the little church located a little way out of town on a hill. Gedler’s face was as white as the snow around him. He had rings under his eyes and was trembling all over. For a moment, Simon wondered if Gedler, and not the priest, needed treatment. The sexton looked as if he hadn’t slept for several nights.

“Well, Gedler,” Simon said cheerfully. “What’s troubling the priest? Does he have intestinal obstruction? Constipation? An enema will do wonders for him. You should try one, too.”

He was heading for the rectory, but the sexton held him back, pointing silently toward the church.

“He’s in there?” Simon asked with surprise. “In this weather? He should be happy if he doesn’t catch his death of cold.”

He was heading into the church when he heard Gedler behind him, clearing his throat. Just in front of the entrance, Simon turned around.

“Yes, what is it, Gedler?”

“The priest…he’s…”

The sexton lost his voice and looked down to the floor without saying a word.

Seized by a sudden presentiment, Simon opened the heavy door. He was met by an icy wind a few degrees colder than the air outside. Somewhere a window slammed shut.

The medicus looked around. Scaffolding towered above them along the interior walls on both sides, all the way up to the rotting balcony. A timber framework higher up under the ceiling suggested that a new wooden ceiling would be installed there soon. The window openings in the back of the church were chiseled out so that a steady, ice-cold draft swept through the nave. Simon felt his breath on his face like a fine mist.

The priest was in the rear third of the nave, only a few steps from the apse. He looked like a statue hewn from the ice, a fallen white giant struck down by the wrath of God. His entire body was covered in a thin layer of ice. Simon approached carefully and touched the white, glittering cassock. It was as hard as a board. Ice crystals had even formed over the eyes, which had been wide open in the throes of death, giving an ethereal look to the priest’s face.

Simon wheeled around in horror. The sexton stood at the portal with a guilty look, turning his hat over in his hands.

“But…He’s dead!” the medicus cried. “Why didn’t you tell me that when you called for me?”

“We…we didn’t want to make a big fuss, Your Honor,” Gedler murmured. “We thought if we said anything in town, everybody in town would know about it at once, and there would be gossiping, and then maybe trouble with the remodeling here in the church.”

“We?” Simon asked, confused.

At that very moment, Magda, the housekeeper in the rectory, appeared at the sexton’s side, sobbing uncontrollably. She was the polar opposite of Abraham Gedler, round as a barrel, with fat, bloated legs. She blew her nose into a white lace handkerchief so large that Simon could see only part of her puffy, tear-stained face.

“What a shame,” she lamented, “that any man must go that way, let alone the pastor. But I always told him not to gorge himself like that!”

The sexton nodded and kept kneading his hat. “He overdid it with the doughnuts,” he mumbled. “He left only two. And it finally caught up with him here while he was praying.”

“The doughnuts…” Simon frowned. His fears had been confirmed-at least in part, except that the pastor was not sick, but dead.

“But why is he lying here and not in his bed?” he asked, more to himself than to the two of them standing there.

“As I said, he probably wanted to pray before he met his maker,” Gedler mumbled.

“In this weather?” Simon shook his head skeptically. “Can I have a look around the rectory?”

The sexton shrugged and turned around to leave for the neighboring building with the maid, who was still sobbing. Magda had left the door open, so the snow had drifted into the main room and crunched under Simon’s feet. On a table by the hearth stood a bowl with two greasy, glistening doughnuts. They looked delicious-brown, about the size of a palm, and coated with a thick layer of honey. Despite the recent encounter with the deceased, which was not exactly appetizing, Simon’s mouth watered. He remembered that he had not yet had breakfast. For a moment he was tempted to try one, then thought better of it. This was a death vigil, not a funeral reception.

Standing at the pastor’s bedside, the Schongau medicus retraced in his mind the pastor’s last steps.

“He must have gotten up and gone over into the kitchen to get a drink of water. This is where he collapsed,” he said, pointing to fragments of the mug and the sticky traces of vomit. The small room reeked of gastric acid and curdled milk.

“But why then, in God’s name, did he go out to the church?” he mumbled. Suddenly, he had a hunch and turned to the sexton.

“What was the pastor doing last night?”

“He…he was in the church. Till late at night,” Gedler added.

The housekeeper nodded. “He even took along a jug of wine and a loaf of bread. He thought he would be there a while. When I went to bed, he was still over there. I woke up again shortly before midnight, and I saw a light burning over there.”

Simon interrupted: “Just before midnight? What is a pastor doing at that time of night in an ice-cold church?”

“He…he thought he had to have another look at the renovation of the choir vault,” the sexton said. “It seemed in the last two weeks that the pastor was acting a bit strange. He was always over in the church, even in this cold!”

“The good man never left things for others to do,” Magda interrupted. “A bear of a man. He knew his way around with a hammer and chisel like no one else.”

Simon thought about that a while. The previous night had been the coldest in a long time. It was not for nothing that the workmen had stopped their work on the church now, in January. If anyone took up a hammer and chisel on such a night, there had to be a damned good reason to do so.

Without wasting any more time on the housekeeper or the sexton, Simon hurried back to the church. The pastor was still lying there on the ground, just as he had been when they had left. Only now did Simon notice that the corpse lay directly over a tombstone with a relief of a woman who looked like the Virgin Mary. The words of an inscription circled her head like a halo.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

“Thus passes the glory of the world…” Simon mumbled. “So true.” He had often seen this inscription on gravestones. As far back as early Rome, it was the custom for a slave to whisper these words to a victorious general on his triumphal march through the city. Nothing of this world lasts forever…

It almost seemed as if the pastor, in a final gesture, had been pointing to the inscription with his right hand. Simon sighed. Had Andreas Koppmeyer really fallen victim here to the desires of the flesh? Or was the gesture a final admonition to those still living?

A sound made him jump. It was Magda, who approached him from behind. She stared wide-eyed at the frozen corpse, then looked at Simon. It seemed she wanted to say something, but she couldn’t get the words out.

“What is it?” Simon asked impatiently.

“The…the two remaining doughnuts…” she started to say.

“What about them?”

“They are coated with honey.”

Simon shrugged, then stood up and wiped the snow from his hands. There was nothing more for him to do here, and he was about to go.

“Well? They also put honey on them at the Stern-delicious, by the way. Is that where you got the recipe?”

“But…I didn’t put any honey on them.”

Simon felt for a moment as if the ground were slipping beneath his feet. Perhaps he had not heard her correctly. “You…you didn’t put honey on them?”

The housekeeper shook her head. “Our honey pot was empty. I meant to buy more at the market next week, but this time I had to make the doughnuts without honey. Heaven knows who spread it on them, but it wasn’t me.”

Simon glanced at the frozen pastor and then looked carefully around the church. A cold draft passed through his hair, and he suddenly felt as if he were being observed. He left the church, Magda in tow, while the wind tugged at his coat as if trying to hold him back.

Once outside, he took the housekeeper by the shoulders and looked her straight in the eye. She was as white as a sheet.

“Listen to me! Send Gedler back to Schongau again,” he said softly. “Tell him to get the hangman.”

“The hangman?” Magda shrieked. Her face turned a shade whiter. “But why?”

“Believe me,” Simon whispered. “If anyone can help us here, it’s him. Now just stop asking questions and go-go!”

He gave the housekeeper a slap on her fat behind, then pushed the heavy doors, which closed with a loud squeal. The medicus quickly turned the bronze key in the lock and slipped it into his pocket. Only now did he feel a little more secure.

The devil was there in the church, and only the hangman could drive him away again.

A short time later, Simon was sitting in the drafty main room of the rectory chewing on an old crust of bread and sullenly slurping on some linden blossom tea that Magda had made for him. Actually, it was steeped from the dried blossoms that the medicus had brought for the pastor, who wouldn’t need them now. The odor of the greenish-brown concoction reminded him of sickness and hangovers.

Simon sighed as he sipped on the hot brew. He was alone. The sexton was on his way to Schongau to get the hangman, and Magda had run to the village to spread the dreadful news. She could have kept it to herself if the priest had simply eaten himself to death, but not if he had been poisoned. Tongues were no doubt already wagging among the common folk in town about satanic rituals and who might have prepared the poison. The medicus shook his head. How he wished he had a cup of strong coffee now instead of this miserable tea, but the hard brown beans were carefully stored in a trunk at home, inside a leather pouch. Not many remained from his last shopping trip at the market in Augsburg, and he would have to be sparing with them because coffee was an expensive, exotic product. Only rarely did merchants bring it with them from their travels to Constantinople or even farther afield. Simon loved the bitter aroma that made it possible for him to think clearly. With coffee he could solve the toughest of problems and now, more than ever, he needed some.

Simon’s musings were suddenly interrupted by a sound outside the window-a soft clicking or squeaking as if a rusty gate were slowly being opened. Carefully, he made his way to the door, opened it a crack, and looked outside. There was nothing there. He was about to step back inside when he looked down again and was shocked to see fresh tracks leading right to the front portal of the church.

The wide wooden door was open a crack.

Simon cursed. He reached into his coat pocket and could feel the cold steel of the church key. How in the world…?

Nervously, the medicus searched the room for a suitable weapon. His gaze wandered from the hearth to a large cleaver. He reached for it; it felt cold and heavy. Then he went outside.

The tracks, clearly those of a large man, led from the walkway directly into the church. Simon made his way quietly through the snow, holding the knife like a sword in front of him until he reached the portal. From outside, nothing was visible inside the darkened church. Summoning all his courage, he stepped inside.

Farther back, the dead pastor was still lying on the floor. A bleeding Jesus on the cross stared wide-eyed and reproachfully at Simon from behind the apse, and along the sides wooden figurines of martyrs were standing in the niches, writhing in the throes of death, their bodies tortured, slain, and riddled with holes, like St. Sebastian on Simon’s left, pierced by six arrows from a crossbow.

The scaffolding, which towered up into the gallery, glittered with hoarfrost. As Simon stepped inside, he heard a loud spitting sound. His knife in hand, the medicus turned around, frantically seeking the source of the sound and scrutinizing the shadows the martyrs cast on the walls.

“Put the knife down before you hurt yourself, you quack!” someone growled. “And stop prowling like a thief through the church. You wouldn’t be the first one I’ve strung up for robbing the offertory box.”

The voice seemed to be coming from high up in the balcony, and when Simon looked up, he saw a huge cloaked figure standing behind the rotting balustrade. The collar of his coat was turned up and a wide-brimmed hat hung down over his face so all that was visible was the end of a huge hooked nose. Little clouds of smoke rose from his long-stemmed clay pipe, and between his hat and disheveled black beard, two lively eyes flashed, mocking Simon.

“My God, Kuisl!” Simon cried with relief. “You scared the daylights out of me!”

“The next time you go sneaking through a place, remember to look up,” the hangman scolded as he swung down the scaffolding. “Or the next time, your killer will lay you flat and that will be the end of the learned medicus.”

Having reached the ground, Jakob Kuisl brushed mortar dust from his threadbare coat and snorted contemptuously, pointing the stem of his pipe at the pastor’s corpse.

“A fat priest who ate himself to death…And that’s the only reason you called me? As a hangman and butcher of worn-out horses, I’m responsible for dead critters, but dead priests don’t concern me.”

“I believe he’s been poisoned,” Simon said softly.

The hangman whistled through his teeth. “Poisoned? And now you think I can tell you what kind of poison it was?”

Simon nodded. The Schongau executioner was widely viewed as a master of his craft, not only with the sword, but also in the field of healing herbs and poisonous plants. When they fell ill, many simple folk preferred the hangman over the medicus for a concoction of ergot and rue for unwanted pregnancies, a few pills for constipation, or a sleeping potion made from poppies and valerian. It was cheaper and they didn’t leave any sicker than when they’d arrived. Simon had often asked the hangman for advice about medicines and mysterious sicknesses, much to his father’s chagrin.

“Couldn’t you take a little closer look at him?” Simon asked, pointing at the stiff, frozen body of the priest. “Perhaps we’ll find a clue to who the murderer is.”

Jakob Kuisl shrugged. “I don’t know what we’d learn from that, but I might as well, since I’m here. He took a deep draw on his pipe and eyed the corpse lying on the floor. Then he bent down and examined the body. “No blood, no sign of strangulation or a struggle,” he mumbled, passing his hand over Koppmeyer’s clothing, which was spattered with frozen bits of vomit. “Why do you think he was poisoned?”

Simon cleared his throat. “The doughnuts…” he started.

“The doughnuts?” The hangman raised his bushy eyebrows quizzically.

Simon shrugged and told Jakob Kuisl briefly what he had learned from the sexton and the housekeeper. “It would be best for you to come back to the rectory with me,” he said finally, heading for the door. “Perhaps I’ve overlooked something.”

As they exited the church, Simon cast a questioning sidelong glance at Jakob Kuisl. “How did you get into the church, by the way? I mean…I have the key here…”

The hangman grinned and held out a bent nail. “These church doors are like curtains. It’s no wonder so many offertories are broken into around here. The priests might just as well leave the doors to their churches wide open.”

When they arrived back in the rectory, Simon led the hangman into the main room and pointed to the two glazed doughnuts and the vomit on the floor.

“There must have been around a half-dozen of these doughnuts,” the medicus said, “all coated with honey, though the housekeeper denies putting any on them.”

Jakob Kuisl gingerly took a doughnut in his huge hands and smelled it, closing his eyes while his powerful nostrils flared up like those of a horse. It looked almost as if he wanted to inhale the doughnut. Finally he put it down, kneeled, and sniffed the pool of vomit. Simon felt himself gradually becoming nauseous. There was an odor of smoke, bitter stomach acid, and decay in the room-and something else that the medicus could not place.

“What…what are you doing there?” Simon asked.

The hangman stood up.

“I can always rely on this,” he said, tapping his red-veined hooked nose. “I can detect any little illness, no matter how small, just by smelling a filthy chamber pot. And this filth here smells of death. Just as the doughnuts do.”

He took a piece of dough in his hand and started to pull it apart. “The poison is in the honey,” he mumbled after a while. “It smells like…” He lifted the piece to his nose again and grinned. “Mouse piss. Just as I thought.”

“Mouse piss?” Simon asked with annoyance.

Jakob Kuisl nodded. “Hemlock smells like that, one of the most poisonous plants here in the Priests’ Corner. The numbness creeps up your body from your feet right to your heart. You watch yourself die.”

Simon shook his head in horror. “What monster would have thought up something like that? Do you think it could have been someone from the village? I could see a jealous worker in the church clubbing Koppmeyer from behind…But something like this?”

The hangman puffed on his cold pipe, lost in thought. Then he abruptly left the warm living room and headed for the door.

“Where are you going?” Simon called after him.

“I want to have a closer look at the dead priest,” Jakob Kuisl grumbled from outside the house. “Something isn’t right here.”

Simon couldn’t help smiling. The hangman had smelled blood. Once he was onto something he was as precise as a Swiss watch.

Back at the church, Jakob Kuisl bent over the corpse and examined it closely. He walked around the body without touching it, as if he were studying its exact position. Just as it had early this morning, Andreas Koppmeyer’s corpse lay on the slab of stone depicting the faded countenance of the mother of God surrounded by a halo. The priest’s hair was white with ice crystals and he lay curled up on one side so that only his profile was visible. In the meantime, the skin on his face had taken on the color of a frozen carp. His left arm was crooked along his body and his right hand seemed to be pointing to the inscription over the Madonna.

“Sic transit gloria mundi,” the hangman mumbled. “Thus passes the glory of the world…”

“He even circled the words. See for yourself!” Simon said, pointing to a squiggle around the inscription. The line was shaky, as if Koppmeyer had drawn it in the ice with the last ounce of his strength.

“It was clear to him that his end was near,” the medicus mused. “Old Koppmeyer always had a sense of humor; you’ve got to hand it to him.”

The hangman bent down and passed his hand over the stone relief of Mary, whose head was surrounded by a radiant halo.

“One thing surprises me,” he mumbled. “This is a gravestone, isn’t it?”

Simon nodded. “The whole Saint Lawrence Church is full of them. Why do you ask?”

“Look around for yourself, you idiot.” The hangman gestured broadly at the interior of the church. “On the other stones you always see images of the deceased-councilmen, judges, rich broads. But this one is no doubt the Virgin Mary. No woman would be so bold as to let herself be depicted with a halo.”

“Perhaps it was a donation to the church?” Simon thought out loud.

“Sic transit-” the hangman mumbled again.

“Thus passes the glory of the world,” Simon interrupted him impatiently. “I know, but what does that have to do with the murder?”

“It’s possible that it has nothing to do with the murder, but with the hiding place,” Kuisl said suddenly.

“Hiding place?”

“Didn’t you tell me the priest spent all last night working in the church?”

“Yes, but…”

“Look a little closer at the squiggle,” the hangman mumbled. “Do you notice anything striking?”

Simon bent down and examined the circle a little more closely. Then it hit him.

“The circle isn’t complete; it doesn’t go around the entire inscription,” he gasped, “but only around the first two words…”

“Sic transit,” Jakob repeated, grinning. “The learned doctor surely knows what that means.”

“This is the way…” Simon murmured absentmindedly. Only then did he get it. “Through…the slab of stone?” he whispered incredulously.

“First we have to move it aside, of course.” The hangman was already struggling to move Andreas Koppmeyer’s huge frame aside. He grabbed him by the cassock and dragged him behind the altar, several yards away. “This will be his resting place for the time being,” he said. “No point scaring any old woman to death who comes in to say her rosary.” He spat into his hands. “Now let’s get to work.”

“But the slab…It weighs at least a couple of hundred pounds,” Simon interjected.

“So what?” Jakob Kuisl had already wrestled the stone from its setting using a carpenter’s nail as a lever. Now he grabbed it with both hands and raised it slowly, inch by inch. Tendons as thick as a man’s fingers protruded from his neck.

“If a fat priest can lift it, it shouldn’t be so heavy, should it?” he panted.

With a grinding sound, the massive stone slab crashed down right next to Simon’s feet.

Magdalena Kuisl knelt in the bloody straw and pressed down on the swollen, bruised abdomen of Frau Hainmiller. The peasant woman screamed in her ear, making her wince. The expectant mother had been screaming for hours now, but it seemed like days to Magdalena. The night before, the hangman’s daughter had come to the Hainmiller household along with the midwife, Martha Stechlin. At first everything seemed to point to a normal birth. The aunts, nieces, cousins, and neighbor women had already spread fresh straw and rushes, put water on the fire, and spread out linens. The air was redolent of smoked mugwort. Josefa Hainmiller, whose head was as red as beetroot, pushed calmly and regularly. It was the farm woman’s sixth child, and up to then, she had always managed without difficulty.

But now Josefa was losing more and more blood. The bedsheets, pink-hued at first from the broken water, had now taken on the color of a butcher block. But the child simply wouldn’t come. Josefa Hainmiller’s initial whimpers gave way first to sobbing and then to loud screams so that her husband, horrified, kept knocking on the door and praying aloud to St. Margareta. He didn’t dare enter-this was a woman’s realm-but if his wife or the child didn’t survive the birth, he already knew who was to blame: the goddamned midwife.

Martha Stechlin groped inside the mother for the child, who was lying crosswise in the uterus. Her arms reached up to her elbows inside the Hainmiller woman, whose dress had slipped up over her thighs, but still the midwife could not get a firm hold on the child. The face of the older midwife was spattered with blood, sweat streamed down her forehead, and she had to keep blinking as it dripped into her eyes.

Magdalena looked anxiously at the aunts and cousins. They whispered among themselves, murmured their rosaries, and kept pointing at the midwife. Just last year, Martha Stechlin had been accused of murdering a child and practicing witchcraft. Only quick action by Magdalena’s father and the young medicus had saved her from the fire. Nevertheless, the midwife was viewed in town with suspicion, and it clung to her like a baby’s first stool. People still called upon her when there was a birth or asked her for herbs to reduce a fever, but behind her back the good citizens crossed themselves to ward off her black magic.

Just as they do with me, Magdalena was thinking as she wiped strands of matted black hair out of her face. Her eyes, usually so cheerful, looked tired and strained, and sweat gathered in her thick, bushy eyebrows. She sighed as she continued to push down rhythmically on the mother’s body.

Magdalena was grateful when Frau Stechlin had asked her about half a year ago if she would like to be her apprentice. As the daughter of a hangman, she didn’t have many choices. The job of hangman was a dishonorable line of work, and people avoided her and her family. If she wanted a husband, her only real choice would be another hangman, and because that didn’t interest her, she had to support herself. At twenty-one, she could no longer be a burden on her parents.

The vocation of midwife was just the right thing for her. After all, she had learned everything worth knowing about herbs from her father. She knew that mugwort was good for internal bleeding and parsley would ensure that unwanted children didn’t come into the world. She knew how to prepare an ointment of goose fat, melissa, and mutton bones, and she knew how to prepare hemp seeds with a mortar and pestle to help a young girl get pregnant. But now, seeing all the blood, the whispering aunts and the screaming mother, she was suddenly no longer sure she really wanted to be a midwife. As she continued pressing and squeezing, her mind wandered. In another world, she could see herself standing at the altar with Simon, a wreath of flowers in her hair and an “I do” on her lips. They would have children, and he would make a modest income as the respected town medicus. They could-

“Stop dreaming, girl! We need fresh water!” Martha Stechlin’s blood-spattered face turned toward Magdalena. She tried to speak in a calm voice, but her eyes said something else. Magdalena thought she could detect a few new wrinkles in the wizened face of the forty-year-old woman. In just the last year, her hair had turned almost completely gray.

“And moss to stop the bleeding!” the woman called after her. “She has already lost too much.”

Magdalena, jolted from her reveries, nodded. As she went out into the hall, she glanced back into the overheated, dark room. The shutters were locked and the cracks filled with straw and clay. Out in the main room, women from the neighborhood were sitting on benches around the hearth and at the table, anxiously and skeptically watching the struggling midwife and her young helper.

“Ave Maria, the Lord be with you…” Some of the old women started saying the rosary aloud. Evidently, they assumed that Josefa Hainmiller would soon be with the good Lord.

Magdalena hurried down the hall, took a handful of moss from the midwife’s bag, and filled a bowl of water from a copper basin on the hearth. When she returned to the main room, she slipped on the blood-soaked straw and fell flat on the floor. Water spattered the old women’s skirts.

“Good heavens, can’t you watch out?” One of the neighbor women looked at her angrily. “What is a young girl like you doing here, anyway? Damned hangman’s girl.”

A second neighbor woman chimed in. “It’s true what they say. A hangman in the house brings misfortune.”

“She is my apprentice,” Martha Stechlin panted as she continued to grope around inside the screaming Frau Hainmiller. “Now leave her alone and bring me some fresh linen.”

Magdalena clenched her teeth and got fresh water from outside. Tears of anger streamed down her face. When she returned, the women still hadn’t calmed down. Disregarding the cries of pain, they started whispering and pointing at her again.

“What’s the point of all this washing?” one of the older women asked. Her face was black with soot, and she had only three yellow teeth still left in her mouth. “Water has never helped during a difficult birth! You need Saint John’s wort and wild marjoram to chase out the devil, and perhaps holy water, but in any case, not simple well water-ridiculous!”

For Magdalena, that was the last straw. “You foolish women,” she shouted, slamming the bowl down on the table. “What do you know about healing? Dirt and foolish chatter-that’s what makes people sick!” She felt as if she were going to suffocate. For much too long she had been breathing the sharp odor of mugwort, garlic, and smoke. Rushing to the window, she tore open the shutters. Light flooded the room as the smoke drifted out.

The neighbors and family members gasped. It was considered a tried-and-true rule that the windows shouldn’t be opened when a woman was in labor. Fresh air and cold meant sure death to every newborn. For a while all that could be heard was the screaming of Frau Hainmiller, but it resounded now out into the street.

“I think it would be best for you to go now,” Martha Stechlin whispered, looking around carefully. “In any case, you can’t be of much help here anymore.”

“But-” Magdalena started to say.

“Go,” the midwife said, interrupting her. “It’s best for all of us.”

Under the withering gazes of the women, Magdalena stomped out the door. As she closed it behind her, she heard whispering and the sound of shutters slamming. She gulped and struggled to hold back her tears. Why was she always so stubborn! This trait, which she’d inherited from her father, had often caused trouble for her. It was possible that this visit to the Hainmillers would be her last one as a midwife. Her behavior would soon enough be the talk of the town, and it would be best for her not to show her face around Frau Stechlin for a while, either.

She sighed. Wearily, she picked up her leather bag containing scissors, old linen rags, and a few ointments, threw it over her shoulder, and headed back to Schongau. Maybe she would at least see Simon today. When she thought of the young medicus, a warm longing and a pleasant tingling rose inside her and her anger subsided. It had been much too long since they had spent a few hours together. It was on Epiphany, when carolers wandered from house to house and young men frightened little children with wild-animal masks. Lost in the masked crowd, the couple had walked hand-in-hand, disappearing into one of the warehouses down by the Lech River.

The clatter of hoofbeats interrupted Magdalena’s daydreams. A man on horseback was coming down the broad tree-lined road, which was blanketed knee-deep in snow. The hangman’s daughter squinted to get a better look and only then realized it wasn’t a man at all on the imposing stallion, but a woman. She appeared to be a stranger here; she looked all around as if she were searching for something.

Magdalena decided to stand by the side of the road and wait for the stranger. When the rider had approached to within a few yards, the hangman’s daughter could see that the woman had to come from a wealthy family. She was wearing a finely woven, dark-blue cape and underneath it a starched white skirt with polished leather boots. She was holding the reins loosely in her fur gloves. But the most striking thing about her was the shock of reddish-blonde hair that protruded from under a velvet hood, framing a pale, finely chiseled, aristocratic face. The rider was perhaps in her mid-thirties, statuesque, and certainly not from around here. She looked like someone from a big city far away-perhaps from Munich-but how in the world did she ever wind up in here in Altenstadt?

“Can I assist you?” Magdalena inquired with a warm smile.

The stranger seemed to think this over, then smiled in return. “You can, girl. I’m looking for my brother, a pastor in this community. Andreas Koppmeyer by name.”

She leaned over to Magdalena and extended her gloved hand. “My name is Benedikta Koppmeyer. And what is yours?”

“Magdalena Kuisl. I am the…midwife here.” As always, it was hard for Magdalena to say she was the daughter of the town executioner. That often led to people making the sign of the cross or turning away, mumbling.

“Magdalena…a beautiful name,” the lady continued, pointing to her bag. “I see you are just coming from delivering a child. Did everything go well?”

Magdalena nodded, looking at the ground. She hoped the lady didn’t notice how she was blushing.

“I am happy to hear that,” the lady said, smiling again. “But on another matter…Do you know where my brother’s church is?”

Without saying a word, Magdalena turned around and headed back to the village. She was actually happy she had met the stranger-a little diversion would do her some good.

“Follow me, it’s not far from here,” she said, pointing to the west. “Behind the hills there, you can make out the Church of Saint Lawrence.”

“I hope my brother is home,” Benedikta Koppmeyer said, dismounting elegantly in order to give the reddish-brown sorrel a chance to rest. “He wrote me a letter. It seems important.”

She followed Magdalena down the street in Altenstadt, holding her horse’s reins in her hand. Suspicious villagers on both sides of the street watched the two women from behind closed shutters.

Simon stared into the black hole that opened up in front of them. A musty, damp odor rose out of the square opening, and a steep staircase, hewn into the rock, led down to the crypt. After just a few yards, the passage was enveloped in darkness.

“Shall we…?” the medicus started to say, then stopped when he saw the hangman’s grim nod. “We’ll need a light,” he said finally.

“We’ll take those over there.” Jakob Kuisl pointed toward two five-armed silver candelabras standing on the altar. “The dear Lord certainly won’t hold it against us.”

He seized the two candelabras and lit them with a votive candle burning in a niche in front of the statue of St. Sebastian, his body pierced by arrows.

“Come now.”

He handed Simon the second candelabra and descended the stairway, Simon close behind. The steps were damp and slippery. As they continued downward, the medicus briefly thought he smelled something strange, but he couldn’t place it and the odor soon vanished.

After only a few yards, they reached the bottom of the chamber. Jakob Kuisl held the candles up to illuminate the almost cubical area. Broken barrels and slats of wood lay around rotting. A splintered crucifix with a fading Jesus lay moldering in a corner, its paint flaking off. In another corner lay a bundle of rags. Simon leaned over and picked one up. Sacrificial lambs and crosses were embroidered onto the moldy linen, which crumbled in his hands.

Meanwhile, Jakob Kuisl had opened a trunk standing crosswise in the middle of the room and pulled out a rusted candelabra and a votive candle that had burned down to the base. Disgusted, he threw the objects back into the trunk. “Holy Saint Anthony, thank you! We have found the church’s storeroom,” he grumbled. “Nothing but rubbish!”

Simon nodded in agreement. It looked as if they had found the junk room of the St. Lawrence Church. Evidently, for hundreds of years, everything for which there was no use up above had been brought down here. So was it just chance, after all, that the dead priest had come to rest right over the tombstone?

Simon’s gaze wandered over the walls, where the candlelight caused outsized shadows to dance about. In the middle, exactly opposite where he stood, was a pile of rubbish-boards, splintered chairs, and a huge oaken table turned upside down against the wall. Behind the table something white was shimmering. Simon went over to it and moved his finger back and forth over the spot.

When he examined his finger in the light of the candle, it was white with lime.

And only then did he remember the odor he had noticed on the stairway. It smelled of lime. Lime and fresh mortar.

“Kuisl!” he cried out. “I think I’ve found something!”

When the hangman saw the fresh mortar, he heaved the huge oak table to one side in a single movement. Behind it a freshly walled-up, chest-high doorway came into view.

“Well, just look at that,” Jakob Kuisl panted, pushing the rest of the clutter to one side with his foot. “The priest actually did lend a hand in the renovations. Just differently than we thought. It looks like he just recently walled up this entrance.” He sunk his finger into the mortar, which was still wet.

“I wonder what’s behind it,” Simon said.

“I’ll be damned if it’s not something valuable,” Jakob Kuisl said, scratching away at the fresh mortar with a nail until a brick wall became visible behind it. “And I’ll bet the priest was killed for exactly that reason.”

He kicked the walled-up doorway, and some bricks fell into an opening behind them, setting off a chain reaction. Cracking and then breaking into pieces, the whole wall collapsed. After a while the noise subsided, but a cloud of mortar dust hung in the air, blocking the view through the portal that was now open. Not until the dust had settled could Simon make out another room. In the middle of it stood something big and heavy, but it was too dark to see anything more.

The hangman climbed over the rubble and ducked through the low entrance. Simon heard him whistle through his teeth at what he saw.

“What is it?” Simon asked, trying in vain to see more than just a huge silhouette from his vantage point.

“It’s best for you to come and see for yourself,” Jakob Kuisl said.

With a sigh, Simon stooped down and followed the hangman through the narrow entranceway, shining his light into the second room.

The chamber was empty except for a huge stone sarcophagus resting on an even larger block of stone. The sarcophagus was simple and without ornamentation except for the relief of a long broadsword, a full five feet in length, depicted on its lid. At the head of the stone block, a Latin inscription was chiseled into the stone, and Simon drew in close to decipher it.

Non nobis, Domine, non nobis, sed nomini tuo da gloriam.

“Not to us, o Lord, not to us, but to Thy name be the honor,” the medicus read softly.

Somewhere he had seen these words, but he couldn’t remember when or where. Bewildered, he looked at the hangman, who was kneeling now and also considering the inscription.

Finally, Kuisl shrugged. “You’re the scholar,” he grumbled. “Now show me your damned overpriced education was worth anything.”

Simon couldn’t help smiling to himself. Jakob Kuisl would never forgive him for going off to the university while he, as a hangman, couldn’t because of his dishonorable profession. Kuisl didn’t think much of the learned quacks, and often Simon had to agree. But Simon would be better off now if he hadn’t broken off his study of medicine after seven semesters in Ingolstadt for financial reasons and out of sheer laziness.

“I don’t know where I’ve seen this saying,” Simon cursed. “But I swear I’ll figure it out. And when I…”

He stopped because he thought he’d heard a sound in the adjacent room, steps scraping along the floor and moving away quickly, something brushing against a wall. Or was he mistaken? Echoing underground crypts could play all kinds of tricks on your imagination. Perhaps the sound had come from the church above?

The hangman obviously had not heard anything. In the meantime, he had started running his hands over the walls but couldn’t find any other exit.

“If I’m right, if the fat priest died because of this,” he mumbled, “then there’s got to be more down here than a stone grave. Or…” He turned again to the sarcophagus. “The secret is in the grave.”

He went to the head end of the stone block and tried to push the cover aside. His face turned a bright red.

“Kuisl! You can’t just…” Simon cried out. “That’s disturbing the dead!”

“Oh, come now!” the hangman panted as he continued to struggle with the stone slab. “The dead don’t care, and this one has been dead for so long that the living won’t complain, either.”

There was a grinding sound as the slab moved aside a half inch or so. Simon watched with fascination as Kuisl, all by himself, raised the slab that had probably been wrestled into place by a whole group of men long ago.

And no doubt they had used tools and ropes for that, too…

He was always astonished by the hangman’s enormous strength. Once more the slab moved with a grinding sound, and a crack the width of a hand appeared.

“Don’t just stand there gaping,” Kuisl cursed between gasps. “Help me!”

Simon pushed, too, even though he was sure he couldn’t be of much help. After a few minutes they had shoved the slab back a good half a yard, and panting, Kuisl shone his light around inside. A musty stench rose from the coffin and a skull grinned back at them. Faded white bones lay at the bottom of the coffin amid dust and rusting pieces of knight’s armor. The hangman picked up a bone and held it to the light. Simon recognized from the few anatomy courses he had taken at the university in Ingolstadt that it was a man’s upper arm bone. But what a huge one!

“My word,” Kuisl whispered. “I have never in my life seen such a huge bone. He must have been a monster of a man…”

Simon gulped just thinking of a knight like this carrying a broadsword as big as the one on the relief.

“The sword,” he whispered to the hangman. Suddenly, he was excited at the thought of rummaging through the grave of a mysterious warrior. He couldn’t help but think of the ballads of King Arthur and the Knights of the Roundtable, which he had enjoyed reading at the university so much more than the same old nonsense about the four humors. “Check and see if the sword is in the coffin, too.”

Jakob Kuisl nodded and continued rummaging about inside the sarcophagus, pulling out armament, rusty scraps of chain mail, some withered brown rags, and finally, a femur as large as a cudgel.

The only thing missing was the sword.

The hangman was about to give up when his hands suddenly felt something cold and smooth. It was a thin marble slab the size of a book and engraved with an inscription. He carefully removed it from the coffin. Each individual letter was decorated in gold leaf, and the inscription itself was in Latin, just like the one on the stone block.

After they had both studied it for a moment, Simon translated aloud, “And I will tell my two witnesses to prophesy. And when they have ended their testimony, the beast that arises from the depths will fight, conquer, and kill them.”

“What a confusing rant,” Kuisl grumbled. “Can you make anything out of it?”

“I have to confess, it doesn’t make any sense to me, either,” Simon said, turning the marble slab over in his hands. “But it seems important, or it wouldn’t have been placed here in the coffin. No sword, just this slab…”

His thoughts were suddenly interrupted by the sound of steps in the neighboring room. Someone was descending the stairway! Suddenly, seized with panic, Simon reached down for the femur on the ground and held it out like a club in front of him. The hangman stood alongside him gripping the silver candelabra even tighter in his right hand. Both waited for the steps to come nearer. Finally, a face appeared in the entrance-an exceptionally pretty face.

It was Magdalena, closely followed by another woman with red hair and a pale face. Each held a votive candle in one hand and seemed less frightened than surprised at seeing the two men before them.

“What in all the world are you doing down here, Simon?” Magdalena asked. “And what in God’s name do you mean to do with the bone in your hand?”

Embarrassed, Simon placed the bone back in the coffin.

“That’s a long story,” he began. “It would be best for us to go upstairs.”

Up above, outside the portal of the St. Lawrence Church, a dark figure crouched behind one of the snow-covered, lopsided gravestones, cursing softly. He had come too late! Obviously, the fat priest had already talked. There was no other way to explain how the quack doctor had been able to find the crypt so fast. And now two women knew the secret, too, as did this big, broad-shouldered fellow. Things were getting out of hand. He would have to ask around and find out who these people were and whether they were dangerous. Especially threatening was this grim-looking giant who was always smoking a pipe. The man could sense that. Something about the giant troubled about him. Pearls of sweat crept across his forehead like little bugs.

Hectically, he pulled a little glass phial from under his black cassock and dabbed a few drops on his neck and behind his ears. The enchanting fragrance of violets wafted through the cold air, and at once the stranger felt safe and unassailable again. He doubted that these simple people had found more down there than he and his allies had, but just to be sure, he would keep a close eye on them from now on. Maybe he would be able to learn more about this bear of a man who reeked of tobacco.

Like a dark shadow, the figure emerged from behind the gravestone and slinked away. Only the sweet fragrance hovered in the air for a while, and then it, too, was gone.