The Poisoned Pilgrim

10

SHORTLY BEFORE MIDNIGHT IN ANDECHS, THURSDAY, JUNE 17, 1666 AD,

"Greetings, Your Excellency,” Kuisl exclaimed, bringing the lantern close so Simon and Magdalena could see the pale face of the abbot bathed in sweat.

Maurus Rambeck was panting, his robe was covered with dirt and torn at the seam, and a thin trickle of blood ran down his forehead. Nevertheless, he tried to radiate the dignity befitting his office.

“What… what do you scoundrels think you are doing?” he growled as he rose to his feet, rubbing the wound on his head. “An attack on the Andechs abbot. Are you crazy? That could cost you all your heads.”

“Or perhaps could cost you your own head,” the hangman replied dryly. “We shall have to see. By the way, if you’re looking for your brother in the flesh, Virgilius, I must disappoint you. He isn’t here. The message was from me.”

“Brother in the flesh?” For a moment Simon was unable to speak. He still couldn’t believe the person before him, who looked like a beaten highwayman, was really the Andechs abbot. Had they made some mistake? Had everything just been a huge misunderstanding? If so, they could expect a severe punishment. They had, after all, almost beaten to death the highest dignitary in the monastery.

“Your Excellency, I… I don’t understand-”

“Perhaps the abbot himself can explain what he’s doing here,” Kuisl interrupted. “In my letter this noon I merely introduced myself as his brother Virgilius and wrote that the monstrance and the hosts were hidden here.” He spat out loudly. “The fact that His Excellency comes to the lion’s den completely unaccompanied reveals that he probably knows much more about this than all the rest of us together. And about the robbery of the hosts. After all, he stole them himself, didn’t he?”

Flinching and startled, Rambeck quickly got control of himself again. “What nonsense,” he snorted. “What is this all about?” he asked in a threatening tone, turning to Simon. “I demand an explanation, Doctor. I enter this house unsuspectingly as the abbot of this monastery and am attacked by a gang of hoodlums.”

“Ah, I wouldn’t call us a gang of hoodlums, Your Excellency,” Simon replied, still noticeably confused. “The young woman on my left is my wife, and the monk here, as you already know, is Brother Jakobus, a Franciscan who helps me in caring for my patients,” he said, pointing to Kuisl.

“To hell with Brother Jakobus,” the hangman said angrily. “It’s time to put an end to this silly masquerade. I’m the Schongau executioner, and the estimable bathhouse surgeon is my son-in-law.”

Now it was Maurus Rambeck who looked completely confused. “Schongau executioner? Son-in-law? But why-”

“We’ll tell you about that later,” Magdalena interrupted. “For now, I’d really like to know why the abbot is searching for Virgilius.”

Kuisl placed the lantern down on an overturned table and crossed his arms. “For God sake, because he’s his brother,” he grumbled. “I already told you. I learned it today from Nepomuk, one of the few who knew. Virgilius himself must have told him. The two Rambecks were students at the same time at Salzburg University.”

Simon groaned softly. “That explains all the books upstairs. They come from the university. Damn, I knew that the abbot was also there for a few years. When I saw the seal on Roger Bacon’s Opus Maius, I should have connected the two.”

“If it makes you feel any better, my dear son-in-law,” Kuisl replied, “it took me a while to remember that, as well. You told me that back when we visited the abbot for the first time. Thanks to Saint Anthony, it occurred to me again today.”

For a few seconds everyone remained silent, gazing at the Andechs abbot, who stood motionless, his eyes flashing, his lips pursed. All of a sudden, however, a change seemed to come over him-he appeared to shrivel up inside, his authority fell away, and what was left was the shell of a man in a torn robe, as tense and anxious as Simon remembered him in recent days.

“My… my brother was always the smarter of the two of us,” Rambeck began softly after a while. The initial anger in his voice had now completely disappeared as he collapsed onto one of the few undamaged chairs in the room. “Even as a child, Virgilius couldn’t stop asking our father questions. Later we studied together in Salzburg, but then we drifted apart. He was in Paris, London, Rotterdam-places where research was much more advanced than here and science was not just considered some satanic monster.” His laugh was tinged with despair. “For my part, I took my vows here in Andechs as a simple monk and later hired Virgilius as a watchmaker. That was supposed to be kept strictly secret, as it would be viewed as nepotism,” Rambeck continued, absent-mindedly fingering a signet ring on his finger.

“Unfortunately I had to return to Salzburg soon after that to teach,” he continued with a sigh. “I had been singled out for higher tasks while Virgilius remained here in Andechs. When I was named abbot of this monastery a few months ago, it was a hard for the vain prior to accept.”

“The way things look now, he’ll be the next abbot regardless,” Simon replied. “The idea of calling upon the district judge in Weilheim came from Brother Jeremias in person.”

Maurus Rambeck nodded. “I know. I wish I could have delayed the trial a bit longer for…” He hesitated. “Well, for personal reasons.”

“You stole the hosts yourself, didn’t you?” the hangman asked in a low voice. “And I have an idea why.” He pulled out his pipe and settled into a charred, wobbly chair.

The abbot smiled. “For a dishonorable hangman, you’re astonishingly sharp,” said Rambeck, delicately touching the bump that had now formed beneath his tonsure. “May I ask how you figured that out?”

“I’d like to know, too,” said Magdalena, wiping some smudges and a few remaining raindrops from her face and taking a seat alongside her father on a blackened chair. “I think you’ve been stringing us along long enough.”

It took a while for Jakob to light his pipe from the tinderbox. Outside, distant thunder could be heard as the storm gradually retreated. Not until clouds of tobacco smoke had drifted up to the ceiling and were twirling around the crocodile did he begin to speak.

“It was pretty clear to me that the hosts couldn’t have been stolen from that room by just any random thief,” he finally replied. “There were no signs of forced entry, and the door was sealed with three sliding bolts that could be unlocked only with three different keys. How could a thief have gotten his hands on all three keys?”

“Evidently he was able to do just that, however,” Simon interrupted, puzzled. “If not…” Suddenly his face brightened and he slapped his forehead. “Damn, how could I have been so stupid?”

“I wondered the same thing, my dear son-in-law,” replied Kuisl. “I always thought you were a little smarter than that.”

Simon cast an annoyed glance at him then began thinking out loud again. “The thief didn’t need a key because he was one of the three people who entered the holy chapel on Monday evening,” he whispered excitedly. “Let me guess, Your Excellency. You were the last to leave the room so you could hide the monstrance under your robe. It was dark, and no one noticed a thing. After the others went down the stairs-”

“Our good abbot simply put the monstrance in the large chest in the anteroom and returned later that night to pick it up,” the hangman interrupted brashly. “That’s the reason I wanted to return to the holy chapel. I had a suspicion, but it was clear the thief couldn’t have carried this heavy monstrance down into the church. That would have attracted attention, so he had to hide it somewhere.” Kuisl grinned. “So much for hocus-pocus. The biggest riddles often have the simplest solutions.”

Rambeck sighed. “It was so simple that I asked myself afterward why no one noticed,” he said, shaking his head. “But all the talk about witchcraft and the devil at work made my fellow Brothers blind to the obvious. They preferred to believe in a golem.”

“But don’t you yourself believe in golems?” Simon inquired. “Just recently I saw you reading a book about them.”

“How do you know…” The abbot looked up in astonishment. For a moment Simon thought he saw a hint of uncertainty in his face; but then he simply shrugged. “I’ll admit I was upset by the gossip. After all, Virgilius’s automaton has disappeared. But a golem?” He shook his head. “An object made of dirt that functions according to the obscure laws of magic? Nonsense. I believe, like my brother, in God and the laws of mechanics.”

“Just a moment… I can’t keep up with this,” Magdalena interrupted, casting a questioning glance at her father. “Any one of the three people in possession of the key could have been the thief. Why were you so sure it was the abbot who stole the hosts?”

The hangman grinned and drew deeply on his pipe. “Yesterday when I followed the three monks into the holy chapel, Prior Jeremias told me that Brother Maurus insisted on visiting the relics room again on Monday evening,” he said smugly. “There was really no reason for that. The chapel should have been closed until the festival began-unless, of course, someone needed something that was in there.”

Simon wiped some dust and broken glass from a stool and sat down facing the abbot. The pounding rain against the bull’s-eye window had let up and now only a soft dripping sound was audible.

“Very well,” the medicus began hesitantly, turning to Rambeck. “Now we know you stole the hosts, but I still can’t make any sense of it. Why? And, above all, what does it have to do with your brother?”

“I have a suspicion,” Kuisl said. “But it would be better, Your Excellency, if you would tell us yourself.”

The abbot straightened up in his chair and looked at each of them closely with a touch of his former arrogance. “Why should I tell you that?” he blustered. “Virgilius is my brother, very well. The fact that I kept it secret is no crime, and as far as the theft of the hosts is concerned…” He paused menacingly. “Who has more credibility here-a no-account bathhouse doctor, a dishonorable hangman and his equally dishonorable daughter, or the venerable abbot of Andechs? Especially since we’ve already found the culprit. Why shouldn’t I simply call the guards at once?”

“Because then there will be no one to help you find your brother,” Jakob replied in a dry tone.

When the abbot didn’t respond, the hangman leaned forward and looked him in the face, his eyes narrowing to slits and his voice so soft Simon and Magdalena could scarcely hear him.

“That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? Because you hoped to find your brother, who was abducted by the real sorcerer?” Kuisl leaned back and sucked calmly on his pipe. When he starting speaking again, a broad smile spread over his face. “But believe me, if anyone can find Virgilius, it’s me. The life of your brother in exchange for the life of Nepomuk. I’d say that’s a fair exchange.”

From his hiding place, the sorcerer’s hate-filled eyes stared at the group sitting around a lantern in the watchmaker’s laboratory.

In the flickering light, the man could see how that damned hangman was speaking to Maurus Rambeck, and how the latter fell to pieces. The sorcerer hissed like a snake and rolled his eyes. He had expected more dignity from the abbot, but it appeared he was actually intimidated by this group.

The sorcerer had listened to the entire conversation. This executioner and his family were more clever than he thought at first-though not clever enough for him. Nobody was. His real problem was his helper, who couldn’t carry out even the simplest orders. Three times this hangman’s daughter had eluded his grasp, but now it was clear she didn’t represent the greatest danger, nor did the effeminate bathhouse doctor; it was the executioner himself.

The sorcerer licked his dry lips. He should have disposed of this Kuisl long ago. He was dangerous. A falling sack of lime wouldn’t be enough, and a direct confrontation seemed too risky. Damn, this whole Kuisl family lay upon him like a curse.

Suddenly he began to grin. The idea was so good he had to be careful he didn’t start to chuckle out loud: there was indeed another way to get rid of all his problems, and it was a shame he hadn’t thought of it earlier. He’d have to give instructions at once for his plan to be carried out.

Until then, all he could do was wait.

As invisible as a shadow, the sorcerer continued to eavesdrop on the conversation in the watchmaker’s house.

Maurus Rambeck sat as still as stone for a long while as rain trickled down the bull’s-eye window in thin rivulets. The church bell tolled midnight, and not until the last sounds had died away did he turn to Jakob again. “Do you think you can find my brother?” he asked skeptically. “You, a dishonorable hangman from Schongau?”

“He may be dishonorable, but he’s also the smartest and strongest damned man in the entire Priests’ Corner,” Magdalena retorted. “If you only knew what my father has accomplished in his life, you wouldn’t talk like such a jackass.”

The abbot raised his hands apologetically and smiled faintly. “Pardon me, young woman; it wasn’t my intent to offend your father.” He shrugged in resignation. “What can I do? It doesn’t look as though I can exactly choose who’s going to help me, and in any case, it seems Brother Jeremias will be taking my position soon.”

“If we are to help you, you must tell us more,” said Simon, leaning forward in his rickety chair. “Tell us what happened to your brother.”

“As your father-in-law already said, he was abducted.” Rambeck buried his face in his hands and sobbed softly before continuing. “Some madman has taken possession of him and is threatening to kill him if I don’t hand over the hosts.”

“In other words, you stole the hosts only to save your brother?” Magdalena asked sympathetically.

The abbot nodded and rubbed his tired, bloodshot eyes. “This… this sorcerer, or whatever you want to call him… knew that only I or one of the other two keyholders would be able to enter the holy chapel, so he kidnapped my brother and sent me a message, along with the one I have here.”

Rambeck reached under his robe, pulling out and carefully unwrapping a little package. When Simon saw what it was, he cringed. In the soiled cloth lay a blackened finger, a few tendons still clinging to it. It bore an engraved silver ring, which Simon noticed now was identical to the one worn by the abbot.

“This ring bears our family coat of arms,” the abbot whispered. “The Rambecks are an old family, and when we are gone, the family will die out.” He looked at Simon in despair. “Do you understand? This madman will stop at nothing. First he killed the apothecary’s assistant because he apparently knew too much; then young Vitalis when he came to the defense of his master. I had to give him the hosts.”

“How could the sorcerer be certain they were the real hosts?” Simon asked incredulously. “You could have given him anything, and-”

“That’s the reason he demanded the monstrance, too; don’t you understand, you imbecile?” Kuisl snorted, looking up angrily at the ceiling where the crocodile was still swinging in the breeze. “His Excellency had to bring the sorcerer the monstrance as proof.”

Rambeck nodded. “On Monday night right after the mass, I took the monstrance and hid it in the fireplace here in my brother’s house. Those were the instructions. Then Virgilius was to be released and the empty monstrance left in the fireplace.” He laughed softly. “No one would have noticed a thing. I could have simply placed other hosts in the silver monstrance and smuggled it back into the chapel on the day of the festival, in the same way as I stole it.”

“Unfortunately, Count Wartenberg demanded entrance to the chapel the following morning to pray. So the plan was discovered.” Simon rubbed his sweaty arms. He’d begun to shiver, and not just because his jacket was soaked from the thunderstorm. Disgusted, he stared at the blackened ring finger still lying in the abbot’s lap.

“The madman didn’t keep his promise,” the medicus finally said. “Your brother is still missing.”

“He… he didn’t come back, nor did the monstrance,” Maurus replied hesitantly. “Last night I was here looking for Virgilius, but then I heard sounds and was afraid.”

“That was just me,” the hangman replied in a low voice. “You should have just come in-it would have saved us all a lot of time and trouble.”

“You? But why…” The abbot seemed irritated at first but then continued in a sad tone. “When I got your news today I thought everything would work out now, but now it seems all is lost. The monstrance and the hosts have vanished, the position of abbot will go to Brother Jeremias, and my brother is presumably dead.” The abbot collapsed on the floor with a sob.

Magdalena took him gently by the shoulder as she would a small child. “You mustn’t give up,” she said softly. “Perhaps it will all work out in the end. My father has already spared many others from disaster.”

“And chopped the head off just as many on the gallows,” Kuisl responded. “I just hope you’ve been telling us the truth.”

Rambeck raised his head. “I swear by the Virgin and all the saints. This is the truth, and nothing but the truth.”

“Very well.” The hangman rose and knocked out his cold pipe against the chair. “Then let’s get to work now. Three days remain before the Festival of the Three Hosts. If we haven’t found the monstrance by then, there will be hell to pay, and if we haven’t caught the culprit, things will look very bad for Nepomuk. The Weilheim executioner is a bastard and doesn’t waste much time.”

“And my brother?” the abbot asked hopefully.

With his huge right hand, Kuisl picked up the blackened index finger from the monk’s lap and examined it carefully.

“A clean cut,” he said, in an appreciative tone. “The work of someone who isn’t finished with his victim, who doesn’t want him to bleed to death. It’s quite possible your brother is still alive and that we’ll be receiving another piece of him.”

The hangman placed the finger carefully back into the hand of the abbot, who had turned a ghostly white. As the hangman turned to leave, his massive frame filled the open doorway, blocking the moonlight, and for a short while the room was plunged into almost total darkness.

Nepomuk Volkmar stared at the walls of his cell in Weilheim, which were stained with blood and feces. He’d been imprisoned in this dreary dungeon for only a few hours, but he already remembered the monastery dairy in Andechs as almost a paradise.

This cell in the so-called Faulturm, or Rotting Tower, was a square hole eight paces deep and accessible only by a ladder. After the bailiffs drew up the ladder and closed the trapdoor, Nepomuk crouched in a corner, trying not to think about what awaited him in the next few days. The dungeon was just wide enough for him to stretch out his legs in the filthy straw, which crawled with fleas, lice, and other vermin. The cell smelled so strongly of garbage that Nepomuk felt like he had to vomit for the first few hours.

The worst, though, were the rats.

They came out of dozens of invisible holes in the stone, crawling over his arms and legs and fighting near his feet over a few moldy crusts of bread that the guards had thrown down for him. Nepomuk had never liked rats-there were people who believed they carried disease-and in this dungeon, he came to hate them even more. Their shining eyes made them look evil and intelligent, and their squeals sounded like the high-pitched voices shouting for his painful, slow death.

You are a warlock, Nepomuk. The Weilheim hangman will torture you with glowing red tongs; he’ll pull your limbs until they are wrenched out of their sockets; he’ll pull out your fingernails one by one; and in the end, he’ll commit you to the fire, Nepomuk, and you’ll scream as you burn to death.

Nepomuk tried to shake off the nightmare. Sitting in the dark, he’d lost all sense of time. What time was it? Midnight? Dawn? The trip in the oxcart from Andechs to Weilheim had taken perhaps three or four hours at a walking pace through the villages where people stood at the side of the road gawking at the box with the sorcerer. Peeking through cracks in the box, Nepomuk studied the faces of farmers watching the strange procession with a mixture of disgust, fear, and excitement. Many had crossed themselves and made signs to ward off evil.

Nepomuk couldn’t help thinking of his last visit with Jakob Kuisl. His friend told him not to give up hope, but how could he find hope in this hell? And what could a dishonorable executioner from Schongau do if the Weilheim district judge personally-not to mention the abbot of Andechs, the prior, even the whole world-wanted to send him to the scaffold? Nepomuk closed his eyes and fled to dreams of better days. It helped him distance himself somewhat from his anxiety, until these memories turned bloody as well…

It’s winter, near Breisach on the Upper Rhine. He and Jakob are together on a battlefield, surrounded by corpses buried under the snow, forming little mounds on the otherwise barren countryside. All day long they ride through destroyed, forsaken villages and burned cities, where stooped-over men pull oxcarts full of corpses through the streets-victims of the Plague. These men are often the only living things in an otherwise empty world. Nepomuk has read the Bible and knows the prophesies of Saint John. Is this the apocalypse? Sometimes he wonders why he and Jakob don’t turn into animals like so many others. It’s probably their long conversations in the evening around the fire-about the laws of mechanics, medicine, and morals-that save them, or the many books they rescue from the charred ruins, or the faith Nepomuk feels, kneeling before a desecrated altar in a small village church. While Nepomuk prays, Jakob waits outside. The son of the Schongau executioner doesn’t want to pray to a God that permits all this to happen. Jakob says he believes in his reason and the law, and nothing else.

But when Nepomuk finally emerges from the church with his reverent mien, he thinks he sees something like a glimmer of envy in his friend’s eyes.

A scraping sound overhead startled Nepomuk from his reveries. When the monk looked up, he saw a slender crack of light that grew larger and larger. Someone was opening the trapdoor, and evidently dawn was just breaking outside.

Even the dim light was enough to blind Nepomuk. Blinking, he held his hand over his eyes. After a while he was able to make out about a half dozen faces staring down from far above, not guards but strangers clothed in the simple garb of peasants and workmen. Some of them thought they’d seen Nepomuk the day before as he was pulled out of the box amid the raucous cries of the mob and led into the Rotting Tower.

“Hey. Is he still alive?” asked one man with a face as round as a full moon. “He isn’t moving, and I can’t see anything. I want my money back if he’s not alive anymore.”

“Throw down a rock, and then you’ll see,” said a bearded man beside him. “But be careful not to hit his head-we’d miss a beautiful execution.”

The others laughed, and Nepomuk could hear children cry out among them. When he saw a glowing object hurtling toward him, he quickly dodged to one side, scraping his shoulder on the rough rock wall. Blinded with pain, he screamed as the torch fell to the ground beside him, flickered in the damp straw, and fortunately went out.

“Look how ugly he is,” shouted the man with the moon face. “The soldiers were right-he really looks like a fat toad.”

“Hey, sorcerer,” a woman taunted. “Can you fly? Fly up to us. Or have you lost your broom?”

Once again the crowd hooted and hollered. Nepomuk buried his head in his hands, trying to ignore everything around him, but then another object was hurled down at him. This time it was a heavy clod of clay that hit him on the back. Pain shot through his body. Stones followed, along with a few soggy turnips and cabbages, then a hail of all kinds of projectiles.

“Here, eat this, you fat toad,” a woman taunted. “Eat it so you can grow big and strong for the torture.”

“Get out of here! Go to hell!” The deep voice that spoke now came from a man accustomed to giving orders. “Just stop. You’re going to kill him for me.”

The crowd murmured, but the bombardment ended. “We paid good money to see the sorcerer,” a bearded man complained. “And now we’re not even allowed to throw things at him?”

Nepomuk looked up again. The torch tossed onto the straw had gone out, but in the dim light at the top of the shaft, he could make out the outline of a person dressed entirely in black. His wavy hair, however, was combed straight back and snow-white, as if the man had aged far before his time. He was perhaps forty and wore a tight jerkin that highlighted his broad back and strong arms. He looked into the hole, holding the torch down so that for a moment Nepomuk could look him in the face. The man’s eyes flashed red just like those of the rats sharing Nepomuk’s cell. He inspected his victim like an animal handed over for slaughter, and Nepomuk instinctively recoiled.

“Still looks to be in good shape,” he mumbled. “Thank God.” Then he turned to the spectators, who were no doubt jostling him for a better look. “Just don’t mess up my work,” he growled. “If you kill him, you’ll owe me-and I promise it will cost you dearly. Do you hear?”

“Very well, Master Hans,” a timid voice replied. “We… we won’t do that; but he’s a sorcerer, after all. Certainly a few clods of earth won’t hurt him.”

“Nonsense,” the white-haired man growled. “Believe me, I know these sorcerers. Once you throw them into the hole, they scream and bleed just as we do, and so far none has ever flown away on me.”

He cast one last glance down at Nepomuk as if trying to calculate what he would earn flaying this body, then he shoved the cover back over the hole. The crack of light became smaller until finally the cell was once again engulfed in darkness.

“Come back tomorrow, people,” Nepomuk could hear the man’s muffled voice say through the rotted wood overhead. “If it’s up to the district judge, we’ll start the interrogation tomorrow morning, and for one kreutzer each, I’ll let you into the yard so you can hear the sorcerer scream.”

The sound of footsteps faded until finally the only thing to be heard was the squeaking of the rats.

Tomorrow, Nepomuk. Tomorrow they’ll pull out your nails and crush your legs. Sleep well, Nepomuk. Dream of heaven, because what starts tomorrow is hell.

The monk, once a hangman himself, turned on his side and cried like a small child. He knew that what he’d seen in the red eyes of the Weilheim executioner was his own death.

That’s how Nepomuk got to know Master Hans.