The Dark Monk (14 page)

Benedikta nodded. “The Premonstratensian canons. We’re at the monastery in Steingaden. As we were fleeing from the robbers, you hit your head against a tree. I put you on the horse and brought you here—it was only a few miles.”

“But the men…the voices…” Simon could feel the stabbing pain in his head getting worse. Benedikta looked down at him sympathetically, and he felt how he was starting to blush. He must be a pathetic sight: pale, bandaged up, and dressed only in a dirty linen shirt.

“What voices?” she asked.

“When I was unconscious…Who helped me back on the horse?”

Benedikta laughed. “It was me! But if it makes you feel any better, it was the monks who undressed you later.”

Simon smiled. “If it had been you, I would surely have remembered.”

She raised her eyebrows in feigned indignation and turned to leave. “Before we cross the boundaries of decency, it would probably be better if we stop and think about why we are actually here,” she said. “The abbot is waiting to see us, but naturally, only if your injury permits,” she added with a slightly derisive smile. “I’ll wait outside for you.”

The door closed, but Simon lay still a moment to collect his thoughts. This woman…confused him. When he finally got up and dressed, the headache was still bothering him, but after checking the bandage with his hands, he could see that the monks had done their work well. He could feel a neat suture; eventually a little scar above the hairline would be all that remained.

The medicus carefully opened the door and was at once blinded by the dazzling winter light. The sky was blue, the sun was shining, and the snow sparkled and glittered in such bright light that it took a while for his eyes to adjust. Then he looked out at the largest construction site he had ever seen.

Before him lay the Steingaden Monastery—or rather, what was being rebuilt in new splendor after the attack by the Swedes. Simon had heard that the current abbot, Augustin Bonenmayr, had ambitious plans, but only now could he see with his own eyes just how ambitious they were. Tall newly built structures stood all around. Many of the buildings sported new roof timbers, most were still covered with scaffolding, and white-robed monks and numerous workers scurried back and forth with trowels and wheelbarrows full of mortar. On Simon’s left, three men were calling loudly back and forth to one another as they tugged on a pulley, and somewhat farther away, an oxcart approached on a newly paved road, bringing freshly cut boards. The air smelled of resin and mortar.

Seeing Simon’s astonishment, Benedikta explained what was going on. “One of the foremen showed me around a bit. In the area where we were sleeping, they are building a new tavern, and right next to it will be the Latin school…” She pointed to a small building on the other side of the park. “There’s even a plan to build a theater here.” She walked ahead as she continued speaking. “I had a talk with the prior this morning. Abbot Bonenmayr plans to make the monastery the most beautiful in the entire region—at least as beautiful as the one in Rottenbuch, he says. He’s over there in the abbey and will receive us at noon.”

All that Simon could do was nod and jog along behind her. Benedikta had taken charge of everything as a matter of course, and Simon could see now why her brother would seek her advice. Behind her refined facade, Benedikta had an extremely direct way about her. He thought about the pistol and the shots she had fired the previous afternoon.

They met the abbot in the cloister between the abbey and the church. Augustin Bonenmayr was a gaunt man with a narrow face. On his nose he wore a pince-nez rimmed in brass, which he was using at the moment to study frescoes in a passageway leading from the chapel. In one arm he was carrying a bundle of parchments, and on his belt dangled a gigantic bundle of keys, along with a plumb line and a carpenter’s square. He looked more like a master builder than the leader of a great monastery.

When he heard the footsteps of the newcomers, he turned around to greet Simon and Benedikta.

“Ah, the young lady with the question! I have been informed of your arrival,” he said, removing the pince-nez. His deep voice resounded through the cloister. “And you must be young Fronwieser.” The abbot approached the medicus with a warm smile and extended his hand. Like all members of the Premonstratensian Order, he wore a white tunic, and a purple sash around his waist identified him as the abbot of the monastery. Simon knelt down and kissed a golden signet ring decorated with a cross.

“If you will permit me to say it,” Simon mumbled, still kneeling, “I have never seen such a magnificent monastery.”

Augustin Bonenmayr laughed and helped him to his feet. “Indeed, we shall rebuild everything—the mill, the brewery, a school, and of course, an abbey. We intend this to be a place of pilgrimage for the many who seek the closeness of God.”

“I am certain that Steingaden will be a showpiece in the Priests’ Corner,” Benedikta said.

The abbot smiled. “People again feel the need for places worthy of a pilgrimage, places where we can feel just how great God really is.” He stepped out of the chapel into the cloister. “But you have not come to talk about pilgrimages, have you? I have heard that you are here on a far sadder mission.”

Simon nodded, then briefly stated the purpose of their visit. “Perhaps the reason for the priest’s death has something to do with the history of the Saint Lawrence Church.”

The abbot frowned and turned to Benedikta. “Do you really think your brother was poisoned because of some dark secret having to do with his church? Isn’t that a bit far-fetched?”

Before Benedikta could answer, Simon interrupted. “Your Excellency,” he said matter-of-factly, “it is said that the Saint Lawrence Church is the property of your church. Are there any building plans? Or does someone know at least who the former owner was?”

Augustin Bonenmayr rubbed the bridge of his nose where the pince-nez had rested. “The monastery owns so many properties that I really don’t know about each individual one, but perhaps we can find something in our archives. Follow me.”

They walked along the cloister wall toward the abbey. On the second floor, they came to an unmarked, low door with two huge locks. As soon as the abbot opened them, Simon was confronted with the musty odor of old parchment. The room was at least twelve feet high. Individual shelves were recessed into niches and filled to the ceiling with books, folios, and rolls of parchment bearing the seal of the monastery. The room itself was covered with cobwebs, and a thin layer of dust had settled on a finely polished walnut table in the middle.

“Our centuries-old monastery library,” Bonenmayr said. “A miracle that it has survived and not fallen victim to fire. As you can see, we are rarely here these days, but the order is still the same. Wait…”

Taking a ladder from a corner, he climbed to the top of the next-to-last shelf.

“Lawrence Church, Lawrence Church…” he muttered to himself, looking around at the individual shelves. Finally, he called out in surprise. “Well, good heavens, here it is right in front of me.” He came down with a tattered roll of parchment with bits of red sealing wax still clinging to it.

Simon looked at the broken seal in surprise. “The roll has evidently been opened already,” the medicus said, passing his finger over the edges of the parchment, “and not too long ago. The wax is still shiny where the pieces broke off.”

Augustin Bonenmayr examined the brittle parchment thoughtfully. “Indeed,” he mumbled. “It is strange. After all, the roll is several hundred years old. Oh well, but…” He walked over to the table and unrolled the parchment. “But perhaps it was just recently copied because of the bad condition it’s in. Let’s have a look.”

Each standing to one side of the abbot, Benedikta and Simon stared at a document that was beginning to crumble at the edges. The writing was faded, but still legible.

“Here it is.” Bonenmayr pointed with his right index finger at a passage in the middle. “The monastery of Steingaden purchased the following properties in the year of our Lord 1289: two properties in Warenberg, two in Brugg, one in Dietlried, three in Edenhofen, one in Altenstadt, and…Indeed, that’s the Saint Lawrence Church in Altenstadt!” Bonenmayr whistled appreciatively. “Really a big transaction. It cost us two hundred and twenty-five denarii. That must have been a tidy sum back then.”

“And who was the seller?” Simon persisted.

The abbot’s finger moved up to the top of the parchment. “A certain Friedrich Wildgraf.”

“What was he?” Simon asked. “A merchant? A patrician? Please tell us.”

The abbot shook his head.

“If what I see here is correct, Friedrich Wildgraf was no less a person than the provincial master of the Order of the Knights Templar in the German Empire, an extremely powerful man at the time.”

Bonenmayr raised his eyes and looked into Simon’s petrified face.

“What is the matter?” he asked anxiously. “Are you not well? Perhaps I should explain to you first who the Templars were.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Simon said. “We know about them.”

Just half an hour later they left the monastery. From a safe hiding place, a figure watched as they disappeared with their horses into the trees. Turning away, the man fingered a rosary in his sweaty hands once again, one pearl after the other. Many years had passed, but now he felt they had almost reached their goal. God had chosen them.

“
Deus lo vult,
” he whispered, then fell to his knees to pray.

5

A
N UNPLEASANT ODOR
brought Jakob Kuisl back from his nebulous nightmares and into the present. A musty smell of dust and earth, somewhat moldy and damp, like in a trench, he thought.

Where am I? What happened?

The memory came surging back—and with it, the anger and pain. He had failed to notice the third man! He must have come down the stairway to the crypt behind him. The stranger, who smelled of violets, had nearly strangled him with a leather strap. Jakob Kuisl knew that people who were strangled lost consciousness in a minute’s time and that death followed just a few minutes after that. He knew this well, as he himself had executed some people in this fashion. Some of those condemned to death at the stake had paid him to strangle them and spare them the painful death by fire. In the heavy smoke, onlookers couldn’t see that the person in the flames was already dead.

Jakob Kuisl remembered the poison dagger that paralyzed him down in the crypt in a matter of minutes. Some interesting poison that he had never heard of. The plant or berry no doubt came from another part of the world. Carefully, the hangman tried to wiggle his fingers and toes. They moved—a good sign. The effect of the poison, whatever it was, had started to wear off, and for the first time, he was able to open his eyes now.

And saw nothing.

He blinked a few times. Was he blind? Had the men blindfolded him? Or was it really so dark in this cellar? He tried to reach up and touch his face.

He couldn’t.

After a few inches, his hand bumped into something cold and hard. He tried the other hand, but the same thing happened. He tried to sit up, but his head bumped into a stone slab. He broke out in a sweat, and his mouth felt dry. He turned this way and that, but on all sides there was nothing but cold stone. He felt his heart beginning to race and struggled to control his breathing.

They’ve buried me alive. In the sarcophagus…

Jakob Kuisl counted his heartbeats. He struggled to breathe regularly, and finally he felt how the time between heartbeats was lengthening until it was beating normally again. And then he began to scream.

“Hey! Can anyone hear me? I’m here!”

He sensed that his voice reached no farther than the stone slab, where it was completely swallowed up. Considering the huge weight of the stone, it was likely that even someone standing directly next to the sarcophagus would not be able to hear him. He had to help himself.

Perhaps Jakob Kuisl could have raised the slab with his strong arms, but the cover was so close to him that he couldn’t raise his arms any higher than his chest. Perhaps he could…

Taking a deep breath, the hangman pressed his whole body upward so that his broad forehead touched the slab.

It felt as if he were trying to push his way through a wall with his head.

The veins on his temples bulged, and blood surged through his head. He pressed and pumped, his muscles as hard as rock. He could hear his bones crack, but the slab was as unmoving as if had been cemented in place.

Then, finally, he heard a soft grating sound.

A ray of light appeared in a narrow crack—actually, not a ray of light at all, but a darkness not quite as dark as the interior of the sarcophagus. He continued pushing his upper body against the stone, knowing that if he gave up now he wouldn’t regain the strength to raise the slab again for a long time. Perhaps forever. His lower back felt like a mighty oak that was ready to splinter, but finally he moved the slab far enough that he could raise his arms to his chest and push them up against the cold stone above him.

With a loud cry, he pushed away the six-hundred-pound stone.

The slab hovered above him for a moment like a serving tray, then tipped to one side and crashed to the stone floor, where it broke into pieces. Like a corpse rising from the dead, Jakob Kuisl sat up in the coffin. His body was covered with stone dust and crushed bone. Human bones and scraps of cloth were scattered all over the room, and in one corner lay the slab with the inscription.

Jakob Kuisl climbed out of the sarcophagus and reached for the marble slab. Only now did he notice that he was still holding in his left hand a scrap of the black cowl he had seized just before losing consciousness. He held it up to his nose and smelled a fragrance of violets, cinnamon, and something else that he couldn’t quite place.

He would never forget this fragrance.

With the scrap of cloth and the marble tablet in hand, he climbed out of the crypt. They would find out that it was a mistake to pick a fight with the hangman.