The Dark Monk

by Oliver Pötzsch

  “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.