The Dark Monk

by Oliver Pötzsch

  “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.

  2

  WITHOUT SAYING A word, the hangman, Simon, and the two women climbed up the narrow stairway from the crypt. When they got to the main room of the rectory, Magdalena stared expectantly at Simon and only then did he begin to tell his story. But after just a few words, he hesitated. In all the excitement, he had forgotten to ask who the beautiful woman was sitting next to Magdalena. She was not someone from the village
—that much was certain. Magdalena noticed his questioning gaze.

  “I didn’t introduce you yet,” she said. “This is Benedikta Koppmeyer, the sister of Father Koppmeyer. She is looking for her brother.”

  Jakob Kuisl, who until now had been puffing glumly on his pipe, began to cough. His face was hard to make out behind thick clouds of smoke. Embarrassed, the medicus looked to one side. After a short while, Benedikta began to speak.

  “What about my brother? There’s something going on. I can see it in your faces.”

  Finally, Simon pulled himself together and began to speak hesitantly. “Well, your brother is…how shall I say—”

  “He’s dead,” Kuisl interrupted. “Dead and gone. Pray for him. He will need it.” Having said this, he stood and went outside. The creak of the door seemed to resound through the house for a long time as Simon struggled for words.

  Benedikta Koppmeyer’s face, already pale, seemed to become even more diaphanous as she stared at the medicus in disbelief. “Is it true?” she whispered. “Andreas is dead?”

  “What does this mean?” Magdalena asked now, too. “Simon, explain yourself!”

  Inwardly, Simon cursed the tactlessness of the dour, boneheaded hangman. He had seen him behave this way many times, yet Simon was always irritated by his coarse behavior, which was so unlike that of the Jacob Kuisl he knew who would spend hours poring over books or playing catch in the yard with his seven-year-old twins, Georg and Barbara.

  After some hesitation, the medicus began to recount the morning’s events. As he spoke, the priest’s sister seemed to get a hold of herself again. She listened intently, with clenched fists and a look that showed Simon that this elegant woman had dealt with other tragedies in her life before this.

  “I don’t know what’s going on here,” she said finally. “But it at least explains the letter my brother sent me. He wrote of a strange discovery and that he didn’t know whom to turn to. My brother and I”—she hesitated for a moment and closed her eyes briefly, her lips tightening into two narrow lines—“were very close, and this is not the first time he asked me for advice in an important matter. He always listened to his little sister,” she said, forcing a smile.

  “May I ask when exactly you received the letter?” Simon asked in a soft voice.

  “Three days ago…And I left at once.”

  “Where are you from?” Simon replied.

  Benedikta Koppmeyer looked at him in bewilderment. “Haven’t I mentioned that? I come from Landsberg, farther down the Lech River. My late husband had a wine business there, which I have been managing for several years.”

  And apparently not badly, Simon thought as he studied the elegant clothing of the merchant’s widow. Once again, he was struck by her delicate features, which were beginning to show the first signs of age. Her mouth was slightly austere and hard—this woman was accustomed to giving orders—but at the same time, her eyes exuded an almost childlike charm. The cut of her clothes befit the latest French fashion and her whole appearance exuded noblesse, something that Simon all too often missed in Schongau.

  He straightened up. “I assume you’d like to see your brother again,” he said.

  The merchant woman nodded, straightened up, and pulled her red hair into a bun. Finally, she followed the medicus outside. “Évidemment,” she whispered as she brushed past Simon in her flowing dress.

  The medicus was thrilled. The distinguished lady from Landsberg not only dressed in the French fashion, but she also knew how to speak French! What a remarkable woman!

  Magdalena hurried after them. If Simon had turned around, he would have noted the somber expression on her face. However, the medicus was still lost in thought about the elegant, urbane stranger.

  After a good hour, the three set out on their way back to Schongau. They had laid out Koppmeyer’s corpse in the charnel house next to the church, and Simon and Magdalena left his sister alone with her brother for a while. When Benedikta Koppmeyer returned, she still looked pale but had pulled herself together again.

  Jakob Kuisl had left, which didn’t surprise Simon very much. Many people had problems with the gruff, sometimes offensive nature of the executioner, but Simon knew him well enough by now to overlook that. He imagined that anyone who had hanged, beheaded, and quartered dozens of criminals in his lifetime just couldn’t ever be a humanitarian, too. Simon still had a clear memory of the last execution a little less than a year ago. One of the mercenaries responsible for the brutal murders of children in Schongau had met his end on the wheel. Jakob Kuisl had broken every bone in his body and then waited two more days to garrote him. During the whole procedure, with all the shouting, screaming, and crying, Kuisl had not shown a bit of emotion. No flinching, no trembling, nothing.

  They walked side by side in silence. Simon looked over at Benedikta Koppmeyer as she took her horse by the bridle and led it through the deep snow. She seemed lost in thought, obviously completely absorbed in grief over her dead brother. Simon did not dare to speak to her. Magdalena was silent, too, her eyes fixed straight ahead on the road. Simon tried to cheer her up once or twice, but her responses were surly and monosyllabic, and at last he gave up. What was wrong with her? Had he done something to offend her? He loved this girl, even if he knew that a marriage with the dishonorable hangman’s daughter was out of the question. His father kept trying to convince him to pursue a rich burgher’s daughter in Schongau. Simon was popular with the women in town. He dressed in the latest fashion, maintained a neat appearance, and always had a charming compliment on his lips. Women could overlook that he was a short man, only five feet tall, and he had had liaisons with a few of them in barns around town. Since he had met Magdalena, however, things were different. He was fascinated by this woman’s temperament, but also by her education and knowledge of medicinal and poisonous herbs, even when Magdalena’s stubbornness and occasional angry outbursts complicated their far-too-infrequent trysts.

  On the other hand, what woman was simple?

  After a short while, the forest gave way to open fields. Beyond that, the Lech River appeared like a green ribbon winding its way through the snow, and high on a hill, with the clear winter sky as a backdrop, stood the city of Schongau with its towers and walls. Simon felt relief as they passed through the city gate with its two sleepy guards. Benedikta, walking next to him, seemed more than exhausted. She had decided to seek quarters at the Goldener Stern Inn until the matter of her brother’s death was cleared up. The medicus wanted to talk her out of it, but a glance from her silenced him. The merchant’s widow did not look as if she would tolerate opposition.

  Simon’s thoughts returned to the crypt and the inscription on the coffin.

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

  Where had he seen these words before? Was it at the university in Ingolstadt? No, it wasn’t that long ago. In Schongau, then? In the city there were really only three places to find more books than just the Bible and a few farmers’ almanacs. The first was Simon’s bedroom, namely in a chest next to his bed, where he also liked to while away the hours during the day. The second was a small room in the executioner’s house where Jakob Kuisl kept a cabinet of books on herbs and poisons, but also writings about the latest therapies. The third, finally, was the heated library of the patrician Jakob Schreevogl, a book lover who had become Simon’s friend after the murders of the children last year, when the medicus had saved the life of the patrician’s daughter.

  Schreevogl…library…

  Something clicked in Simon’s mind.

  Without waiting for the women, he ran through the city gate, startling the two constables who had dozed off.

  “Where you going, Simon?” Magdalena called after him.

  “Have to…take care of…something…” Simon blurted out as he ran. Then he disappeared around the next corner.

  “Does he do that often?” Benedikta asked Magdalena as she walked along beside her.

  The hangman’s daughter shrug
ged. “You can ask him yourself. Sometimes I think I don’t really know him.”

  Simon ran down the Münzgasse, past the town hall. In the square behind that were rows of elegant patrician homes, three-story buildings with ornate balconies, stucco work, and colorful murals attesting to their owners’ prosperity. The city may have suffered during the Great War, but the city fathers had managed to keep themselves afloat in a new era. Payment of an exorbitant ransom had just barely managed to save Schongau from destruction by the Swedes. Enemy troops had burned down buildings on the outskirts of town, but the houses here in the market square still retained some of the splendor of past centuries when Schongau had been an important center of commerce. Only the crumbling plaster and peeling, faded paint gave evidence that the city on the river continued to waste away. Life continued elsewhere—in France, the Netherlands, perhaps even Munich and Augsburg—but certainly not in the Bavarian Priests’ Corner at the edge of the Alps.

  Although the sun hadn’t set yet, the streets were practically empty. People had retired to their homes and were warming themselves by the hearth in the main room or by the kitchen stove. Here and there, behind the glass windows of middle-class homes, a candle or oil lamp flickered. Simon’s goal was the three-story patrician house on the left belonging to the Schreevogls. As often as he could, he visited the alderman’s house in order to browse his well-stocked library. By now he was pretty certain this was where he had first read the words they also saw in the crypt. It must have caught his attention some time or other while he was browsing through the library.

  After he had rung twice, Agnes, the servant woman, appeared in the doorway and greeted him with a nod. Behind her, he could hear shrieks of joy. Clara Schreevogl came dashing toward him with outstretched arms. Ever since their adventure almost a year ago, Simon had become like an uncle to the ten-year-old orphan whom the Schreevogls had taken in and cared for like one of their own. She jumped into his arms, clinging to his jacket with her little hands.