The Dark Monk

by Oliver Pötzsch

  “Did you notice anything out of the ordinary during your renovations?” Kuisl asked. “Drawings? Figures? Old paintings?”

  The mason’s face brightened. “Yes, there was something unusual! Up in the balcony, the wall was full of bright-red crosses. The whole left-hand wall was covered with them!”

  “What did they look like?”

  “Well, different from the cross of Our Savior. They were rather…May I?” Baumgartner pointed to one of the sharp knives on the table. When the hangman nodded, Baumgartner carved a cross into the wood. The arms were of equal length and became narrower toward the center. The mason nodded with satisfaction. “They looked something like that.”

  “And what did you do with the crosses?” Kuisl continued.

  “It was strange. The priest told us to paint them over. That was shortly after he got so upset about the cellar.”

  “The cellar?” The hangman frowned.

  “Well, on New Year’s Day, while moving the slabs, Johannes Steiner noticed that under one grave marker there was a hollow space. We then moved the cover aside. We needed three men to do that—it was a huge thing—and from there, steps led down below.”

  Jakob Kuisl nodded, lighting his filled pipe with a glowing wood chip. Baumgartner looked at him with growing enthusiasm.

  “Did you go down into the cellar, too?” Kuisl asked, puffing on his pipe.

  “No…Only the priest went down, and soon he came back all excited. The next day he told us to paint over the crosses, and we did.”

  The hangman nodded slowly. “Are you sure none of you went down?” he asked again.

  “I swear by the Virgin Mary, no!” Baumgartner cried. “But why is that so important?”

  Jakob Kuisl stood up and walked to the door. “Forget it. You can go now.”

  Peter Baumgartner straightened up, relieved. He didn’t know why Kuisl was asking all these questions, but at least it had saved him half a guilder. Besides that, he was happy he could leave the executioner’s house. He was sure he could see evil lurking in every corner of the room. Still, he was itching to ask just one last question.

  “Kuisl?”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “This pipe of yours. How does it taste? It smells…well, really not so bad.”

  Jakob Kuisl expelled a huge cloud of smoke that almost completely enveloped his head.

  “Don’t get started with it,” his voice rang out from behind the cloud. “It’s like with drinking. You enjoy it, but you can’t ever quit.”

  When the mason had left, Magdalena came down the narrow staircase into the main room. After the strenuous night, being thrown out of the Hainmiller house and meeting Benedikta Koppmeyer, she had lain down for a rest and had had weird dreams in which Simon and Benedikta rode past her in a sleigh, laughing and waving. Simon’s face was a grotesque mask that dissolved and dripped to the ground like melting snow. She was finally awakened by Peter Baumgartner’s scream. Through the thin floor, she overheard the rest of their conversation.

  “Why do you think the priest wanted to have the crosses painted over?” she asked as she descended the staircase. “Do you think they had something to do with the crypt? And by the way, what did you find down there, anyway?”

  “It would be better for you not to know,” her father grumbled, “or you’ll just start snooping around again.”

  “But, Father,” she said with a look that had always bewitched him since she was a little girl, “if you don’t tell me, Simon will. So tell me!”

  “You’d better keep a close eye on your Simon.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “You know exactly what I mean. He’s doing more than just making eyes at this woman from the city.”

  Magdalena blushed. “How can you say something like that? You have hardly ever seen them together,” she cried. “And besides…I don’t care who Simon flirts around with, anyway.”

  “Then it’s all right.” He walked over to the stove and threw another piece of wood on the fire, sending sparks into the air. “It’s much more important for us to learn who the workers were in the church.”

  Magdalena had trouble focusing her thoughts on anything but Simon. They had been a couple for more than a year, even if they couldn’t act like one openly. She cursed her father for suggesting that Simon might have something to do with another woman.

  “Why are you concerned with the workers?” she said finally, trying to pick up the thread of the conversation. “You certainly don’t believe that—”

  “You heard it,” her father interrupted. “The workers opened the crypt, and even if Baumgartner swears up and down that none of them were down below, I don’t believe it. Someone poked around down there.”

  “And then killed the priest?” Magdalena gasped.

  “Rubbish!” Kuisl exclaimed, spitting on the floor, something he only dared to do when his wife, Anna Maria, wasn’t home. At the present, she was up at the market in town with the twins.

  “Naturally, none of them is responsible for what happened to the fat priest,” he continued. “But they weren’t able to keep their mouths shut, either. We’ve got to find who they spoke to, and I’m sure we’ll have the murderer then.”

  Magdalena nodded. “The murderer learned about the crypt and was afraid Koppmeyer would find out too much, and that’s why he killed him. That could be what happened,” she said, mulling it over.

  The hangman opened the door so that clouds of tobacco smoke and fumes from the stove could drift out, and an ice-cold breeze blew through the room.

  “So what are you waiting for?” he asked.

  “What do you mean?” Magdalena said, with some irritation.

  “You wanted to help me snoop around, so go find the workers who were in the Saint Lawrence Church and talk with them. Talking with men and making eyes at them is something you can do, can’t you?”

  Magdalena grimaced at him, then put on her cape and walked out into the cold.

  When Simon walked in the front door, he realized it would probably be some time before he would be able to continue reading the little book about the Templars. Sitting on the bench by the stove were three citizens of Schongau, all of whom looked like they needed more than just a few words of consolation and a cheese compress. Simon knew them all. Two were farmers from the area whom he had often seen in the marketplace. The third was the Schongau blacksmith’s journeyman. He was coughing up reddish-yellow mucus, which he thoughtfully spat into some brown rags. Nevertheless, some kept spattering onto the wooden floorboards, which were only sparsely covered with dirty reeds. The faces of the patients were drawn, beads of sweat stood out on their foreheads, and all of them had dark rings around their eyes and faces the color of wax.

  To drive away the poisonous miasma, old Fronwieser had been burning lavender and balm, and it smelled like Easter mass in the little room. Simon didn’t think these vapors did any good. He had read, in fact, that diseases were carried by dirt and bodily fluids, but his father considered this to be just newfangled nonsense. As the blacksmith’s journeyman on his left went into a new fit of coughing, Simon cautiously moved one step to the side.

  “Isn’t it nice that the young gentleman finally showed up. What kept you so long in Altenstadt? A nice little supper with the priest?” Bonifaz Fronwieser entered from the adjacent room holding a smoking pine chip and a few more sprigs of lavender. At one time, as a dashing young army surgeon in the Great War, he had been an imposing figure and had made eyes with many a pretty girl, but now, stooped over with thinning gray hair, he looked older than his fifty years, and all that remained of his former self was his piercing, alert eyes. And his harsh tone.

  “I’ve been waiting for you for hours!” he snapped softly enough that the three patients on the bench couldn’t hear. “I have to pay a visit to Master Hardenberg, a member of the city council. He’s come down with it, too! And instead, here I am fooling around with a few farmers who can only afford to pay me with a few eggs, at
best!”

  He poked his withered index finger at Simon’s chest. “Tell me the truth—you’ve been keeping company with the hangman again and sticking your nose into those filthy books! People are already gossiping, and you’re giving them a reason to.”

  Simon rolled his eyes. Bonifaz Fronwieser hated the hangman, who he thought was corrupting his son with books and his unorthodox methods of healing.

  “Father, the priest—” he said, trying to interrupt his father’s harangue, but his father cut him off nevertheless.

  “Aha, so that’s it! No doubt you were partying with the fat old codger, eh? Hope you enjoyed your meal, at least,” he croaked. “His housekeeper at least is supposed to be a good cook!”

  “He’s dead, Father,” Simon said softly.

  “What?” Bonifaz Fronwieser seemed irritated. For a moment, he wanted to continue his litany of complaints, but now he hesitated. He hadn’t reckoned with this news.

  “Koppmeyer is dead, so there were some things that had to be done,” Simon repeated.

  “I’m…I’m really sorry,” the older physician grumbled after a short pause. “Did he have this fever, too?”

  Simon eyed the three patients, who looked at him partly out of curiosity and partly out of fear. Then he shook his head.

  “No…It was something else. I’ll tell you later.”

  “Very well,” his father grumbled, falling back into his familiar role. “Then get to work. As you can see, there are still a few of the living here and they need to be treated.”

  Simon sighed, then helped his father in examining the patients. There wasn’t a lot to do: fetch a few dried herbs for a potion, listen to a few chests, check tongues, the usual sniffing and observing of urine samples. Simon had no illusions—most of this was just cheap playacting performed to give sick people false hope and take their money. Even doctors with university degrees couldn’t usually tell very much. The two Fronwiesers were just as helpless in the face of this fever, which had been spreading around Schongau for a full two weeks and had killed a dozen people. People were getting chills and pain in the joints, and some died suddenly overnight. Others survived the first onslaught, only to be overcome with terrible coughing fits soon after.

  It made Simon furious to stand by helpless in the face of this epidemic. His father, on the other hand, seemed to have resigned himself to it. The relationship between them was tense, to put it mildly. As the town doctor of Schongau, Bonifaz Fronwieser hoped his son would someday follow in his footsteps. But Simon didn’t want anything to do with his father’s old-fashioned methods—enemas, bloodletting, sniffing old men’s urine. The young medicus preferred to occupy himself with the books that the Schongau hangman was always lending to him. He had long ago worked his way through the box of leather folios that Jakob Kuisl had given him as a present almost a year ago, and he longed for more. Even now, as he was occupied with treating the three patients, he couldn’t help but think again about the theories of controversial scientists. Currently, he was rereading the work of an Englishman named William Harvey, which dealt with the circulation of blood in the human body. Was it possible that blood consisted of tiny animalcules…?

  “Why are you standing around daydreaming, you good-for-nothing!” his father snapped, interrupting his reveries. “Here, take some blood from Johannes Steringer! I’m going to the alderman now. Bleeding is something you can do by yourself!”

  He handed Simon the sharp little stiletto they used for slitting a patient’s veins. Then, after briefly wishing them a good recovery, he set out on his way. “And don’t let them put you off with a few eggs and a loaf of bread,” he scolded Simon as he walked past him.

  Simon looked down at Johannes Steringer, who was sitting on the bench in front of him, coughing and shaking and spitting up reddish-yellow phlegm into a ratty handkerchief. He knew the blacksmith’s journeyman from a few previous house calls, a strong, solid fellow who was slumped over now, hardly able to move, and staring blankly into space. The idea of letting blood from this sick, weakened body seemed outright foolish to Simon. He knew that bloodletting was a tried-and-tested remedy for almost any sickness; nevertheless, he put the stiletto aside.

  “It’s all right, Steringer,” he said. “You can go home now. Have your wife make you some sage broth and lie down next to the stove until it gets better.”

  “And the bloodletting?” the journeyman gasped.

  “We’ll do that another time. For now, you need your blood. Go home.”

  Steringer nodded and set out for home, as did the two farmers. Simon gave each of them a little jar of wild thyme. As payment, the young medicus pocketed a few old discolored coins and half a leg of smoked ham. He thanked them and closed the door behind them as they left.

  Simon took a deep breath. Finally, he had time to devote to the little book the patrician had given him. He sat down excitedly on the bench next to the stove and leafed through the yellowing pages.

  There was a lot to learn about the rise and fall of the Templars. He read that they had even lent money to the Pope and that they had been almost invincible in battle, a band with strange rites and customs whose members had sworn allegiance to one another, who had flung themselves headlong into battle for God, and who were even admired by their enemies for their bravery. He read about the great battles in the Holy Land, the destruction of Jerusalem, the flight of the Templars to Cyprus, and their continuing power in Europe. He was astonished to learn that, in the end, the knightly order owned more than ten thousand castles and estates, from England to Byzantium! Had there also been a branch here in Schongau? Which Templar’s bones had they found under the St. Lawrence Church? Had he left a message to posterity on the marble slab?

  Two witnesses who prophesy…the beast that arises from the depths that fights, conquers, and kills them.

  But even after studying the book a long time, Simon still couldn’t find the strange saying engraved on the marble slab in the coffin. The book also said nothing about the Templars’ legendary treasure. Was it possible it had never existed? Simon rubbed his tired eyes and went to bed. The wind continued whistling through the shutters, while in his room a thin layer of ice slowly formed over the bedposts.

  3

  MAGDALENA KNOCKED AT the door of the carpenter Balthasar Hemerle’s house and listened for the sound of steps inside. It was early in the morning, but she had already visited the masons and the stonecutter in Altenstadt the day before. The men all looked at her distrustfully at first—nobody was comfortable with the daughter of the hangman at their door. It was quite possible that her presence might make the cattle sick the next day. When she explained that she wanted to ask them about the dead priest in Altenstadt and the renovation work in the St. Lawrence Church, they let her in reluctantly, often under the suspicious eyes of their wives. Magdalena was not just the hangman’s daughter, but with her thick black hair, bushy eyebrows, and full lips, she was also an attractive woman who was quite capable of exciting passions. She knew very well that men stared at her behind her back. Still, none of the young fellows ever asked her for a dance. No one except Simon.

  Her conversations on the previous evening had not revealed anything new. All the workers agreed they had found the crypt, but only the priest had gone down into it. He looked pale when he came back, went to fetch some incense, and burned it there, and then immediately had the entrance sealed. They also mentioned the strange crosses on the walls in the balcony, but they all said they hadn’t told anyone else about it. The visit to the carpenter’s house was Magdalena’s last try. Balthasar Hemerle led her into the living room. He was a large, good-natured man with a full, shaggy beard, a twinkle in his eye, and a face distorted by pockmarks. Unlike many other men in town, he was never troubled by the fact that Magdalena was just a dishonorable hangman’s daughter. On the contrary, he had smiled at her at the last church fair and even tipped his large carpenter’s hat mischievously to her by way of greeting. But Magdalena knew that he made eyes at other girls, t
oo, and his wife had scolded him once or twice about it. Fortunately, Katharina happened to be at the market in Schongau at the moment.

  “Well, young lady, what do you need from me?” Hemerle grinned, pushing a mug of mulled wine across the table to her. “Does the city need a new gallows? The old one looks pretty rotted, don’t you think? I’ll bet that it will snap at the next hanging, and your father will look like a damn fool.”

  Magdalena smiled and shook her head, sipping on the invigorating drink. She took another gulp and then finally got around to explaining why she was there. Balthasar Hemerle looked at her for a long time, thinking about it.

  “The word going around is that the fat old Koppmeyer was poisoned. Does this have anything to do with that?”

  Magdalena shrugged. “That’s just what we want to find out.”

  Hemerle nodded. “I don’t know how you have gotten involved in this,” he began, “but it’s true that none of us went down into the crypt. And the workers painted over the crosses just as they were told.”

  “Have you spoken with anyone about it?” Magdalena asked as she kept sipping on her mulled wine. She could feel its warming effects; she absolutely could not empty the whole mug, or she’d never make it home again.

  “Who could we have talked to?” Hemerle said. “But wait…” He paused. “We were all talking about it last Sunday after church when our group was sitting at our regular table at Strasser’s Tavern in Altenstadt. The priest had seemed nervous delivering his homily, and we did notice a few strangers in the tavern.”

  “Who were they?” Magdalena could feel her heart beginning to race, and not just from the strong wine.

  “Strangers…I don’t know,” Hemerle grumbled. “Didn’t look at them that closely. They sat at the next table with black cowls, like monks, and didn’t even take off their hoods.”

  “Did you notice anything else?”

  The carpenter knitted his brow. Finally, he seemed to remember something.