The Poisoned Pilgrim

by Oliver Pötzsch

  As Virgilius continued humming the automaton’s melody, Kuisl watched him cautiously, but Paul was still dangling over the void, crying.

  “It wasn’t Virgilius who dug up the dead monk in the cemetery; it was you, and you set fire to him and threw him in the well,” Kuisl thundered now at the abbot. “You were afraid we’d catch on to what he was doing. Admit it.”

  “That’s true,” Maurus smiled. “It seemed too dangerous to have you turn him in to the judge in Weilheim, so I set fire to the corpse of our dearly departed brother Quirin, who’d been suffering from consumption, and placed one of Virgilius’s walking sticks beside it. I even cut off Quirin’s ring finger so he would look just like Virgilius. After all, a corpse can’t commit a murder, can it?” He winked at the hangman. “Tell me how you figured it out.”

  “It was you yourself who raised my suspicion when you found the body in the well so quickly,” Kuisl replied. “Besides, how could a hunchback with a walking stick have dug up a grave? And there were no prints in the ground from a cane. The only thing I couldn’t figure out was this handkerchief.”

  The abbot looked bewildered. “What handkerchief?”

  “Alongside the grave we found a lace handkerchief with the initial A. My superstitious son-in-law thought it belonged to Aurora.”

  “Oh, that?” Rambeck laughed softly, shaking his head again. “I must have lost the handkerchief near the grave. A stands for abbot. Every abbot in this monastery receives such cloths, along with gloves, napkins, and other such frilly things. They all bear this insignia.”

  Virgilius’s humming finally stopped. The hunchbacked watchmaker’s eyes were still closed as he held the boy out in the rain like a sacrificial offering.

  “I… I understand,” Virgilius murmured suddenly as if in a trance. “I finally understand. There can be no new life until an old one dies. It all makes sense. You here, Maurus, are the messenger of Christ, and the hangman is a messenger from hell—and then this boy. Above all the boy. God sent him to me.”

  There was another blinding flash of lightning as Virgilius stepped just a bit closer to the opening. Solemnly, he held the crying child up to the black clouds.

  “O, God of vengeance, take this living sacrifice from me and give me back my Aurora,” he pleaded.

  Then he dropped the boy over the side.

  Like corpses, Magdalena and Simon lay motionless on the ground of the monastery garden, while Peter played atop the ivy-covered walls, undeterred by the steady drumbeat of rain. Behind them, the last section of the grotto had collapsed, sealing the entrance to the underworld off forever.

  Simon coughed and spat phlegm and water, but the cool rain had helped relieve his paralysis somewhat. Now he could even talk, though the words came out with a strange drawl. In faltering sentences, he told Magdalena what had happened in the passageways.

  “He took Paul with him,” he gasped. “Along with that damned Matthias. I… I knew right away that that fellow wasn’t to be trusted.”

  Magdalena shrugged sadly. “You’re right, but that doesn’t bring our son back. Even if he’s alive, he’s out there somewhere in this storm. If I only knew—” Suddenly she jumped up. “Of course. How could I forget?” she laughed. “This damned fear muddles my mind. They’ve surely gone up to the belfry.”

  Simon frowned. “The belfry?”

  Magdalena nodded vigorously. “Remember, Simon? It must have been Matthias who almost threw me off the tower. I presume I interrupted him setting up everything for his master’s great experiment. This time, they intend to carry it out. The lightning will surely strike the belfry.”

  She quickly stood up and called to Peter, who came running. Anxiously she eyed her husband on the ground. “Can you walk or would you rather…?”

  “Stay here while my youngest son is in the hands of a madman?” Simon croaked, struggling to get up. “Are you kidding? I’d rather crawl on all fours to that blasted bell tower.”

  “Then let’s go.” Magdalena pulled her husband to his feet, took Peter by the hand, and led them both quickly across the fields and meadows toward the monastery. Simon staggered and stumbled but, with Magdalena’s occasional help, was able to walk on his own. So they moved ahead faster than expected.

  “You may be right,” Simon gasped, pointing at the dark steeple in the distance that seemed to sway slightly in the storm. “If lightning strikes anywhere around here, it would be up there.”

  Magdalena crossed herself. “God forbid it comes to that.”

  Storm clouds still hung dark and heavy over the Holy Mountain, rain poured down, the storm raged like a wild beast, and hail flattened the fields of grain.

  Along the way they came across splintered branches and fruit trees knocked down by the storm. Clearly the harvest this year would be a disaster and people would go hungry again.

  A few minutes later they arrived at the outer monastery wall. Blown open by the wind, the gate was standing crooked on its hinges. Silently they ran through deserted streets, ankle-deep in mud. Here and there, lights could be seen burning in the farm buildings and in the monastery, and though Magdalena thought she saw anxious faces peering out from between the slats of the shutters, she hurried on.

  Briefly she thought of asking the abbot or some of the other monks for help. But the Andechs bailiffs were still after Simon, and she had to hope her father in any case was on his way to the church tower with some of Wartenberg’s soldiers. No doubt he would have figured out that Virgilius wanted to carry out his experiments up there.

  Climbing the final yards up the steep slope, they arrived in the muddy church square and stared up at the tower. Rain fell in their eyes, and though it was only seven in the evening, it was almost dark.

  “There!” Simon cried suddenly pointing to a tiny point in the belfry that seemed to be moving. “You were right. Someone is up there. But I can’t see who.”

  Magdalena squinted and held her hand up to shield her face from the downpour, but she could only make out a figure holding a sort of bundle out over the scaffolding. There was no sign of her father or the count’s soldiers.

  “Whoever it is up there, we must hurry,” she said. “If necessary, I’ll go alone and you can stay down here with Peter, and I…”

  Hearing a soft groan inside the church, Magdalena stopped short and listened. Then she raised her mud-splattered skirt and ran toward the portal while Simon and Peter followed close behind.

  The nave was so dark that only the vague contours of objects were visible. Leaves and twigs had blown in through the damaged roof and columns, and the altars and confessional stools stood out from the wet floor like black boulders. A few of the artistic stained glass windows had been damaged by the storm, and the pews were strewn with colorful splinters of glass.

  In the middle of the church, a figure lay in a pool of blood. His arms and legs were contorted and twisted like those of a broken doll, and though he was groaning and twitching slightly, he was otherwise motionless. Slowly he turned his head toward Magdalena and she finally recognized who it was.

  Matthias.

  Magdalena stared up at a gaping hole in the roof and the torn canvas that had been temporarily covering it. The knacker’s boy must have fallen straight through the opening. It was a miracle he was still alive.

  “You… you monster!” she shouted, running toward him. “What did you do with my children? I trusted you, I…”

  She saw the smiling face of the silent journeyman and stopped short. Even now that she knew Matthias had abducted her children, he looked friendly, helpful. Could he really be in league with Virgilius?

  Moaning, he stretched out his hand and seemed to wipe the floor. It took Magdalena a while to realize he was writing something on the mud- and blood-stained surface. She knelt down to read it before the rain could wash it away.

  I am sorry.

  “Bah, as if that changes anything,” exclaimed Simon, who had now arrived on the scene. “He’s sorry. This scoundrel has been deceiving us all
along and working with Virgilius. He’s a criminal and kidnapper, and perhaps even Brother Laurentius’s killer. And he was out to get you, too.”

  But even Simon couldn’t keep his son from leaning down and passing his hand through the man’s blood-spattered red hair.

  “Matthias sick?” Peter asked anxiously.

  Magdalena nodded. “Your friend Matthias is very sick,” she said softly. “He’s probably going to die.” She cast an anxious gaze up at the balcony, then at the stairway leading from there up to the belfry. “But before that perhaps, he’s going to tell us what’s happening there. Do you hear me, Matthias?” She turned to the mortally injured workman. “Who’s up there? If you want to make amends, do it now.”

  Matthias grumbled, then reached for his dirty, torn jacket. Pulling a wax tablet and stylus from a pocket, he started laboriously composing a message.

  “This is taking too long,” Simon groaned. “In the meantime, Virgilius may kill our child.”

  “Wait!” Magdalena raised her hand for silence, but she, too, kept staring through the hole in the roof where the tower was clearly visible. “Just a moment. This might be important.”

  Finally Matthias finished writing. He groaned and handed the tablet to Magdalena, who quickly started reading.

  Virgilius and the boy are in the belfry. So is your father and the abbot. No harm will come to the boy. Don’t let the boys think badly of me. Only God knows the entire truth.

  Magdalena looked sorrowfully at the childish scribbles.

  Only God knows the entire truth…

  When she looked down again, she saw his head had tipped to one side and his eyes were staring rigidly skyward. A few green and red beech leaves floated down from the hole above.

  “Matthias dead?” Peter asked anxiously.

  Magdalena nodded. She couldn’t hold back a few tears forming in the corner of her eyes. “He… he is now with our dear Lord, and we’ll probably never find out why he conspired with this madman. But deep inside, I know he wasn’t a bad man.”

  “Not a bad man?” Simon shook his head furiously. “Magdalena, he abducted our children. He’s a murderer and a criminal.”

  “How many murderers has my father executed who would perhaps have been saints in another life?” she said softly. “And how many scoundrels are running around free, dressed in expensive clothes.”

  She crossed herself, rose to her feet, and straightened up.

  “You stay down below here with Peter,” she told her husband gruffly. “I’ll go up there now and bring my son back. If my father and the abbot can’t do it, I’ll just have to do it myself. To hell with Virgilius.”

  Without another word, she ran toward the balcony that lay in the growing darkness.

  There was something in the watchmaker’s eyes that tipped Jakob Kuisl off a fraction of a second before he released the boy.

  An instant just long enough for Kuisl to lunge for the opening. Slowly, as if God had ordered time to stop, the hangman saw his grandson falling. He reached out and just managed to catch the bawling child by the collar. There was a horrifying rip as the clothing started to tear, but then it held. With his arms and legs thrashing about, Paul dangled like a marionette from his grandfather’s outstretched arms.

  As Kuisl pulled the boy back inside with a loud shout, Virgilius gave him a sudden push from behind. For what seemed like an eternity, the hangman tottered at the edge of the opening. The watchmaker screeched behind him in an inhumanly high pitch. “The sacrifice! You took away my sacrifice. I need this boy so that Aurora can live.”

  A sudden gust of wind struck the hangman from the front, allowing him to regain his balance. One last time, he glanced down into the gaping void and then, summoning all his strength, threw himself back onto the platform. The boy landed safely beside him and clung tightly to his grandfather.

  “It’s over, Virgilius,” the abbot shouted into the storm. “Give up and return to God. It’s still not too late.”

  “Never!” Only the whites of the watchmaker’s eyes were still visible, shining eerily in the gathering darkness as he broke into a defiant laugh.

  “God took away what was dearest to me; how can I return to him? He mocked me and forsook me.” Virgilius’s voice was so loud that it even drowned out the clap of thunder. “I can be my own God. I don’t need him. Don’t you understand, Maurus? It’s faith alone that makes this Christian Moloch so strong. I used my faith to bring Aurora back.”

  “God alone can create life,” the abbot admonished, approaching him with raised hands. “Repent, Virgilius. Let me grant you absolution.”

  “I curse your absolution. I curse God.” Virgilius ran to his automaton, grasped it by its stiff arms, and looked out into the darkened heavens.

  “All I need is a single bolt of lightning,” he cried, looking up into the clouds. “There will come a day when we realize that lightning, too, isn’t divine, but a natural phenomenon we can use for our own purposes.” He reached for the wire leading from the ceiling down to the bier, where it branched into other smaller wires. Carefully he checked the connections. “I must have done something wrong. There must be some reason the lightning hasn’t hit the steeple yet,” he murmured. “Exactly, that must be it. We must work even more carefully if we wish to abolish God. Like a watchmaker. We must—”

  Suddenly the stairway started creaking again and footsteps could be heard coming up. Virgilius turned around to stare at the woman who had just appeared in the opening. He couldn’t recognize her in the darkness. Her hair was drenched from the rain and she was breathing heavily from the climb up the stairs, but she held her determined head up and chin out. Like an angry, vengeful goddess, she raised her hand to point at the watchmaker, who cried out in delight.

  “Aurora… is it you?” he asked hesitantly. “Did you finally come back to me after all these years? But…” His gaze shifted from the automaton to the woman standing before him in the opening. “How… how is that possible? The lightning…”

  “Go to hell, Virgilius,” she snarled.

  At this moment, there was a crash so loud that Kuisl thought the tower would split apart. A fraction of a second later, a blue light as thick as a man’s arm shot from the top of the steeple directly into the puppet. Virgilius, still clinging to an end of the wire, was enveloped in a bluish aura like a gigantic halo. Flames shot out from his hair, his sleeves, even from his ears, and as he opened his mouth in a shrill, inhuman scream, tiny flames appeared there, as well.

  Virgilius twitched and thrashed. His whole body trembled as he continued holding the wire. Then it became a giant flaming torch.

  The force of the explosion threw Kuisl back against the side of the tower as everything around him erupted in flames. His ears were ringing shrilly, but otherwise all he could hear was blood pulsing through his head. Coughing, the Andechs abbot crawled toward the trapdoor, his robe ablaze. In the opposite corner, Magdalena clutched her boy in her arms, her eyes and mouth open wide in a scream, though Kuisl still couldn’t hear a thing.

  He jumped up, rushed to Magdalena, seized her and the child, and pushed them both toward the trapdoor. All around them timbers were beginning to fall from the ceiling. Though Kuisl could feel flames singeing his beard, he didn’t stop until he made sure his daughter and grandson made it to the trapdoor over the stairs. Then he climbed down behind them.

  When he turned around one last time, he could see Virgilius still standing like a flaming scarecrow alongside his beloved Aurora. A blackened clump engulfed in flames, he bared his teeth and stared at the automaton he had created. The puppet’s wax face was melting like honey, revealing the metal parts and iron beneath.

  Her dead mechanical eyes glowed, and for a brief moment it looked to Kuisl as if it wasn’t Virgilius clinging to his automaton but the automaton clinging to its creator.

  Then more burning beams fell from the ceiling, burying the two.

  The hangman rushed down the stairs, away from the chaotic scene above, just a few yards
behind Magdalena and Paul. He could hear the wind whistling through the tower, fanning the fire, a flaming hell they struggled to escape as they staggered down the steep stairway. They stumbled a few times but always managed to grab hold of the railing at the last moment.

  Arriving breathlessly in the nave, Kuisl felt enormous relief on finding his second grandchild and son-in-law unharmed and waiting. The Andechs abbot stood to the side, coughing, his robe burned up to his knees and his face blackened with soot, but otherwise apparently uninjured.

  “That… that was the punishment of God,” Maurus Rambeck gasped, staring blankly into space. “We’ve seen the face of God.”

  “If we don’t hurry, we’ll see it again soon,” replied Kuisl, nudging the others toward the exit. “This fire will destroy the entire monastery.”

  Standing in front of the church, they watched the burning steeple light up the darkness like a mighty torch. Glowing beams and shingles fell on the church roof below, and soon the entire structure was in flames, threatening to spread to the neighboring monastery buildings.

  More and more monks—as well as pilgrims and simple villagers—gathered in the square, staring up in disbelief at the roaring conflagration that continued to grow as the rain gradually eased off.

  “This is the end of the monastery,” whispered the abbot next to Kuisl.

  “Or the beginning,” the hangman replied. “Didn’t you want to build a new, finer one anyway? If not now, when?”

  Suddenly shouts could be heard in the crowd, voices of the count and his soldiers assigning men to various fire brigades. Armed with buckets, people ran like frightened ants in all directions—pilgrims and Benedictines side by side, all trying to control the fire. Kuisl spotted his cousin Michael Graetz in the front row of the crowd with some other dishonorable people. The hangman suspected the battle was hopeless. Wind whipped flames toward the monastery and the outlying buildings, and a few glowing roof shingles were already falling from the far-off brewery.

  “Damn it, hangman,” cried Leopold von Wartenberg, who had fought his way over to them. “What did you do up there? I’ll have Master Hans personally boil you in oil for this.”