The Poisoned Pilgrim: A Hangman's Daughter Tale (21 page)

“I heard a noise,” he said, “and do hope nothing has happened. For God’s sake, you’re pale as a ghost.”

“Pale as lime would be the right expression,” Magdalena groaned, pointing to the burst sack at her feet. “That huge thing almost killed me.”

The Brother looked up anxiously. “It must have fallen from the scaffold. I said just this morning that this area had to be roped off. As if enough hadn’t already happened in the last few days.” He sighed, then looked at Magdalena severely. “But you really shouldn’t be hanging around the church square at this hour. What in heaven’s name are you doing here?”

Just as she had the evening before in the church, Magdalena noticed Laurentius’s finely wrought facial features. His fingers were long, with clean nails that glimmered faintly in the darkness.

“I’m… looking for my husband,” she stammered. “He’s the bathhouse surgeon from Schongau who’s taking care of the sick people here. Have you seen him, by chance?”

At once the monk’s expression brightened. “Ah, the bathhouse surgeon who is taking care of the sick pilgrims free of charge?” he asked. “A true Christian. You can be sure he has earned his place in the Heavenly Kingdom.”

“Thank you, but I think he’d prefer to spend the next few years here on earth,” she replied, pulling her shawl tight around her shoulders. “And in your monastery, that’s not so easily done at present.”

The Brother cringed. “You’re right,” he murmured haltingly. “This is a dreadful time—first the young Coelestin and then…” His voice broke and he turned aside.

“Were you very close to the watchmaker’s assistant, Vitalis?” Magdalena asked, concerned.

Brother Laurentius nodded, his lips tightly pressed together. Only after a while did he answer. “I’m the novitiate master here. All my charges are dear to me, as I’m responsible for the education of each individual.” He sighed. “But with Vitalis it was something else. He was very… sensitive. He often visited me in the evening and poured out his heart.” The priest’s long eyelashes began to flutter, and Magdalena saw a tear run down his face.

“Did Vitalis have difficulties with his master?” she asked, curiously.

The young monk shrugged. “I don’t know. Toward the end he was very reserved—something must have happened. The last time we met he seemed to want to tell me something, but then he decided to remain silent. It was probably Aurora who made him so anxious.”

“Aurora?”

“Yes, his master’s automaton,” Laurentius explained. “Vitalis thought the puppet was alive. He often told me that she moved on her own at night, hissing and whispering, almost like a human being, and he felt she was following his every move.”

Magdalena shook her head. “A dreadful thought.”

“Indeed. Vitalis thought the puppet was hiding some horrible secret, and on the night before his gruesome end he told me, ‘She will kill him—and all of us.’” Brother Laurentius nodded, lost in thought. “Those were his exact words: ‘kill us.’ Now it seems his prophesies have been fulfilled. God knows what this creature did with poor Vitalis and his master who has vanished.” He hastily crossed himself and bowed. “It’s quite late, only a few hours before morning prayers. Let’s hope and pray this witchery will end soon. God be with you.” With these final words, the novitiate master turned and left.

Magdalena stared after his dark form as he vanished into the night, then hastily climbed down the steep path toward the village. She fervently hoped that Simon had returned by now. This
monastery seemed more and more sinister to her, and for a long time she couldn’t get the automaton’s soft melody out of her mind.

A shrill, unending glockenspiel.

Half an hour later, Kuisl, Simon, and Magdalena had returned to the knacker’s house and were sitting around the stove in the main room thinking about the events of the last few days. The hangman had lit his pipe for the third time, and the whole room filled with clouds of smoke from the tobacco and the wet wood burning in the stove. Kuisl’s cousin Michael Graetz still hadn’t returned from his visit to the local tavern, and his silent assistant seemed to have disappeared, even though Magdalena had asked him to stay and watch the children—a good opportunity finally for the three to discuss everything that had happened.

“Experiments with lightning?” Simon asked, incredulously. “Your friend Nepomuk actually was studying lightning?”

Nodding, Kuisl took a deep drag on his pipe. He was still wearing the filthy monk’s robe, which clung to him like a wet sack and seemed to itch all over. “He was trying to capture lightning,” he grumbled, after he’d finally finished scratching himself. “Not such a bad idea, when you think of how often it has struck just in our little Schongau. Nepomuk took a wire and ran it down the church steeple to the cemetery, and the lightning actually did strike there. But unfortunately, it also set the whole tower on fire.”

“Just a moment,” Magdalena spoke up. “The day before yesterday I saw a wire like that there, but also a strange sort of stretcher. When I went back again tonight, it was gone; only the wire was still hanging from the ceiling.”

She had met Simon on the way home and, until now, hadn’t told him or her father anything about the sack of lime that had fallen next to her. In the meantime, she was no longer sure herself whether her constant fear of attack was her imagination run
wild, and now, especially in the warm light of the knacker’s cottage, everything seemed to her like a distant fairy tale.

“Perhaps the stretcher in the belfry wasn’t Nepomuk’s at all, but belonged to someone trying to copy his ideas,” Simon said.

Magdalena frowned. “And who would that be?”

“No idea,” Simon replied, perplexed. “The entire inner council seems very peculiar, above all the abbot himself. Your father and I surprised him reading a book about conjuring up golems.” He waved his hands back and forth vigorously, trying to dispel the smoke. “Whoever it is, we’re too late. The stranger has clearly disposed of all the evidence because things were getting too hot for him. And now—” Simon coughed, then turned angrily to his father-in-law. “Damn, Kuisl!” he shouted. “Can’t you just
once
stop that awful smoking? How can anyone think straight in all this smoke?”

“I can, for one,” the hangman growled. “You should try it yourself sometime; it might make things a little clearer for you. I just had a few really interesting ideas.” He grinned and took an especially deep drag on the pipe. “Nepomuk told me, for example, that Virgilius had told him about a stranger—someone who would be interested in the experiments with lightning, he thought.”

“The abbot,” Magdalena interrupted. “Perhaps he needs a powerful lightning flash to bring his golem to life, and he wanted Virgilius to help him.”

The hangman spat into the reeds on the floor. “Nonsense. There’s no such thing as a golem. I believe in hard iron, a well-tied noose, and the evil in men, not a man made of clay. Golems are nothing but horror stories made up by priests to scare people.” He shook his head stubbornly. “It’s too bad Virgilius went up in smoke and we can’t ask him about this stranger anymore.”

“Ahem… apropos fire.” Simon cleared his throat and paused before continuing. “Please don’t think I’m crazy, but I’ve made a very strange discovery, and slowly I’m starting to wonder
whether there’s something to this talk of witchcraft.” Hesitantly, he told the others of his strange experience with the glowing corpse in the Andechs beer cellar and his own hasty retreat.

“Did you say it was a white powder, and the corpse glowed in a green light?” Kuisl finally asked.

Simon nodded. “It was a very dim glow, like a glowworm. I just can’t make any sense of it.”

“But I can,” the hangman replied dryly. “I’ve heard of a phenomenon like that.”

“Well?” Simon sat up attentively. “What is it?”

Kuisl grinned at his son-in-law. “Well, what do you know? I’m afraid I’ve not had enough to smoke today to figure that out. My mind isn’t working fast enough, and unfortunately I’m not allowed to smoke any more in here…” Calmly he pulled a louse from under his robe and stuffed it into his glowing pipe, where it burst.

“Father, stop this nonsense and tell us right away what you know,” Magdalena hissed. “Or I’ll tell Mother that you already had three pipefuls today.”

“Oh, all right, all right,” the hangman replied, waving her off. “It’s probably phosphorus.”

“Phosphorus?”
Simon looked at his father-in-law incredulously. “What in God’s name is phosphorus?”

“Phosphorus mirabilis.
An element just recently discovered by a apothecary in a city named Hamburg, you worthless scholar,” Kuisl barked. “You should have hung around the Ingolstadt University a little longer.” He leaned back smugly and took a deep draw on his pipe. “Actually, the apothecary, like so many others, was looking for the philosopher’s stone, but what came out was a glowing substance, namely phosphorus. I read about it in one of my books by Athanasius Kircher. It has a faint green glow in the dark, but it also has another extremely dangerous property.”

“And that would be…” Magdalena prodded.

The hangman folded his arms in front of his broad chest. “Well, it burns like tinder. You only have to place it out in the sun, and once it catches fire it can’t be put out and inflicts horrible wounds.”

“Do you think that poor Vitalis was doused with this… this phosphorus?” Simon whispered. “But why?”

“Maybe because someone is trying to make the priests believe in witchcraft?” Kuisl grumbled. “Didn’t you say yourself that Vitalis’s skull had been smashed in? Perhaps someone bludgeoned him and then spread phosphorus on the corpse to make his death look like witchcraft. Then they quickly found a scapegoat—Nepomuk.”

“But his eyepiece,” Simon objected. “It was found at the crime scene.”

“Anyone could have put it there,” Magdalena interrupted. “My father is right. An automaton disappears, a watchmaker seems to have been swallowed up by the earth, and an assistant is horribly burned—all designed to look like the work of the devil, and all to stir up fear? If you ask me, this stranger is stopping at nothing, and now all of Andechs is in turmoil.” She hesitated briefly. “The question is, who would benefit from panic breaking out here among the pilgrims?”

Simon was staring through the clouds of tobacco smoke at the cross in the devotional corner when he suddenly slammed his hand down on the table. “I have it!” he shouted.

“Good Lord, Simon,” Magdalena whispered. “Please be quiet. You’ll wake up the children.”

“It must have something to do with the Festival of the Three Hosts,” said Simon, now in a quieter voice. “Someone wants to interfere with this festival. Already some of the pilgrims are thinking about returning home. They’ve heard of the horrible murders and are afraid of the automaton that is said to be prowling the halls of the monastery. If this continues, the festival may
not even take place at all—in any case, it won’t be a happy festival, pleasing to God.”

“But why would anyone do something like that?” Magdalena asked skeptically. “What would anyone have to gain from it?”

Simon sighed. “I’m afraid we don’t know enough yet about the monastery to answer that question. But we can change that.” With a grin, he pulled out the leather-bound volume he’d been carrying under his jacket. “I… uh… borrowed this chronicle from the library; perhaps we’ll find an explanation here. After all, the sacred three hosts are the most important relic here in Andechs.”

“Then go ahead and read it, but I’m going to take a rest from this foolishness.” Kuisl pulled his stinking, sweaty robe over his head and tossed it into a corner with disgust. “I just hope this nonsense will be over soon.”

At that moment, the door creaked and swung open. Michael Graetz entered, his face red and enveloped in a cloud of alcohol. The Erling knacker had evidently had a few too many beers and wavered slightly as he looked around in astonishment.

“Pinch me,” he finally mumbled with a thick tongue. “I think I just saw a huge monk through the window right here in this room, and now he’s magically vanished.”

“A monk? In your house?” The hangman laughed. Only to Magdalena’s and Simon’s ears did it sound a bit too loud. “My dear cousin, a priest would climb up onto a manure pile before he’d pay a visit to the homes of dishonorable people like us.” Kuisl pointed to a closed chest along the wall next to the devotional corner. “And now let’s see if you have something to welcome your family. That would really be something to drink to.”

A few rays of light escaped through the closed shutters of the knacker’s house, but the person outside huddled in darkness. He
crept around the hawthorn bushes separating the house from the forest and peered carefully through their thorny branches.

The man clenched his fists so hard his knuckles turned white. The master would be angry, very angry. He’d failed once again, even despite the master’s warning that this curious young woman could spoil the entire plan. She was snooping around too much—that’s all there was to it—and what was wrong in taking a life if it would save many others?

The man took a deep breath to try to regain his composure. He had seen so many men die pointless deaths in the Great War that a shield of ice had formed around his innermost self, and only rarely did he feel any emotion. It was terrible that he felt this way about her. Perhaps it was her beauty that caused his weakness, or perhaps her laugh, which he heard coming from the house at that very moment. He had wanted to throw the sack of lime directly at her, but at the last moment, a higher power had moved his hand slightly to one side, just as it had pressed the flintlock a fraction of an inch to the right the night before.

The man behind the hawthorn bushes whimpered softly as he dreaded telling the master of the foiled plan. The master would rage and rant, and worse: he would no longer love him.

Still moaning softly to himself, the man crawled back into the forest where he was soon swallowed up again in the darkness.

The man would have to confess his guilt.

M
ORNING MASS AT
A
NDECHS
M
ONASTERY
, W
EDNESDAY
, J
UNE
16, 1666 AD