The Poisoned Pilgrim: A Hangman's Daughter Tale (29 page)

“Fine, fine, I just thought…”

At that moment, Simon’s eyes fell on the front cover of the
Opus Maius,
imprinted with a golden stamp.

Sigillum universitatis paridianae salisburgensis
…

“A book from Salzburg University?” The medicus frowned. “But why…” Something about the stamp puzzled him, but just as he started to examine it more closely, he heard something downstairs. The door creaked, and a moment later the church bells struck the eleventh hour.

“Ah, our friend has arrived,” the hangman said. “I was right after all. Let’s go downstairs and greet him.”

Kuisl quietly descended the stairs into the assistant’s room with Simon and Magdalena close behind. Once downstairs, they tiptoed toward the half-open door of the workshop. Through the small opening, Kuisl saw a light moving quickly back and forth through the room; then he heard a soft, grating voice.

“Virgilius? Virgilius? Are you here?” the voice said. “Do you have the monstrance?”

Simon cringed. The voice sounded familiar, and now he saw the man, as well. A monk in a dark robe stood with his back to them, holding a torch to light the room. His hood came down over his face, and he was bent over like a bloodhound intently sniffing the floor.

“My God, the sorcerer,” Magdalena whispered. “That’s the man from up in the tower…”

Simon placed his hand over her mouth, but it was too late—the stranger had heard her. He briefly turned his masked face in her direction, then ran as fast he as he could toward the exit.

“Stop, you scoundrel!” Magdalena called to him. “You just wait and I’ll show you what happens when you try to throw a hangman’s daughter from a tower.”

She reached for one of the two copper hemispheres on the
ground in front of her and flung it at the departing figure. There was an earsplitting sound, like that of a ringing bell; then the man staggered a few steps and collapsed onto the floor, stunned. The torch rolled to one side, flickered one last time, and went out, plunging the room into complete darkness. Not even the hangman or his lantern was visible.

Paralyzed for a few seconds, Simon strained to see what lay in front of him in the darkness. When he finally made out a vague outline, he reached for the second half of the sphere and ran toward the shadowy figure, which, staggering and moaning, seemed to be trying to stand up.

“Stop!” Simon cried out into the darkness. “In the name of the monastery, you are under arrest.”

The dark figure hobbled toward them now, gasping, and Simon brandished the heavy copper bowl in his hand, prepared to bring it down on the warlock’s head at the slightest hint of resistance.

The man turned toward the exit, but when Magdalena ran after him, he wheeled around again and struck her so hard she staggered backward.

“Simon, stop him,” she panted. “He mustn’t get away.”

Simon was still holding the half sphere over his head, but as he prepared to throw it, another large shadow appeared in front of the open door.

The Schongau hangman.

“Stop at once!” he called out. “All three of you, or I’ll whip you so hard you’ll have to crawl through the church on your knees.”

With his left hand, Kuisl slammed the door closed, and with his right he raised his lantern, shining it directly in the face of the monk whose hood had fallen from his head during the fight.

When Simon finally recognized the man, he had to clench his jaw tight to keep from screaming.

It was the abbot of Andechs, and he was very angry.

S
HORTLY BEFORE MIDNIGHT IN
A
NDECHS
, T
HURSDAY
, J
UNE
17, 1666 AD,

G
REETINGS, YOUR EXCELLENCY
,” Kuisl exclaimed, bringing the lantern close so Simon and Magdalena could see the pale face of the abbot bathed in sweat.

Maurus Rambeck was panting, his robe was covered with dirt and torn at the seam, and a thin trickle of blood ran down his forehead. Nevertheless, he tried to radiate the dignity befitting his office.

“What… what do you scoundrels think you are doing?” he growled as he rose to his feet, rubbing the wound on his head. “An attack on the Andechs abbot. Are you crazy? That could cost you all your heads.”

“Or perhaps could cost you your own head,” the hangman replied dryly. “We shall have to see. By the way, if you’re looking for your brother in the flesh, Virgilius, I must disappoint you. He isn’t here. The message was from me.”

“Brother in the flesh?” For a moment Simon was unable to speak. He still couldn’t believe the person before him, who looked like a beaten highwayman, was really the Andechs abbot. Had they made some mistake? Had everything just been a huge misunderstanding? If so, they could expect a severe punishment.
They had, after all, almost beaten to death the highest dignitary in the monastery.

“Your Excellency, I… I don’t understand—”

“Perhaps the abbot himself can explain what he’s doing here,” Kuisl interrupted. “In my letter this noon I merely introduced myself as his brother Virgilius and wrote that the monstrance and the hosts were hidden here.” He spat out loudly. “The fact that His Excellency comes to the lion’s den completely unaccompanied reveals that he probably knows much more about this than all the rest of us together. And about the robbery of the hosts. After all, he stole them himself, didn’t he?”

Flinching and startled, Rambeck quickly got control of himself again. “What nonsense,” he snorted. “What is this all about?” he asked in a threatening tone, turning to Simon. “I demand an explanation, Doctor. I enter this house unsuspectingly as the abbot of this monastery and am attacked by a gang of hoodlums.”

“Ah, I wouldn’t call us a gang of hoodlums, Your Excellency,” Simon replied, still noticeably confused. “The young woman on my left is my wife, and the monk here, as you already know, is Brother Jakobus, a Franciscan who helps me in caring for my patients,” he said, pointing to Kuisl.

“To hell with Brother Jakobus,” the hangman said angrily. “It’s time to put an end to this silly masquerade. I’m the Schongau executioner, and the estimable bathhouse surgeon is my son-in-law.”

Now it was Maurus Rambeck who looked completely confused. “Schongau executioner? Son-in-law? But why—”

“We’ll tell you about that later,” Magdalena interrupted. “For now, I’d really like to know why the abbot is searching for Virgilius.”

Kuisl placed the lantern down on an overturned table and crossed his arms. “For God sake, because he’s his brother,” he grumbled. “I already told you. I learned it today from Nepomuk,
one of the few who knew. Virgilius himself must have told him. The two Rambecks were students at the same time at Salzburg University.”

Simon groaned softly. “That explains all the books upstairs. They come from the university. Damn, I knew that the abbot was also there for a few years. When I saw the seal on Roger Bacon’s
Opus Maius,
I should have connected the two.”

“If it makes you feel any better, my dear son-in-law,” Kuisl replied, “it took me a while to remember that, as well. You told me that back when we visited the abbot for the first time. Thanks to Saint Anthony, it occurred to me again today.”

For a few seconds everyone remained silent, gazing at the Andechs abbot, who stood motionless, his eyes flashing, his lips pursed. All of a sudden, however, a change seemed to come over him—he appeared to shrivel up inside, his authority fell away, and what was left was the shell of a man in a torn robe, as tense and anxious as Simon remembered him in recent days.

“My… my brother was always the smarter of the two of us,” Rambeck began softly after a while. The initial anger in his voice had now completely disappeared as he collapsed onto one of the few undamaged chairs in the room. “Even as a child, Virgilius couldn’t stop asking our father questions. Later we studied together in Salzburg, but then we drifted apart. He was in Paris, London, Rotterdam—places where research was much more advanced than here and science was not just considered some satanic monster.” His laugh was tinged with despair. “For my part, I took my vows here in Andechs as a simple monk and later hired Virgilius as a watchmaker. That was supposed to be kept strictly secret, as it would be viewed as nepotism,” Rambeck continued, absent-mindedly fingering a signet ring on his finger.

“Unfortunately I had to return to Salzburg soon after that to teach,” he continued with a sigh. “I had been singled out for higher tasks while Virgilius remained here in Andechs. When I
was named abbot of this monastery a few months ago, it was a hard for the vain prior to accept.”

“The way things look now, he’ll be the next abbot regardless,” Simon replied. “The idea of calling upon the district judge in Weilheim came from Brother Jeremias in person.”

Maurus Rambeck nodded. “I know. I wish I could have delayed the trial a bit longer for…” He hesitated. “Well, for personal reasons.”

“You stole the hosts yourself, didn’t you?” the hangman asked in a low voice. “And I have an idea why.” He pulled out his pipe and settled into a charred, wobbly chair.

The abbot smiled. “For a dishonorable hangman, you’re astonishingly sharp,” said Rambeck, delicately touching the bump that had now formed beneath his tonsure. “May I ask how you figured that out?”

“I’d like to know, too,” said Magdalena, wiping some smudges and a few remaining raindrops from her face and taking a seat alongside her father on a blackened chair. “I think you’ve been stringing us along long enough.”

It took a while for Jakob to light his pipe from the tinderbox. Outside, distant thunder could be heard as the storm gradually retreated. Not until clouds of tobacco smoke had drifted up to the ceiling and were twirling around the crocodile did he begin to speak.

“It was pretty clear to me that the hosts couldn’t have been stolen from that room by just any random thief,” he finally replied. “There were no signs of forced entry, and the door was sealed with three sliding bolts that could be unlocked only with three different keys. How could a thief have gotten his hands on all three keys?”

“Evidently he was able to do just that, however,” Simon interrupted, puzzled. “If not…” Suddenly his face brightened and he slapped his forehead. “Damn, how could I have been so stupid?”

“I wondered the same thing, my dear son-in-law,” replied Kuisl. “I always thought you were a little smarter than that.”

Simon cast an annoyed glance at him then began thinking out loud again. “The thief didn’t need a key because he was one of the three people who entered the holy chapel on Monday evening,” he whispered excitedly. “Let me guess, Your Excellency. You were the last to leave the room so you could hide the monstrance under your robe. It was dark, and no one noticed a thing. After the others went down the stairs—”

“Our good abbot simply put the monstrance in the large chest in the anteroom and returned later that night to pick it up,” the hangman interrupted brashly. “That’s the reason I wanted to return to the holy chapel. I had a suspicion, but it was clear the thief couldn’t have carried this heavy monstrance down into the church. That would have attracted attention, so he had to hide it somewhere.” Kuisl grinned. “So much for hocus-pocus. The biggest riddles often have the simplest solutions.”

Rambeck sighed. “It was so simple that I asked myself afterward why no one noticed,” he said, shaking his head. “But all the talk about witchcraft and the devil at work made my fellow Brothers blind to the obvious. They preferred to believe in a golem.”

“But don’t you yourself believe in golems?” Simon inquired. “Just recently I saw you reading a book about them.”

“How do you know…” The abbot looked up in astonishment. For a moment Simon thought he saw a hint of uncertainty in his face; but then he simply shrugged. “I’ll admit I was upset by the gossip. After all, Virgilius’s automaton has disappeared. But a golem?” He shook his head. “An object made of dirt that functions according to the obscure laws of magic? Nonsense. I believe, like my brother, in God and the laws of mechanics.”

“Just a moment… I can’t keep up with this,” Magdalena interrupted, casting a questioning glance at her father. “Any one of
the three people in possession of the key could have been the thief. Why were you so sure it was the abbot who stole the hosts?”

The hangman grinned and drew deeply on his pipe. “Yesterday when I followed the three monks into the holy chapel, Prior Jeremias told me that Brother Maurus insisted on visiting the relics room again on Monday evening,” he said smugly. “There was really no reason for that. The chapel should have been closed until the festival began—unless, of course, someone needed something that was in there.”

Simon wiped some dust and broken glass from a stool and sat down facing the abbot. The pounding rain against the bull’s-eye window had let up and now only a soft dripping sound was audible.

“Very well,” the medicus began hesitantly, turning to Rambeck. “Now we know you stole the hosts, but I still can’t make any sense of it. Why? And, above all, what does it have to do with your brother?”

“I have a suspicion,” Kuisl said. “But it would be better, Your Excellency, if you would tell us yourself.”

The abbot straightened up in his chair and looked at each of them closely with a touch of his former arrogance. “Why should I tell you that?” he blustered. “Virgilius is my brother, very well. The fact that I kept it secret is no crime, and as far as the theft of the hosts is concerned…” He paused menacingly. “Who has more credibility here—a no-account bathhouse doctor, a dishonorable hangman and his equally dishonorable daughter, or the venerable abbot of Andechs? Especially since we’ve already found the culprit. Why shouldn’t I simply call the guards at once?”

“Because then there will be no one to help you find your brother,” Jakob replied in a dry tone.

When the abbot didn’t respond, the hangman leaned forward and looked him in the face, his eyes narrowing to slits and his voice so soft Simon and Magdalena could scarcely hear him.

“That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? Because you hoped to find your brother, who was abducted by the real sorcerer?” Kuisl leaned back and sucked calmly on his pipe. When he starting speaking again, a broad smile spread over his face. “But believe me, if anyone can find Virgilius, it’s me. The life of your brother in exchange for the life of Nepomuk. I’d say that’s a fair exchange.”