Oliver Potzsch: The Poisoned Pilgrim

“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.”