Oliver Potzsch: The Poisoned Pilgrim

“Indeed.” Simon nodded and crammed the dried herbs into his leather bag. “I studied medicine in Ingolstadt. Unfortunately, I was unable to find a position as doctor. The… circumstances were not favorable.” He hesitated. The monk didn’t have to know he’d gone broke because of his gambling debts and the money he spent on fancy clothes.

The medicus cast an approving glance around the dimly lit room. Everything here was exactly the way he wished his own office to be. The large pharmacy cupboard, heavy wooden shelves along the walls lined with pots and tinctures. A low entryway led into another room that evidently served as a laboratory. In the dim light, Simon could make out a stove with a few pieces of wood glowing inside and on the mantelpiece, some sooty flasks. In front of this, a huge marble table supported something long and misshapen, partially covered with a dirty linen cloth.

At one end of the cloth a single pale foot protruded.

“My God!” Simon gasped. “Is that-”

“My assistant, Coelestin,” the Brother sighed, rubbing the sweat from his forehead. “Some farmers brought him to me shortly before sunrise today. Last night, the unfortunate fellow went to catch a carp for me in the pond down by the woods. And what does the dolt do? He falls off the walkway and drowns like a little cat. And then this charlatan Virgilius comes by and…” He broke off, shaking his head as if trying to shake off a bad dream.

Carefully Simon stepped into the laboratory and sniffed. Now he could explain the sweet odor he’d noticed yesterday.

The body was starting to decompose.

“May I?” the medicus asked hesitantly, pointing at the corpse beneath the shroud. Simon had always had a strange fascination with dead people. Stiff and lifeless, they were like anatomical dolls God gave the world to demonstrate the miracle of the human body.

“Go right ahead,” Johannes replied, finally removing his eyepiece and securing it in his robe. “Since you are evidently a sort of colleague, a second look certainly can’t harm. But there’s really nothing unusual about him. I can’t tell you how many drowned corpses I’ve seen in my life.” He sighed and crossed himself. “Man is not a fish, or God would have given him gills for breathing and fins to paddle.”

Curious, Simon pulled back the wet cloth and stared into the white, slightly blue face of the young Coelestin. Some compassionate villager had closed his eyes and put two rusty kreutzers on them, but his mouth was wide open like that of a carp gasping for air. Leaves and pieces of algae stuck to the thinning hair of the monk’s tonsure, and green blowflies buzzed around the putrid corpse. The dead novitiate’s robe hung on his body like a wet sack.

“I wanted to be alone with him a little longer,” Brother Johannes said hoarsely. “He was, after all, my loyal assistant for more than two years, and we lived through many things together, beautiful and some ugly…” He swallowed. “But now I shall have to go up and see the abbot, so please take your herbs and-”

“There are spots there.”

“What?” Annoyed, Brother Johannes turned to the medicus, who was pointing at a spot on the dead man’s collarbone.

“Look, black-and-blue spots here, both on the left and right shoulders.” Simon ripped open the wet robe. “And here on the breastbone as well.”

“He probably got those when he fell into the water,” the monk retorted. “What does that tell you?”

“Bruises on someone who fell into unresisting water?” Simon frowned. “I don’t know.” He began studying the body until he finally found what he was looking for on the back of Coelestin’s head.

“It’s just as I thought,” he murmured. “A big bump. Someone clearly dealt your assistant a heavy blow, then held him under water until he drowned.”

“Murder?” the Brother gasped. “Do you really think so?”

Simon shrugged. “Murder or manslaughter I can’t say, but in any case there was a second person involved. Perhaps a tavern brawl? A robbery that turned to murder?”

“Nonsense. A monk doesn’t get involved in brawls. Besides, why would…” Johannes hesitated and shook his huge head like a stubborn ox. “Of course there are still riffraff in the area. But the good Coelestin was nothing more than a simple novitiate in a thin robe! He had no money, nothing of value on him.” The fat monk raised his finger and his voice took on a singsong character. “Saint Benedict put it so nicely in one of his rules. No one may own a thing. No book or writing table or writing implement-nothing. So who could have wanted to harm Coelestin?”

“Didn’t he have any enemies down in town or here in the monastery?” Simon inquired.

Brother Johannes laughed so loudly his round belly bounced up and down. “Enemies? Good Lord, we are monks. We watch our tongue, we don’t steal, and if heaven permits, we don’t run after women, either. So why are you asking?” Suddenly his eyes narrowed to little slits. “But let me tell you something, barber surgeon. If you’re so sure of yourself, then come along to see the abbot and tell him. Brother Maurus is an intelligent, well-read man. Let him decide how Coelestin met his end.” Grimly he stomped out the door. “If the abbot agrees, you can use my apothecary as if it was your own,” he grumbled. “You have my word on that. And now, let’s go before my novitiate is completely eaten up by these damn blowflies.”

Mumbling a curse, Simon ran after him. This is what he got for talking too much. All he really wanted to do was to get back to Magdalena as fast as possible.

As the medicus turned around one last time, one of the blowflies, buzzing noisily, flew right into Coelestin’s mouth. It sounded like the corpse was softly mumbling to himself.

Magdalena was sitting on the bench in front of the knacker’s house, getting angrier by the minute as she waited for Simon to return from the apothecary. He had been gone over an hour now! What could be taking him so long? He probably got involved in a long conversation with that ugly monk about man-drake root or daphne and had completely forgotten her.

Impatiently she watched Michael Graetz as he struggled to hoist a stinking horse cadaver onto his cart. Despite the arduous work, the knacker hummed a soldier’s marching song and seemed completely happy with himself and the world. Beside him, a stocky young man pulled the dead nag onto the flatbed. Magdalena had learned from Graetz that this was his assistant, Matthias.

The hangman’s daughter couldn’t help but think of her father at home, whose job it also was to cart away dead animals. Looking at her cousin clothed in rags, Magdalena swore once more that her children would someday be better off. Peter and Paul wouldn’t be dishonorable executioners, knackers, or torturers but doctors or bathhouse surgeons like their father.

The dry horse manure made her sneeze suddenly, and Michael looked at her with concern. “May Saint Blasius protect you from the fever,” he mumbled.

“Nonsense!” Magdalena hissed, blowing her nose loudly on a rag she extracted from her skirt pocket. “I just had to sneeze, that’s all. So stop acting as if I had the Plague.”

The knacker’s stocky helper grinned at her and made some inarticulate noise that sounded to Magdalena like a laugh.

“What is it?” she growled. “Is there something funny about me? Is snot running out of my nose? Answer me, you scoundrel.”

“Matthias can’t answer you,” Michael replied. “He doesn’t have a tongue anymore.”

“What?”

The knacker shrugged and looked sympathetically at the strong young man, who now was completely involved in his work. “Croatian mercenaries cut out his tongue while he was still a young lad,” Michael said in a low voice. “They were trying to force his father, the innkeeper in Frieding, to tell them where he’d hidden his savings.” The knacker sighed. “But the poor fellow really didn’t have anything. Finally they took him away and strung him up on the gallows hill in Erling, and the boy had to watch.”