Oliver Potzsch - The Dark Monk

Entering the cathedral, she couldn’t help pausing a moment. It seemed as if she were in another world; she had never before seen such an imposing building. As she continued to move forward, she looked up at the towering columns, the balcony, and the bright, colorful stained-glass windows with the morning sun streaming in. On all sides, angels and saints stared down from richly decorated walls.

The monk strode through the cathedral and finally turned left toward the end of a side aisle. Here, he knelt down in front of a sarcophagus and bowed his head in prayer.

Magdalena hid behind a column, where she finally had a chance to catch her breath.

A murderer who prays…

Had he come, perhaps, to confess his sins? Magdalena considered this for a moment before rejecting it. After all, the stranger had just purchased more poison. A penitent sinner wouldn’t do that.

She wanted to get a look at his face, but the haggard monk still hadn’t removed his cowl, and the only thing visible was his protruding, pointed nose. The bag with the poison was still dangling from his wrist, and the cross hung down from his broad shoulders like a heavy padlock.

Magdalena couldn’t see whose coffin the man kneeled at. Concealed behind the column, she watched him impatiently. When she realized the prayer might take a while, she looked up once more to admire the size of the cathedral. She studied the columns and side altars, the many niches, and the stairways that led up and down. On the left, a well-worn stone staircase led down into a crypt, and farther back, a small walkway branched off. On her right, above the stone altar where the stranger was praying, a row of paintings depicted some old men wearing mitres and capes. Each held a shepherd’s crook in his hand and looked down benevolently on his followers. Magdalena noticed that the paintings on top left were old and faded, and their subjects had a strange gray hue, like messengers from a distant era. Farther down to the right, the paintings seemed newer and more colorful. Each painting was dated, and Magdalena realized these were portraits of all the Augsburg bishops. In the last painting on the bottom row, an astonishingly young man was depicted with thinning black hair, a hooked nose, and a strange penetrating gaze. Magdalena read the name beneath it.

Bishop Sigismund Franz. Appointed 1646.

The bishop up there seemed to be staring directly into her soul with his unpleasant piercing eyes.

She hesitated.

Something about the painting irritated her. Was it the black, almost impoverished look of the cloak? The cold gaze? The surprising youth amid all these old men? As she looked closer, she realized what it was, but it took a while to accept it.

Around the bishop’s neck hung a golden chain with a cross-with two crossbeams.

Just like the one the monk wore!

Magdalena almost cried out loud. Thoughts raced through her head, but she had no time to organize them-the monk had finished praying. He stood up, crossed himself, and bowed now. Finally, he headed for the cloister and disappeared through an ancient stone doorway. He hadn’t once turned around. Casting a final glance at the young bishop above her, Magdalena took off after the stranger. She felt as if Bishop Sigismund Franz’s eyes were boring right through her from behind.

Just after the first cockcrow, there was such a loud pounding at Jakob Kuisl’s door that it sounded as if he himself were being summoned for execution. Outside, it was still the dead of night. Kuisl lay in bed alongside the soft, warm body of his wife, who turned, blinking and groggy, to her husband after the visitor had pounded on the door a third time.

“It doesn’t matter who it is…Wring his neck,” she mumbled and buried her head under a down pillow.

“You can bet on it,” the hangman groaned, swinging his legs out of bed, almost falling down the stairs when the knocking began again a fourth time. In the next room, the twins woke up and began to cry.

“All right, all right,” the hangman growled, “I’m coming!”

As he stumbled down the ice-cold stairs barefoot and dressed only in his nightshirt, he swore to himself he would, at the least, apply thumbscrews to this disturber of the peace. He would probably also shove burning matches under his fingernails.

“I’m coming, I’m coming!”

Jakob Kuisl had had a strenuous night. The little ones had a terrible cough and couldn’t be calmed down, even with hot milk and honey. Once Georg and Barbara had finally drifted off to sleep, Kuisl rolled around in bed for hours thinking about the second gang of robbers. He was brooding about the mysterious fourth man when he’d finally fallen asleep.

Only to be awakened what seemed like five minutes later by this fool trying to break down his door.

Furious, Jakob Kuisl ran down the steps, threw aside the bolt, tore open the door, and shouted at his visitor so loudly that the guest almost fell over into a large snowdrift behind him.

“What is God’s name do you think you’re doing, you stupid clod, coming here in the middle of the night…” Too late, he noticed it was Burgomaster Karl Semer standing there. “Confound it…” the hangman muttered.

The hangman stood a full head taller than the burgomaster, and the patrician looked up at Kuisl in terror. There were dark circles under Semer’s eyes, he was pale, and his left cheek was badly swollen.

“Excuse my bothering you at such an early hour, Kuisl,” he whispered, pointing at his cheek. “But I just couldn’t stand it…the pain…”

The hangman frowned, then opened the door. “Come in.”

Leading the burgomaster into the main room, he relit the fire in the hearth with a few pieces of kindling he kept in holders on the table.

In the faint light, Karl Semer looked around the hangman’s quarters-the executioner’s sword next to the devotional corner, the rough-hewn stool, the huge well-worn table, the gallows ladder in the corner. A few books lay open on the table.

“You’re reading…?” the burgomaster asked.

The hangman nodded. “Dioscorides’s work. An old tome, but there’s nothing better for learning about herbs. And this one here,” he continued, holding up a newer book, “Athanasius Kircher, a damned Jesuit, but what he writes about the plague is first rate. Do you know his work?”

The burgomaster shrugged. “Well, to tell the truth…I read mostly balance sheets.”

Lighting his pipe from a piece of kindling, the hangman continued. “Kircher thinks the plague is transmitted by tiny, winged creatures that he has seen with a so-called ‘microscope.’ He says nothing about vapors emanating from the earth, or God knows what else the quack doctors go on and on about, but creatures so small they’re invisible to the naked eye, that jump from one person to another-” Kuisl’s enthusiastic remarks were interrupted by his children’s crying. His wife, too, could be heard complaining loudly up in the bedroom.

“What in God’s name is going on down there?” she cursed. “If you want to go out and drink, go to Semer’s tavern and let the children sleep in peace!”

“Anna,” Jakob Kuisl hissed, “Semer is standing right down here.”

“What?”

“The burgomaster is down here with a toothache.”

“Toothache or not, please keep the noise down, for God’s sake!”

A door slammed.

The hangman looked at Karl Semer and rolled his eyes. “Women,” he whispered, but softly enough that his wife couldn’t hear. Finally, he turned serious again. “So what brings you to me?”

“My wife thinks you’re the only one who can help me,” the burgomaster said, pointing to his swollen cheek. “I’ve had this toothache for weeks, but tonight…” He closed his eyes. “Make it go away. I’ll pay whatever you ask.”