Oliver Potzsch - The Dark Monk

“You filthy dog, I’ve got you now.”

The hangman punched his opponent in the mouth so hard that he collapsed like a bundle of dry wood.

Soon thereafter, when the man regained consciousness, he found himself tied up and with a pounding headache. Jakob Kuisl was sitting next to a little fire nearby, his head glowing in the red light of the flickering flames. Blood streamed down his right cheek while he sewed up the gunshot wound with clenched teeth.

When the hangman noticed the man looking over at him, he grinned. “It’ll be some scar,” he said, “but nothing compared to the scars you’ll have if you don’t come clean with me right away.” He nodded in the direction of the campfire. In the flames, the man saw a huge double-edged hunting knife, its blade glowing red.

Then he decided to talk.

Magdalena ran from the subterranean chapel, up through a dark tunnel, until she came to a junction. Corridors at about shoulder height branched off to the left and the right, illuminated by flickering torches spaced at wide intervals in the darkness.

Where was she? Which corridor should she take?

On an impulse, she decided to go left. The corridor curved around, ending after only a few steps in a stone grotto. In the middle of the almost cubical space stood two sarcophagi. Here, too, burning torches were attached to the walls. The grave markers each depicted a knight in full armor holding a sword. Carefully, Magdalena approached the huge stone coffins.

Was she imprisoned now in another Templar tomb?

She didn’t notice the marble tablet embedded in the foot of the tomb until she stubbed her toe on it. Cursing softly, she hopped around a few times in a circle. When the pain finally subsided, she struggled to translate the ornate, slightly archaic Latin on the tablet in front of her.

Beneath this marker lie the precious remains of the exalted and mighty Princes of Bavaria, the father Guelph VI and his son Guelph VII, equal in virtue to his father.

Magdalena held her breath. She was evidently in the crypt of the Guelphs, the mighty family of noblemen who ruled over Bavaria long ago. That much she knew. Her prison, the chapel, had to be their shrine! But she had no idea where their tomb was. In Munich? In Nuremberg?

Perhaps…in Augsburg?

Only now did she notice the soft humming, murmuring, singing sound, similar to what she’d heard below the cathedral in Augsburg. After her eyes grew accustomed to the dark, she could make out a slight glimmer along the ceiling of the room. Light fell through the cracks in a rectangle at the same place the sound was coming from. Magdalena’s heart began to pound. Only a few meters above her were people who could come to her aid! Monks, perhaps, who were singing a chorale, or attendees at a mass, who were singing a last hymn. She was about to shout out for help, but then she stopped short.

What if the group above her was just another gathering of those maniacs-a secret meeting of the order of murderers and fanatics headed by the bishop of Augsburg?

Magdalena decided to remain silent until she’d first examined the other passages.

When she got back to where the passageways crossed, she heard a different sound for the first time: a barely audible scraping and shuffling coming from the direction of the chapel, as if something were being dragged along the ground. Magdalena was startled. Was Brother Jakobus not dead, after all? Was his spirit, an avenging angel, coming to get her? The hangman’s daughter tried to shake this off, just as she would a night of bad dreams.

You’re seeing ghosts, that’s all…

This time she took the right corridor. After a few turns, it led to a steep spiral staircase. Again she heard the shuffling sound behind her. She decided to pay no more attention to it and hurried up the stairway, sometimes two steps at a time.

The top of the staircase ended in front of a dirty wooden wall.

Had she reached a dead end? She stood still, listening. There was that sound again; now she could hear it quite clearly. Down below, something was crawling slowly up the staircase, dragging itself, pulling itself, panting like a large, heavy beast. Desperately, she pushed against the wooden wall. Behind it, she heard muffled voices. Should she knock? Cry for help?

Never before in her life had Magdalena experienced such fear. In front of her these deranged people were probably waiting for her, and behind her something was panting and dragging itself up the staircase. In her despair she crouched down against the wall, trying to make herself as small as possible, as if this might allow her to vanish into the wall.

There was a click.

The wall creaked and tipped forward, and Magdalena fell into the room behind it with a loud crash. Wood splinters and bricks of plaster came raining down from the ceiling.

When the dust finally cleared and Magdalena raised her head, she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

“What in the world are you doing?”

Benedikta stared open-mouthed at Simon, who was walking down the endless rows of shelves, examining the great number of books in the monastery library.

“I’m looking for a book.”

“Well, isn’t that nice! The Steingaden abbot gives us the choice of being stabbed to death by his hoodlums or broken on the wheel by the Schongau executioner, and my dear medicus friend is looking for a book!”

Simon paused for a moment. “I’m not looking for just any book, but a particular, special one. I suspect that when we finally know what this abbot is actually looking for, we’ll at least have the possibility…Ah, here it is!”

He pulled a large leather-bound volume from a lower shelf. “I knew that a Premonstratensian monastery would have a work like this. Now let’s see if I was right…”

Benedikta looked over his shoulder with curiosity. “May I ask what you’re looking for?”

Simon leafed through the pages quickly as he spoke. “This is a standard work about the history of the Holy Cross-the De Sancta Cruce by the Jesuit Francisco de Borja. There’s another copy in Jakob Schreevogl’s library. I’m sure in this book we’ll find that…”

He continued leafing through the book until he got to a smudged page depicting various types of crosses. Benedikta recognized the Byzantine cross, the St. Andrew’s cross with its diagonal cross beams, and the Maltese cross with the eight points. Even the Templars’ cross was there. At the very bottom, there was another cross that caused Benedikta to hold her breath.

The cross had two crossbeams.

The upper crossbeam was shorter than the lower one. It was the exact same cross that Brother Nathanael was wearing on a chain around his neck and the abbot of Steingaden on his signet ring.

“The cross of Caravaca,” Simon whispered. “Also called the Spanish cross or the Patriarchal cross. The crossbeam at the top stands for the INRI inscription on the cross of Jesus. Worn by archbishops, it is said to have been brought down to earth from heaven by two angels during the war against the Moors.”

Benedikta nodded excitedly. “It’s clearly the sign of this strange order. But why?”

A broad smile spread across Simon’s face. “Ah, now comes the interesting part! The original cross of Caravaca supposedly contains a sliver of wood from the True Cross-the cross on which Jesus was crucified. I asked myself why the order chose this particular symbol, and I came to the conclusion that there is only one possible explanation…”

“They’re looking for the True Cross,” Benedikta gasped. “Of course! The abbot and his disciples are looking for the cross of Christ, the greatest treasure in Christendom! Not gold, silver, or jewels, just a goddamn rotten old wooden cross.” The disappointment showed in her face. “If I’m not mistaken, there are hundreds of slivers of wood floating around that were allegedly once part of the True Cross. Every other village church has one-you could build a city out of them! This rotten old cross is just one of many.” She sighed. “We could have saved ourselves this wild goose chase.”