“Apparently it’s not that simple,” Simon replied. “It’s safe to say that someone was looking very hard for this secret room. The terrible mess in the apothecary’s room on the second floor is evidence of that.”
“Could Mamminger be behind it?” Magdalena asked.
“He has something to do with it at least.”
The medicus continued reflecting on this as he made his way through the room, now and then picking up a fragment of pottery or a piece of melted glass. Underneath the toppled bookshelf he found a few scorched boards connected by thin bars, and then, as he continued rummaging around, he came upon a few small blackened bones.
Animal bones.
“It appears your uncle was keeping animals in cages down here,” Simon said. “Not especially large ones. These bones could have come from rats or cats.”
Disgusted, he tossed the bones aside and walked to a far back corner of the room, where a knee-high pile of ash still smoldered. Carefully he reached into the faintly glowing black mass.
Slowly he sifted the warm ashes through his fingers, letting them fall to the ground. There were bits the fire hadn’t consumed entirely, which shimmered bluish white in the lantern light. Sniffing them, he recognized the same slightly sweet odor he had noticed a few days earlier while inspecting the moldy flour in the bathhouse supply room. Could this enormous pile of ash be simply burned flour? Or was this the remains of some alchemical powder he’d never heard of?
What the devil had Hofmann been doing down here?
He suddenly heard a loud crack and stones began falling to the ground. A moment later the world around them seemed to explode.
“Damn it, the house is collapsing!” Simon shouted. “I was afraid it would. Let’s get out of here fast!”
Magdalena was already in the front supply room, scrambling like a cat up the rungs. Before Simon followed her, he frantically filled his purse with the bluish ash. Maybe he’d have a chance later to examine the powder more closely. Then he, too, rushed off toward the well shaft.
A loud thundering sound suggested the beams were breaking apart under the weight of the rubble. Up in the boiler room Magdalena stood amid the melted kettles while rubble and stones hailed down on her.
“The way out is blocked!” she shouted, pointing at the narrow tunnel now closed off by a mountain of bricks. The roof above them was creaking and starting to sag, and at any moment they knew they’d be buried beneath it.
“There has to be another way out!” Simon shouted over the deafening creaking and splintering.
Panicked, he looked around until at last, on the left, he discovered a passageway through the debris barely wide enough to pass through. He pushed Magdalena through the tiny opening, crawled in behind her, and found himself standing in what was once the bathing chamber. Here, too, the roof threatened to fall. The back part of the room had already collapsed completely, but in front, where the door had once been, a new hole had just opened up in the wall.
After nudging Magdalena through the hole, Simon scrambled through behind her. Just seconds later the entire ruin collapsed behind them with a terrible roar, and a cloud of dust rose up into the sky.
Coughing and panting, Simon and Magdalena lay on the ground, unable to speak. When the dust had drifted away, they could see Nathan and the other beggars standing nearby.
“Well done,” the beggar king said, tipping his hat. “Most of my fellows bet you wouldn’t make it out. It sounded out here like a whole load of gunpowder-”
“Shut your damn mouth!” Magdalena burst out, apparently having regained her voice. “We were nearly killed and you’re taking bets on it! Are you insane? You didn’t say a word about helping!”
“What could I have done?” Nathan replied meekly in a subdued voice. “I wanted to warn you, but the timbers were already cracking.” Then, lowering his voice, he continued. “By the way, you should quiet down a bit unless you want the entire neighborhood to come running.”
Simon noticed now that some windows had already opened in nearby houses and curious eyes were watching their little group.
“I would have called you soon in any case,” Nathan whispered. “There’s something I want to show you. It appears you weren’t the only ones to visit the bathhouse tonight.”
Taking Simon and Magdalena by the arm, the king of beggars led them to the other side of the burned-out building, where they crouched behind a collapsed stone wall. He pointed to a figure in a black cape who was clinging to the wall of a neighboring house like a bat.
“My boys didn’t even see him at first,” Nathan whispered. “He must have been prowling around here the whole time, and I think he had the same plan you did. Well, he sure won’t find anything now.”
“Oh, God, Simon!” Magdalena whispered. “That’s the stranger who was in the garden at Silvio’s house! The man who tried to kill me! He’s coming toward us!”
Nathan raised his hands reassuringly. “Don’t worry; you have me and my boys here now.”
“Your boys are blind, crippled old men,” Simon sneered. “Just what are they going to do?”
“Well, see for yourself.”
The beggar king pointed to the doorway of a house, where two of his men loitered on the steps. As the stranger approached the ruin, presumably to get a better look, they lurched toward him. Simon noticed one of them was Crazy Johannes, Nathan’s right-hand man.
“My good fellow, a pittance for an old soldier who lost his sight in the Battle of Rheinfelden,” Johannes croaked, looking very much indeed like a down-and-out mercenary. “Just a kreuzer for a cup of mulled wine.”
“Away with you!” shouted the stranger. “I have no time for your twaddle!”
In the meantime the other beggars had reached the man and were jostling him. As the stranger faltered, Crazy Johannes raised a crutch and rammed it between the man’s legs, causing him to fall with a startled cry. Seconds later two more beggars on crutches emerged from the shadows of an entryway and began flailing away at the figure on the ground.
In one fluid motion the stranger jumped to his feet and pulled out his rapier. The beggars surrounded him like a pack of ravenous dogs, each waving a crutch through the air to hold the man at bay.
Unexpectedly the man lunged to one side, feinted to the left, then attacked from the right. Johannes let out a loud cry as the blade cut into his shoulder.
The cloaked stranger took advantage of the momentary confusion to jump onto a dung cart beside a nearby house. The beggars attacked the cart and tried to overturn it, but the man scrambled up to an open window in the second story, climbed inside, and disappeared. Moments later a woman’s scream was followed by heavy footsteps on a stairway. Simon looked up to see the stranger squeezing through a hatch in the roof, then dashing across neighboring rooftops in the direction of the Danube.
“Damn!” Nathan shouted. “We almost had him!”
Beggars arrived now from all directions to help their injured companion. In his sooty jacket Simon, too, rushed over to Johannes, whose wound, he saw immediately, was serious. The blade had pierced Johannes’s right shoulder clean through. The medicus was relieved to see that the blood seeping from the wound was dark in color rather than light, meaning the lung hadn’t been injured.
“Give me a hand!” he shouted, gesturing to some of the beggars. “We’ll carry him carefully to the catacombs, and I’ll see if there’s anything I can do for him there.”
Magdalena was still standing behind the collapsed wall, peering out over the roofs of Regensburg, where the red sun was just beginning to rise. She was so lost in thought she didn’t notice a boy standing directly in front of her. He was about ten years old, had strawberry-blond hair and a face so covered with freckles it looked as if he’d been splattered with mud. At first she presumed he’d come to see the collapsed house, but then she realized he was addressing her.