With his finger to his lips, Simon led her to the farthest corner of the old Roman vault.
“Forget everything that’s happened up till now,” he whispered. “There’s something much more important we’ve got to deal with. We have to get out of here, tonight if possible.”
“What are you saying?” Magdalena’s voice echoed through the room.
Simon cringed, clapping his hand over her mouth. “For God’s sake, be quiet!” he gasped. “I have the feeling that all of Regensburg is conspiring against us now.”
In a whisper he told Magdalena of his meeting with Gessner and of his suspicion that Nathan was in league with the city. He also told her about the philosopher’s stone.
She listened with a furrowed brow. “So you think my uncle really did discover this stone?” she asked at last, a bit skeptical. “But isn’t it just some fantasy the alchemists peddled to their princes and sponsors to ingratiate themselves with them?”
Simon shrugged. “Who knows? The stone is more a symbol than a real object. Paracelsus wrote about it; I attended a medical lecture on it at the university in Ingolstadt. Some people really believe some substance exists that can transform base metals into gold or silver, while there are others who speak of a powder that, when mixed with wine, will bestow health and eternal life. Aurum potabile, liquid gold, is what they call it.”
“So it’s a medicine…” Magdalena nodded thoughtfully. “That’s something a bathhouse owner like Hofmann could really have used.”
“Do you remember the mountains of burned flour down in the alchemist’s workshop?” Simon asked. “I’ve been thinking it over; I’m pretty sure it wasn’t flour. It may have been the very powder Mamminger was looking for. I pinched a sample as we were leaving.” He pulled Magdalena close to him. “We have to get away from here. I get the feeling Nathan’s been sounding us out for a while now. Do you remember how he insisted on coming with us into the cathedral? After that he disappeared, just like Mamminger and the murderer. And he was eavesdropping on us down in the catacombs as well. Gessner’s right! We can’t risk having Nathan follow us everywhere, only to have him call the bailiffs when he thinks we’re getting too close.”
“But where do you want to go?” Magdalena asked. “Don’t forget we’re still wanted for arson. There’s no place up there where we’d be as secure.”
Simon grinned. “I know a place where the guards can’t get to us.”
The hangman’s daughter raised her bushy eyebrows. “And where would that be?”
“The bishop’s palace,” Simon said, triumphant. “I even have an invitation.” The medicus reached into his pocket and fished out the beer-stained document Brother Hubertus had given him and waved it under Magdalena’s nose. Before she could say a word, he went on.
“I met the bishop’s brewmaster this morning-a wise, well-read monk. I left the powder in his care so he could examine it.”
“Are you out of your mind?” Magdalena had to get hold of herself to keep her voice from rising. “You gave the only possible piece of evidence we have to a complete stranger? Why didn’t you just scatter it to the winds from the balcony of city hall? No doubt you also told this bishop’s servant about the alchemist’s workshop!”
Simon raised his hands, trying to calm her down. “Don’t worry. He doesn’t know a thing. And, that said, I’m not going to ask about all the things you may have blabbed to that old Venetian goat. You trust your dwarf just as much as I trust my fat brewmaster. Understood?”
“Keep Silvio out of this, will you?”
“Silvio? Aha!” Simon sneered. “At least we have the first two letters of our names in common. But never mind that…” He turned serious again. “I think Brother Hubertus would have no objection to our lodging at his place. Nobody will think to look for us in the bishop’s palace.”
“And how do you think you’ll…”
Magdalena broke off when they heard footsteps on the stairs. Torchlight filled the doorway, but it took a while for them to recognize Nathan’s dimly backlit face. The beggar king wore such a broad grin that his golden incisors sparkled like crown jewels, even in the half light.
“Ah, there you are, my dears,” he said. For a brief moment Magdalena feared Nathan had been eavesdropping on their entire conversation and had come over only because he wanted to silence them. Instead, he just stood stock-still, his hand extended cordially.
“I’ve looked for you everywhere,” he said, sounding somewhat peeved. “I was worried when I didn’t see you leave the cathedral this morning.”
“Oh, but we left,” Magdalena replied curtly, trying to conceal her initial fear. “The one who never showed was you!”
Nathan cocked his head to the side. “Then we’ll have to blame the damned morning fog. Who knows?” As he turned to leave, he said, “Upstairs there’s a little boy with a very high fever and a cough. Could the Herr Medicus have a look?”
Simon nodded silently, and together they climbed the crumbling narrow stairway up to the rooms above. Nathan lit the way for them with his lantern, pausing at every low doorway to bow slightly and wave Magdalena ahead of him. Such gestures had just recently seemed witty, even comical, to her; but now she found them obsequious and insincere.
“Our brother Paulus rescued an abandoned barrel of brandy from the street,” Nathan told them with a grin as they hurried through the passageways. “It was just standing there in front of the Black Elephant Tavern. In his boundless mercy Paulus decided to take the barrel in. If you hurry, there may still be a drop or two left.”
When the beggar king rounded a corner and disappeared, Simon pulled Magdalena close.
“This is our chance!” he whispered. “Once they’re all drunk, we’ll pack our things and clear out.”
Nathan’s face suddenly reappeared from around the corner. A glint of suspicion shone in his eyes. “Why are you whispering?” he snapped. “We don’t have any secrets between us, do we?”
Magdalena put on her sweetest smile. “Simon was just telling me how nice it might be to be alone together tonight. I’m sure you don’t want to know the details.”
“Young lovers!” the beggar king exclaimed, rolling his eyes theatrically toward the ceiling. “They’re always thinking of just one thing. But first you’ll have to fill me in on what happened this morning in the cathedral.”
“Later, later,” Simon replied. “The little sick boy comes first.”
He squeezed Magdalena’s hand, and together they hurried through the narrow, crumbling corridors and archways toward the large subterranean hall. The beggars’ catacombs didn’t feel so much like home anymore.
After countless hours in near total darkness, Jakob Kuisl had the feeling the roof was closing in on him. This room was slightly larger than his cell in the dungeon, but he still felt as if an iron vise were clamped around his chest, squeezing him tighter and tighter.
Kuisl was a man reared on sunlight and forests. Even as a child, he’d never been able to endure being cooped up. Sunlight and green moss, birdcalls and the rustle of pines and beeches-all these were as essential to him as the air he breathed. It was in the dark, then, that the shadows of the past lurked. In the dark the Great War reached long, shadowy arms out to seize him…
Blood trickling down onto the furrowed field like a light summer rain, the screams of the wounded, the muffled sound of cannon fire, the sharp odor of gunpowder… Germans, Croats, Hungarians, Italians, Frenchmen, Spaniards, all united in a shrill, monstrous chorus. In the vanguard, men with pikes over five paces long; behind them, musketeers and dragoons, sitting high atop their horses and thrashing away at the surging mob in front of them.
He is Jakob, the hangman’s son, the man with the two-handed sword. In his pack he has stowed a certificate validating his mastery of the longsword. As a “double mercenary,” he receives twice the pay of an ordinary soldier. A sergeant, their leader.