Still on his knees, he slid across the floor to Magdalena, who to this point had been listening in silence.
“Please,” he stammered. “You must tell your father I’m in trouble. He’s my only hope. Tell him… tell him ugly Nepomuk needs his help.”
“Nepomuk?” Magdalena stopped short. “Is that your real name?”
“Nepomuk Volkmar. I was baptized with that name.” Groaning, he rose to his feet. “The name is a curse. I renounced it when I took my vows.”
At that moment, footsteps could be heard again. The door creaked and swung open, and Simon entered. He looked over at Magdalena with concern, but hardly glanced at the monk at her side.
“I’m sorry it took so long,” he said, shrugging. “But the abbot had a few more questions. Now everything is clear.” He smiled. “We are free to go.”
“Simon,” Magdalena replied, pointing to Nepomuk Volkmar. “This monk knows my father. He-”
“That won’t help him now,” Simon interrupted. “The Weilheim executioner is in charge of executions at Andechs, not the one from Schongau.” Whispering, he continued, “Besides, I don’t know what your father could do here except assure a fast, halfway bearable death.”
“Simon, you don’t understand. Nepomuk was-”
“What I understand is that you’ve been happily chatting away with a man accused of three murders and the guards outside are already looking at us suspiciously,” Simon hissed. “So let’s get out of here, please, before the abbot changes his mind and locks us up for complicity in this case.”
Nepomuk Volkmar gave Magdalena a hopeful look. “You will tell your father, won’t you?” he murmured. “You won’t forsake me?”
“I’ll…” Magdalena began as Simon pulled her out the door. The last thing Magdalena saw as the dungeon door closed slowly behind them was the ugly apothecary’s battered, pleading gaze.
Then the door slammed shut.
Outside, the sun shone brightly in a blue sky as a few puffy clouds passed overhead, and the world seemed like quite a different place. The sound of singing pilgrims could be heard in the distance and butterflies fluttered over the meadows near the monastery.
Magdalena sat down on the ruins of a wall and stared at Simon angrily. “You didn’t even let me finish,” she hissed. “Don’t you ever do that again. I’m not one of your former whores. I’m a woman, damn it-don’t you forget it.”
“Magdalena, it was all for your own good. The guards-”
“Now just shut your mouth and listen to me,” she interrupted. “That man in there is probably my father’s best friend, and unless a miracle happens, he’ll be tortured as a sorcerer and murderer and burned in short order. Can you imagine what will happen if I don’t tell my father about it? Can you imagine what he’s going to do to you if you stop me?”
“His best friend?” the medicus asked, surprised. “How do you know that?”
Briefly, Magdalena told Simon about the monk’s former life, his time as regimental executioner in the war and his friendship with her father. When she had finished, the medicus still looked skeptical.
“And you believe everything he says? Don’t you think it’s more likely the man is just grasping at straws?”
“He knew details of my father’s life, Simon. He… he described them better than I could.” Magdalena looked into the distance, where a new storm was approaching over Lake Ammer. “Yes, I believe him.”
“Very well,” said Simon, softening his tone. “Perhaps he really does know him, but that’s a far cry from saying he’s innocent.” He held his wife firmly by the shoulder. “Magdalena, all the evidence points to his guilt. The eyepiece at the scene, the argument with the watchmaker, his behavior… Didn’t you yourself say he was behaving strangely? Just think of those strange rods he was carrying in the forest. In the council, too, they said he’s engaged in blasphemous experiments.”
Magdalena gave him an astonished look. “Blasphemous experiments?”
“They… they didn’t say anything specific,” Simon replied hesitantly. “But clearly Nepomuk has often argued with Virgilius, and it no doubt had something to do with his experiments.”
“That strange bier and all those wires up in the belfry,” Magdalena murmured. “Could those have been one of his experiments?”
Simon shrugged. “I don’t know. The monks were very guarded about that. In any case, the entire council is a group of very strange characters.” He started counting them off on his fingers. “The cellarer is a fat zealot who wants nothing more than to burn the apothecary right off… The prior has something against me… And the old librarian was very cold, as if none of it mattered to him. Only the master of the novitiates seemed concerned about death. I think he’d been crying-his eyes were red, in any case.”
He recounted in great detail his meeting with the abbot and the uproar that ensued when the monks heard about the automaton that had vanished.
“The stupid cellarer really believes the automaton is a sort of golem that haunts the Holy Mountain,” Simon replied, shaking his head. “It’s almost as if time has stood still up here. Musical automata like that are pretty common nowadays.”
“A golem?” Magdalena asked. “What is that?”
“An object that springs to life when life is breathed into it.” Absentmindedly Simon reached for a piece of brick and crumbled it in his hand. “I read about that once when I was a student in Ingolstadt. Golem is the Hebrew word for unformed. Some Jewish rabbis were said to be able to create a lifeless servant out of clay. It involved some very complicated rituals.” He shook his head. “It’s nonsense naturally, but for literalist Christians, also a perfect opportunity to depict the Jews once again as the devil incarnate. The cellarer in any case was almost foaming at the mouth, and the librarian was just as fired up. If I remember correctly, he was the first to bring it up.”
“Suppose someone in the council was involved somehow in the murders?” Magdalena wondered aloud.
Simon laughed derisively. “Perhaps the abbot himself? Magdalena, give it up. It was the apothecary, without a doubt. He isn’t a sorcerer-it’s not that-but there’s a simple reason why he committed these murders. We just haven’t found out yet what that is. Jealousy toward a colleague, revenge… who knows? Brother Johannes put this idea into your head and now you’ll stop at nothing to try to prove his innocence.”
“You didn’t talk with him,” Magdalena whispered. “Nepomuk is a man who has suffered a long time and is always fleeing from something because he can no longer stand the horror. A man like that would never kill three people. Besides, it wasn’t Nepomuk who pushed me out of the belfry. You told me yourself that at the time he was with you visiting the abbot.”
Simon sighed. “From your mouth to God’s ear. So what are you going to do?”
“I’m going down to the tavern in Erling to send a message to Schongau. What else?” Magdalena jumped down from the wall and ambled away toward the village. “Expect to see my father arrive shortly to straighten things out.”
“That’s the last thing I need,” Simon groaned. “I not only have to provide the abbot with more details on the murder, but now my father-in-law will be nosing around after me.”
Magdalena turned around and grinned. “He’s always known what to do, so quit whining. You could have looked for another family to marry into.”
With a wink, she ran through the flowering meadows toward Erling. To the west, the distant rumble of thunder could be heard.
Somewhere deep inside the Holy Mountain a clicking and rattling could be heard.
The automaton rumbled over pebbles and stones, banging against a low beam from time to time but stoically soldiering on. The corridor it rolled through was ancient, having been hewn into the mountain long before there was a monastery, at a time when the sword alone ruled and religious beliefs were celebrated in bloody rites with burning baskets full of writhing prisoners of war or on rough, charred altars. Since then, faith had grown; it had changed form, but it had persevered. In its new form it had overthrown kingdoms and crowned emperors. Its power was greater than ever.