“Let us pray that the monastery is restored to its full splendor in time for the Festival of the Three Hosts,” a richly dressed patrician said worriedly. “It doesn’t look ready now. Will we have to march among the sacks of mortar and blocks of stone? I’ve paid my tithes… and for what?”
“We’ve thought about returning home to Garmisch,” a little old woman added in a trembling voice. “First there was that fever going around, and now they say some kind of monster is haunting the monastery.”
“A monster?” asked an old man next to her with a shudder of delight. “What do you know about it?”
“Well, people say…” the old woman began, but she paused as a procession of Benedictines came out a side door of the church. Singing loudly, some carried smoking censers that they swung back and forth. The crowd fell to its knees and the monks strode past them with heads held high. Simon recognized the abbot among them, as well as the fat cellarer, the novitiate master, and the hook-nosed prior, Jeremias. Just before the monks entered the main building of the monastery, Simon noticed how the prior gave him a look of disgust. Then the monks disappeared inside.
The medicus rubbed his forehead, trying to sort out his thoughts. The abbot, the prior, and all the others from the monastery council seemed to be hiding something from him. How would he ever learn what that was? This monastery seemed like an enchanted place to which only a few chosen people had access. How could he ever hope to advance to the inner circle? Simon cursed under his breath.
His thoughts were interrupted by another large monk with a cowl pulled down over his face. For a brief moment the medicus thought he was looking at his father-in-law in a Benedictine robe, but then he realized this was only Brother Martin, the large carpenter who’d discovered him and Magdalena at the watchmaker’s house the day before.
Suddenly an idea flashed through his head.
Only a few are chosen…
He couldn’t help but grin. It seemed he’d found a way to learn more about the monks and their secrets. It would take a bit of planning, but then nothing would really stand in his way.
Of course, he knew his father-in-law would balk at the plan.
Long after the three Schongauers had disappeared, the man remained standing there, his eyes full of hatred.
After listening to them from his hiding place, he finally disappeared into the crowd in the church square. Beneath the folds of his robe, a strange tingling feeling came over him as he watched the large, broad-shouldered man leave. The giant was not at all as stupid as he looked. He would have to watch out for this huge man who’d correctly guessed the weapon used and asked the right questions. Moving quietly, the man scurried behind the monastery wall like a fat toad that had surfaced only briefly to warm itself in the sun. Not until he reentered the dark forests of the Kien Valley did he feel safe again. Nevertheless, he couldn’t shake a nagging fear that the plan might fail.
Now there were three of them poking their noses around in the monastery. If he wasn’t careful, soon half of Andechs would be pursuing him. This girl had foiled his plans twice. He’d have to make sure she wouldn’t be able to do that again. The next time he’d have to proceed more carefully. Perhaps poison, a silent blade in the night, a message that would lead her into a trap… There were so many possibilities.
Next time he’d have to make sure his assistant clearly understood how important it was to get rid of this girl. Sometimes the fellow was just a bit too sensitive; feelings were like a poisonous fog surrounding a person, and before you realized it, it could be too late. He himself knew how powerful feelings could be. Too often they left a gaping wound in the soul that wouldn’t heal.
From far away, he heard the old, familiar melody and felt how it helped bring back his old sense of security. Nothing could hold him back now-certainly not this rabble from Schongau.
There were only five days left before his dream would finally become a reality.
7
ERLING, TUESDAY, JUNE 15, 1666 AD
"What are you asking me to do? Are you out of your mind?” The Schongau hangman was sitting in the knacker’s house, having just lit his pipe a second time. When Simon hesitantly explained his plan, the hangman dropped his pipe on the floor, and Magdalena quickly picked it up before her two children could get a close look at the smoking bowl of tobacco. They had already broken a clay jug in the small room and dumped out a box of grain.
“Well, I do think it’s the only way we can learn more about this monastery and its residents,” Simon replied hesitantly. “And Magdalena is right: if you want to speak with your friend Nepomuk, it certainly can’t be as an executioner on a pilgrimage.”
“Aha, but as a stinking monk, eh?” He spat on the floor. “Out of the question. I can’t even recite the full credo or bow like these priests.”
“But you don’t have to,” Magdalena cooed gently. “A little humility would go a long way. You’ll see, you’ll make a wonderful monk.” She handed her father his pipe and smiled cheerfully, to which the hangman responded with a grunt.
“How hard can it be?” she continued. “Simon simply introduces you as a wandering Franciscan monk who’s helping him to care for his patients. Your friend Nepomuk is in jail, and the pilgrimage is looking more and more like a procession of the sick and the dying. Ever since this strange fever broke out, the abbot is happy to have anyone to help. No one is going to ask you to sing and pray-all you have to do is to keep your eyes open.”
“A hangman as a monk,” Kuisl spat out the word with such contempt that his grandchildren crawled back into their mother’s lap, terrified. “Out of the question. Even a blind man would see through it. There has to be another way.”
Simon looked at Magdalena and sighed softly. He knew it wouldn’t be easy to get his father-in-law to go along with the plan. The idea had just come to him when he noticed the hefty Brother Martin in his robe in the procession of Benedictine monks. The robe was a perfect disguise to learn more about the inner circle of the Andechs monks. The Brothers knew Simon already, but his father-in-law seemed a better choice anyway. Grumpy and uncommunicative as he was, he could just as easily pass himself off as a Carthusian monk vowed to silence. At noon Simon told Magdalena about his plan, and since then, she’d been waiting for her cousin, the knacker, and his silent redheaded assistant to leave the house so she could speak with her father in peace and quiet.
Peace and quiet was just relative, however, for the two little ones kept pulling at each other’s hair and tossing clay bowls off the shelves.
“Good Lord, Magdalena,” Simon flared up. “Can you see to it that the kids are quiet when adults have something important to discuss?”
“Ah, and why doesn’t the lord and master of the house do that himself?” Magdalena picked up little Paul, who was crying because his brother had taken away a carved wooden donkey, and put him in her lap. “You could spend a bit more time caring for your sons.”
“Everything in its time,” Simon replied, somewhat peeved. “Now we have to concentrate on learning more about a few of the monks.” After one more stern look, he turned to his father-in-law again.
“You can see for yourself, we’ve taken care of everything. What can go wrong?”
The medicus had found a black robe in a box in the monastery guesthouse, and now passed it hesitantly across the table to Kuisl. It was moth-eaten and the hems were somewhat moldy, but at least it was more or less the right size. After Magdalena made a few alterations it would look like a suitable robe for an itinerant mendicant.
“The Minorites wear almost the same robes as the Benedictines,” Simon explained with angelic patience. “Nobody will notice that we have made a few little changes; and if you pull the hood way down over your face, not even your own wife would recognize you.”