The third man sat upright on the chair between them. When Nepomuk recognized him in the light of the crackling fire, he started shaking harder, fell to his knees, and folded his hands in prayer.
“Please, Brother,” he pleaded. “You must believe me. This is all an-”
“Don’t get any false hopes,” the third man interrupted. “I’m no longer your Brother, but your inquisitor. The Weilheim judge assigned me this unpleasant task in view of the need to soon fill a higher position. Our monastery urgently needs a new abbot.”
The eyes of the Andechs prior flashed icily, like two marbles, as he turned and nodded to Master Hans. “Executioner,” Brother Jeremias said, “we wish to begin the interrogation. The sooner he confesses, the better.”
14
ANDECHS, THE EVENING OF SATURDAY, JUNE 19, 1666 AD
Simon sat hunched up on a rough-hewn chair at the bedside of Brother Laurentius, sadly observing the priest’s burned, disfigured body.
The monk’s condition was unchanged. The many burns on his face, back, and legs were festering so that the bandages had to be changed frequently. The young monk’s face was covered; all that could be seen beneath the bandages were his nose and eyes. He groaned, and occasionally one of his fingers quivered, but otherwise there was no sign of life-he looked more like a mummy now than anything human.
Simon bent over him compassionately and took his hand. Brother Laurentius seemed to feel the touch, and his breathing became more measured. Suddenly there was a sound from beneath the bandages-some mumbled, at first incomprehensible words.
“Brother,” Simon said softly. “If you wish to tell me something…”
“He’s… alive…” said a muffled voice from beneath the blankets. “Down in the catacombs… I’ve… I’ve… seen him.”
“The puppet is alive?” Simon cringed. “But how is that possible? Who’s behind this, Laurentius? Say something, please. It’s very important.”
“The… hosts. He… needs the hosts…” The Brother’s mumbling turned into an incomprehensible death rattle. Reaching up with his right hand, he grabbed Simon by the collar and pulled him down so that the medicus could smell his burnt flesh. Disgusted, Simon noticed a strong odor like that of a roasted pig.
“Thunder and lightning! Thunder and Lightning! Stop him before the fire comes down from heaven. The fire!”
With a final scream, the Brother doubled up, his grip around Simon’s neck loosening, and fell back on the bed, lifeless.
“Brother Laurentius. Brother Laurentius!”
Simon felt in vain for a pulse. Frantically he pulled a small, polished copper disk from his doctor’s bag and held it under Laurentius’s nose. When the disk finally misted up, the medicus leaned back, relieved. The Brother was breathing, even if very shallowly. No doubt he would soon pass away; Simon could only hope he would regain consciousness before that and say something. What in the world had Laurentius meant by those strange words?
Thunder and lightning. Thunder and Lightning. Stop him before the fire comes down from heaven.
The medicus took a deep breath and tried to calm down. Evidently Laurentius had seen the watchmaker’s automaton in the subterranean passageways of the former castle. His confused mumblings seemed to suggest this automaton or golem was still alive and that it had something to do with the three hosts. The medicus remembered that special magic numbers and incantations were required to summon a golem. Perhaps hosts, as well?
Simon shook his head reluctantly. All that just couldn’t be true. Simon was an enlightened person of the new era, the time after the Great War. He believed in mechanics and empirical knowledge, not in magic formulas and golems. But what if science was wrong? What if there really was something like a physical, living devil? Had Virgilius perhaps created an automaton that could move according to the laws of mechanics, as well as think and… kill? Had the automaton killed its own creator?
Then burned him and thrown him into a well? How could that be?
Once more Simon checked Laurentius’s pulse, which had returned, though it was still weak. The monk had fallen into a death-like sleep; not even the tips of his fingers quivered beneath the bandages anymore.
Other patients moaned from nearby beds, but Simon doubted they’d heard any of this strange talk. Nor had the pilgrims, still singing and praying outside the door. The medicus thought about Kuisl’s warning that the sorcerer, or perhaps one of his accomplices, could enter the clinic in the next few hours to kill the troublesome monk.
If he waits just a bit longer, he can save himself the trouble, Simon thought. Laurentius doesn’t have long to live. It’s time to give him last rites.
To take his mind off this, Simon reached for the Andechs chronicle, which he’d wrapped in a dirty towel and hidden under one of the beds. He leafed through the little book until he got to the place describing the old castle. Perhaps he could find some information here about the subterranean passageways depicted on the count’s map.
Until now, Simon had read only that the castle had fallen due to “cowardly, vile treason.” Another chapter dealt in more detail with this. Evidently the Andechs-Meranier had been the leading family of nobles in Bavaria many hundreds of years ago, until suddenly the Wittelsbachs seized power.
Simon immersed himself in the tiny, spidery flourishes that described how, at a wedding in Bamberg in the year 1208, the Wittelsbach Duke Otto had murdered the Staufer King Philipp, a son of the famous Emperor Barbarossa. Details of the murder were evidently never completely clear-only that Otto was declared an outlaw, arrested in Oberndorf near Kelheim, and beheaded on the spot.
Simon started turning pages, then stopped short. In the investigation of King Philipp’s murder, it was not the Wittelsbachs who were charged with conspiracy, but the Andechs. All their property was confiscated and given to the Wittelsbachs, among them the Andechs castle that was stormed after many long battles, and razed. The chronicle described the conquest of the ancestral castle in dramatic detail.
Lost in thought, the medicus was transported back into the past, to a world hundreds of years ago that came back to life in the pithy Latin text. As so often when he was reading, Simon became lost in the images conjured up in his mind. Suddenly he thought he could see the armor glinting in the sunlight, the cries of the attackers, and smell the blood and horse sweat in the air as the castle was stormed. Simon was sitting there, in his chair in the year 1666, but at the same time he was carried back more than four hundred years. His lips moved silently as his fingers followed the lines…
The battlements rise over the mighty fortress high above the Kien Valley. Atop the parapets, the defenders run excitedly back and forth while below the Wittelsbach foot soldiers and knights gather in a clearing along the moat, preparing for the final assault. For weeks they have laid siege to their enemy’s castle, catapulting hundred-pound rocks at it and ramming the entrance again and again as fire, pitch, and sulfur rained down on them. Their sappers have dug passageways directly under the walls of the fortress. Many have died, and even more, tormented by fever and gangrene, writhe in pain in their tents, which look like red pustules in the cleared forest land.
They yearn for the death of their enemy and know the day of vengeance is at hand.
The traitor had cost them a lot of money, but he told them where the escape tunnel was; this was how the beleaguered defenders were able to smuggle fresh meat, flour, and wine into the castle-not enough to provide for the entire garrison, but enough to hold out for the last few months.
That would all come to an end today.
A small elite group of fighters set out through the tunnel into the castle. Silently they slashed the throats of the guards, leaving a trail of blood and gore beneath the castle and up into the courtyard. Now they can be heard screaming inside the castle, attacking the guards at the gate, shoving aside the three huge beams that bar the entrance, and finally opening the heavy door, leaving the way clear for the over three hundred warriors who have been waiting outside for just this moment.