While Simon, lost in thought, was pondering the mighty crucifix, the hangman walked straight through the nave to study the frescoes in the chancel. After that, he proceeded down the side aisles. On the south side, a long-dead artist had painted a mural of the Fourteen Holy Helpers. Over the entrance, a larger-than-life statue of St. Christopher looked down sternly at the hangman.
“Nothing,” he grumbled. “I’m not finding anything. Damn! I think you were wrong.”
“We have to keep looking,” Simon insisted. “There is certainly something here; it’s just well concealed. Perhaps-”
He was interrupted by a shout from outside. Magdalena! They rushed out to find her standing at the edge of the snow-covered graveyard surrounding the basilica. She was facing the south wall of the church and pointing at a small, chest-high plaque almost completely covered with ivy. Magdalena had pulled the ice-covered vegetation aside.
“Here!” she exclaimed. “Here it is! You were right, Simon!”
The stone plaque, old and weathered, was cemented into a recess in the wall. On it an inscription was engraved.
Fridericus Wildergraue, Magister Domus Templi in Alemania. Anno domini MCCCXXIX. Sanctus Cyriacus, salva me.
“Friedrich Wildgraf’s memorial plaque,” Simon whispered. “Master of the Knights Templar in Germany. Deceased in the Year of Our Lord 1329. Saint Cyriacus, save me.”
“But why is this plaque here when the grave of the Templar is in the Saint Lawrence Church?” Magdalena wondered.
Simon shrugged. “By the year 1329, the Templars had been banned in Germany for more than twenty years,” he said. “Maybe it was just too dangerous to bury the German provincial master here. It’s possible that the priest at that time could get approval for this small tablet.” He ran his hands over the inscribed letters. “But perhaps this tablet is only intended as a clue to put us on the right track…”
“Before we beat around the bush any further,” the hangman said, “let’s just figure out a few things.” He pulled out his knife and began scraping away the mortar around the tablet.
“But, Father!” Magdalena whispered. “What if the priest sees us-”
“The priest is busy preparing for mass and probably getting stoned on the wine,” Jakob Kuisl said and continued scraping. “But feel free to ask him, if you wish.”
Soon he had made a little groove around the tablet, then inserted his dagger to pry it out, and it fell into the soft snow.
Behind it there was nothing but gray stone.
Simon tapped on it, but it was solid, a part of the enormous block of stone and as immovable as the other stones the church was made of.
“Damn!” he exclaimed. “This can’t be it! Is this Templar just making fools of us?”
The medicus kicked the icy wall, which seemed to make no impression on the church. Only his frozen toes hurt. Finally, he took a few deep breaths.
“Very well. The riddle has led us here to the basilica,” he murmured. “Here’s the memorial plaque. What have we overlooked?”
The hangman bent over and picked up the plaque lying in the snow in front of him.
“Sanctus Cyriacus, salva me. Saint Cyriacus, save me,” Kuisl repeated. “Isn’t it strange that he chose this saint for the inscription? As far as I know, Saint Cyriacus was a martyr who was burned in boiling oil and then beheaded.”
“St. Cyriacus is the patron saint for those tempted in the hour of death,” Simon said. “For a Templar accused of treason and sodomy, not a bad patron to have.”
“Aren’t those the Fourteen Holy Helpers depicted in the basilica?” Kuisl asked. “I’ve never seen a Saint Cyriacus there…”
A sudden thought flashed through Simon’s mind. The saints in the south aisle! How could he have been so blind?
Without waiting for the others, he raced around the church, stormed through the portal, and finally, stopped in front of the Fourteen Holy Helpers in the south aisle. They were positioned in groups of two, one above the other. At the very top was Barbara, the patron saint of the dying and helper in cases of lightning and fire. After her was St. Christopher, St. Margaret as patron saint of women in childbirth, St. George, and St. Blaise, who helped in cases of illness of the throat. Nine other patrons were immortalized on the wall of the church, but St. Cyriacus was not among them.
But there was another saint pictured there whose name was noted in small letters beneath the picture.
St. Fridericus…
Simon almost laughed when he read the inscription. Apparently, none of the church’s many visitors had ever noticed the error. The painting depicted a man in a bishop’s robe with a miter and staff. His right hand was raised protectively over a castle sitting atop a forested mountain, and on closer examination, one could see he was touching the castle with his index finger.
In the meantime, Jakob Kuisl and his daughter had also arrived in front of the picture of St. Fridericus.
“He fooled us all for many hundreds of years,” Simon exclaimed, laughing. Some of the women praying turned around with admonishing glances. “St. Fridericus!” he added, whispering, but still grinning. “He simply used his own name! What magnificent blasphemy!”
“But what is this Templar trying to tell us?” Magdalena asked, puzzled, as she considered the fresco. “Is he just mocking us?”
Kuisl approached the painting to within a few inches. He tapped the castle beneath the picture of the saint, where he’d noticed a brown spot not much larger than a flyspeck.
“Here,” he said. “Here it is.”
He fished out a magnifying lens from deep inside his pocket and held it over the spot. Suddenly, he was able to make out two words painted in thin, shaky brush strokes.
Castrum Guelphorum…
“The old castle of the Guelphs,” Simon whispered, “up on the Castle Hill above Peiting. My God, all that stands there now is ruins!” He sighed and rubbed his tired eyes. “I am afraid the search will last longer than we first expected.”
The stranger with the black cowl and the sweet smell of violets was standing outside in the cemetery of the basilica. With trembling hands, he held up the Templar’s stone plaque, which Jakob Kuisl had left lying there.
How was that possible? The hangman was not only still alive, but had also apparently discovered a clue! Perhaps it was an act of providence, after all, that this Kuisl had not suffocated in the sarcophagus. The stranger had thought this a suitable way of dying for someone responsible for killing so many others. In any case, the man was alive and had solved the riddle-he, his daughter, and that brash young medicus. Why hadn’t they been able to figure this out? Didn’t the monks have a specialist in their own ranks? They had read the same words on the marble plaque in the crypt but hadn’t been able to make sense of them.
For days they had been hiding like itinerant riffraff in local barns to avoid arousing suspicion. They lived on nothing but dry bread and their faith; they froze, they prayed, and the only thing that kept them going was the knowledge that they were the chosen ones, those sent by God.
Deus lo vult…
The stranger cursed in Latin and, at once, murmured a short prayer asking the Lord to forgive this little sin. Then he started putting his thoughts together.
Everything now was actually very simple. They would track these three like bloodhounds, they would find the treasure, and the Master would give them his blessing. Their place in paradise was assured, even if the path to it was cold and stony.