“That will work for a while, but believe me, the pain will return, worse than before, and eventually, even the cloves won’t help anymore.”
“Oh, God, what shall I do?” Karl Semer, seized by panic, held his cheek and gave the hangman a pleading look. “What shall I do?”
Jakob Kuisl went to the chest in the next room and brought back a pair of pincers as long as his arm, a tool he usually used only for torturing prisoners. “We’ll probably have to pull it,” he said.
Karl Semer looked close to passing out. “Right away?”
The hangman gave the burgomaster a stein full of liquor. “Why not? My wife has to get up, anyway.”
The scream that followed awoke not only Anna Maria and the twins, but the entire Tanners’ Quarter as well.
Magdalena followed the dark monk through the Augsburg Cathedral, seeking cover behind columns along the way. He disappeared into a cloister directly in front of her. The hangman’s daughter then followed him through a portal leading to the atrium, just in time to see him walk past a wooden door and disappear around another corner. Two acolytes were walking toward her, giving her curious looks. She slowed her pace and smiled as she passed by them, swinging the bag of herbs as casually as possible. The pimply young men stared at her low neckline as if they’d never seen a woman before. They probably don’t see a low neckline in the cloister too often, Magdalena thought, smiling stoically. Finally passing the acolytes, she picked up her pace, rounded the next corner…
And no one was there.
Magdalena uttered a curse she’d learned from her father. The damned monk had gotten away again!
She hurried on, circling the atrium until she was back again at the door leading into the cathedral. How was that possible? How had the man disappeared through the portal again? She would have to have seen him! Standing in the cloister, she looked around an inner courtyard surrounded by columns. There was not a soul to be seen here in the little herb garden or amid the low bushes, which lay dormant under a cover of snow. It seemed as if the stranger had simply vanished into thin air. Once more, she made the rounds of the cloister. Maybe she had overlooked a door somewhere, an opening, a hidden niche?
Until now, Magdalena hadn’t had time to look around more carefully. The walls on one side were covered with memorial plaques from many historical periods. Knights in old-fashioned armor, grinning skeletons, and hook-nosed bishops stared out at her. But there was no door to be seen.
She had completely lost track of the man.
Exhausted, she leaned against one of the slabs and took a deep breath. At least she knew now that Koppmeyer’s murderer was somehow connected with this cathedral. The watchmen at the gate had greeted him, he obviously knew his way around the cathedral, and he was wearing the same cross as the young bishop pictured over in the side aisle. A cross with two crossbeams.
The same cross…The thought that suddenly dawned on her was so dreadful and absurd that she didn’t want to accept it at first.
Could it be that this monk and the bishop were one and the same?
Before she could think through the implications of this ghastly idea, the slab behind her began to speak.
Magdalena jumped away, dropping the purse and the herbs. She stared at the man engraved on the stone slab-a knight in armor with an open helmet, a broadsword at his side, and two dogs playing at his feet. He glared back at her with vacant eyes.
Magdalena held her breath and listened. From the knight’s mouth, open in a mute cry, Magdalena thought she could make out an almost inaudible murmuring and hissing.
Carefully, she approached the stone relief once more. Pressing her ear against the cold plaque, she could hear a hum behind it, a continuous, mournful sound. Magdalena closed her eyes and listened. It was not a single voice, but the muffled choir of many men that came through the stone.
Was it possible…?
She pressed both hands against the slab, but it didn’t yield. She looked for a crack along the edges where she might get a handhold; she probed for some hidden mechanism.
All in vain.
Finally, she noticed two palm-size basins of holy water attached waist-high to both sides of the slab-two grinning stone skulls, each with a depression in the top serving as a basin. The skulls appeared old and weathered, and the holy water in the basins was frozen. Magdalena examined them more closely.
The skull on the right was bent at an odd angle and looked up at Magdalena with a teasing grin.
Like a man on the gallows whose neck my father has broken, she was thinking. She reached out for the skull and tried to turn it straight.
It moved.
With a grating sound, the heavy stone slab moved back, revealing a steep, worn stone staircase leading down into the darkness. Magdalena held her breath and listened. From far below, she could hear men singing a mournful chorale in Latin.
Mors stupebit et natura, cum resurget creatura…Deus lo vult…Confutatis maledictis, flammis acribus addictis…Deus lo vult…Deus lo vult. God wills it.
There they were again, those strange Latin words her father had told her about, the ones used by the Latin-speaking strangers in the Altenstadt tavern and by the murderers in the crypt.
God wills it…
It was time to go down and see what this was all about.
Magdalena stuffed the purse with the herbs back under her dress and started down the steep staircase, one step at a time. The steps spiraled around a weathered column, and the singing grew louder as she drew nearer. She noticed symbols carved into the walls now-engravings of fish here and there, the letters P and X. She passed niches in which there were flickering oil lamps lighting her way. She had the feeling this stairway was much older than the cathedral above.
She finally reached the bottom. A narrow, domed corridor led toward the singing, and farther ahead she could make out a bright light. As she groped through the dark corridor, her hand felt something smooth and dry that crumbled at her touch. Pulling her hand back, she gazed down on a neatly stacked pile of skulls on the floor next to her. She had stuck her hand straight in the eye socket of one of the skulls. On the opposite wall, bones were stacked up to the ceiling. The singing sounded quite close now.
Iudex ergo cum sedebit, quidquid latet apparebit…Deus lo vult…
Magdalena had reached the end of the corridor. Kneeling down, she peered out from behind the little pyramid of skulls.
What she saw was terrifying. The high-vaulted room was the size of a church and had rough niches carved into the walls all around, reaching up to the ceiling and stacked full of bones. At the front of the room was a stone altar and, beyond that, a weathered cross on the wall. By the light of torches, Magdalena could see a group of at least two dozen men in monks’ cowls and capes gathered around the cross, some kneeling and some standing and singing their chorale. Over their black habits, all of them wore white cloaks adorned with crosses in the same shape and color as the one behind the altar.
The crosses had two crossbeams, painted blood red.
Tuba mirum spargens sonum, per sepulcra regionum…Deus lo vult…
After what seemed like an eternity, the men finished singing. Though Magdalena could feel her feet falling asleep, she remained crouched behind the pyramid of skulls, watching the proceedings. One of the cloaked men stepped up to the altar and raised his hands in blessing. He, too, had a cowl pulled down over his face. He turned around to face the group and spoke in a loud voice that echoed through the vault.
“Dear brethren,” he began, “honorable citizens, clergy, and simple pastors who have traveled from afar to get to this place. Our brotherhood has always made it our mission to destroy heretics wherever they may be and prevent the spread of the accursed Lutheran heresy!” A murmur of approval rose from beneath the cowls, but the man motioned for his listeners to be silent. “You know that we are also trying to save our Master’s treasures from destruction at the hands of heretics. Much has been returned to the fold of the Holy Catholic Church, the only church!” He paused dramatically before continuing. “I have convened this meeting to proclaim some happy news. We have succeeded in finding the largest treasure in all of Christianity!” Excited whispers coursed through the crowd. Their leader raised his hand again to silence them.