“Which of the two do you think it is?
“What?”
Simon was so wrapped up in the ghastly sight that he didn’t hear Benedikta at first.
“I mean, which of the saints could be concealing the message?” Benedikta replied. “We probably won’t have enough time to open both coffins.”
“Which one…?” Simon stopped to think. “Let’s take Felicianus,” he finally said. “Felicianus means ‘happy’ or ‘lucky,’ and the finder of the prize will be happy and lucky. And doesn’t it say in Matthew that the first-that is, the primi-will be the last?”
Benedikta looked at him skeptically. “From your lips to God’s ear.”
They approached the high altar until they were standing directly beneath Felicianus’s coffin.
“If you take me on your shoulders, maybe I can reach the coffin,” Benedikta said. “Then I’ll try to lift the lid.”
“But it’s much too heavy,” Simon whispered. “You’ll certainly drop it!”
“Oh, come now, it’s just made of glass, after all. And the skeleton inside doesn’t weigh any more than a few dusty old bones.”
“And what happens if it falls, anyway?”
Benedikta grinned. “Then we’ll just have to put old Felicianus back together again. You’re a doctor, after all!”
Simon sighed and knelt down so that Benedikta could climb onto his shoulders. Then, swaying slightly, he lifted her up. When the physician felt Benedikta’s thigh brush against his cheek, a pleasant tingling coursed through his body.
Wonderful, he thought. We’re desecrating the bones of a saint while I’m dreaming of the thighs of a naked woman. Two mortal sins at the same time.
Finally, Benedikta could reach the coffin. Reaching her arms around the lower part of the glass case, she whispered to Simon. “Now let me down-slowly!”
As Benedikta continued gripping the precious case, Simon knelt down slowly, bit by bit. The coffin swayed back and forth, scraped along the base of the altar, and finally touched the ground. Benedikta hopped nimbly down from Simon’s aching shoulders.
“And now let’s open it.”
Benedikta laid the coffin down on the ground gingerly and examined the cover. The edges of the glass were soldered with a gold alloy. She pulled out her knife and began to make a clean cut through the seam.
“Benedikta,” Simon whispered in a hoarse voice. “Are you sure we should be doing this? If we get caught, we’ll be put on trial, and our punishment will make Scheller’s torture on the wheel look like a walk in the park.”
Benedikta looked up from her work for just a moment. “I didn’t come all the way here to give up now. So come now and help me!”
Simon took out the medical stiletto he always carried with him, inserted it in the soldered crack, and pried open the seam, inch by inch. The alloy was soft and brittle, and it didn’t take them long to remove the lid.
“St. Felicianus, forgive us!” Simon mumbled, though he didn’t think his prayer would meet with much understanding in heaven. “We’re doing it only for the good of the church!”
A musty odor rose up from the open coffin, and Simon stared in disgust at the skeleton, which was covered in patches of green mold. The bones were tied to one another and to the glass coffin in back by thin wires. The dried laurel wreath atop the saint’s head had slipped down over the forehead, and between the bony fingers of his right hand, St. Felicianus held a rusty sword.
“The sword and laurel wreath,” Simon whispered, “are symbols of a martyr’s death and victory.”
Benedikta had already started examining the bones. She poked her fingers in the eye sockets and felt around the inside of the skull. “There has to be a message hidden here somewhere,” she mumbled, “a piece of paper, a note. Damn, Simon, help me look! We don’t have forever!”
Suddenly, something clattered behind them. Simon turned around but could make nothing out in the darkness. Shadows and light from the flickering candles at the foot of the Virgin Mary’s altar floated back and forth between the columns.
“Did you hear that?” Simon asked.
Benedikta was now examining the slightly moldy chest cavity. “A rat, a gust of wind-what do I know? Now come over here and help me!”
Once again, Simon gazed out over the nave. The columns, the altar to the Virgin, the flickering candles…
The medicus jumped.
Flickering candles…?
All along, the candles had been burning evenly. If they were flickering now, then-
“Simon, Simon! I’ve found it! I’ve found the message! Come and look!” Benedikta’s shout tore him from his thoughts. She had scraped some of the rust from the sword blade, and her eyes glowed as she pointed to her discovery. “It was underneath the rust! You were right!”
Simon came closer, bending down over the sword. An inscription could be seen under the rust on the blade, though only a few words were legible.
Heredium in…
With his stiletto, he hurriedly set about scraping the rust from the rest of the inscription, letter for letter, word for word.
Heredium in baptistae…
As he continued scraping, he whispered a translation of the Latin verse.
“The heritage in the baptist…”
He got no further because at that very moment all hell broke loose around them.
Meanwhile, there was a quiet knock at Jakob Kuisl’s front door. A messenger from Burgomaster Karl Semer, his personal scribe, was standing outside in the frigid night, pale, freezing, his knees shaking.
But it wasn’t the cold that made his knees shake. He crossed himself as he entered the hangman’s house, declining the cup of wine that Kuisl offered. Nervously, he noticed the execution sword hanging near a cross in the devotional area of the main room. It was bad luck to enter a hangman’s house so soon before an execution, especially on a night when wolves were roaming around and it was so cold the snot froze in your nose. But what could he do? He had been ordered to deliver a message to the hangman that very night. Presiding Burgomaster Karl Semer had returned from his business trip and was now keeping his promise by delivering the information Jakob Kuisl was so eager to have.
“What did you find out?” Kuisl asked, sucking on the cold stem of his pipe. “You can look out the window as you tell me, or I’ll put a mask over your eyes, if that will make it easier for you.”
The messenger shook his head, ashamed.
“All right, then, out with it!”
Speaking quickly, with his head bowed, the scribe reported what Burgomaster Semer had learned on his trip. Jakob Kuisl kept stuffing his pipe, lighting it over the stove, and then blowing clouds of smoke toward the ceiling, terrifying the messenger. A contented smile passed over the hangman’s face.
His suspicions had been confirmed.
Simon didn’t know where to look first. With a loud crash that resounded through the entire church, the huge statue of Mary in the apse tipped to one side, fell, and broke into hundreds of pieces. Shouts came from the right. The medicus caught sight of a wiry monk in a black robe leaping through the air with a drawn dagger and kicking another man in the head, who fell with a loud thud among the pews. From somewhere else, he heard a loud cry, almost like that of a child. Panting, a second stout monk appeared from behind the altar of Mary, followed by two men, one of whom held a crossbow cocked and ready to fire. They wore the tattered trousers of the mercenary foot soldiers in the Thirty Years’ War, long coats, and wide-brimmed hats with colorful feathers. The man with the crossbow paused, aimed, and pulled the trigger. With a gurgling sound, the fat monk fell forward into the baptismal font. Now the other monk turned around, dodged a candlestick aimed at him, then with a lightning-fast, almost imperceptible movement, thrust upward, plunging his scimitar deep into his opponent’s chest. The soldier staggered for a moment, trying to pull the blade out again, then fell against a grave slab on the wall and slid down to the floor. A wide bloody streak reached from the slab down to the ground.