Brother Johannes stopped tapping the walls and stared wide-eyed at the abbot. “But, Your Eminence!” he cried. “This is a holy place!”
“This is a hiding place for the damned Templars!” Bonenmayr shouted. “I won’t let them trifle with me any longer, not on my own property! We’re going to dig right here! Go and get the pickaxes-at once!”
Simon and Magdalena followed Benedikta down the steep winding staircase into the darkness. At the very next turn, Simon knew that Magdalena’s suspicions had been right. He reached for the tip of one of the torches; it was still hot. Someone must have extinguished it just moments ago.
The opening in the wall above them was now no more than a faint glow, and even that disappeared after the next turn. Benedikta stopped, pulled out a box of matches, and soon they saw a flickering light in front of them-she’d set fire to one of the books. Simon felt a twinge in his heart; he didn’t want to know which precious book had just met a fiery death. Aristotle? Thomas Aquinas? Descartes? He looked uneasily at the Confessions of Saint Augustine he held in his hands. He couldn’t yet bring himself to set fire to the masterpiece.
Holding the burning book, Benedikta led the way. At the bottom of the staircase, the corridor extended to the intersection where, not even an hour ago, Magdalena had stood looking for a way out.
“Which way?” Benedikta whispered.
Magdalena looked around. “The chapel where I was held prisoner is to the left. The way straight ahead leads to the crypt of the Guelphs, but there’s no way out there, so let’s go right.”
Now Magdalena, too, had set fire to a book and, along with Benedikta, entered a corridor even narrower than the others. In the flickering light, Simon imagined he was looking at two sisters-the older one wearing a finely woven fur overcoat, her red hair up in a bun, and the other, with shaggy black hair, wearing a dress tattered from her long imprisonment, her eyes fiery with youth. Both had the same determined look on their faces.
Magdalena seemed to have regained her old self-confidence now, casting a sideward glance at Benedikta. “In that black coat you’re slower than a fat bear in hibernation,” she whispered. “You’d better let me go first. I’m younger and quicker.”
“Petite garce!” Benedikta hissed. “I hardly believe you could save us if we’re ambushed in here. You forget I have our only weapon.” She pulled out the pistol and stepped back a pace.
The hangman’s daughter scoffed at the little handgun. “That’s just a woman’s toy. You couldn’t shoot a chicken off the top of the manure pile with that little thing. You should see the weapons my father brought back from the war.”
“But your father is unfortunately not here to protect his dear little girl!”
Simon lifted his hands, pleading. “Ladies, please! Let’s just get out of here first, and then you’ll have plenty of time to bash each other’s heads in.”
Benedikta cast Simon a scornful gaze. “For once, you’re right. We’ve wasted enough time with this.” Then she quietly stepped out in front of the little group.
Magdalena and Simon followed her down the narrow passageway. Extinguished torches hung in rusty sconces along the wall at regular intervals; in one corner they found an empty black pitch bucket no doubt used to prepare the torches. They passed a number of niches and small passages leading off on both sides, but they continued down the main corridor. At one point, Magdalena bumped into Benedikta, who had stopped suddenly at an intersection. Two corridors forked away from this spot, both the same size.
“And where now, Madame Smarty Pants?” the hangman’s daughter whispered.
Benedikta held up her book, which had burned down about halfway. The flame guttered to the left with a thin trail of smoke.
“The passageway to the right seems to lead out,” she said. “At least that’s where the draft is coming from, so we should-”
She was interrupted by that shuffling, gasping sound. Now it was quite close, coming from a niche nearby. Or was it farther away? A clatter of little stones, then silence again.
Benedikta aimed her pistol into the darkness.
“Whoever or whatever you are, come out!” she cried. “I have a nice surprise for you here. Come and get it.”
Someone giggled.
Simon and the two women held their breath. The giggling echoed through the corridors, making it impossible to tell exactly where it was coming from.
Now came the sound of shoes shuffling over stone.
“Damn it, show your face!” Benedikta shouted. “You damn bastard, I’ll cut your balls off! Je te coupe les couilles, fils de pute!”
Despite his fear, Simon was astonished that Benedikta could curse like a longshoreman. Where had she learned to talk that way? His thoughts were interrupted by a rasping, cracking voice coming from somewhere down the corridor.
“The demons, Magdalena. The demons. They have taken possession of me. They…are eating…consuming me…from inside…Can you see the demons, Magdalena?”
“Oh my God, it’s Brother Jakobus!” Magdalena whispered. “He isn’t dead yet!”
“Or perhaps he is,” Benedikta replied. “This voice doesn’t sound like it comes from…the living.”
Simon could smell something now, at first just a faint odor, but then growing stronger and stronger. It was the pungent smell of burning tar, an acrid stench. It came from up ahead, riding on the draft of air. Now heavy, black, billowing clouds of smoke were drifting past them like thunderheads driven by a storm, and the voice was much louder, a rush of wind descending upon them.
“The demons, Magdalena. They…are consuming…me…Can you see them? Can you see them?”
As he spoke the last words, a small, flickering ball appeared on their right. It was rolling toward them, faster and faster, growing larger until it finally filled the entire passageway.
“Can you see them, Hangman’s Daughter?”
Magdalena and the others were so terrified they couldn’t move. Too late, they noticed that the fiery ball was the blazing monk’s robe. The fire was consuming his habit, eating its way through to his body, a living torch racing toward them.
Then, like a fiery nightmare, Brother Jakobus threw himself upon them.
Like gravediggers, the monks pounded away with pickaxes on the chapel floor. Sweat poured down their faces as they hacked away at the floor slabs, smashing them to pieces, then digging them out with their shovels. Weathered memorial slabs, tiles decorated with crosses, inlaid mosaics-everything was pounded to rubble and tossed outside in a pile next to the church. Beneath the slabs they found nothing but dirt.
“Keep digging!” the abbot shouted. “Perhaps it’s hidden somewhere in the ground! It has to be here!”
Breathing heavily, the monks went to work on the hard ground. The soil was full of little stones that made digging especially difficult. Despite the icy temperature, sweat stains formed on the monks’ tunics, which were turning brown with dirt. The Premonstratensian monks groaned and moaned; they weren’t accustomed to such hard work.
Brother Nathanael had assisted with the digging at first, but now he was standing alongside the abbot. The Dominican pointed to the pit in the ground, which got stonier as the monks continued to dig. “The medicus must have been mistaken. The cross isn’t here!”
Frantically, Bonenmayr looked around the chapel, which appeared more and more like a pile of rubble. Where had they not yet dug? What had they forgotten? His gaze wandered to the only object not yet hacked to pieces.
The altar.
Brother Johannes noticed the abbot’s gaze. “Your Eminence, not the altar!” he groaned. “It’s sacred and-”