“Well?” Benedikta asked, with a gesture inviting Simon to have a look for himself. “Would you like to try your luck this time?”
That was when they heard voices and the sound of someone approaching from the other side of the door.
The theater stood directly on the eastern wall surrounding the monastery complex. It was not yet complete, but it was easy to imagine how it would look some day. At the corners of the second story, gargoyles with demonic faces looked down from tower-like oriel windows. Above the main entrance was the monastery’s coat of arms along with a relief of the comic and tragic masks.
Augustin Bonenmayr walked with such long, quick strides toward the building that the monks had difficulty keeping up. The theater was one of his most ambitious projects, one he had worked on a long time in order to gain the acceptance of his colleagues. Just like the Jesuits, the Steingaden abbot wanted to win converts to the true belief with light, music, and colorful scenery. The theater was a divine weapon in the struggle against the austere reformation, which was hostile to sensual feelings. It took a lot of imagination to realize Bonenmayr’s dream of the divine theater.
Without slowing his pace, the abbot pushed open the double doors to the playhouse. The torches that the monks carried bathed the auditorium in a dim light; shadows danced over the bare walls and balconies. In front was a stage, almost ten feet high and constructed from spruce, and in front of that a deep orchestra pit opened up. In place of scenery, bundles of cloth and piles of boards lay around, and ropes and pulleys dangled from the unfinished ceiling.
Augustin Bonenmayr turned to his cohorts as he hurried up the narrow steps to the stage. “Faster! Good Lord, faster! We’re almost there.”
The abbot pushed aside a bundle of cloth and stepped to the middle of the stage, onto a wooden square in the floor, almost invisible from the auditorium. Then he pointed to one of the pulleys on the wall.
“The lever on the right!” he called out to Brother Johannes. “Pull it and lower the rope slowly.”
As the others joined him on the square, Brother Johannes let out the rope, and the rattling, creaking platform moved downward.
“A trapdoor where the devil, the angels, or even the Savior himself can appear, or vanish,” Bonenmayr explained to Brother Nathanael, who looked around approvingly. A dreamy look came over the abbot’s face. “I’ve had pulleys installed everywhere. There will be scenery, curtains that can be rolled up and down, and even a cloud-making machine! Soon people will go out into the world after a performance here with the feeling they’ve met God! Paradise on earth, so to speak! Ecce homo, we are here…”
With a grinding sound, the platform came to rest on the stone floor of the cellar. The dark room they found themselves in seemed to encompass many niches and corners. Columns set at regular intervals supported the low ceiling, and weathered memorial slabs covered the walls and floor. The actual size of the vault was hard to estimate, as it was filled with moldy boxes, shelves, and trunks. A rotting statue of Mary leaned against the wall next to a pulley, and stone cherubs and gargoyles lay strewn around on the floor, worn by time, weather, and pigeon droppings. In the midst of all this were a few strange apparatuses whose functions were not immediately clear.
“We found this cellar during the construction on the playhouse,” Bonenmayr said as Brother Lothar handed him a torch. “An old vaulted cellar that probably served as a hiding place during the Great War and was then forgotten. At first I thought about moving the graves to the cemetery and sealing the cellar up, but then I thought I could use it for the stage machinery and as a storeroom for the costumes. And now…” He stepped over to a grave marker. Running his hand over it, he whispered, “I feel we’ve almost reached our goal.”
“And you think this is the old Saint John’s Chapel?” Brother Nathanael asked skeptically. “How can you be so sure? The Steingaden Monastery is ancient, and this could just as well be any other forgotten crypt.”
The abbot shook his head and pointed at the grave markers. “Just look at the inscriptions!” he whispered. “These are the graves of abbots and other religious dignitaries connected to the monastery. I’ve already taken a closer look at the dates of death, and the most recent entry is dated 1503. And the Saint John’s Chapel alongside the church was not built until 1511-that’s just eight years later. That can’t be a coincidence! I’m certain we’re standing in the crypt of the former Saint John’s Chapel. In the years that war was raging in this country, it was simply forgotten.” He started tapping on the grave slabs. “Now we must just find the entrance to the hiding place. I suggest-”
There was a soft creaking sound overhead, and the abbot stopped to listen. Then a thud followed, as if a heavy sack had fallen to the floor.
“Brother Johannes!” Bonenmayr cried out. “What in the world are you doing up there?”
The monk up above did not answer.
“Damn it, Johannes, I asked you a question!”
Again, silence.
The abbot turned to Brother Nathanael. “Please go up there and see what’s going on. We have no time for such childish nonsense.”
Nathanael nodded, clenching his dagger between his teeth, and climbed up the pulley rope to the stage.
Bonenmayr now inspected the plaques more closely. The reliefs depicted skulls, crossbones, occasionally a monk with his eyes closed and arms crossed, and Roman numerals indicating the year of death in each case.
Bonenmayr suddenly stopped in front of an especially weathered plaque.
“It’s strange, but I’ve never seen this inscription before,” he said, tapping his slender fingers against the plaque. “I have never heard of an abbot by this name.” He bent down and examined the name again through his pince-nez. “And the dates can’t be right, either.”
He wiped the dust from the inscription so that the letters beneath the crossbones were easily legible.
H. Turris. CCXI.
“What does that mean?” Bonenmayr murmured. “Perhaps an honorable Horazio Turris, born 211 in the Year of Our Lord? A Roman officer who found his last resting place here?”
Brother Lothar nodded obsequiously. “It’s just like you said, Your Eminence.”
“You ass!” The abbot looked at the monk disdainfully. “This monastery is old, but not that old.”
“Possibly the M for the number one thousand has simply been worn away,” Brother Lothar quickly added, trying to correct his error. “Couldn’t it be MCCXI-that is 1211 AD?”
The abbot thought about this for a bit and shook his head. “Then the other numbers would be worn as well. No, there’s something behind all this. Quick! Give me your torch!”
The baffled monk watched as Bonenmayr took the torch and copied the letters of the inscription on the dust of the stone floor.
“H. Turris. CCXI,” the abbot mumbled, concentrating on the name and the year he’d scribbled beneath it. Suddenly an idea came to him. He started drawing the letters furiously in the dust, erasing them, writing them again.
Brother Lothar looked on, confused. “Your Excellency, what in the world-”
“Hold your tongue. Bring me some more light from the other torch over there,” Bonenmayr grumbled. Silently the monk held up the torch Nathanael had left behind and watched as the abbot continued sketching and erasing the letters.
Finally Bonenmayr stopped. His face partly obscured in the shadows, his eyes narrowed to slits behind his pince-nez. He grinned like a schoolboy, pointing at the letters on the ground. Beneath the name and the year of death there were now two new words.
Two very familiar words.