Magdalena, eager to see something, too, nudged Simon. Her soft body pressed up close against him, and he could feel her warm, slightly sour breath on his neck.
“Simon, say something!” she whispered. “What’s going on there?” She pressed even closer to him-too close, because he could feel himself losing his balance. He fell forward, crashing into the rubble of the gravestone.
Augustin Bonenmayr wheeled around, his face contorted with hatred. “Fronwieser!” he hissed. “I should have gotten rid of you right away! Well, it’s not too late. Brother Lothar!” He pointed to the monk, who picked a heavy stone up from the floor and was walking toward the medicus. “Do it for God! Deus lo vult!”
“You’ll do nothing of the sort!” Benedikta stepped into the opening, holding the little pistol she’d fired earlier at Brother Jakobus. Simon wasn’t certain she’d reloaded the dainty little handgun in the meantime, but in any case, the pistol had the desired effect. Uncertain, Brother Lothar stopped and looked over to his abbot. Now Magdalena appeared in the opening as well. For a moment, Augustin Bonenmayr was clearly caught off guard, but then a smile spread across his face and he seemed to change his strategy.
“Ah, I see. The three lovers have found one another again. How delightful!” The Steingaden abbot advanced one step toward Simon. “Brother Jakobus told me your Magdalena seems to be something of a bitch. But what does a monk understand about women…?” He grinned as if he’d just said something terribly amusing. “What divine providence, in any case, that he ran into her in Augsburg, of all places! We swear we wouldn’t have harmed a hair on her head. She was just…collateral so her father would stay out of this in case things got too difficult. How is Brother Jakobus, by the way?”
“You could light up your whole damned monastery with him,” Magdalena snapped. “He’s burning, just as if my father himself had hauled him over the coals.”
The abbot shook his head gently. “So much hatred! I have a proposal for you.” Holding the cross in his right hand, he advanced another step toward the group.
Benedikta pointed the pistol at his head. “Stop right there! Not one more step!” she whispered. “Or blood will flow down this cross.”
The abbot raised his hands in apology. “Let’s not argue. If I remember correctly, you’re still wanted in Rottenbuch for desecrating holy relics. I’ve already given your name to Brother Michael, the superintendent at Rottenbuch. Believe me, he’d rather see you burn today than tomorrow. But I could have been mistaken, and the real perpetrators could have been some highway robbers who just happened to come along. All it would take would be a word from me-”
“That’s a filthy lie, fils de pute!” Benedikta growled.
The abbot shrugged. “Whether it’s a lie or not, would you want to take the chance? Your future is in my hands. Kill me and you’ll be chased through all of Bavaria as vagrants and outlaws. Let me leave with the cross and you’re free.”
“How can we be so sure you won’t turn us in, anyway?” Simon asked.
Bonenmayr smiled and put his finger on the weathered piece of wood. “I swear on the True Cross of Christ. Is there any stronger oath?”
Benedikta looked at Simon and Magdalena, hesitating. For a while, silence filled the crypt.
Finally, Benedikta sighed. “For my part, I can live with this offer. I’d hoped for a real treasure, a gilded crucifix inlaid with rubies, perhaps, or a velvet-lined silver box-or whatever! But this rotten cross isn’t worth any more than the thousands of other splinters of wood presumed to come from the genuine cross. I can’t make any money from it…So you can keep it!”
“Benedikta is right,” Simon said, turning to the abbot. “How are you going to convince your flock that this is the genuine cross?”
“This is the genuine cross!” Bonenmayr insisted. “At least part of it. The damned Templars never let the Church forget they had it, and for that reason the Holy See always protected those heretics, even when the Pope noticed that they were going their own way and becoming more arrogant and greedy. When the French king finally got rid of them, the Church hoped the cross would show up somewhere again. Many Templars were handed over to the Inquisition, but even under torture they all kept silent, and the cross remained lost. Our order has been looking for it for centuries! We were able to save many other relics from the heretics, who sprang up out of the ground like poisonous mushrooms, but the True Cross had disappeared from the face of the earth. Now it has returned to the bosom of the Holy Catholic Church, and everything has turned out for the best! The bishop of Augsburg will inform the Pope of what we’ve found, and His Holiness will confirm its authenticity.”
“Do you really believe that?” Simon asked.
Augustin Bonenmayr nodded enthusiastically. “With the Pope’s blessing, this cross will become Christianity’s most important religious relic! People will make pilgrimages from all over the world to visit us. I already have plans for a magnificent pilgrimage church near Wies’s farm-”
“Good Lord, there’s blood on that cross!” Magdalena interrupted. She pointed at Benedikta. “The blood of your brother and of many others! I almost died because of that accursed cross!” She walked toward the abbot with a menacing look. “If you think you can simply go out and keep preaching your rubbish, then you’ve got another thing coming. I’ll send my father after you; he’ll break every bone in your body with that cross.”
“Magdalena, calm down!” said Simon. “The abbot’s suggestion is not so bad. What’s dead is dead, and-”
“Just a moment!” Benedikta interrupted. “Do you smell that?”
Simon took a whiff and noticed the caustic smell of smoke coming from the larger room behind them. It was faint, but unmistakable.
“Fire!” Benedikta cried. “Everyone get out!”
They fled back to the domed vault where clouds of smoke were ascending through the hole in the stage floor. Just moments later, the entire ceiling looked like the sky on a gloomy November day, disappearing behind a billowing gray cloud of smoke. The abbot sat on the ruins of the gravestone, pressing the cross to his chest as if the relic could protect his scrawny body from the flames.
His lips moved in a quiet prayer.
On the stage above, flames were eating through the dry brocade as if it were straw. Fire climbed up the curtains to the ceiling and along the balconies, leaving a path of destruction in its wake. Soon the entire auditorium was bathed in a red glow, and despite the cold January day outside, an almost unbearable heat filled the theater.
The hangman and the monk circled each other like two wolves ready to attack, each waiting for the other to make the first move. Finally, Brother Nathanael struck. He feigned a move to the left, then attacked from the right with his dagger. The hangman dodged to the right and struck the monk with his elbow, knocking him down. Before he could fall onto the burning curtain, Nathanael rolled away, jumped up like a cat, and attacked again.
The hangman hadn’t expected such a quick counterattack, and the dagger brushed his right arm in the same place the highwayman had cut him earlier that same day. Kuisl suppressed a groan and swung the cudgel but landed only a glancing blow on Nathanael’s shoulder. The monk turned in a half circle, ducked, and thrust the dagger at the back of the hangman’s knees. With a spirited leap to one side, Kuisl avoided this blow, but in the smoke-filled room, he was too late noticing the burning curtain at his feet. To avoid jumping straight into the flames, he changed direction in mid-jump, stumbled, fell over, and was just able to pull himself up on a painted backdrop of a sky full of white clouds from which the Lord looked down.