She quickly stood up and called to Peter, who came running. Anxiously she eyed her husband on the ground. “Can you walk or would you rather…?”
“Stay here while my youngest son is in the hands of a madman?” Simon croaked, struggling to get up. “Are you kidding? I’d rather crawl on all fours to that blasted bell tower.”
“Then let’s go.” Magdalena pulled her husband to his feet, took Peter by the hand, and led them both quickly across the fields and meadows toward the monastery. Simon staggered and stumbled but, with Magdalena’s occasional help, was able to walk on his own. So they moved ahead faster than expected.
“You may be right,” Simon gasped, pointing at the dark steeple in the distance that seemed to sway slightly in the storm. “If lightning strikes anywhere around here, it would be up there.”
Magdalena crossed herself. “God forbid it comes to that.”
Storm clouds still hung dark and heavy over the Holy Mountain, rain poured down, the storm raged like a wild beast, and hail flattened the fields of grain.
Along the way they came across splintered branches and fruit trees knocked down by the storm. Clearly the harvest this year would be a disaster and people would go hungry again.
A few minutes later they arrived at the outer monastery wall. Blown open by the wind, the gate was standing crooked on its hinges. Silently they ran through deserted streets, ankle-deep in mud. Here and there, lights could be seen burning in the farm buildings and in the monastery, and though Magdalena thought she saw anxious faces peering out from between the slats of the shutters, she hurried on.
Briefly she thought of asking the abbot or some of the other monks for help. But the Andechs bailiffs were still after Simon, and she had to hope her father in any case was on his way to the church tower with some of Wartenberg’s soldiers. No doubt he would have figured out that Virgilius wanted to carry out his experiments up there.
Climbing the final yards up the steep slope, they arrived in the muddy church square and stared up at the tower. Rain fell in their eyes, and though it was only seven in the evening, it was almost dark.
“There!” Simon cried suddenly pointing to a tiny point in the belfry that seemed to be moving. “You were right. Someone is up there. But I can’t see who.”
Magdalena squinted and held her hand up to shield her face from the downpour, but she could only make out a figure holding a sort of bundle out over the scaffolding. There was no sign of her father or the count’s soldiers.
“Whoever it is up there, we must hurry,” she said. “If necessary, I’ll go alone and you can stay down here with Peter, and I…”
Hearing a soft groan inside the church, Magdalena stopped short and listened. Then she raised her mud-splattered skirt and ran toward the portal while Simon and Peter followed close behind.
The nave was so dark that only the vague contours of objects were visible. Leaves and twigs had blown in through the damaged roof and columns, and the altars and confessional stools stood out from the wet floor like black boulders. A few of the artistic stained glass windows had been damaged by the storm, and the pews were strewn with colorful splinters of glass.
In the middle of the church, a figure lay in a pool of blood. His arms and legs were contorted and twisted like those of a broken doll, and though he was groaning and twitching slightly, he was otherwise motionless. Slowly he turned his head toward Magdalena and she finally recognized who it was.
Matthias.
Magdalena stared up at a gaping hole in the roof and the torn canvas that had been temporarily covering it. The knacker’s boy must have fallen straight through the opening. It was a miracle he was still alive.
“You… you monster!” she shouted, running toward him. “What did you do with my children? I trusted you, I…”
She saw the smiling face of the silent journeyman and stopped short. Even now that she knew Matthias had abducted her children, he looked friendly, helpful. Could he really be in league with Virgilius?
Moaning, he stretched out his hand and seemed to wipe the floor. It took Magdalena a while to realize he was writing something on the mud- and blood-stained surface. She knelt down to read it before the rain could wash it away.
I am sorry.
“Bah, as if that changes anything,” exclaimed Simon, who had now arrived on the scene. “He’s sorry. This scoundrel has been deceiving us all along and working with Virgilius. He’s a criminal and kidnapper, and perhaps even Brother Laurentius’s killer. And he was out to get you, too.”
But even Simon couldn’t keep his son from leaning down and passing his hand through the man’s blood-spattered red hair.
“Matthias sick?” Peter asked anxiously.
Magdalena nodded. “Your friend Matthias is very sick,” she said softly. “He’s probably going to die.” She cast an anxious gaze up at the balcony, then at the stairway leading from there up to the belfry. “But before that perhaps, he’s going to tell us what’s happening there. Do you hear me, Matthias?” She turned to the mortally injured workman. “Who’s up there? If you want to make amends, do it now.”
Matthias grumbled, then reached for his dirty, torn jacket. Pulling a wax tablet and stylus from a pocket, he started laboriously composing a message.
“This is taking too long,” Simon groaned. “In the meantime, Virgilius may kill our child.”
“Wait!” Magdalena raised her hand for silence, but she, too, kept staring through the hole in the roof where the tower was clearly visible. “Just a moment. This might be important.”
Finally Matthias finished writing. He groaned and handed the tablet to Magdalena, who quickly started reading.
Virgilius and the boy are in the belfry. So is your father and the abbot. No harm will come to the boy. Don’t let the boys think badly of me. Only God knows the entire truth.
Magdalena looked sorrowfully at the childish scribbles.
Only God knows the entire truth…
When she looked down again, she saw his head had tipped to one side and his eyes were staring rigidly skyward. A few green and red beech leaves floated down from the hole above.
“Matthias dead?” Peter asked anxiously.
Magdalena nodded. She couldn’t hold back a few tears forming in the corner of her eyes. “He… he is now with our dear Lord, and we’ll probably never find out why he conspired with this madman. But deep inside, I know he wasn’t a bad man.”
“Not a bad man?” Simon shook his head furiously. “Magdalena, he abducted our children. He’s a murderer and a criminal.”
“How many murderers has my father executed who would perhaps have been saints in another life?” she said softly. “And how many scoundrels are running around free, dressed in expensive clothes.”
She crossed herself, rose to her feet, and straightened up.
“You stay down below here with Peter,” she told her husband gruffly. “I’ll go up there now and bring my son back. If my father and the abbot can’t do it, I’ll just have to do it myself. To hell with Virgilius.”
Without another word, she ran toward the balcony that lay in the growing darkness.
There was something in the watchmaker’s eyes that tipped Jakob Kuisl off a fraction of a second before he released the boy.
An instant just long enough for Kuisl to lunge for the opening. Slowly, as if God had ordered time to stop, the hangman saw his grandson falling. He reached out and just managed to catch the bawling child by the collar. There was a horrifying rip as the clothing started to tear, but then it held. With his arms and legs thrashing about, Paul dangled like a marionette from his grandfather’s outstretched arms.
As Kuisl pulled the boy back inside with a loud shout, Virgilius gave him a sudden push from behind. For what seemed like an eternity, the hangman tottered at the edge of the opening. The watchmaker screeched behind him in an inhumanly high pitch. “The sacrifice! You took away my sacrifice. I need this boy so that Aurora can live.”