A sudden gust of wind struck the hangman from the front, allowing him to regain his balance. One last time, he glanced down into the gaping void and then, summoning all his strength, threw himself back onto the platform. The boy landed safely beside him and clung tightly to his grandfather.
“It’s over, Virgilius,” the abbot shouted into the storm. “Give up and return to God. It’s still not too late.”
“Never!” Only the whites of the watchmaker’s eyes were still visible, shining eerily in the gathering darkness as he broke into a defiant laugh.
“God took away what was dearest to me; how can I return to him? He mocked me and forsook me.” Virgilius’s voice was so loud that it even drowned out the clap of thunder. “I can be my own God. I don’t need him. Don’t you understand, Maurus? It’s faith alone that makes this Christian Moloch so strong. I used my faith to bring Aurora back.”
“God alone can create life,” the abbot admonished, approaching him with raised hands. “Repent, Virgilius. Let me grant you absolution.”
“I curse your absolution. I curse God.” Virgilius ran to his automaton, grasped it by its stiff arms, and looked out into the darkened heavens.
“All I need is a single bolt of lightning,” he cried, looking up into the clouds. “There will come a day when we realize that lightning, too, isn’t divine, but a natural phenomenon we can use for our own purposes.” He reached for the wire leading from the ceiling down to the bier, where it branched into other smaller wires. Carefully he checked the connections. “I must have done something wrong. There must be some reason the lightning hasn’t hit the steeple yet,” he murmured. “Exactly, that must be it. We must work even more carefully if we wish to abolish God. Like a watchmaker. We must-”
Suddenly the stairway started creaking again and footsteps could be heard coming up. Virgilius turned around to stare at the woman who had just appeared in the opening. He couldn’t recognize her in the darkness. Her hair was drenched from the rain and she was breathing heavily from the climb up the stairs, but she held her determined head up and chin out. Like an angry, vengeful goddess, she raised her hand to point at the watchmaker, who cried out in delight.
“Aurora… is it you?” he asked hesitantly. “Did you finally come back to me after all these years? But…” His gaze shifted from the automaton to the woman standing before him in the opening. “How… how is that possible? The lightning…”
“Go to hell, Virgilius,” she snarled.
At this moment, there was a crash so loud that Kuisl thought the tower would split apart. A fraction of a second later, a blue light as thick as a man’s arm shot from the top of the steeple directly into the puppet. Virgilius, still clinging to an end of the wire, was enveloped in a bluish aura like a gigantic halo. Flames shot out from his hair, his sleeves, even from his ears, and as he opened his mouth in a shrill, inhuman scream, tiny flames appeared there, as well.
Virgilius twitched and thrashed. His whole body trembled as he continued holding the wire. Then it became a giant flaming torch.
The force of the explosion threw Kuisl back against the side of the tower as everything around him erupted in flames. His ears were ringing shrilly, but otherwise all he could hear was blood pulsing through his head. Coughing, the Andechs abbot crawled toward the trapdoor, his robe ablaze. In the opposite corner, Magdalena clutched her boy in her arms, her eyes and mouth open wide in a scream, though Kuisl still couldn’t hear a thing.
He jumped up, rushed to Magdalena, seized her and the child, and pushed them both toward the trapdoor. All around them timbers were beginning to fall from the ceiling. Though Kuisl could feel flames singeing his beard, he didn’t stop until he made sure his daughter and grandson made it to the trapdoor over the stairs. Then he climbed down behind them.
When he turned around one last time, he could see Virgilius still standing like a flaming scarecrow alongside his beloved Aurora. A blackened clump engulfed in flames, he bared his teeth and stared at the automaton he had created. The puppet’s wax face was melting like honey, revealing the metal parts and iron beneath.
Her dead mechanical eyes glowed, and for a brief moment it looked to Kuisl as if it wasn’t Virgilius clinging to his automaton but the automaton clinging to its creator.
Then more burning beams fell from the ceiling, burying the two.
The hangman rushed down the stairs, away from the chaotic scene above, just a few yards behind Magdalena and Paul. He could hear the wind whistling through the tower, fanning the fire, a flaming hell they struggled to escape as they staggered down the steep stairway. They stumbled a few times but always managed to grab hold of the railing at the last moment.
Arriving breathlessly in the nave, Kuisl felt enormous relief on finding his second grandchild and son-in-law unharmed and waiting. The Andechs abbot stood to the side, coughing, his robe burned up to his knees and his face blackened with soot, but otherwise apparently uninjured.
“That… that was the punishment of God,” Maurus Rambeck gasped, staring blankly into space. “We’ve seen the face of God.”
“If we don’t hurry, we’ll see it again soon,” replied Kuisl, nudging the others toward the exit. “This fire will destroy the entire monastery.”
Standing in front of the church, they watched the burning steeple light up the darkness like a mighty torch. Glowing beams and shingles fell on the church roof below, and soon the entire structure was in flames, threatening to spread to the neighboring monastery buildings.
More and more monks-as well as pilgrims and simple villagers-gathered in the square, staring up in disbelief at the roaring conflagration that continued to grow as the rain gradually eased off.
“This is the end of the monastery,” whispered the abbot next to Kuisl.
“Or the beginning,” the hangman replied. “Didn’t you want to build a new, finer one anyway? If not now, when?”
Suddenly shouts could be heard in the crowd, voices of the count and his soldiers assigning men to various fire brigades. Armed with buckets, people ran like frightened ants in all directions-pilgrims and Benedictines side by side, all trying to control the fire. Kuisl spotted his cousin Michael Graetz in the front row of the crowd with some other dishonorable people. The hangman suspected the battle was hopeless. Wind whipped flames toward the monastery and the outlying buildings, and a few glowing roof shingles were already falling from the far-off brewery.
“Damn it, hangman,” cried Leopold von Wartenberg, who had fought his way over to them. “What did you do up there? I’ll have Master Hans personally boil you in oil for this.”
Unlike the figures around him, who were covered with ash, mud, and soot, the count was still as neat as a pin, lightly perfumed, and untouched by the slightest smudge of dirt. Evidently Leopold von Wartenberg was better at giving commands than at doing things himself. When he raised his hand to strike the dishonorable hangman, the Andechs abbot intervened.
“Your Excellency, this man is innocent,” Maurus Rambeck said firmly. The abbot seemed to have regained his former haughty manner. “It was the lightning that struck in the tower, burning my brother to death and destroying the automaton.”
“Your brother who is already dead?” The count sneered. “Then it’s true what this shrewd hangman surmised? Virgilius was behind all of this?”
Maurus Rambeck nodded. “I’ll draft a report first thing tomorrow morning and make a clean breast of it all. But for now, let’s all lend a hand. We must at least save the library.”
“My God, the library!” Simon hobbled toward the burning monastery, wringing his hands. “All the beautiful books. We must save them.”
“Damn it, Simon, stop,” cried Magdalena, while both children clung to her singed skirt. “You can’t run that fast yet. Come and care for your two little boys instead.”