“By God, yes,” Kuisl murmured after an eternity. “I knew someone like that, someone who tried. Heaven knows what he’s doing now, but at least he tried. It’s just me, stupid bastard that I am, who returned from the war to keep hanging people.”
He laughed softly. Then he dragged on his pipe until a small ember began to glow bright red again.
“Damn,” he finally continued, pointing with the stem of his pipe to his two grandchildren frolicking around and shouting cheerfully with Barbara in the shallow water.
“If I weren’t here, then you wouldn’t be, either, would you? And neither would the little bed wetters. For that alone I’ll be glad to chop off a few more heads.”
4
ERLING, EARLY ON THE MORNING OF MONDAY, JUNE 14, 1666, AD
At sunrise, Simon rose with a groan from his prickly straw bed in the knacker’s house.
He’d worked till late in the night on his report for the abbot. In it, he mentioned a possible murder weapon he’d discovered the evening before by the pond. On a long net leaning against the side of the walkway, he found drops of blood that could have come from the back of the dead noviate’s head. But Simon could suggest neither a suspect nor a motive.
The medicus would have liked to sleep a bit longer, but Michael Graetz rose before sunrise, noisily prepared a breakfast for his guests, and then left, whistling and singing, to visit a farmer nearby. After that, sleep was out of the question. In any case, the events of the previous day kept going through Simon’s mind. He sat down at the rickety table and, lost in thought, served himself some steaming porridge.
“Can you be a bit quieter when you smack your lips, or do you want to wake the dead?” Magdalena rubbed her eyes and stared at Simon angrily.
“Well, at least when you grouse like that it seems you’re on the road to recovery.” Simon grinned and pointed at the second bowl of porridge. “Want some breakfast?”
Magdalena nodded, then stood up and dished out some porridge. She did in fact seem to have recovered and ate with an appetite that reminded Simon of a hungry wolf.
“I’ll deliver my report to the abbot this morning,” he said, wiping his mouth. “First, I’ll stop by to see this watchmaker Virgilius. From some of the things he said, I’m guessing he knows more about Brother Johannes than he wanted to tell me yesterday.”
“Do you think perhaps that Johannes killed his own apprentice?” she asked, taking another serving of porridge. “I wouldn’t put anything past that ugly toad. I can feel he’s covering up something.”
“Actually, it’s no business of ours,” Simon sighed. “If only I’d kept my big mouth shut when I was talking with the abbot. But now one more visit won’t make any difference. In any case, I’d like to take you along to have a look at that bizarre automaton,” he said, getting up from the table. “What do you say? Do you want to come?”
“To admire my rival? Why not?” Magdalena laughed. “Watch out-if I don’t like her, I’ll yank out a few screws, and after that your nutty companion Virgilius won’t be able to use his doll for anything but an expensive scarecrow.”
Shortly thereafter they strolled through the village, up the hill toward the monastery, then took the little trail branching off to the right to the watchmaker’s house. The sun had already risen above the treetops and shone brightly and warmly now on the freshly painted stone building with the little garden in front. Simon walked past the daisies and poppies and up to the door. He was about to knock when he noticed it was already ajar.
“Brother Virgilius?” he called into the room. “Are you there? I brought someone along whom I’d like you to…”
Noticing the stench of sulfur and gunpowder, he stopped short. He also sensed another odor, which at another time and place he might have experienced as pleasant.
The odor of grilled meat.
“What’s going on?” Magdalena asked, amused. “Did you catch the monk in bed with his doll?”
“Evidently Brother Virgilius has been experimenting again,” Simon murmured. “Let’s hope nobody got hurt this time.”
As he pushed against the door, he met with resistance, as if something heavy was right behind it. Groaning, he pushed harder, and the odor became stronger. Heavy clouds of smoke issued through the crack; then suddenly something sprang out of it like a snake.
A pale, bloated arm.
With a loud cry, Simon jumped back, stumbling and landing on his back in the middle of the daisies. Magdalena, too, stepped back, trembling and pointing to the arm that hung lifeless in the doorway at knee-height, its fingers pointing accusingly at the shocked couple.
“Someone… someone must be lying behind the door,” Simon stuttered, as he slowly rose to his feet.
“And whoever that is, is likely dead as a doornail.” Magdalena gathered her courage, struggled to open the door, and in the gradually dispersing smoke, gazed on a scene of horror. The room looked as if a demon had been unleashed in it.
Directly in front of them lay the corpse of the young assistant, Vitalis. The novitiate’s head was angled oddly, as if some superhuman force had broken his neck; his shirt and parts of his trousers were burned, and beneath the clothing, burned flesh was visible on his back and legs. His arm was extended toward the door as if in a last desperate attempt to flee, and his face, seared by the flames, grimaced in fear, his mouth wide-open and eyeballs turned upward.
“My God,” Simon panted. “What happened here?”
In the room itself, tables and chairs had been overturned, the valuable pendulum clock lay in pieces on the floor, and the two halves of the copper sphere had rolled into a corner. Only the crocodile dangled from the ceiling as before, staring with lifeless eyes on the chaos below.
“If Virgilius was really experimenting with gunpowder, he’s blown himself up, along with everything else here, and has dissolved in a cloud of smoke.” Magdalena stepped into the room and looked around warily. “In any case, he’s not here.”
Simon stooped down to pick up the head of a doll that had rolled in front of him, its forehead shattered and eyes smashed in. Perplexed, he was turning the porcelain head over in his hands when something crossed his mind.
The woman doll! Where in the world…
Simon groped about for a while in the dimly lit room, but the automaton had disappeared. In the middle of the room, however, he discovered Brother Virgilius’s black robe in a large pool of blood, as well as a scorched screwdriver.
“It doesn’t look like Virgilius made it out of this room alive,” he murmured. A horrible thought passed through his head, so absurd that he cast it at once into the furthest corner of his mind.
Could the doll have killed its master and dragged him away? Was that even possible?
Suddenly he could feel something crunch beneath his feet. Stooping down, he picked up a broken lens inside a small, blood-stained brass ring. It took him a moment to realize what it was.
Brother Johannes’s eyepiece-the one the monk had worn yesterday in the apothecary’s house.
Simon was about to turn around to Magdalena when he saw two black-robed Benedictine monks in the doorway. Their faces, white as sheets, stared down in horror at the dead Vitalis at their feet.
“For the love of the Holy Virgin, what happened here?” one of them groaned, while the younger one stared at Magdalena and crossed himself.