To be sure, she walked around the entire platform, but the strange construction had indeed vanished into thin air. All that remained was a piece of wire protruding from the ceiling, dangling in the wind.
Magdalena cursed softly. Someone must have removed the stretcher in the last two days. Now she would probably never find out what the apparatus was. Grumbling, she kicked one of the heavy church bells, but the heavy iron bell hardly moved a fraction of an inch. Then she climbed down and quietly left the church, but not without bowing one last time before the main altar and the two statues of Mary.
Please excuse the lateness of my visit, Holy Mother of God, she prayed to herself. But you, too, probably want to know what’s going on up in your tower. Or have you known about all this for a long time?
As Magdalena stepped under the scaffolding in front of the main entrance, she could sense something moving. At that moment a large, heavy object fell toward her. Instinctively, she jumped aside in time for a shapeless object to graze her right shoulder. There was a whoosh as a waist-high sack of lime landed next to her on the ground, bursting open and pouring its contents across the pavement.
Everything happened so fast that Magdalena scarcely had time to catch her breath. Her heart pounding, she leaned against one of the uprights of the scaffold, staring down at the sack from which a cloud of dust rose now into the bright, moonlit night.
Was that just another accident? Softly she cursed herself for sneaking through the church in the darkness. Good Lord, she had two little children who needed her, and here she was poking her nose around, looking for some madman.
“Is everything all right?”
The voice came from the right, by the church entrance. A monk approached, but not until he was standing almost in front of her did she recognize the novitiate master Brother Laurentius.
“I heard a noise,” he said, “and do hope nothing has happened. For God’s sake, you’re pale as a ghost.”
“Pale as lime would be the right expression,” Magdalena groaned, pointing to the burst sack at her feet. “That huge thing almost killed me.”
The Brother looked up anxiously. “It must have fallen from the scaffold. I said just this morning that this area had to be roped off. As if enough hadn’t already happened in the last few days.” He sighed, then looked at Magdalena severely. “But you really shouldn’t be hanging around the church square at this hour. What in heaven’s name are you doing here?”
Just as she had the evening before in the church, Magdalena noticed Laurentius’s finely wrought facial features. His fingers were long, with clean nails that glimmered faintly in the darkness.
“I’m… looking for my husband,” she stammered. “He’s the bathhouse surgeon from Schongau who’s taking care of the sick people here. Have you seen him, by chance?”
At once the monk’s expression brightened. “Ah, the bathhouse surgeon who is taking care of the sick pilgrims free of charge?” he asked. “A true Christian. You can be sure he has earned his place in the Heavenly Kingdom.”
“Thank you, but I think he’d prefer to spend the next few years here on earth,” she replied, pulling her shawl tight around her shoulders. “And in your monastery, that’s not so easily done at present.”
The Brother cringed. “You’re right,” he murmured haltingly. “This is a dreadful time-first the young Coelestin and then…” His voice broke and he turned aside.
“Were you very close to the watchmaker’s assistant, Vitalis?” Magdalena asked, concerned.
Brother Laurentius nodded, his lips tightly pressed together. Only after a while did he answer. “I’m the novitiate master here. All my charges are dear to me, as I’m responsible for the education of each individual.” He sighed. “But with Vitalis it was something else. He was very… sensitive. He often visited me in the evening and poured out his heart.” The priest’s long eyelashes began to flutter, and Magdalena saw a tear run down his face.
“Did Vitalis have difficulties with his master?” she asked, curiously.
The young monk shrugged. “I don’t know. Toward the end he was very reserved-something must have happened. The last time we met he seemed to want to tell me something, but then he decided to remain silent. It was probably Aurora who made him so anxious.”
“Aurora?”
“Yes, his master’s automaton,” Laurentius explained. “Vitalis thought the puppet was alive. He often told me that she moved on her own at night, hissing and whispering, almost like a human being, and he felt she was following his every move.”
Magdalena shook her head. “A dreadful thought.”
“Indeed. Vitalis thought the puppet was hiding some horrible secret, and on the night before his gruesome end he told me, ‘She will kill him-and all of us.’” Brother Laurentius nodded, lost in thought. “Those were his exact words: ‘kill us.’ Now it seems his prophesies have been fulfilled. God knows what this creature did with poor Vitalis and his master who has vanished.” He hastily crossed himself and bowed. “It’s quite late, only a few hours before morning prayers. Let’s hope and pray this witchery will end soon. God be with you.” With these final words, the novitiate master turned and left.
Magdalena stared after his dark form as he vanished into the night, then hastily climbed down the steep path toward the village. She fervently hoped that Simon had returned by now. This monastery seemed more and more sinister to her, and for a long time she couldn’t get the automaton’s soft melody out of her mind.
A shrill, unending glockenspiel.
Half an hour later, Kuisl, Simon, and Magdalena had returned to the knacker’s house and were sitting around the stove in the main room thinking about the events of the last few days. The hangman had lit his pipe for the third time, and the whole room filled with clouds of smoke from the tobacco and the wet wood burning in the stove. Kuisl’s cousin Michael Graetz still hadn’t returned from his visit to the local tavern, and his silent assistant seemed to have disappeared, even though Magdalena had asked him to stay and watch the children-a good opportunity finally for the three to discuss everything that had happened.
“Experiments with lightning?” Simon asked, incredulously. “Your friend Nepomuk actually was studying lightning?”
Nodding, Kuisl took a deep drag on his pipe. He was still wearing the filthy monk’s robe, which clung to him like a wet sack and seemed to itch all over. “He was trying to capture lightning,” he grumbled, after he’d finally finished scratching himself. “Not such a bad idea, when you think of how often it has struck just in our little Schongau. Nepomuk took a wire and ran it down the church steeple to the cemetery, and the lightning actually did strike there. But unfortunately, it also set the whole tower on fire.”
“Just a moment,” Magdalena spoke up. “The day before yesterday I saw a wire like that there, but also a strange sort of stretcher. When I went back again tonight, it was gone; only the wire was still hanging from the ceiling.”
She had met Simon on the way home and, until now, hadn’t told him or her father anything about the sack of lime that had fallen next to her. In the meantime, she was no longer sure herself whether her constant fear of attack was her imagination run wild, and now, especially in the warm light of the knacker’s cottage, everything seemed to her like a distant fairy tale.
“Perhaps the stretcher in the belfry wasn’t Nepomuk’s at all, but belonged to someone trying to copy his ideas,” Simon said.
Magdalena frowned. “And who would that be?”
“No idea,” Simon replied, perplexed. “The entire inner council seems very peculiar, above all the abbot himself. Your father and I surprised him reading a book about conjuring up golems.” He waved his hands back and forth vigorously, trying to dispel the smoke. “Whoever it is, we’re too late. The stranger has clearly disposed of all the evidence because things were getting too hot for him. And now-” Simon coughed, then turned angrily to his father-in-law. “Damn, Kuisl!” he shouted. “Can’t you just once stop that awful smoking? How can anyone think straight in all this smoke?”