The hangman sighed. “Then just a woman. The main thing is to keep them gawking at you and not watching us.”
With a smile, Magdalena joined her father and headed toward the church. It looked like he was finally onto something.
In front of the church they met Simon, who was awaiting his wife impatiently.
“Can you image how worried-” he started to say, but Kuisl cut him short.
“She was with Matthias, and she’s still alive; so let’s forget the matter.”
“With the mute Matthias, Graetz’s assistant?” Simon stared at his wife incredulously. “What are you doing around him?”
“At least he takes care of the two boys, whereas their high and mighty father prefers to stick his nose in books,” she groused.
“Just a minute. I’m only doing that because we have a murder to solve here. You said yourself-”
“Calm down, both of you,” the hangman interrupted. “You can fight all you want in Schongau, but we’re here now to help Nepomuk, and to do that I’ve got to get a better look at the holy chapel. Now, for God’s sake, let’s get in there.”
He opened the door to the church. At the noon hour, relatively few pilgrims were present. Around two dozen were kneeling and praying in the rear pews with their eyes closed, and closer to the front, near the high altar, a single monk was busy preparing for the next mass. To her horror, Magdalena recognized him as Brother Eckhart, the cellarer.
“Oh, great,” she whispered. “The old bastard snubbed me before, and I hardly think I’ll be able to distract him now.”
“You must at least try,” Simon whispered. “It will take us only two minutes to get up the stairway, across the balcony, and to the entrance, and if you can distract him that long, it will be enough.”
“Two minutes?” The hangman’s daughter raised her eyebrows. “That can be an eternity-but all right, I’ll do my best.” Magdalena dipped her fingers in the holy water from the font at the entrance, crossed herself, curtsied politely, and moved toward the apse where Brother Eckhart was busy cleaning the communion cup with a cloth. Seeing the young woman approach, he turned away pointedly.
“Oh, Your Excellency…” Magdalena started to say, but the cellarer didn’t respond. “I wasn’t here for the offertory this morning,” she said, “but I’d like to donate something for construction of the new monastery.” At that, the fat monk raised his head.
“You can give me the money if you wish,” he answered haughtily, “and I’ll pass it along as a charitable donation.”
You’ll blow it on booze, you bloated winebag, Magdalena thought, smiling.
“As you wish, Your Excellency,” she replied in a naive tone. “But may I ask you something first?”
The cellarer gave her a distrustful look. “Are you the woman I chased out of the balcony recently?” he asked, “the one who wanted to know so much about our relics room?”
“Ah, yes,” Magdalena admitted after brief hesitation. “The relics… they… they mean so very much to me.” She beamed ecstatically. “I even dream about the relics. In my dreams, Charlemagne and Saint Elizabeth even come to my bed and speak to me. They tell me when the cattle are sick and when the milk will turn sour, and when I look in the pot the next day, the milk is sour. A miracle!”
“A… miracle, indeed. And now let me polish the chalice for the next mass.” Evidently the cellarer was accustomed to hearing such stories from the faithful, and his distrust vanished. Magdalena cast a surreptitious glance up at the balcony to see Simon and her father starting up the stairs to the monk’s choir. She had to think of something.
“This… this painting in the back of the church,” she giggled, pointing spontaneously at one of the paintings at the back of the apse, “there is a mouse on it crawling right into the priest’s stole.”
“You stupid woman. You really don’t know anything, do you?” Brother Eckhart descended the steps from the altar toward her, shaking his head. To her great relief, he followed her to the painting.
“What you see here is the famous mouse that led us back to the holy treasure long ago. See? It’s carrying a scrap of parchment in its mouth.”
Grateful for the diversion, the hangman’s daughter leaned in to examine the painting, graying now with age. In the picture, a tiny mouse scurried out from under the altar during mass, holding a piece of parchment in its mouth.
“After the destruction of the castle that once stood here, it seemed the treasure was lost,” Brother Eckhart continued. “Monks had buried it in front of the altar in the chapel of the castle, and the hiding place was forgotten. But a mouse pulled a piece of parchment with pictures of relics on it from the hiding place, and the relics were found again. That is a miracle.” He smiled sardonically. “Now give me your gift for the church and get back to your sour milk.”
“Ah, yes, my gift…” Magdalena smiled awkwardly, watching Simon and her father out of the corner of her eye. They were standing upstairs at the door to the relics room but were apparently having no luck opening it.
Damn. What are you doing up there? How long do I have to stand here looking like a dumb goose?
Magdalena leaned over and fumbled with her bodice as if searching for a few coins between her breasts. The cellarer stared back, absorbed by this unexpected sight. “Perhaps, uh… there are other ways you could be of service to the monastery,” he murmured, licking his lips. “And we could pay you. As cellarer, I have the key to the pantry, as well as to some other rooms farther down below where we store wine, bacon, and sausage. There’s also a little place there where just the two of us could be together.”
“To pray?” Magdalena batted her eyelashes.
The cellarer laughed. “You can also pray at the same time-that won’t disturb me.”
At that moment, the hangman’s daughter was relieved to see Simon and her father disappear through the open door. Immediately a change came over her face.
“Well, what is it?” Brother Eckhart asked lustfully. “Shall the two of us go away to pray?”
“You know what, Your Excellency?” she snarled, her ingenuousness vanishing. “You’re too old for me-and too fat and too ugly. And I seriously doubt you’re at all able to do that sort of praying anymore. I think I’ll just donate in the usual way.” She extracted a single rusty kreuzer and tossed it at the feet of the astonished cellarer. “And now farewell. Saint Elizabeth is waiting for me at her next audience.”
Turning on her heels, she sashayed out the door, but not without stopping to bow one last time before each of the statues of Mary.
When Simon pressed the handle and realized the door up on the balcony was locked, he suppressed a quiet curse. It looked as if their visit here was for naught.
“Of course it’s locked,” he whispered. “We should have expected that.” He looked down into the nave where Magdalena was just heading to the back of the apse with the cellarer. “We’d better retreat before my wife gets herself into even more trouble.”
“You can forget that,” the hangman grumbled. “Just make sure nobody sees us, and I’ll do the rest.” He pulled out a little coil of wire and began poking around in the keyhole. “I do this in the Schongau dungeon sometimes to unlock ankle chains when I’ve misplaced the keys,” he said as he slowly turned the wire back and forth. “This won’t take long.”
There was a soft click as the door swung open. “Well, what did I say?” he beamed as they slipped inside.
“That won’t help you to open the locks at the entrance to the holy chapel,” Simon said as they hurried up the winding staircase past the votive paintings. “That’s quite a different story.”
“Idiot! I know that. I don’t want to get into the chapel, just have a look at the vestibule.”
Simon looked at his father-in-law in surprise. “The vestibule? Why is that?”
“You’ll see in a moment.”
They entered the little room outside the holy chapel now. Subdued sunlight fell through a single locked window on the north side, and the air smelled stale and moldy. Unlike on Kuisl’s last visit, a heavy wooden bar and an iron-reinforced door blocked the entrance to the chapel. Knee-high, waist-high, and eye-level, each of the three bars was secured with a heavy lock.