It was a gorgeous day.
But distant thunder announced the coming storm.
Just a few hours later, three cloaked figures moved through the little streets below the monastery, hunched over in the torrential rain striking their woolen capes obliquely and soaking them to the skin. Lightning flashed through the sky, followed immediately by earsplitting thunder. Dusk had turned into pitch-black night, and only a few lights were still burning up in the monastery. Simon looked up anxiously, squinting in the face of the driving rain.
“Couldn’t we have left a bit later?” he complained. “What a deluge. If we don’t watch out we’ll be washed down into the Kien Valley.”
The Schongau hangman turned around with a look of contempt. “What are you? A man of salt who will dissolve in the rain? It’s just water, not pitch or sulfur; your fine jacket will dry out again, and life will go on.”
“It certainly isn’t healthy to stomp through the rain in such weather.” Simon sneezed, as if to support his point.
“You could have stayed with the knacker in his comfy little house,” Kuisl snarled. “It would have been better that way. What a group-a silly bathhouse doctor and my own daughter. I’d feel a lot better if I had a few of my men from the war here now.”
“But this isn’t a war. We’re in Andechs,” whined Magdalena, who, following Simon closely, was barely recognizable beneath her soaked headscarf. “And if you were any kind of a leader you would at least have let your troops in on your plans. Who is the damned sorcerer, anyway?” She was working herself up into a frenzy now. “Damn it all. You’ve been stringing us along since yesterday. Admit that you like keeping us in suspense.”
Kuisl grinned. “Let your father enjoy this moment. Besides, it’s dangerous to know too much in Andechs these days. It’s for your own good. You’ll have to put up with it just a bit longer.”
Simon and Magdalena followed the hangman up to the monastery. They forgot their argument earlier that day as soon as Kuisl told them they might that very night unmask the person who stole the hosts. In the meanwhile, the knacker and his mute assistant would care for the two sleeping boys. Magdalena had simply told the two men that she and Simon had to take care of the sick pilgrims, but now, in the silence and darkness occasionally punctuated by flashes of lightning, the hangman’s daughter wondered whether it wouldn’t have been better for them to stay back in the house on such a night, too.
Suddenly Kuisl turned sharply to the right, and the couple quickly realized where he was headed.
“The watchmaker’s workshop,” Simon groaned. “What in heaven’s name do you think we’ll find there?”
“I sent for someone to meet us,” the hangman replied without turning around. “I sent him a message, and if I’m right, he’ll show up.”
“And if he doesn’t?” asked Magdalena.
“Then I’ll head for Weilheim, give the executioner hell, and rescue Nepomuk from the dungeon all by myself.”
Magdalena cringed. “Then let’s just hope you’re right. I don’t want to see my father cut up into pieces, skewered on a spear, covered with tar, and set out on display all around Weilheim.”
The front of the watchmaker’s house had seemed so inviting in bright daylight but now appeared gloomy in the rain and dark. Low-lying and tilting to one side, the house-with its garden in front and low wall-didn’t seem to fit in with its surroundings. The door looked locked, but when Kuisl gave it a push it swung open with a grating sound.
The hangman removed a lantern from under his cape and gazed at the strange objects before him-the crocodile on the ceiling, the broken furniture, the burn marks on the floor. Everything was just the way he’d found it the night before.
“We’re a bit early,” Kuisl said. “I’ve summoned our friend to come when the bells toll eleven o’clock, but I thought there would be no harm in arriving a bit early.” He grinned. “Not that we should expect any surprises.”
“What friend?” asked Simon, shaking the water from his hair. “By all the saints, won’t you tell us? I can’t think of anything more fun than to prowl around a haunted house, in thunder and lightning, where one man has been burned alive and another was presumably abducted by a golem.”
Without answering, Kuisl motioned his son-in-law to approach the narrow staircase leading to the second floor. “Come now, you coward,” he said with a mischievous smile. “I’ll show you something you’ll like. I promise.”
“Your word in God’s ear. If I must.”
The three of them passed through the assistant’s bedroom and up a narrow staircase into the small library Kuisl had discovered the evening before. When Simon saw the books, his mood changed dramatically. His fear vanished as he enthusiastically removed one after the other from the shelves and started leafing through them.
“This… this is a real treasure,” he gasped. “Just look.” He held up a stained folio volume. “The Opus Maius of the Franciscan Roger Bacon, with illustrations. It must be worth a fortune. And look here… Agrippa’s De occulta philosophia.”
“Wonderful,” Magdalena replied dryly. “But unfortunately we’re not here to read but to catch a madman. Put the damned books back on the shelf and stop shouting.”
“Fine, fine, I just thought…”
At that moment, Simon’s eyes fell on the front cover of the Opus Maius, imprinted with a golden stamp.
Sigillum universitatis paridianae salisburgensis…
“A book from Salzburg University?” The medicus frowned. “But why…” Something about the stamp puzzled him, but just as he started to examine it more closely, he heard something downstairs. The door creaked, and a moment later the church bells struck the eleventh hour.
“Ah, our friend has arrived,” the hangman said. “I was right after all. Let’s go downstairs and greet him.”
Kuisl quietly descended the stairs into the assistant’s room with Simon and Magdalena close behind. Once downstairs, they tiptoed toward the half-open door of the workshop. Through the small opening, Kuisl saw a light moving quickly back and forth through the room; then he heard a soft, grating voice.
“Virgilius? Virgilius? Are you here?” the voice said. “Do you have the monstrance?”
Simon cringed. The voice sounded familiar, and now he saw the man, as well. A monk in a dark robe stood with his back to them, holding a torch to light the room. His hood came down over his face, and he was bent over like a bloodhound intently sniffing the floor.
“My God, the sorcerer,” Magdalena whispered. “That’s the man from up in the tower…”
Simon placed his hand over her mouth, but it was too late-the stranger had heard her. He briefly turned his masked face in her direction, then ran as fast he as he could toward the exit.
“Stop, you scoundrel!” Magdalena called to him. “You just wait and I’ll show you what happens when you try to throw a hangman’s daughter from a tower.”
She reached for one of the two copper hemispheres on the ground in front of her and flung it at the departing figure. There was an earsplitting sound, like that of a ringing bell; then the man staggered a few steps and collapsed onto the floor, stunned. The torch rolled to one side, flickered one last time, and went out, plunging the room into complete darkness. Not even the hangman or his lantern was visible.
Paralyzed for a few seconds, Simon strained to see what lay in front of him in the darkness. When he finally made out a vague outline, he reached for the second half of the sphere and ran toward the shadowy figure, which, staggering and moaning, seemed to be trying to stand up.
“Stop!” Simon cried out into the darkness. “In the name of the monastery, you are under arrest.”
The dark figure hobbled toward them now, gasping, and Simon brandished the heavy copper bowl in his hand, prepared to bring it down on the warlock’s head at the slightest hint of resistance.