But Magdalena had already crawled down into the hole. The two guards stood on the staircase looking uncertainly at the Wittelsbach count.
“What’s the matter with you?” Wartenberg asked. “Are you rooted to the spot? Follow that crazy woman right now.” Then he turned to Kuisl with a grin. “You should have disciplined your daughter better when she was a child, but now it’s probably too late. She’s a damned stubborn girl.”
“It runs in the family,” Kuisl grumbled as he climbed the stairs from the keep with a shrug. “When she comes out from down there, I’ll give her a good spanking. Now let’s head back to the surface before Virgilius rides away on a lightning bolt, never to be seen again.”
Gradually Simon could feel strength returning to his limbs. Though his arms and legs itched as if a thousand ants were crawling over them and his heart raced, he tried not to move. It wasn’t clear what Virgilius would do with him if he realized his victim was not as defenseless as he thought. Simon’s children still clung to the motionless, stiff body of their father, staring wide-eyed at the strange hunchback before them.
Simon was still trying to figure out how he could have been so easily deceived. The burned corpse in the cemetery well wasn’t Virgilius, but the monk from the third fresh grave. The watchmaker had set out the bait for them, and they had swallowed it.
The handkerchief with Aurora’s monogram. Virgilius himself must have dropped it there. The footprints were his own. Why had Simon been so foolish as to believe in golems and witchcraft?
Now the watchmaker dissolved the hosts in a glass and poured the cloudy water into a small bottle. He studied it, absorbed in thought.
“Voila! This is what I call the true aqua vitae, the water of life,” he murmured. “A potion as strong as dreams, fears, and the desires of thousands of pilgrims. The sacred hosts have been venerated for many centuries, infused with the faith of generations of pilgrims. These crushed wafers are the focal point of one of Europe’s greatest pilgrimage sites.”
Virgilius laughed under his breath, shaking the bottle so the tiny crumbs in the water began to dance. “Isn’t this amazing? Actually it’s no more than baked flour, as lifeless as all the other relics. Rusty pieces of metal, worthless bones, and spotted old shrouds that have almost crumbled to dust. But we humans breathe new life into them through of our faith.” Longingly he turned his eyes toward the ceiling. “How many years have I been searching in vain for the key to bringing back my Aurora. Just yesterday in the monastery library I came upon an ancient book dealing with conjuring golems and creating life. I made copies, studied numerology, the Talmud… and finally I understood.”
Virgilius leaned over toward Simon, whose lips and facial muscles had started to twitch uncontrollably. The medicus suddenly recalled the Jewish book he’d seen a few days ago on the abbot’s desk. That must have been the work that Virgilius was citing with such solemn fervor.
“Do you know how rabbis instilled life into their mud and clay golems?” the monk whispered, bending down farther over Simon’s twitching face. “They placed a piece of paper inscribed with the name of God in their mouths. Then they recited the last paragraph from the story of creation.” The monk closed his eyes as if praying. “And God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living soul,” he recited softly.
Virgilius stood up again, giggling. “Do you understand? Only God, not man, can perform this miracle. But we can help. The Jews understood this far earlier than we Christians. I’ve studied the scriptures and written my own book. Now, finally, I know what to do.”
Humming, he walked over to a closed chest, opened it, and pulled out a silk cape and a bonnet decorated with artificial flowers. Lovingly he placed the cape over Aurora’s shoulders and fastened the bonnet atop her wig.
“The great day is at hand, Aurora,” he whispered solemnly. “How long have I waited for this. Faith and science, the lightning and the hosts-together they’ll create new life.” He pulled out a comb and proceeded to tenderly brush his automaton’s hair. Smiling awkwardly under its bonnet, the puppet offered no resistance.
“That stubborn apothecary didn’t want to listen”-he mumbled as if to himself-“and didn’t want to tell me anything more about his experiments with lightning. So I decided to steal his notes and study them in peace. I told Vitalis about my plans, but that stupid apothecary’s assistant Coelestin was watching us up in the tower. The nosy little weasel was watching us experiment with wire and a dead goat.” The watchmaker’s frantic movements became even more erratic as some of the puppet’s stuffing started coming out.
“Tell me yourself, Aurora,” he whispered. “Didn’t I have every right to get rid of him? There was too much at stake. And when that coward Vitalis wanted to go to the abbot, didn’t I have to get rid of him, as well? For you! I did it all only for you. Tell me, how can anyone call me a murderer when I’ve acted only out of love?”
Virgilius’s voice cracked. Breathing heavily, beside himself with anger, he threw the comb on the ground. It took him a while to calm down again, but then a thin smile appeared on his lips.
“After I killed Vitalis, the bright idea came to me that saved the day,” he continued with a giggle. “The idea that allowed me to dispose of all my cares at once. I poured phosphorus over Vitalis, faked my own abduction, and blamed it all on the apothecary. His eyepiece lay right alongside the documents; all I had to do was to place it beside Vitalis’s charred body.” Virgilius nodded as if replying to something the automaton had said. “You’re right, Aurora. Johannes deserved his punishment, the damned fiend. Just like Laurentius. Why did that nosy novitiate master have to spy on me and discover these passageways? He almost managed to flee with the monstrance, but I caught him at the last moment. I hope that good-for-nothing sodomite burns in hell forever.”
With a slight bow, he turned to Simon. “I really have you to thank for this, bathhouse surgeon. Without you, these stupid monks would probably not have fallen for my trap. But with your help I quickly dispatched the apothecary. My thanks to you. You would have been a good new assistant, but unfortunately I have no more time for that.” He seized Aurora by her stiff hands and squeezed them hard. “Our new life together begins as yours is ending.”
With a sigh, Virgilius turned to the back wall where a rope hung from the ceiling. When he pulled on it, a soft bell rang somewhere.
“Believe me, I don’t really want you to die,” the watchmaker said. “Just as I didn’t really want the death of the others, either; but each time it was unavoidable. Tell me yourself: how can I take a paralyzed person with me? My servant will have his hands full carrying my beloved Aurora.”
Humming softly he removed a small chest from one of the shelves that was still intact and spread a white powder on the floor.
“I hope you understand that I must destroy these passageways,” Virgilius continued. “My knowledge mustn’t fall into the wrong hands, and certainly not those of this stupid, narrow-minded prior who people say will soon be replacing my brother as abbot. I’ve always produced this phosphorus powder with the thought it could someday cleanse everything here in a great conflagration.”
Simon struggled in vain to rise. By now he no longer cared whether Virgilius became suspicious. If he didn’t move soon, both he and his children would be consumed here in a truly apocalyptic sea of fire. Simon had seen what the phosphorus did to Vitalis, Laurentius, and the corpse of the monk in the cemetery. The powder already spread on the ground would be enough to turn the room into one huge fireball. Desperately, Simon looked over at Peter and Paul, who had begun to cry again. Virgilius followed Simon’s gaze and passed his hand through his thinning hair contemplatively.