Finally, he tore himself away from the spot and hurried after the others, but the smoke had now become so thick he couldn’t see where they’d gone. The huge man groped through the smoke, coughing, bumping into shelves, and knocking over statues of saints.
“Wait for me!” he gasped. “Where are you? Where-”
At that moment, an especially large chunk of the ceiling directly above the monk broke loose and came crashing to the ground. Brother Lothar could only watch in horror as he was buried in burning timbers. After a few moments, his plaintive cries ceased.
In the meantime, Simon and the two women opened the door they’d used to enter the crypt. The medicus was relieved to see that the smoke in the tunnel behind the door was not as dense as he’d expected-the door had held it back, for the most part. They ran down the corridor, past the intersecting tunnel, until they finally arrived back at the entrance to the monastery. Benedikta leaned against the door, just as she had the last time, and pushed as hard as she could, but the wooden door would not budge this time, either. She cursed and rubbed her shoulder.
“Let me try,” Simon said. He took a running start and hit the door as hard as he could. A sharp pain went through his leg, but still, the door didn’t budge. Behind them, the corridor was already filling with smoke.
“You did close the door into the crypt, didn’t you?” Simon asked uncertainly.
Benedikta shrugged and pointed to Magdalena. “I thought she had-”
“Aha, it gets even better,” the hangman’s daughter responded. “First your shot misses the abbot, and now you’re blaming other people.”
“You were the last, you silly little twit,” Benedikta shouted.
“Cut it out!” Simon replied. “We don’t have time for your petty quarrels! If a miracle doesn’t happen, we’ll suffocate here like a fox in its den. I’ve got to get this damn door open!”
Stepping even farther back, he took another run at the door, screaming loudly.
Too late, he noticed that the door had opened silently and an astonished monk was staring at him. “What in the world…?”
Simon ran into him at full speed, knocking the monk down.
“Sorry to bother you,” the medicus gasped, standing up quickly, “but this is an emergency. The monastery is on fire.”
The monk’s expression changed from astonishment to horror. “The monastery on fire? I’ll have to let the abbot know at once.”
The two women headed up a narrow stone stairway with Simon right behind them.
“I’m afraid that’s not a very good idea,” he called back to the monk. “His Eminence is very busy at the moment.”
At the top of the stairway they came to another door, but unlike the last, this one opened easily. Stepping outside, Simon realized they were in the same cloister where he and Benedikta had first met Augustin Bonenmayr an eternity ago.
A group of white-robed Premonstratensian monks ran toward them excitedly, but to Simon’s astonishment, they continued past them toward the rear exit of the cloister, paying the intruders no mind. In the distance, a shrill bell began to ring.
“Fire! Fire!” everyone was shouting. “The playhouse is on fire!”
Taking advantage of the chaos, the three followed the monks. As they rushed outside, they looked back at the monastery wall, where flames shot up into the night sky and people ran back and forth shouting.
“The playhouse!” Benedikta shouted. “Clearly, the cross was not in Saint John’s Chapel, but in the theater! The underground corridor must lead from there to the cloister. What a labyrinth!”
Simon quickly realized that it was too late to save the burning building. All that remained of the two-story structure now was a glowing shell. When the roof collapsed, the physician could only shake his head. The theater! He had clearly overlooked something in the solution to the last riddle, but none of it mattered now. Simon wondered whether the abbot had managed to flee or had burned to death inside.
He felt overcome by exhaustion now as the burden of the last few days’ events came over him. Magdalena and Benedikta seemed weary and drained, too. Together, they dragged themselves to a small snow-covered cemetery nearby to watch the building consume itself like an enormous funeral pyre.
“Our search was for nothing!” Simon finally lamented, tossing a chunk of ice into the darkness. “Our dream of all that money came to naught! Now I’ll no doubt end up as the poor town doctor of Schongau…”
Benedikta stood there silently, clutching a ball of snow so hard that water ran through her fingers.
“Do you think that crazy Bonenmayr got away?” Magdalena asked.
Simon stared into the fire. “I don’t know. If he didn’t, we’re in big trouble. If the abbot was telling the truth, then the whole world knows that Benedikta and I defiled the holy relics in Rottenbuch. Bonenmayr is the only one who could have helped us.”
Benedikta spit on the ground. She had clearly gotten her voice back. “Do you seriously believe he’d do that if he’s still alive? I’ll tell you what he’ll do. He’ll take the cross and watch with glee as the hangman breaks every one of our bones, one by one.”
“I’m not going to break any bones,” a voice boomed behind them. “At least not Simon’s.”
Surprised, the three wheeled around to see the Schongau hangman sitting astride an old gravestone. With his coat collar turned up to shield himself from the cold, he was blowing little puffs of smoke into the frigid January night.
Simon looked at Jakob Kuisl as if he’d seen a ghost. “How…how in the world did you get here…?” he stuttered.
“That’s just what I wanted to ask my daughter,” the hangman said, turning to Magdalena. “Couldn’t stand being away in Augsburg, hmm? Had to return to your sweetheart?” He grinned. “You women are all the same.”
“It wasn’t…exactly like that, Father,” Magdalena replied. “I was-”
“You can tell me all about that later,” Jakob Kuisl interrupted, hopping down from the gravestone. “But first tell me why the Steingaden abbot burned alive in there,” he said, pointing to the roaring fire behind him, his face glowing red in the light from the flames. “I can feel in my bones that you had something to do with that. Am I right?”
“So Bonenmayr is really dead?” Simon asked.
The hangman nodded. “As dead as a witch at the stake. So tell me-out with it!”
“It was all about the cross,” Simon began. “The Templar hid the True Cross underneath the playhouse. The riddles led us to this place…” He briefly told Kuisl everything that happened since they had last spoken.
Jakob Kuisl listened silently, and when Simon finished, he exhaled a huge cloud of smoke. “All that looking around just for a rotten old cross,” he grumbled. “And now the accursed cross has fallen victim to the flames as well. I saw it all…ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Probably, it’s best that way. That cross has brought nothing but death and misfortune.”
“Let’s get out of here,” Benedikta said, standing up from the drift of snow she was sitting on, “before the monks notice we’re here.”
“You’re not going anywhere, girl,” the hangman replied suddenly, “except perhaps to the gallows.”
“What are you saying?” Simon looked at Jakob Kuisl in astonishment. “This woman is a respectable lady from Landsberg. You don’t talk that way-”
“She’s nothing but scum.” Kuisl knocked out his pipe on a gravestone. “She’s not a respectable lady, and she doesn’t come from Landsberg.”
For a few moments, no one said a thing.
Finally, Magdalena spoke up hesitantly. “Not from Landsberg? I don’t understand-”
Her father immediately cut her off. “Perhaps she’ll tell us herself what her real name is. In Augsburg, she was Isabelle de Cherbourg; in Munich, she was Charlotte Le Mans; and in Ingolstadt, Katharine God-knows-what…But I doubt any of those is her real name.” Scowling, the hangman drew closer until he was only a step away from her. “Damn it, your name! I want to know-at once! Or I’ll jam glowing embers under your pretty little fingernails until you beg for mercy!”
Simon and Magdalena both eyed Benedikta as she stood there clutching a gravestone with both hands. Her
