The Dark Monk

kept in holders on the table.

In the faint light, Karl Semer looked around the hangman’s quarters-the executioner’s sword next to the devotional corner, the rough-hewn stool, the huge well-worn table, the gallows ladder in the corner. A few books lay open on the table.

“You’re reading…?” the burgomaster asked.

The hangman nodded. “Dioscorides’s work. An old tome, but there’s nothing better for learning about herbs. And this one here,” he continued, holding up a newer book, “Athanasius Kircher, a damned Jesuit, but what he writes about the plague is first rate. Do you know his work?”

The burgomaster shrugged. “Well, to tell the truth…I read mostly balance sheets.”

Lighting his pipe from a piece of kindling, the hangman continued. “Kircher thinks the plague is transmitted by tiny, winged creatures that he has seen with a so-called ‘microscope.’ He says nothing about vapors emanating from the earth, or God knows what else the quack doctors go on and on about, but creatures so small they’re invisible to the naked eye, that jump from one person to another-” Kuisl’s enthusiastic remarks were interrupted by his children’s crying. His wife, too, could be heard complaining loudly up in the bedroom.

“What in God’s name is going on down there?” she cursed. “If you want to go out and drink, go to Semer’s tavern and let the children sleep in peace!”

“Anna,” Jakob Kuisl hissed, “Semer is standing right down here.”

“What?”

“The burgomaster is down here with a toothache.”

“Toothache or not, please keep the noise down, for God’s sake!”

A door slammed.

The hangman looked at Karl Semer and rolled his eyes. “Women,” he whispered, but softly enough that his wife couldn’t hear. Finally, he turned serious again. “So what brings you to me?”

“My wife thinks you’re the only one who can help me,” the burgomaster said, pointing to his swollen cheek. “I’ve had this toothache for weeks, but tonight…” He closed his eyes. “Make it go away. I’ll pay whatever you ask.”

“Well then, let’s have a look.” Jakob Kuisl guided the burgomaster to one of the stools. “Open your mouth.”

He held up a small piece of burning wood to see into the burgomaster’s mouth. “Ah, I can see it, the son of a bitch,” he mumbled. “Does this hurt?” He tapped a finger on a black stump of a tooth far back in the burgomaster’s mouth. The burgomaster jumped and let out a scream.

“Shh,” Kuisl said. “Remember my wife. She doesn’t have much understanding for these things.”

He left for the adjoining room and returned shortly with a little bottle.

“What is that?” the burgomaster grumbled, half dazed with pain.

“Clove oil. It will ease the pain.” The hangman put a few drops on a cloth and dabbed it on the tooth.

Karl Semer groaned with relief. “Indeed, the pain is better. What a miracle!”

Jakob Kuisl grinned. “I can inflict pain, and I can take it away. Everything at a price. Here, take it!” He handed the burgomaster the little bottle. “I’ll give you the tincture for a guilder.”

Kuisl poured the burgomaster a cup of brandy. He drank it in one gulp and gratefully took another cupful.

The two men sat across from each other for a while in silence. Curious, Semer looked around the room again, his eyes coming to rest on the gallows ladder.

“Scheller’s trial will probably be tomorrow,” the burgomaster said, pointing to the ladder. Relieved of pain, he now looked remarkably relaxed, even in the hangman’s house. “Then, in three days, you can go to work.”

But then he became angry. “This damned second band of robbers!” He pounded the table with his fist so hard that the brandy splashed out of the glass. “If it weren’t for them, I could sell my muscatel easily in Landsberg and beyond. The Swabians love their wine, and I can’t deliver it!”

“But perhaps you can.” The hangman poured himself a big glass of liquor this time.

Karl Semer looked up at him in amazement. “What do you mean by that? Don’t talk nonsense. As long as we don’t know who’s leaking information about our secret routes, it’s extremely dangerous out there. Shall I let the same thing happen to me as Holzhofer and the others?”

Jakob Kuisl grinned. “I know roads that even the highway robbers don’t. It would be easy to get through with a horse and sled. And besides, you could get an escort for the first few miles. With my men, I’ll be out there chasing the thieves down the next few days, anyway.”

“An escort, huh?” The burgomaster furrowed his brow. “And what will that cost me?”

Jakob Kuisl emptied the liquor in one gulp like a glass of milk. “Almost nothing,” he said. “Just a little information.” He leaned over the table. “All I’d like you to do on your way to Swabia is to ask around a bit for me. For a man like you, what I want to know should be easy to get.” He explained to the burgomaster what he wanted.

Semer listened attentively and nodded. “I don’t really know what good that will do, but if that’s all there is to it, sure…And we could leave as early as tomorrow?”

The hangman nodded. “As soon as the snowstorm lets up. But until then…” He pointed to the burgomaster’s cheek. “With a tooth like that, I wouldn’t take any big trips, anyway.”

The burgomaster blanched. “But the pain has stopped, and I have the clove oil…”

“That will work for a while, but believe me, the pain will return, worse than before, and eventually, even the cloves won’t help anymore.”

“Oh, God, what shall I do?” Karl Semer, seized by panic, held his cheek and gave the hangman a pleading look. “What shall I do?”

Jakob Kuisl went to the chest in the next room and brought back a pair of pincers as long as his arm, a tool he usually used only for torturing prisoners. “We’ll probably have to pull it,” he said.

Karl Semer looked close to passing out. “Right away?”

The hangman gave the burgomaster a stein full of liquor. “Why not? My wife has to get up, anyway.”

The scream that followed awoke not only Anna Maria and the twins, but the entire Tanners’ Quarter as well.

Magdalena followed the dark monk through the Augsburg Cathedral, seeking cover behind columns along the way. He disappeared into a cloister directly in front of her. The hangman’s daughter then followed him through a portal leading to the atrium, just in time to see him walk past a wooden door and disappear around another corner. Two acolytes were walking toward her, giving her curious looks. She slowed her pace and smiled as she passed by them, swinging the bag of herbs as casually as possible. The pimply young men stared at her low neckline as if they’d never seen a woman before. They probably don’t see a low neckline in the cloister too often, Magdalena thought, smiling stoically. Finally passing the acolytes, she picked up her pace, rounded the next corner…

And no one was there.

Magdalena uttered a curse she’d learned from her father. The damned monk had gotten away again!

She hurried on, circling the atrium until she was back again at the door leading into the cathedral. How was that possible? How had the man disappeared through the portal again? She would have to have seen him! Standing in the cloister, she looked around an inner courtyard surrounded by columns. There was not a soul to be seen here in the little herb garden or amid the low bushes, which lay dormant under a cover of snow. It seemed as if the stranger had simply vanished into thin air. Once more, she made the rounds of the cloister. Maybe she had overlooked a door somewhere, an opening, a hidden niche?

Until now, Magdalena hadn’t had time to look around more carefully. The walls on one side were covered with memorial plaques from many historical periods. Knights in old-fashioned armor, grinning skeletons, and hook- nosed bishops stared out at her. But there was no door to be seen.

She had completely lost track of the man.

Exhausted, she leaned against one of the slabs and took a deep breath. At least she knew now that Koppmeyer’s murderer was somehow connected with this cathedral. The watchmen at the gate had greeted him, he obviously knew his way around the cathedral, and he was wearing the same cross as the young bishop pictured over in the side aisle. A cross with two crossbeams.

The same cross…The thought that suddenly dawned on her was so dreadful and absurd that she didn’t want to accept it at first.