The Dark Monk

It was blood.

“What the devil…?”

When Nathanael pushed the material aside, he saw Brother Johannes’s badly beaten face peering out from under the heap like a discarded doll. He was moaning softly. Blood ran from his nose and from a wound at the back of his head, where a large lump had already formed. Nathanael glanced at the wound before giving the monk an angry kick in the side. Brother Johannes would have a headache for a few days, but he would survive. It was most important now to find out who was out to get them.

“Please stand up and tell me who-”

At this instant he heard a whooshing sound so soft that an untrained ear wouldn’t have even noticed it. But Nathanael hadn’t survived a half-dozen murderers’ attacks in the Spanish provinces just to meet his end in a theater in the peaceful little Priests’ Corner. He lunged forward just before the heavy stage curtain came tumbling down from the ceiling. It crashed onto the stage, burying the candles, candelabra, and the head of Brother Johannes, whose moans stopped abruptly.

Nathanael jumped up and scanned the ceiling. His eyes wandered along the balconies and up the stairs leading to the loft, while he played nervously with the dagger in his hand.

“Come out, whoever you are!” he called out. “You cowardly dog! Fight like a man!”

Out of the corner of his eye, the monk saw a little flame blaze up. Nathanael cursed. The candles he’d dropped had set fire to the curtain!

He was about to stamp out the flames when he heard the rattle of a winch unwinding. Turning around, he saw a giant of a man gliding calmly down from the ceiling. He held onto a rope with one hand and, in the other brandished a short but heavy wood cudgel.

“No one calls me a cowardly dog,” the hangman growled. “Especially you. The three of you overpowered me in the dark once, but for you, I don’t need the cover of darkness. I’ll finish you off just like this, you shady, black- robed ruffian.”

Jakob Kuisl jumped over the burning curtain. The flames cast a flickering light across the stage as the hangman raised his cudgel and approached the monk, ready for a fight.

Simon moved along the wall cautiously until he was able to peer into the opening behind the smashed gravestone. With low ceilings, the space behind it was only a few paces wide and deep and expelled a musty odor. In the torchlight, the abbot and his helper knelt before a simple stone altar with a wooden cross atop it. At about shoulder height, it looked very old and weathered; rusty nails just barely held the crooked and bent cross together, and in a few places, it appeared to have been charred. Nevertheless, Augustin Bonenmayr bowed his head as if the Holy Mother in person were standing before him. After a while he stopped praying, took the relic carefully from the wall, and kissed it.

“The Cross of Christ!” he whispered. “Our Savior once touched this wood. See for yourself…” He pointed to a place on one of the crossbeams.

Brother Lothar bowed down reverently to get a better look.

“Here, see the hole!” the abbot said. “His hand must have been nailed to this very spot!”

“Your Eminence…” Brother Lothar whispered so softly that Simon could barely understand him. “The cross…I always thought it was much larger…”

“You fool!” said Augustin Bonenmayr, slapping his helper on the head. “This is only part of the True Cross. The rest was destroyed! It was the Templars’ duty to take the cross of Christ into every battle during the Crusades and to protect it. But at the Battle of Hattin, they failed. The cross fell into the hands of infidels and was almost completely destroyed. The cross bearer was an ancestor of this miserable fellow Friedrich Wildgraf.” The abbot gripped the weathered relic. “He was able to rescue just part of it. Since then, the cross has been considered lost without a trace. But now it has come to light again, here in Steingaden. Who could have imagined!” Bonenmayr stroked the two rotten crossbeams like a long-lost lover.

Magdalena, eager to see something, too, nudged Simon. Her soft body pressed up close against him, and he could feel her warm, slightly sour breath on his neck.

“Simon, say something!” she whispered. “What’s going on there?” She pressed even closer to him-too close, because he could feel himself losing his balance. He fell forward, crashing into the rubble of the gravestone.

Augustin Bonenmayr wheeled around, his face contorted with hatred. “Fronwieser!” he hissed. “I should have gotten rid of you right away! Well, it’s not too late. Brother Lothar!” He pointed to the monk, who picked a heavy stone up from the floor and was walking toward the medicus. “Do it for God! Deus lo vult! ”

“You’ll do nothing of the sort!” Benedikta stepped into the opening, holding the little pistol she’d fired earlier at Brother Jakobus. Simon wasn’t certain she’d reloaded the dainty little handgun in the meantime, but in any case, the pistol had the desired effect. Uncertain, Brother Lothar stopped and looked over to his abbot. Now Magdalena appeared in the opening as well. For a moment, Augustin Bonenmayr was clearly caught off guard, but then a smile spread across his face and he seemed to change his strategy.

“Ah, I see. The three lovers have found one another again. How delightful!” The Steingaden abbot advanced one step toward Simon. “Brother Jakobus told me your Magdalena seems to be something of a bitch. But what does a monk understand about women…?” He grinned as if he’d just said something terribly amusing. “What divine providence, in any case, that he ran into her in Augsburg, of all places! We swear we wouldn’t have harmed a hair on her head. She was just…collateral so her father would stay out of this in case things got too difficult. How is Brother Jakobus, by the way?”

“You could light up your whole damned monastery with him,” Magdalena snapped. “He’s burning, just as if my father himself had hauled him over the coals.”

The abbot shook his head gently. “So much hatred! I have a proposal for you.” Holding the cross in his right hand, he advanced another step toward the group.

Benedikta pointed the pistol at his head. “Stop right there! Not one more step!” she whispered. “Or blood will flow down this cross.”

The abbot raised his hands in apology. “Let’s not argue. If I remember correctly, you’re still wanted in Rottenbuch for desecrating holy relics. I’ve already given your name to Brother Michael, the superintendent at Rottenbuch. Believe me, he’d rather see you burn today than tomorrow. But I could have been mistaken, and the real perpetrators could have been some highway robbers who just happened to come along. All it would take would be a word from me-”

“That’s a filthy lie, fils de pute!” Benedikta growled.

The abbot shrugged. “Whether it’s a lie or not, would you want to take the chance? Your future is in my hands. Kill me and you’ll be chased through all of Bavaria as vagrants and outlaws. Let me leave with the cross and you’re free.”

“How can we be so sure you won’t turn us in, anyway?” Simon asked.

Bonenmayr smiled and put his finger on the weathered piece of wood. “I swear on the True Cross of Christ. Is there any stronger oath?”

Benedikta looked at Simon and Magdalena, hesitating. For a while, silence filled the crypt.

Finally, Benedikta sighed. “For my part, I can live with this offer. I’d hoped for a real treasure, a gilded crucifix inlaid with rubies, perhaps, or a velvet-lined silver box-or whatever! But this rotten cross isn’t worth any more than the thousands of other splinters of wood presumed to come from the genuine cross. I can’t make any money from it…So you can keep it!”

“Benedikta is right,” Simon said, turning to the abbot. “How are you going to convince your flock that this is the genuine cross?”

“This is the genuine cross!” Bonenmayr insisted. “At least part of it. The damned Templars never let the Church forget they had it, and for that reason the Holy See always protected those heretics, even when the Pope noticed that they were going their own way and becoming more arrogant and greedy. When the French king finally got rid of them, the Church hoped the cross would show up somewhere again. Many Templars were handed over to the Inquisition, but even under torture they all kept silent, and the cross remained lost. Our order has been looking for it for centuries! We were able to save many other relics from the heretics, who sprang up out of the ground like poisonous mushrooms, but the True Cross had disappeared from the face of the earth. Now it has returned to the bosom of the Holy Catholic Church, and everything has turned out for the best! The bishop of Augsburg will inform the Pope of what we’ve found, and His Holiness will confirm its