authenticity.”

“Do you really believe that?” Simon asked.

Augustin Bonenmayr nodded enthusiastically. “With the Pope’s blessing, this cross will become Christianity’s most important religious relic! People will make pilgrimages from all over the world to visit us. I already have plans for a magnificent pilgrimage church near Wies’s farm-”

“Good Lord, there’s blood on that cross!” Magdalena interrupted. She pointed at Benedikta. “The blood of your brother and of many others! I almost died because of that accursed cross!” She walked toward the abbot with a menacing look. “If you think you can simply go out and keep preaching your rubbish, then you’ve got another thing coming. I’ll send my father after you; he’ll break every bone in your body with that cross.”

“Magdalena, calm down!” said Simon. “The abbot’s suggestion is not so bad. What’s dead is dead, and-”

“Just a moment!” Benedikta interrupted. “Do you smell that?”

Simon took a whiff and noticed the caustic smell of smoke coming from the larger room behind them. It was faint, but unmistakable.

“Fire!” Benedikta cried. “Everyone get out!”

They fled back to the domed vault where clouds of smoke were ascending through the hole in the stage floor. Just moments later, the entire ceiling looked like the sky on a gloomy November day, disappearing behind a billowing gray cloud of smoke. The abbot sat on the ruins of the gravestone, pressing the cross to his chest as if the relic could protect his scrawny body from the flames.

His lips moved in a quiet prayer.

On the stage above, flames were eating through the dry brocade as if it were straw. Fire climbed up the curtains to the ceiling and along the balconies, leaving a path of destruction in its wake. Soon the entire auditorium was bathed in a red glow, and despite the cold January day outside, an almost unbearable heat filled the theater.

The hangman and the monk circled each other like two wolves ready to attack, each waiting for the other to make the first move. Finally, Brother Nathanael struck. He feigned a move to the left, then attacked from the right with his dagger. The hangman dodged to the right and struck the monk with his elbow, knocking him down. Before he could fall onto the burning curtain, Nathanael rolled away, jumped up like a cat, and attacked again.

The hangman hadn’t expected such a quick counterattack, and the dagger brushed his right arm in the same place the highwayman had cut him earlier that same day. Kuisl suppressed a groan and swung the cudgel but landed only a glancing blow on Nathanael’s shoulder. The monk turned in a half circle, ducked, and thrust the dagger at the back of the hangman’s knees. With a spirited leap to one side, Kuisl avoided this blow, but in the smoke-filled room, he was too late noticing the burning curtain at his feet. To avoid jumping straight into the flames, he changed direction in mid-jump, stumbled, fell over, and was just able to pull himself up on a painted backdrop of a sky full of white clouds from which the Lord looked down.

Just as the hangman was standing up, the heavy wall tipped forward, taking him with it, burying him with the Almighty. With a thundering rattle, additional backdrops fell over onto him.

For a moment silence prevailed, broken only by the crackling of the flames and the strange hissing voice of the monk. “I once met a man in Salamanca like you,” he whispered. “Big and strong, but stupid. I slashed his throat as he was preparing to take a swing at me with his double-edged sword. He stared at me in disbelief before he fell forward.”

Jakob Kuisl struggled to separate the heavy canvas-covered frames, but they were somehow stuck together. As hard as he pressed, they didn’t move an inch. He heard steps approaching the fallen frame and the dagger scraping across the canvas. Nathanael was cutting the material lengthwise, and it wouldn’t take him long to reach Kuisl’s neck.

“The church is not a gentle flock of lambs waiting to be slaughtered,” Nathanael said as his knife inched forward, cutting through the material. “The church has always needed people like me, and that’s the only reason it’s survived this long. It must punish and destroy, just as Saint John the Baptist prophesied about our Savior. Do you know the Bible verse, Kuisl? He will thoroughly purge his floor, separating the wheat from the chaff and gathering the wheat into his garner. But the chaff he will burn up with unquenchable fire.” The dagger had reached the hangman’s neck now. “And now you are the chaff, Kuisl.”

At that moment, the executioner’s fist shot through the canvas-right at the spot depicting the kindly, smiling mouth of the Savior-and the hangman grabbed the hand holding the dagger, pulling Brother Nathanael down. Gasping, the monk lost his balance and fell onto the canvas as his dagger clattered onto the floor. Kuisl’s other hand punched through the material and gripped Nathanael by the throat like a vise. Nathanael wriggled like a fish out of water and poked his fingers through the backdrop but couldn’t get hold of the man underneath. The monk shook and waved his arms about, but his movements became weaker and weaker until his forehead finally fell into the canvas. For a moment it looked as if he were kissing the painted Savior on the mouth. Then he rolled to one side and lay still on the stage floor with eyes wide open.

When Jakob Kuisl finally managed to extricate himself from under the backdrop, he cast a final, almost remorseful look at the dead Dominican. “Why did you always have to talk so much?” he said, wiping off his massive, soot-stained hands on his jacket. “If you want to kill someone, just shut up and do it.”

Only now did Kuisl notice the inferno raging around him. The flames had reached the seats in the middle of the hall, and even the backdrops at Kuisl’s feet had caught fire. The first heavy timbers from the balcony came crashing down.

Because of all the smoke, Kuisl could no longer see the trapdoor on the stage floor. He coughed, climbing down the stairs toward the main exit. One last time, he turned around and shook his head. Unless there was another exit, anyone still beneath the stage was doomed. At any rate, it would be insane to climb down there again.

He was already halfway to the back of the hall when he heard the squeak of a pulley.

In the meanwhile, the smoke down below in the crypt had become so dense that the upper third of the room was no longer visible. The ropes connected to the platform ended somewhere in a gray cloud. Simon stopped to think. The tunnel through which they’d entered was presumably already filled with smoke, so the only way out was, in fact, up. He ran to the platform, eyes peeled for the mechanism to set it in motion.

“There has to be a pulley here,” he shouted to Benedikta and Magdalena. “A lever, a crank-something! Help me find it!”

Out of the corner of his eye, Simon could see Augustin Bonenmayr still standing in the opening to the crypt, clutching the cross. The Steingaden abbot stared at the flames eating through the floor of the stage above, the flickering light reflected in his pince-nez, which was perched at an odd angle atop his nose. Bonenmayr’s murmuring grew louder, swelling to a long litany as the auditorium above him threatened to come crashing down. “And the first angel blew his trumpet,” the abbot intoned, “and hailstones and fire mixed with blood fell over the land…”

“Where is the damned pulley?” Simon shouted into Brother Lothar’s ear. The monk was staring, frozen with fear, at the cloud spreading across the ceiling. “If you want to get out of here alive, open your big mouth!”

Brother Lothar pointed silently to an inconspicuous crank on the wall next to a costume cabinet. Without another word, Simon ran to it and started turning the handle.

“Hurry!” he shouted to the two women. “Get onto the platform! I’ll pull you up. Once you’re there, let the lift back down again. Now hurry!”

Magdalena and Benedikta hesitated for a moment, then ran over to the platform. As Simon turned the handle, the lift squeaked to life. At the last second, the women jumped on.

“Watch out, Simon!” Magdalena suddenly shouted. “Behind you!”

A heavy blow struck the medicus on the back of the head, and as he fell, he saw the abbot standing over him with the cross.

“You set this fire, didn’t you?” Bonenmayr whispered. “You wanted to make sure the cross would burn. But you won’t succeed! Who are you, Simon Fronwieser? A Lutheran? A Calvinist? What connection do you have with this Templar gang?”

“Your Eminence, snap out of it!” Simon panted. “Why would we set this fire? We’ll burn to death ourselves if we don’t hurry. We have to, both of us-”

Bonenmayr swung the cross at him again. Simon had just enough time to put his hands in front of his face, but the blow was so hard that, for a moment, he thought he would pass out.

The sound of a pistol firing brought him back to his senses. Apparently, Benedikta had reloaded her weapon.

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