The Dark Monk by Oliver Pötzsch, Lee Chadeayne Page A

library and looked around. A little cast-iron stove was glowing in one corner of the wood-paneled room, and book after book lined the walls on gleaming cherrywood shelves. Jakob Schreevogl was well-to-do. His father had taken a small stove-fitting business and grown it into the leading one in the area. Since the death of his father, young Schreevogl had invested a considerable portion of his money in his book collection, a passion he shared with Simon.
    The patrician offered him a chair and poured him a steaming cup of coffee. Jakob Schreevogl was a big man and, like all Schreevogls, had a pointed, slightly hooked nose that nearly hung down into his coffee. As the young alderman slurped the hot brew, Simon inquired about the aldermen’s meeting that had taken place that morning. He knew that important topics had been on the agenda.
    “So, did the city council make any decision on how to proceed with these gangs of murderers?”
    Jakob Schreevogl nodded earnestly. “We’ll no doubt send out a patrol to search for the robbers.”
    “But you’ve done that once before!” Simon interjected.
    “I know, I know,” Schreevogl sighed. “But this time it has to be well thought out and needs a competent leader. We’re still considering who might be the right person for that.”
    Simon nodded. The matter was too serious to be entrusted to a few drunken village constables. For weeks, a band of robbers had been ravaging the countryside. A merchant and two farmers had been attacked. The highwaymen had slain the merchant, and the two farmers had just managed to escape. There were at least a dozen men, they reported, some with crossbows and a few with muskets, even. In other words, a real danger, if not for the city, then at least for the surrounding area.
    “If the aldermen can’t get their hands on these scoundrels soon, we’ll have to ask Munich to send soldiers.” Jakob Schreevogl cursed under his breath and blew into his hot cup of coffee. “But the council wants to avoid that at all costs. Soldiers cost money, as you know. But forget about politics,” he said, waving his hand dismissively. “It bores me. You have certainly come for a different reason.”
    “Indeed,” Simon replied. “I’m looking for a book—or rather, for a quotation in a book that I think I’ve read here.”
    “Aha, a book!” Jakob Schreevogl smiled. “I’m pleased that you enjoy my library so much. So tell me, how does the quote go?”
    “ Non nobis Domine, non nobis, sed nomini tuo da gloriam, ” Simon repeated from memory.
    The patrician stopped to think. “Where did you read this?”
    “In the little church of Saint Lawrence in Altenstadt.”
    “ Not to us, o Lord, not to us, but to Thy name be the honor, ” Jakob Schreevogl mumbled, furrowing his brow. “Strange. I believe that’s the motto of the Knights Templar.”
    Simon had to cough when his coffee went down the wrong way. “The Templars?” he asked finally.
    Schreevogl nodded. “It was their battle cry.”
    Suddenly, the alderman’s brow furrowed again—he seemed to remember something. Quickly, he stood up and walked over to a shelf near the stove. “Now I know the book you mean!” he said. After a few minutes of searching, he took out a little leather-bound book no larger than the palm of a hand. “Here!” he exclaimed, handing it to Simon. “It’s in this treatise by Wilhelm von Selling. Ordinis Templorum Historia. An ancient, strange book. Selling was an Englishman, a Benedictine monk who, in contrast to the church, tried to keep the memory of the Templars alive. He wrote this book more than two hundred years ago, but even at that time, the Templars had been confined to history for a century.
    Simon nodded as he leafed through the well-worn tome. Some pages apparently had been ripped out, moisture had curled others, and some were scorched. The book was written in Latin with embellished initials and was not printed, but handwritten. It looked like the book had