Chapter 472

“Yeah, all right. So what’s the next plan? If we follow that passage up, what city does it lead to?”

It was time to accept it. I still doubted that a medieval secret passage could have survived this long, and I wasn’t even sure whether such a passage had ever existed in the first place. But we were already in this together. I quickly nodded and waited for Narke’s answer.

“There’s no point worrying about that. But… how about we try a little deduction? What route did Germans usually take when traveling to Italy in the Middle Ages?”

“Via Imperii. If you’re heading to Rome, that’s the best route.”

Via Imperii was a route that ran from the North Sea through Bavaria and along eastern Switzerland before reaching Rome.

“You know your stuff. What else?”

“The Alps. Though Via Imperii goes through the Brenner Pass anyway.”

The Brenner Pass was part of the Alps, straddling Austria. Narke seemed pleased to be talking about something he knew well, and continued with a smile.

“Right, you know that well too~ People traveled down via the Via Imperii, followed the Rhine, or crossed the Alps by various routes. Some went through Austria via the Brenner Pass and on to Verona and Venice in Italy, while others, like us, reached Italy by way of Lake Constance. Of course, even when they went through Lake Constance, they usually traveled down the Rhine Valley, passed through Chur in Graubünden, Switzerland, and reached Milan via the Septimer Pass.”

He was explaining this on the assumption that we already knew the geography of the Alps. In other words, whether they passed through Lake Constance or not, the more common route was ultimately to head toward the Alps. There were routes that didn’t, of course.

So far, Narke had been hinting that even if we followed the underground passage, its other end wouldn’t lead toward one of the traditional Alpine routes. I wiped the lake water from my forehead and said, “So, in other words… you’re not saying the passage ends in Chur.”

“That’s right, Lukas. You already know the answer.”

“I figured as much…”

Narke’s eyes lit up as he waited for me to say what was on my mind. After our trip to Austria-Hungary, Narke seemed to have developed a taste for putting me to the test. Or maybe he’d been like this all along.

So, as I said, even if we followed the underground passage, its exit wouldn’t lead toward any of the traditional routes through the Alps. Let’s rule out unnecessarily complicated possibilities based on the information that illuminated manuscripts were smuggled from Reichenau Island, below Konstanz, into the Vatican in Rome—for example, the possibility that the manuscripts were taken to France first, where a French Catholic acquired them and then carried them to Rome. If we only consider the possibility that merchants who stopped in Konstanz smuggled the illuminated manuscripts southward into Rome, then their next destination was most likely Zurich, Switzerland.

Besides the fact that Zurich is a major city close to Reichenau Abbey, I want to use another German artifact as a clue: the Manesse Manuscript. It is one of the defining examples of medieval German illuminated manuscripts, a songbook commissioned by the Manesse family of Zurich in the 14th century. It contains the works of courtly poets along with more than a hundred miniatures. Considering that the Reichenau Ottonian manuscripts were produced in the 10th and 11th centuries, there is a considerable gap in time, but even with the limited clues we have, Zurich seems like the closest place to where the Reichenau manuscripts might have exerted a strong influence.

There is also Einsiedeln Abbey near Zurich. A Benedictine monk from Reichenau Abbey was among the monastery’s earliest historical figures, and in the 13th century, one of the ancestral branches of the Manesse family ruled territory belonging to Einsiedeln Abbey. That, too, gave me a faint basis for my theory. In any case, all these subtle connections existed because of the close geographical proximity between Reichenau Island and Zurich, so what I paid the most attention to in the end was their geography.

In any case, if the underground passage ran all the way from Reichenau to Zurich, it would have to be incredibly long, which was hardly possible. Instead, I thought the passage might have an exit somewhere along the route toward Zurich, a little farther from the harbor—far enough to avoid inspections of merchant ships and their cargo.

“It seems likely that the exit is somewhere along the road to Zurich, but it would still take a very long time to get there on foot. Would an hour or two really be enough?”

“That’s fine. Finding the exit is something we’ll have to do ourselves, but we don’t actually need to come all the way out. As long as we enter Swiss territory while still inside the passage, we can get to Italy.”

As long as we enter Swiss territory… That would only be possible if he was assuming we’d use warp magic. I narrowed my eyes as suspicion began to creep in.

“What, you know the official Swiss coordinate system?”

“I do, but unfortunately, we can’t get a permit. We’ll have to use illegal warp.”

“Who the hell would think about getting a permit while illegally crossing the border? That’s not the problem. How do you even know the coordinate system?”

Has he ever been to Switzerland? If so, then I suppose it’s possible… I looked at him skeptically before shaking my head.

“You didn’t possibly estimate two hours just for walking inside the underground tunnel, did you? You said we’d be on the Italian Peninsula after two hours.”

“That got extended when Elias decided to take a boat~”

“You never discussed that with me?!”

Get your stories straight. This was exactly why Elias needed someone like Leo by his side to keep him in check at every turn. Instead, two equally headstrong people had teamed up, and now the whole trip was turning into a planless mess.

“Actually, I was planning to warp to Gaienhofen in Baden and take a boat from there to Konstanz and Reichenau Island. Like you said earlier, Gaienhofen is right next to them. But getting a boat was already proving difficult, so I left the first step of our illegal border crossing to Elias.”

“You were planning to bring trouble to Julia with this, weren’t you?”

“If you put it that way, yeah~”

“…No matter how I think about it, the underground passage still seems a little questionable. Elias, you had a plan too, right? What was your plan for crossing the border illegally?”

Elias gauged the position of the barrier floating on the lake before answering confidently.

“We swim across. First, we dive underwater, right beneath where the barrier is!”

“Let’s hurry up and find that underground passage.”

Elias grabbed my shoulder as I turned away, but I had no choice but to urge Narke on with my eyes. Narke rubbed his chin as he gazed beyond the dark pier.

“That’s what we’re going to look for now… First, let’s cross over to Reichenau Island. There should be St. George’s Church when we get there. We need to stop there first.”

The wind roared past my ears. The lake kept the air warm, but the wind itself was fierce. We followed the road connecting Konstanz to the island, and soon the entrance to Reichenau Island came into view.

The first thing we saw was a Flurkreuz¹. Narke made the sign of the cross toward the statue of Christ hanging on the stone cross, then carefully walked toward the small St. George’s Church farther behind it. The island was wide open, and there were no notable markings on the surrounding ground, perhaps because the warp point was located deeper inside. The warp point listed in the travel guide provided by the Baden government was probably a coordinate that would take travelers directly in front of Reichenau Abbey.

There was no one around, probably because it was so late. If we were careful, it seemed like we could search for the underground passage without being noticed. I looked into the distance and whispered, “The underground passage is fine, but we should investigate this place too, Narke. There’s St. Mark’s Church here.”

“Right. And it’s not just a church. St. Mark’s relics are here too.”

I slightly furrowed my brow at that. Elias also raised an eyebrow. Narke walked a step ahead of us and spoke quietly once again.

“The church also has soil from Golgotha² stained with the Holy Blood. Soil believed to have been stained by the blood Christ actually shed. Maybe the ‘Saint Mark’ Einsiedel mentioned was referring to this place.”

I thought so too. It was a possibility. I fell silent as I looked toward the Church of St. Mark, which appeared like a tiny speck in the distance.

As we walked toward the Church of St. George, Narke took a sheet of paper from inside his coat and handed it to us. It was a charcoal drawing that seemed to have been copied directly from the illustrations in the storybook he had seen as a child. Narke was actually quite good at drawing, but the composition of this one was strange for reasons unrelated to his skill. A person stood blankly in the background, while in the foreground, someone on horseback was looking to the side.

“The storybook I read obviously didn’t have a smooth narrative from beginning to end. It was a collection of individual Bible illustrations arranged in an order that made them easy to appreciate. Most of them were taken from parts of the Gospels or liturgical books, but one of them—the very last page—didn’t depict anything in particular. There was a person who appeared to be Saint Nicholas, riding a white horse like Saint George and holding a spear. Behind him was Saint Luke, holding a set of scales and a Bible—or rather, a manuscript, considering the period.”

“That’s pretty strange. So someone deliberately made up a story.”

“Exactly. This isn’t an illustration of a passage from the Bible. Someone created a story of their own. You know that, in the past, there were many people who couldn’t read, so illustrations were used to help them understand the Bible. This was also a drawing made to convey information to people who couldn’t read. There was even an unknown number scribbled diagonally in tiny writing at the very bottom, written with a quill. Who was the code supposed to be passed on to?”

“Going by our current theory, it would have been meant for a merchant.”

“Right. If this really was drawn at Reichenau Abbey, then the white horse and spear symbolizing Saint George would refer to this Church of Saint George, and Saint Nicholas could represent a merchant, couldn’t he? He was the patron saint of children, sailors, and merchants. And if we consider that Saint Luke, the patron saint of painters, is holding a manuscript, doesn’t the whole thing fit together fairly well?”

“Maybe so.”

I couldn’t say I was convinced—not when having a connection between things didn’t necessarily mean we had found the definite answer. Still, considering Narke’s abilities, I had no reason to dismiss his theory as hasty or lacking sufficient grounds. If it had truly made no sense, Narke would have stopped pursuing it himself. He walked ahead of us and whispered again.

“At least, that was what I thought at first.”

“So you thought differently the second time?”

Instead of answering me, Narke pushed the charcoal drawing toward me.

“Want it, Lukas?”

“I won’t refuse if you’re giving it to me… But why?”

Narke said nothing. Elias stared at him. I folded the charcoal drawing Narke had given me and slipped it into the inner pocket of my jacket, then quietly watched his back.

We finally stood cautiously in front of the Church of St. George. But we ran into a problem right away. Narke carefully touched the rusty padlock hanging from the gate and gave it a shake. Perhaps he hadn’t foreseen this far ahead—or perhaps he simply hadn’t bothered to. Either way, his brows tilted in slight confusion. Naturally, no matter how much he twisted it, the padlock wouldn’t come off. It was late enough that the church would have been locked for the night.

When Narke eventually reached for the wand at his waist, I shook my head and tapped Elias on the arm.

“Eli.”

“Hm. So you finally recognize my true worth.”

“…….”

Elias pulled a thick piece of wire from his clutch and twisted it. He shoved the wire into the lock and turned it a couple of times before snapping his fingers with an audible snap. Then he pulled the wire back out, bent it into a slightly different shape for a minute or two, shoved it into the lock again, and started fiddling with it. Narke watched him with an excited smile—he really does get excited over the strangest things.

Click—

The lock came open. We carefully stepped into the dark corridor of the church. Elias, meanwhile, was crouching outside and stuffing something into his pocket. Whatever he was doing, Narke ignored him, gathering light at the tip of his wand and casting it onto the wall.

I looked around at the brightly colored murals and murmured, “It’s a mural.”

“Yeah. It was painted in the 10th century.”

I nodded. By then, Elias had come inside and was examining the paintings one by one, starting from the ones near the entrance.

“Mark, Chapter 5. This is the story where he casts demons into two thousand pigs and drowns them in the sea.”

“Haha… ‘drowns them in the sea.’ Considering we’re standing on a lake, that’s kind of creepy.”

“Come on! Even if it’s as big as a city, it’s still technically a lake~”

“Right~”

Narke replied in his usual dismissive, breezy manner. Elias and I couldn’t help feeling a chill at the same time. Elias cleared his throat and moved on to the painting beside it. Maybe he had picked up more than expected despite sleeping through church services, because he could tell what each painting depicted just by looking at it.

“Luke, Chapter 14. Healing the dropsy. Hmm, that one’s about calming the sea. That one’s making a blind man see. Healing a leper… raising a widow’s son. This one’s bringing a daughter back to life and healing a woman. That one’s Lazarus being raised. Hey, there are a few stories here that get you criticized if you ask what the hell they’re doing. Why did they have to include these?”

I couldn’t help letting out a dry laugh at Elias’s choice of words before looking over at Narke. Unlike in the Middle Ages, when the entire population was Christian, more and more Germans in this day and age no longer believed in Christianity, which had probably made debates over some of those stories even more heated. That must have been why Elias saw it that way. In any case, Narke answered with a calm expression.

“What’s the point of arguing over that? These paintings were made to comfort the people. To wash away their pain, to bring their dead family members back to life… They gave people hope that the things they desperately wished for with all their hearts could come true through Christ. But now, we should also consider that there may have been a purpose behind including these particular scenes.”

Elias patted Narke on the shoulder with an expression that said he knew it.

“Yeah, that’s why I asked. Why did they have to draw pigs drowning in the sea, of all things? What if we end up getting drowned while we’re looking for the passage?”

“Hm~”

“All right, Narke. We came to the Church of St. George based on your interpretation. There must be a reason St. George was drawn on that illustration, and you think it’s this mural, right?”

“That’s right.”

“Then you think we can use this mural to figure out where the secret passage is?”

“I can’t say for sure, but it’s worth a try.”

Narke pulled another manuscript from inside his coat and pointed to the numbers written beneath it. I realized what he was about to do. Just as I was about to turn my attention to the inscriptions on the mural, Narke’s expression suddenly hardened.

“Lukas. Can you memorize all the tituli written here? Clockwise!”

“What? Wait.”

I did as he asked and read all the Latin inscriptions beneath the paintings. As soon as I finished, Narke shoved Elias and me out of the Church of St. George, then hurriedly locked the door behind us. Before we could even ask what was going on, he grabbed us and ran, hiding us behind a small building beside the church. Only then did I see the white light approaching from the distance. My eyes widened.

Rustle—

Far beyond the Church of St. George, someone who had apparently come from the direction of Reichenau Abbey was standing there with a lantern. The black collar of his clothing fluttered in the wind. We held our breath.

“Is anyone there?”

“…….”

The monk drew closer and closer to the church. After looking around the building, he turned his head. The sound of footsteps pressing into the grass and dirt was steadily approaching. Narke smiled and swallowed hard.

Translator Note

1. A Flurkreuz (also called a Wegkreuz or Feldkreuz) is a German term for a wayside cross. It is a small religious monument shaped like a cross. It stands along roads, footpaths, field edges, or forest trails. ↩︎
2. Golgotha, also known as Calvary, is the historic site just outside the ancient walls of Jerusalem where Jesus Christ was crucified. ↩︎