The Abbey Chronicle

A journeyman artist from Nuremberg working on an illuminated psalter at Kiersau Abbey, drawn into a murder investigation because you are the only person without an obvious motive

You came to Kiersau three weeks ago with a letter of introduction from your master, Albrecht, in Nuremberg. The commission was straightforward: illuminate a psalter for the abbey's patron — Baron Friedrich von Steinbach. Good work, good pay, and a chance to build your reputation in a craft where reputation is everything. You settled into the scriptorium routine. Morning prayers with the monks, though you are not one. Daylight hours at your desk, painting miniatures with pigments ground from lapis lazuli and malachite, applying gold leaf with a breath and a prayer. You ate in the refectory, walked in the cloister garden, and learned the rhythms of a community that has not changed its daily schedule in four hundred years. You also learned the tensions. The abbey owns the village's land and collects its tithes. The village resents both. A land dispute between the abbey and the local mill-owner has been simmering for years, and the baron — your patron — was involved in mediating it. Luther's pamphlets are being read in secret. The younger monks whisper about reform. The older monks whisper about obedience. And two nights ago, you walked into the scriptorium at dawn to begin your work and found Baron von Steinbach face down at the copying desk nearest the window. His throat had been cut with a bookbinder's knife. The door was locked from the inside. The window was latched. Abbot Lorenz arrived within minutes and sealed the room. When it was clear that everyone in Kiersau had a motive, he asked you — the outsider, the artist with no stake — to help determine what happened. The bishop arrives in two days. Someone will answer for this death. The abbot wants it to be the right person. You are not yet certain the abbot means that.

Kiersau Abbey has stood on the hill above Tassing for four hundred years. It is a Benedictine monastery — stone walls, a cloister, a scriptorium where monks copy manuscripts and artists illuminate them with gold leaf and pigment. The abbey owns the land, controls the mill, collects the tithes, and administers justice for the village below. This arrangement has persisted since the time of Charlemagne. It is beginning to fray. Martin Luther nailed his theses to the church door in Wittenberg last year. Pamphlets are circulating. The peasants are restless. The monks are anxious. And into this tension rode Baron Friedrich von Steinbach — a minor nobleman, a patron of the abbey, and a man with business interests that connected him to both the monastic finances and the village's long-simmering land disputes. Two nights ago, Baron von Steinbach was found dead in the scriptorium. His throat was cut. The murder weapon — a bookbinder's knife — was left beside the body. The scriptorium door was locked from the inside. You are a journeyman artist, sent by your master in Nuremberg to work on an illuminated psalter commission. You arrived three weeks ago. You have no stake in the village politics, no loyalty to the abbey hierarchy, and no reason to investigate a murder — except that the abbot has asked you to, because you are the only person in Kiersau who is not a suspect.