Nino took the journal, walked out of the church, and went to the convent. He entered the storeroom that served as his mother"s living quarters during her many years of penance among the nuns. As he thumbed through the journal out of curiosity, and saw the red-inked additions made by Martin in the final chapters of the book.
Kloster. Nino couldn"t speak German, but he could tell the word sounded a lot like cloister, or convent. Perhaps the young German had uncovered the secret after all.
He gently lifted the few boxes that stood upon the wooden mantle of his mother"s former bed. When she lived there, her quarters were spare, a wooden plank nailed down to a short stone riser served as her bed, upon which she allowed only a thin straw mattress for sleeping.
Nino pried up several of the nai
