The Beggar King

8

REGENSBURG

EARLY MORNING, AUGUST 21, 1662 AD

The hour has come, Bavarian. We must begin.”

In the dungeon the Regensburg executioner bent down to Jakob Kuisl, who had fallen asleep on the grimy hard wooden floor, and gently shook him by the shoulder. When the Schongau hangman didn’t stir, Teuber nudged him with his foot.

“Come on, now, pull yourself together. The authorities have decided to have you tortured,” the executioner announced. “If you keep lolling around like this, we’ll have to summon the guards and light a fire under your ass.”

“It’ll never burn, as wet and moldy as it is down here.” Kuisl rubbed his bloodshot eyes. “Even back home in little Schongau, the condemned are better off than here in your fine Imperial City.”

Teuber chuckled. “Just you wait. After the sentencing you’ll go to death row, just like all the others condemned to die. There’s at least a bit of sunlight there, and you’re allowed visitors.”

“I’m thrilled to hear it.” Kuisl struggled to his feet and turned toward the door. “Let’s go. Before I actually wake up.”

Outside, four bailiffs waited for the Schongau hangman, a mixture of fear and revulsion in their faces. To them he was the bathhouse monster who had sunk his fangs into the throats of two of their citizens-at least that was the word on the street. Because such a monster could even be expected to attack four guards armed to the teeth, the bailiffs lowered their halberds, ready to strike at any moment.

“Calm down,” Kuisl said. “I’m not going to attack you.”

Without paying further attention to the guards, he accompanied Teuber down the narrow corridor until they came to stairs leading down into a large room. Along the way they passed a brazier filled with glowing coals and a few pokers. The air was thick with smoke, sweat, and fear.

The Schongau hangman surveyed the torture chamber, impressed with both the equipment and the size of the room. On Kuisl’s left stood a rack topped with a bloodstained roller spiked with iron balls. Behind it was the so-called Naughty Liesl, a wooden triangle attached to a cord, which the hangman used to hoist the offender into the air. Scattered around the room lay stones of various sizes, which were attached as weights to the victim’s arms and legs as he swung from the device.

On the opposite wall were other torture instruments that Kuisl knew only by word of mouth, because the Schongau city council considered them too expensive. Among them were the Maiden’s Lap, a chair with iron spikes covering the seat; the Spanish Donkey; and the Slide, an upright rack with four polished rotating wood triangles. Two white tallow candles gave off flickering light, and between them hung a crucifix: a solemn reminder that everything happening here was God’s will.

“Well done, cousin. Nothing’s missing here.” Kuisl’s gaze wandered to one side where a portion of the basement was closed off by a thick wooden lattice. From behind it came quiet murmurs.

“The three inquisitors are already here,” Teuber whispered, pointing to the lattice. “We’re just waiting now for the surgeon. Until recently the bathhouse owner Hofmann played that part, but they had to replace him rather abruptly, of course. As far as I know, with the surgeon Dominik Elsperger.” Teuber shrugged. “If you ask me, he’s a real quack. But in here it doesn’t really matter, now does it?”

“So, who are my three inquisitors?” asked Kuisl. He tried to make out anything behind the mesh but could see only moving shadows. “They’re probably afraid I’m going to bite their heads off.”

“All three are aldermen,” Teuber said. “According to custom, it includes the oldest and the youngest members of the council. The third member is always someone different at each trial. Ah, here comes the doctor now.”

The bailiff led in a timid little man who reminded Kuisl of the Schongau medicus Bonifaz Fronwieser. Dominik Elsperger wore a tattered jacket and, beneath it, a bloodstained linen smock. He held a large leather bag in front of him like a shield. When he caught sight of the Schongau hangman, he flinched.

“I–I’m supposed to examine you first,” the surgeon stuttered. “To determine whether you’re fit for questioning, you understand. Please remove your shirt.”

Kuisl unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it over his head, revealing a hairy chest marked by a number of scars from old gunshot wounds. The little physician fumbled around, anxiously eyeing the guards. He looked Kuisl in the eye briefly as he felt for his heartbeat. Finding it calm and measured, the doctor nodded ceremoniously.

“The offender is more than fit for questioning,” he said, looking toward the closed-off area. “Strong as an ox. He won’t keel over so fast. In my estimation we can proceed.”

Only a soft whisper could be heard from the niche behind the latticework. Finally Elsperger took his seat on a bench whose backrest, oddly, extended only half its length. Teuber noticed Kuisl’s bemused glance.

“The other half of the bench is for me,” the Regensburg executioner said with a grin. “We disreputable hangmen don’t deserve a backrest. But I don’t get to sit down very much anyway.”

“That’s right, Teuber,” a harsh voice finally said behind the lattice. It sounded like an older man accustomed to being obeyed. “Enough chitchat. Let’s begin.”

Teuber nodded. “As you wish.”

Once again the Regensburg executioner turned and whispered in Kuisl’s ear. “Confess, Kuisl. I promise you a quick, clean death.”

“Get to work, hangman,” Kuisl growled. “Leave the rest to me.”

A second voice with a strong Bavarian accent could be heard now behind the lattice, higher and brighter than the first. Kuisl assumed it belonged to the youngest council member. “Teuber, first show the man the instruments and explain their purpose. Maybe that will make him more cooperative.”

“Save yourself the trouble,” Kuisl said. “You know who I am. You don’t have to explain to a hangman what he does.”

Teuber sighed and led his colleague to the rack. With huge, callused hands he tied Kuisl’s hands and feet to a roller at each end of the rack so not even the slightest movement was possible.

“Jakob Kuisl of Schongau,” the harsh voice intoned once more from behind the lattice. “You stand accused of the murders of Andreas Hofmann and his wife, Lisbeth, nee Kuisl, on the morning of the fourteenth of August in their very own bathhouse. Do you acknowledge your guilt?”

“As guilty as our Savior,” Kuisl replied.

“Do not blaspheme our Lord,” the young Bavarian replied. “You will just make everything worse.”

“We have evidence, Kuisl,” said the old man with the rasping voice. “We found the will. You had poison in your possession. For the last time, confess!”

“Good heavens, those were medicines!” Kuisl swore. “My sister was deathly ill. I came to visit her to try to cure her, nothing more. This is a damned setup, don’t you see that?”

“A setup?” asked the Bavarian, amused. “Now who do you think would have wanted to set you up?”

“I don’t know myself,” Kuisl muttered. “But when I find out, I’ll-”

“Lies, nothing but lies,” the old man interrupted. “This is pointless; we’ll have to torture the suspect. Teuber, put the spiketooth roller under him.”

The Regensburg executioner lifted Kuisl’s upper body until his back arched like a bridge, then inserted a roller covered in thin spikes between the rack and his body. When the executioner let go of him, Kuisl’s back dropped onto the roller and the iron spikes bore deeply into his flesh. Kuisl clenched his jaw but didn’t utter a sound.

“Now turn the wheel,” the Bavarian ordered.

Teuber moved to the head of the rack and began turning a crank so that Kuisl’s arms and legs were stretched in opposite directions. Bones cracked, beads of sweat appeared on Kuisl’s brow, but still he remained silent.

Then a third voice sounded behind the lattice, quiet and throaty, of indeterminate age, but as sharp as a saw.

“Jakob Kuisl of Schongau,” the man whispered. “Can you hear me?”

Kuisl shuddered. His back arched upward as if a fire had been lit beneath him. He knew this voice from his distant past. It had sought him out in the dungeon, and now it was here to torment him like something out of a nightmare.

How is this possible?

“Dear little hangman,” the voice whispered. “I know you’re a stubborn old bastard, but believe me when I tell you that we’ll cause you more pain than you could ever imagine. And if you don’t confess today, then you will tomorrow or the day after. We have time, plenty of it.”

Kuisl pulled against the ropes with such force that the blood- and soot-stained rack nearly toppled.

“Go to hell, damn it!” he screamed. “Whoever you are, go back to where you came from!”

The guards seized their halberds, and the little surgeon jumped up anxiously from the bench.

“Shall I bleed him a bit so he’ll calm down?” Elsperger muttered. “With loss of blood, they tire quickly.” But the Schongau hangman’s furious shouts drowned him out.

Teuber took firm hold of Kuisl’s hands and bent down close over him. “Damn it, what’s the matter with you, Kuisl?” he whispered. “This is just the beginning. You’re only going to make everything much, much worse.”

Kuisl tried hard to breathe evenly.

Got to calm down… Have to find out who is behind the grille.

Again the third voice spoke.

“Teuber, it’s time to show this monster how serious we are,” the unknown man whispered with an enjoyment audible to Kuisl alone. “He who refuses to hear shall feel. Put the blue fire to him.”

Kuisl turned his head in despair, but Teuber was already outside his field of vision. Nearby he heard a sound he knew only too well: a long, drawn-out hiss and sizzle, like the sound of fat being dropped into a hot pan. Then the infernal odor of sulfur wafted through the torture chamber.

Kuisl clenched his jaw. No matter what happened, they wouldn’t hear him scream.

Magdalena was stirring an ointment of butter, arnica, resin, and chamomile in a wooden crucible. The pleasant aroma more or less distracted her from the stench that permeated the space around her.

Since the early-morning hours, more and more beggars had been arriving at the underground hall with their various ailments. The hangman’s daughter would have guessed there were almost two dozen now, but the exact number was hard to determine given the vault’s irregular shape and the dim torchlight. The beggars lay, crouched, and leaned in corners and tiny niches. They came with scabies; open sores on their legs; hacking coughs; and sudor anglicus, English sweating sickness; and whatever their ailment, all wanted to be treated by Simon and Magdalena. By now it was almost noontime.

They had just finished treating an especially difficult case. The left leg of old Mathis was covered with festering wounds, some of them already infested with maggots.

“When the principessa finishes preparing her ointment, it would be nice if she could help me clean out these wounds,” the young medicus said, glancing up from his work to Magdalena. “Of course, only if she doesn’t find it beneath her dignity.”

The hangman’s daughter sighed softly. Simon was still out of sorts because she’d spent the prior evening with Silvio. A dozen times she reassured him she hadn’t enjoyed herself at the ball at all, and that her curiosity had nearly cost her her life in the Venetian’s garden. Still, Simon was in a huff. And though she could understand that somewhat at first, his fussing had begun to get on her nerves-mainly because she’d scarcely slept that night. At least the beggars had brought her her travel bag from the Whale; she’d put on a halfway clean dress, and in her linen skirt and gray bodice she felt once more like the simple daughter of the Schongau hangman. Yet none of that prevented Simon from treating her as if she’d just spent a fabulous and decadent night at a glittering ball.

“You can take your principessa and shove it,” she snapped angrily. “And going forward, you can spare me your whining.”

Sullenly, Magdalena took the salve to Simon and, with some tweezers, helped to pluck maggots from the leg of a snoring man she’d plied beforehand with a generous portion of brandy. Simon used a tattered cloth as a curtain to block off a niche that served as their examination room. He arranged some planks as a bed, as well as a wobbly chair and a table on which he laid out his few medical instruments and books.

“It’s only because I worry,” Simon whispered after a while, still cleaning the wound. “It’s not a good idea for you to be gadding about Regensburg by yourself. You see what can happen when you get involved with a runty provincial aristocrat like him.”

“Oh, I see, but you, sir, can march straight into a band of revolutionaries and listen to a raftmaster spout off all sorts of foolishness. That’s a good idea?”

“At least now we know why this trap was set for your father,” Simon replied.

Magdalena frowned. Simon had told her about his experience the night before with the freemen on Wohrd Island. Nevertheless, she remained skeptical. There were just too many unanswered questions.

“I’m not sure I really understand it all,” she said, laying the tweezers aside. “This freeman Gessner believes the Regensburg patricians lured my father here with some letter from his sister, forged a will, and then posted guards at the scene of the crime. All that just so they could frame him for murder? Why should they do that? They could just as well have framed some random person. These things happen in every big city. They didn’t have to drag my father all the way from Schongau just for that.”

Simon set a bowl of dirty water down on the table and began to bandage the beggar’s leg with scraps of halfway clean cloth. “You’re right; it’s a roundabout way of doing it,” he said. “But this way no one asked any questions. The patricians wanted to eliminate one of the freemen’s leaders without arousing suspicion. They clearly succeeded in that.”

“That just sounds too simple,” Magdalena mumbled. “There’s a catch here somewhere. Why, for instance, was the bathhouse under surveillance until just last night? Something important must have been inside.”

“Hofmann’s pharmacy looked like it had been hit by a tornado,” Simon replied. He sat down on a stool, rubbed the sweat from his forehead, and tried to think. “Certainly someone was looking for something in there-”

“Perhaps there was some piece of evidence they wanted to destroy,” Magdalena interrupted, “something that would have revealed the real reason for the murder. And now…”

“And now this someone thinks we know, too!” Simon continued excitedly. “They think we found something in the bathhouse that could implicate them.” He sprang up from his stool. “That just might be it!”

“That would also explain the strange hooded man who tried to kill me twice yesterday,” Magdalena said. “Once in the coffeehouse and later in Silvio’s garden. The Mamminger fellow who spoke with the stranger is the Regensburg city treasurer, a patrician! I bet Mamminger hired him as an assassin to silence us both.”

Simon nodded. “I’m certain this is the same man who locked us in the bathhouse basement and nearly burned us alive. As fast as possible we’re going to have to-”

Magdalena put a finger to his lips. Without a word, she pointed to the curtain, then pulled it aside in a single motion. Behind it Nathan’s grinning face appeared.

“Ah, I thought I heard someone calling for me,” the beggar king said. “May I help you with something?”

Simon groaned softly. Nathan had probably overheard their entire conversation! Simon still wasn’t sure how much he could trust the beggar king.

“I’m sure if we needed help you would have heard about it,” the medicus replied, pointing to his sleeping patient. “In any event, this patient needs his rest, and so do we. We’re nearly dying of hunger.”

Nathan clapped his hands together. “Ah, well, it just so happens that I’ve gotten my hands on some delicious treats for you-under the table, so to speak. It’s not much. The guards in Haid Square were especially vigilant today. But for a little lunch it’ll do nicely.”

He led Simon and Magdalena to the large table in the middle of the hall, where some bowls of bread, cheese, and apples, as well as a magnificent leg of pork, awaited them. Nathan’s helpers had also managed to swipe a mug of foaming brown beer from right under the tavern keeper’s eyes.

“Help yourselves!” the beggar king said. “You’ve really earned it today.”

Simon bit into the pork and washed it down with a gulp of beer. Only now did he realize how hungry he was. Magdalena, too, hadn’t really had much to eat since the night before at the Venetian’s ball. She reached for the apples, which she devoured eagerly one after the other.

Nathan took a seat next to them and watched as they ate. He reminded Simon of a sly old crow patiently waiting for a crumb to fall from the table.

“I did, by the way, accidentally overhear your little discussion,” Nathan said, picking his golden teeth. Then he turned to Simon with a conspiratorial look. “So do you really believe that Mamminger sent a hired assassin after you?”

The medicus just shrugged and continued chewing, but Magdalena nodded. “Everything points in that direction,” she replied, reaching for a mug of beer. “The treasurer seems to think we’ve found proof of his guilt, and now he wants us out of the way.”

Nathan snickered and took a bite of cheese. “Proof?” he finally scoffed. “And what kind of proof would that be? Perhaps Mamminger dropped his signet ring somewhere in the bathhouse? Or you found a bloody silver dagger engraved with initials in his kitchen drawer, or-”

“Nonsense,” Simon mumbled. “It must be something serious, something that has to be kept hidden at all costs… some kind of secret.”

Lost in thought, he ran his fingers across the tabletop, which was dusted in a thin layer of flour from the fresh-baked bread. Still pondering, he rubbed it between his fingers.

Flour?

Spinning around, Simon took Magdalena by the shoulder so abruptly she choked on her beer.

“The tracks in the cellar!” he exclaimed. “How could I have forgotten?”

“Tracks?” Nathan inquired, puzzled. “In what cellar?”

The medicus held out his right hand and placed his floury finger under the beggar king’s nose. He looked around cautiously and lowered his voice. “There’s a hidden storage room at the bottom of the bathhouse well. We found a few sacks of flour down there, which the rats had been nibbling. I had a closer look at them, and this flour…” Simon paused a moment to think. “There were tracks in it, big footprints, and they stopped directly in front of the wall. One of the tracks was cut off midway as if…”

“As if the trail continued on the other side!” Magdalena finished his sentence excitedly. “Damn! Why didn’t you say something earlier?”

“I–I completely forgot,” Simon stammered. “Just as I was going to take a closer look, the place caught fire and we had to run for our lives-or don’t you remember? The tracks in the flour were just about the last thing I was thinking about at the moment.”

Magdalena sighed. “Well, there’s only one way to find out whether you’re right,” she said, standing up from the table.

“And what would that be?”

The hangman’s daughter grinned. “We’ve got to go back to the bathhouse tonight and take a closer look.”

“But the house was completely destroyed in the fire,” Nathan said. “How can you expect to find anything there?”

“I hardly believe the fire made its way into the well,” Magdalena said. “And the fire does give us one advantage. This time we don’t need to worry about being locked inside a burning building. Thanks, by the way, for the meal.”

An apple in hand, she returned to the makeshift ward to treat the next patient.

Jakob Kuisl lay on the wood floor of his cell and tried to forget his pain.

The Schongau hangman had retreated to his innermost being, where a bright sun sent its warming rays into the very tips of his fingers, filling him with pleasant thoughts.

A meadow of spring flowers, lilies of the valley with dew on their leaves, the bright laughter of the twins and Magdalena…

Kuisl knew from his own agonizing interrogations that people could bear a lot of pain if only their beliefs were strong, if they felt close to God, or if, like Kuisl, they were firmly convinced of their own innocence. His father once told him about an elderly woman who was tortured more than sixty times in the notorious Schongau witch trial. The stubborn old God-fearing midwife denied the accusations against her until she was finally released. Jakob Kuisl wondered how many sessions he could endure. Thirty? Forty?

The hangman groaned, trying to find a position that would minimize his pain. It was impossible for him to lie on his back because it was there the spikes had rolled through his flesh on the rack. Gaping black and red burn wounds covered his thighs, and he could scarcely move his arms. For over half an hour Teuber had turned the screws, and his thumbs, index fingers, and both shinbones had turned blue and pulsed in pain as if an iron hammer were pounding them still.

Kuisl knew this was just the first stage of his torture. Early the next morning they would start with stretching by ropes. They would tie his arms behind his back and raise him from the ground this way, attaching weights of as much as a hundred pounds to his legs. The third voice behind the lattice had demanded all through the last session that they start the stretching as soon as possible. Kuisl sensed the two other Regensburg aldermen were rather put off by their colleague’s blatant hatred, but they didn’t interfere as the third man kept issuing increasingly brutal orders.

The third man…

Kuisl had been racking his brain the last few hours trying to remember where he’d heard that voice before, and though the pain made it almost impossible to concentrate, he continued to rummage through his memory. He recalled the hateful look of the stranger on the raft. Could the third voice belong to him? Something deep inside Kuisl told him he’d known the raftsman long ago. But he couldn’t possibly be an inquisitor. Teuber told Kuisl that those selected to oversee the torture were always rich, respected citizens; this raftsman, on the other hand, was a simple man and probably not even from Regensburg.

Kuisl blinked and tried to guess the time. From far off he could hear cries and laughter, and a dim light fell through the hatch, causing the dust in the air to shimmer. Probably early afternoon.

At that moment he heard footsteps in the corridor outside the cell. The bolt slid aside, and the Regensburg executioner entered. He carried a flickering torch and a linen sack, which he opened now, arranging its contents on the floor. In the dim light Kuisl could make out a few clay vessels, some rags, bouquets of dried herbs, and a large bottle of brandy.

“Kuisl, Kuisl,” Teuber muttered, handing the Schongau hangman the uncorked bottle. “One thing is clear; the Regensburg aldermen tried everything: burning sulfur, the rack, thumb screws, and Spanish boots-all in one day! I’ve never seen anything like that before.” He shook his head. “They want to see you hang, and sooner rather than later.”

Kuisl nodded and took a deep swig of brandy. The alcohol seemed to wash through his entire body, rinsing away the worst of the pain.

“Well? Do you still believe I killed my own sister?” he asked, wiping his bloody, swollen hand across his lips.

Teuber opened one of the pots and spread a cooling ointment over a burn on Kuisl’s thigh where, just a few hours before, he had applied burning sulfur.

“What I think is of no importance,” he replied. “They told me to get you ready for tomorrow, and then we’ll proceed. They don’t trust the quack doctor to do it right, so it’s up to me. Those damned patricians! Now turn around.”

Kuisl rolled on his side so the Regensburg executioner could treat the wounds on his back. He had to hand it to Teuber-he was a master of his craft. He knew how to harm, but he knew how to heal as well. Years of experience working with burns, dislocated shoulders, and broken bones had made the Regensburg hangman an excellent doctor.

“You know, it’s funny, Teuber,” Kuisl said with his eyes closed. “First we hurt the people, then we nurse them back to health…”

“And in the end we kill them.” Teuber nodded. “I’ve given up thinking about it. I do my work; that’s all there is to it. Now your fingers.”

Kuisl held his swollen blue thumbs out to the Regensburg executioner, who had crushed them only a few hours before. Now the executioner rubbed them with a fragrant yellow ointment that smelled of marigold and arnica. When he finished, he repeated this on Kuisl’s legs, where Spanish boots-with iron uppers and spikes inside-had left colorful, shiny bruises.

“You know that I’m innocent,” Kuisl whispered, clenching his fists to better endure the pain in his legs. “I’ve seen it in your eyes. You also believe that something’s not right with one of the inquisitors. Admit it.”

Pausing, Teuber stared at the man across from him for a long time. “Damn, you’re right,” he said at last. “The one alderman is spewing vitriol the way some people breathe fire and brimstone. Almost as if it was his sister whose throat you slit.”

“For God’s sake, I didn’t…” Kuisl burst out, but he calmed down again, as there was no point in arguing now. The Regensburg executioner was his only ear to the outside world.

After a few deep breaths Kuisl asked, “Do you know the three aldermen?”

Teuber shrugged. “One of them is probably the president of the council, Hieronymus Rheiner. As far as I know, he’s the oldest member of the council. Rheiner is also the president of the court that tried your case.”

“Of course!” Kuisl interrupted. “The president at my trial the day before yesterday. How could I have forgotten?”

“The youngest one I recognized by his voice,” Teuber continued. “That’s Joachim Kerscher from the tax office, a little braggart whose father bought him the position.”

Kuisl nodded. The chief of the tax office was responsible for municipal taxes and thus an extremely powerful man. Of course, the hangman was interested in someone else. “What about the third man?”

There was a long pause.

“Who is the third man?” Kuisl grew impatient.

Teuber shook his head. “I don’t know. I’ve heard that voice somewhere before, but I can’t say where.”

“Can you find out for me who he is?”

By now the Regensburg executioner had bandaged Kuisl’s back with clean cloth.

“Not even if I wanted to,” Teuber replied. “The identity of the third inquisitor always remains secret, to ensure impartiality. He won’t be named in any document, or found in any record either. So, that’s the end of that.”

He patted Kuisl lightly on the shoulder and started to pack the clay pots back into his bag.

“We’ll see each other again tomorrow morning when I resume your torture,” he said with a sigh, and turned to leave. “I’ll leave the torch for you, since it’s so gloomy down here.”

“Teuber,” Kuisl whispered. “Damn it, I’ve got to know who the third man is! I’m absolutely certain he has something to do with the murder. If I knew his name, I could send Magdalena to find out more about him, then maybe everything would end well after all. The judgment may not be passed until I confess under torture, but I don’t know how much longer I can hold out. So don’t let me down!”

“Hang it! I tell you I can’t do it!” Teuber wrung his callused hands, unable to look Kuisl in the eye. “I have five children, and they all need their father. If I start poking around now, I’ll end up on the scaffold right there with you. But in chains and minus my sword. Don’t you get it?”

“I have children, too, Teuber,” the Schongau hangman answered calmly. “Young twins, beautiful children. And my eldest daughter is somewhere out there trying to save my life.”

Standing in the doorway, Teuber pressed his lips tightly together and clutched his linen sack as if trying to wring blood out of it.

“We’ll see each other again in the morning,” he said finally. “Try to get some sleep.”

He slammed the door behind him and slid the bolt closed. Kuisl could hear his rapid footsteps retreat down the passageway. It almost seemed he wanted to run.

Kuisl stared pensively at the grimy cell wall in front of him. The torch Teuber left hanging on a ring was half burned down now, but by its light the Schongau hangman was able to get a clear look around his cell for the first time. The stinking chamber pot, the wedge of wood that served as his pillow, the scribbling on the wall… Kuisl studied the strange script that had troubled him so greatly the day before. It still glared out at him in the very middle of the back wall, directly under the line from the mercenary’s song, which he’d carefully scratched out.

P.F.K. Weidenfeld, anno domini 1637…

That was a quarter of a century ago. The hangman tried to remember what was going on back then, what the name and date brought to mind. Had he ever known anyone by that name?

P.F.K. Weidenfeld…

Back then Kuisl’s colonel had already promoted him to sergeant, and even though he was only twenty-two years old, he commanded a large number of mercenaries. Many of the older, more seasoned soldiers objected on account of his youth, but after the first battle most didn’t say another word. Kuisl taught them discipline and respect, two virtues the lansquenets knew about only through stories. Kuisl lived with the horror and terror of war, the nightmares of murder, robbery, and rape, all those years, but the memories grew within him like a poisonous mushroom. At least he had done what he could to stanch senseless bloodshed by his own men.

But what bloodshed was sensible?

P.F.K. Weidenfeld…

With torch in hand, Kuisl walked along the wall, trying to decipher the rest of the scribblings.

All of a sudden he noticed something.

The Weidenfeld inscription as well as some of the others were new! They had been carved into the wooden wall with a sharp knife, and they shone in a much lighter color than the older ones-so someone must have carved them just recently.

Just for him.

Softly the hangman began murmuring the names he’d been trying to forget all these years.

Magdeburg, Breitenfeld, Rain on the Lech, Nordlingen…

Familiar names from the Great War, battlefields where Kuisl served as a mercenary and where he pillaged, blasphemed, whored, and murdered. Images and smells came back to him now like dark storm clouds.

Good God!

The torch smoked in front of him, and another greater torture began.

This time it penetrated to his innermost being.

“Lord Almighty! Just look at what the fire has done here!” Simon whispered, pointing to what was left of the bathhouse, which had collapsed in a smoldering heap. A thunderstorm overnight had transformed much of the ruin into a muddy mountain of black, splintered beams. The walls had fallen in on three sides. Shattered tiles, scorched window frames, scraps of cloth, and broken pots were scattered all over the street, evidence that scavengers had already helped themselves. Only the chimney still rose up out of the devastation as a reminder that a stately building had once stood on this spot.

The medicus shook his head. “We certainly won’t find anything here. Let’s just go back.”

Magdalena, too, looked sadly at the ruins. While she had to admit she hadn’t expected to find her aunt’s house so completely destroyed, she didn’t want to give up so easily.

“How much time do we have?” she asked Nathan, who stood beside her now, gnawing on an old chicken bone.

The beggar king picked at something stuck between his gold teeth. “My boys will signal me when the guards return to patrol this area,” he said. “At the moment the bailiffs are down at St. Emmeram’s Square, so it will probably be a while before they come back. I’ll whistle when they do.”

Magdalena nodded. She was happy to have Nathan and a dozen beggars along. The beggar king had advised her to wait to visit the ruin until the early-morning hours because the city guards would be nearing the end of their shifts, eager to be relieved, and thus patroling only halfheartedly. Although Simon had been against involving the beggars in their plans at first, it hadn’t been hard to convince him: in a city like Regensburg it was never a good idea to wander about alone at night, but in the company of Nathan’s colleagues they were as safe in the streets as Lazarus in the lap of Abraham. Here again it was evident how helpful the beggars guild could be. All along the Wei?gerbergraben they posted lookouts to send word at the slightest sign of danger.

“Then let’s not waste any time,” Magdalena whispered.

With a lantern in hand, the hangman’s daughter searched the pile of charred beams for an opening she could slip through.

“Magdalena,” Simon whispered. “The place will collapse and bury you. Perhaps it would be better if we-”

“Just come along,” she interrupted Simon curtly. “I, at least, am not going to let my father down.”

She nudged a beam to one side, setting off a chain reaction that ended with a portion of the mountain of debris collapsing with a great crash. She jumped aside as a cloud of ash rained down on them.

“What did I tell you?” Simon whispered. “You’re digging your own grave!”

Magdalena pointed to a new opening in the debris. “At least now we’ve found a way in,” she said. “This is about where the boiler chamber with the well must have been.”

She crouched down and crawled into the ruin, holding the lantern in front of her, and in just a few moments disappeared inside. Simon murmured a quick prayer and crawled in after her. If they were going to die, then at least they would die together.

“Good luck,” he could hear Nathan call after him. “Don’t worry. If the whole thing collapses, we’ll dig you out, dead or alive.”

“Thanks, that’s very kind of you,” Simon scoffed, though he knew the beggar king could no longer hear him.

The medicus could feel his back scrape against the charred beams, and a muddy layer of ash and dirt clung to his knees. They were making their way through a tunnel of masonry stones and large pieces of rubble when Magdalena’s lantern brightened in front of him and the space around him opened up.

He rose to his feet carefully, realizing they’d in fact made it back into the bathhouse boiler room. Most of the equipment here was unrecognizable, though: the brick oven had burst into pieces, and the copper kettle used to heat bath water seemed to have completely disappeared. It took a while for Simon to notice shiny black pieces on the floor that reminded him of slag. The kettles had melted! What hellish temperatures must have prevailed here!

Meanwhile, Magdalena pushed aside a pile of bricks and gazed into a black hole directly beneath her.

“The well shaft,” she said. “The rungs are still here. Now it gets interesting.”

With these words she began her descent. Before long the medicus heard her call again. “Simon, you were right! This-this is unbelievable!”

When she fell silent, Simon leaned over the hole. “Magdalena, what’s wrong?” he whispered. “Are you still there?”

“I’m here in the back.” The voice of the hangman’s daughter echoed strangely, as if she were now much farther away.

“Is there really a secret passageway?” Simon asked excitedly.

“It’s best you come down and see for yourself.”

Simon reached for the iron rungs, casting a quick glance at the splintered beams and loose stones above him. If the roof caved in now, they’d either drown or starve to death down in the well. He couldn’t imagine Nathan and his beggars taking up shovels and digging them out.

Hand over hand, the medicus climbed down the rungs into the shaft until he reached the opening. The flames had gutted the hidden storage room, and the sacks and boxes they found there on their last visit were reduced to ash. But Simon discovered something else now.

Farther back there was yet another entryway, this one only waist-high. Simon ducked into the low opening. The ground was strewn with charred wood, some of it still marked with whitewash. He had to smile.

A secret wooden door painted white and hidden behind the sacks. Hofmann was a clever fellow!

Carefully he peered inside. In the large room before him the fire had left its mark, though not so thoroughly as in the first room. In one corner stood a charred table; a blackened shelf that had fallen from the wall now lay on the floor. In the middle of the room the chimney of a huge stone furnace rose up to the ceiling, and all around it were smashed pots and splinters of glass that he suspected were once polished lenses.

Simon stepped over the broken glass and ran his hand along the balance bar of a scale: still warm, scorched and twisted almost beyond recognition by the heat.

“I’ll be damned if this wasn’t an alchemist’s workshop,” he whispered. “Your uncle is looking stranger and stranger by the minute.”

“I wonder whether Hofmann’s murderer searched this room,” Magdalena said.

Simon thought for a moment, then nodded. “It’s quite possible he didn’t. Your uncle kept his laboratory well hidden. I assume the fireplace is connected to the chimney in the boiler room so no one would notice he was down here working with distillation flasks. A bathhouse operator has to always keep the water boiling, after all, and thus the chimney was always smoking.”

“But what does that have to do with the patricians?” Magdalena picked up a piece of a glass lens and examined it as if this shard might hold the answer to all her questions. “Until now we’ve assumed the aldermen had my uncle killed because he was one of the leaders of the freemen-retaliation, nothing more.”

“Apparently it’s not that simple,” Simon replied. “It’s safe to say that someone was looking very hard for this secret room. The terrible mess in the apothecary’s room on the second floor is evidence of that.”

“Could Mamminger be behind it?” Magdalena asked.

“He has something to do with it at least.”

The medicus continued reflecting on this as he made his way through the room, now and then picking up a fragment of pottery or a piece of melted glass. Underneath the toppled bookshelf he found a few scorched boards connected by thin bars, and then, as he continued rummaging around, he came upon a few small blackened bones.

Animal bones.

“It appears your uncle was keeping animals in cages down here,” Simon said. “Not especially large ones. These bones could have come from rats or cats.”

Disgusted, he tossed the bones aside and walked to a far back corner of the room, where a knee-high pile of ash still smoldered. Carefully he reached into the faintly glowing black mass.

Slowly he sifted the warm ashes through his fingers, letting them fall to the ground. There were bits the fire hadn’t consumed entirely, which shimmered bluish white in the lantern light. Sniffing them, he recognized the same slightly sweet odor he had noticed a few days earlier while inspecting the moldy flour in the bathhouse supply room. Could this enormous pile of ash be simply burned flour? Or was this the remains of some alchemical powder he’d never heard of?

What the devil had Hofmann been doing down here?

He suddenly heard a loud crack and stones began falling to the ground. A moment later the world around them seemed to explode.

“Damn it, the house is collapsing!” Simon shouted. “I was afraid it would. Let’s get out of here fast!”

Magdalena was already in the front supply room, scrambling like a cat up the rungs. Before Simon followed her, he frantically filled his purse with the bluish ash. Maybe he’d have a chance later to examine the powder more closely. Then he, too, rushed off toward the well shaft.

A loud thundering sound suggested the beams were breaking apart under the weight of the rubble. Up in the boiler room Magdalena stood amid the melted kettles while rubble and stones hailed down on her.

“The way out is blocked!” she shouted, pointing at the narrow tunnel now closed off by a mountain of bricks. The roof above them was creaking and starting to sag, and at any moment they knew they’d be buried beneath it.

“There has to be another way out!” Simon shouted over the deafening creaking and splintering.

Panicked, he looked around until at last, on the left, he discovered a passageway through the debris barely wide enough to pass through. He pushed Magdalena through the tiny opening, crawled in behind her, and found himself standing in what was once the bathing chamber. Here, too, the roof threatened to fall. The back part of the room had already collapsed completely, but in front, where the door had once been, a new hole had just opened up in the wall.

After nudging Magdalena through the hole, Simon scrambled through behind her. Just seconds later the entire ruin collapsed behind them with a terrible roar, and a cloud of dust rose up into the sky.

Coughing and panting, Simon and Magdalena lay on the ground, unable to speak. When the dust had drifted away, they could see Nathan and the other beggars standing nearby.

“Well done,” the beggar king said, tipping his hat. “Most of my fellows bet you wouldn’t make it out. It sounded out here like a whole load of gunpowder-”

“Shut your damn mouth!” Magdalena burst out, apparently having regained her voice. “We were nearly killed and you’re taking bets on it! Are you insane? You didn’t say a word about helping!”

“What could I have done?” Nathan replied meekly in a subdued voice. “I wanted to warn you, but the timbers were already cracking.” Then, lowering his voice, he continued. “By the way, you should quiet down a bit unless you want the entire neighborhood to come running.”

Simon noticed now that some windows had already opened in nearby houses and curious eyes were watching their little group.

“I would have called you soon in any case,” Nathan whispered. “There’s something I want to show you. It appears you weren’t the only ones to visit the bathhouse tonight.”

Taking Simon and Magdalena by the arm, the king of beggars led them to the other side of the burned-out building, where they crouched behind a collapsed stone wall. He pointed to a figure in a black cape who was clinging to the wall of a neighboring house like a bat.

“My boys didn’t even see him at first,” Nathan whispered. “He must have been prowling around here the whole time, and I think he had the same plan you did. Well, he sure won’t find anything now.”

“Oh, God, Simon!” Magdalena whispered. “That’s the stranger who was in the garden at Silvio’s house! The man who tried to kill me! He’s coming toward us!”

Nathan raised his hands reassuringly. “Don’t worry; you have me and my boys here now.”

“Your boys are blind, crippled old men,” Simon sneered. “Just what are they going to do?”

“Well, see for yourself.”

The beggar king pointed to the doorway of a house, where two of his men loitered on the steps. As the stranger approached the ruin, presumably to get a better look, they lurched toward him. Simon noticed one of them was Crazy Johannes, Nathan’s right-hand man.

“My good fellow, a pittance for an old soldier who lost his sight in the Battle of Rheinfelden,” Johannes croaked, looking very much indeed like a down-and-out mercenary. “Just a kreuzer for a cup of mulled wine.”

“Away with you!” shouted the stranger. “I have no time for your twaddle!”

In the meantime the other beggars had reached the man and were jostling him. As the stranger faltered, Crazy Johannes raised a crutch and rammed it between the man’s legs, causing him to fall with a startled cry. Seconds later two more beggars on crutches emerged from the shadows of an entryway and began flailing away at the figure on the ground.

In one fluid motion the stranger jumped to his feet and pulled out his rapier. The beggars surrounded him like a pack of ravenous dogs, each waving a crutch through the air to hold the man at bay.

Unexpectedly the man lunged to one side, feinted to the left, then attacked from the right. Johannes let out a loud cry as the blade cut into his shoulder.

The cloaked stranger took advantage of the momentary confusion to jump onto a dung cart beside a nearby house. The beggars attacked the cart and tried to overturn it, but the man scrambled up to an open window in the second story, climbed inside, and disappeared. Moments later a woman’s scream was followed by heavy footsteps on a stairway. Simon looked up to see the stranger squeezing through a hatch in the roof, then dashing across neighboring rooftops in the direction of the Danube.

“Damn!” Nathan shouted. “We almost had him!”

Beggars arrived now from all directions to help their injured companion. In his sooty jacket Simon, too, rushed over to Johannes, whose wound, he saw immediately, was serious. The blade had pierced Johannes’s right shoulder clean through. The medicus was relieved to see that the blood seeping from the wound was dark in color rather than light, meaning the lung hadn’t been injured.

“Give me a hand!” he shouted, gesturing to some of the beggars. “We’ll carry him carefully to the catacombs, and I’ll see if there’s anything I can do for him there.”

Magdalena was still standing behind the collapsed wall, peering out over the roofs of Regensburg, where the red sun was just beginning to rise. She was so lost in thought she didn’t notice a boy standing directly in front of her. He was about ten years old, had strawberry-blond hair and a face so covered with freckles it looked as if he’d been splattered with mud. At first she presumed he’d come to see the collapsed house, but then she realized he was addressing her.

“Are you-uh-Magdalena Kuisl?” he asked fearfully. “The daughter of the Schongau hangman?”

“Who wants to know?” Magdalena snapped, scrutinizing him carefully. “You sure don’t look like a city guard.”

The boy shook his head shyly. “I’m Benjamin Teuber, the son of the Regensburg executioner. My friends and I have been looking for you everywhere. I have something to give you,” he replied, handing her a folded piece of paper. “It’s a letter from your father.”

Incredulous, Magdalena took the note. “From my father?”

Benjamin nodded and rubbed his toes together bashfully. “He gave it to my dad and asked him to find you and give it to you. And then I have a message for you from my father.”

“What’s that?” Magdalena asked.

“That your dad is a thick-skulled, pigheaded, low-down bastard.”

The hangman’s daughter smiled. There was no greater compliment anyone could give her father.