The Beggar King

EPILOGUE

REGENSBURG

TWO MONTHS LATER, 1662 AD

By the end of October barons, dukes, freemen, and counts had started streaming into Regensburg. With their colorful costumes, boisterous servants, and countless coaches, wagons, and carts-all pulled by handsome steeds-they gave just a taste of what Regensburg was in for when the Reichstag would officially begin in January. The strangers, an exotic crowd from the farthest reaches of the German Empire, filled the narrow streets and houses with noise and life. Speaking in exotic tongues, servants brawled in the taverns with the locals while noble gentlemen shopped the markets until the shelves were bare. The locals whined and complained, and many already longed for the day the kaiser would leave again.

Jakob Kuisl didn’t see much of this, though. For the first few days his fever was so high he woke only from time to time for a sip of thin barley soup. As was customary among hangmen, he stayed at Teuber’s house, where for the next two months Simon, Magdalena, and Teuber’s wife nursed the two executioners back to health. Caroline Teuber said she’d never seen such good friends curse each other so much. When their fevers finally broke after almost ten days and their strength began to return, the two hangmen lay in the Teubers’ wide marital bed quarreling like sick, bored children, complaining constantly about the medicine, the lukewarm mulled wine, and the mushy food.

“I can only hope they get better soon,” Caroline sighed as she stood alongside Magdalena, stirring a pot of fragrant green oil. “I have my hands full with my five youngsters and don’t need to hear any more arguing.”

During those first few days Philipp Teuber had been on the brink of death. He woke up screaming with recurrent fever dreams of being hanged by a furious mob. His chest wound healed surprisingly quickly, however. The bolt, which had missed his lung by less than an inch, pierced straight through the muscles in his shoulder. When Teuber first regained consciousness, he credited the successful cure to his own ointment. Jakob Kuisl, on the other hand, was convinced that bad weeds don’t die. Even Kuisl’s shoulder and the severe burns on his arms and legs were healing well. His blisters left little pockmarks, however, that would remind the hangman forever of his time in the Regensburg torture chamber.

Soon after Kuisl was spared execution at the raft landing, Mamminger proposed to the city council that the Schongau executioner be declared innocent. The treasurer was able to convince the patricians that Kuisl was a victim of the scheming freemen, who after the death of their leader had vanished as suddenly as they’d appeared-almost as if they’d never even existed.

City guards burned the thirty bags of ergot in a field near Regensburg. In the end only Mamminger and a few patricians in the inner circle knew about the monstrous plan to poison the Reichstag. The treasurer considered it advisable to let as few people as possible in on the incident-in part, not to upset people unnecessarily, but also to avoid giving any visiting nobles the wrong idea. Even Nathan fell silent, and Simon had to imagine the beggar king had received a tidy sum of money from Mamminger for that.

On a cold, wet October morning, the medicus installed Nathan’s new set of gold teeth as promised. It was on this occasion that Simon learned something interesting about his adversary, the Venetian.

“Yesterday I was out at the wellspring,” the beggar king said casually as the medicus packed his instruments. “And just imagine-they’ve found Silvio!”

“After all this time?” Simon was so astonished he almost dropped his stiletto. “Is he alive?”

Nathan grinned. “Only if there’s life after death.” Then he told the excited medicus what he learned after bribing one of the guards.

The bailiffs ordered the well house opened when farmers began complaining about a disgusting odor coming from the door. Just inside the guards found Silvio’s half-decomposed corpse. Evidently the Venetian had wandered for days through the labyrinth of corridors and subterranean springs but, finding no exit, had slowly starved to death inside the well house.

“Do you know what’s so funny about the whole thing?” Nathan said as he admired his gold teeth in a polished copper mirror. “All his pockets were full of that bluish stuff. He must have hidden a little sack somewhere the guards hadn’t seen. As his hunger grew, it seems he ate the flour. His whole jacket was white with it; he must have really stuffed himself full. And now listen to this…” Nathan paused for dramatic effect and winked at Simon. “They swore they’d never seen a corpse with such a horrified expression-his eyes wide with fear, his mouth open in a fixed scream, his cheeks sunken in. And they say his hair was white as snow, as if he’d caught sight of Satan and all the demons of the underworld at once! What a gruesome death!” Nathan shuddered before turning to examine his teeth again, extracting a filament of meat lodged there.

“Alone in the dark for days, a prisoner of his own madness!” Simon mused. “I wonder what sort of nightmares he suffered. Well, in the end, at least he found out exactly how that damn ergot works.”

By early November they were finally ready to leave. Simon and Magdalena paid a final visit to the beggars down under Neupfarr Church Square where they celebrated all night. Hans Reiser cried a bit, but when Simon promised him one of his books about herbs, the old man quickly calmed down again. The medicus knew he’d found a worthy successor in this man who was so thirsty for knowledge, that soon the beggars in Regensburg would be able to seek help from one of their own. After all, healing herbs grew in every garden in town and needed only to be gathered secretly, under the light of the moon.

Long after the little group cast off from the Regensburg raft landing, Nathan and his men stood on the pier waving farewell. Cold November rain lashed the faces of the passengers, and the horses made slow progress along the muddy towpath as they pulled the raft against the current. And in the days that followed, the weather didn’t improve. Wrapped tightly in their cloaks, hoods pulled far down over their faces, Simon and Magdalena stood in the bow, staring into a fog that hung low over the forests and fallow fields. Smoke rose from fires in the fields and wafted westward, homeward. Magdalena had written her mother a letter weeks back announcing they’d be returning, and now homesickness was consuming her with a yearning stronger than anything she’d ever felt.

After two endless weeks of travel, they came to the broad Lech River, and here at last, through the fog, the familiar church towers and gabled roofs appeared atop a hill.

“Schongau,” Magdalena said in a muted voice. “I thought we’d never get back.”

“Are you sure you really want to go back?” asked Simon, pulling her close.

As the cold rain whipped her face, Magdalena grew silent. Finally, through clenched teeth, she whispered an answer. “Do we have a choice?”

As soon as they left the Schongau raft landing and started up toward the Tanners’ Quarter, they noticed something was wrong. It was almost noon, but there was no one in the streets. Many doors had been bolted shut and the windows nailed closed with thick boards. A few stray dogs and cats scurried through the muddy streets, but it was otherwise as quiet as a cemetery.

“Somehow I pictured our homecoming differently,” the hangman said. “Where is everyone? At mass? Or have the Swedes attacked again?”

Simon shook his head. “It looks to me like people are afraid of something.” Little bouquets of St. John’s Wort hung from doors, and some windows were marked with pentagrams and crosses drawn in chalk. “For heaven’s sake,” he muttered. “What happened here?”

Walking faster, they finally arrived at the hangman’s house at the far end of the Tanners’ Quarter. Unlike the other buildings, the door here stood open, and as they arrived, a figure that Magdalena didn’t recognize at first emerged from the house into the gloomy daylight.

My God, Mother…

With a pail of garbage in her hand, Anna-Maria Kuisl shuffled into the yard. Stooped, she looked smaller and more fragile than Magdalena remembered. The hangman’s daughter also thought she noticed a few new white strands in her mother’s black hair.

She’s gotten old, Magdalena thought, old and sad.

When Anna-Maria lifted her head and saw her daughter and the others before her, she dropped the bucket and uttered a loud cry. “Thanks be to all the saints! You’re back! You’re really back!”

She ran toward her husband and daughter and, embracing them, began to sob. For a long time they stood there in the rain, a little bundle of humanity lost in their love for one another. Off to one side Simon could only shift uncomfortably from one foot to the other.

Finally Kuisl straightened up, wiped his eyes, and began to speak.

“What’s happened here?” he asked, gesturing at the surrounding houses. “Speak up, wife; what pestilence did the Lord God send this time to test us?”

“The Plague,” his wife whispered, making the sign of the cross. “The Plague. It’s already claimed more than two hundred people, and every day there are more, and…”

In a flash all the color drained from Kuisl’s face. He took his wife firmly in his arms. “The children! What’s happened to the children?” he gasped.

Anna-Maria smiled weakly. “They’re well, but for how long I don’t know. I made them a potion of toads and vinegar according to a recipe from the hangman Seitz in Kaufbeuren, but Georg won’t drink it.”

“Nonsense!” Kuisl snapped. “Toads and vinegar! Woman, who talked you into this nonsense? It’s high time I put things in order around here. Let’s go inside. I’ll make the children a cup of angelica powder and-”

The sound of footsteps cut him short. Turning, he saw Johann Lechner in the yard behind him. The Schongau secretary wore a long brown fur coat over his nondescript official garb. He looked as if he’d stepped out for a short walk and just happened to drop by the Tanners’ Quarter. To his left and right stood two nervous guards with cloths tied over their mouths, looking for all the world as if they wanted nothing more than to get out of here at once.

“How nice you’re back,” Lechner began softly, a sardonic smile on his lips. “You can see we’ve removed the garbage from town ourselves while you were away. Actually, that’s the hangman’s job, but when he’s nowhere to be found…” He paused briefly, menacingly. “Believe me, Kuisl, there will be consequences.”

“I had my reasons,” the executioner said tersely.

“Of course, of course.” Lechner nodded almost sympathetically. “We all have our reasons. But more than a few people believe the terrible odors and fumes from the trash brought the Plague to Schongau. And that the hangman is therefore to blame for all our misfortune. What do you have to say to this theory, huh?”

Kuisl remained defiantly silent.

Finally the secretary continued, drawing patterns in the mud with his walking stick as he spoke. “I’ll admit that when I heard you were coming back, my first thought was to have you dragged out of town in an animal hide and pushed into the nearest manure pit,” he said casually. “But then it occurred to me what an outrageous waste that would be.” Lechner looked the hangman in the eye. “I’m going to take pity on you one more time, Kuisl. The city needs you-and not just to haul the garbage away. People are talking about the wonder of your healing practices, and it just so happens that we could stand a few miracles right now, especially since we don’t have a medicus at the moment…” Lechner’s words hovered in the air like the Sword of Damocles. He turned his gaze to Simon, waiting for a reaction.

“What… what do you mean by that?” Simon felt as if the ground were slipping from under him, and his throat was suddenly parched. “My father… is he…?”

Lechner nodded. “He’s dead, Simon. Your father didn’t hide from this terrible sickness; he visited the sick in their homes. You can be proud.”

“My God,” Simon whispered. “Why him?”

“Only the dear Lord can say. It’s often the bravest doctors who leave us first.”

Simon was overwhelmed now by countless images and thoughts. He’d left his father angry, and now he’d never see him again. Simon remembered when, as a little boy, he accompanied his father and the camp followers in the war. He remembered the years he’d looked up to his father. Bonifaz Fronwieser had been a respected army surgeon at the time, a good doctor and healer, not the drunken, hot-tempered quack he later became in Schongau. Simon hoped he could remember his father as he used to be. Indeed, it seemed he’d regained some of his earlier dignity just before the end.

For a long time no one spoke. Finally Lechner cleared his throat. “We’ll need a new doctor in town,” he said. “I know, Simon, you never completed your university studies, but no one has to know that.”

Simon gave a start. In spite of his grief, hope sparked within him. Had he heard correctly? Had Lechner just proposed he take over as town doctor? He felt Magdalena squeeze his hand, and right then he knew what to do.

He embraced the hangman’s daughter and held her close. “Thank you for your offer, Your Excellency,” he whispered. “But I’ll accept only on the condition that you also welcome the new doctor’s future wife. Magdalena knows more about herbs than anyone. She’ll be an invaluable help to me.”

Lechner frowned. “A hangman’s daughter, the town doctor’s wife? How do you figure that?”

“You don’t have to call him a medicus,” Magdalena replied defiantly. “If it’s only a question of the title, then Simon will…” She thought for a while, then her face brightened. “Then he’ll become a bathhouse owner.”

There was a brief silence broken only by the crows cawing from rooftops.

“Bathhouse owner?” Simon stared at her in disbelief. “Cleaning dirty wooden tubs, bleeding people, and shaving their beards? I don’t think I’d care for that. It’s a dishonorable vocation that-”

“Exactly; then you will fit in with me,” the hangman’s daughter interrupted. “And I’ll be glad to take care of the shaving, if you really find that so disagreeable.”

Lechner shook his head thoughtfully. “Bathhouse operator? Why not? Actually, that’s not a bad idea at all. We do have one in town already, but he’s a drunken scoundrel, and the only thing he knows how to do is bleed people of their money. For all intents and purposes you’ll be working as a medicus, I guarantee that. After all, there’s no doctor in town, so you won’t have any competition.” Satisfied, he nodded. “Bathhouse operator. That could be a solution.”

“And the people?” Anna-Maria interjected. “What will people say? When I think of Berchtholdt and the way they taunted my poor Magdalena…” She shook her head. “I never want to live through a night like that again.”

“You don’t have to worry about Berchtholdt anymore,” Johann Lechner replied. “The Plague claimed him two days ago. Not even his wife shed a tear.” The secretary shrugged. “All the St. John’s Wort, rosaries, and Ave Marias in the world couldn’t save him in the end. Last night they took him down to Saint Sebastian’s Cemetery and buried him as fast as they could. May his soul rest in peace.” The secretary quickly crossed himself. “So are we agreed, Fronwieser? Bathhouse owner for life, and I’ll do what I can to get the council to approve marriage with the hangman’s daughter.”

Simon hesitated for just a moment, then they shook on it. “Agreed.”

“Just a moment,” Kuisl grumbled. “You can’t go ahead and arrange a wedding here without first asking my permission. I always said the Steingaden executioner would make a good match for Magdalena-”

“Oh, stop with that foolishness!” Anna-Maria interrupted. “You can’t keep hiding the fact that you actually like Simon, and after everything he’s done for you, it would be an outrage if you were to refuse him now. So give him your blessing, then leave the two of them be. You’ve played the surly old bear long enough.”

Kuisl stared back at his wife, his mouth hanging open in astonishment. But words apparently failed him, and he said nothing more.

“Then I’ll leave the young couple to themselves.” A hint of a smile played across the secretary’s lips as he turned and hurried abruptly off with the guards in the direction of the Lech Gate. “I’ll expect to see you in two hours at your father’s house,” he called back to Simon. “And bring your woman along; there’s a lot to be done.”

The freshly crowned bathhouse owner grinned. As so often, Simon had the feeling Lechner had achieved exactly what he wanted. Simon took Magdalena by the arm and strolled back into the town with her, toward his father’s house.

As the couple disappeared through the Lech Gate, Kuisl and his wife entered the house and went up the stairs to the room where the twins were napping. They stood for a long time in front of the little beds, holding hands and watching their children’s calm and even breathing.

“Aren’t they beautiful?” Anna-Maria whispered.

Kuisl nodded. “So innocent. And to think their papa has so much blood on his hands.”

“You numbskull! The children don’t need a hangman but a father,” she replied. “Remember, you’re the only one they have.”

A shadow passed over Kuisl’s face. He let go of his wife’s hand and stomped down the stairs without a word where he sat on the bench beneath the family altar for a long time, staring off into space and cracking his knuckles now and then.

When his wife saw him brooding there, she couldn’t help but smile. Anna-Maria had grown accustomed to her husband’s moods; she knew he’d take his time before speaking again. Sometimes it took days. Without a word, she began pounding angelica root in a stone mortar. For a long time the rhythmic scrape of the pestle and the crackle of the flames were the only sounds in the room.

Finally, when she had had enough, she put down the pestle and ran her hand through her husband’s black hair, which was beginning to show the first signs of gray.

“What’s the trouble, Jakob?” she asked softly. “Don’t you want to tell me what happened in Regensburg?”

The hangman shook his head slowly. “Not today. I need some time.”

When Kuisl finally cleared his throat, he looked his wife directly in the eye.

“I’d just like to know one thing…” he began haltingly. “Back then, in Weidenfeld, when I saw you for the first time…”

Anna-Maria bit her lip and drew back. “We weren’t ever going to talk about that again,” she whispered. “You promised me that.”

Kuisl nodded. “I know. But I have to know, or it’ll tear me apart worse than the rack.”

“Then what is it you want to know?”

“Did any of those men touch you? You know what I mean-did they attack you? Philipp Lettner perhaps, that filthy bastard?” Kuisl put his hand on his wife’s shoulder. “Please tell me the truth! Was it Lettner? I swear it won’t change anything between us.”

For a long time the only sound in the room was the crackling birchwood on the hearth.

“Why do you want to know that?” Anna finally asked. “Why can’t things stay the way they were? Why must you hurt me?”

“Yes or no, for God’s sake!”

Standing, Anna-Maria walked over to the family altar and turned the crucifix around so the wooden Jesus faced the wall.

“The Savior doesn’t need to hear this,” she whispered. “No one does, except us.” Then, haltingly, she began to speak. She left nothing out. Her voice was hard and even, like the pendulum of a clock.

“Do you know how I washed myself after that?” she said finally. She stared off into space. “I washed for hours in the icy brooks along the way, in the rivers, ponds, whatever pool of water there was. But it didn’t help. The filth remained, like a mark of Cain that only I could see.”

“You kept silent a long time,” the hangman said softly. “You’ve never said a word about this until today.”

Anna-Maria closed her eyes for a moment before she continued. “When we got to Ingolstadt, I slipped away from you for a while. I went to visit an old midwife down by the river. She gave me a powder to get rid of it. The blood flushed it out-it was nothing but a little red clot.” Tears welled up in her eyes. “A week later, we made love for the first time. I held on to you, and I thought of nothing else.”

Kuisl nodded, his gaze transfixed by the past. “You clawed at my back. I couldn’t figure out whether out of pleasure or pain.”

Anna-Maria smiled. “The pleasure helped me forget the pain. The pleasure, and the love.”

“The powder from the midwife,” he asked. “What was it?”

His wife bent over him and ran her finger across the creases in his face. They were deep, like furrows in a field, and she knew each one intimately.

“Ergot,” she whispered. “A gift from God, or from the devil-take your pick. Just don’t take too much or you’ll fly off to heaven and never return.”

“Or to hell,” the hangman replied.

Then he took his wife in his arms and held her tight until all that remained of the birch on the hearth were glowing embers.