The Dark Monk

7

JAKOB KUISL WALKED along the steep slope of the Ammer Gorge, looking down at the rushing river over two hundred feet below. Ice floes drifted along the surface, bumping into one another, piling up in bizarre formations that reminded the hangman of a crooked, worn-out flight of stairs. Below, darkness was already approaching, and before long the temperature would drop. Slowly, the sun dipped below the tree line, bathing the faces of the search party in the last rays of golden sunlight.

“We need to stop for today,” Hans Berchtholdt mumbled behind him. “It’s like hunting for a needle in a haystack.”

Almost from the very start of the hunt, the baker’s son had expressed doubts about the undertaking, and then the other patrician sons had followed suit. How would they ever find a band of robbers in the vast Schongau forest? Wasn’t this a job for soldiers and simple constables, anyway? Even if some of the young men had been keen on the idea at first-they hoped to finally have a chance to play real war games-the cold, strenuous march had robbed them of their last bit of enthusiasm. Now all they wanted was to go home.

Jakob Kuisl kept a careful eye on the other bank of the river, hoping to spot any sign of suspicious movement. Highway banditry had always plagued the Bavarian forests, but since the Great War, it had become practically impossible to travel from city to city without an armed escort. Several times a year, Kuisl strung up a few thugs on Gallows Hill, some no older than fourteen, but it did no good. Hunger and desire trumped fear of the hangman. And this winter, the gangs of robbers were larger than they had been in many years. Their leader, Hans Scheller, had rallied almost two dozen of his cronies, among them former mercenaries, but also farmers whose fields, barns, and livestock had been destroyed in the war, as well as their women and children.

“Hey, Kuisl, I’m talking to you! Let’s go home. You can keep looking by yourself.”

Kuisl gave the baker’s son a scornful look. “We’ll check out one last hiding place; then you can go home to your warm feather bed. You do look completely frozen, or does the red nose come from the boozing?”

Hans Berchtholdt turned even redder. “Don’t get smart with me, butcher!” he shouted, putting his hand on his sword. “I won’t let someone like you lecture me. It’s a disgrace that Lechner put you in charge!”

“Watch your tongue, Berchtholdt!” said Jakob Schreevogl, who up to that point had been walking ahead silently with the hangman. “You heard yourself what the clerk said. Kuisl knows what he is doing better than any of us, and so he’s the leader.”

“Berchtholdt is right, Schreevogl!” This time it was Sebastian Semer, son of the presiding burgomaster. In a tight-fitting doublet with copper buttons and an elegant round hat adorned with a rooster feather, he looked quite out of place here in the forest. In addition, the cold seemed to be getting the best of the young patrician in his thin leather boots. His voice trembled-whether from the cold or out of some unconscious anxiety about confronting the hangman, Jakob Kuisl couldn’t tell. “It’s unheard of that a butcher and executioner is ordering around honorable citizens,” Semer finally said. “I…I…shall complain to my father!”

“Yes, yes, do that, and get started before nightfall.”

Kuisl stomped ahead, hoping that the group would follow. He could feel his authority slipping away. He could count on the fingers of one hand the men who trusted him in this endeavor: Jakob Schreevogl; old Andre Wiedemann, whom he had known since the war; perhaps the blacksmith, Georg Kronauer; and a few workers. The rest followed him because the clerk ordered them to and because they feared the hangman.

Kuisl sighed under his breath. Most people didn’t consider executioners honorable citizens because the job involved things that no one else wanted to do: torturing and hanging criminals, removing dead animals from town, sweeping up the streets, and preparing magic drinks and extracts. For the sons of the aldermen, the very idea that such a person should give them orders was an abomination. Kuisl could sense clearly that resistance was brewing.

Under his breath, he cursed Lechner for having put him in this situation. Was it possible that Lechner just wanted to get rid of him? For far lesser reasons people had lynched hangmen. If the next hideout was empty like the rest, the hunt for robbers was over for him, too.

When he stepped out from behind the next dense grove of pines, however, he knew at once that they were on the right track this time.

From down below in the gorge, smoke rose toward them-just a thin column, but easy to see in the cold winter air. Kuisl grinned. He had been sure the scoundrels were hiding out somewhere around here. When he planned the hunt, he knew there was little point in just stumbling through the forest hoping to happen on individual bandits. The region around Schongau was a wilderness of forests, gorges, and steep hills. Around each town, only small areas were farmed, and beyond them the primeval forest took over, endless and profound.

The hangman knew this area better than anyone else. In recent years, he had combed miles of the forest for healing and poisonous plants. He knew every major cave, every ruin, every hiding place. They had already been to three possible hideouts that day, and now, at the fourth, their luck seemed to have changed. From the beginning, Kuisl suspected he would find something here at Schleyer Falls.

The smoke rose through a crevice in the rock near the steep slope. The hangman knew that, below, huge limestone formations had been hollowed out by water over a period of thousands of years, concealing an extensive network of caves with entrances behind the waterfalls. Here, at Schleyer Falls, the water flowed over green moss, down to the Ammer River in the summer; now, in the winter, icicles hung down like a white curtain in front of the entrances.

Kuisl bent down to inhale the smoke, which smelled like roasted meat and burned fat. It was coming up through a natural chimney in the rock and had to be from a large campfire.

“Hangman, what’s wrong? Why-”

Kuisl motioned to the baker’s son to be silent, then pointed to the column of smoke and a small path about a hundred and fifty feet in front of them that led down into the gorge. He was about to move ahead when he caught sight of a few iron rungs that lead downward in the rock wall next to him.

“Their escape route,” he whispered. “We have to split up. You take the main body of men down the path,” he said, addressing Jakob Schreevogl. “I’ll climb down the rungs with a smaller number of people, just to make sure they don’t slip away from us like rats through this escape hatch.”

He reached into a sack he had been carrying over his shoulder, took out some torches, and distributed them to Andre Wiedemann and Georg Kronauer. “We’ll smoke them out from behind,” he said to the others. “You’ll be waiting by the entrance, and when they come out, capture as many as you can, but if anyone resists, kill him.”

The old war veteran Andre Wiedemann grumbled his approval, while Hans Berchtholdt’s face turned as white as a sheet. “Shouldn’t a few of us wait up here just in case someone slips by you?” he stammered. Like his friend, Sebastian Semer was suddenly no longer as outspoken as he had been moments before. An owl hooted somewhere, and he glanced anxiously in all directions.

“Nonsense,” Kuisl said as he stuffed his two freshly oiled wheel lock pistols with powder, still chewing on his cold pipe. “We need every man down below. Now, off you go!”

He nodded at Jakob Schreevogl once again, then put both pistols in his belt and, with the loaded musket slung over his shoulder, climbed down the rungs with Wiedemann; the blacksmith, Kronauer; and two other workers. For a moment, he wondered whether it might have been better to leave the two patrician boys up above. It was possible they would panic, do something rash, and blow the group’s cover. But when he thought of their shining sabers, dapper hats, and polished rifles, he couldn’t help but smile.

They wanted to play soldier. Now they’d have a chance to see what it was really like.

Magdalena felt as if she were flying. Standing at the very front of the raft, she watched water rush against the rough-hewn logs to her right and left. Now and then, the raft bumped into shattered ice floes or broken icicles that eddied and sank to the bottom of the Lech. They rushed past slopes on both sides that fell steeply down to the river from hilltops of snow-covered beeches. The raftsmen’s laughter and commands sounded like an unending song. Farther downriver, the Lech exited the narrow gorge and wound its way through a snow-covered landscape dotted with darker spots marking the locations of towns and small groves of trees.

On the left, the little town of Landsberg appeared. Its formidable town walls and towers had been partially dismantled and taken away during the Great War. The hangman’s daughter had heard stories about how the little town had suffered much more than Schongau in the war. Many Landsberg girls, fearing they would be raped by marauding soldiers, jumped from watchtowers into the Lech and drowned. Magdalena remembered now that Benedikta, too, came from this town. These thoughts of the war and of her rival suddenly cast a pall over a trip that had been so pleasant up to then.

“Some girls staring into the waves have fallen in.” The deep voice tore her out of her musings. She turned to see the Augsburg merchant Oswald Hainmiller, who was gnawing on a goose wing and offered her a second piece. Fat dripped from his lips, soiling his trimmed Vandyke beard and white pleated collar. The fat merchant was going on forty and wore a silver buckle and a wide belt that strained against his paunch. The red rooster feather on his hat fluttered in the breeze. Magdalena thought it over for a moment, then reached for the goose wing and took a healthy bite. Except for a few spoonfuls of oatmeal, she hadn’t eaten anything all morning.

“Thanks very much!” she said with a full mouth before directing her gaze back to the turns in the river ahead.

Hainmiller grinned. “How long are you staying in our beautiful city?” he asked, wiping grease from his cheek with his lace-trimmed sleeves. “Will you have to go right back to your shabby little town?”

Hainmiller spoke in the broad Augsburg dialect that Schongauers hated so much because it reminded them of the free imperial city’s snobbishness. Magdalena had booked passage that morning from the merchant. Oswald Hainmiller was bringing wine, oil, tin, spices, and a large cargo of lime with him, and Magdalena’s presence was a welcome opportunity for him to while away the time and to boast a bit until they arrived in Augsburg that evening.

Magdalena sighed. The fat merchant had been trying to strike up a conversation with her ever since they left Schongau. It didn’t look as if he would ever give up. Even when Magdalena told him she was the daughter of the Schongau hangman, he kept hitting on her. In fact, that seemed to excite him only more. Magdalena resigned herself to her fate and smiled back.

“I’ll be able to stay only a day,” she said. “Tomorrow, I’ll be heading back.”

“One day!” the merchant cried, gesturing heavenward as a sign of despair. “How will you be able to appreciate the beauty of this city in just one day? The new town hall, the bishop’s palace, all the fountains! I have heard about Schongauers who were so overwhelmed when they first arrived they had to sit down-the sight was just too much for them.”

The sight of you is too much for me, Magdalena thought, trying to concentrate on the whitecaps in front of her. This fat braggart was already spoiling her visit to Augsburg with all this talk. She was truly looking forward to seeing the city, which had been one of the greatest and most beautiful in Germany before the war.

“Do you know yet where you are going to sleep?” The merchant’s face took on a ferret-like appearance.

“I…My father gave me the name of a good inn by the river,” she said, and could feel her blood beginning to boil. “Food and lodging for only four kreuzers per night.”

“But in return, you’ll have to share your bed with a whole army of fleas and bedbugs.” Oswald Hainmiller stepped very close to her now and was petting her skirt. She could see goose fat forming droplets in his beard. “At my house there is a four-poster with white linen, and you’d have to share that only with me. Perhaps I’d even pay you four kreuzers for the night,” he whispered in her ear, moving so close now that she could smell the alcohol on his breath.

“Cut it out!” Magdalena snapped, pushing him away. “I may be just the hangman’s daughter, but I’m not available.”

The merchant didn’t back off. “I know you girls,” he slobbered. “First you resist, but then you’re all the more willing.”

The wine, combined with the sight of Magdalena, had clearly made Hainmiller more and more lecherous during the last hours of the trip. “Don’t make such a fuss,” he said, grabbing her bodice.

Magdalena pushed his hand away, disgusted. “Wash your mouth out before you say another word,” she replied. “You stink like a dead rat.”

She struggled to free herself from his grip and ran to the middle of the raft, where two Schongau raftsmen were guiding the vessel with long poles. She knew them by sight from Semer’s tavern. They looked over at her hesitantly but didn’t intervene. Magdalena cursed. She was probably nothing more in these men’s eyes than the hangman’s tramp getting her just deserts.

For Oswald Hainmiller, the whole thing became more and more of a game. He ran after her, grinning, while she fled past the raftsmen toward the back of the raft. She clambered over crates and packages, past millstones and sacks of marble and salt. Finally, she reached the back of the raft, but the merchant was still close behind her.

“Very good,” Hainmiller purred, tugging at her bodice. “Here, at least we won’t be disturbed.”

Magdalena looked around. To her left, she spotted a large wooden cart full of quicklime, shrouded with a makeshift linen cover. Thinking quickly, she removed the waxed tarp, hoisted herself up, and skipped along the edge of the cart, smiling and swaying her hips suggestively.

“Come on!” she called to the merchant, who by now was out of breath. “If you want me, you’ve got to come up here and get me.”

Oswald Hainmiller hesitated a moment, then pulled his fat body up onto the side of the cart and edged his way toward her. “In just a second…just a second…I’ll have you,” he groaned.

When he’d gotten just an arm’s length away, Magdalena suddenly gave him a shove, and he waved his hands wildly in the air trying to catch his balance.

“You damn slut!” he roared before falling headfirst into the cart.

A cloud of white dust covered him, and before long, he started to scream. The quicklime was in his eyes, in his mouth, and in every little open cut. Writhing, he coughed and finally pulled himself out of the cart. His coat and the jacket underneath were covered with white spots that started eating away at the cloth wherever there was any moisture. Magdalena jumped down from the cart and grinned. At the very least, Oswald Hainmiller would need a new wardrobe before his next tryst. And perhaps a new face.

After hesitating briefly, she took two handfuls of the white powder and carefully filled the side pockets of her overcoat, being careful that the strong, caustic powder didn’t get wet and eat through her clothing, too. Who knows, maybe she could use it again.

“I’ll…I’ll make you pay for this, you hangman’s wench!” Hainmiller, panting and half blind, leaned over the back of the raft to wash his burning eyes in the water. Seconds later, he was squirming and screaming on the floor of the raft as the powder, hissing and smoking, reacted with the water. “You damned slut!” he howled, crawling across the logs in search of a clean rag to wipe his face. “You won’t enjoy anything in beautiful Augsburg, that I promise you!”

“From now on, leave me alone,” she shouted, moving to the front again, where the Schongau raftsmen stared at her curiously. “You, too,” she shouted, “you lecherous, cloven-hoofed scum! You’re all trouble!”

Sitting down on a crate in the bow, she wrapped her arms around her knees and stared straight ahead. Her mother always warned her that most men were either horny fools or unfeeling blocks of ice. It was best to have nothing to do with them. Magdalena started to cry, but not wanting any of the nosy people standing around to see how sad she was, she brushed away her tears.

At this moment, like a little child, she wished her father were there.

Jakob Kuisl slid down the bank until his feet came into contact with the first rung. An iron railing ran along the rock face before disappearing into a fissure after about fifty feet. For a moment, the hangman considered lighting the torches he’d brought along, but he decided against this, lest he warn the bandits. Inside the fissure, everything was black, but soon his eyes grew accustomed to the dark. Above him, daylight was cut off briefly as each of the men squeezed his way through the crevice. There were only five of them, but Kuisl knew he could count on each, particularly Andre Wiedemann, who had fought with him near Augsburg in the battle against the Swedish invaders. But the blacksmith and the two other men looked like seasoned veterans, too.

After another fifty feet, the railing ended at the foot of the rock chimney. In one corner, Kuisl could make out a narrow passageway and hear the sound of muffled voices and laughter inside. The men slipped to the ground carefully on both sides of the passageway, and the hangman ventured a quick glance.

Behind the knee-high entrance, a short tunnel opened onto a large cave a few feet away. Over a crackling fire, a few rabbits sizzled on a spit. Now and then a ragged figure walked past the fire. Jakob Kuisl could see more men sitting on the other side of the flames, huddled in fur and rags against the cold. Someone belched loudly, others laughed, and two others still were quarreling loudly. Jakob could also hear the whine of a small child and smell sweat, gunpowder, and burning meat in the air.

Smoke stung Kuisl’s eyes; he blinked. He had been right. They had found the winter quarters of the Scheller gang, and it looked now as if most of them had returned in the evening from their daily forays. The hangman smiled grimly. There could hardly be a better moment to put a stop to their game. From the voices, Kuisl could only guess how many there were-perhaps around thirty, among them many women and children.

He nodded to Wiedemann, Kronauer, and the others; then he cut off six of the twelve wooden powder flasks from the chain around his shoulder. In each, there was enough powder for one charge. With a leather cord, he tied six of them together so tightly they could all fit in one hand.

He squinted, estimating how far away the thieves were, and raised his arm. With one smooth gesture, he tossed the self-made bomb through the tunnel and directly into the fire.

The explosion was so strong it threw Kuisl back a full yard into the tunnel. The blast reverberated from the rocky walls of the caverns and corridors, a thundering echo so loud it seemed the mountain might collapse. Jakob Kuisl felt a faint tingling in his ears, and it was a while before he could hear the screams, coughing, and cursing coming from the robbers’ den. He gave a sign to the four other men, and they crawled through the low tunnel, entering the inferno with their sabers drawn.

The explosion had blown embers and burning logs throughout the cave and caused rocks and boulders to fall from the ceiling. Ragged men and women crawled around, trying to get their bearings despite the heavy smoke. A few lifeless figures surrounded what was left of the fireplace, and agonized screams and the cries of children resounded through the smoke-blackened cave.

The hangman hesitated. Deciding against an attack, he shouted in a loud, deep voice that could be heard everywhere in the cave. “It’s over, you dirty thieves. Now put down your weapons and leave, nice and easy, with your hands up. There’s a small army of well-armed citizens waiting for you outside, and if you behave and surrender, then-”

A dark shadow flew at him. At the last moment, he ducked and the blade only brushed his cheek. The man in front of him was at least a large as he was, and though his face, framed by a shaggy beard, was blackened with soot, his eyes flashed like glowing embers.

Kuisl’s voice sounded deep and threatening. “Put down your weapons and go outside. You’ll only make this worse.”

“Go to hell, you bastard,” the man snarled, and raised his saber again. This time the hangman was ready. He jumped back, pulling out a loaded pistol and pressing the trigger in one motion.

The bullet hit the robber in the shoulder and threw him back against the wall. As he stared in disbelief at the bloody mass where his right arm had once been, the hangman took out his larch-wood cudgel and struck the giant so hard that he tumbled to the floor against the rock wall.

“I warned you,” Kuisl grumbled, wiping a trickle of blood from his cheek.

Out of the corner of his eye, the hangman could see Wiedemann fighting one of the robbers, too. The other three men had run outside behind the fleeing highwaymen.

Wiedemann’s back was to the wall, and despite the cold, pearls of sweat formed on his brow. The man in front of him swung at him with a jagged saber as if he were splitting wood. The veteran was struggling to fend off his opponent, and it looked as though he was about to collapse under a hail of blows.

Outside, shots could be heard. Jakob Kuisl hesitated. What was going on out there? Hadn’t the scoundrels surrendered?

“Surrender!” the hangman shouted at the robber fighting with Wiedemann. “You’re the last one!”

But the man didn’t even seem to hear him. He kept slashing away at Andre Wiedemann with a look in his eyes that reminded the hangman of a wild beast, a mixture of hunger, desire, and naked fear. The boy was probably not even twenty years old.

Jakob Kuisl kicked the boy in the side with his right boot. When he fell to the ground, panting, Kuisl pointed his second loaded pistol at him.

“Now get out, and be quick about it! Then nothing will happen to you.”

The young robber seemed to be thinking it over. He looked the hangman up and down, then threw the saber away and ran toward the exit with his hands in the air.

“I’m leaving,” he shouted. “Don’t hurt me, I’m-”

As he crossed the cave entrance, a shot rang out.

The boy’s body was thrown back inside, and he landed on the ground, quivering. Once more, he raised his head and looked at the hangman in disbelief, then collapsed.

“Damn! What’s going on out there?” Kuisl shouted. “The man surrendered!”

He hurried to the exit, which was framed on both sides by icicles so big they looked like columns. When he looked outside, he saw the flash from a gun to his right. He ducked behind one of the icicles and, at the same moment, felt a dull pain in his left upper arm.

“You damn fools!” he cried out. “It’s me, the hangman! Stop at once!”

He leaned against the rock face, looking for cover. When he heard no further shots, he poked his head out carefully and saw a gruesome scene outside the cave.

A wave of anger came over him.

The Schongau men formed a half circle around a pile of dead bodies-young, old, men, women, and children. Blood flowed in streams over the white snow.

Several muskets were still directed at the entrance, and only gradually did the citizens lower their weapons. Hans Berchtholdt’s musket was still smoking. With a mixture of confusion and bloodlust, he stared at the hangman, who emerged from the cave now looking like the devil incarnate.

“I…I…” Berchtholdt stuttered.

“You dirty bastard, you almost killed me!” shouted Jakob Kuisl. Then he ran to the baker’s son and grabbed the barrel of the musket with his right hand. With a loud curse, he rammed the butt of the gun into Berchtholdt’s stomach so hard he sank to the ground, gasping.

“And what is this?” the hangman roared, pointing to the pile of corpses. “You were supposed to disarm and arrest them, not slaughter them!” For a moment, he was tempted to hit Berchtholdt over the head with his own musket, but Kuisl broke it over his knee instead and threw it as far as he could.

“They…they just started shooting.” Jakob Schreevogl stepped forward now. His face white, he was trembling and looking down sheepishly. “I couldn’t help myself.”

“How many?” Kuisl whispered.

Schreevogl just nodded. “We were able to capture a dozen, and the rest are dead, shot down like dogs.”

Berchtholdt stood up and spoke again, groaning. “You ought to be glad-that saves you work; you won’t have to string up so many.”

“It…was very simple,” Sebastian Semer added, a kind of fire burning in his eyes that the hangman knew all too well. “Just like hunting.”

Behind them, other voices joined in: “Why wait? Let’s string the rest of them up on the beech tree over there!”

Jakob Kuisl closed his eyes. His wounded left arm ached. Bloody scenes passed before his eyes, memories of days long gone.

Silence, only the cawing of the ravens strutting around on the bloody uniforms and pecking at the eyes of the dead women…a knotty tree full of twitching bodies that hang like plump apples on a tree…the men-my own men-looking at me, eyes wide with fear. I grab the next one, toss the noose around his neck, one after the other. One after the other…

The baker’s son seemed to notice Kuisl’s distress. “Since when has the hangman been afraid of death, huh?” he jeered, tottering about unsteadily. “All we did was make less work for you.”

Kuisl ignored him. “You’re just animals,” he whispered softly to himself. “Every one of you is worse than the hangman.”

He pushed the crowd aside and walked over to the trembling prisoners who were tied up, awaiting their fate. There were around a dozen of them, including four women. One of the women carried a screaming infant in a sling on her back. Two emaciated boys, around six and ten years of age, clung to their mother. Most of the men had fresh wounds, had been struck by a sword or grazed by a bullet, and many of the haggard faces were beaten black and blue.

One member of the anxious group stood out. He was almost as large as the hangman and wore a full beard, torn breeches, and a filthy leather cape collar. Blood seeped from a wound on his forehead, but despite his impoverished appearance, there was an aura of strength and pride about him. He looked at the hangman with an alert, steady gaze.

“You must be Hans Scheller,” Kuisl said.

The gang leader nodded. “And you’re nothing more than a filthy, murdering band of thugs,” he said.

Cries and angry shouts came from behind the hangman.

“Watch what you say, Scheller!” one of the workers shouted back. “Or we’ll rip your belly open right now and hang your guts up in the branches!”

“Nobody’s going to rip anyone’s belly out,” Kuisl said. His voice was calm, but there was something in it that caused the others to fall silent.

“We’ll take the marauders along with us back to Schongau now,” he continued, “and then the city council will take care of them. You all have done enough damage here already.” He turned aside with a disgusted expression. Snowflakes fell on the lifeless bodies piled up at the cave entrance like so many slaughtered animals.

The hangman shook his head. “Now let’s at least give them a decent burial.”

For the time being, he bound up his left arm with a dirty rag and used his right arm to move aside a few stones lying in a hollow near the cave.

“What’s the matter?” he growled. “Doesn’t anyone want to help me? After you nearly shot me to death, too?”

Silently, the Schongauers moved in to help him clear a space for the icy stone graves.

Jakob Kuisl’s left arm was so painful that he left the men to finish the bloody work on their own. With clenched teeth, he went back into the cave to look around.

The two robbers lay dead right where he’d left them, but the smoke was still so thick he couldn’t see farther than a few steps. He climbed over rubble, burning tree branches, and blackened logs until he reached the rear of the vault. Strewn about here were the robbers’ few belongings: tattered coats, stained copper plates, a few rusty weapons, even a roughly carved wooden doll.

Farther back still, directly along the sooty rock wall, the hangman came across a wooden box reinforced with iron bands. Its padlock took only five minutes of the hangman’s time. The lock snapped open, and Jakob Kuisl put his lock pick back in his bag, opening the trunk cautiously, well aware that some boxes like this were booby trapped-poisoned needles and pins could come shooting out. But nothing happened.

At the bottom of the trunk lay a few shining guilders; a silver pitcher; a corked, unopened bottle of brandy; furs; and a golden brooch that at one time must have belonged to the wife of a rich merchant. There wasn’t much there, but that didn’t surprise the hangman. The robbers had evidently bartered most of their treasure away or hidden it somewhere, which Kuisl doubted. He would certainly discover the truth in the tower dungeon. The hangman hoped that Hans Scheller would be reasonable and spare him having to tie hundredweight stones to his feet, as he had done with the highwayman Georg Brandner two years ago. Kuisl had had to break every bone in Brandner’s body before he finally told him where he had buried the stolen coins.

Underneath a lice-ridden fur coat and bearskin cap, the hangman finally came upon a laced-up leather bag. He opened it and couldn’t help laughing-it was exactly what he needed now. Evidently, either the robbers had at one time attacked a barber surgeon or one of them had held onto the surgical kit from his military service. In the bag, a needle, thread, and forceps were neatly arranged by size and still relatively free of rust.

Kuisl uncorked the bottle of brandy with his teeth and took a long swig. Then he rolled up his left shirtsleeve and felt for the wound. The bullet had passed through his coat, leather collar, and shirt and had lodged in his upper arm. Fortunately, the bone appeared uninjured, but Kuisl could feel that the bullet was still lodged in his flesh. He found a piece of leather in the bag, clenched it between his teeth, and groped for the bullet with the forceps.

The pain was so severe that he felt himself getting sick, so he sat down on the trunk to take a few deep breaths before continuing. Just when he thought he was going to faint, the forceps met a firm object. He carefully drew it out and viewed the small, bent piece of lead. After taking another drink, he poured the rest of the brandy over the wound. Once again, he was almost overcome with pain, but the hangman knew that most soldiers didn’t die from bullets themselves, but from the gangrene that followed a few days later. During the war, he learned that brandy could prevent gangrene. While most barber surgeons recommended cauterizing the wound or pouring hot oil into it, Kuisl preferred this method and had had good experience on some of his patients with it.

Finally, he wrapped the arm with material he’d ripped from the shirt of a dead robber and listened for voices outside the cave. The men seemed almost finished with their work, so Kuisl would have to remind them soon of the two corpses in the cave. And they would have to take the trunk along, too. The owners of the stolen objects were no doubt rotting away somewhere in the forests around Schongau, but the city could put the money to good use, if only to pay the hangman for the upcoming executions. Kuisl earned one guilder for each robber he hanged, four guilders for each blow to a man on the wheel, and two guilders and thirty kreuzers for torturing prior to the execution. It was quite possible that this was exactly the fate in store for robber chief Scheller.

Just as Kuisl was about to stand up, he caught sight of a large, glossy leather bag behind the trunk. It was made of the finest calfskin, and the front was embossed with a seal that the hangman didn’t recognize. Was it possible, after all, that the robbers had other treasures stashed away? He set the bag in front of him and looked inside. What he saw puzzled him.

What in the world?

Lost in thought, he stuffed the bag into his sack and headed toward the cave entrance.

He would have some questions to ask Hans Scheller. For both their sakes, Kuisl hoped the robber chief would answer them quickly and honestly.

Night was falling on the Tanners’ Quarter just outside the town walls when Simon knocked on the door to the hangman’s house.

He’d spent the last hour stomping back to Schongau through a light snowfall. The businesswoman had proceeded directly to Semer’s inn. Simon assumed she had to make preparations for her brother’s funeral the following day, but she also seemed exhausted. The medicus, too, was tired and freezing after the long search. Despite the cold and approaching nightfall, however, he wanted to talk with Jakob Kuisl about what they had found in the castle ruins. He was also curious about how things had gone in the hunt for the highwaymen. His hands and feet felt like blocks of ice, so he was more than happy when Anna Maria Kuisl finally came to the door.

“Simon, what in the world has happened to you?” she asked in astonishment, looking at his snow-covered overcoat and stiff, frozen trousers. She seemed to have already forgiven him for the disturbance late the previous night, when Simon had been calling loudly for Magdalena. The hangman’s wife shook her head sympathetically. “You look like the snowman that the kids built in the backyard.”

“Is your husband here?” Simon’s voice trembled. His whole body was frigid now.

Anna Maria shook her head. “He’s out hunting for the robbers. I hope he comes home soon. But come in now; you look like you’re freezing,” she said as she led Simon into the warm room.

She poured some hot apple cider for Simon and handed him the cup. The room was filled with the aroma of steaming onions and melted butter.

“Here, this will be good for you.” She smiled cheerfully at him as he sipped on the cider sweetened with honey.

“I’m sorry I can’t offer you coffee, but perhaps you’d like to wait for my husband in the other room. I’ve got to go back upstairs and have another look at the children.” They could hear a dry cough and the cries of little Barbara upstairs.

“Georg has it in his chest,” she said anxiously. “Let’s hope it’s not this fever that’s going around.” She’d climbed the steep flight of stairs before Simon could ask if Magdalena was home.

She was probably still feeling hurt. Well, he had learned that women needed time. She’d be back, and then he would have a chance to say he was sorry.

Fortified by the sweet apple cider, Simon entered the adjacent room. In the course of the last year, he had become accustomed to visiting the hangman’s library at least once a week, and Jakob Kuisl allowed him to browse through the old folios and leather-bound books in his absence. In the process, Simon had often stumbled upon things that were interesting for his work as a doctor. For example, the hangman had the complete works of the English doctor Thomas Sydenham, in which every known illness was listed and described in detail-a compendium not even found in the library in Ingolstadt!

The book he held in his hand at the moment, however, didn’t have the slightest thing to do with medicine. Titled Malleus Maleficarum (The Witches’ Hammer), it was written by two Dominicans-Heinrich Kramer and Jakob Sprenger. Some pages were soiled and worn, and some had a brownish sheen that looked like dried blood. Simon had frequently browsed through the so-called Witches’ Hammer. On the page he had open at the moment, the authors tried to prove that the Latin word femina (woman) came from fides minus, meaning “of less faith.” Another chapter described what witches looked like, the type of magic they used, and how one could protect himself from them. Then, Simon became engrossed in a detailed passage that described how to make the male organ disappear by magic.

“A bad book,” a voice behind him said. “It would be better for you to put it away.”

Simon turned around. In the doorway, the hangman stood wearing a bandage over his left arm, while snow melted from his fur trousers and formed a puddle at his feet. He tossed his musket in a corner and took the volume from Simon’s hands.

“This book belonged to my grandfather,” he said as he placed it back on one of the tall shelves along with the other books, parchment rolls, notes, and farmers’ almanacs. “He used it in interrogations back in the days when more than sixty women were burned at the stake in Schongau. You can make anyone out to be a witch if you just badger them long enough.”

Simon felt a chill, and not just because of the unheated room. Like all other Schongauers, he’d heard a lot about the notorious witch trials three generations ago that had made the city a name for itself all over Bavaria. In those days, Jakob Kuisl’s grandfather Jörg Abriel had come into a lot of money and dubious notoriety. With his attendants, he traveled by coach to a number of places where executions were to be held and extracted a confession from every witch.

“These Dominicans…” Simon asked after a pause. “Aren’t they often inquisitors at witch trials?”

The hangman nodded. “Domini canes is another name for them-the dogs of the Lord. They are clever and well read and do the dirty work for the Pope.” He spat on the floor, which was covered with fresh reeds. “Let’s hope that no one from this despicable order ever comes to Schongau. Where the Dominicans are, there is fire. And who gets his hands dirty then? Who do you think? Me! That filthy, accursed gang! Unscrupulous smart-asses and bookworms who revel in the suffering of others!”

Having worked himself into a frenzy, he pulled out the bottle of brandy from under his overcoat and took a deep swig. Then he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and took a deep breath. Only slowly did he regain his usual composure.

“Do you yourself use that…book?” Simon pointed hesitantly to The Witches’ Hammer on the shelf.

The hangman shook his head and headed toward the heated room. “I have other methods. But tell me now what you found up at the castle.”

They made themselves comfortable by the stove, where a stew of onions, carrots, and bacon was simmering. Suddenly, Simon realized how hungry he was, so when the hangman filled up two plates, he dug in gratefully.

After they had eaten in silence for a while, Simon pointed to the hangman’s bandaged arm. “Did that happen while you were chasing the robbers?” he asked.

Jakob Kuisl nodded, wiped his mouth on his sleeve, and pushed the plate aside. Then he started filling his long-stem pipe.

“We caught them,” he grumbled. “Down in the Ammer Gorge near Schleyer Falls. A good number of them are dead, and the rest are cooling their heels up in the dungeon. So I’ll have plenty to do in the next few days, too, and won’t be able to help you.” He lit his pipe with an ember and eyed Simon sternly. “But stop stalling and tell me now…What happened up on Castle Hill? Or do I have to apply the thumbscrews to you first?”

Simon grinned inwardly. Even if the hangman was crabby and uncommunicative, he was just as curious as Simon. The physician wished he could get more out of the hangman about the fight with the robbers, but for now, he related what he had found in the crypt under the chapel and everything else he had learned in his search with Benedikta. “The inscription,” he concluded, “must be a riddle. And the word tree is carved in capital letters. But I swear we examined every tree in the whole damned forest up on that mountain and couldn’t find a thing!”

“An inscription in German…” the hangman murmured. “Strange, you would think the Templars would have written in Latin at that time. At least that’s the way it is in all my old books, only pompous-sounding Latin, no German and certainly not Bavarian German. Well, so be it…” He puffed big black clouds of smoke from his stem pipe, eyeing them intently in the flickering light of the embers. “This damned Templar is sending us on a wild goose chase,” he muttered. “First the crypt in the Saint Lawrence Church, then the basilica in Altenstadt, and now the castle ruin in Peiting, which doesn’t seem to be the last riddle, either. I wonder what else lies in store for us.”

“I think I know,” Simon said. He explained his suspicion that Temple Master Friedrich Wildgraf had concealed part of the Templar’s treasure here. The hangman listened without saying a word. “This treasure is more than anything we can imagine,” Simon finally concluded in a whisper, as if he feared someone could be listening in on them. “Enough to buy whole cities, I believe, and fund wars. Such a treasure would also explain the murder of Koppmeyer, the presence of these monks in Strasser’s Tavern, and the attempt on your life. Someone is doing everything he can to eliminate anyone else who might know about this.”

“But what’s the point of all this rubbish with the riddles and the game of hide-and-seek?” grumbled the hangman, drawing on his pipe. “A simple clue in the crypt, a testament would have also sufficed.”

“Up to now, all the riddles have had something to do with God,” Simon interrupted, struggling not to cough through the clouds of smoke. “The Templars no doubt wanted to make sure only a true believer would find the treasure. The inscription from the castle ruins also seems like a sort of prayer.” He pulled out a parchment roll on which he had noted the lines.

“This is what I discovered among men as the greatest wonder,” the physician mumbled, “that the earth did not exist, nor the sky above, nor TREE…” He hesitated. “Why in the world is ‘tree’ capitalized? Did we overlook something up there?”

“Deus lo vult,” the hangman murmured suddenly.

“What?”

“Deus lo vult-it’s the will of God. That’s what the man with the dagger said to the fat Swabian down in the crypt. It almost sounded like a battle cry. What the devil does that mean?”

Simon shrugged. “A man with a strong scent of perfume, another with a curved dagger, a fat Swabian…” The medicus rubbed his tired eyes, which were tearing up from the smoke. “What an odd group! And how did these men ever learn about the Templar’s grave? From the construction workers?”

The hangman shook his head. “I don’t think so. I actually have another idea, but it’s too early to say yet. Now I’m tired.”

He rose to accompany the physician to the door. Suddenly, it occurred to Simon that, with all the excitement, he had completely forgotten to ask the hangman about Magdalena.

“Your daughter…” he began saying at the doorway. “I…I must speak with her. I think I have to apologize. Is she upstairs in the house or still with Stechlin?”

The hangman shook his head. “Neither. She left for Augsburg this morning on the ferry to get a few supplies for me and the midwife. It’s probably best if you don’t see each other for a while.”

“But…” Simon suddenly felt forlorn.

Jakob Kuisl pushed him outside, slowly closing the door behind him. “She’ll come back, don’t worry,” he grumbled. “She’s just a stubborn Kuisl like her mother, and now, good night. I have to go upstairs and have a look at little Georg.”

With a creak, the door clicked shut on Simon, leaving him alone with the darkness. Snowflakes were falling on his head, and it was as silent as the grave. Carefully, he threaded his way through the fresh snow toward the lights of the town. Slowly, a feeling crept over him that he had made a great mistake.

The merchant stopped bothering Magdalena for the rest of the way to Augsburg. Once or twice, he cast a glance at her with reddened, spiteful eyes, but otherwise, he was busy washing off the quicklime with icy water from the Lech and rubbing lotion on his burning face. Oozing red pustules were breaking out around the edges of his beard, and he cursed softly as he sipped from a bottle of fruit brandy to calm himself down.

The six o’clock bells were about to ring when Magdalena spotted a number of sparkling lights in the darkness ahead-just a few at first, but as time passed, more and more appeared until they eventually filled the entire horizon.

“Augsburg,” she whispered, full of awe.

Until now, Magdalena had known the city only from what people had told her-that it was a metropolis more lively and colorful than little Schongau. Here Protestants and Catholics lived peacefully side by side in a free city, subject only to the emperor. Its wealth was legendary before the Great War, and even now, the city seemed to have lost little of its former splendor.

The view helped the hangman’s daughter forget her anger and sadness for the time being. The ferry landing was a short way outside the city, near the Red Gate. Even at this late hour, there was more activity on the pier than Magdalena had ever seen in Schongau. Barrels and sacks were being offloaded by the dozen, and a crowd of dockworkers were bent over as they carried the heavy cargo to storage sheds nearby. The glow of innumerable torches and lanterns made it possible for work to continue even now, after darkness had fallen. Harsh commands, but also crude words and laughter, could be heard all over the landing.

Fortunately, Magdalena had already paid for her passage in Schongau, so she could disembark without having to deal with the merchant anymore and disappear in the noisy crowd. She kept checking to make sure the little linen bag was still hanging over her shoulder. It contained instructions from Stechlin and her father-but above all, the money the midwife had given her. Twenty guilders! She had never had so much money in her life! Most of it came from the pregnant Frau Holzhofer, who was waiting in Schongau for her bezoar.

When Magdalena looked around again, she noticed that Oswald Hainmiller, along with two men dressed all in black, had been trailing her. He was whispering to them and pointing at her. His face, disfigured with pustules and a red rash, seemed to flare with hatred.

Magdalena boarded one of the little boats that ferried people over a canal to the Red Gate. It was a rough trip, and passengers were pressed close together. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed that the two men had boarded the boat as well, but she decided to ignore them for the time being.

Shortly thereafter, she arrived, freezing and hungry. The Red Gate would be closing punctually when the six o’clock bell rang, and merchants dressed in furs, as well as ragged day laborers and wagon drivers, were crowding into the city. Magdalena jumped aside to let a horse-drawn coach pass, and promptly tripped over a street vendor behind her, holding a sales tray around his neck.

“Can’t you watch where you’re going?” the man snapped at her as he picked his tinderbox, shears, and whetstone up off the street.

“I’m…I’m dreadfully sorry,” Magdalena stuttered. Feeling something tug at her, she turned around just in time to see a boy, about ten years old, trying to cut off the strap to her purse with a little knife.

Magdalena slapped him so hard that he fell back into filthy slush.

“You’d better not try that again!” she growled at him, grabbing the purse even tighter, and hurrying through the slowly closing gate. When Magdalena turned around again to look at the boy, she was shocked to see the two men from the landing just a few steps away, carefully observing her.

“What’s the rush, dear?” one of them growled. He was wearing a tattered overcoat and a patch over one eye. “Let’s look for a place to stay together tonight. We’d be warmer together.” A gust of wind blew his coat open a bit, revealing a heavy dagger about a foot long. The other man, who was as fat as a wine barrel, was swinging a big polished stick.

Without waiting to hear what the other might have to say, Magdalena raced off. She slipped into the crowd, then gradually worked her way through it. Behind her, she could hear suppressed cursing. The crowd in front of her was so dense that it was hard to make progress. She knocked down a few day laborers, bumped into some peddlers, and tipped over a basket of firewood.

Finally, she had worked her way through most of the crowd, and the street grew markedly quieter. Just as she was about to breathe a sigh of relief, she heard the hurried footfalls of someone behind her. She looked back as she ran and caught a glimpse of her pursuers, who had been able to slip through the crowd as well. The fat man waved his cudgel in the air and panted. The man with a patch over one eye was faster, and gaining ground. Magdalena looked around, desperate for help. Why hadn’t she stayed hidden in the crowd? The men would never have dared to attack her in public. But here? Night had fallen and the houses and streets were just barely visible. There were hardly any people in this part of town, and the few who saw the men pursuing Magdalena ducked into entryways or anxiously peered out at the pursuers from behind tiny recessed windows.

Thinking fast, Magdalena turned into a narrow side street. Perhaps she could shake off her pursuers in a labyrinth of little lanes. She ran past clattering millwheels, over rickety bridges, and through tiny cobblestone squares, but the two men were right on her heels. She was a good runner and, in the forest or fields, probably could have shaken off the two easily, but here, in the streets and alleys, the men had an advantage. They knew the location of every stairway, every row of parked wagons that she would have to run around.

Coming around the next corner, she was suddenly confronted with a wall. Frost-covered ivy spiraled down from the top of the ten-foot-high wall, and a pile of fetid garbage lay in one corner. Bare walls rose up to the left and right. Seized with panic, Magdalena looked for a way out.

She had run into a cul-de-sac.

Her two pursuers caught up with her. She felt like a trapped animal as the men slowly approached her, smiling.

“You see, you little tart, now we’ve found a place all to ourselves,” the man with the eye patch said. He looked around as if he were inspecting a room at an inn. “Maybe it’s not so comfy, but I do like it. How about you?”

The fat man with the cudgel now approached from the left. “Don’t make it harder than necessary,” he growled. “If you scratch and bite, it’s just going to hurt more.”

“Oh, let her go ahead,” the other said. “I like it when they scratch and bite.” He swung his saber through the air. “Hainmiller gave us a tidy sum so you wouldn’t forget him so soon. Just what did you do to his face, girl? Did you give him a bad shave? Well, in any case, we’re going to shave you now.”

The fat man looked at her almost sympathetically. “It’s really too bad; you have such pretty lips. But what can we do? Let’s get it over with.” He moved closer.

Magdalena scrutinized the men, considering her options. She was alone, and this didn’t look like the kind of area where anyone would come running out to help if she shouted. On the contrary, people would probably close their shutters and hope to steer clear of trouble themselves. Both thugs were powerfully built and looked like seasoned street fighters. It was clear that she had no chance for a fair fight.

But perhaps there was a way to trick them.

She dropped her arms, lowering her head meekly as if resigned to her fate, just waiting for the men to attack her. “Please don’t hurt me…” she whimpered.

“You should have thought about that before, slut,” said the man with the eye patch as he approached her with his sword raised. “Now it’s a little too-”

With a sweeping gesture, Magdalena took aim at the thug, flinging a handful of the quicklime at him that she had been keeping in her jacket pocket. The powder formed a cloud in front of the man’s eyes. He screamed and rubbed his face, trying to wipe away the lime with the arm he was using to hold the sword, but managed only to rub it deeper into his eyes. Shrieking loudly, he fell to the ground.

“You damned whore! I’ll make you pay for that!”

He crawled toward her on his knees, swinging the sword wildly through the air, while the fat man with the cudgel approached. Magdalena reached into her jacket pocket again. Even though she knew it was empty now, she held her arm up again as if about to throw the next handful at the fat man’s face.

“What do you say, fatso?” she snarled. “Do you want to go blind like your friend?”

The fat man stopped and looked down at his comrade moaning on the ground.

At that moment, Magdalena pretended to fling the powder in his face. The man ducked, and the hangman’s daughter ran toward the pile of garbage.

Her feet sank into the slimy half-frozen garbage and feces, but she was able to jump up and get a handhold on the top of the wall. Her fingers dug into the ice and snow as she pulled herself up.

She had almost reached the top when she felt something pulling her back down again. The fat man was tugging on her shoulder bag, and the strap was tightening like a noose around her neck, cutting off her breath. She had just two choices: surrender and fall back down or be choked to death.

Of course, there was a third option-to let go of the bag-but she didn’t even want to think about that.

As the strap tightened around her neck, Magdalena couldn’t help but think of the people sentenced to die on the gallows. Is this how it felt when one was hanged? Dark clouds passed before her eyes, and she began to lose consciousness.

The third possibility…

She ducked suddenly, slipping the strap over her head, and the fat man fell back with a groan into the pile of garbage. She was free!

Ignoring the curses and cries of pain behind her, she jumped down the other side of the wall and ran along the street ahead, struggling to catch her breath. She ran through icy alleys and over slippery bridges, fell once or twice in muddy slush, and finally, gasping for air, came to a stop at a street corner.

She leaned against the wall of a house, sobbing, then collapsed on the cold ground. She had lost everything. Twenty guilders! Money that Stechlin and her father had entrusted to her, money only borrowed by the midwife from a patrician woman! She could never return to Schongau-the shame was too great-and she didn’t even have a few coins for shelter that night. She was completely alone.

Magdalena was crying when she sensed someone standing nearby.

She looked up to see a young man leaning against the side of a house a few feet away. It was the little pickpocket who had tried to steal her purse. He watched her silently.

Finally, Magdalena lost her patience. “Why are you looking at me like that?” she shouted. “Mind your own business, and get out of here!”

The boy shrugged and turned to leave.

Suddenly, Magdalena remembered that there was, indeed, someone who might help her. She could at least get shelter for the night, and perhaps he would have a suggestion about getting the money back. Magdalena had hoped she wouldn’t have to go there, but as things stood now, it was her last chance.

“Wait!” she called to the boy, who turned around with a questioning look.

“Take me to Philipp Hartmann,” she whispered.

“Who?” the boy asked, anxious. Faint light fell on his face from a window nearby, and he suddenly looked as white as a sheet. “I don’t know any-”

“You know exactly who I mean.” Magdalena stood up and wiped the saliva and tears from her face. “I want to go and see the Augsburg hangman-and hurry up about it, or I’ll see that he strings you up by the Red Gate. I swear I will, as sure as my name is Magdalena Kuisl.”