The Hangman’s Daughter

CHAPTER 9

SATURDAY APRIL 28, A.D. 1659 NINE O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING

The next morning, the physician and the hangman were sitting together in the Kuisl house over two mugs of weak beer, thinking about everything that had happened in the past few days. Simon had thought all night long about the unconscious midwife, realizing how little time they had left. He silently sipped his beer while next to him Jakob Kuisl chewed on his pipe. Magdalena’s constant comings and goings in the room to fetch water or to feed the chickens under the bench didn’t make thinking any easier. At one point she came and knelt down right in front of Simon and her hand brushed over his thigh as if by chance, causing a shiver to run through his body.

Jakob Kuisl had told him that his daughter was the one who found the mandrake root in the forest. Ever since then Simon had become even more attracted to her. This girl was not only gorgeous, she was also clever. What a pity that women were barred from entering the university. Simon was sure that Magdalena would have had no trouble holding her own in her studies against all those learned quacks.

“Would you like another beer?” asked the hangman’s daughter, winking and filling up his tankard without waiting for an answer. Her smile reminded Simon that there was more to this world than missing children and self-appointed inquisitors. He smiled back at her. Then his thoughts returned to gloomier things.

The night before he had to accompany his father on a house call. Haltenberger’s farmhand had come down with a bad fever. They’d given him cold compresses, and Simon’s father had bled him. Simon was at least able to convince his father to use some of that ominous powder that had previously helped several times with fever and supposedly came from the bark of a rare tree. The patient’s symptoms reminded him of another case in which a wagon driver from Venice had collapsed on the street in their town. A foul odor had come from the man’s mouth, and his entire body was covered with pustules. People spoke of the French disease, and that the devil used it to punish those who indulged in unchaste love.

Simon would gladly have indulged in unchaste love last night, but during his rendezvous with Magdalena later on in a secret corner by the town wall, she had only wanted to talk about Goodwife Stechlin. She, too, was convinced of the midwife’s innocence. Once he had tried to touch her bodice, but she had turned away. At his next attempt the night watchman had discovered them and sent them home. It was way past eight o’clock in the evening, and at that time young girls were no longer allowed out on the streets. Simon had the feeling of having missed a crucial moment, and he was not sure if luck would soon bring him another. Perhaps his father was right and he should keep his hands off the hangman’s daughter. Simon was not sure if she was only toying with him or whether she really cared for him.

Jakob Kuisl couldn’t fully concentrate on his work that morning either. While Simon sat there sipping weak beer and staring out the window, he mixed a salve of dried herbs and goose fat. He kept putting the pestle aside to fill his pipe. Anna Maria, his wife, was out in the field, and the twins were rollicking under the kitchen table, a few times almost knocking over the mortar. He scolded them and sent them outside into the yard. Georg and Barbara trotted off, pouting, but knowing full well that their father could not stay angry at them for long.

Simon leafed through the well-thumbed book the hangman had lying open on the table. Simon had returned two of his books and was eager to learn new things. The tome before him was not necessarily going to provide that. Dioscorides’s De materia medica was still the standard text of the healing arts even though its author, a Greek physician, had lived in the days of our Savior. Also at the university in Ingolstadt they were still teaching his methods. Simon sighed. He had the feeling that humanity was running in place. So many centuries and they had not learned anything new.

He was still surprised that Kuisl owned this book as well. In the hangman’s wooden chest and medicine cabinet there were over a dozen books and innumerable parchments, among these the writings of the Benedictine nun Hildegard of Bingen and newer texts on the circulation of blood or on the location of organs in the body. Even such a recent text as Ambroise Pare’s Writings on Anatomy and Surgery in a German translation was among them. Simon did not believe that any Schongau citizen owned more books than the hangman, not even the court clerk, who had a reputation as a great scholar in town.

As Simon leafed through the Greek’s text he wondered why he and the hangman could not simply leave the case of the midwife alone. Probably it was precisely this rejection of the obvious, this continuous probing prompted by curiosity, that created a bond between them. That, and a good portion of obstinacy, he thought with a smile.

All of a sudden his finger stopped on a page. Next to a drawing of the human body there were drawings of a few symbols for alchemistic ingredients. One of them showed a triangle with a squiggle below.

It was the old symbol for sulfur.

Simon knew it from his university days, but now he remembered where he had last seen this symbol. It was the symbol that the linen weaver Andreas Dangler had shown him, the same symbol that his foster child Sophie had drawn in the dirt in their backyard.

Simon pushed the book across the table to Jakob Kuisl, who was still crushing herbs in the mortar.

“This is the old symbol I told you about! The symbol Sophie drew! Now I recognize it again!”

The hangman looked at the page and nodded.

“Sulfur…the stink of the devil and of his playmates.”

“I wonder if they really…?” Simon asked.

Jakob Kuisl chewed on his pipe. “First the Venus symbol, and now the symbol for sulfur…well, it is strange.”

“Where did Sophie learn such symbols?” Simon asked. “Only from the midwife. She must have told her and the other children about them. Perhaps she did teach them witchcraft after all.” He sighed. “Unfortunately we can no longer ask her about it, in any case not now.”

“Nonsense,” the hangman growled. “The Stechlin woman is no more witch than I am. The children probably discovered the symbols in her room, in a book, on vials, bottles, who knows where.”

Simon shook his head. “The symbol for sulfur maybe,” he said. “But the Venus symbol, the witches’ symbol? You said yourself that you’ve never seen such a symbol in her house. And if you had, then she would be a witch after all, wouldn’t she?”

The hangman continued crushing the herbs in the mortar even though they had long been ground into a green paste.

“The Stechlin woman is no witch, and that’s that,” he growled. “Let’s forget about her, and instead find the devil who is going through our town and kidnapping the children. Sophie, Clara, and Johannes, they’ve all disappeared. Where are they? I’m sure that when we find them we’ll also find the solution to the puzzle.”

“That is, if the children are still alive,” mumbled Simon. Then he became lost again in his reveries.

“Sophie did see the devil. It was down by the river,” he said finally, “and he asked about the Kratz boy. Not long after that, the boy was dead. The man was tall, he had a coat and a hat with a feather in it and a scar across his face. Also he is said to have had a hand made of bone, at least that’s what the girl thinks she saw…”

Jakob Kuisl interrupted him. “The serving girl at Semer’s inn also saw a man with a skeleton hand in the lounge.”

“True,” said Simon. “That was a few days earlier, together with a few other men. The maid said they looked like soldiers. Then they went upstairs to meet someone there. But who was that?”

The hangman scraped the paste from the mortar into a jar, which he sealed with a piece of leather.

“I don’t like it when soldiers hang around our town,” he growled. “Soldiers only bring trouble. They drink, they rob, they destroy.”

“Speaking of destruction…” said Simon. “Schreevogl told me the night before last that not only is the Stadel destroyed, but on the same evening someone was at the building site for the leper house. Everything was razed to the ground there. Could that too have been the work of the Augsburgers?”

Jakob Kuisl dismissed this with a wave of the hand. “Hardly,” he said. “They’ll only welcome a leper house here. Then they hope that fewer travelers will stop in our town.”

“Well, then perhaps it’s wagon drivers from somewhere else who are afraid of catching leprosy in passing by,” remarked Simon. “After all, the trade route runs not far from the Hohenfurch Road.”

Jakob Kuisl spat. “Well, I know plenty of Schongauers who are just as afraid of that. The church wants the leper house, but the patricians are against it because they fear that business travelers will stay well clear of our little town…”

Simon shook his head. “And yet there are leper houses in many large cities, even in Regensburg and Augsburg…”

The hangman walked over to the apothecary’s closet to put away the jar. “Our moneybags are cowardly dogs,” he told Simon over his shoulder. “Some of them come and go regularly here at my house, and they tremble when the plague is still in Venice!”

When he returned he was carrying a larchwood truncheon about the length of his arm over his shoulder and grinning. “We need to take a closer look at that leper house in any case. I get the feeling that too many things are happening all at once for it to be a coincidence.”

“Right away?” Simon asked.

“Right away,” Jakob Kuisl said, swinging his truncheon. “Perhaps the devil is making his rounds out there. I’ve always wanted to give him a good thrashing.”

He squeezed his massive body through the narrow door opening to the outside, into the April morning. Simon shivered with cold. It wouldn’t be surprising if even the devil were afraid of the Schongau hangman.

The building site for the leper house was located in a clearing right next to the Hohenfurch Road less than half an hour’s travel from the town. Simon had watched the workmen more than once as he passed the site. They had already set the foundations and raised brick walls. The doctor remembered having seen wooden scaffolding and a roof truss the last time. The ground walls of the little chapel next to it had also been completed.

Simon recalled how the priest had often mentioned with pride in his sermons during recent months the progress being made on the construction. In building the leper house, the church was fulfilling a long-held wish: it had always been its basic mission to care for the poor and the sick. Besides, the highly contagious lepers were a danger to the entire town. So far they had always been shunted off to the leper house in Augsburg. But the Augsburgers had enough lepers of their own, and lately they had only reluctantly accepted more. Schongau didn’t want to plead for their help in the future. The new leper house would be a symbol of municipal independence, even if many in the council were opposed to its construction.

Not much was to be seen now of that once-busy building site. Many of the walls had collapsed as if someone had rammed them as hard as they could. The truss was now a sooty skeleton reaching up to the sky, and most of the wooden scaffolds were smashed or burnt. A smell of wet ashes hung in the air. An abandoned cart loaded with wood and barrels was stuck in a ditch at the side of the road.

In one corner of the clearing there was an old well made of natural stone. A group of craftsmen were sitting on the edge, staring in complete bewilderment at the destruction. The work of weeks, if not months, was destroyed. The construction had been a living for these men, and their future was now uncertain. As of yet, the church had not said what was going to be done.

Simon waved at the workmen and walked a few steps toward them. They eyed the physician with suspicion while continuing to chew on their bread. The doctor was obviously interrupting their meal, and they had no intention of wasting their short break on a chat.

“It looks pretty bad,” Simon called out as he walked toward them and pointed toward the building site. The hangman followed a few steps behind him.

“Do you know who did it?”

“And what business would that be of yours?” replied one worker, spitting on the ground in front of them. Simon recognized him as one of those who had tried a few days earlier to crash the keep to get at the midwife. The man looked over Simon’s shoulder in the direction of Jakob Kuisl. The hangman smiled and rolled the truncheon back and forth on his shoulder.

“Greetings, Josef,” said Kuisl. “How’s the wife? In good health? Did my concoction work?”

Surprised, the others looked at the carpenter who had been hired by the town as site manager.

“Your wife is sick?” one of them asked. “You didn’t say anything about that.”

“It’s…nothing serious,” he growled and looked at the hangman as if seeking his help. “Only a little cough. Isn’t that right, Master Kuisl?”

“That’s right, Josef. Would you be so kind as to show us around?”

Josef Bichler shrugged and walked off in the direction of the collapsed walls. “There isn’t much to see. Follow me.”

The hangman and the physician followed while the other workmen remained at the well, talking to one another in hushed voices.

“What’s wrong with his wife?” asked Simon in a whisper.

“She no longer wants to go to bed with him,” said Jakob Kuisl as he surveyed the site. “He asked the midwife for a love potion, but she wouldn’t give him one. She thought that was witchcraft. So he came to me.”

“And you gave him?”

“Sometimes belief is the best potion. Belief and clay dissolved in water. There have been no complaints since then.”

Simon grinned. At the same time he could not help shaking his head over a man who wanted to see the midwife burned as a witch and at the same time ordered magic potions from her.

In the meantime they had reached the foundation of the leper house. Parts of the once six-foot-high walls had collapsed completely, and stones were scattered everywhere on the ground. A stack of planks had been thrown over and set on fire, and in some places smoke was still rising.

Josef Bichler crossed himself as he looked down on the destruction. “It must have been some kind of devil,” he whispered. “The same one that murdered the little ones. Who else knocks down entire walls?”

“A devil or a couple of strong men using a tree trunk,” Jakob Kuisl said. “This one there, for instance.” He pointed to a thick pine trunk with its branches removed lying in the clearing not far from the north wall. Tracks in the dirt revealed how it had been dragged from the edge of the wood to the spot and from there on to the wall. The hangman nodded. “They probably used it like a battering ram.” They climbed over part of the destroyed wall into the interior of the structure. The foundation had been smashed at several points as if someone had gone wild with a pickax. Slabs of stones had been pushed to the side and clumps of clay and pieces of brick were scattered around. In places the debris reached as high as their knees, so that they sometimes had to climb over heaps of rubble. It looked worse than after an attack by the Swedish forces.

“Why would someone do anything like that?” whispered Simon. “That’s no longer vandalism, that’s blind destructiveness.”

“Strange,” remarked Kuisl, chewing on his cold pipe. “Tearing down the walls would really have been enough to halt the building. But here…”

The carpenter looked at him anxiously. “I’m telling you…the devil,” he hissed. “Only the devil has such power. Look at the chapel next to it-he crushed it with his fist as if it were a piece of paper.”

Simon shivered. Now at noon the sun was trying to dissolve the morning mist but it couldn’t quite do that. The mist still hung in thick clouds over the clearing. The forest, which began only a few yards behind the building site, could be seen only dimly.

In the meantime Jakob Kuisl had stepped out again through the masonry archway. He kept searching around in front of the western wall fragment and finally stopped. “Here!” he called out. “Clear tracks. Must have been four or five men.”

All of a sudden he stooped down and picked something up. It was a small black leather pouch, no larger than a child’s fist. He opened it, looked inside, and then sniffed it. A blissful smile brightened his face. “First-rate tobacco,” he told Simon and the carpenter, who had both come closer. He rubbed the brown fibers into crumbs and deeply inhaled the aroma once more. “But not from around here. This is good stuff. I’ve smelled something like this up in Magdeburg once. For this stuff, traders got themselves slaughtered like pigs.”

“You’ve been to Magdeburg?” asked Simon softly. “You never told me about that.”

The hangman quickly stuffed the pouch into his coat pocket. Without answering Simon’s question he walked toward the foundation walls of the chapel. Here, too, there was nothing but destruction. What had been walls were toppled over, forming small stone mounds. He climbed one of them and gazed all about. His mind seemed to be still on the pouch he had found. “Nobody smokes that kind of tobacco around here,” he called down to the other two.

“How would you know?” asked the carpenter sourly. “All of this devil’s weed smells the same!”

The hangman was torn from his thoughts and looked down angrily at Josef Bichler. As he stood there on the mound of stones surrounded by clouds of mist, he reminded Simon of some legendary giant. The hangman pointed his finger at the carpenter. “You stink,” he shouted. “Your teeth stink, and your mouth stinks, but this…weed, as you call it, is fragrant! It invigorates the senses and tears you from your dreams! It covers the entire world and lifts you into heaven; let me tell you that! In any case, it’s much too good for a peasant numskull like you. It comes from the New World, and it is not meant for any old nitwit.”

Before the carpenter could answer, Simon interrupted, pointing to a mound of wet, brown earth just next to the chapel. “Look, there are tracks here too!” he shouted. The mound was indeed covered with shoe prints. With a last angry look the hangman climbed down from the mound and examined the tracks. “Boot tracks,” he said finally. “These are soldiers’ boots, that’s for sure. I’ve seen too many of them to make a mistake here.” He whistled loudly. “This is getting interesting…” He pointed to a particular impression, somewhat blurred at the end of the sole. “This man limps. He’s dragging one foot a little and cannot put much weight on it.”

“The devil’s clubfoot,” hissed Josef Bichler.

“Nonsense,” growled Kuisl. “If it were a clubfoot, then even you would be able to see it. No, the man is limping. He probably got a bullet in his leg during the war. They took out the bullet, but the leg has remained stiff.”

Simon nodded. He could still remember such operations from his days as an army surgeon’s son. Using long, thin grasping pincers, his father had burrowed into the wounded man’s flesh until he finally found the bullet. Pus and gangrene had often developed afterward, and the soldier would die within a short time. But sometimes all went well, and the man could go back into combat, only to come back to them with a stomach wound the next time.

The hangman pointed at the mound of moist earth. “What is the clay doing here?” he asked.

“We use it to plaster the walls and the floor,” the carpenter said. “The clay is from the pit by the brick hut behind the tanners’ quarter.”

“This property here belongs to the church, doesn’t it?” Simon asked the carpenter.

Josef Bichler nodded. “Schreevogl, the old codger, willed it to the church shortly before he died last year, and the young heir wound up with nothing.”

Simon remembered his conversation the day before yesterday with Jakob Schreevogl. That was more or less what the patrician’s son had told him. Bichler grinned at him and poked at something that was stuck between his teeth.

“It sure bothered the young Schreevogl,” he said.

“How do you know that?” asked Simon.

“I used to work for the old man, over at his kiln. They sure got in each other’s hair, and then the old man told him that he was giving the land to the church for the leper house, and that heaven would reward him for it, and then he told his son to go to hell.”

“And young Schreevogl?”

“He cursed mightily, mainly because he’d already planned a second kiln here. Now the church got it all.”

Simon wanted to ask more questions, but a crashing noise caused him to whirl around. It was the hangman who had jumped over a stack of boards and was now running across the road toward the forest. There, almost swallowed up in the fog, Simon was able to make out another form, crouched down and running through the trees toward the high bank of the Lech.

Simon broke away from the surprised carpenter and ran diagonally across the clearing, hoping to cut off the other person. When he reached the edge of the woods, he was only a few yards behind him. From the right he could hear branches breaking as the hangman drew nearer, panting and swinging his cudgel.

“Run after him! I’ll stay on the right so he won’t escape over the fields,” he panted. “We’ll get him up on the steep bank at the latest.”

Simon was now in the middle of a dense pine forest.

He couldn’t see the fleeing person anymore, but he could hear him. In front of him twigs kept snapping, and muffled steps were moving away rapidly on the needle-covered ground. At times he thought he could distinguish a vague shape between the branches. The man, or whoever it was in front of him, was running in a crouch and somehow…strangely. Simon noticed that he was breathing harder, and there was a metallic taste in his mouth. It had been a long time since he had run so long and so fast. Come to think of it, it had been since his childhood. He was accustomed to sitting in his room reading books and drinking coffee, and he hadn’t done much running in recent years, except for those few times when he had to flee from angry fathers of pretty burghers’ daughters. But that, too, had been a while back.

Simon was losing ground to the runner in front of him and the snapping of twigs became less audible. From far off to the right he could hear the splintering of wood. That had to be the hangman, bounding like a wild boar over the fallen trees.

A few moments later Simon had reached the bottom of a small depression. The slope on the other side rose steeply before him. Somewhere beyond it began the bank of the Lech. Instead of pine trees, low intertwined bushes grew there, making it almost impossible to break through. Simon pulled himself up on one of the bushes and, with a curse, let go of it immediately. He had reached right into a blackberry bush and his right hand was now covered with small thorns. He listened, but all he could hear was splintering wood behind him. Now he saw the hangman coming from that direction. Kuisl leaped over a moldy tree trunk and finally came to a stop in front of him.

“So?” asked Jakob Kuisl. He too was breathless from the chase, even if not nearly as much as the physician. Simon shook his head while bending over with a stitch in his side. “I think we’ve lost him,” he panted.

“Damn,” the hangman cursed. “I am sure it was one of the men who destroyed the building site.”

“Then why did he come back?” asked Simon, still out of breath.

Jakob Kuisl shrugged. “Don’t know. Maybe he wanted to see first if the site had been abandoned. Perhaps he wanted to see it once more, and perhaps he just wanted to look for his good tobacco.” He hit his truncheon against a stunted fir tree. “Whatever. We’ve lost him in any case.” He looked up the steep slope. “He must be pretty strong if he can climb this. Not everybody could.”

In the meantime the physician had sat down on a moss-covered stump and was hard at work pulling the blackberry thorns out of his hand. A multitude of tiny mosquitoes swarmed around his head, looking for a good place to find blood.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said, waving his arms to ward off the mosquitoes.

The hangman nodded and walked ahead a few steps. Suddenly he stopped and pointed to the ground. In front of him lay an uprooted tree. At the spot where it had been rooted in the ground there was now a patch of moist, loamy soil. Two boot imprints were plainly visible in the center. The left one was less clear and ended in a sliding footprint.

“The limping man,” whispered Jakob Kuisl. “It really was one of the soldiers.”

“But why did they destroy the leper house? And what does that have to do with the dead children?” Simon asked.

“That’s something we shall soon find out. Very soon,” muttered the hangman. His eyes wandered once more over the crest of the hill. For an instant he thought he saw a human form up there, but then clouds of mist drifted by once more. He pulled the small tobacco pouch from his coat pocket and started to fill his pipe as he walked along.

“At least the devil has good taste,” he said. “You have to grant the bastard that much.”

As for the devil, he was standing at the top of the slope and, hidden behind a beech tree, looking down at the two small figures directly below him. Next to him lay a large boulder. For a moment he was tempted to get the rock rolling. It would loosen other rocks as it fell, setting off an avalanche of gravel, rock, and dead branches that would descend on those two down there and possibly bury them. His pale skeletal hand reached for the boulder, but then the taller of the two figures suddenly turned his head in his direction. For a brief moment he looked into the man’s eyes. Had the hangman seen him? He pressed himself back against the beech tree and dismissed his idea. This man was too strong and agile. He would hear the rockslide coming and would jump to the side. The little quack was no problem, a snoop whose throat he would cut the next time they met in some dark corner of town. But the hangman…

He should not have come back here. Not in broad daylight. Of course they would examine the building site at one time or another. But he had lost his tobacco pouch, and that was something they might be able to trace to him. Besides, he had a nagging suspicion. Therefore he had decided to look into things himself. Only the others mustn’t know anything about it. They were waiting for the devil to come and pay them off. If the workmen were to start building again, they would simply return and pull everything down once more. That was their order. But the devil was shrewd and had figured out right off that there was more than that to this business. And so he had returned. That the little snoop and the hangman had shown up at the same moment was annoying. But they didn’t catch him and he would simply give it another try at night.

He had told the others to look for the girl, but they had only reluctantly followed his order. They still obeyed him because they were afraid of him and had already accepted him earlier as their leader. But they were contradicting him more often now. They couldn’t understand how important it was to eliminate the children. They had caught the little boy at the very start, and now they figured that the others would be terrified. They did not understand that the business had to be finished. The mission was in danger, and the payment was at risk. These dirty little brats who thought they could get away from him! A filthy little gang, squealing piglets whose throats had to be slit to make the shrill sounds in his head stop.

Shrill tolling of bells, crying of women, high-pitched wailing of infants that makes one’s eyeballs burst…

Again, mist clouded his vision and he had to cling to the beech trunk so as not to topple down the slope. He bit his lips until he could taste blood, and only then did his mind clear. First he would have to eliminate the girl, then the snoop, and then the hangman. The hangman would be the most difficult. A worthy opponent. And then he would straighten things out down there at the building site. He was certain that the moneybags had kept something from him. But you can’t fool the devil. And if anyone tried to, the devil bathed in his blood.

He breathed in the scent of fresh earth and delicate flowers. Everything was all right now. With a smile on his lips he walked along the edge of the hill until he was swallowed up in the forest.

When Simon and Jakob Kuisl returned to Schongau, the appearance of the ghostly figure had already become the talk of the town. Josef Bichler and the other workmen had run straight to the market square and told everyone of the devil’s imminent arrival. The market stalls all around the Ballenhaus were abuzz with whispering and gossiping. Many of the local craftsmen had laid down their work and were now standing around in groups. The whole town was gripped with tension. Simon had the feeling that it wouldn’t take much for the fuse to blow. One wrong word, one shrill cry, and the mob would force their way into the keep and burn Martha Stechlin themselves.

Under the suspicious looks of the market women and craftsmen, the physician and the hangman walked through the entrance gate of the town’s parish church. A cool silence received them as they stepped into the town’s largest house of worship. Simon’s gaze wandered over the tall pillars with their peeling plaster, the darkened windowpanes, and the rotting choir seats. A few solitary candles were burning in dark side aisles and cast their flickering light upon yellowed frescoes.

Much like Schongau, the Church of the Assumption had seen better days. Quite a few Schongauers felt it would have made more sense to put money into the renovation of the church than into the construction of the leper house. The belfry more than anything else looked really dilapidated. In the inns across the street, people already painted dark pictures of what would happen if that tower were to collapse during Mass some day.

Now it was Saturday noon, and only a few old women were sitting in the pews. Once in a while one of them would get up and walk over to the confessional on the right side and emerge after some time, murmuring and running a rosary through her bony fingers. Jakob Kuisl sat in the rear pew observing the old women. When they noticed him they murmured their prayer with ever greater fervor and pressed close against the wall of the main aisle as they scurried past him.

The hangman was not welcome in church. His assigned seat was all the way in the back to the left, and he was always the last to receive communion. Still, Jakob Kuisl made it a point even today to give the old women his friendliest smile. They acknowledged it by crossing themselves and quickly leaving the church.

Simon Fronwieser waited until the last of them had exited the confessional and then stepped inside it himself. The warm voice of the parish priest, Konrad Weber, could be heard through the tight grate of the wooden window.

“Misereatur tui omnipotens Deus, et dimissis peccatis tuis, perducat te ad vitam... May almighty God have mercy on thee, and having forgiven thee thy sins, bring thee to life…”

“Father, I don’t come to confess,” whispered Simon. “I only need some information.”

The Latin whispering stopped. “Who are you?” asked the priest.

“It’s me, Simon Fronwieser, the surgeon’s son.”

“I don’t see you often at confession, even when I am told that you have every reason for it.”

“Well, I…I shall improve, Father. In fact I’ll be confessing right now. But first I must find out something concerning the leper house. Is it true that old Schreevogl left you the land on the Hohenfurch Road, even though he had actually promised it to his son?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“The destruction at the leper house. I would like to find out what’s behind it.”

For a long time the priest said nothing. Finally he cleared his throat.

“People say that it was the devil,” he whispered.

“And you believe that?”

“Well, the devil can appear in many ways, also in human form. It’ll be Walpurgis Night in a few days, then the Evil One will mate once more with certain godless women. It is said that long ago witches’ sabbaths were held on that piece of land.”

Simon flinched.

“Who says so?”

The priest hesitated before continuing.

“People say so. The spot on which the little church is being built is where sorcerers and witches are said to have caroused in the past. A long time ago there used to be a chapel there, but it fell into ruin just like the former leper house. It’s as if some evil spell lies over the area…” The priest’s voice became a whisper. “They have found an old pagan stone altar there, which fortunately we were able to destroy. This was one more reason for the church to build a new leper house and chapel there. Evil must yield when it is touched by God’s light. We sprinkled holy water over the entire site.”

“Apparently without success,” murmured Simon. Then he continued his questioning: “Had old Schreevogl already left this piece of land to his son? That is, was he already recorded as an heir?”

The priest cleared his throat.

“You knew old Schreevogl? He was a…well, yes, a stubborn old codger. One day he came to see me at the parish house, all upset, and told me that his son did not understand the least thing about business and that he would now like to leave the land down there at the Hohenfurch Road to the church. We changed his will, and the provost witnessed it.”

“And not long after that he died…”

“Yes, from a fever. I gave him last rites myself. Still on his deathbed, he spoke of the piece of land, saying that he hoped we would have much joy from it and would be able to do much good. He never forgave his son. The last person he wanted to see was not Jakob Schreevogl but old Matthias Augustin. Those two had been friends ever since they served together on the town council. They had known each other ever since childhood.”

“And even on his deathbed he did not take back the donation?”

The priest’s face was now close to the wooden lattice.

“What should I have done?” he asked. “Tell the old man to change his mind? I was glad that I could finally get that piece of land without spending a single guilder. The way it is situated makes it ideal for a leper house. Far enough from the town and yet close to the road…”

“Who do you think destroyed the building site?”

Father Konrad Weber fell silent once more. Just when Simon thought that he would say nothing more, he spoke up once again, in a very low voice.

“If the destruction goes on like this I won’t be able to defend my decision to build the leper house before the council much longer. Too many are opposed. Even the provost feels that we cannot afford such a building. We shall have to resell the land again.”

“To whom?”

Again, silence.

“To whom, Father?”

“Until now, nobody has shown any interest. But I could well imagine that young Schreevogl might soon show up at the parish house…”

Simon stood up in the narrow confessional and turned away.

“Thank you very much, Father.”

“Simon?”

“Yes, Father?”

“The confession.”

With a sigh Simon sat down once more and listened to the priest’s monotonous words.

“Indulgentiam, absolutionem et remissionem peccatorum tuorum tribuat tibi omnipotens et misericors Dominus…May the almighty and merciful Lord grant thee pardon, absolution, and remission of thy sins…”

It was going to be a long day.

When Simon finally left the confessional, Father Konrad Weber paused for a moment. He felt as if he had forgotten something. Something that was on his tongue just before and he couldn’t remember it now. After thinking about it for a short while, he returned to his prayers. Perhaps it would come to him later.

Simon sighed as he stepped from the dark church out into the open air. The sun had moved over the rooftops by now. Jakob Kuisl had gone to sit on a bench near the cemetery and was sucking on his pipe. With eyes closed, he was enjoying the first warm day of spring and the excellent tobacco he had found at the building site. He had left the cool church a while ago, and when he saw Simon approaching, he blinked.

“Well?”

Simon sat down next to him on the bench. “I believe we have a clue,” he said. Then he told him of his conversation with the priest.

Lost in thought, the hangman chewed on his pipe. “All this talk about witches and sorcerers is pure nonsense as far as I am concerned. But the fact that old Schreevogl practically disinherited his son, that’s worth thinking about. So you think young Schreevogl could have messed up the building site in order to get his land back?”

Simon nodded. “It’s possible. After all, he had wanted to build a second kiln there, as he told me himself. And he’s ambitious.”

Suddenly Simon remembered something.

“Resl, the waitress at Semer’s inn, told me about the soldiers meeting someone upstairs at the inn,” he exclaimed. “One of them was limping, she said. That must have been the devil we saw today. Perhaps it was Jakob Schreevogl who met with the devil and the other soldiers up there at the inn.”

“And what does all of that have to do with the fire at the Stadel, with the symbols and with the dead children?” Jakob Kuisl asked while he continued sucking on his pipe.

“Perhaps nothing at all. Perhaps the Stadel mess and the children are really the work of the Augsburgers. And young Schreevogl only took advantage of all the excitement in order to destroy the building site without being noticed.”

“While his ward was being abducted?” The hangman rose, shaking his head. “That makes no sense! If you ask me, there are just too many coincidences all at once. Somehow it ought to fit together: the fire, the children, the symbols, the ruined leper house. Yet we don’t know how…”

Simon rubbed his temples. The incense and the priest’s Latin babbling had given him a headache.

“I don’t know what to do anymore,” he said. “And time’s short. How much longer will Goodwife Stechlin remain unconscious?”

The hangman looked up to the belfry, where the sun had already passed the crest of the roof.

“Two days at the most. And then Count Sandizell will arrive, the representative of the Elector. If we don’t have the true culprit by then, they won’t screw around for long, and the midwife will be done for. They’ll want to get rid of the count and his entourage as quickly as possible. He only costs them money.”

Simon rose from the bench.

“I shall go and see Jakob Schreevogl now,” he said. “That is the only lead we’ve got. I am sure something’s fishy with that leper house.”

“Go ahead and see him,” grunted Kuisl. “As for me, I’m going to smoke a little more of the devil’s tobacco for a while. There’s nothing better to help a person concentrate.”

The hangman closed his eyes again, breathing in the fragrance of the New World.

Johann Lechner, the court clerk, was on the way from his office to the Ballenhaus. On his way he noticed with some discomfort the whispering women and the grumbling workmen in the square. As he passed them, he dealt them light shoves and slaps here and there. “Go back to work,” he called out. “There’s a proper way to do everything. It will all be cleared up. Now return to your work, burghers! Or I shall have to have some of you arrested!”

The burghers slinked off to their workrooms, and the market women resumed sorting out their merchandise. But Johann Lechner knew that they would start gossiping again as soon as his back was turned. He would have to send a few bailiffs to the square to prevent a disturbance. It was high time for this tiresome business to be concluded. And just now it was impossible to talk to the damn midwife! The aldermen were breathing down his neck, wanting to see results. Well, perhaps he would soon be able to show them some. After all, he still had a second trump in his hand.

The court clerk rushed up the steps of the Ballenhaus to the second floor, where a small room with a locked door was provided for the more prominent burghers, those one did not want to throw into the rat-infested hole in the Faulturm tower or in the dungeon in the keep. A bailiff was posted in front of the door. He greeted Johann Lechner with a nod before opening the massive lock and pushing back the bolt.

Martin Hueber, the wagon driver from Augsburg, was sprawled over a small table in an alcove, peering through the window at the square below. When he heard the court clerk enter he turned around and greeted him with a smirk.

“Ah, the court clerk! So have you finally come to your senses? Let me go, and we won’t say another word about this matter.”

He rose and walked to the door, but Lechner let it slam shut.

“I believe there must be some kind of misunderstanding here. Martin Hueber, you and your team are suspected of having started the fire at the Stadel.”

Martin Hueber’s face turned red. He slapped his broad hand on the table.

“You know that’s not true!”

“No need to deny it. A few Schongau rafters saw you and your men.”

Johann Lechner lied without blinking an eye. With great curiosity he awaited the Augsburger’s reaction.

Martin Hueber took a deep breath, then sat down again, crossing his arms over his wide chest in silence.

The clerk kept insisting. “Why else would you have been down there at nightfall? You had already unloaded your freight in the afternoon. When the Stadel went up in flames you were suddenly there, so you must have been hanging around beforehand.”

The wagon driver remained silent. Lechner went back to the door and reached for the handle.

“All right then. We’ll see if you maintain your silence under torture,” he said as he pushed down the handle. “I shall have you taken to the keep this very day. You’ve already met the hangman down by the raft landing. He’ll be glad to break a few of your bones.”

Johann Lechner could see the turmoil behind the wagon driver’s brow. He bit his lip, and finally the words burst forth.

“It’s true, we were there,” he cried, “but not in order to burn down the Stadel! After all, our own merchandise was in there too!”

Johann Lechner returned to the table.

“And what was it you wanted there?”

“We wanted to give the Schongau rafters a thrashing, that’s what we wanted! Up at the Stern that wagon driver of yours, Josef Grimmer, gave one of our men such a beating that he’ll probably never be able to work again! We wanted to make sure that such a thing would never happen again, but by God, we didn’t set fire to the Stadel! I swear it!”

Fear gleamed in the wagon driver’s eyes. Johann Lechner experienced a warm feeling of satisfaction. He had suspected something, but he had not believed that the Augsburger would cave in so quickly.

“Hueber, it doesn’t look good for you,” he continued. “Is there anything to support your case?”

The wagon driver thought briefly, then nodded.

“Yes, there is something. When we were down by the landing we saw a few men run away, about four or five of them. We thought they were yours. Just a little while later the Stadel was burning.”

The court clerk shook his head sadly, like a father who is immensely disappointed with his son.

“Why didn’t you tell us this earlier? It would have saved you a lot of suffering.”

“But then you’d have known that we had been there before,” sighed Martin Hueber. “Also, until just now I really did think these men were yours. They looked like town bailiffs.”

“Like town bailiffs?”

The Augsburg carter was struggling for the right words.

“More or less. After all, it was already getting dark, and they were quite a ways off. I didn’t see much. Now that I think about it, they may have been soldiers.”

Johann Lechner gave him a puzzled look.

“Soldiers…”

“Yes, the colorful clothes, the high boots, the hats. I believe one or two of them were also carrying sabers. I…I’m no longer sure.”

“Well, you really should be sure, Hueber.”

Johann Lechner walked back to the door. “You should be sure, or else we’ll have to help you remember. I’ll give you one more night to think it over. Tomorrow I shall return with quill and parchment, and we’ll set it all down in writing. If some uncertainties still remain, we’ll quickly clear them up. It just so happens that the hangman is not busy right now.”

With those words he closed the door behind him and left the wagon driver alone. Johann Lechner smiled. They would see what the Augsburger would come up with overnight. Even if he was not responsible for the fire, his confession would still be worth its weight in gold. A Fugger wagon driver as the ring-leader of a conspiracy against the wagon drivers of Schongau! The Augsburgers would have to eat humble pie in future negotiations. It might even be possible, under such circumstances, to increase the rates for warehousing Augsburg goods. After all, the Stadel would have to be rebuilt at great cost. It was wonderful how everything was working out. Once the midwife confessed, all would be well again. Fronwieser, that quack, had said that she would be ready for interrogation tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow at the latest.

It would just take time and patience.

The Schreevogl house was in the Bauerngasse, in the Hof Gate quarter, not far from the castle. In this neighborhood stood the houses of the patricians, three-story showpieces with carved balconies and paintings on their facades. The air smelled much better here, mainly because it was far away from the malodorous tanneries down by the Lech. Servant girls were shaking out bedding on the balustrades, while merchants came to the door to supply the cooks with spices, smoked meat, and plucked geese. Simon knocked on the tall door with the brass knob. After a few seconds he could hear steps inside. A maid opened and led him into the entrance hall. A short time later Jakob Schreevogl appeared at the top of the wide spiral staircase. With concern he looked down on Simon.

“Any news about our Clara?” he asked. “My wife is still sick in bed. Under no circumstances do I wish to upset her unnecessarily.”

Simon shook his head. “We were down at the Hohenfurch Road. The building site of the leper house is completely ruined.”

Jakob Schreevogl sighed. “I already know that,” he said and with a gesture invited Simon to have a seat while he himself settled into a cushioned chair in the antechamber. He reached into a bowl of gingerbread cookies and started chewing slowly. “Who would do such a thing? I mean, of course there was opposition to the construction in the council, but from there to go and destroy the entire leper house…”

Simon decided to speak openly with the patrician.

“Is it true that you had already made firm plans for a second kiln on that land before your father left it to the church?” he asked.

Jakob Schreevogl frowned and put the gingerbread back into the bowl. “But I’ve already told you. After the argument with my father he quickly changed his will, and I could bury my plans.”

“And your father, too, shortly thereafter.”

The patrician raised his eyebrows. “What are you implying, Fronwieser?”

“With your father’s death you no longer had any chance of having the will changed again. Now the land belongs to the church. If you want it back, you’d have to buy it back from the church.”

Jakob Schreevogl smiled. “I understand,” he said. “You suspect me of interfering with the construction until the church would give me back the land voluntarily. But you forget that before the council, I had always spoken for the building of the leper house.”

“Yes, but not necessarily on a piece of land that is so important to you,” interrupted Simon.

The patrician shrugged. “I am already conducting negotiations regarding another piece of land. The second kiln will be built but at another location. This particular spot on the Hohenfurch Road wasn’t important enough for me to put my good name at risk for it.”

Simon looked Jakob Schreevogl straight in the eye. He could detect no trace of deception.

“Who, if not you, could be interested in destroying the leper house?” he asked finally.

Schreevogl laughed. “Half the council was against building it: Holzhofer, Puchner, Augustin, and, leading them all in opposition, the presiding burgomaster Karl Semer.” He quickly became serious again. “Which doesn’t mean that I would suspect any one of them of such a thing.”

The young patrician rose and started to pace back and forth across the room. “I don’t understand you, Fronwieser,” he said. “My Clara has disappeared, two children are dead, the Zimmerstadel has been destroyed, and you are questioning me here about a burned-out building site? What is that supposed to mean?”

“We saw someone at the leper house this morning,” Simon interjected.

“Who?”

“The devil.”

The patrician caught his breath as Simon continued.

“In any case, the one they call the devil now,” he said. “It may be a soldier with a limp. The one who abducted your Clara and who was hanging out with other soldiers at Semer’s inn a few days ago. And who met an apparently important person from the town upstairs in the inn’s conference room.”

Jakob Schreevogl sat down again.

“How do you know that he met someone at Semer’s inn?” he asked.

“A servant girl told me,” Simon replied sharply. “Burgomaster Semer himself claimed to know nothing about it.”

Schreevogl nodded. “And what makes you think that this person was someone important?”

Simon shrugged. “Soldiers are hired for money; that’s their profession. And in order to be able to pay four men, much money is needed. The question is, what were they hired to do?”

He leaned forward.

“Where were you on Friday of last week?” he asked softly.

Jakob Schreevogl remained calm and returned the physician’s gaze.

“You’re barking up the wrong tree if you think I had anything to do with this,” he said sharply. “Don’t forget that it was my daughter who was abducted.”

“Where were you?”

The patrician leaned back and appeared to be reflecting. “I had gone down to the kiln,” he said finally. “The chimney was clogged up, and we worked late into the night cleaning it. You’re welcome to ask my workers.”

“And in the evening, when the Stadel was burning? Where were you then?”

Jakob Schreevogl slammed his hand down on the table so that the gingerbread bowl jumped. “I’ve had enough of your suspicions! My daughter has disappeared, and that’s all that counts for me. I don’t give a damn about your ruined building site. And now get out of my home. Right now!”

Simon tried to calm him. “I’m only following every lead I can find. I have no idea either how all this fits together. But somehow it does, and the devil is the link.”

There was a knock at the door.

Jakob Schreevogl walked the few steps to the door and opened it abruptly.

“What is it?” he asked angrily.

A small boy, about eight years old, was standing outside. Simon had seen him before. He was one of the children of Ganghofer, the baker in the Hennengasse. He stared up fearfully at the patrician.

“Are you the alderman Jakob Schreevogl?” he asked timidly.

“That’s who I am. What’s the matter? Speak quickly!” Schreevogl was about to close the door again.

“The father of Clara Schreevogl?” the boy asked.

The patrician paused. “Yes,” he whispered.

“I’m supposed to tell you that your daughter is all right.”

Schreevogl tore the door open and pulled the boy toward him.

“How do you know that?”

“I…I…am not supposed to tell you. I promised!”

The patrician grabbed the little boy by his soiled shirt collar and pulled him up to look right in his eyes.

“Did you see her? Where is she?” he screamed into his face. The boy struggled and tried to free himself from the man’s grasp.

Simon stepped closer. He held up a shining coin and rolled it back and forth between his fingers. The boy stiffened, and his eyes followed the coin as if he were hypnotized.

“Your promise should not bind you. After all, it was not a Christian oath, was it?” he asked the child in a soothing voice.

The boy shook his head. Jakob Schreevogl carefully set him down and looked expectantly between Simon and the boy.

“Well,” continued Simon. “Who told you that Clara was well?”

“It…it was Sophie,” the boy whispered without taking his eyes off the coin. “The red-haired girl. She told me down by the raft landing, just before I came. I got an apple for bringing you the message.”

Simon brushed his hand across the boy’s head trying to calm him down. “You did very well. And did Sophie also tell you where Clara is now?”

The boy shook his head fearfully. “That’s all she told me. I swear by the Holy Mother of God!”

“And Sophie? Where is she now?” Jakob Schreevogl interrupted.

“She…she left again right away, over the bridge and into the woods. When I looked at her she threw a stone at me. Then I came here right away.”

Simon looked at Jakob Schreevogl from the side. “I believe he’s telling the truth,” he said. Schreevogl nodded.

When Simon tried to give the child his coin, the patrician intervened and reached into his own purse. He pulled out a shiny silver penny and gave it to the boy.

“This one is for you,” he said. “And another one just like it if you find out where Sophie or my Clara are. We’re not out to harm Sophie, you understand?”

The boy reached for the coin and closed his small fist around it.

“The…the other children say that Sophie is a witch and will soon be burned, together with the Stechlin woman,” he whispered.

“You need not believe everything the other children are saying.” Jakob Schreevogl gave him a little nudge. “Run along now. And remember, this is our secret, right?”

The boy nodded. Seconds later he disappeared around the corner with his treasure.

Jakob Schreevogl closed the door and looked at Simon. “She’s alive,” he whispered. “My Clara is alive! I must immediately tell my wife. Please excuse me.”

He rushed upstairs. Halfway up the stairs he stopped once more and looked down at Simon.

“I have much esteem for you, Fronwieser,” he said. “Now as always. Find the devil, and I shall reward you generously.” He smiled as he continued. “You’re welcome to look around my little private library. I think it contains a few books that may interest you.”

Then he quickly went upstairs into his wife’s bedroom.