The Hangman’s Daughter

CHAPTER 16

TUESDAY MAY 1, A.D. 1659 SIX O’CLOCK IN THE EVENING

From a window in the Council Chamber the court clerk Johann Lechner was looking down on the colorful scene in the market place below. He could hear the bells from the town parish church pealing the six o’clock hour. It was already dusk, and small fires were burning in braziers set up on tripods around the sides of the square. Children were dancing around them, and in front of the Ballenhaus the youngsters had erected a maypole, adorned with colored ribbons and a wreath of green boughs. A few minstrels were standing on a newly built pinewood stage still smelling of resin, tuning their fiddles and lutes. There was a whiff in the air of things boiling and frying.

Lechner’s gaze wandered over the tables that had been put out for the May Day celebration. Burghers in their holiday attire were sitting around and enjoying the bock beer provided free by burgomaster Karl Semer. There was singing and laughter, but in spite of it all, the clerk could feel no holiday mood.

That damned witch was still unconscious, and the Landgrave was expected this very evening. Johann Lechner was horrified at the thought of what would happen then. Investigations, torturing, spying, suspicions…If only the Stechlin woman had confessed, everything would have been all right. They could have had their trial and sent her to the stake. My God, she was as good as dead anyway! Death at the stake would have been a happy release for her and for the town as well!

Johann Lechner leafed through the old documents about the witch hunt of two generations ago. He had taken them down again from the archives near the council chamber. Eighty arrests, countless torturings…sixty-three women burned! The great wave of persecution had begun when the district judge had taken the matter into his hands and then finally the Duke himself had spoken. Then there was no more holding back. Lechner knew that witchcraft was a smoldering fire that would eat its way through society if not stopped in time. Now, presumably, it was too late.

The door squeaked on its hinges and he turned around. Jakob Schreevogl, his face red, was standing in the council chamber. He addressed the clerk with a trembling voice.

“Lechner, we must speak. My daughter has been found!”

The court clerk jumped up. “She’s alive?”

Jakob Schreevogl nodded.

“I’m very happy for you. Where was she found?”

“Down at the building site for the leper house,” the alderman said, still gasping for breath. “But that isn’t all…”

Then he told the court clerk what Simon had told him. After hearing just a few words, Johann Lechner had to sit down. The young patrician’s story was simply too unbelievable.

When Schreevogl had finished, Lechner shook his head.

“Even if it’s true, nobody is going to believe us,” he said. “Least of all the Landgrave, the Elector’s representative.”

“If we have the inner council behind us,” the patrician broke in, “and we plead unanimously for the release of the Stechlin woman, then the Landgrave must also agree. He can’t go above our heads. We are free burghers, established by the town laws. And the Landgrave signed the laws himself at the time.”

“But the council will never vote for us,” Johann Lechner reminded him. “Semer, Augustin, Holzhofer-they are all convinced that the midwife is guilty.”

“Unless we present them with the name of the person who really did order the murder of the children.”

The court clerk laughed.

“Forget that! If he really belongs to the inner council of the town, then he is powerful enough to keep his activities secret.”

Jakob Schreevogl buried his face in his hands and rubbed his temples.

“Then I can see no hope any more for the Stechlin woman…”

“Or you sacrifice the children,” the court clerk added, as if in passing. “Tell the Landgrave about the true origin of the witches’ signs, and perhaps he’ll let the midwife go. But the children? They’ve dabbled in witchcraft, and I don’t think the Landgrave will let them off so easily.”

There was silence for a short time.

“The midwife or your daughter. It’s your choice,” Johann Lechner said.

Then he went over to the window. From the north the call of a horn could suddenly be heard. The court clerk stuck his head out in order to hear exactly where it was coming from. He blinked.

“His Excellency, the Landgrave,” he said, turning toward the patrician, who sat as if turned to stone at the council table. “It looks as if you’ll have to make your decision quickly.”

The boys playing down by the Hof Gate were the first to see the Landgrave. The Elector’s deputy arrived by way of the Altenstadt Road traveling in a magnificent coach drawn by four horses. On each side rode six soldiers in full armor, with open helmets, pistols, and swords. The first soldier was carrying a horn, with which he announced the arrival of the Landgrave. Behind the coach came a second carriage, which was used for transporting the servants and the chests with the necessities that His Excellency required for the trip.

The gate had already been closed at this hour, but now it was quickly reopened. The horses’ hooves clattered over the cobblestones, and most of the burghers who had gathered on the market square for the feast now ran down to the gate to see the arrival of the highborn man with a mixture of admiration and skepticism. Only rarely did such distinguished gentlemen come to visit little Schongau. Previously the Landgrave had visited the town more often, but that hadn’t happened for a long time. Nowadays, any aristocrat who visited the town was a welcome spectacle and a change from the daily routine. At the same time the burghers were aware that the Landgrave and his soldiers would eat up their meager provisions. In the Great War, hordes of mercenaries had more than once descended on the town like locusts. But perhaps the Landgrave wouldn’t stay all that long.

Crowds lined the streets, through which the procession advanced slowly toward the marketplace. The people chatted and whispered and pointed to the silver-bound chests in which the Landgrave, no doubt, carried his valuable household goods. The twelve soldiers looked straight ahead. The Landgrave himself was invisible behind a red damask curtain that covered the coach door.

Once they had arrived at the marketplace, the coach stopped directly in front of the Ballenhaus. Dusk had already fallen over the town, but the birch logs were still glowing in the braziers, so that bystanders could see a form in a green doublet descending from the coach. At the Landgrave’s right dangled a dress sword. His beard was neatly trimmed, his long silky hair combed, and his high leather boots were brightly polished. He glanced briefly at the crowd, then strode toward the Ballenhaus, where the aldermen were already assembled at the entrance. Only a few of them had managed to don appropriate attire for the occasion on such short notice. Some had the corner of a shirt sticking out from under their doublet, and the coat buttons had been put in the wrong buttonholes. More than one passed his fingers through his untidy hair.

Burgomaster Karl Semer stepped forward to greet the Landgrave and offered his hand rather hesitantly.

“It is with-um-joyous anticipation that we have so long awaited your arrival, Your Excellency,” he commenced, stuttering slightly. “How nice that your arrival coincides with the May Day festival. Schongau is proud to be permitted to celebrate the beginning of summer with you, and-”

The count interrupted him with a brusque gesture and surveyed, in a rather bored way, the coarsely made tables, the maypole, the little fires, and the wooden stage. It was obvious that he had experienced more splendid feasts than this.

“Well, I am also pleased to see my Schongau once more,” he said finally. “Even if the occasion is a sad one…Anyway, has the witch confessed?”

“No, unfortunately she very cleverly fell into a swoon at the last questioning,” the court clerk Johann Lechner replied. With Jakob Schreevogl he had just emerged from the door of the Ballenhaus to join the group. “But we are quite confident that she will come to before tomorrow. Then we can proceed with the questioning.”

The count shook his head disapprovingly.

“You are no doubt aware that the use of torture in your questioning requires approval from Munich. You had no right to begin before you have it.” He waved a threatening finger, half seriously, half playfully.

“Your Excellency, we thought we could speed up the procedure by-” the court clerk began, but he was immediately interrupted by the Landgrave.

“No, you may not! First the approval. I’m not getting mixed up in arguments with the Munich court council! I’ll send a messenger as soon as I’ve seen for myself what the situation is. But tomorrow…” He looked up at the clear, starry sky. “Tomorrow I should first like to go hunting. The weather looks promising. I’ll see about the witch later.”

The count chuckled.

“She’s not going to fly away in the meantime, hey?”

Solicitously, burgomaster Semer shook his head. Johann Lechner’s face became pale. He rapidly calculated the expenses that the town would incur if the count really intended to wait for the approval from Munich. The soldiers would stay for a good month, perhaps longer…That meant board and lodging for a month, and also inquiries, suspicion, spying! And the matter would not stop with one witch.

“Your Excellency,” he began. But Count Sandizell had already turned to his soldiers.

“Unsaddle!” he commanded. “And then enjoy yourselves! We’ll join in the feast. Let us greet the summer. I can see that fires are already burning. Let us hope that here in a few weeks a much larger fire will burn, and that the devilry in this town will at last come to an end!”

He clapped his hands and looked up at the stage.

“Play up, musicians!”

The minstrels strummed nervously at a country dance. At first hesitantly, but then more confidently, the first pairs stepped out to dance. The celebrations began. Witches, witchcraft, and murder were temporarily forgotten. But Johann Lechner knew that all this would drive the town to its ruin before many days had passed.

The hangman knelt down before Martha Stechlin and changed the bandage on her forehead. The swelling had gone down. Where Georg Riegg’s stone had struck her, there was an ugly black-and-blue bruise. And the fever seemed to have gone down. Jakob Kuisl nodded, satisfied. The brew of linden flowers, juniper, and elderberries that he had given her that morning seemed to help.

“Martha, can you hear me?” he whispered and patted her cheek. She opened her eyes and looked at him vacantly. Her hands and feet were swollen like balloons from the torture. Everywhere dried blood covered her body, which was only barely concealed by a dirty woolen blanket.

“The children are…innocent,” she croaked. “I know now how it was. They…”

“Shhh,” said the hangman, laying a finger on her dry lips. “You shouldn’t talk so much, Martha. We know it too.”

The midwife looked astonished.

“You know that they had looked at the sign at my house?”

Jakob Kuisl grunted in agreement. The midwife raised herself from her reclining position.

“Sophie and Peter were always interested in my herbs. Especially the magic ones. They wanted to know everything. I showed the mandrake to Sophie once, but that’s as far as it went! I swear it to God! I know what can happen. How quickly the gossip spreads. But Sophie wouldn’t leave me alone, and then she must have had a closer look at the signs on the jars…”

“The bloodstone. I know,” the hangman interrupted her.

“But that is really quite harmless,” the midwife began to sob. “I give the red powder to women when they bleed down there, infused in wine, nothing evil in it, by God…”

“I know, Martha, I know.”

“The children drew the sign on their own bodies! And as to the murders, by the Holy Virgin Mary, I have nothing to do with them!”

Her body shook as she broke into a fit of sobbing.

“Martha,” Jakob Kuisl said, trying to calm her down. “Just listen. We know who killed the children. We do not know who gave the murderer his orders, but I’m going to find him, and then I’ll come and fetch you out of here.”

“But the pain, the fear, I can’t stand it anymore,” she sobbed. “You’ll have to hurt me again!”

The hangman shook his head.

“The Landgrave has just arrived,” he said. “He wants to wait for approval from Munich before they question you any further. That’ll take time. Till then you are safe.”

“And then?” asked Martha Stechlin.

The hangman remained silent. Almost helplessly he patted her shoulder before going out. He knew that unless a miracle occurred, the death sentence was now only a formality. Even if the mastermind could be discovered, the fate of the midwife was sealed. Martha Stechlin would burn in a few weeks at the latest, and it was he, Jakob Kuisl, who would have to lead her to the stake.

When Simon arrived at the market square, the feast was already in full swing. He had been resting at home for a few hours, and now he wanted to see Magdalena again. He gazed over the square looking for her.

Couples were dancing arm in arm around the maypole. Wine and beer were flowing from well-filled jugs. Some drunken soldiers were already staggering around the edge of the fires or chasing screaming maidens. The Landgrave was sitting at the aldermen’s table, obviously in high spirits. Johann Lechner must have just told him a funny story. The clerk knew how to keep the bigwigs in a good mood. They were all having a grand time. Even the parish priest, sitting a little to one side, sipped calmly on a half pint of red wine.

Simon looked over at the stage. The minstrels were playing a country dance that became faster and faster until the first dancers, laughing, fell to the ground. The squealing of women and the deep laughter of the men mixed with the music and the clinking of mugs to form one single sound ascending into the starry night sky.

That morning, when Simon, at the end of a long night, had climbed out of the tunnels, he had believed that nothing could ever be the same as it had been before. But he had been wrong. Life was going on, at least for a little while longer.

Jakob Schreevogl had taken Clara and also, for the time being, Sophie under his care. The council had decided not to interrogate the children until the following morning. By then Simon, in consultation with the young patrician, would have to consider what to tell the aldermen. The truth? But would that not deliver the children to a terrible fate? Children who played at witchcraft could end up at the stake as well as adults. Simon knew this from earlier trials he had heard of. Probably the Landgrave would question the children until they named the midwife as a witch. And then a lot of other witches would be added too…

“Hello, what’s going on? Would you like to dance?”

Simon wheeled around, startled out of his gloomy thoughts. Before him stood Magdalena, laughing. She had a bandage around her head but otherwise looked well. The physician couldn’t help smiling. It was only this morning that the hangman’s daughter had fled from two soldiers. Two nights of horror and unconsciousness lay behind her, and nevertheless she was inviting him to dance. She seemed to be indestructible. Just like her father, thought Simon.

“Magdalena, you should go and rest,” he began. “In any case, the people…” He pointed to the tables, where the first maidservants were beginning to whisper and point at them.

“Oh, the people,” Magdalena interrupted him. “What do I care about them?”

She took him by the arm and drew him onto the dance floor, which was built out in front of the stage. Closely embracing, they danced to the music of a slow folk dance. Simon felt the other pairs draw away from them, but he didn’t care. He looked into Magdalena’s dark eyes and felt himself sinking into them. Everything around merged into a sea of lights with them in the very middle. Worries and dark thoughts were far away. He could only see her smiling eyes, and slowly his lips approached hers.

Suddenly a shape appeared in the corner of his eye. It was his father hurrying toward him. Bonifaz Fronwieser gripped his son hard by the shoulder and turned him around to face him.

“How dare you?” he hissed. “Can’t you see how the people are beginning to talk? The physician with the hangman’s wench! What a joke!”

Simon tore himself free.

“Father, I must ask you…” he tried to calm him down.

“No!” snapped his father and pulled him a little away from the dance floor, without even casting a single glance at Magdalena. “I order you…”

Suddenly Simon felt himself engulfed in a black cloud. The severe trials of the past few days, the deadly fear, the worry for Magdalena. He pushed his father violently away from him, causing the astonished man to gasp. At this very moment the music stopped, so that his words were clearly audible to all the bystanders.

“You’ve no right to give me orders! Not you!” he panted, still out of breath from dancing. “What are you anyway? A dubious little field surgeon, an opportunistic yes-man! Purging and piss smelling, that’s all you can do!”

The slap hit him hard on his cheek. His father stood before him, white as a sheet, his hand still raised. Simon felt that he had gone too far. But before he could apologize, Bonifaz Fronwieser had turned away and disappeared into the darkness.

“Father!” he called after him. But the musicians struck up again, and the couples resumed their dancing. Simon looked at Magdalena, who shook her head.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” she said. “He’s your father, after all. My father would have knocked your head off for that.”

“Has everyone here something against me?” Simon mumbled. The brief moment of happiness between himself and Magdalena had evaporated. He turned away and left her standing on the dancing floor. He needed a mug of bock beer.

On his way across to where the beer barrel was set up on its trestles he passed the aldermen’s table. There sat the patricians in cozy familiarity: Semer, Holzhofer, Augustin, and Puchner. The Landgrave had gone over to his soldiers to see if everything was all right. At last the patricians had the opportunity to talk about the coming days and weeks. They anxiously put their heads together and the clerk Johann Lechner sat firm as a rock between them lost in his own thoughts.

Simon stopped and from his position in the shadows observed the scene in front of him.

It reminded him of something.

The four patricians. The clerk. The table…

His head was hot from dancing. The efforts of the previous night still ached in his bones. He had already drunk two mugs of beer at home. He needed a moment before it came to him.

But then he felt as if the last stone of the mosaic had been put into its place.

They had simply not listened properly.

Hesitantly, Simon turned away. The parish priest was sitting alone at a table a little farther back and was observing the dancers. His expression alternated between disapproval and relaxation. As a representative of the church he could not of course approve of this wild, heathen activity. But he was obviously enjoying the warm night, the flickering flames, and the rhythm of the music. Simon went over and sat down beside him, not waiting for an invitation. The priest looked at him in surprise.

“My son, you’re not coming to confession now, are you?” he asked. “Although…as I have just seen, you certainly seem to be in dire need of it.”

Simon shook his head.

“No, Father,” he said. “I need some information. I think I just didn’t listen properly the last time.”

After a short conversation Simon stood up again and returned thoughtfully to the dancers. On the way there he had to pass the aldermen’s table once more. Abruptly he stopped.

One seat was now empty.

Without stopping to think, he hurried to a house at the edge of the marketplace. Behind him the sounds of laughter and music faded. He had heard enough.

Now he must act.

The man sat in a heavy armchair upholstered in velvet and looked out the window. On the table in front of him was a bowl full of walnuts and a jug of water. He could no longer tolerate any other kind of food. It was difficult for him to breathe, and stabs of pain went through his abdomen. He could hear the sounds of the revelry outside, and there was a gap in the drawn curtains through which he could have observed the activity below. But his eyes were going bad, and the fires and dancers all blurred into a misty picture without contours. His hearing, however, was excellent, and so he was aware of footsteps behind him, even when the intruder was endeavoring to enter the room unnoticed.

“I’ve been expecting you, Simon Fronwieser,” he said, without turning around. “You are a nosy little know-it-all. I was against you and your father obtaining burghers’ rights back then, and I have since been proved right. You bring nothing but unrest to our town.”

“Unrest?” Simon no longer took the trouble to be quiet. With quick steps he hurried to the table, while he continued to speak. “Who has brought unrest to this town, then? Who ordered the soldiers to kill small children who had seen too much? Who caused the Stadel to be burned? Who saw to it that fear and hate returned to Schongau and that witches should burn at the stake again?”

He had worked himself up into a rage. With one more step he reached the chair and spun it round toward him. He looked into the blind eyes of the old man, who just shook his head as if he pitied him.

“Simon, Simon,” said Matthias Augustin. “You still haven’t understood. All this happened only because you and that wretched hangman interfered. Believe me, I don’t wish to see any more witches burned. I saw too many people burned at the stake when I was a child. I only wanted the treasure. It belonged to me. Everything else that happened is the responsibility of you two.”

“The treasure, that damned treasure,” Simon muttered as he let himself fall into the chair next to the old man. He was tired, simply tired out. He spoke on, almost as if in a trance.

“The parish priest gave me the decisive clue in the church, but I didn’t understand him correctly. He knew that you were the last one to speak to old Schreevogl before he died. And he told me that you and he were friends.” Simon shook his head before he went on. “When I went to him for confession at that time, I asked him if anyone else had recently shown any interest in the site,” he said. “Until today he had forgotten that you had indeed asked him about it shortly after old Schreevogl’s death. It wasn’t until today, at the May feast, that he suddenly remembered.”

The gray-headed patrician bit his bloodless lip.

“The old fool. I had offered him a lot of money, but no, he just had to build that damned leper house…But the property should have been mine, mine alone! Ferdinand should have left the site to me. It was the least that I expected of the old miser! The very least!”

He took a walnut from the table and cracked it with a practiced hand. Fragments of shell scattered over the tabletop.

“Ferdinand and I had known each other since our childhood. We went to grammar school together, as little boys we played marbles together, and later we had the same girlfriends. He was like a brother…”

“The painting in the council chamber shows you both in the middle of the patricians. A picture of trust and unity,” Simon interrupted him. “I had forgotten about it until I saw you this evening at the table with the other aldermen. In the painting you are holding a paper in your hands. Today I asked myself, what was on it?”

Matthias Augustin’s eyes turned to the light of the flames visible through the open window. He seemed to be looking into the far distance.

“Ferdinand and I were both burgomasters at that time. He needed money, desperately. His stovemaking business was nearly bankrupt. I lent him the money, a considerable sum. The paper in the painting is the receipt. The artist thought I should, as burgomaster, hold a paper in my hand. So I took the receipt, without the others noticing what it was. An eternal witness to Ferdinand’s debt…” The old man laughed.

“And where is the receipt now?” asked Simon.

Matthias Augustin shrugged.

“I burned it. At that time we were both in love with the same woman, Elisabeth, a redheaded angel of a girl. A bit simple perhaps, but of unsurpassable beauty. Ferdinand promised me that he would have nothing more to do with her, and in return I burned the receipt. Then I married this woman. A mistake…”

He shook his head, regretfully. “She bore me a useless, stupid brat and then died during childbirth.”

“Your son, Georg,” Simon interjected.

Matthias Augustin nodded curtly. Then he went on, while his thin gouty fingers twitched.

“The treasure is mine by right! Ferdinand told me about it on his deathbed, and that he had hidden it somewhere on the building site. He told me I would never be able to find it. He wanted to have his revenge. Because of Elisabeth!”

Simon walked around the table. Thoughts rushed through his head in confusion, then came together again in a new pattern. Suddenly it all made sense. He remained standing and pointed to Matthias Augustin.

“You yourself stole the sketch of the deed of gift from the town archives,” he cried. “Fool that I was! I thought that only Lechner or one of the four burgomasters would have known about the hiding place behind the tile. But you?”

The old man chuckled.

“Ferdinand had that hiding place made when he built the stove. He told me about it. A tile with a picture of a court clerk with documents coming out of his arse! He was always well-known for his coarse sense of humor.”

“But if you had the sketch-” asked Simon.

“I couldn’t make sense of it,” Augustin interrupted him. “I turned it this way and that, but I couldn’t see anything there about the damned hiding place!”

“So then you had the work on the building site disrupted so that you could have more time to look for it,” reasoned Simon. “And then the children overheard you, and you simply had them killed because of the dangerous knowledge they had. Did you know that they hadn’t recognized the instigator? All these murders were unnecessary.”

Angrily, Matthias Augustin cracked another nut.

“That was Georg, the simpleton. He got his brains from his mother, not from me. He was supposed to give the soldiers money only for the destruction of the building site. But even for that he was too stupid! He was careless and let himself be overheard, then gave the order to kill the children. He didn’t seem to realize the trouble that sort of thing would cause!”

The patrician seemed to have forgotten Simon. He continued his rant, without paying any attention to the physician.

“I told him to stop! He was to tell that devil that it was enough. What great secrets could the children have revealed? And who would have believed them anyway? But the killing went on. And now the children are dead, the Landgrave is sniffing around looking for witches in the town, and in spite of all that we still haven’t got the treasure! An absolute disaster! I should have left Georg in Munich. He has ruined everything!”

“But why do you worry about the treasure?” asked Simon incredulously. “You’re rich enough. Why risk so much for a few coins?”

The old man suddenly pressed his hands to his stomach and bent forward. A wave of pain seemed to pass through him before he could speak further.

“You…don’t understand,” he panted. “My body is a lump of rotten flesh. I’m rotting away while I’m still alive. The worms will be eating me soon. But that…is…not important.”

Once again he had to stop briefly and let the pain pass over him. Then the attack seemed to be over.

“What counts is the family, our reputation,” he said. “The Augsburg wagoners have almost driven me to ruin. Damned pack of Swabians! Before long, our house will go to the dogs. We need this money! My name is still good enough to obtain credit, but soon even that will be of no use. I need…this treasure.”

His voice turned into a soft rattle, while his fingers grasped the edge of the table convulsively. The colic pains returned. With increasing horror, Simon saw the old man twitch, jerk his head back and forth, and roll his blind eyes. Saliva drooled from the corner of his mouth. The pain must have been beyond imagining. Perhaps an obstruction in the gut, the physician thought, perhaps a growth that had spread over the whole abdomen. Matthias Augustin would not live much longer.

At this moment Simon noticed a movement out of the corner of his eye. As he started to turn around a mighty blow hit him on the side of the head. He sank to the floor, and as he fell he saw young Georg Augustin standing there, his hand grasping a heavy iron candlestick raised for a second blow.

“No, Georg!” his father gasped from behind. “You’ll only make things much worse!” Then a black wave swept over Simon-he didn’t know if the candlestick had hit him again or if he had lost consciousness from the first blow.

When he came to, he felt a tightness around his chest, hands, and feet. His head throbbed with pain, and he could not open his right eye. Presumably blood had run into it and clotted. He was sitting on the chair where he had been before, but he could no longer move. He looked down and saw that he was tied to it with a curtain cord from top to bottom. Simon wanted to call out, but only succeeded in uttering a choking sound. A gag had been stuffed into his mouth.

In front of him the grinning face of Georg Augustin appeared. With his sword he poked at the physician’s doublet, and some of the copper buttons popped off. Simon cursed inwardly. When he saw that Matthias Augustin had disappeared from the May feast, he had not given a thought to this son of his but hurried directly to the Augustins’ house. The young patrician must have secretly followed him, and now his perfumed and beautifully barbered head of hair was directly in front of Simon’s face, looking him straight in the eye.

“That was a mistake,” he hissed. “A damned bad mistake, you quack! You should have kept your big mouth shut and screwed your hangman’s wench. It’s such a lovely feast out there. But, no, you have to make trouble…”

He stroked Simon’s chin with his sword. In the background the physician could hear old Augustin groaning. When he turned his head in that direction he saw the old man lying on the floor near the table. He dug his fingers into the cherrywood floorboards; his whole body twitched with cramps. Georg gave him only a brief glance before he turned again to Simon.

“My father will not disturb us any further,” he said, casually. “I have gotten to know these fits. The pain increases until it is intolerable, but then it stops. And when it stops, he’s just an empty carcass, much too exhausted to do anything. He’ll fall asleep, and when he wakes up again, there’ll be nothing left of you.”

Once again the patrician moved his sword slowly over Simon’s throat. Simon tried to cry out, but the gag only slipped down farther into his throat. He had a choking fit. Only with much trouble could he calm himself.

“You know,” whispered young Augustin. He bent down to Simon again, so that the smell of his expensive perfume wafted over him. “At first I cursed when I saw you going to see my father. I thought that would be the end. But now, well…other possibilities have arisen.”

He stepped to the fireplace, where a little fire was burning, and reached for the poker. Its tip was glowing red. He held it close to Simon’s cheek so that the physician could feel the heat. Grinning smugly, he continued.

“When we were watching the hangman doing his torturing down there in the keep, I thought I might enjoy this sort of thing. The screams, the smoke rising from human flesh, the pleading looks…Well, the witch wasn’t quite to my liking. You, on the other hand…

With a swift movement he lowered the poker and pressed it firmly to Simon’s breeches. The heat ate its way through the fabric and hissed as it touched his thigh. Simon’s eyes filled with tears. He gave a long howl but the gag wouldn’t let out more than a muffled groan. Helplessly he tossed about on the chair. After a while Augustin removed the poker and looked in his eyes, smiling coldly.

“Your beautiful breeches…Or are these the latest fashion now, these-what do you call them-rhinegraves? It’s a pity. You’re a loudmouth, that’s true, but at least you have a feeling for style. I can’t imagine how a nobody like you, a vagrant field surgeon, would have breeches like these. But all joking aside…”

He took the other armchair and sat astride it, the back facing Simon.

“That just now was only a foretaste of the pain that you are going to feel. Unless…” He pointed the poker at Simon’s breast. “Unless you tell me where the treasure is. Spit it out now. Sooner or later you’re going to have to tell me.”

Simon shook his head wildly. Even if he had wanted to, he didn’t know. He had an idea that the hangman had found the treasure. In the course of the day Kuisl had given out one or two hints. But he wasn’t sure about it.

Georg Augustin interpreted his shake of the head as a refusal. Disappointed, he stood up and went back to the fireplace.

“It’s a pity,” he said. Then we’ll have to take it out on your fine doublet. Who is your tailor, quack? Not anyone from Schongau, surely.”

The young patrician held the poker in the fire and waited until it was red-hot again. Meanwhile Simon heard music and laughter from outside. The festival was only a few steps away, but the only thing observant burghers might see from outside would be a brightly lit window and a man sitting on a chair with his back to it. It seemed certain that Georg Augustin would not be disturbed. The man-and maidservants were all down in the market place and had presumably been given permission to stay out until morning. It would probably be after midnight before anyone entered the patrician’s house again.

Behind Simon, old Augustin squirmed on the floor, groaning quietly. The pain seemed to be diminishing. But he was in no position to intervene. Simon prayed that the old man would not pass out. Matthias Augustin was the only hope he had. Perhaps he might succeed in bringing his crazy son to his senses. Simon had already established that Georg was not quite normal.

“My father has always considered me to be a ne’er-do-well,” said the young patrician, turning the poker round in the fire. His eyes looked almost dreamily into the fire. “He’s never believed in me. Sent me away to Munich…But that was my idea with the building site. I hired the soldiers in Semer’s inn. I gave the burgomaster a lot of money to keep quiet about it. He let me in through the back door, the old fool. He thought I needed the soldiers to destroy the leper house because it was bad for business. As if I cared a damn about trade!”

He laughed aloud. Then he came toward Simon with the red-hot iron.

“And now my father will realize that I’m not as useless as he’s always thought me to be. When I’ve finished with you, your little hangman’s bitch won’t recognize you anymore. Perhaps I’ll have a go at her myself, the little tart.”

“Georg…be careful…”

Old Augustin had managed to heave himself upright. He propped himself up, panting, on the table and appeared to be wanting to say something. But pain overcame him, and he collapsed again.

“You have nothing more to say to me, Father,” whispered Georg Augustin as he moved nearer to Simon. “It’ll all be over in a couple of weeks. Then I shall be sitting here and managing the business. You’ll be rotting in your grave, but our house and our name will continue to exist. I shall buy a few new wagons with the money and some strong horses, and then we’ll put those Augsburgers in their place!”

Desperately, the old man gesticulated toward the door behind his son.

“Georg, behind you…”

The young patrician, at first surprised and then obviously shocked, looked at his father, who was pointing his spindly fingers at the entrance. When he finally turned around, it was too late.

The hangman flew at him like an avenging fury, and with one single blow knocked Georg Augustin to the floor. The glowing poker flew into a corner of the chamber, landing with a clatter. Dazed, Georg Augustin looked up at the big man above him, who now bent down and pulled him up with both hands.

“You leave torture to me, you fop,” said the hangman. Then he gave the patrician such a head butt with his hard skull that he sank lifeless into the chair. Blood ran from his nose. He keeled over forward, fell, and lay unconscious on the floor.

The hangman paid no further attention to Georg Augustin and hurried to Simon, who was rocking back and forth on his chair and quickly pulled the gag from his mouth.

“Kuisl!” panted the physician. “Heaven has sent you. How did you know?”

“I was at the feast to cool my Magdalena down a bit,” the hangman interrupted him, growling. “Thought I’d catch the two of you flirting. Instead I heard you’d had a tiff. You’re lucky she still likes you and saw you going into Augustin’s place. She told me where you were. When you didn’t come out, I went after you.”

The hangman pointed to the tear in Simon’s hose, under which burned skin, red-black, was showing.

“What’s that all about?”

Simon looked down. When he saw the wound again the pain returned.

“The swine got me with the poker. He was going to burn me alive.”

“Now at least you know what’ll happen to the Stechlin woman,” Kuisl growled. “What’s the matter with him down there?” He pointed to old Augustin, who had meanwhile recovered and sat in his chair, his eyes full of hate.

“He’s the mastermind we’ve been looking for so long,” said Simon, while he bound up his wound with a strip of cloth as best he could. At the same time he told the hangman what had happened.

“The honorable Matthias Augustin,” Jakob Kuisl finally growled when Simon had finished his story, looking at the old man. “You can’t have enough of executions at the stake. Didn’t my grandfather do enough of them for you? Haven’t you heard enough women screaming?”

“As God is my witness, I wanted no such thing,” said Matthias Augustin. “All I wanted was the money.”

“Your damned money,” said the hangman. “It’s blood money. I want none of it. Take it-you can eat it as far as I’m concerned!”

He reached under his coat and drew out a small dirty linen bag. With disgust he threw it onto the table, where it burst open. Gold and silver coins poured over the tabletop and rolled jingling to the floor.

The old man looked on, his mouth wide open. Then he leaned over the table and grabbed the coins.

“My treasure! My money!” he panted. “I shall die with dignity. My house will live on!” He began to count the coins.

“A pity, really, all that money for a moneybags like you,” grunted Jakob Kuisl. “I’m wondering if I should take it away from you again.”

Fearfully Matthias Augustin looked across at him. He stopped counting, his fingers trembled.

“You wouldn’t dare, hangman,” he hissed.

“And why not?” said Kuisl. “Nobody would notice anything. Or are you going to tell the council that I took Ferdinand Schreevogl’s treasure away from you? Money that actually belongs to the church and you have unlawfully embezzled?”

Matthias Augustin looked at him with suspicion.

“What do you want, hangman?” he asked. “You’re not interested in the money. What then?”

Jakob Kuisl lunged over the table with his massive body until his face was directly in front of the old man’s toothless mouth.

“Can’t you guess?” he mumbled. “I want you to persuade the council and the Landgrave that there is no witch. That it was all a children’s game with elderberry juice and magic rhymes. So that the midwife will be freed and this persecution will be over. Help me do this, and you can have your goddamned money.”

Matthias Augustin shook his head and laughed.

“Even if I wanted to do that, who would believe me? There were deaths, the Stadel burned down, the soldiers at the building site…”

“The destruction at the building site was an act of vandalism by some burghers who didn’t want a leper house there. A trifle…” Simon interjected, when he had understood what the hangman was leading up to. “The Augsburgers started the Stadel fire,” he hastened to add. “But so as not to upset neighborly relations, there will be no further consequences. And the dead children…”

“Peter Grimmer fell into the river, an accident, as the physician here can confirm,” he continued in measured tones. “And the others? Well now, the war hasn’t been over all that long. The region is swarming with robbers and highwaymen. In any case, who’s going to bother with a couple of orphans when he can save the town with a lie?”

“Save…the town?” asked Matthias Augustin, astonished.

“Well,” Simon added, “if you don’t present the Landgrave with a good story, he’ll hunt down more witches and keep on until half the women in Schongau are burned at the stake. Remember the witch trials in your childhood, when dozens of women were burned. The council will support you and swallow a few small lies if you see to it that the past does not repeat itself. You alone have enough influence to persuade the aldermen and the Landgrave. Use it! I’m sure you know all the mean little secrets that each of them has, which you can use to persuade them if necessary.”

Matthias Augustin shook his head.

“Your plan won’t work. Too much has happened…”

“Think of the money,” the hangman interrupted him. “The money and your reputation. If we tell the people out there what kind of villains you and your son are, probably nobody will believe us. We ourselves know that we lack proof. But who knows? Somewhere something will stick…I know the people. They gossip, and even the fine people come to me from time to time for a love potion or a salve for warts, and so people start to talk…”

“Stop, just stop it!” Matthias Augustin cried. “You have persuaded me. I will do my utmost. But I can’t promise you anything.”

“We can’t promise anything either,” said the hangman, deftly sweeping up the money from the table into his big coat. The old man tried to protest, but a glance from the hangman made him fall silent.

“Come to my house in two days, after the big council meeting,” said Jakob Kuisl. “I’m quite sure your son will be needing a jar of arnica.” He looked down at Georg Augustin almost sympathetically as he lay huddled upon the floor, still unconscious. A small pool of dried blood surrounded his black locks. Then the hangman turned to the father again.

“Perhaps I can also find an elixir in my closet that will reduce your pain. Believe me, we shabby barbers and army surgeons know one or two mysteries that the university doctors still haven’t heard of.”

He went to the door and waved his goodbye with the bag. “If the council gets it right, this bag will change its owner. If not, I’ll throw it in the Lech. It’s up to you.”

Simon followed him out. Before he shut the door, he could hear the old man groaning once more. The cramps had started again.

The council meeting two days later was one of the strangest ever to take place in Schongau. Matthias Augustin had used the whole of the previous day to put the squeeze on individual members of the inner council. He had found something against every one of them. With threats, flattery, and persuasion he was able to bring every one of them over to his side. When he finally convinced the court clerk Johann Lechner, there was nothing more in the way of the final plan.

When the Landgrave appeared at the council meeting in the morning, he was confronted by a unanimous group of enlightened burghers who considered the slightest suspicion of witchcraft as belonging in the realm of legend. The investigations conducted by the council had determined without doubt that the witches’ signs were nothing but a children’s game, the fire at the Stadel was an act of revenge by the depraved Augsburg thugs, and the murdered children the victims of shady elements hiding in the forests around Schongau. All of it no doubt very sad, but no cause for mass hysteria.

In addition, by a stroke of luck, the former mercenary soldier and robber Christoph Holzapfel was arrested by the Landgrave’s men on the morning of the third of May. Magdalena, the hangman’s daughter, identified him immediately as her abductor, and by the evening the wicked soldier had confessed, in the keep, to having murdered three little children from Schongau out of pure malice.

Remarkably, no torture was necessary to obtain this confession. But the hangman must have shown him the instruments during the short time that he was alone with the abductor of his daughter. In any case, the murderer was afterward prepared to make a written confession, which he signed with his left hand. The right hand hung down like a damp red rag and seemed to be only held together by skin and sinew.

The Landgrave made a few lame attempts to have the Stechlin woman tried for witchcraft after all. But as she had not confessed up to then, he would have had to apply to Munich for permission to continue the torture. The four burgomasters and the court clerk made it clear to him that he could not rely on their support.

The final touch was supplied by old Matthias Augustin, who described in lively detail before the whole council the horrors of the last great witchcraft trial of 1589. Even the Landgrave did not want to do anything to bring that about again.

And so at noon on May 4, 1659, the entourage of the Landgrave Count Wolf Dietrich von Sandizell set out again for his estate at Thierhaupten, from there to direct the destinies of Schongau at a distance. As the soldiers in their shining breast-plates rode through the town gates, the burghers waved a long farewell to their lord. Noisy children and barking dogs accompanied the carriage as far as Altenstadt. The burghers all agreed it had been nice to see such important people close up. It was even nicer to see them ride away.

The hangman went to the keep and had the door unlocked by the bailiffs. Martha Stechlin lay sleeping among damp straw and her own foul-smelling excrement. Her breathing was regular, and the swelling on her forehead had gone down. Jakob Kuisl bent down to her and patted her cheek. A smile came to his face. He remembered how this woman had stood by his side at the birth of his children-the blood, the screaming, and the tears. Strange, he thought. People fight with tooth and nail when they come into the world, and when they have to go they fight too.

Martha Stechlin opened her eyes. It took some time before she found her way out of her dreams back into the prison.

“What is it, Kuisl?” she asked, not yet fully conscious. “Will it go on? Have you come to hurt me again?”

The hangman smiled and shook his head.

“No, Martha. We’re going home.”

“Home?”

The midwife sat up. She blinked, as if she wanted to see if she wasn’t still dreaming. Jakob Kuisl nodded.

“Home. Magdalena has been tidying up a bit at your house, and young Schreevogl has contributed heaps of money. For a new bed, pots and pans, whatever you need. It’ll do for the beginning. Come, I’ll help you up.”

“But why?”

“Don’t ask now. Go home. I’ll tell you about it later.”

He grasped her under the arms and pulled her to her feet, which were still swollen. Martha Stechlin limped along at his side toward the open door. Sunlight flowed in from outside. It was the morning of May fifth, a warm day. The birds were twittering, and from the town they could hear the cries of the maids and housewives haggling in the marketplace. From the fields the scents of summer and flowers wafted over to them, and if you closed your eyes you could even hear the murmuring of the Lech. The midwife stood in the doorway and let the sun shine on her face.

“Home,” she whispered.

Jakob Kuisl wanted to support her by taking her under her arms, but she shook her head and pulled away. Alone she limped along the alley toward her little house. At the next bend in the road, she disappeared.

“The hangman, a friend of humanity-who would have thought it?”

The voice came from another direction. Jakob Kuisl looked around and saw the court clerk strolling toward him. He was wearing his dress coat, the brim of his hat was turned up jauntily, and in his right hand he held a walking stick. The hangman nodded a wordless greeting, then he turned to go on.

“Would you care to come for a little walk, Kuisl?” Johann Lechner asked. “The sun is smiling, and I think we should have a good talk. What’s your yearly salary, actually? Ten gulden? Twelve? I find you are underpaid.”

“Don’t worry, I’ve earned a lot this year,” the hangman growled without looking up. He filled his pipe calmly. The inside of the bowl seemed to him to be of more interest than the man standing in front of him. Johann Lechner remained standing and played with his stick. There was a long silence.

“You knew it, didn’t you?” Jakob Kuisl asked at last. “You knew it all the time “

“I always had to think of the interests of the town,” said Lechner. “Nothing else. That’s all that counts. It seemed to me to be simpler that way.”

“Simpler!”

The court clerk fiddled with his stick. It looked as if he was searching for notches in the handle.

“I knew that old Schreevogl owed a lot of money to Matthias Augustin. And it was clear to me that as a respected businessman he must have had more money than was mentioned in his will,” he said, blinking in the sunlight. “And I knew about the old man’s eccentric sense of humor. So when the sketch of the building site disappeared from the archives, it was clear that someone was very interested in the site. First I suspected young Schreevogl, but he had no access to the archives…Finally I realized that Ferdinand Schreevogl had certainly told his friend Augustin about the hiding place behind the oven tile. From then on it was all clear. Well, I’m pleased that everything has turned out for the best.”

“You’ve covered up for Augustin,” Jakob Kuisl grumbled as he drew on his pipe.

“As I said already, for the good of the town. I couldn’t understand that business with the mark. Anyway…who would have believed me? The Augustins are a powerful family in Schongau. It seemed that the death of the midwife would resolve all the problems at once.”

He smiled at Kuisl.

“Wouldn’t you really like to come for a little walk?”

The hangman shook his head silently.

“Well, then,” said the clerk. “A good day to you, and God’s blessing.”

Swinging his stick he disappeared in the direction of the Lech Gate. Burghers who saw him greeted him courteously, raising their hats. Before he disappeared into a narrow street, Jakob Kuisl thought he saw Lechner raise his stick once again as if he wanted to send him a distant greeting.

The hangman spat. Suddenly his pipe didn’t taste good anymore.