The Hangman’s Daughter

EPILOGUE

One Sunday morning in July 1659, the hangman and the physician were sitting together on the bench in front of the hangman’s house. The smell of freshly baked bread drifted over to them from the house. Anna Maria Kuisl was preparing the midday meal. There would be hasenpfeffer with barley corn and turnips, her husband’s favorite dish. Out in the garden, the twins Georg and Barbara were playing with Magdalena, their big sister. She had pulled a clean bedsheet over her head and, thus disguised as a frightening river spirit, ran through the flowering meadows. Screaming and laughing the children fled from her, seeking protection from their mother in the house.

Lost in thought, Jakob Kuisl puffed on his pipe and observed this scene. He was enjoying the summer and did only what was necessary. The trash in the streets had to be swept up every week, and now and then a dead horse had to be removed, or someone needed a salve for itching and stings…Over the past two months he had earned enough that he could afford to be a bit lazy. For the execution of the remaining soldier, Christoph Holzapfel, the town had paid him ten whole guilders! The condemned soldier, who had been arrested shortly after the arrival of the Landgrave, had been broken on the wheel to the applause of the watching crowd. Outside the town the hangman had broken his arms and legs with a heavy wagon wheel and braided him on the wheel next to the scaffold. Christoph Holzapfel lived, screaming, for another two days; finally Jakob Kuisl had pity on him and strangled him with a neck iron.

The body of Andre Pirkhofer, killed on the building site, was hung in chains next to his countryman, as was the corpse of Christian Braunschweiger, whom the townspeople, even after his death, referred to as “the devil” while crossing themselves three times. His charred corpse, shrunk to the size of a child, was removed from the tunnels before the entrance was sealed off once and for all. His lips were burned off and his scalp shriveled, so that the teeth stood out, grinning. The bony left hand shone out white among all the black flesh, and people said that even from the gallows it seemed to beckon. Two weeks later, the devil’s entire body was just bone and mummified skin; nevertheless the council let it hang longer as a dreadful warning until the bones fell off one by one.

The fourth soldier, Hans Hohenleitner, was never found. Most likely the Lech had washed him down toward Augsburg, where the fish ate his corpse. But all this was of no more interest to Jakob Kuisl. Altogether the hangman of Schongau had earned more than twenty guilders in the past two months. That should be enough for some time.

Simon sipped his coffee, which Anna Maria Kuisl had kindly brewed for him. It tasted strong and bitter and drove the weariness out of his body. Last night had been strenuous. A feverish infection was going around in Schongau. It was nothing really serious, but people were demanding the new powder from the West Indies, which the young physician had been prescribing since last year. Even his father seemed to be persuaded of its efficacy.

Simon glanced over at the hangman. He had news that he did not wish to keep any longer from his friend and mentor.

“I was at the Augustins this morning,” he said, as casually as possible.

“Well?” inquired Jakob Kuisl. “What’s the young fool doing? I haven’t heard anything from him since his father’s death last month. Seems that he’s devoting himself diligently to the business, so people say.”

“He is…ill.”

“A summer fever? May God see to it that he sweats and shivers for a long time.”

Simon shook his head.

“It’s more serious. I discovered red patches on his skin, which are gradually spreading. In many places he has no feeling anymore. I believe…he has an infection. He must have caught it during his last journey to Venice.”

“Leprosy?”

The hangman was silent for a moment. Then he laughed loudly.

“Augustin a leper! Who would have thought that? Well, then, he’ll be very pleased that the leper’s house is nearly finished. First of all the half-wit sabotages the building and then he must move in himself. Say what you like: God is just, after all.”

Simon had to chuckle. But immediately his conscience started to trouble him. Georg Augustin was a bad man, a lunatic, a child murderer who had, moreover, tortured him. The scar on Simon’s thigh still hurt. But in spite of this, he would not have wished this disease on even his worst enemy. Georg Augustin’s body would slowly rot away while he was still alive.

To turn their minds to other thoughts, Simon changed the subject.

“This betrothal of Magdalena with the Steingaden hangman,” he began.

“What about it?” Kuisl grumbled.

“Are you really serious about it?”

The hangman took a puff on his pipe. It was some time before he answered.

“I turned him down. The wench is too stubborn. He doesn’t deserve that.”

A smile spread over Simon’s face. It seemed that a heavy weight had been lifted from his mind.

“Kuisl, I’m really very-”

“You be quiet!” the hangman interrupted him. “Or I might change my mind.”

Then he stood up and went to the door. Without a word he motioned to Simon to follow him.

They went through the living room, which smelled of fresh-baked bread, across to the little workroom. The hangman, as always, had to stoop to get through the low doorway. Behind him Simon entered the holy of holies. Once again he looked reverently at the massive cabinet, which reached up to the ceiling. A treasure chest, thought Simon. Full of the medical knowledge of centuries…

Immediately the young physician was overcome with the urge to open the cabinet so as to browse through the books and folios. As he moved toward it he almost stumbled over a small chest standing in the middle of the chamber. It was made of polished cherrywood, with silver fittings and a solid-looking lock, with the key still in it.

“Open it,” said the hangman. “It belongs to you.”

“But…” Simon interjected.

“Consider it as payment for all your trouble,” he said. “You helped me to rescue my daughter and also save the woman who brought my children into the world.”

Simon knelt and opened the chest. The lid sprang open with a little click.

Inside there were books. At least a dozen.

They were all new editions. Scultetus’s Wundarzneylisches Zeughaus, or Surgical Armory, the book of midwifery by the Swiss Jakob Ruf, the complete works of Ambroise Pare in a German translation, Georg Bartisch’s Augendienst, Paracelsus’s Grosse Wundarzney, bound in leather with illustrations in color…

Simon rummaged through them, turning pages. A treasure lay before him, much greater than the one they had found in the tunnels.

“Kuisl,” he stammered. “How can I ever thank you? It’s too much! That…it must have cost a fortune!”

The hangman shrugged.

“A few golden coins more or less. Old Augustin didn’t notice it.”

Simon sat up, shocked.

“You mean, you-?”

“I believe that Ferdinand Schreevogl would have wanted it like that,” said Jakob Kuisl. “What use would so much money be to the church or the old moneybags on the council? It would have taken on dust just as it did down below in that hole. Now off you go and start reading, before I regret it.”

Simon gathered the books together, shut the chest, and grinned.

“Now you can borrow a few books from me when you want to. If in return, Magdalena and I…”

“You rascal, be off with you!” The hangman gave him a gentle slap on the back of the head so that Simon almost tripped over the threshold with the chest. He ran outside and along the banks of the Lech through the tanners’ quarter, into town, over the cobblestones of the Munzstrasse, and into the narrow stinking alleys, until he arrived panting at his house.

He would have a lot of reading to do today.