The Hangman’s Daughter

CHAPTER 4

WEDNESDAY APRIL 25, A.D. 1659 NINE O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING

Jakob Kuisl walked through the narrow alley that led southward alongside the town wall. The houses here were freshly plastered; the tiled roofs shone red in the morning sun. The first narcissi and daffodils were blooming in the gardens. The area around the ducal castle, known as the Hof Gate quarter, was considered to be a better part of the town. It was here that the craftsmen who had been successful and had become wealthy settled. The hangman’s path led him past quacking ducks and clucking chickens, which fluttered away in the alley before him. A joiner with a plane, a hammer, and a chisel sat on the bench outside his workshop smoothing the top of a table. As the executioner passed him, he turned his head away. One didn’t greet the hangman; it was thought to be unlucky.

At last Jakob Kuisl reached the end of the alley. At its farthest end, directly at the city wall, lay the keep, a hulking three-story tower with a flat roof and battlements, built with massive blocks of stone. For centuries the building had served as a dungeon and torture chamber.

The city jailer was leaning against the iron-hinged door to catch the spring sun on his face. From his belt, next to the finger-long keys, dangled a cudgel. Other weapons were not needed. After all, the suspect was in irons. The jailer had protected himself against possible curses with a small wooden crucifix and an amulet of the Blessed Virgin, both hanging from a leather thong around his neck.

“I bid you a good morning, Andreas!” called Jakob Kuisl. “How are the children? Is little Anna well again?”

“They’re all well, thank you, Master Jakob. The medicine helped a good deal.”

The jailer looked around furtively in all directions to see if anybody had seen him talking to the hangman. The man with the big sword was shunned, but it was to him that people came if they were plagued with gout or a finger was broken. Or when one’s little daughter, as was the case with jailer Andreas, was suffering badly from whooping cough. It was the simpler people who went to the executioner rather than to the barber or the physician. Mostly they came out better than when they went in. Anyway, it was cheaper.

“What do you think? Can you let me talk to the Stechlin woman alone?” Kuisl filled his pipe and offered the jailer some of his tobacco. Furtively Andreas stuffed the gift into the bag at his belt.

“I don’t know about that. Lechner has forbidden it. I’m supposed to be present all the time.”

“Say, didn’t Stechlin bring your Anna into the world? And your Thomas?”

“Well, yes…”

“You see, she brought my children into the world too. D’you really believe that she’s a witch?”

“No, not really. But the others…”

“The others, the others…Think for yourself, Andreas! And now let me in. And stop by at my house tomorrow; the cough mixture for your little girl is ready. If I’m not there, you can just take it. It’s on the table in the kitchen.”

With these words he stretched out his hand. The jailer gave him the key, and the hangman entered the keep.

There were two cells in the back part of the chamber. In the one on the left Martha Stechlin lay motionless on a bundle of dirty straw. It reeked powerfully of urine and rotten cabbage. Through a small barred window light fell into the front room, from which a stairway led down into the torture chamber. Jakob Kuisl knew it well. Down there were all the things the hangman needed for the painful questioning.

At first he would only show the instruments to the Stechlin woman-the red-hot pincers and the rusty thumbscrews with which the agony could be intensified one turn at a time. He would have to explain to her what it was like to be slowly stretched by hundredweights of stone until the bones cracked and finally sprang out of their sockets. Often it was sufficient just to show the instruments to break the victim’s spirit. But with Martha Stechlin the hangman was not so sure.

The midwife seemed to be asleep. When Jakob Kuisl stepped up to the grill, she looked up, blinking. There was a clinking sound. Her hands were connected by rusty chains to rings in the walls. Martha Stechlin tried to smile.

“They’ve chained me up like a mad dog.” She showed him the chains. “And the grub is just what you would give to one.”

Kuisl grinned. “It can’t be worse than in your house.”

Martha Stechlin’s expression darkened. “What’s it look like there? They smashed everything up, didn’t they?”

“I’ll go there and have another look. But at the moment you have a much greater problem. They think you did it. Tomorrow I’ll come with the court clerk and the burgomaster to show you the instruments.”

“Tomorrow-so soon?”

He nodded. Then he regarded the midwife intensely.

“Martha, tell me honestly, did you do it?”

“In the name of the Holy Virgin Mary, no! I could never do anything like that to the boy!”

“But was he with you? In the night before his death too?”

The midwife was freezing. She was wearing only the thin linen shirt in which she had fled from Grimmer and his men. Her whole body was shivering. Jakob Kuisl handed her his long coat, full of holes, and without a word she took it through the grill and put it round her shoulders. Not until then did she begin to speak.

“It wasn’t only Peter who was with me. There were some of the others as well. They miss their mothers, that’s it.”

“Which others?”

“Well, the orphans, you know-Sophie, Clara, Anton, Johannes…whatever they’re all called. They visited me, sometimes several times a week. They played in my garden, and I made some porridge for them. They haven’t anybody else anymore.”

Jakob Kuisl remembered. He, too, had occasionally seen children in the midwife’s garden, but he had never realized that they were almost all orphans.

The hangman knew the children from seeing them in the streets. They often stood together and were avoided by the others. Several times he had intervened when other children had banded together to attack the orphans and beat them. It seemed almost as if they had some sort of sign on their foreheads that led the others to choose them again and again as victims of aggression. For a moment, his mind went back to his own childhood. He was a dirty, dishonorable hangman’s son, but at least he had parents-a blessing that meanwhile fewer and fewer children enjoyed. The Great War had taken the lives of many fathers and mothers. The city put such poor, orphaned souls under the care of a guardian. They were often citizens from the city administration, but they were sometimes master craftsmen, who also took over the possessions of the dead parents as part of the bargain. In these families, usually numerous, these children were the last link in a long chain. Barely tolerated, pushed about, rarely loved. One more mouth to feed because the money was needed. Jakob Kuisl could well understand why these children had seen something like a mother in the affectionate Martha Stechlin.

“When was the last time they were with you?” he asked the midwife.

“The day before yesterday.”

“So then, the day before the night of the murder. Was Peter also with them?”

“Yes, of course. He was such a polite boy…”

Tears rolled down the midwife’s blood-encrusted face. “He didn’t have a mother anymore. I was with her in her last hours myself. They always wanted to know everything, Peter and Sophie. What I did as a midwife and what herbs I used. They watched closely when I pulverized them in the mortar. Sophie said she would like to become a midwife one day.”

“How long did they stay?”

“Until shortly before dark. I sent them home then, because Klingensteiner’s wife sent for me. I stayed with her until early yesterday morning. By God, there are witnesses to that!”

The hangman shook his head. “That won’t help you. Yesterday evening I spoke with old Grimmer. Peter supposedly never returned home. Grimmer was at the inn until closing hour. When he went to wake his son the next morning, the bed was empty.”

The midwife sighed. “So I was the last one to see him alive…”

“That’s just it, Martha. It looks bad. Out there people are gossiping.”

The midwife pulled the coat tighter around her. Her lips tightened.

“When will you begin with the pincers and the thumbscrews?” she asked.

“Soon, if Lechner has anything to say about it.”

“Shall I confess?”

Jakob Kuisl hesitated. This woman had brought his children into the world. He owed her a favor. In any case, try as he might, he found it impossible to imagine that she could have inflicted wounds like that on Peter.

“No,” he said finally. “Put it off. Deny it as long as you can. I’ll treat you gently, I promise you.”

“And if that doesn’t help anymore?”

Kuisl drew on his cold pipe. Then he pointed the stem at Martha. “I’ll get the swine who did it. I promise you. Hold on until I have the bastard.”

Then he turned suddenly and made his way toward the outer door.

“Kuisl!”

The hangman stopped and looked round once more at the midwife. Her voice was a whisper, barely audible.

“There’s just one thing more. You ought to know.”

“What’s that?”

“I had a mandrake in my closet.”

“A man-! You know, the bigwigs hold that to be the devil’s stuff.”

“I know. In any case, it’s gone.”

“Gone?”

“Yes, disappeared. Since yesterday.”

“Have any other things gone missing?”

“I don’t know. I’d only just noticed it before Grimmer came with his people.”

Jakob Kuisl remained standing by the door, pensively sucking at the pipe stem.

“Strange,” he murmured. “Wasn’t it the full moon last night?”

Without waiting for an answer, he walked out and the door slammed shut with a great noise behind him. Martha Stechlin wrapped herself in the coat, lay down on the straw, and wept silently.

The hangman took the quickest way to the Stechlin house. His steps echoed through the alleys. A group of peasant women, loaded with baskets and sacks, looked up in astonishment at the huge man who hurried past them. They made the sign of the cross, then continued gossiping about the terrible death of the Grimmer child and about his father, the widower and drunkard.

As he walked along, Jakob Kuisl again thought about what the midwife had just said to him. The mandrake was the root of mandragora, a plant with yellow-green fruits, whose consumption had a numbing effect. The root itself resembled a tiny withered man, which is why it was often used for spells. Pulverized, it was an ingredient of the notorious flying salve, used by witches to anoint their broomsticks. It was supposed to flourish particularly well under the gallows and to thrive on the urine and sperm of those who had been hanged, but Jakob Kuisl had never seen one growing on the Schongau gallows hill. In fact the plant was excellent as an analgesic or for bringing about abortions. But if a mandrake was found in Martha Stechlin’s possession, that would mean a certain death sentence.

Who could have stolen the plant from the midwife? Someone who wanted to harm her?

Someone who wanted her to be suspected of witchcraft?

Perhaps the midwife had simply misplaced the forbidden root. Jakob Kuisl strode on faster. Soon he would be able to form a picture for himself.

A short time later he stood in front of the midwife’s house. When he saw the splintered window frame and the broken door, he was no longer sure that he would find anything significant there.

The hangman pushed at the door. With one final squeak it came off its hinges and fell inward.

In the room it looked as if Martha Stechlin had been experimenting with gunpowder and had blown herself up. The clay floor was strewn with broken earthenware pots, whose alchemical signs indicated their previous contents. There was a strong smell of peppermint and wormwood.

The table, chair, and bed had been smashed and their various parts scattered throughout the room. The kettle with the cold porridge had rolled into the corner, its contents making a small puddle, from which footprints led to the garden door at the back. Smeared footmarks were also to be seen in the herbal pastes and powders on the floor. It looked as if half of Schongau had paid a visit to Martha Stechlin’s house. Jakob remembered that along with Grimmer a good dozen men had stormed the midwife’s house.

When the hangman looked more closely at the footprints, he began to wonder. Between the big footprints were smaller ones, smeared but still clearly recognizable. Children’s footprints.

He looked around the room. The kettle. The broken table. The footprints. The smashed pots. Somewhere in his brain a bell was ringing, but he couldn’t say why. Something seemed familiar to him.

The hangman chewed the stem of his cold pipe. Then he went outside, deep in thought.

Simon Fronwieser sat downstairs in the living room near the fire and watched the coffee boiling. He inhaled the exotic and stimulating odor and shut his eyes. Simon loved the smell and taste of this strange powder; he was almost addicted to it. Just a year before, a merchant from Augsburg had brought a bag with the small hard beans to Schongau. He praised them as a wonderful medicine from the Orient. The Turks would drink themselves into a frenzy with coffee, and it would also lead to wonderful performances in bed. Simon was not quite sure how many of the rumors were true. He only knew that he loved coffee and after drinking it he could browse for hours in his books without getting tired.

The brown liquid was now bubbling away in the kettle. Simon took an earthenware beaker to fill it with the drink. Perhaps the effect would inspire him with more ideas about the death of the Grimmer boy. Ever since he had left the hangman’s house the previous day, he could not stop thinking about that terrible story. Who could have done such a thing? And then that sign…

The door flew open noisily, and his father entered the room. Simon knew at once that there was going to be trouble.

“You went down to see the executioner again yesterday. You showed little Grimmer’s body to the quack. Go on, don’t deny it! Hannes the tanner told me. And you were flirting around with that Magdalena too!”

Simon shut his eyes. He had indeed met Magdalena down by the river yesterday. They had gone for a walk. He had behaved like an idiot, unable to look her in the eyes, and kept throwing pebbles into the Lech the whole time. He told her everything that had come into his head since the death of Grimmer’s boy: that he didn’t believe the Stechlin woman was guilty, and that he was frightened of a new witch trial like the one seventy years before…

He had babbled on like a six-year-old, and he had really only wanted to say that he liked her. Someone must have seen them. In this blasted town you were never alone.

“Maybe I was. Why does it bother you?” Simon poured out his coffee. He avoided looking into his father’s eyes.

“Why does it bother me? Have you gone crazy!” Bonifaz Fronwieser was, like his son, of small stature, but as was the case with many small men, he could get very angry. His eyes almost popped out, the points of his already graying mustache trembled.

“I am still your father!” he screamed. “Can’t you see what you are doing? It has taken me years to build this up for us here. You could have it so good! You could become the first proper doctor in this town! And then you ruin it all by meeting this hangman’s wench and visiting her father’s house. People are talking-don’t you notice that?”

Simon looked up at the ceiling and let the sermon go over his head. By now he knew it by heart. In the war his father had made his way somehow as a minor army surgeon, where he had met Simon’s mother, a simple camp follower. Simon was seven years old when his mother died of the plague. Father and son had followed the soldiers for a few years, cauterized gunshot wounds with boiling oil and amputated limbs with the bone saw. When the war ended they had traveled through the country in search of a place to settle. Finally they had been accepted in Schongau. In the past few years, with hard work and ambition, his father had advanced to barber and then to a kind of official town doctor. But he had not studied medicine. Nevertheless, the town council tolerated him because the local barbers were incompetent, and doctors from the distant towns of Munich or Augsburg were too expensive.

Bonifaz Fronwieser had sent his son to study in Ingolstadt. But the money had run out, and Simon had to return to Schongau. Since then his father had saved every penny and looked with suspicion upon his offspring, whom he thought was a careless dandy.

“…while others fall in love with decent girls. Take Joseph, for example: he’s courting the Holzhofer girl. That’ll be a rich alliance! He’ll get on all right. But you…” His father ended the speech. Simon had not been listening for some time. He sipped his coffee and thought about Magdalena. Her black eyes, which always seemed to be smiling; the broad lips, which were moist yesterday with the red wine that she had brought to the river in a leather flask. Some drops had fallen on her bodice, so he gave her his kerchief.

“Look at me when I’m talking to you!” His father hit him with a ringing backhanded slap, so that the coffee, in a wide arc, flew through the room. With a rattle the cup fell to the floor and shattered. Simon rubbed his cheek. His father stood in front of him, slight and trembling. Coffee stains marked his doublet, which was spotted enough anyway. He knew that he had gone too far. His son was no longer twelve years old. But he was indeed his son. They had gone through so much together; he only wanted the best for him…

“I’m going to see the hangman,” whispered Simon. “If you want to stop me, you can stick your scalpel in my stomach.” Then he gathered up a few books from the table and slammed the door behind him.

“Go to Kuisl then!” shouted his father after him. “And a lot of good it may do you!”

Bonifaz Fronwieser stooped and picked up the fragments of the cup. With a loud curse he threw them through the open window out onto the street, behind his son.

Blind with anger Simon hastened through the alleys. His father was so…so…pigheaded. He could even understand the old man. It was after all about his son’s future: study, a good wife, children. But even the university had not been the right thing for Simon. Dusty old knowledge, learned by heart, still partly drawn from Greek and Roman scholars. Actually his father had never gotten much further than purges, bandaging, and bleeding. In the executioner’s house, on the other hand, a fresher wind blew, for Jakob Kuisl owned the Opus Paramirum of Paracelsus and also the Paragranum, treasures for bibliophiles, which Simon was occasionally allowed to borrow.

As he turned into the Lech Gate street, he bumped into a horde of children who were standing together in a group. From the middle of the group came a loud yammering. Simon stood on tiptoe and saw a tall, solidly built boy sitting above a girl. He was holding her down on the ground with his knees while he struck his victim again and again with his right fist. Blood flowed from the corners of the girl’s mouth, and her right eye was swollen and shut. The cluster of children accompanied every blow with shouts of encouragement. Simon pushed the jeering pack aside, grabbed the boy by the hair, and pulled him off the girl.

“Pack of cowards!” he cried. “Attacking a girl, shame on you!”

The mob retreated a few yards, but only reluctantly.

The girl on the ground sat up and wiped her hair, sticky with filth, out of her face. Her eyes looked around warily as if seeking an opening in the crowd of children through which she could escape.

The big boy drew himself up in front of Simon. He was about fifteen and half a head taller than the physician. Simon recognized him. It was Hannes, the son of Berchtholdt, the baker in the Weinstrasse.

“Don’t interfere, physician,” he threatened. “This is our business.”

“If you are knocking a little girl’s teeth out, that’s my business too,” replied Simon. “After all, I am, as you say, a physician and I must reckon up what the fun will cost you.”

“Cost me something?” Hannes scowled. He was not exactly the brightest of the group.

“I mean, if you cause the girl injury, you’ll have to pay for it. And we have enough witnesses, haven’t we?”

Hannes looked over at his comrades, puzzled. Some of them had already left the scene.

“That Sophie is a witch!” Another boy joined the discussion. “She has red hair, and moreover she was always with the Stechlin woman, just like Peter, and he’s dead now!” The others murmured in agreement.

Simon shuddered internally. It was beginning. Now, already. Soon Schongau would consist entirely of witches and people pointing their fingers at them.

“Nonsense,” he exclaimed. “If she were a witch, why would she let you beat her up? She would have flown away on her broomstick long before. Now be off with you!”

Reluctantly, the gang withdrew, but not without casting one or two threatening looks at Simon. When the boys were a stone’s throw away, he heard them shout: “He goes to bed with the hangman’s girl!”

“Perhaps she’ll put a noose around his neck!”

“Difficult to make him a head shorter, he’s short enough already!”

Simon sighed. His still fresh and tender relationship with Magdalena was no longer a secret. His father was right: people were talking.

He stooped down to help the girl up.

“Is it true that you were always at the Stechlin woman’s house with Peter?” he asked.

Sophie wiped the blood from her lips. Her long red hair was full of dirt. Simon reckoned she was about twelve years old. Under a layer of filth an intelligent face looked at him. The physician thought he remembered that she came from a tanner’s family in the Lech quarter down by the river. Her parents had died during the last outbreak of the plague, and another tanner’s family had taken her in.

The girl remained silent. Simon grabbed her shoulder firmly.

“I want to know if you were with Peter at Goodwife Stechlin’s. It’s important!” he repeated.

“Could be,” she murmured.

“Did you see Peter in the evening?”

“Goodwife Stechlin has nothing to do with it, so help me God.”

“Who, then?”

“Peter went down to the river again afterward…alone.”

“Why?”

Sophie pressed her lips together. She avoided his eyes.

“I want to know why!”

“He said it was a secret. He…was going to meet someone.”

“Who, for God’s sake?”

“Didn’t say.”

Simon shook Sophie. He felt that the girl was hiding something from him. Suddenly she broke from his grasp and ran into the next alley.

“Wait!” he cried and started to run after her.

Sophie was barefoot, and her little feet flitted lightly over the stamped earth. She had already reached the Zankgasse and ducked between some servant maids coming from the market with fully laden baskets. As Simon rushed past them, his clothing caught on one of the baskets. The maid let go of the basket, and radishes, cabbages, and carrots flew in all directions on the street. Simon heard angry cries behind him, but he could not stop, as the girl was on the verge of making her escape. She had already disappeared around the next bend, where there were fewer people in the alleys. Simon held onto his hat with one hand and continued running. On the left stood two houses with their roofs almost touching and in between was a narrow alley, just about shoulder-width, leading to the town wall. The ground was covered with rubble and trash, and at the other end Simon could see a small form running away. Cursing, the physician bade farewell to his fine leather boots greased with beef tallow and sprang over the first mound of rubble.

He landed directly in a heap of refuse, slipped, and fell on the seat of his pants in a mass of rubble, rotten vegetables, and the fragments of a discarded chamber pot. He could hear the sound of distant footsteps. He groaned and rose to his feet as one story higher a window shutter was opened. Startled faces looked down on a rather shaken physician, who was carefully removing cabbage leaves from his coat.

“Mind your own business!” he shouted up at them. Then he limped off in the direction of the Lech Gate.

The hangman looked through the glass at a heap of yellow stars, which were glittering in the light of the tallow candle. Crystals like snow, each one perfect in its form and arrangement. Jakob Kuisl smiled. When he dipped into the mysteries of nature, he was sure that there must be a God. Who else could create such lovely works of art? Man’s inventions could only ape those of his Creator. On the other hand, it was the same God who ensured that people died like flies, carried off by plague and war. It was difficult in such times to believe in God, but Jakob Kuisl discovered Him in the beauties of nature.

Just as he was carefully distributing the crystals on a piece of parchment with his tweezers, there was a knock at the door. Before he could say anything, the door of his study opened a crack. A current of air blew in and moved the parchment toward the end of the table. With a curse Jakob grabbed at it and prevented it from being blown down. Some of the crystals disappeared into a crack in the table.

“Who in the name of three devils?”

“It’s Simon,” said his wife, who had opened the door. “He wants to bring the books back. And he would like to talk to you. He says it is very important. And don’t swear so loud, the children are asleep.”

“Let him come in,” growled Kuisl.

When he turned toward Simon he saw a deformed face. Not until then did the hangman notice that he still had his monocle in his eye. The doctor’s son, on the other hand, was looking into a pupil as large as a ducat.

“Just a toy,” grumbled Kuisl, taking the brass-mounted lens out of his eye. “But sometimes fairly useful.”

“Where did you get that?” asked Simon. “It must be worth a fortune!”

“Shall we say I did a favor for an alderman, and he repaid me in kind.” Jakob Kuisl sniffed. “You stink.”

“I’ve…I had an accident. On the way here.”

The hangman, with a dismissive gesture, passed the lens to Simon and pointed to the little yellow heap on the parchment.

“Just take a look at that. What do you think it is?”

With the monocle, Simon bent over the little grains.

“That’s…that is fascinating! I’ve never seen such a perfect lens…”

“What about the grains, that’s what I want to know.”

“Well, from the smell I would say it’s sulfur.”

“I found it together with a lot of clay in little Grimmer’s pocket.”

Simon abruptly took down the monocle and looked at the hangman.

“Peter? In his pocket? But how did the sulfur get there?”

“That’s what I’d like to know too.”

Jakob Kuisl reached for his pipe and began to fill it. Meanwhile Simon walked up and down in the little room and told about his encounter with the orphan girl. Occasionally Kuisl growled; otherwise he was fully occupied with filling and lighting his pipe. When Simon had finished his story, the hangman was already enveloped in a haze of tobacco smoke.

“I visited the Stechlin woman,” he said finally. “The children had indeed been with her. And a mandrake is missing.”

“A mandrake?”

“A magic herb.”

Jakob Kuisl told briefly of his meeting with the midwife and of the chaos in her house. Again and again there were long pauses while he drew on his pipe. Meanwhile Simon seated himself on a wooden stool and fidgeted impatiently.

“I don’t understand it at all,” said the young physician at last. “We have a dead boy with a witches’ mark on his shoulder and sulfur in his pocket. We have a midwife as a prime suspect, from whom a mandrake has been stolen. And we have a gang of orphans who know more than they will admit. None of this makes sense!”

“Above all we have very little time,” mumbled the hangman. “The Elector’s secretary is coming in a few days. Between now and then I have to make the Stechlin woman the culprit, otherwise the council will be on my back.”

“And what if you simply refuse?” asked Simon. “Nobody can demand that you…”

Kuisl shook his head. “Then they’ll send another, and I can look for a new job. No, it’ll have to be like this. We must find the real murderer, and right soon.”

“We?”

The hangman nodded. “I need your help. People don’t like talking to me. The fine people turn up their noses as soon as they see me in the distance. Although…” he added with a smile, “they would turn up their noses at you now.”

Simon looked down at his spotted, foul-smelling doublet. It was still covered with brown spots. A tear in his hose ran from the knee down the left leg. A faded lettuce leaf hung from his hat…to say nothing about the splotches of dried blood. He would need new clothes and had no idea where the money for them would come from. Perhaps if the murderer was caught the council might contribute a few guilders.

Simon thought over the hangman’s proposition. What had he to lose? Not his reputation anymore; that was already ruined. And if he wanted to continue seeing Magdalena in the future, it would be an advantage to be on good terms with her father. And then there were the books. Just now there lay next to the monocle on the table a tattered work of the Jesuit Athanasius Kirchner, who wrote of tiny worms in the blood. That priest had worked with a so-called microscope, which could magnify things many more times presumably than Kuisl’s monocle. The possibility of reading this book at home, alone in bed with a hot cup of coffee…

Simon nodded. “Good, you can count on me. By the way, the book on the…”

The doctor’s son got no further in expressing his wish. The door flew open, and Andreas the jailer staggered into the room, panting for air.

“Forgive me for disturbing you so late,” he gasped. “But it’s urgent. They told me I would find Fronwieser’s son here. Your father needs help!”

Andreas’ face was as white as a sheet. He looked as if he had seen the devil incarnate.

“What in all the world can be so urgent?” asked Simon. Privately he wondered who could have seen him going into the executioner’s house. It seemed that you could not take a step in this town without being observed.

“Grocer Kratz’s son, he’s dying!” exclaimed the jailer Andreas with his last bit of strength. He kept reaching for the little wooden crucifix that hung round his neck.

Jakob Kuisl, who up to that moment had listened in silence, became impatient. He slammed his hand down on the rickety table, so that the monocle and Athanasius’ masterpiece jumped up a little. “An accident? Tell us, then!”

“Everything covered in blood! Oh, God, help us, he has the sign! Just like Grimmer…”

Simon sprang from his stool. He felt fear rising inside him.

Kuisl stared at the physician’s son through clouds of tobacco smoke. “You go there. I’ll have a look at the Stechlin woman. I don’t know if she’s really safe in the prison.”

Simon grabbed his hat and ran out into the street. Out of the corner of his eye he caught a glimpse of Magdalena, who waved to him sleepily from the attic window. He had a feeling they would not have much time to see each other in the next few days.

The man stood at the window, his head only a hand’s width away from the heavy red fabric of the curtain.

Outside night was falling, but what difference did that make? Here in this room it was always dusk, a depressing gray twilight, where even by day the sunlight was feeble. Through his inner eye the man saw the sun over the town. It would rise and set, again and again, nothing would stop it. The man would not let anything stop him either, even if delays occasionally occurred. These delays made him…irritable. He turned around quickly.

“What a useless ass you are! Good for nothing! Why can’t you manage to finish anything properly?”

“I’ll finish it all right.”

In the half-light a second figure could be seen sitting at the table and stabbing about with a knife in a pie as if it were the stomach of a slaughtered pig.

The man at the window drew the curtains still closer together. His fingers clutched the fabric like claws. A wave of pain overcame him. He didn’t have much more time left.

“That business with the children was totally unnecessary. The talk is just beginning now.”

“Nobody will talk. You can count on me.”

“Some people have already become suspicious. We can only hope that the midwife will confess. The hangman has already begun asking stupid questions.”

The figure at the table continued to work the pie into a stew of meat and lumps of pastry. The knife rose and fell frantically.

“Bah, the hangman! Who’s going to believe him?”

“Don’t underestimate Kuisl. He’s as sly as a fox.”

“Then the little fox will run into the trap.”

The man at the window quickly took the few steps to the table and struck him hard in the face with the back of his hand. The other held his cheek for a little, then looked up apprehensively into the face of his assailant. He noticed how his assailant put his hands on his stomach and was panting in pain.

A slight smile played on his lips. This problem would soon resolve itself.

“You will stop this nonsense now,” murmured the older man, grimacing in pain. A steady ache throbbed from inside his abdomen. He leaned forward over the table.

“You leave it alone. I’ll take care of it myself now.”

“I can’t.”

“You can’t?”

“I’ve handed it over to someone else. One who won’t let us interfere with his work anymore.”

“Call him off. It’s enough. When the Stechlin woman confesses, we’ll get our money.”

The older man had to sit down for just a second. It was difficult for him to speak. Damn this body! He needed it still, just until they got hold of the money. Then he could die in peace. His life’s work was in danger and this useless fool was ruining everything. But not as long as he himself could breathe. Not as long…

“This is an excellent pie. Would you like some?”

With his knife, the younger man had speared the pieces of meat spread out on the table and began to eat them with relish.

At the end of his strength, the old man shook his head. The younger man smiled.

“Keep calm, everything will be all right.”

He wiped the gravy out of his beard, took his sword in hand, and hurried to the door.

Without waiting for the jailer, Simon headed to the Kratzes’ house, which stood in a narrow side street in the Lech Gate quarter. Clemens and Agathe Kratz were regarded as hardworking grocers who had acquired a modest fortune over the years. Their five children all went to the local grammar school, and they did not treat their ward Anton, who after the death of his parents had been assigned to them by the town council, any differently than their own four children. Clemens Kratz, the father, sat huddled by the counter. With his right hand he mechanically caressed the shoulder of his wife, who was pressed against him, sobbing. In front of them on the counter lay the body of the boy. Simon did not need to look long at it to determine the cause of death. Someone had cut little Anton’s throat clean through. Clotted blood had dyed his linen shirt red. The eyes of the ten-year-old boy were fixed on the ceiling.

When they found him an hour earlier he had still been breathing noisily, but in minutes the life had ebbed from his little body. The only thing that Bonifaz Fronwieser could do was confirm the death. When Simon came in, the work was already done. His father briefly looked him up and down, and after expressing his sympathy to the Kratzes packed up his instruments and went out without saying goodbye.

After Bonifaz Fronwieser had left the house, Simon sat for a few minutes by the dead child and looked at his white face. The second death in two days…Had the boy known his murderer?

Finally the physician turned to the boy’s father.

“Where did you find him?” he asked.

No answer. The Kratzes were sunk in a world of grief and pain not easily penetrated by the human voice.

“I’m sorry, but where did you find him?” repeated Simon.

Only then did Clemens Kratz look up. The father’s voice was hoarse from much weeping. “Outside on the doorstep. He just wanted to go over quickly to his…friends. When he didn’t come back we opened the door to go and look for him. And there he was, lying in his blood…”

Mother Kratz began to whimper again. On a wooden bench in a back corner sat the four other Kratz children, their eyes wide open with fear. The youngest daughter pressed a doll made of scraps of cloth to her chest.

Simon turned to the children. “Do you know where your brother wanted to go?”

“He isn’t our brother.” The voice of the eldest Kratz boy sounded firm and defiant in spite of his fear. “He’s an orphan.”

And you certainly let him know that often enough, thought Simon. He sighed. “All right. Once more, then. Do you know where he wanted to go?”

“Just to the others.” The boy looked him straight in the face.

“Which others?”

“The other orphans. They always met down by the Lech Gate. He wanted to go there again. I saw Sophie, the redhead, with him at the four o’clock bells. They were planning something. They had put their heads together like a herd of cattle.”

Simon couldn’t help thinking of the small girl he had only a few hours before rescued from a beating. The red hair, the defiant eyes. At the age of twelve it seemed that Sophie had already made a lot of enemies.

“That’s right.” The father chimed in. “They did in fact often meet at the Stechlin place. Sophie and the Stechlin woman, the same witches’ brood. They are responsible! And they made this Satan’s mark on him, for sure!”

Mother Kratz began to weep again, so that her husband had to comfort her.

Simon went over to the body and turned it carefully onto its stomach. On the right shoulder blade there was in fact the same symbol as had been found on the Grimmer boy. Not quite as clear, certainly. Someone had tried to wipe it off. But the color had already penetrated too deeply under the skin. Indelibly it still appeared on the child’s shoulder.

Simon could sense that Clemens Kratz had come up behind him. Filled with hate, the father stared at the sign.

“The Stechlin woman did that to him. And that Sophie,” he hissed. “For sure. They should burn them-burn them both!”

The physician tried to calm him. “Stechlin is in the keep, she couldn’t have done it. And Sophie is still a child. Do you really believe that a child-”

“The devil has got into that child!” cried Mother Kratz from behind. Her eyes were bloodshot from weeping, her face pale and puffy. “The devil is here in Schongau! And he’ll carry off other children!”

Simon looked once again at the faded mark on the boy’s back. No doubt, someone had tried to remove it, without success.

“Did any of you try to wash this mark off?” he asked them.

Kratz crossed himself.

“We have not touched the devil’s mark, so help me God!” The other members of the family shook their heads and signed the cross too.

Simon sighed inwardly. He wouldn’t get any further here with logical arguments. He took his leave and went out into the darkness. Behind him he could still hear the sobbing of the mother and the murmured prayers of the old grocer.

At the sound of a whistle Simon turned around. His eyes searched the alley. At the corner a small form was leaning against the wall of a house and beckoning to him.

It was Sophie.

Simon looked around, then he entered the narrow alley and bent down to the girl.

“You got away from me last time,” he whispered.

“And I’ll get away from you again this time,” replied Sophie, “but now just listen: a man asked for Anton, just before he was stabbed.”

“A man? But how do you know…?”

Sophie shrugged. A slight smile passed over her lips. Simon wondered for a moment what she would look like in five years’ time.

“We orphans have eyes everywhere. That saves us from beatings.”

“And what did he look like, this man?”

“Tall. With a coat and a broad-brimmed hat. There was a feather in the hat. And across his face there was a long scar.”

“And that’s all?”

“His hand was all bones.”

“Don’t lie to me!”

“Down by the river he asked a few raftsmen where the Kratzes’ house was. I was hiding behind the trees. He kept his left hand under his coat, but once it slipped out and I saw it shining white in the sun. A skeleton hand.”

Simon bent farther down and put his arm around the girl.

“Sophie, I don’t believe you. It would be best for you to come with me now…”

Sophie tore herself away. Tears of rage filled her eyes.

“Nobody believes me. But it’s true! The man with the hand of bones cut Anton’s throat. He wanted to meet us down at the Lech Gate, and now he’s dead.” The girl’s voice became a whimper.

“Sophie, we can…”

With a quick turn the girl escaped from Simon’s arm and raced away down the alley. After a short distance she had already disappeared into the darkness. As he started to chase after her, Simon realized that the purse with the money for new clothes was missing from his belt.

“You damned little-” He looked at the heap of dirt and rubbish in the alley. Then he decided to dispense with a pursuit this time. Instead he went home, so that he could finally get a good night’s sleep.