The Poisoned Pilgrim: A Hangman's Daughter Tale (15 page)

Snorting, he wiped the sweat from his forehead. He’d asked himself a dozen times whether it had been such a good idea to take his two grandchildren along to Andechs. After all, it was a matter of life or death for his best friend, who sat in the dungeon accused of murder and witchcraft. Well, as soon as they arrived up on the Holy Mountain, this foolishness would end and he could finally hand the children over to their mother. That way Magdalena would at least have something to do and stop sticking her nose into things that were none of her business.

Kuisl mulled these things over as he watched the shore in Dießen gradually recede in the distance. The tower of the monastery church now looked no longer than his hand, and behind it, he could see the Wessobrunn Highlands and Mount Hoher Peißenberg. The hangman had left Schongau early in the morning with his son Georg on two horses he’d borrowed from the well-to-do Schreevogls. Georg returned home with the horses while Kuisl looked around Dießen for a boat. The old ferryman knew nothing about Kuisl’s job, and it was better that way. The men who worked on the lake were especially superstitious, and no fisherman in the world would have permitted a living, breathing hangman on his boat. With winds increasing in force, Kuisl’s ferryman had already prayed several times to Saint Peter, the patron saint of fishermen and seafarers.

“Are you making a pilgrimage to Andechs with the two young lads?” the old fisherman asked now. When he got no answer, he continued fervently: “We should thank the Holy Virgin every day that we live so near this blessed place. I’ve been up on the Holy Mountain at least ten times, and I swear I’ve seen more relics than would fit in this boat.”

And people still drown in the lake just the same,
Kuisl thought.
A lot of good all that praying does.

Shuddering, the hangman remembered a stormy night some years back when a ship sank in Lake Ammer and a large group of pilgrims drowned. Only two children could be saved at that time, yet people spoke of this as a miracle, as if it somehow lessened the grief over the other thirty who had drowned.

“The most precious of them are the three sacred hosts,” the fisherman kept on babbling cheerfully, paying no heed to the silence of the man opposite him. “They are displayed only once a year at the Festival of the Three Hosts, but there are others, such as the Charlemagne’s Victory Cross; a branch from Christ’s crown of thorns; half of His kerchief; Mary’s belt; the wedding dress of Saint Elizabeth; Saint Nicolas’s stole, and…” He stopped for a moment and lowered his voice conspiratorially. “And our Savior’s foreskin, taken from him by the accursed Jews at the age of—”

“Please just pay attention to your rowing, or all the beautiful relics in the world won’t help us,” the hangman interrupted, pointing to the sky. “It looks as if a new storm is brewing.”

The ferryman winced and dipped his oars deep in the water. Indeed, a dark bank of clouds was moving toward the lake from the west.

“Damned weather,” the old man cursed. “Have hardly ever seen so much as in the past few weeks. If it keeps up like this, there won’t be a thing still growing in the fields. The Lord is angry at us, and I’d just like to know why.”

“He’s probably punishing people who never stop talking,” Kuisl murmured. “Maybe you should make another pilgrimage to Andechs. At least up there you can’t drown.”

“But lightning can strike you dead there.” The ferryman laughed and pushed his hat back on his neck. “Believe me, there’s more lightning up there than anywhere else—it’s almost as if
the steeple attracts it. Just a few days ago I saw it hit the ruined steeple again, flashing green and blue like at the Last Judgment. I thought the whole mountain was on fire. If you ask me, it all has something to do with that new abbot who spends too much time with his nose in books instead of praying for our salvation.”

While the fisherman cackled on like an old chicken, they arrived at Herrsching Bay on the other side of the lake. To the right, at the little village of Wartaweil, pilgrims departed on the strenuous route to the monastery.

The water here was noticeably calmer, and the wind had abated to a gentle breeze. Jakob Kuisl saw at least two dozen fishing boats tied to rotting piers as fishermen on the shore laboriously patched their nets. Behind them, the Holy Mountain rose up out of a forest of green beeches.

“And how are you going to get up to the monastery with the two youngsters?” the old man asked curiously. “The path is pretty steep.”

“Just let me take care of that. I’ve hauled bigger guys off to say their prayers.”

The fisherman looked at him, confused. “What do you mean by that?”

“God bless you.” Kuisl handed the old man a few coins, then, despite the child’s loud objections, lifted Peter into a wooden frame and, groaning, strapped the pack on his back. With an old cloth, he tied little Paul around his waist where the two-year-old watched with curiosity as the boats bobbed in the water.

“So now I’ll take you to your mother,” the hangman grumbled. “Just quit rubbing that fish head through my hair.” Kuisl took the foul carcass from Peter’s hands, tossed it in the water, and then stomped along the path to the landing site in Wartaweil.

Soon the hangman had left the few houses behind him and entered the shady forest that surrounded the monastery on all sides. He had decided to take a little-used path to avoid being annoyed
again by another chatterbox on a pilgrimage. The children seemed to enjoy their grandfather’s rolling strides and squealed with delight. Again and again Peter pointed out birds and squirrels poised on tree branches over the path that stared back down curiously on the teetering, six-armed monster. The three-year-old gave the animals imaginary names and sang a little song in a squeaky voice.

“May bug fly, your father’s gone to die,

your mother is in Pommer Land…”

“What crazy songs your mother teaches you,” Kuisl cursed, but soon he was humming along softly, too. In the meantime, the constant swaying and singing had put little Paul to sleep in his sling.

The path quickly became steeper, and as Kuisl made his way up the mountain, sweating and panting, he couldn’t help thinking about how many pilgrims had taken the same path to the Holy Mountain before him. At one time there had been over forty thousand present just for Pentecost, and now, for the Festival of the Three Hosts, huge crowds were also expected. The hangman could imagine that a warlock locked up in the monastery would be troubled by all this pious activity, and for that reason he also imagined they would try to set Nepomuk’s trial for the next day or so.

Deciding to take a shortcut, Kuisl hastened his steps, abandoning the narrow serpentine path up the mountain, and climbed directly up the slope. Now and then he came upon old, weathered steps—moss-covered stones—amid the beeches, but mostly he had to struggle through knee-high thickets. Ahead he saw some boulders placed in a circle that looked almost like the foundation of a tower. The hangman threw back his sweaty head and tried to guess how far it might still be to the monastery.

“Look, Grandpa, a witch. Are you going to burn her?” Peter
pointed to an especially large boulder, at least forty feet high, in a clearing to the right. A gnarled linden tree was growing on top of it, so in the shadows of the surrounding forest it looked, in fact, like a stooped old woman.

“Nonsense, lad,” Kuisl growled. “That’s no witch, that’s a—” Only then did he realize what the boy was actually pointing at. At the foot of the rock stood the entrance to a cave. There before a small fire sat an old, gray-haired, barefoot woman wearing a dirty, torn dress tied around her waist. She rose slowly with the help of a cane and hobbled painfully toward the hangman and his grandchildren. When she finally stood face to face with Kuisl, he looked into her milky white eyes and realized she was completely blind.

“May the Lord bless you,” the woman murmured, extending her withered hand. “Is it you, Brother Johannes? Have you brought me a little beechnut porridge again?”

“I… I’m only a pilgrim on the way to Andechs,” Kuisl replied hesitantly. “Tell me, old woman, is this the way to the monastery?”

The old woman was visibly shocked, and it took a while for her to relax again.

“A burden of great sin lies upon you,” she whispered. “Great sin! I can feel that. The devil’s rock has led you to me, hasn’t it?”

“Devil’s rock?” Kuisl shook his head. “Woman, I have no time for your nonsense. I have two lads here who need their mother. So tell me… is this the way—”

“This is the entrance to hell,” the woman hissed, pointing to the cave behind her. Her voice took on a hard tone now, and the whites of her eyes seemed to glow from the inside. “I am standing guard over it because Satan has come back to earth, but I have no power over him. He sings, he groans, he moans; I can hear him in the night when he forces his way through the bowels of the mountain with his Plague-infested body.” When she reached for Kuisl with her cadaverous hand, he took an instinctive
step backward. “Beware, wanderer! I can sense you follow in the footsteps of Lucifer. Who are you? A mercenary overcome by misfortune? A murderer? How many men have you killed? Tell me, how many?”

“I am the Schongau executioner,” Kuisl growled. He could feel the hair standing up on the back of his neck. “Ask the city council—they keep the books. Now let me through before I kill one more person.” The hangman brushed the old woman’s hand aside and hurried past her.

Angrily the old woman pounded her crooked cane on the ground. “It is no accident that the Lord has sent you this way,” she shouted after him. “Hear the truth, hangman! Judgment is at hand. I can hear the demons digging. They are worming their way through the world, they are reaching out through moldy leaves with their long claws. Soon they will be here, very soon. Repent, hangman! Soon misfortune will strike you like a bolt of lightning.”

The children were starting to cry, and Kuisl hastened up the steep path until the old woman’s voice was only a distant echo. His heart was pounding, and not just from exertion. The woman had touched something deep within him, something black, dark, in the very depths of his soul. It was as if all the dead men in the last decades, all those tortured, hanged, beheaded, or broken on the wheel had called out at the same time for revenge. He couldn’t help thinking of his dream the night before, the memories of the war that had flashed through his mind.

How many men have you killed? Tell me, how many?

For the first time in a long while Jakob Kuisl felt real fear.

He shook himself and hurried along the path through the trees. Branches seemed to reach out to seize him, leaves brushed against his face, the children whined and wailed, and Peter kept pulling at his hair like an angry little gnome on his shoulders.

Kuisl staggered forward, almost falling, but finally pushed one last green branch aside. Now he looked out on a sunny clearing
of meadows and fields where ears of light brown barley waved in the wind. Beyond these, in the bright light of early afternoon, lay the monastery.

The horror had vanished.

Suddenly the hangman couldn’t help laughing out loud. Like a child, he’d let himself be scared by an old woman babbling about revenge and retribution. What in the world was wrong with him? Was he turning into an anxious child afraid of old wives’ tales? It was high time to hand the children over to Magdalena and concentrate on his real reason for being here.

With renewed courage Kuisl hiked along the fields toward the monastery, but in secret he decided to pray and beg for forgiveness in the coming days.

Not that he really believed in any of this, but it couldn’t hurt, either.

Magdalena was awakened by the rattling cough of an old man on a simple wooden plank bed to her right. Gasping, the old man spat a green clump of phlegm onto the reeds on the floor.

Disgusted, the hangman’s daughter turned away. Since the night before, she’d been laid out in a wing of the monastery—a horse stable no longer in use, which the abbot made available for the sick. Only a handful of patients were there in the early morning, but their numbers had increased dramatically in the last few hours. She estimated that over two dozen moaning, snoring, wailing pilgrims were housed now in the provisional hospital. Wrapped in thin woolen blankets, they lay shivering in flea-infested beds and on bales of straw on the ground. The damp old quarters stank of manure and human excrement, while outside they could hear pilgrims singing on their way to the monastery to pray for a good harvest, a healthy child, or simply a peaceful year without war, hunger, and pestilence.

Carefully Magdalena tested the fragrant herbal dressing on her neck. The wound wasn’t deep—the strange projectile had
only grazed her. Nevertheless, she had passed out briefly due to exhaustion and loss of blood. What troubled her even most was the fear of whoever was lying in wait for her the night before along the monastery wall.

That unknown person… and the strange melody.

Was it the same man who’d pushed her from the belfry the day before?

“Well, are you back among the living?” Simon bent over her with a smile and handed her a bowl of steaming oatmeal. “My poppy-seed potion obviously worked well. It’s afternoon; with just a few interruptions, you’ve slept more than sixteen hours.”

“I… I probably needed it,” Magdalena replied, still a bit drowsy. “But I’m damned hungry now.” She attacked the oatmeal with gusto. Not until she had wiped the last morsel away with her finger did she lean back, sighing.

“That was good,” she murmured, “very good. Almost as good as the porridge my cousin makes, the scruffy knacker.” Suddenly her face turned serious. “I should be glad I’m still alive and can eat at all,” she added softly.

Simon caressed her sweaty forehead. “I made you a compress with shepherd’s purse, horsetail, and marigold,” he said, with concern in his voice. “The wound on your neck should heal well, but you were spouting all kinds of crazy things last night. What in the world happened to you?”

Magdalena sighed. “If only I knew.” Then she told Simon about what she had seen during evening mass, the strange melody, about being ambushed and the shots that came from behind the wall.