The Poisoned Pilgrim: A Hangman's Daughter Tale (16 page)

“It was the same song Brother Virgilius’s automaton was singing?” Simon looked at her skeptically. “Are you sure?”

Magdalena shrugged. “In any case, it was a glockenspiel, and it came from somewhere inside the mountain… down below.” Suddenly a chill came over her again. “Do you think that automaton really killed its master and the apprentice and is now
looking for other victims somewhere down there? Is it a… a golem?”

“Nonsense,” Simon replied. “Those are nothing but horror stories. Only God can create life. But I do think these monks have something to do with it.”

Magdalena grinned triumphantly. “Then do you believe now that the ugly Nepomuk is innocent? I said so right away.”

“You mean Brother Johannes?” Simon handed Magdalena a pitcher of water, and she gulped it down eagerly. “If he really isn’t a sorcerer, he’ll be sitting just as before in the old cheese cellar,” he mused. “So he can’t be the one who shot at you last night. Perhaps it was just a hunter who thought you were a wild animal. It was, after all, pretty dark.”

“Simon, don’t be silly. Do I look like a wild boar?” Magdalena shook her head and cringed, as the wound began to sting again. “That was no hunter; it was that stranger. Sometimes I believe you think I’m just a hysterical woman.”

Simon smiled. “Oh, God, no, I’d never dare to think that. But it’s true that you sometimes… well… seem over-stressed.”

“Good heavens, I’ve rarely felt as clear-headed as now,” Magdalena snapped. “But if you say one more time that I’m sick, I’ll probably really start feeling that way.”

But Simon was already lost in thought again and seemed not to have heard. “The monks are indeed behaving very strangely,” he continued, haltingly. “All this talk in the monastery council about the blasphemous experiments Johannes and Virgilius were carrying out. What did the monks mean by that? And what was the abbot doing with the prior and one of the Wittelsbachs in the relics chamber so late at night? You said that Maurus Rambeck seemed very distracted during mass…”

“Just like the young novitiate master,” Magdalena spoke up. “He looked like he’d been crying and got a poke in the ribs from the prior. And the fat cellarer was standing guard up on the balcony.
If you ask me, they have a secret and are afraid someone will learn about it.”

“But Count Wartenberg?” Simon frowned. “What in God’s name does that Wittelsbacher nobleman have to do with it?”

“The cellarer said Wartenberg had the third key.”

“The third key?” Simon shook his head, stood up, and stretched. “Things are getting more confusing just when I have my hands full here. This damned fever is like a plague.” He pointed to the door where two pilgrims were just carrying in another patient, a deathly pale farmer dressed in coarse linen, whose weak moans joined the chorus of the wailing and rattling of the other patients.

“Basically this pilgrimage is one huge source of infection,” Simon grumbled. “For years, both my father and I have preached that what makes people sick is not vapors escaping from the ground, but that people infect one another. Thousands will come to Andechs in the next few days and carry this fever back with them to their cities and villages. It would be better for people to stay home and pray there.”

“It’s too late for that now, Master Fronwieser. The best we can do is to care for the people, so they can return home healthy.”

Simon turned around to see Jakob Schreevogl carrying in a child. He was weak, sweat was streaming down his forehead, and his eyes were closed.

“The parents believed that a hundred rosaries and the donation of a candle would assure their child’s survival,” the alderman sputtered. “Fortunately I was able to convince them to leave the boy in your care, at least during noon mass. It’s a disgrace.” Carefully he placed the child down on a bale of straw in the corner of the low-ceilinged vault, then looked at Simon with a tired smile. “When I see sick children, I can’t help thinking of my little Clara and how you cured her back then, Fronwieser. I hope you can help this boy as well. Every child is a gift of God.” The young alderman reached for his belt and took out a purse of clinking
coins. “Here, take this. I actually wanted to buy an arm’s-length bee’s-wax candle with the money and donate a new confessional booth, but I have the feeling the coins are better off invested here.”

“Thank you,” Simon murmured, weighing the purse in his hands. There must have been thirty guilders in it. “I’ll ask the abbot for permission to buy medicine and clean bed linens with it.”

Schreevogl waved him off. “Just decide for yourself. The abbot really has other concerns at the moment. Rumors of this horrible murder are going around, and some golem is said to be haunting the monastery. If Rambeck isn’t careful, his flock will be nothing but anxious sheep at the Festival of the Three Hosts.” He winked at Magdalena, who had sat up in bed now. “But if I know you, you both already know more about this than I do.”

“If we learn anything about the murderer, you’ll be the first to know, we promise.” Magdalena stretched again and stood up. She was still wavering slightly but otherwise seemed to have recovered. “And now excuse us for a moment. I’d like to…” She stopped short as a shadow fell over her face. Something large was standing in the doorway, blocking the sunlight. It was a man in a black overcoat with broad shoulders, carrying a crude walking stick in his callused hands, his face concealed by a wide-brimmed hat. The giant bent down and placed two little boys gingerly on the ground. They ran toward Magdalena with shouts of joy.

“Looks like Paul has finally learned to walk,” the hangman grumbled. “It’s about time. I thought he’d always be crawling through the house like a little worm.”

“My God, Father!” Magdalena shouted, running toward her children, who embraced her warmly. She laughed out loud with relief. In all the excitement, she’d completely forgotten the letter she’d sent the day before. Now that her father and children were with her, she felt everything would turn out well.

“Spare your mother, you rascals,” Kuisl scolded, raising his finger playfully. “You’ll crush her. It’s hard to believe that they were clinging to my coattails just a minute ago.”

“Even the best grandfather can’t replace a mother.” Smiling, Simon came over to his father-in-law and held out his hand. As they shook, Simon could feel his bones cracking. He never ceased to be amazed at the strength of the Schongau executioner.

“It’s great that you came so soon, Jakob,” Simon said through clenched teeth, “but we thought it might be without the children—”

“Wouldn’t that suit you just fine,” Kuisl interrupted gruffly. “Leave the sick grandmother with two screaming youngsters and enjoy your vacation. Nothing doing—Magdalena can just take care of her own little rascals.”

“Mother is sick?” Magdalena approached her father anxiously with her two children in her arms. “But why did you then—”

“What am I to do? Abandon my friend?” Kuisl said crossly. “Anyway, I don’t think it’s anything serious, just a stupid cough like so many in Schongau have nowadays. I wanted to stay, but…” He stopped short, then continued gruffly. “Your mother is a tough woman. She practically threw me out of the house when she heard about Nepomuk.”

“Nepomuk? Your friend?” Jakob Schreevogl, who had been standing quietly alongside them until then, gave the hangman a bewildered look. “I’m afraid I don’t understand. And just what are you doing in Andechs, Kuisl? Has the executioner come on a pilgrimage?”

“Ah… I’m afraid that’s a long story, my dear councilor,” Magdalena interrupted. “I’ll tell you about it another time, but for now we have a favor to ask.”

“And what would that be?”

Magdalena pointed at the coughing and wailing patients all
around them. “Could you watch Simon’s patients for about an hour? The Kuisl family has a few things to discuss.”

The patrician was dumbfounded. “Me? But I have no idea how—”

“It’s very simple.” Magdalena handed Schreevogl a rag and a bucket of fresh water. “Wash the sweat from their brows, change the dressings now and then, and try to look serious and competent. Believe me, that’s all most doctors do.”

She took her two children by the hand and left the stinking infirmary with Simon and the hangman as the astonished patrician gazed after her.

Together the family climbed the steep lane up to the monastery church to find a quiet place to talk, but they soon found that wouldn’t be easy: The noon mass had just concluded, and crowds of attendees came streaming toward them. Magdalena noticed the number of pilgrims was significantly larger than the day before. There were still five days left before the Festival of the Three Hosts, but already the streets around the monastery were as crowded as at a church fair.

The pilgrims seemed to come from everywhere. Magdalena heard many strange German dialects—of which she knew only Swabian and Frankish—and saw that many pilgrims from individual villages stayed together in tight groups. There were poorly dressed day laborers, solid middle-class workers, and fat patricians who stepped delicately over steaming piles of horse manure, looking disgusted and holding up their trousers. Often someone would start singing a hymn, and the others would join in.

“Come sinners, come now, see the true son of God…”

Simon and the hangman took the kids on their backs to make their way through the crowds more easily. The air smelled of incense, fried fish, and dust from the road, and somewhere a
boy was crying for his mother. Still, all the singing and praying made Magdalena feel peaceful.

“How did you ever find us in this crowd, Father?” Magdalena asked as they walked through the mass of people up to the church.

“I went down to see cousin Graetz,” the hangman grumbled. “At first there was just a dumb, red-headed farm boy there who didn’t want to let me in, but then Michael came along with his knacker’s wagon and told me my good son-in-law was caring for the sick even here in Andechs.”

“Does Graetz know why you’re here?” Simon asked anxiously. “Perhaps for the time being it’s better—”

“How dumb do you think I am? As far as Graetz knows, I’m here on a pilgrimage. That made a lot of sense to him—he said I needed it.” Kuisl clapped his hands impatiently. “But now enough of this chitchat. Tell me what happened to ugly old Nepomuk and what—for heaven’s sake—you have to do with all of it.” He looked around angrily. “Damn crowds. I know why I never go on pilgrimages.”

“I think I know a place where we’ll be undisturbed,” Magdalena replied with a grin, thinking about how much her father hated big crowds. That’s why the hangman always dreaded a public execution. “Follow me,” she called to the others, “there’s something I wanted to show you, in any case.”

Crossing the crowded church square, with its piles of stones and sacks of mortar, she headed toward the little gate she’d discovered the previous night. Followed by the others, she took the narrow path on the other side of the monastery wall, which led shortly to a chapel in the forest. The noise of the crowd receded; they met no one but a grim-looking woodcutter; then finally they were alone. The children crawled happily around the remains of a stone wall, and Simon gave them some pine cones and beechnuts to play with.

“This is where I heard the music yesterday,” Magdalena said softly.

“What damned music?” Kuisl growled. “Speak up, girl, before I have to put the thumb screws on you.”

Magdalena sat down on a fallen tree trunk not far from the chapel and started to recount what she and Simon had learned in the last three days. She told her father about the two dead men, the bloodbath in the watchmaker’s workshop, and the automaton that had vanished along with its master. Then she told him about the two attempts on her life.

“Someone by the wall here took a shot at me,” she said finally. “The strange thing is that I didn’t hear a shot, just a hissing sound.”

“A hissing? Maybe it was a bolt from a crossbow…” Her father scrutinized the trees around them, stopping suddenly in front of a beech where he scratched a bullet out of the bark with his finger. He frowned and held it up for them to see. “This is fresh,” he grumbled, “a rather high caliber. Are you really sure, girl, you didn’t hear a shot?”

“Father, I may be stubborn, but I’m not deaf.”

“Strange.” Kuisl rubbed the heavy, misshapen piece of lead in his callused fingers. “There’s actually only one weapon this could come from, and it’s very rare and valuable. I saw it only once, in the war.”

“So it was Nepomuk,” Simon interrupted excitedly. “After all, he was a mercenary and—”

“Nonsense.” The hangman spat on the ground in disgust. “When this happened, Nepomuk had already been in the dungeon a long time; you told me that yourself. So stick to the facts. These little monks are dubious characters, and if they themselves aren’t involved, they’re just trying to find someone to blame.”

“Just the same,” Simon objected, “your friend Nepomuk is keeping something from us. Evidently he was carrying out some experiments with Virgilius before the watchmaker disappeared.”

Kuisl rubbed the side of his huge nose, thinking. “Then I should no doubt have a serious talk with Nepomuk.”

“And how do you plan to do that?” asked Magdalena. “Are you going to just knock on the dungeon door, say you’re the Schongau hangman, and ask whether you can torture the prisoner just a bit to hear what he has to say? Andechs is under the jurisdiction of the court in Weilheim, don’t forget. If the governor learns you’re snooping around his district, you’ll quickly wind up on the rack yourself.”

“Give me a moment. I’ll come up with something,” Kuisl grumbled. “I always think of something. Now let’s go visit my cousin Michael,” he said, turning toward the gate. “The children are hungry, and so am I. You’ll see, it’s a lot easier to think with a full stomach and a good pipe to smoke.”

They walked out onto the church square still teeming with pilgrims. The workmen had now roped off an area near the south wing in order to continue the construction work without interruption. Many pilgrims were looking up anxiously at the holes in the charred roof; some of them grumbling because the main door to the church had been blocked briefly. Simon watched a group of angry pilgrims gather around the entrance.