The Poisoned Pilgrim: A Hangman's Daughter Tale (24 page)

Had the golem snatched him?

Magdalena clenched her lips, trying not to scream. Simon, and her father, too, had told her that golems didn’t exist, but so many things had happened in the last few days that she herself would have never thought possible. Her heart was pounding so fast now that even little Paul looked at her anxiously.

“Mama?” he asked cautiously. “Mama is crying?”

Magdalena shook her head. “Peter…” she said as calmly and gently as possible, “he’s gone. We have to look for him. Will you help me look?”

“Peter with the man?” Paul asked. His mother looked at him, not understanding. He asked again, “Peter with the big man?”

“With
what
big man?” For a moment, Magdalena was so horrified she nearly dropped the boy. “Tell me, Paul, what man are you talking about?”

“The nice man. He has sweet berries.”

“Oh, God.” Magdalena’s voice turned shrill. “Dammit, Paul! Who was the man who gave you the berries?”

“There, the man there.” He pointed to the bottom of the slope where a rock stood almost as tall as a man. Behind it, the laughter of a child could be heard, and in the next moment, Peter appeared, beaming with joy, sitting atop someone’s shoulders.

It was the mute Matthias.

Magdalena felt a huge weight fall from her shoulders and relieved tears run down her cheeks as she burst into laughter. How could she ever have imagined a monster had taken off with her son? This monastery was driving her crazy.

“Ah,
that
man, you mean,” she said, waving to Peter and Matthias. Peter’s trousers were dirty and covered with wet leaves and his shirt had a rip in it, but he seemed otherwise unharmed. Cheerily he waved back.

“Mama!” he cried out. “Here I am, Mama. I fell down, but the man helped me.”

“You… you little brat.” Magdalena exploded. She was trying to sound strict despite her relief. “Haven’t I told you a hundred times not to run away from me? Just look at you.”

“The man helped me,” Peter replied calmly, and Matthias let out a loud grunt in greeting. Once again, as Magdalena looked down at the silent knacker’s helper, she was impressed at how
handsome he was. With his strawberry blond hair and wide chest, he looked almost like Saint Christopher carrying the baby Jesus on his shoulders.

“It doesn’t matter who it is,” Magdalena chided as she looked for a safe place to climb down the slope with Paul in her arms. “Tonight you’re going to bed without your sweet porridge, do you hear?”

Finally she arrived at a somewhat flatter spot, where she could slowly slide down the gentle slope on slippery leaves. When she got to the bottom, she found Matthias grinning. He bowed slightly so she could take her oldest child in her arms.

“You’re never going to run away from me again, do you hear?” she scolded, holding him close to her bosom. “Never again.”

Silent Matthias was still grinning at her. Then he reached down into his trouser pocket and fetched out a prune, which he held under her nose. Only now did Magdalena notice that the mouth of her oldest child was smeared with prune juice.

“Ah, now I understand,” she laughed. “You fell down here and Matthias cheered you up by feeding you prunes. It’s no wonder I didn’t hear a word from you—how could I, when your mouth was full of sweets?”

Peter snatched the sweet fruit from his mother’s hands and ate it hungrily. When Peter’s little brother started to cry, Matthias gave him a prune, too, and Paul at once put it in his mouth.

Together they walked along the slope past moss-covered rocks and beeches whose green foliage glimmered in the sun. After recovering from her fright, Magdalena felt almost born again. Now little Paul was riding on Matthias’s shoulders while Peter walked alongside holding his hand. The children seemed to really like the silent journeyman. Matthias pointed out birds in the forest, tossed leaves through the air so they came fluttering down like rain, and made funny faces that sent the children into fits of laughter. Magdalena couldn’t help but smile.

I hope Simon never hears about this,
she thought.
I can’t remember the last time he made the children laugh like this. He just doesn’t have enough time for them.

After a while, they came to a group of rocks that looked like the remains of a circular foundation. Behind these a kind of rocky spire rose up. Peter let go of the man’s hand, ran toward the rocks, and started to climb up. Once on top, he tiptoed around the edge… but then suddenly stopped, as if rooted to the spot.

“What’s the matter, Peter?” Magdalena asked. “Is something wrong?”

“Up there, Mama.” Peter pointed at another large rock that, in the distance, looked like the giant head of a troll. The child’s voice now sounded soft and anxious. “Look, Mama. There’s the witch again. I’m afraid of the witch.”

“What kind of witch?” With a pounding heart, Magdalena rushed over to the ring of stones, followed by Matthias and little Paul. Halfway around the circle she caught sight of an old woman in a tattered dress, stooped over as if carrying an enormous burden. When the white-haired woman turned to her, Magdalena could see from her empty, milky eyes that she was blind.

“The children,” the woman whispered, her voice sounding like the moaning of the wind. “The children are in great danger. Someone is trying to harm them—I can feel that.”

“What… what are you saying, woman?” asked Magdalena, moving closer to Matthias. “Who wants to harm my children?”

With angry grunts, the big, mute man strode over to the ring of stones and lifted Peter down from the rock. The boy, paralyzed by fear, couldn’t look away from the old woman in the tattered dress.

“Evil is everywhere!” the old woman wailed. “I’m guarding the entrance to hell, but evil long ago spread to our houses and homes, and I can no longer stop it. Beware, children. Beware!”

Blindly groping her way forward, the old woman staggered
toward Matthias, Magdalena, and the children, reaching out toward Paul with her long, filthy fingernails. The knacker’s apprentice gave her a shove and she fell backward, landing in the wet leaves.

“Woe to you!” she screamed as if she’d completely lost her mind now. “Woe to you! Evil is reaching out: I can hear it rumbling in the bowels of the mountain, I hear its song every night—the end is near.”

Dazed, Magdalena took her children by the hand and walked backward, step by step, to the slope where they’d come down. “Listen, old woman,” the hangman’s daughter said, trying to calm her down. “We wish you no harm. I’m sorry if we’ve frightened you.”

Magdalena kept speaking in a soft, soothing voice as she continued to move away with the children. The woman was clearly insane, but crazy people often spoke curses that came true. That’s what older people had always told her, in any case; perhaps there was some truth to it.

The old woman was still wailing, but in the meantime her words had given way to an incomprehensible babble. She lay doubled up on the ground, and Magdalena only hoped Matthias hadn’t inadvertently injured her. Magdalena was about to walk back to the woman to see what was wrong when the knacker’s assistant took her by the shoulder and pulled her back with a growl. He gestured as if to say the woman was out of her mind and pointed back to the monastery. His gaze conveyed a clear warning—now void of any friendliness.

“Geout. Esser geout,”
he stammered

“You’re right, Matthias,” Magdalena sighed. “We’d better turn around and get out before she does something to harm the children. There’s nothing more we can do to help here; she’s living in her own world.”

After a final anxious look, she turned and hurried back to
the slope with Matthias and the children. She could hear the whining old woman for a while, but then only the stillness of the forest. The children were already beginning to laugh again, and in a few minutes, they seemed to have forgotten the strange encounter. In another quarter hour, they had struggled up the steep slope and now stood at the edge of the forest, looking out on the fragrant field of flowers.

Magdalena took a deep breath, feeling as if she’d awakened from a bad dream.

“Who in God’s name was that?” she asked Matthias, but the journeyman just shrugged and turned to point the way home.

The four hurried across the meadow toward the monastery wall, where new groups of pilgrims had been circling since early morning, praying loudly. In the midst of one such group, Magdalena spotted her father. This time he wasn’t wearing his monk’s robe, and he looked tired.

“Where in the devil have you been?” he growled, absent-mindedly patting his grandsons’ heads. “Simon and I have been worried.”

“I was in the forest with Matthias and the children,” she said, trying to reassure him. “You men were completely absorbed in your conversation.”

“Is that Graetz’s journeyman?” Kuisl took a careful look at the redheaded giant. “Well, then at least you weren’t unprotected. Nevertheless, I think it would be best for you not to go so far into the forest from now on.”

“Ah, I see. You want to lock me up, you and Simon?” asked Magdalena, regaining her self-confidence. “You can forget that,” she groused. “I’ll go where I want.”

For a moment she wondered whether to tell her father about the strange encounter with the mad old woman, but she decided to keep silent. In the present situation, it would just be grist for her father’s mill. Instead, she turned to him and whispered,
“You’d better be careful Semer doesn’t see you out here, or he’ll get some dumb ideas.”

“Bah!” the hangman retorted. “I’m no more interested in Semer than I am in a used wad of tobacco.” He spat on the ground to emphasize his point. “Now for once, I want you to come where
I
want to go. Unlike you, stupid woman, we two men have been thinking.”

“Ah, and what came of that?”

“I’d rather discuss that with you in private, if possible, without the children present.” Once more the hangman looked Matthias up and down. “Do you think your strong bodyguard would be able to take the two kids down to the knacker’s house and keep an eye on them there?”

“Better than you and Simon together,” Magdalena snapped.

The children pouted, but when the knacker’s helper finally offered them two more plums, they followed willingly. After the children and Matthias disappeared around the corner, the hangman turned back to his daughter.

“Well?” she asked curiously. “What’s your plan?”

Grinning, the hangman unrolled the monk’s robe he’d been hiding under his cloak.

“Brother Jakobus and Saint Simon will pay another visit to the relics room,” he said with a sneer. “There’s something there I have to get a look at again. Do you think a weak woman like you can keep the priests off our backs for a while?”

“If you’re looking for a weak woman, you’ve come to the wrong place.”

The hangman sighed. “Then just a woman. The main thing is to keep them gawking at you and not watching us.”

With a smile, Magdalena joined her father and headed toward the church. It looked like he was finally onto something.

In front of the church they met Simon, who was awaiting his wife impatiently.

“Can you image how worried—” he started to say, but Kuisl cut him short.

“She was with Matthias, and she’s still alive; so let’s forget the matter.”

“With the mute Matthias, Graetz’s assistant?” Simon stared at his wife incredulously. “What are you doing around him?”

“At least he takes care of the two boys, whereas their high and mighty father prefers to stick his nose in books,” she groused.

“Just a minute. I’m only doing that because we have a murder to solve here. You said yourself—”

“Calm down, both of you,” the hangman interrupted. “You can fight all you want in Schongau, but we’re here now to help Nepomuk, and to do that I’ve got to get a better look at the holy chapel. Now, for God’s sake, let’s get in there.”

He opened the door to the church. At the noon hour, relatively few pilgrims were present. Around two dozen were kneeling and praying in the rear pews with their eyes closed, and closer to the front, near the high altar, a single monk was busy preparing for the next mass. To her horror, Magdalena recognized him as Brother Eckhart, the cellarer.

“Oh, great,” she whispered. “The old bastard snubbed me before, and I hardly think I’ll be able to distract him now.”

“You must at least try,” Simon whispered. “It will take us only two minutes to get up the stairway, across the balcony, and to the entrance, and if you can distract him that long, it will be enough.”

“Two minutes?” The hangman’s daughter raised her eyebrows. “That can be an eternity—but all right, I’ll do my best.” Magdalena dipped her fingers in the holy water from the font at the entrance, crossed herself, curtsied politely, and moved toward the apse where Brother Eckhart was busy cleaning the communion cup with a cloth. Seeing the young woman approach, he turned away pointedly.

“Oh, Your Excellency…” Magdalena started to say, but the
cellarer didn’t respond. “I wasn’t here for the offertory this morning,” she said, “but I’d like to donate something for construction of the new monastery.” At that, the fat monk raised his head.

“You can give me the money if you wish,” he answered haughtily, “and I’ll pass it along as a charitable donation.”

You’ll blow it on booze, you bloated winebag,
Magdalena thought, smiling.

“As you wish, Your Excellency,” she replied in a naive tone. “But may I ask you something first?”

The cellarer gave her a distrustful look. “Are you the woman I chased out of the balcony recently?” he asked, “the one who wanted to know so much about our relics room?”

“Ah, yes,” Magdalena admitted after brief hesitation. “The relics… they… they mean so very much to me.” She beamed ecstatically. “I even dream about the relics. In my dreams, Charlemagne and Saint Elizabeth even come to my bed and speak to me. They tell me when the cattle are sick and when the milk will turn sour, and when I look in the pot the next day, the milk is sour. A miracle!”

“A… miracle, indeed. And now let me polish the chalice for the next mass.” Evidently the cellarer was accustomed to hearing such stories from the faithful, and his distrust vanished. Magdalena cast a surreptitious glance up at the balcony to see Simon and her father starting up the stairs to the monk’s choir. She had to think of something.