The Poisoned Pilgrim: A Hangman's Daughter Tale (38 page)

At that moment came a knock at the door so loud it sounded as if someone were trying to kick it in.

“Open up!” shouted an angry voice that Magdalena thought she recognized. “In the name of the monastery, open this door at once before I have this pigsty torn down.”

“For God’s sake, all right, all right,” the short knacker rushed to the door and pressed the latch. Two hunters in green hunting costumes stormed in. Magdalena recognized them as the same men who had been guarding Nepomuk in the dairy a few days ago. They were armed with lances, and small crossbows hung from their belts. Behind them came a foppish youth and a potbellied older man whom the hangman’s daughter knew all too well: the Schongau burgomaster, Karl Semer, and his son, Sebastian.

Squinting, old Semer scrutinized the scantily furnished room before speaking. “Where is he?”

“Where is who?” Magdalena was puzzled. “I don’t know whom you’re talking about.”

“Your father, you dumb goose,” Karl Semer walked up to Magdalena and glared at her. “Do you think I don’t know what you’re up to? A stranger dressed as a Franciscan monk slipped into the monastery yesterday—a spy. He probably even stole documents from the monastery before running off. The prior told me everything.” He moved even closer, so close that Magdalena
could smell his pungent sweat. “And do you know what else the prior told me? This fraudulent Franciscan was over six feet tall, a bear of a man with a hooked nose like nobody else in the Priests’ Corner. I know your father is behind this. Admit it.”

Magdalena appeared calm, but inside she was seething. She hadn’t seen her father since the morning before, and evidently he’d been caught snooping around the monastery. She could only hope nothing had happened to him.

“Nonsense,” she replied coolly. “Why would my father be here in Andechs? Perhaps he’s on a pilgrimage? An executioner?” she scoffed. Michael Graetz stood there silently, his arms crossed, and she hoped he wouldn’t betray her.

“Ha, hangman’s girl, you lie whenever you open your filthy mouth,” the burgomaster growled. His son’s lips curled into a faint smile, and Magdalena could feel him looking her up and down.

“Your own husband tipped us off,” he continued. “A few days ago in the tavern he boasted of how his father-in-law would straighten out things in Andechs.”

“Then my father changed his mind. In any case, he’s not here. You two can come and have a look under the bench.” Magdalena turned to her children who were awake now and had started crying. “And now goodbye. As you can see, I have better things to do than stand here listening to idle talk.”

The two hunters were still standing in the doorway with their lances, but now they looked uncertain. Evidently old Semer had promised them they could arrest the false monk in the knacker’s house and reap a handsome reward for it, but all they found was a rude woman with two screaming brats and a grim-looking knacker in a bloody work apron.

“What’s this all about, Alois?” Michael Graetz growled. Obviously, he knew one of the hunters. “Is this any way to behave, to just come crashing into the house of an honest man, shouting wild accusations?”

“I’m sorry, Michael, but—” the man started, but Karl Semer interrupted.

“This isn’t a house, it’s a pigsty,” he shouted. “And I’m not going to let myself be criticized by a filthy knacker, especially when he’s lying. There’s no question that Kuisl was here, and somewhere, we’re no doubt going to find that damned Franciscan robe.”

In the meantime, young Semer had been wandering through the room with visible disgust, carefully examining things. Finally, he stopped in front of a windowsill where he found a small leather pouch that looked familiar. When he tipped it over, little flakes of tobacco fell to the floor.

“Aha, and what is this here?” Sebastian Semer shouted triumphantly. “I know only one person who smokes this stinking weed, and that’s the Schongau hangman.”

“Then you’re sadly mistaken,” replied Magdalena without batting an eyelash. “I like to smoke a pipe now and then myself. It’s good for digestion, young councilor. You should try it sometime; then you wouldn’t have so much gas.”

“You smoke it, too? A woman?” It took Sebastian Semer a while to pull himself together. “That’s… that’s a damned lie.”

“I can attest to it,” the knacker answered quietly from his corner. “She smokes like a saber-rattling Saracen.”

“Then… then you’re lying too. I’ll—”

“Me? Lying?” Now Graetz’s voice became louder, as well, as he struggled to be heard over the screaming children. Despite his rather small stature, the knacker approached the confused youth threateningly and reached for the knife hanging on his waistband. “Even a filthy knacker has a sense of decency,” he trumpeted. “You’re calling me a liar? Who the hell are you, anyway?”

“Uh, this is the son of the Schongau burgomaster,” Magdalena said, trying to calm him down as she rocked the two crying boys in her arms. “I’m sure we can clear this all up.”

“Then the son of the Schongau burgomaster should go back
where he came from,” grumbled Graetz, only slightly mollified. “In any case, he’s not welcome here.”

Open-mouthed and trembling slightly, Sebastian Semer turned to his father. “Father, did you hear what this—”

Karl Semer waved him off angrily. Though he seemed about to explode, he managed to get control of himself. “Very well, hangman’s girl, we’ll leave,” he said softly. “But if I find your father anywhere in Andechs, I’ll have him arrested and interrogated on suspicion of breaking into the monastery and of blasphemy. And then we’ll see who’s more stubborn—the hangman from Schongau or the one from Weilheim. I’ve heard that Master Hans is a tough fellow. He’ll be glad to take on a colleague who’s been going around causing mischief dressed as a Franciscan monk.” Semer’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Who knows, perhaps your father even has something to do with the watchmaker’s corpse that was fished out of the well this morning.”

Magdalena looked at him, perplexed. “Virgilius’s corpse was found? But…”

The burgomaster chuckled. He clearly enjoyed seeing the self-confident young woman finally a bit unsettled.

“That’s the truth. Evidently, that damn apothecary burned him and then threw him in the well. The prior, who will probably soon be the new abbot, just told me about it. So the matter is clear.” Semer smiled maliciously. “Your father has been snooping around here in vain. This apothecary will be burned in Weilheim as a murderer, and we can soon all go about our business again.” He bowed stiffly. “And now I must really say goodbye before I get sick from the odor in here.” Turning up his nose, Karl Semer turned and beckoned to his son, who was still standing there alongside him, trembling with anger. “Come on, Sebastian, this is no place for people like us.”

Holding their heads high, the Semers left the knacker’s house with the two perplexed hunters as Magdalena and Michael Graetz watched silently.

“I’m afraid you owe me some explanation,” the knacker said once the footsteps had finally faded away. “Why isn’t your father here, when he clearly is here? And what is this matter with the fake Franciscan monk? I remember that I, in fact, saw someone in my house who looked like that.” He winked at Magdalena. “I don’t mind lying to these puffed-up old buzzards because they’ve offended our family, but I’d still like to know why that old show-off was so angry.”

“That’s… that’s a long story,” Magdalena sighed. “Let me put the children to bed; then I can probably explain a few things. In any event, it seems everything was all in vain. Now that Virgilius is dead, we can no longer count on the abbot’s help. And Nepomuk will be burned at the stake.”

She took the two boys into the bedroom, sang them a lullaby, then returned to the main room, where she sat down at the table beside the knacker.

“So…” she began hesitantly. “Where shall I begin?”

“Start with your father,” said Graetz. “What in the world is that stubborn old fool up to this time?”

Neither Magdalena nor Graetz noticed someone eavesdropping outside. When the man had heard what he wanted, he quietly slipped away through the hawthorn bushes.

His heart pounding, Simon entered the Prince’s Quarters in the monastery’s upper story.

Jakob Schreevogl had reappeared in the clinic half an hour before to tell Simon the condition of the count’s son had become critical. The medicus had checked some of his other patients before hurrying off, not without first reminding Schreevogl not to let the still-unconscious novitiate master out of his sight. Surprised, the councilor had nodded, then bent down to wash Laurentius’s burns with a damp towel.

As Simon entered the room of the sick boy in the Wittelsbach family tract, he saw right away how urgently the boy needed
attention. He was deathly pale, groaning and rolling in his sleep from one side of the bed to the other, and his heart was racing like a tightly wound spring recently released. Simon put his hand on the four-year-old’s red-hot forehead. The count and his young wife sat on the edge of the four-poster canopy bed. She’d obviously been crying—her eyes were red and her makeup was running. She was wearing a tight-fitting, fur-trimmed silk dress, which Simon considered inappropriate for this visit to the bedside of her deathly sick son. Like her husband, she seemed to have a liking for too much perfume.

“Good Lord, can’t you do something?” the countess cried out as Simon felt for the pulse of his young patient. “Give him medicine; bleed him if necessary. I don’t need a doctor to hold my child’s hand.”

“Your Excellency, I’m only listening for a heartbeat,” replied Simon, trying to calm the overwrought woman.

“By holding his hand? How do you do that?”

“Josephine, let the man do his job,” the count urged her. “He was recommended to me by one of the Schongau aldermen.”

“That fat fellow you’re doing business with?”

“No, someone else. At least I have a good impression of him. I think the bathhouse surgeon knows what he’s doing, perhaps more than our sinfully expensive doctors in Munich.” The count glared menacingly at Simon. “And he knows what will happen to him if he fails.”

The countess rubbed her tear-stained eyes. “You’re… you’re right, Leopold,” she sighed. “It’s just this… sitting around not being able to do anything that’s driving me out of my mind.” Simon looked at her out of the corner of his eye and wondered whether she’d ever had much on her mind.

“Well?” Wartenberg asked harshly. “Is there hope, bathhouse surgeon? Be honest, please.”

The chances of your son surviving are so slight that a single pilgrimage probably won’t suffice,
Simon thought darkly.
But I can
scarcely tell you that, because then you’ll be measuring me for the right-size noose.

“The most important thing for us to do now is to lower the fever,” he said. “I found a little Jesuit’s powder a few days ago in the apothecary here. It’s very rare and expensive, but I’ll give it to your son.”

“Jesuit’s powder?” the countess inquired, horrified. “What sort of witch’s brew is that?”

“It’s the bark of a tree that grows in the West Indies, Your Excellency. It cured a countess suffering from fever there, and it ought to help your son, as well.”

“A countess?” Wartenberg’s wife chewed on her painted lips. “Very well, then you may proceed with this… uh, whatever it is.”

Simon took the jar with the inauspicious-looking yellow dust out of his medicine bag, carefully poured the powder into a little phial, mixed it with wine, then finally dripped it into the boy’s mouth. Secretly, he was happy he’d almost forgotten the powder the last few days and hadn’t used it already. Now the appropriate moment seemed at hand—the tiny dose might just be enough for a child.

“With God’s grace the fever should subside,” Simon said after emptying the phial. Then he packed up his medicine bag. “Now we must wait and pray your son is strong enough to overcome the sickness himself.”

“Pray! You always just say pray.” The countess raised her hands. “This whole place does nothing but pray, and still my little Martin is dying.”

“Be still, Josephine,” the count whispered. “You are blaspheming God.”

“And so what if I am? I always told you we shouldn’t come to this filthy hole of a monastery. Someone else could have brought the key. Why in God’s name did the elector assign you to bring…”

“Good God, I told you to hold your tongue.”

Clearly the count hadn’t intended to speak so loudly, and Simon could sense they were hiding something from him.

Leopold von Wartenberg eyed him suspiciously. “Did you want something else?” he asked harshly.

“Ah, yes, I do have one more question,” Simon said to change the subject. “Has your son done anything out of the ordinary? Did he eat or drink anything he wouldn’t otherwise? Something that could be the cause of this sickness?”

The count seemed to forget his distrust for a moment, struggling to remember. “Actually no,” he finally answered. “We brought our own cook with us who prepares our food in the monastery kitchen.” Suddenly he paused. “But three days ago, we had supper in the tavern in Andechs because our cook had gone to Herrsching to buy fish. The food in the tavern was simple but not bad. We had marinated leg of venison with dumplings and braised turnips. Very tasty, though a bit tough.”

“Leg of venison, I understand.” Simon nodded. Something about the answer made him prick up his ears, though he couldn’t say exactly what.

Finally he reached down one last time to feel the little boy’s pulse. It was still fast, but at least the child seemed to be sleeping calmly now. Simon rose, exhausted.

“I’d be very grateful, Your Excellency, if you would let me know of any change in his condition,” he said, bowing deeply. “For better or worse. And now, farewell. Unfortunately, other patients are waiting.”

Count Wartenberg dismissed him with a brusque wave of his hand, and Simon bowed repeatedly as he backed out of the room. Outside in the hall, he could hear the countess sobbing again.

Exhausted, the medicus rubbed his temples, trying not to think of the long night still awaiting him at the bedside of the novitiate master. Perhaps he could ask Schreevogl to take over at
least the second part of his watch. He would tell him simply that the condition of the young monk was so grave he needed constant care.