The Poisoned Pilgrim: A Hangman's Daughter Tale (61 page)

The door flew open with a crash, and Count Wittelsbach stormed in. He wore a stiff red jacket, just as the day before; his handlebar mustache was carefully curled; and as so often, he smelled of soap and perfume. But his eyes betrayed that he hadn’t slept much the night before.

“Ah, there you are, bathhouse surgeon,” he began impatiently, without so much as looking at Jakob Schreevogl. “I’ve been wondering where you were. Have you seen your father-in-law?”

Simon looked at him innocently. “I thought he had reported to you about the events yesterday, didn’t he?”

“No, confound it, he didn’t.” Then he waved his hand dismissively. “But basically I don’t care what this hangman does. Let the monks deal with him. I’ve had the entrances to those damned catacombs sealed and the relic forgerers led away. My work here is finished.” Then he hesitated briefly. “Actually, I’m not here on account of the hangman but because of my son.”

“Is he better?” Simon asked, his heart pounding. “Did the Jesuit’s Powder work?”

Leopold von Wartenberg nodded. “Yes, the fever has gone down and he does seem to be getting better. I… I have you to thank for that.” He straightened up. “Therefore I have an offer to make you.”

Simon frowned. “What do you have in mind?”

“We’re traveling back to Munich today,” he declared. “My family could use a doctor like you. There are still some rooms free in our palace, and the pay would be at least ten times what you’re earning now. You could care for my son, take on a few wealthy patients, and otherwise lead a good life. How would that suit you?”

Simon’s head began to spin. Was it possible? Could someone like him, who had dropped out of medical school in Ingolstadt and was working as a dishonorable bathhouse surgeon, really settle down and practice medicine in Munich? This was exactly the kind of post his late father had always wanted for him. And the count would certainly know how to help him gain the proper approvals.

“You’re hesitating?” the count asked.

“No, no, it’s just…” Simon shook his head and laughed, but then he looked at the count anxiously.

“And my wife and my children?” he asked softly. “What about them?”

“A hangman’s daughter?” Leopold von Wartenberg raised his bushy eyebrows. “A dishonorable woman and two equally dishonorable kids in my house? How would that be arranged?” He stopped to think for a moment. “Very well, I could let you visit them from time to time. They could live in the Tanners’ Quarter in Munich and you could send them a little money for a while.” The count chuckled. “But love comes and love goes, and I’m sure you’ll soon find another woman with a better social standing.”

Simon rocked his head from side to side as if he was considering the offer. “Well…”

Leopold von Wartenberg winked mischievously at him. “Our coach is leaving from the monastery at noon,” he said. “You could travel with our group.”

“That’s… really very generous of you,” the little medicus
began hesitantly. “But… uh… I’m afraid Munich will have to get along without me.” He straightened up and turned his nose up almost the way the count had. “I’m sorry, but your city stinks too much of perfume; so I wish you a good day and farewell.” Bowing slightly, he skipped out the door. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the count standing in the middle of the clinic, open-mouthed like a carp gasping for air. He didn’t say a word.

“We’ll see each other in Schongau,” Schreevogl called after the medicus. “And give my greetings to Magdalena. By God, she’s the prettiest and stubbornest woman in the whole Priests’ Corner.”

Simon smiled and took a deep breath. The Andechs air still smelled of fire, but also of burning coal, sweat, beer mash, and a bit of incense.

This was the odor of people, and Simon loved it.

Nepomuk was startled when the door to his cell opened a crack. Blinded by the light, he squinted. Early that morning they had fetched him from the hole and locked him in this larger cell. There was no window here either and the straw stank as if it hadn’t been changed for years, but he had room enough now to stretch out, he had been given fresh water and a slice of bread, and there were far fewer rats. After the hell of recent days, it almost felt like paradise.

They had intended to continue the torture that morning, and the monk had been praying all night in preparation for his great journey. He knew he wouldn’t survive another day of torture. Six of his fingers had been broken, and Master Hans had pulled the fingernails out of the others, one by one. His right shoulder had been dislocated, pain radiated up to the top of his skull, and his arms and legs were covered with burns.

Nepomuk was sure the pain would be over that day. Either he would die from the torture or would, screaming and half-mad,
confess to everything they asked. His subsequent burning at the stake would be a welcome relief.

Now the door opened all the way, and Nepomuk saw Master Hans on the threshold.

“Have you come to take me away?” he groaned, addressing the white-haired man with the red eyes who had tormented him over and over in his nightmares. “I almost thought you’d forgotten me.”

Master Hans shook his head. His lips were red, and his ratlike eyes seemed to glow in the dark. “The torture has been postponed,” he grumbled. “Who knows who ordered that. You seem to have powerful advocates, monk.”

“The torture… has been postponed?” Nepomuk struggled to get to his feet, but he was too weak. He fell back to the ground, groaning and glaring up at the executioner like a whipped ox. “But… but why?”

“Don’t ask me. The ways of the noble lords are unfathomable.” Master Hans picked a piece of meat from his teeth and flicked it into the putrid straw.

Then he began to curse loudly. “All that work for nothing. I had you almost to the point of confession. But they’ll pay me every penny, every penny.” He grinned. “And what does it matter? I got a nice delivery today: two new criminals. And you have a visitor.”

He stepped aside. Behind him appeared another man who had been visiting his dreams. At over six feet tall, he had shaggy black hair, a dirty coat, and a hooked nose. And he was smoking.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Jakob Kuisl growled, drawing on his pipe. “I’ve got to say Master Hans really did a thorough job. It will no doubt take a week to get a bag of maggots like you back in shape.”

“Indeed.” The Weilheim executioner at his side smiled. “A masterpiece, but unfortunately your friend was too stubborn.
You could have saved yourself a lot of grief if you had just confessed, but I can also cure you for a price.”

Kuisl declined for his friend. “Never mind, Hans. You’re perhaps better at torturing, but I can take care of the healing. That requires something the dear Lord unfortunately didn’t give you.”

“And what would that be?”

“A heart.”

Kuisl handed the astonished executioner a few coins. “Take these, and leave us alone for a moment. Get out of my sight.”

With a shrug Master Hans shuffled out into the hall, where he tossed the coins in the air and deftly caught them. “You were always too soft for this line of work, Kuisl,” he called back into the dungeon. “Too much feeling just leads to bad dreams. What’s wrong, Kuisl? Do you have bad dreams?”

Without bothering to reply, Kuisl walked toward his friend crouching on the hard dirt floor in front of him. He pulled Nepomuk to him like a child and embraced him.

“It’s over, Nepomuk,” he whispered. “It’s over.”

“Over…? Over?” The fat monk stared at his friend in disbelief. His eyes were still swollen from being beaten by the Andechs hunters, and flies were circling his bloodied lips. “Do you mean I’m… free?”

“I’m not able to take you myself,” the hangman replied in a steady voice, “but the Andechs abbot swore to me by all that’s holy that he will get you out of here soon.” Kuisl grinned. “The noble gentleman owes me a favor. Without me, someone would have taken his place as abbot.”

A long, shrill shout of pain could be heard in the distance. Nepomuk trembled. “My God, who was that?” he gasped.

“Oh, I’m afraid that was the abbot’s replacement. Brother Jeremias and Brother Benedikt have already confessed to everything, but Master Hans hopes to squeeze a few more things out
of them. After all, he’s paid on commission.” For a moment, Nepomuk could only look at his friend with his mouth open. He had to pinch himself to make sure he wasn’t dreaming.

“Do you mean the… the Andechs prior is over there…” he stammered.

Kuisl set him down gently again on the ground. “That’s a long story, and I’ll tell you all about it, but first let’s relax a bit in this stinking hole.” With a wink, he took out another long-stemmed pipe and a pouch of wine he had under his coat.

“I thought we could perhaps chat a little about old times,” he said warmly. “After all, that’s what I promised you the last time we met in the Andechs dungeon. Do you remember?” He offered Nepomuk the pipe and the full pouch of wine.

“To our friendship,” he said.

“To our friendship,” replied the apothecary.

Nepomuk looked at the hangman wearily, his swollen eyes filling with tears that had nothing to do with the dense tobacco smoke.

S
OMEWHERE NEAR
S
CHONGAU ON
T
UESDAY
, J
UNE
22, 1666 AD

O
N TUESDAY MORNING
at eight o’clock, Jakob Kuisl knelt before a plain wayside shrine not far from his hometown. The cross, overgrown with ivy, stood a ways back from the road so the hangman didn’t fear being discovered by anyone. Kuisl hadn’t prayed for a long time, and his words came haltingly. “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name…”

He thought of the mad woman in the Kien Valley who had demanded he seek penance. So much had happened in recent decades—he had accumulated such a burden of guilt—that a simple prayer simply couldn’t suffice.

But this was at least a start.

“For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen.”

The hangman crossed himself, stood up with a groan, and continued along the road from Peiting to Schongau.

He’d stayed all day with his friend Nepomuk in Weilheim: they drank and smoked together, and above all, they told stories from the Great War. Kuisl had cleaned Nepomuk’s wounds, covered them with ointment, and wrapped them in bandages. From years of experience, he knew the wounds would heal in a
few weeks but the emotional scars would remain. In his dreams, Nepomuk would be haunted by the torture for the rest of his life.

Finally, after the hangman promised to visit his friend again soon, he had set out at a leisurely pace toward Schongau in the shadow of the Hoher Peißenberg. Magdalena, Simon, and the children had gone directly home from Andechs, and Kuisl assumed they would arrive home before him.

When he saw the silhouette of the town gleaming before him in the morning sun, a strange familiarity came over him. People here in the town on the other side of the river had never cared for him, they avoided looking at him, and those who sought out his healing services mostly did so in secret. After buying a talisman, a love potion, or a piece of a noose, they would cross themselves and proceeded to confession. But despite all that, this small, dirty, ugly town was his home.

He had none other.

Lost in his thoughts, he crossed the bridge and took a narrow, shaded path below the city wall. His prayer earlier in the forest had left him with a pleasant, unfamiliar feeling of security. But then his thoughts turned to his two younger children, the twins Georg and Barbara, and whether they had been able to control those rowdy Berchtholdt boys after his departure. Had they performed his duties as executioner—removed the garbage in the streets and carted it out of town?

But above all, he thought of his sick wife, Anna-Maria. Was she still trembling with fever? He remembered her cough had gotten a little better before he left. He’d thought of Anna often in recent days, especially when he became angry or impatient, and wondered what she would do in his place. Anna-Maria could be just as temperamental as her husband, but she always kept a cool head at the critical moment. Especially before executions, which often robbed him of sleep at night, she had always been a pillar of strength and had kept him from getting drunk.

The hangman started walking faster. He passed the outlying
sheds and homes of the Tanners’ Quarter, which was crowded between the Lech and the city wall. Now in the early afternoon, many men were out in the streets, hanging foul-smelling leather hides out to dry on poles and frames. Women were standing by the river, washing and chatting. When they saw Kuisl, they turned and whispered among themselves. The hangman was accustomed to such behavior, but something seemed especially strange about it today. Almost as if they pitied him.

What in God’s name
…

Finally he reached his house, which stood somewhat off the road near a large pond. Alongside it was a shed for the knacker’s carts, and by the entrance, a lovely garden with flowers, fruit trees, and vegetables.

It was when he saw the garden that he knew that something was definitely wrong.

His wife tended it daily, but now it looked as if it hadn’t been weeded for a while. Goutweed and bindweed were growing in the flowerbeds, and slugs were crawling over the wilted, partially brown lettuce. A climbing trellis that had blown over in a recent storm hadn’t been set up again.

“Anna?” he called hesitantly. “I’m back. Can you hear me?” But there was no answer from inside the house.

After a while, the door creaked open. As soon as he saw the midwife Martha Stechlin standing in the hallway with a pale and deeply furrowed face, he knew what had happened.

“No!” he shouted, running toward the door. “No! Tell me it’s not true.”

“There was… nothing I could do,” the midwife said softly. “The fever was too strong. We took her—”

“No!”

Kuisl pushed Martha aside and staggered into the room. At the large, battered table beneath the crucifix in the corner sat his family, their vacant eyes still puffy from crying. At the center of the table stood a large bowl of steaming porridge, untouched.
The hangman saw Barbara and Georg—the latter having grown a light fuzz on his upper lip—and he saw Magdalena and Simon holding Peter and Paul on their laps. The boys were sucking their thumbs in unusual silence.