The Hangman's Daughter (7 page)

“You went down to see the executioner again yesterday. You showed little Grimmer’s body to the quack. Go on, don’t deny it! Hannes the tanner told me. And you were flirting around with that Magdalena too!”

Simon shut his eyes. He had indeed met Magdalena down by the river yesterday. They had gone for a walk. He had behaved like an idiot, unable to look her in the eyes, and kept throwing pebbles into the Lech the whole time. He told her everything that had come into his head since the death of Grimmer’s boy: that he didn’t believe the Stechlin woman was guilty, and that he was frightened of a new witch trial like the one seventy years before…

He had babbled on like a six-year-old, and he had really only wanted to say that he liked her. Someone must have seen them. In this blasted town you were never alone.

“Maybe I was. Why does it bother you?” Simon poured out his coffee. He avoided looking into his father’s eyes.

“Why does it bother me? Have you gone crazy!” Bonifaz Fronwieser was, like his son, of small stature, but as was the case with many small men, he could get very angry. His eyes almost popped out, the points of his already graying mustache trembled.

“I am still your father!” he screamed. “Can’t you see what you are doing? It has taken me years to build this up for us here. You could have it so good! You could become the first proper doctor in this town! And then you ruin it all by meeting this hangman’s wench and visiting her father’s house. People are talking—don’t you notice that?”

Simon looked up at the ceiling and let the sermon go over his head. By now he knew it by heart. In the war his father had made his way somehow as a minor army surgeon, where he had met Simon’s mother, a simple camp follower. Simon was seven years old when his mother died of the plague. Father and son had followed the soldiers for a few years, cauterized gunshot wounds with boiling oil and amputated limbs with the bone saw. When the war ended they had traveled through the country in search of a place to settle. Finally they had been accepted in Schongau. In the past few years, with hard work and ambition, his father had advanced to barber and then to a kind of official town doctor. But he had not studied medicine. Nevertheless, the town council tolerated him because the local barbers were incompetent, and doctors from the distant towns of Munich or Augsburg were too expensive.

Bonifaz Fronwieser had sent his son to study in Ingolstadt. But the money had run out, and Simon had to return to Schongau. Since then his father had saved every penny and looked with suspicion upon his offspring, whom he thought was a careless dandy.

“…while others fall in love with decent girls. Take Joseph, for example: he’s courting the Holzhofer girl. That’ll be a rich alliance! He’ll get on all right. But you…” His father ended the speech. Simon had not been listening for some time. He sipped his coffee and thought about Magdalena. Her black eyes, which always seemed to be smiling; the broad lips, which were moist yesterday with the red wine that she had brought to the river in a leather flask. Some drops had fallen on her bodice, so he gave her his kerchief.

“Look at me when I’m talking to you!” His father hit him with a ringing backhanded slap, so that the coffee, in a wide arc, flew through the room. With a rattle the cup fell to the floor and shattered. Simon rubbed his cheek. His father stood in front of him, slight and trembling. Coffee stains marked his doublet, which was spotted enough anyway. He knew that he had gone too far. His son was no longer twelve years old. But he was indeed his son. They had gone through so much together; he only wanted the best for him…

“I’m going to see the hangman,” whispered Simon. “If you want to stop me, you can stick your scalpel in my stomach.” Then he gathered up a few books from the table and slammed the door behind him.

“Go to Kuisl then!” shouted his father after him. “And a lot of good it may do you!”

Bonifaz Fronwieser stooped and picked up the fragments of the cup. With a loud curse he threw them through the open window out onto the street, behind his son.

Blind with anger Simon hastened through the alleys. His father was so…so…pigheaded. He could even understand the old man. It was after all about his son’s future: study, a good wife, children. But even the university had not been the right thing for Simon. Dusty old knowledge, learned by heart, still partly drawn from Greek and Roman scholars. Actually his father had never gotten much further than purges, bandaging, and bleeding. In the executioner’s house, on the other hand, a fresher wind blew, for Jakob Kuisl owned the
Opus Paramirum
of Paracelsus and also the
Paragranum,
treasures for bibliophiles, which Simon was occasionally allowed to borrow.

As he turned into the Lech Gate street, he bumped into a horde of children who were standing together in a group. From the middle of the group came a loud yammering. Simon stood on tiptoe and saw a tall, solidly built boy sitting above a girl. He was holding her down on the ground with his knees while he struck his victim again and again with his right fist. Blood flowed from the corners of the girl’s mouth, and her right eye was swollen and shut. The cluster of children accompanied every blow with shouts of encouragement. Simon pushed the jeering pack aside, grabbed the boy by the hair, and pulled him off the girl.

“Pack of cowards!” he cried. “Attacking a girl, shame on you!”

The mob retreated a few yards, but only reluctantly.

The girl on the ground sat up and wiped her hair, sticky with filth, out of her face. Her eyes looked around warily as if seeking an opening in the crowd of children through which she could escape.

The big boy drew himself up in front of Simon. He was about fifteen and half a head taller than the physician. Simon recognized him. It was Hannes, the son of Berchtholdt, the baker in the Weinstrasse.

“Don’t interfere, physician,” he threatened. “This is our business.”

“If you are knocking a little girl’s teeth out, that’s my business too,” replied Simon. “After all, I am, as you say, a physician and I must reckon up what the fun will cost you.”

“Cost me something?” Hannes scowled. He was not exactly the brightest of the group.

“I mean, if you cause the girl injury, you’ll have to pay for it. And we have enough witnesses, haven’t we?”

Hannes looked over at his comrades, puzzled. Some of them had already left the scene.

“That Sophie is a witch!” Another boy joined the discussion. “She has red hair, and moreover she was always with the Stechlin woman, just like Peter, and he’s dead now!” The others murmured in agreement.

Simon shuddered internally. It was beginning. Now, already. Soon Schongau would consist entirely of witches and people pointing their fingers at them.

“Nonsense,” he exclaimed. “If she were a witch, why would she let you beat her up? She would have flown away on her broomstick long before. Now be off with you!”

Reluctantly, the gang withdrew, but not without casting one or two threatening looks at Simon. When the boys were a stone’s throw away, he heard them shout: “He goes to bed with the hangman’s girl!”

“Perhaps she’ll put a noose around his neck!”

“Difficult to make him a head shorter, he’s short enough already!”

Simon sighed. His still fresh and tender relationship with Magdalena was no longer a secret. His father was right: people were talking.

He stooped down to help the girl up.

“Is it true that you were always at the Stechlin woman’s house with Peter?” he asked.

Sophie wiped the blood from her lips. Her long red hair was full of dirt. Simon reckoned she was about twelve years old. Under a layer of filth an intelligent face looked at him. The physician thought he remembered that she came from a tanner’s family in the Lech quarter down by the river. Her parents had died during the last outbreak of the plague, and another tanner’s family had taken her in.

The girl remained silent. Simon grabbed her shoulder firmly.

“I want to know if you were with Peter at Goodwife Stechlin’s. It’s important!” he repeated.

“Could be,” she murmured.

“Did you see Peter in the evening?”

“Goodwife Stechlin has nothing to do with it, so help me God.”

“Who, then?”

“Peter went down to the river again afterward…alone.”

“Why?”

Sophie pressed her lips together. She avoided his eyes.

“I want to know why!”

“He said it was a secret. He…was going to meet someone.”

“Who, for God’s sake?”

“Didn’t say.”

Simon shook Sophie. He felt that the girl was hiding something from him. Suddenly she broke from his grasp and ran into the next alley.

“Wait!” he cried and started to run after her.

Sophie was barefoot, and her little feet flitted lightly over the stamped earth. She had already reached the Zänkgasse and ducked between some servant maids coming from the market with fully laden baskets. As Simon rushed past them, his clothing caught on one of the baskets. The maid let go of the basket, and radishes, cabbages, and carrots flew in all directions on the street. Simon heard angry cries behind him, but he could not stop, as the girl was on the verge of making her escape. She had already disappeared around the next bend, where there were fewer people in the alleys. Simon held onto his hat with one hand and continued running. On the left stood two houses with their roofs almost touching and in between was a narrow alley, just about shoulder-width, leading to the town wall. The ground was covered with rubble and trash, and at the other end Simon could see a small form running away. Cursing, the physician bade farewell to his fine leather boots greased with beef tallow and sprang over the first mound of rubble.

He landed directly in a heap of refuse, slipped, and fell on the seat of his pants in a mass of rubble, rotten vegetables, and the fragments of a discarded chamber pot. He could hear the sound of distant footsteps. He groaned and rose to his feet as one story higher a window shutter was opened. Startled faces looked down on a rather shaken physician, who was carefully removing cabbage leaves from his coat.

“Mind your own business!” he shouted up at them. Then he limped off in the direction of the Lech Gate.

The hangman looked through the glass at a heap of yellow stars, which were glittering in the light of the tallow candle. Crystals like snow, each one perfect in its form and arrangement. Jakob Kuisl smiled. When he dipped into the mysteries of nature, he was sure that there must be a God. Who else could create such lovely works of art? Man’s inventions could only ape those of his Creator. On the other hand, it was the same God who ensured that people died like flies, carried off by plague and war. It was difficult in such times to believe in God, but Jakob Kuisl discovered Him in the beauties of nature.

Just as he was carefully distributing the crystals on a piece of parchment with his tweezers, there was a knock at the door. Before he could say anything, the door of his study opened a crack. A current of air blew in and moved the parchment toward the end of the table. With a curse Jakob grabbed at it and prevented it from being blown down. Some of the crystals disappeared into a crack in the table.

“Who in the name of three devils?”

“It’s Simon,” said his wife, who had opened the door. “He wants to bring the books back. And he would like to talk to you. He says it is very important. And don’t swear so loud, the children are asleep.”

“Let him come in,” growled Kuisl.

When he turned toward Simon he saw a deformed face. Not until then did the hangman notice that he still had his monocle in his eye. The doctor’s son, on the other hand, was looking into a pupil as large as a ducat.

“Just a toy,” grumbled Kuisl, taking the brass-mounted lens out of his eye. “But sometimes fairly useful.”

“Where did you get that?” asked Simon. “It must be worth a fortune!”

“Shall we say I did a favor for an alderman, and he repaid me in kind.” Jakob Kuisl sniffed. “You stink.”

“I’ve…I had an accident. On the way here.”

The hangman, with a dismissive gesture, passed the lens to Simon and pointed to the little yellow heap on the parchment.

“Just take a look at that. What do you think it is?”

With the monocle, Simon bent over the little grains.

“That’s…that is fascinating! I’ve never seen such a perfect lens…”

“What about the grains, that’s what I want to know.”

“Well, from the smell I would say it’s sulfur.”

“I found it together with a lot of clay in little Grimmer’s pocket.”

Simon abruptly took down the monocle and looked at the hangman.

“Peter? In his pocket? But how did the sulfur get there?”

“That’s what I’d like to know too.”

Jakob Kuisl reached for his pipe and began to fill it. Meanwhile Simon walked up and down in the little room and told about his encounter with the orphan girl. Occasionally Kuisl growled; otherwise he was fully occupied with filling and lighting his pipe. When Simon had finished his story, the hangman was already enveloped in a haze of tobacco smoke.

“I visited the Stechlin woman,” he said finally. “The children had indeed been with her. And a mandrake is missing.”

“A mandrake?”

“A magic herb.”

Jakob Kuisl told briefly of his meeting with the midwife and of the chaos in her house. Again and again there were long pauses while he drew on his pipe. Meanwhile Simon seated himself on a wooden stool and fidgeted impatiently.

“I don’t understand it at all,” said the young physician at last. “We have a dead boy with a witches’ mark on his shoulder and sulfur in his pocket. We have a midwife as a prime suspect, from whom a mandrake has been stolen. And we have a gang of orphans who know more than they will admit. None of this makes sense!”

“Above all we have very little time,” mumbled the hangman. “The Elector’s secretary is coming in a few days. Between now and then I have to make the Stechlin woman the culprit, otherwise the council will be on my back.”

“And what if you simply refuse?” asked Simon. “Nobody can demand that you…”

Kuisl shook his head. “Then they’ll send another, and I can look for a new job. No, it’ll have to be like this. We must find the real murderer, and right soon.”