“Jakob Kuisl is an innocent man,” Simon insisted once more. “You have my word.”
“That’s the only thing standing between you and immediate expulsion,” Brother Hubertus said, dabbing the sweat on his forehead.
Simon wrapped both hands around his tankard and stared down into his beer, as if somehow he might find the solution to all his problems there. Of course, his wonderful plan had ended in a fiasco. Why on earth had he thought Brother Hubertus would welcome them with open arms? Last night the Franciscan had thrown a fit when he learned how much he’d been deceived. That’s when Simon laid all his cards on the table. He told Brother Hubertus about Kuisl and the intrigue against him. He told the monk where the powder came from, as well as his suspicions about the philosopher’s stone. For the most part Brother Hubertus took it all in in silence, his lips tightly pressed. Not until Simon mentioned the floury dust in the storage room and alchemist’s workshop did the brewmaster interject a few questions. He seemed mostly interested in the quantity of powder Simon and Magdalena had found down there.
Hubertus appeared to have calmed down a bit in the meantime, but though he continued to sip his wheat beer, he really didn’t seem to enjoy it.
“At least it looks like your father’s feeling better,” he said, looking over at the hangman’s daughter. “He has the constitution of an ox; give him a few days and he’ll shake those shackles right off. I’ll have to assign a guard to his bedside soon enough.”
“Does that mean my father can stay here in the bishop’s palace?” Magdalena looked hopefully at the Franciscan. Until now she’d kept silent for the most part, leaving the explaining to Simon. But this concerned the fate of her family. “You won’t turn him over to the city, will you?” she inquired. “You’ll grant him asylum?”
“How can the bishop deny asylum to such a battered man?” Hubertus replied. “That is our damned duty as shepherds of the Lord, even when upholding this duty may—er—conflict, shall we say, with other concerns.” This last sentence he added with a sigh.
Simon breathed a sigh of relief. Magdalena’s father was safe for the time being. The night before, they had taken Kuisl to the brewmaster’s chamber and applied fresh bandages to his wounds, and he’d been sleeping like a baby ever since. Simon had briefly examined his wounds, burns, and bruises. Neither he nor Magdalena could imagine all the suffering he’d been through in the past few days.
“But don’t get your hopes up too much,” the fat monk continued. “I was able to persuade the bishop to allow you to stay here for only three days.” He turned to both Simon and Magdalena and held three fat fingers up to their faces. “Three days, no more. That’s all the time you have to prove this man’s innocence. Thereafter he’ll be turned over—and you along with him—to the city guards. To be clear, the only reason you have even this much time is because I interceded on your behalf. If it was up to the bishop, the whole lot of you would be rotting away as we speak in the dungeon at city hall.”
Simon nodded timidly. “I can’t tell you how grateful I am. I’m sorry I so shamelessly abused your trust.”
“Oh, come now!” Brother Hubertus took a big gulp from his tankard. “Enough of this pompous talk—let’s get to work.”
“You’re right,” Simon declared with a firmer voice. “Time is precious, and so it’s all the more urgent now that you tell us what you’ve learned about the powder. Last night you implied you’d found the secret—so put an end to the suspense. What is it?”
The Franciscan looked thoughtfully at Simon for a long while before answering. “Actually, I wanted to tell you yesterday what nasty stuff that powder is,” he began. “But tell me the truth, Fronwieser. Can I really trust you? How do I know that you’re not looking for more of this evil stuff yourself? How am I supposed to know you’re not lying to me again? You, a doctor in the Regensburger Collegium? Bah!”
“I give you my word as a doctor,” Simon stammered.
“Your word’s worth nothing here,” Hubertus retorted. “Believe me, this powder is much too dangerous for me to depend on the word of any old quack who comes along.” He rose to his full, imposing height. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll make some more inquiries, and only when I’m convinced this stuff can’t cause any greater damage than it may have already, then I’ll let you in on the secret.”
Simon stared back at him, his mouth open. “But—but then how are we supposed to help Magdalena’s father?” he stuttered. “We need to know what—”
“Whatever you need to know or do, it’s all the same to me,” the brewmaster interrupted. “Early tomorrow morning I’ll have more to tell you. But until then the matter is too delicate. This secret could drive us all out of our minds, and if what I think is true…” His expression clouded over. “Just tend to your future father-in-law, or he may die even before his time here is up.”
With these words, he turned to leave the brew house, teetering as he slammed the door behind him.
The medicus sighed and drummed his fingers on the rutted tabletop.
“And now?” asked Magdalena. “What shall we do now, you know-it-all?”
“You heard him,” Simon replied gruffly. “We take care of your father. That’s something I know how to do at least.”
He rose abruptly and walked past steaming vats to a little wooden door in the back of the vaulted room. It opened into a low room furnished with a simple bed and a trunk with metal fittings. This would ordinarily have been the brewmaster’s bedroom, but Brother Hubertus had made it up yesterday for Jakob Kuisl, who now lay snoring loudly on the bed, bare from the waist up. Simon leaned down and put his ear to Kuisl’s powerful hairy chest. A few hours earlier he’d given Kuisl a bit of the opium poppy extract he carried around in his bag, and as a result the hangman’s breathing was calmer now and even. Magdalena had also been keeping watch at her father’s bedside, periodically spooning hot chicken broth between his chapped lips. The medicus carefully checked the hangman’s bandages.
The bishop’s bailiffs had tied the hangman to the bed with ropes, but Simon very much doubted these fetters could hold him there for long. The Schongau executioner had the constitution of a bear and, in keeping with that, seemed to have fallen into a deep winter’s sleep. The wounds on his back, arms, and legs no longer festered, and the inflammation had begun to go down overnight. Simon was hopeful Kuisl would be well on his way to recovery within a few days.
Just in time for his next torture session, he thought gloomily.
He felt a hand on his shoulder. Magdalena gave him a sympathetic look.
“I’m really sorry about what happened earlier,” she said softly. “I know you meant well. We’ve always found a way out. Let’s wait and see—we just might again.”
Simon smiled wearily and nodded. “You’re right. We’ll make out, all three of us.” But his voice sounded strangely hollow. For the first time since their arrival in Regensburg he couldn’t shake the feeling that their situation might be hopeless after all.
“At least he probably won’t remember a thing about all this.” The hangman’s daughter gestured toward her father, whom she hadn’t seen for such a long time. Kuisl slept as sweetly as if he were back home in his own bed.
“One thing is clear,” Magdalena continued. “We can’t escape with him now, not in his present condition. And as long as we sit around here in the bishop’s palace, we’ll never find out what there is to know about this powder. This fat monk is just putting us off.”
Simon frowned. “At least I was right in thinking that there was something special about the stuff. It may hold the key to all our questions—and it’s dangerous. Brother Hubertus seems to have great respect for it. A secret that could drive us all out of our minds…” He quietly pondered the brewmaster’s strange words. “Just what in the world could Brother Hubertus have meant by that?”
“It’s already starting to drive me out of my mind.” Magdalena sighed. “A powder that the Regensburg patricians are chasing after as they would a murd
erer—or God knows who else! What on earth could it be?”
“Perhaps it really is something like the philosopher’s stone,” Simon whispered. “But what exactly this stone is…” He shook his head. “This kind of thinking won’t get us very far. Let’s wait until morning to see whether Hubertus lets us in on his secret. If not, we’ll try to escape with your father before the bishop has him locked up in the dungeon.”
“And how do you think we’re going to manage that?” Magdalena asked incredulously. “The guards in the courtyard outside rattle their sabers every time I so much as poke my head out the brewery door.”
“No idea. But there’s no point in sitting here twiddling our thumbs. We might as well start looking around here.” Shrugging, Simon headed back into the brewery, waving cheerfully through the window at the suspicious bailiffs outside. “There’s got to be more than one exit in this whole place,” he mused. “We just have to find it.”
The Danube flowed past the city like a sluggish ribbon of black slime. Dead fish, cabbage stalks, and shredded fishnets bobbed up and down along the rotting posts of the pier. Not a breath of air stirred in the midday heat, and the stench hung heavily over the pier, permeating the shutters of every building around the harbor.
On the pier, hidden behind shipping crates piled high, two men were seated atop two large wooden tethering posts. They didn’t even smell the infernal stench. The hatred within them was so great it blocked out everything else. Their hatred was a poison that had eaten away at them year after year, leaving room in their hearts and their minds for only one thought.
Revenge.
“But how could that happen!” one of them complained, cracking his knuckles so loudly the sound echoed across the deserted waterfront. “We were so close, and then he slipped away like a mouse into a hole. Now he’s feasting at the bishop’s palace and pleading for asylum! What a goddamned disgrace!”
“The bishop can’t let him stay there forever,” the other calmly replied. His voice was prickly, cold, like the dead of winter. “He won’t dare let a mass murderer loose.”
“How did Kuisl even manage to escape the dungeon in the first place, huh? There’s something not right there. They say the guards fell asleep. Bah!”
The other nodded. “I have a suspicion about that; if I’m right, Teuber just may have the pleasure of torturing his children with his very own hand. But first things first…” Vacantly, he watched the bloated carcass of a wild duck float by. After a pause he continued, his voice impassive. “Sooner or later the bishop’s going to have to turn Kuisl over, and then we can pick up where we left off.”
“And if he doesn’t?” snapped the other. “These priests love to play games with the city. It’s quite possible Kuisl will remain there until pigs grow wings and fly. I can’t wait that long! I’ve been waiting for this moment for years. I want my vengeance. I want—”
“Silence!” the man with the cold voice interrupted, slapping his companion’s face so hard he nearly fell headlong into the harbor. “You’re like a child, and someone’s taken your damn toy away. Do you think I don’t want revenge, too? He read the inscription on the cell wall, and I got him to the point where he almost recognized me down in the torture chamber—and no doubt in his nightmares as well…” His lips curled into a thin smile; then he grew serious. “But we have to be careful, or the others could start asking questions. I have worked a very long time to make sure no one in Regensburg would recognize me or my old name. At the inquisition I was a little too… ardent, and that was a mistake. We’ve got to remain calm—both of us. Also on account of the other matter.”
The second man whimpered and pinched his nose as a mixture of blood and green snot dripped into the Danube below. As so often, anger swelled within him. Why did he put up with this man? Why didn’t he just snap his neck? Instead, the second man swallowed his rage, just as he had his entire life.
“So what would you suggest, then?” he asked.
The man with the icy voice spat into the water. “You’re right,” he said. “We don’t know when the bishop is going to release him. Besides, his daughter and that smart aleck, the quack, are with him. They’re working hand in glove with the fat brewmaster. And they know about the Holy Fire…”
“Goddamn it! How do you know that?”
“The little weasel told me. The blasted little schemer knows everything about those two and thinks we ought to come up with some kind of a plan as quickly as possible.” He grinned. “But don’t worry—I have something in mind.”
“What?” the second man asked hopefully. He admired how the other man could throw together a plan. He was cunning, so damned shrewd!
But the other man hesitated. When he did begin to speak, his speech was clipped. He had thought it all out very carefully, and now they just had to be sure they didn’t make any mistakes. “We have to lure the mouse from its hole again,” he whispered. “With some kind of bait. But we have to find a way to get at him first.”
“You want to go into the bishop’s palace?”
The man nodded. “I know a few of the guards there, so that shouldn’t be difficult. I’ll leave a little note for Kuisl that he won’t forget as long as he lives.” Again, the corners of his mouth twitched into a thin smile. “We’ll have to bring him back to where it all began. We should have done that long ago, just him and us. That’s how it has to be.”
The second man nodded enthusiastically. “Just the two of us—and him! Like before! Kuisl will wish he was back in the torture chamber!” Suddenly he scowled. “But suppose the fat brewmaster already knows too much; suppose the others have explained the Holy Fire to him?”
The man with the icy voice spat in the river again and stood up in a single motion. “Leave that to me. We’ll catch both of them—the mouse as well as the fat rat.”
Jakob Kuisl woke to a stomach growling as loud as a bear. He was overwhelmed by hunger.
Good, he thought. If I’m hungry at least I know I can’t be dead.
He opened his eyes and stared into the darkness. It was night; alongside his bed a beeswax candle flickered atop a trunk. Next to it some kind soul had placed a jug of wine, a bowl of soup, and a loaf of bread. Kuisl vaguely recalled how his daughter had fed him like an infant just a short while ago. A wave of relief passed through his body: the third inquisitor hadn’t gotten his hands on Magdalena! What else had happened? They had fled together through the streets of Regensburg and sought refuge at the bishop’s palace. Young Simon had mentioned something about asylum, and shortly after that Kuisl had passed out again. In brief waking moments he remembered Magdalena, her voice shaking, speaking about the inscriptions in the dungeon, about the third inquisitor, and about his escape.
And then there was something else, too: he thought he remembered a man bending down over his bed at some point during the night. The stranger, whose face was hidden in shadow, had passed his fingers over the hangman’s throat and whispered just one word.
Weidenfeld.
Kuisl blinked as a shudder ran through his body. The impression was so vivid, he believed he’d even smelled the man. Kuisl had felt a hand on his sweaty shirt. Evidently his nightmares had followed him to this place as well, but for the moment they were mostly drowned out by hunger and thirst.
He was about to sit up and reach for the bread when he felt the strap across his chest. Surprised, he looked down to find leather bonds on his arms and legs tying him to the bed. He cursed softly. The bishop’s guards had apparently locked him in this room and tied him to this bed. Panicked, he pulled at the straps, but they didn’t give even the slightest. After a few minutes of struggle fat beads of sweat broke out on his forehead, and his hunger and thirst were starting to make him crazy. Should he call for help and beg the guards to loosen his bonds, just for a moment? He didn’t want to give them the satisfaction. Perhaps they’d allow his daughter to come feed him again like a toothless old man on his deathbed. That made him shudder. He’d rather die of thirst than degrade himself like
that.
So he kept tugging at the straps, thrashing back and forth until he felt the strap around his left foot begin to loosen. The hangman shifted his legs until, at last, he could slip first his right and then his left foot out of the bonds. Although he’d worked his way at least partially free, the straps around his chest and arms were as tight as if they’d been riveted to him. Kuisl threw himself so violently to the side that the bed tipped over with a crash, pinning him beneath it.
With bated breath he lay still on the ground and listened.
Had the guards heard him? All was quiet. Perhaps the bailiffs were asleep in another wing of the bishop’s palace, assuming he was still too weak to break free.
After a few minutes Kuisl tried to get upright in spite of the bed strapped to his back. He struggled to get a look around the room. He needed something sharp to tear the straps, but the room was empty except for the bed and the trunk. He’d have to look elsewhere. Swaying and grunting, he got to his feet like an animated wardrobe; the bed on his back made him even broader across than he already was. With his right hand he grabbed the door handle and pressed down cautiously. Perhaps…?
Creaking softly, the door swung outward.
Kuisl grinned. The bishop’s bailiffs had indeed forgotten to lock him inside! Stooping, he staggered through the doorway and groped around in the darkness before him like a clumsy giant. He had to be careful not to stumble or he’d wake up the entire palace. Step by step he moved quietly through a vaulted room with a stone ceiling and high windows letting in moonlight. In this dim light Kuisl noticed large copper buckets atop brick ovens and sacks of wheat and hops, some of them open, scattered across the floor. But it was the aroma that told Kuisl definitively this was a brewery.
The Beggar King: A Hangman's Daughter Tale Page 33
