She’s gotten old, Magdalena thought, old and sad.
When Anna-Maria lifted her head and saw her daughter and the others before her, she dropped the bucket and uttered a loud cry. “Thanks be to all the saints! You’re back! You’re really back!”
She ran toward her husband and daughter and, embracing them, began to sob. For a long time they stood there in the rain, a little bundle of humanity lost in their love for one another. Off to one side Simon could only shift uncomfortably from one foot to the other.
Finally Kuisl straightened up, wiped his eyes, and began to speak.
“What’s happened here?” he asked, gesturing at the surrounding houses. “Speak up, wife; what pestilence did the Lord God send this time to test us?”
“The Plague,” his wife whispered, making the sign of the cross. “The Plague. It’s already claimed more than two hundred people, and every day there are more, and…”
In a flash all the color drained from Kuisl’s face. He took his wife firmly in his arms. “The children! What’s happened to the children?” he gasped.
Anna-Maria smiled weakly. “They’re well, but for how long I don’t know. I made them a potion of toads and vinegar according to a recipe from the hangman Seitz in Kaufbeuren, but Georg won’t drink it.”
“Nonsense!” Kuisl snapped. “Toads and vinegar! Woman, who talked you into this nonsense? It’s high time I put things in order around here. Let’s go inside. I’ll make the children a cup of angelica powder and—”
The sound of footsteps cut him short. Turning, he saw Johann Lechner in the yard behind him. The Schongau secretary wore a long brown fur coat over his nondescript official garb. He looked as if he’d stepped out for a short walk and just happened to drop by the Tanners’ Quarter. To his left and right stood two nervous guards with cloths tied over their mouths, looking for all the world as if they wanted nothing more than to get out of here at once.
“How nice you’re back,” Lechner began softly, a sardonic smile on his lips. “You can see we’ve removed the garbage from town ourselves while you were away. Actually, that’s the hangman’s job, but when he’s nowhere to be found…” He paused briefly, menacingly. “Believe me, Kuisl, there will be consequences.”
“I had my reasons,” the executioner said tersely.
“Of course, of course.” Lechner nodded almost sympathetically. “We all have our reasons. But more than a few people believe the terrible odors and fumes from the trash brought the Plague to Schongau. And that the hangman is therefore to blame for all our misfortune. What do you have to say to this theory, huh?”
Kuisl remained defiantly silent.
Finally the secretary continued, drawing patterns in the mud with his walking stick as he spoke. “I’ll admit that when I heard you were coming back, my first thought was to have you dragged out of town in an animal hide and pushed into the nearest manure pit,” he said casually. “But then it occurred to me what an outrageous waste that would be.” Lechner looked the hangman in the eye. “I’m going to take pity on you one more time, Kuisl. The city needs you—and not just to haul the garbage away. People are talking about the wonder of your healing practices, and it just so happens that we could stand a few miracles right now, especially since we don’t have a medicus at the moment…” Lechner’s words hovered in the air like the Sword of Damocles. He turned his gaze to Simon, waiting for a reaction.
“What… what do you mean by that?” Simon felt as if the ground were slipping from under him, and his throat was suddenly parched. “My father… is he…?”
Lechner nodded. “He’s dead, Simon. Your father didn’t hide from this terrible sickness; he visited the sick in their homes. You can be proud.”
“My God,” Simon whispered. “Why him?”
“Only the dear Lord can say. It’s often the bravest doctors who leave us first.”
Simon was overwhelmed now by countless images and thoughts. He’d left his father angry, and now he’d never see him again. Simon remembered when, as a little boy, he accompanied his father and the camp followers in the war. He remembered the years he’d looked up to his father. Bonifaz Fronwieser had been a respected army surgeon at the time, a good doctor and healer, not the drunken, hot-tempered quack he later became in Schongau. Simon hoped he could remember his father as he used to be. Indeed, it seemed he’d regained some of his earlier dignity just before the end.
For a long time no one spoke. Finally Lechner cleared his throat. “We’ll need a new doctor in town,” he said. “I know, Simon, you never completed your university studies, but no one has to know that.”
Simon gave a start. In spite of his grief, hope sparked within him. Had he heard correctly? Had Lechner just proposed he take over as town doctor? He felt Magdalena squeeze his hand, and right then he knew what to do.
He embraced the hangman’s daughter and held her close. “Thank you for your offer, Your Excellency,” he whispered. “But I’ll accept only on the condition that you also welcome the new doctor’s future wife. Magdalena knows more about herbs than anyone. She’ll be an invaluable help to me.”
Lechner frowned. “A hangman’s daughter, the town doctor’s wife? How do you figure that?”
“You don’t have to call him a medicus,” Magdalena replied defiantly. “If it’s only a question of the title, then Simon will…” She thought for a while, then her face brightened. “Then he’ll become a bathhouse owner.”
There was a brief silence broken only by the crows cawing from rooftops.
“Bathhouse owner?” Simon stared at her in disbelief. “Cleaning dirty wooden tubs, bleeding people, and shaving their beards? I don’t think I’d care for that. It’s a dishonorable vocation that—”
“Exactly; then you will fit in with me,” the hangman’s daughter interrupted. “And I’ll be glad to take care of the shaving, if you really find that so disagreeable.”
Lechner shook his head thoughtfully. “Bathhouse operator? Why not? Actually, that’s not a bad idea at all. We do have one in town already, but he’s a drunken scoundrel, and the only thing he knows how to do is bleed people of their money. For all intents and purposes you’ll be working as a medicus, I guarantee that. After all, there’s no doctor in town, so you won’t have any competition.” Satisfied, he nodded. “Bathhouse operator. That could be a solution.”
“And the people?” Anna-Maria interjected. “What will people say? When I think of Berchtholdt and the way they taunted my poor Magdalena…” She shook her head. “I never want to live through a night like that again.”
“You don’t have to worry about Berchtholdt anymore,” Johann Lechner replied. “The Plague claimed him two days ago. Not even his wife shed a tear.” The secretary shrugged. “All the St. John’s Wort, rosaries, and Ave Marias in the world couldn’t save him in the end. Last night they took him down to Saint Sebastian’s Cemetery and buried him as fast as they could. May his soul rest in peace.” The secretary quickly crossed himself. “So are we agreed, Fronwieser? Bathhouse owner for life, and I’ll do what I can to get the council to approve marriage with the hangman’s daughter.”
Simon hesitated for just a moment, then they shook on it. “Agreed.”
“Just a moment,” Kuisl grumbled. “You can’t go ahead and arrange a wedding here without first asking my permission. I always said the Steingaden executioner would make a good match for Magdalena—”
“Oh, stop with that foolishness!” Anna-Maria interrupted. “You can’t keep hiding the fact that you actually like Simon, and after everything he’s done for you, it would be an outrage if you were to refuse him now. So give him your blessing, then leave the two of them be. You’ve played the surly old bear long enough.”
Kuisl stared back at his wife, his mouth hanging open in astonishment. But words apparently failed him, and he said nothing more.
“Then I’ll leave the young couple to themselves.” A hint of a smile played across the secretary’s lips as he turned and hurried abruptly off with the gua
rds in the direction of the Lech Gate. “I’ll expect to see you in two hours at your father’s house,” he called back to Simon. “And bring your woman along; there’s a lot to be done.”
The freshly crowned bathhouse owner grinned. As so often, Simon had the feeling Lechner had achieved exactly what he wanted. Simon took Magdalena by the arm and strolled back into the town with her, toward his father’s house.
As the couple disappeared through the Lech Gate, Kuisl and his wife entered the house and went up the stairs to the room where the twins were napping. They stood for a long time in front of the little beds, holding hands and watching their children’s calm and even breathing.
“Aren’t they beautiful?” Anna-Maria whispered.
Kuisl nodded. “So innocent. And to think their papa has so much blood on his hands.”
“You numbskull! The children don’t need a hangman but a father,” she replied. “Remember, you’re the only one they have.”
A shadow passed over Kuisl’s face. He let go of his wife’s hand and stomped down the stairs without a word where he sat on the bench beneath the family altar for a long time, staring off into space and cracking his knuckles now and then.
When his wife saw him brooding there, she couldn’t help but smile. Anna-Maria had grown accustomed to her husband’s moods; she knew he’d take his time before speaking again. Sometimes it took days. Without a word, she began pounding angelica root in a stone mortar. For a long time the rhythmic scrape of the pestle and the crackle of the flames were the only sounds in the room.
Finally, when she had had enough, she put down the pestle and ran her hand through her husband’s black hair, which was beginning to show the first signs of gray.
“What’s the trouble, Jakob?” she asked softly. “Don’t you want to tell me what happened in Regensburg?”
The hangman shook his head slowly. “Not today. I need some time.”
When Kuisl finally cleared his throat, he looked his wife directly in the eye.
“I’d just like to know one thing…” he began haltingly. “Back then, in Weidenfeld, when I saw you for the first time…”
Anna-Maria bit her lip and drew back. “We weren’t ever going to talk about that again,” she whispered. “You promised me that.”
Kuisl nodded. “I know. But I have to know, or it’ll tear me apart worse than the rack.”
“Then what is it you want to know?”
“Did any of those men touch you? You know what I mean—did they attack you? Philipp Lettner perhaps, that filthy bastard?” Kuisl put his hand on his wife’s shoulder. “Please tell me the truth! Was it Lettner? I swear it won’t change anything between us.”
For a long time the only sound in the room was the crackling birchwood on the hearth.
“Why do you want to know that?” Anna finally asked. “Why can’t things stay the way they were? Why must you hurt me?”
“Yes or no, for God’s sake!”
Standing, Anna-Maria walked over to the family altar and turned the crucifix around so the wooden Jesus faced the wall.
“The Savior doesn’t need to hear this,” she whispered. “No one does, except us.” Then, haltingly, she began to speak. She left nothing out. Her voice was hard and even, like the pendulum of a clock.
“Do you know how I washed myself after that?” she said finally. She stared off into space. “I washed for hours in the icy brooks along the way, in the rivers, ponds, whatever pool of water there was. But it didn’t help. The filth remained, like a mark of Cain that only I could see.”
“You kept silent a long time,” the hangman said softly. “You’ve never said a word about this until today.”
Anna-Maria closed her eyes for a moment before she continued. “When we got to Ingolstadt, I slipped away from you for a while. I went to visit an old midwife down by the river. She gave me a powder to get rid of it. The blood flushed it out—it was nothing but a little red clot.” Tears welled up in her eyes. “A week later, we made love for the first time. I held on to you, and I thought of nothing else.”
Kuisl nodded, his gaze transfixed by the past. “You clawed at my back. I couldn’t figure out whether out of pleasure or pain.”
Anna-Maria smiled. “The pleasure helped me forget the pain. The pleasure, and the love.”
“The powder from the midwife,” he asked. “What was it?”
His wife bent over him and ran her finger across the creases in his face. They were deep, like furrows in a field, and she knew each one intimately.
“Ergot,” she whispered. “A gift from God, or from the devil—take your pick. Just don’t take too much or you’ll fly off to heaven and never return.”
“Or to hell,” the hangman replied.
Then he took his wife in his arms and held her tight until all that remained of the birch on the hearth were glowing embers.
TRAVELER’S GUIDE TO REGENSBURG
The book you have just read is actually a love letter. If a person can be said to love a city, then I love Regensburg, and I hope you will feel the same after reading this book. If you’re planning a visit, let me reassure you that today Regensburg doesn’t stink, all the roads are paved, and you won’t be locked up in the House of Fools if you’re out and about after eight o’clock in the evening.
While Regensburg is part of Bavaria, it feels very Italian—with its narrow lanes, café tables in the open air, any number of churches, a real cathedral, and a history that dates back to the Roman Empire. A wonderful city, it was just recently named a UNESCO World Heritage site.
If you want to learn more about Regensburg, I recommend a tour, either with one of the city guides or with STADTMAUS—an organization whose novel tours bring old Regensburg back to life with actors and dramatizations. But perhaps you’ll want to set out in the footsteps of the hangman’s daughter and visit the places that play a role in my book.
If you’re the type of person who insists on reading the last pages first, consider yourself warned: if you continue reading, you’ll learn who the villain is. Is that what you want? No? Then go back to the Prologue and start from the beginning. I hope you enjoy it!
On the other hand, if you’ve already finished, and enjoyed, the book, then take a trip to Regensburg, perhaps for a weekend. Pack comfortable shoes and a copy of this book and go! For the following city tour, you’ll need at least a day or, better yet, two. After all, you’re on vacation, not running a city marathon.
Just like Magdalena and Simon, we’ll start our tour through Regensburg down by the pier next to the Stone Bridge. The oldest stone bridge in Germany, it marked the border between the Free Imperial City of Regensburg and the Duchy and Electorate of Bavaria, right up until the nineteenth century. With its fifteen arches, it was—for people of the Middle Ages—one of the wonders of the world, if not one of the devil’s masterpieces.
In the seventeenth century, at the time of our story, Regensburg was still an important trade junction, thanks to the Danube, which was navigable by ship and connected the city with Vienna and, farther downstream, the Black Sea. The Danube landings teemed with rafts and raftsmen—and no doubt with any number of shady characters. You would search in vain here for raftmaster Karl Gessner’s house—it’s just an invention of mine—though brandy and tobacco smuggling were certainly common. That said, you’ll have a fine view here of the two Wöhrd Islands. On the Upper Wöhrd, the larger island, there were actually mills at the time—hammer mills and sawmills powered by the waters of the Danube. And local rumors claim there was once a smuggler’s tunnel under the Danube, just as in my story.
Fortify yourself with some Regensburg bratwurst, preferably at the famous Wurstkuchl, probably the oldest bratwurst restaurant in the world. The quaint little tavern stands right next to the bridge and was a popular meeting place, even in Jakob Kuisl’s time. The first written record of it dates back to 1616. Look for markings on the wall here that denote historic high-water river levels. The beautiful blue Danube may not seem so harmless anymore.
Walk west along the Danube and turn left into Weißgerbergraben. Three hundred years ago a bathhouse stood on this corner. Of course, there was no secret alchemist’s laboratory here and, as far as I know, never a devastating fire, either. The old house was torn down in the eighteenth century to make way for an imposing structure that housed a doctor’s office—a building still in the hands of the same family today.
Heading south along Weißgerbergraben, cross Arnulfsplatz and turn right onto Jakobsstraße. Farther still from the center of town stands Jakobstor (Jakob’s Gate), the gate by which the Schongau hangman entered the city and the place where he was first imprisoned overnight. The execution site was located only a few steps away at the time but has long since been torn down and built over.
Far more exciting is Jakobskirche (Jakob’s Church) with its famous “Scotch” portal. Itinerant Irish monks, called “Scoti” at the time, laid the cornerstone of this building at the end of the eleventh century. To this day, experts are still trying to decipher the meaning of the innumerable figures depicted in reliefs on the portal. Some represent society’s outcasts, like those who appear in my novel: prostitutes, street performers, beggars, witches. Try to find them all—it took me quite a long time, but in my search I realized society’s outcasts would be a central motif of the novel.
After crossing the Bismarckplatz (Bismarck Square), stroll back into town by way of Gesandtenstraße. Once called Scherergasse or Lange Gasse, this is where patricians and, later, the representatives to the Reichstag lived. Today it’s a shopping district, but the buildings still retain a certain touch of the distinction that characterized Regensburg at the time of the Perpetual Reichstag of the Holy Roman Empire (Der Immerwährende Reichstag, 1663–1806). The building at 2 Gesandtenstraße, by the way, was my model for the home of city treasurer Paulus Mämminger—a figure who, like the Regensburg executioner, Philipp Teuber, really existed.
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