The Beggar King hd-3

by Oliver Pötzsch

  Simon was painfully aware that city treasurer Paulus Mamminger was one of the most powerful men in Regensburg. Whom could Simon trust, then? It still wasn’t clear what Mamminger’s role was in this game, to say nothing of Nathan or the baldheaded murderer! For that reason Simon hadn’t taken the secret tunnel under the Danube. Nathan and his henchmen could very well be lying in wait for him there, their pockets lined by powerful men to whom Simon was no more than a pesky bug to be squashed.

  The medicus bit his lip. He had to figure out whether his hunch was right before he could determine just whom to trust.

  At last the guards managed to open the gate, and along with a dozen shopkeepers, farmers, and day laborers, Simon headed across the Stone Bridge. With fifteen arches, it spanned the river to the other side, where the Electorate of Bavaria began. In the slowly lifting morning fog, the medicus could see that the customs barrier on the other side was now raised. Walking briskly, his head bent, he hurried past the guards. The day before, Simon had found in the brewmaster’s room a brown felt hat, which he now drew down over his face. He could only hope the guards were too tired to look closely.

  It seemed to work. He didn’t hear anyone call out after him, so, breathing deeply, he continued over the bridge, glancing over the railing at eddies that formed between the artificial islands. Rafts and fishing boats glided under the arches and then passed by the Lower Wohrd Island.

  His goal was almost within reach.

  About halfway across the bridge Simon caught sight of a wooden ramp that led to the larger island, the Upper Wohrd. A little house with a clock tower stood at the entry to the ramp. Here a city official leaned back on a bench, eyes sleepy and small, taking pleasure in the first rays of morning sun.

  Simon slowed his pace to avoid arousing suspicion.

  “What business do you have on the Wohrd?” the bearded guard asked gruffly. “You don’t exactly look like a miller or carpenter.” He squinted beneath his helmet as he eyed Simon. “You look more like a pen pusher to me.”

  Simon nodded. “That I am.” He casually produced the tattered page he’d torn from the brewmaster’s herbarium. In the shadow of the gate’s parapet, it was just about impossible to make out anything on the page. Simon held his breath and prayed the guard would fall for the cheap trick. “The Wohrd miller is behind on his taxes, and I’m here on behalf of the city.”

  “Let me see that.” The bailiff tore the paper from Simon’s hand and studied it carefully.

  My God, he’s going to call the guards! Simon thought. They’re going to lock me up, and all will be lost! All of Regensburg will-

  “Fine. You may pass.” The bailiff pompously handed the paper back. “Looks all right to me.”

  Simon nodded respectfully, suppressing a grin. This man was illiterate! Not even the drawings on the back had aroused his suspicion. Bowing a few times, the medicus took leave of the grim watchman and proceeded down the ramp. He waited a few yards before he dared to stand up straight.

  At that moment he heard banging and pounding across the water. Not far from where he stood, mill wheels turned in the swift current, powering huge hammers and millstones inside the island’s several buildings and sheds. Clattering sawmills stood side by side with rattling grain, fulling, and paper mills. The island was a single rumbling beast, and Simon could almost feel its vibration underfoot.

  The mill…

  His goal was in sight. Now he only hoped his hunch was right.

  The island was overgrown with low bushes, and it took Simon some time to orient himself in the daylight, but he finally recognized the big wooden gabled building to which Nathan had brought him that night. He slackened his pace, still uncertain what he might find inside. Was the mill being guarded?

  On the spur of the moment he decided to avoid the main door and first take a quick look inside through one of the windows. He clambered up onto a stack of wood against the side of the building until he reached the sealed window shutters. Bending a slat to one side, he stared into the half darkness.

  There wasn’t much to see. Just as last time, sacks of grain and flour were scattered throughout, and at the rear an enormous millstone creaked and groaned, driven by a water wheel on the building’s shore side. Simon was about to turn away when he spotted an especially large sack that had fallen from a larger pile and now lay by itself in the middle of the large room.

  The sack was moving.

  Simon blinked and took another look. Indeed, the big sack quivered and shook. Only now did the medicus realize it wasn’t a sack of grain at all but a person tied into a tight bundle. When this person rolled to the side and Simon saw her face, he had to suppress a scream.

  It was Magdalena!

  Her hair wet and tousled, her face pale, she trembled from head to toe. Nevertheless, her eyes flashed with anger, reminding Simon of a captured lynx.

  Seconds later several figures emerged from the shadows inside the mill. Two were hefty thugs with broad shoulders and the fixed gazes of men accustomed to carrying out orders. Simon thought he recognized at least one of them from the raft landing. The third was different-small, he wore a red shirt with white ribbons and, on his head, one of those chic musketeer hats Simon so wished he could afford.

  The man was Silvio Contarini.

  Crossing his legs, the Venetian took a seat on a sack of grain and scrutinized the quivering bundle in front of him. During the whole trip on the river Magdalena had struggled in vain to free herself from her bonds. In the meantime she seemed to have tired, and her movements had grown weaker. Silvio shook his head regretfully.

  “It’s really such a shame that our relationship had to come to this.” He sighed. “But the ways of the Lord are inscrutable. Believe me, I adore you all the same-your courage, your intelligence, and, of course, your beauty.”

  “You miserable dwarf!” Magdalena barked as she tried to get up. “I’ll cut off your tiny little prick if you so much as touch me again!”

  “Scusate, but that’s unavoidable,” Silvio purred. “After all, I need you for our experiment. But if you prefer, I’ll see that from now on, only these charming cavaliere-” He gestured to the two grinning behemoths at his side. “-that only their hands touch you. Would you prefer that?”

  “What kind of damned experiment?” Magdalena snapped, a hint of uncertainty resonating in her voice. “Give it to me straight for once.”

  Silvio settled onto his sack of grain as he might a chaise longue, folding his arms behind his head and looking around the mill as if for the first time. Wholly satisfied, he turned back to Magdalena.

  “So tell me, what do you think all this is here?”

  “Grain. Flour. What else?” the hangman’s daughter snapped.

  Silvio nodded. “Esattamente. But flour from a very special grain.” With a flash, the Venetian thrust his sword into one of the bags on which he’d sat just a moment ago like a king atop his throne. Rye trickled through his fingers and spilled across the floor. Almost half of the grains were blackish blue in color as if they’d begun to mold.

  “Freshly harvested and threshed from fields I leased around Regensburg,” he continued. “We’ve taken great pains to produce grain so pure. In fact, the color comes from a simple fungus that grows on the grain during warm, wet summers. The farmers fear it, but its effects are truly astonishing. You could almost say these grains are blessed by God. They give humankind the ignis sanctus, the Holy Fire.” Looking into Magdalena’s eyes, he added, “But you midwives probably know it better by the name Saint Anthony’s Fire.”

  “My God!” Magdalena panted. Her face turned a shade whiter. “Saint Anthony’s Fire! Then inside all these grains is…”

  Silvio nodded. “Ergot. Indeed. God’s poison. It offers man a vision of Judgment Day. Those who partake of it behold a vision of heaven… and hell. It’s said the grain is as old as humankind.” Again the grain trickled through his fingers. “Entire villages have given themselves up to the Almighty God after a taste. Men who’ve eaten
bread baked with ergot-laced flour have gone into ecstasies, identifying witches and devils in their midst and destroying them. Twitching and dancing, they move through the streets singing our Savior’s praise. A purifying poison! I can proudly say that never has such a great amount of ergot been produced by the hand of man.” He gestured grandly at the sacks piled up all over the mill as a rapturous smile spread across his lips.

  “Enough for an entire city.”

  From his hiding place Simon watched the Venetian stand up and stride down the line of sacks like a commander inspecting his troops. Simon’s heart was racing. They should have guessed this from the start! Bluish, musty powder. Ground ergot! This fungus grew not only in rye but in other types of grain as well-and on more than one occasion it had infected entire grain fields, resulting in mass intoxication. People who ate contaminated bread went mad, and many even died. Only in very small quantities did it have any healing power, and even then it was primarily used to induce labor or abort a pregnancy. Now this madman intended to poison an entire city!

  Simon cursed himself for not having considered this possibility before. Just the day before they’d left for Regensburg, the baker, Berchtholdt, had poisoned his maid, Resl, with ergot. The medicus had never seen the stuff in Schongau, so his father must have been storing it secretly. Before that Simon’s last experience with it was at the university in Ingolstadt.

  He remembered the bathhouse owner’s illustrated herbarium, in which some types of grain had been highlighted. In his secret alchemist workshop Hofmann must have been producing an especially pure form of ergot. It had been right in front of Simon’s eyes all this time!

  Desperately Simon tried to think of a way out, for himself and for Magdalena. The Venetian’s two hulking henchmen had withdrawn to a corner of the mill below and were taking turns drinking from a clay jug that-to judge from their blissful expressions-must have contained some high-proof brandy. All the same, the medicus was sure the thugs were still sober enough to present a real danger. What should he do? Alert the city guards? By the time the blundering bailiffs made it here from the bridge, Silvio would be long gone, and Magdalena with him. And who was to say that the patricians weren’t in on it themselves? Hadn’t Mamminger tried to get a hold of this powder, too? Hadn’t he hired a murderer to do just that?

  At that moment Simon heard movement behind him. When he turned around, he was horrified to find another of Silvio’s servants climbing the woodpile like a cat. So there were three of them! This one had apparently been keeping watch by the door.

  When the servant realized Simon saw him, too, he uttered a loud curse and reached for Simon’s foot a few inches away. The medicus kicked frantically and struck the man in the face. The servant tumbled back with a scream, bringing down some logs with him. As the whole pile started to shift, Simon could feel logs slipping beneath him and knew that at any moment he could be crushed among them like grain in a millstone.

  He straightened up, trying to regain his balance atop the tumbling logs, and just managed to save himself with a daring leap to the side. With a loud crash, the logs on which he’d just been standing toppled to the ground. He watched the servant desperately try to crawl out from under the thundering chaos. In the next moment, however, a heavy trunk, which surely weighed a ton, crashed down on the man, silencing his cries abruptly.

  The timbers were still rolling down all around Simon. A sudden, heavy blow to his shoulder knocked him down, and a long timber rolled over his thigh, pinning him to the ground. He shifted back and forth, pushing against the wood with all his might, but was unable to free himself.

  When, moments later, the logs stopped falling, he could hear soft footsteps approach. He tried to turn his head, but a shadow appeared above him, and he closed his eyes, afraid of what he would see. When he dared to open them again, the Venetian stood directly above him.

  Silvio cocked his head to the side, smiling, and drew his rapier slowly across Simon’s trembling chest, inch by inch, toward his neck.

  “Well, well, look what we have here,” the ambassador whispered. “The loyal, jealous lover. Che dramma! At least now you have a good reason to dislike me.”

  Jakob Kuisl and the Regensburg executioner sat silently in a rotten little rowboat heading east down the Danube.

  They’d found the worm-eaten boat floating just behind the landing dock and for just a few hellers had talked the ferryman into lending it without any unnecessary or embarrassing questions. At first Kuisl was anything but enthused that the Regensburg executioner had followed him, but when he noticed Teuber’s grim, determined look, he reached out to shake his hand. Whatever was compelling Teuber to help him, Teuber was a friend. And a friend was something Kuisl badly needed at the moment. Pain still throbbed in his left shoulder, and his arms and legs burned red hot one minute, ice cold the next.

  “You don’t have to do this,” the Schongau hangman said softly. “I’ll get through this without-”

  “Shut your mouth before I change my mind.” Teuber plunged the oar violently into the water as if he were trying to slay a monster in the depths. “I’m not quite sure myself why I’m helping a thick-headed, stubborn old fool like you. And now be quiet and just pretend you’re mending your fishing net. The raftsmen over there are already looking askance at us.”

  Kuisl chuckled and reached behind him for a tangle of nets, which reeked of fish. On his lap he began busily unraveling them. As the boat passed the Upper Wohrd Island and floated through the whirlpool under the Stone Bridge, the two passengers lowered their heads, but none of the guards on the bridge above gave them so much as a glance. To the bailiffs the men in the soiled jackets were just a pair of fishermen headed downstream to cast their nets. For a moment Kuisl thought he saw a small figure on the bridge that reminded him of Simon, but that was surely just his imagination.

  For most of the trip the Schongau hangman kept his eyes closed, lost in the images playing out under his eyelids, images from the past that had returned with a vengeance. It seemed his fever had revived all the memories he’d buried so long ago.

  “We were here, in this region,” Kuisl mused, as the eastern city wall receded behind them. “I’d almost forgotten. In the distance there was a castle atop a hill, a ruin.” He opened his eyes and looked at Teuber. “It was big, and it overlooked a burned-out market town on the Danube. Is there anything like that around here?”

  Teuber nodded hesitantly. “That must be Donaustauf, just a few miles downriver. The Swedes set fire to the castle a long time ago, just after the occupiers ran off with an entire load of salt. Did you have anything to do with that?”

  Kuisl looked out over the Danube winding through the forests like a muddy green monster. A mill stood on the right-hand bank, but otherwise there were no buildings in sight.

  “We were there a few years afterward,” he said, closing his eyes again. “The castle had been destroyed sometime before that, but our winter encampment was somewhere very near there. In the spring we were supposed to go back to Bohemia again for yet another murderous campaign.” He spat into the water. “By God, for every one of them I’ll roast in hell a hundred years.”

  Teuber dipped the rudder below the river’s glassy surface. A flock of ducks scattered and flew off, quacking.

  “You were in the war a long time, weren’t you?” Teuber asked finally.

  “Far too long.”

  For a while neither spoke. The boat drifted gently downriver as the sun rose over the eastern treetops and burned down on the backs of the men’s necks.

  “What did you do in the war?” Teuber asked. “Pikeman, swordsman, musketeer?”

  “I was a sergeant.”

  Teuber whistled through his teeth. “A hangman sergeant-well, isn’t that something! You must have been a good soldier to have risen so far above your station.”

  “I know a thing or two about killing.”

  They were silent once more, until at long last, around a bend in the river, a dreary little city came into vi
ew with a hastily repaired castle perched atop a hill. A crooked jetty lined the shore, where a number of boats and rafts were docked. As they drew closer, Kuisl could see that many of the buildings were in ruins, their roofs collapsed and walls black with soot. The wall that once surrounded this city had been eaten away like a piece of old cheese.

  “Donaustauf,” said Teuber, steering the boat toward a mud-splattered pier. “Used to be a pretty little market town, but once the Swedes were done with it, Plague and hunger ravaged it only further. No doubt it’ll be a while before they can rebuild it, and the next war will come along.” He laughed softly and tethered the boat to a rotted post. “So, then, where did your dreams tell you to look?”

  Kuisl held his nose in the air as if trying to catch a scent. “Don’t know. Weidenfeld… was a little village, actually more like a hamlet, just a few miles from our winter quarters. More or less that way.” He pointed uncertainly toward the castle on the hill. “We could see that ruin from there.”

  “Great,” Teuber said. “Behind that hill the forest begins. That won’t get us very far. Wait here.”

  He approached the jetty, where a few ragged fishermen had spread out their morning catch. They eyed him warily at first but didn’t seem to recognize him as the Regensburg executioner. When he asked about the town, they shook their heads and pointed toward the other side of the hill.

  In a few minutes Teuber returned. “I have news-some good and some bad,” he reported. “Your Weidenfeld is in fact back in the forest over there-a little hamlet. The older men can still remember it. But there isn’t much left of it. Everything’s ruined and overgrown, and nobody lives there anymore. Why don’t you finally come out with it and tell me about this Weidenfeld?”