Kuisl raised his hands to ward off the guards, but he was much too tired to resist them. He’d been racing so long now-first lugging the deathly pale Teuber almost two miles from Weidenfeld to the rowboat, then rowing back from Donaustauf against the current. The Regensburg executioner hadn’t regained consciousness after speaking his last words in the ruined village. Throughout the boat trip Kuisl watched blood seeping slowly through the moss, herbs, and bandages. Teuber’s face was waxy like a corpse’s, so Kuisl repeatedly checked to make sure his friend was still breathing.
“He needs help,” the Schongau hangman pleaded in a hoarse voice as he climbed out of the rowboat. Almost unconscious himself, he offered no resistance as the guards seized him and bound his hands and feet. “Bring Teuber to a surgeon,” he muttered, “a real one, or I’ll wring your necks. Do you understand?”
“Hold your tongue, monster!” one guard shouted, punching him so hard his upper lip split open and he fell to the ground. “Your game is over; you won’t get away from us again. That was you who did that to the mill, wasn’t it?”
As other Regensburgers began to recognize the man being led away, a murmur went up that gave way to cheers and shouting.
“The werewolf!” an old woman shouted. “The werewolf’s back! And look, he’s in league with our executioner! Throw them both on the mill-into the fire with them!”
“By Saint Florian, they should burn!”
“No, hang them instead! Right here!”
“Hold on, people!” one of the guards interjected. “We can’t say whether the Regensburg hangman-”
But his voice was drowned out by the crowd. People were already down by the great crane on the raft landing, tossing boat ropes over the crossbeams. They tied the rope into a noose and began to fashion a makeshift gallows. The first sticks and stones flew through the air now, and the guards, silent and pale, formed a circle around Kuisl and the Regensburg executioner, who was lying unconscious on the pier. They couldn’t hold off the crowd for long.
“Go get a city official!” a high-ranking officer shouted at the other guards as he braced himself against two farm workers who’d already drawn their knives. “If you can, bring Mamminger! Right away! Before they kill Teuber. Run! Get going, damn it!”
As one of the guards broke from the circle and ran toward town, the crowd amassed into one enormous, furious, screaming creature that charged the desperate bailiffs behind him. Kuisl looked out on the riotous mob, registering a cold, bestial look in their eyes.
Predators, he thought. This is what they always look like at an execution.
This time the execution was his own.
“Nathan!” Simon cried as he stumbled out of the dark well chamber and into the bright daylight. “I should have known!”
The beggar king was counting out and distributing shiny coins to the beggars standing around him. Only reluctantly did he look up.
“Beg your pardon?” he mumbled.
“You told the treasurer we were here!” the medicus cried, kicking the beggar in the shins. “Who else do you work for? The kaiser? The pope? The Virgin Mary?”
Grimacing in pain, Nathan rubbed his shins. “If the price is right.” Finally, he grinned. “Be happy. Without the esteemed treasurer, you’d be fish food now. And your little sweetheart would no doubt be trapped in a fit of hysterical laughter, trying to claw her own eyes out, having gone stark mad. So don’t make such a fuss.”
“Great,” Simon muttered. “So we’ve been rescued from the well chamber only to be burned at the stake for arson and God knows what else. Thank you very much.”
Suddenly he felt the treasurer’s hand on his shoulder.
“We’ve been working with Nathan a long time,” said Mamminger, who’d emerged from the well chamber right after Simon. “He’s been keeping us up to date on what’s happened since you first sought refuge with the guild.”
“So it’s true,” Simon whispered.
But the treasurer seemed not to have heard him. “I just didn’t know what role you were playing in all this,” Mamminger continued. Removing his official red hat, he passed a hand over his sweaty forehead. “So I had Nathan keep an eye on you. When it became clear you had nothing to do with the powder, it was unfortunately too late. You had sought amnesty in the bishop’s palace, and as long as you were there, there was nothing I could do to help you.”
“You knew about the powder?” asked Magdalena, her clothes and hair dripping in the bright light. She eyed the treasurer suspiciously. “Then why didn’t you just put a stop to Silvio Contarini and his game?”
Paulus Mamminger shook his head slowly, deep in thought. “We only suspected the freemen were planning something for the coming Reichstag, but we had no real evidence. When we heard that Hofmann was experimenting somehow with alchemy, I asked Heinrich von Butten to find out more.”
“The kaiser’s agent,” Simon added softly. “We thought for a long time he was trying to kill us.”
Mamminger shook his head. “His job was only to learn more about you two. Later, he wanted to warn you about Contarini, but the Venetian somehow always managed to distract you.” Mamminger removed his sweaty pince-nez to clean them. “Heinrich von Butten was the kaiser’s best agent,” he continued. “A brilliant swordsman-inconspicuous, intelligent, and incorruptible. Leopold I wanted him to serve as a spy at the Regensburg Reichstag. His Excellency won’t be happy to hear he’s dead.” Mamminger sighed. “Von Butten had long suspected that Contarini was working for the Grand Vizier. When he saw the Venetian in the company of a beautiful woman, a stranger, we started to snoop around. And lo and behold…!” He smiled at Magdalena. “It just so happened that beautiful stranger was the niece of the bathhouse owner under suspicion of plotting against the kaiser. Naturally, this gave us more than a moment’s pause, especially when it turned out her father was said to have killed the very same bathhouse owner.”
“Did you really think my father killed his sister and brother-in-law?” asked Magdalena, tying her wet hair into a bun. “Even a blind man could have figured out he walked right into a trap!”
The treasurer frowned. “Don’t judge too quickly, young lady. Your father was the brother-in-law of a leading freeman-an insurgent. For that reason alone he came under suspicion. We had to subject him to some pretty severe interrogation just to find out whether he knew anything about this powder.” He shrugged. “Your father is a tough nut to crack. We aldermen therefore reached the decision, after long discussions in my house, to suspend the torture for the time being. The following night I left a note in the cathedral for Heinrich von Butten, telling him to see whether he could find some connection between Contarini and the freemen-and exonerate your father.” Mamminger put his pince-nez back in place. “Unfortunately Kuisl fled the very same night, thus renewing suspicions. It’s too bad; we very much wanted him to identify the true leader of the free-men for us.”
“I think we can help you in that regard,” Simon said. “It’s the raftmaster, Karl Gessner. He also set the trap for Jakob Kuisl.”
The treasurer’s eyes widened in disbelief. “Gessner? But why…?”
“Revenge,” Magdalena chimed in. “Gessner and my father knew each other from the war. But that the raftmaster was the leader of the freemen you could have also learned from this gentleman.”
She pointed at Nathan, who only smiled back innocently and continued counting coins into a pouch. Mamminger raised his eyebrows and scowled at the beggar king, who had turned to pick his nose.
“I really don’t know what the two of you are talking about,” Nathan replied. “I would never-”
“What’s going to happen with Contarini now?” Simon asked. “Has he escaped?”
The treasurer squinted, irritated, and turned back to the medicus. “To date no one has ever explored all the caves the water carved through the rock down there,” he explained earnestly. “It’s a wet, dark labyrinth, and no one can really say how far down it goes. Maybe the Venetian will find the entran
ce to hell down there, but he might also get lost or eventually return to the well chamber. Just in case, we sealed the exit. No one can get out. And now-”
Just then they heard the sound of someone approaching through the field. A watchman, drenched with sweat, came running up to Mamminger. He whispered something in Mamminger’s ear, and the treasurer frowned, placing his official red hat back on his head, hurrying down the path, and beckoning to the others to follow.
“We hope your father will soon be able to answer all the outstanding questions in person,” he said as he hastened toward the city with the watchmen and the beggars. “They caught him down at the raft landing, and if we don’t hurry, there won’t be much of him left.”
Jakob Kuisl barely felt the cabbage stalks, stones, and rotten fish that hailed down on his body and face. The shouts of the crowd, too, echoed strangely, as if they came from the end of a long tunnel. Straining to turn his head, he saw Philipp Teuber next to him, his consciousness quickly fading again and, like himself, with a noose around his neck. The Regensburgers had finished erecting a gallows on the harbor crane high above the raft landing now, and both hangmen stood on crates piled high to form a makeshift scaffold. Leering and smirking at the hangmen, a few carpenters waited beside a crank that would eventually hoist the ropes and, with them, the men high in the air. Kuisl let his gaze wander along the rotten wooden structure that rose at least twenty feet above them.
Must at least be a great view of Regensburg from up there, he thought.
Kuisl’s fever had returned now in full force, and despite the midsummer temperatures, Kuisl was freezing. Even if he weren’t in pain and dizzy, though, there was no possibility of escape now. He was shackled, and when he looked out over the crowd, he saw several hundred pairs of angry eyes, all eager for a summary execution. A few guards were scattered among them, but they’d abandoned their official duty now to join the onlookers. After a brief and futile resistance, most bailiffs had withdrawn and given the two prisoners over to the screaming mob. Kuisl counted himself lucky that the Regensburgers hadn’t stoned him to death yet.
Another clod of dirt hit Kuisl on the head so hard his gaze went black. Still, he was able to remain upright. Next to him, however, Philipp Teuber was close to losing consciousness again, and, because he was no longer able to support himself, his body weight tightened the noose around his neck like a garrote cutting off his air supply. Teuber’s eyes were closed, his face chalky except where blood vessels had burst, and his mouth open like a carp gasping for air.
“Monster! Monster!”
All around him Kuisl heard the roar of the crowd as if through a wall, a seething mass of high-pitched screams and shrill laughter rising and falling. Blood dripping from his forehead, he blinked, blinded by the sun; still, he had the impression he could clearly see each individual in the crowd below-bull-necked raftsmen and carpenters, snotty-nosed children and journeymen bare to the waist, but also fishwives. Even a few fine ladies looked on from the rear with their finely powdered male companions, whispering and pointing at the two figures on the makeshift gallows. For all these people the two hangmen were a marvelous spectacle, an experience they could share with their children and grandchildren. Unleashed, the people’s anger demanded a blood sacrifice.
“Hey, Teuber,” a skinny, pockmarked youth shouted from the first row. “How does that noose feel around your neck? You hanged my brother. I hope you dance just as long as he did.”
“They say the other one’s a hangman, too. Perhaps they can hang each other,” a young maid joked.
As laughter broke out, the crowd surged toward the teetering stack of crates that threatened to collapse at any moment. Atop the hastily built scaffold and beside the two shackled executioners stood four grim raftsmen, the apparent ringleaders. With grave self-importance, they held the crowd back, preventing them from storming the gallows. Kuisl had to assume the four men had designs on the ropes and victims’ clothes and bodies. Bloody talismans were thought to have magical powers, especially those from a pair of hangmen.
“String ’em up! String ’em up!” At first just a few voices chanted, but then others joined in and the shouts rose to a mighty chorus that resounded over the pier.
“String ’em up and let ’em dance!”
Now Kuisl could feel the carpenters beginning to turn the crank on the winch. The cords tightened, pulling the hangmen slowly upward. At first Kuisl could still touch the ground with his toes, but soon he was swinging freely in the air.
The rope squeezed Kuisl’s throat and Adam’s apple tight, crushing his windpipe as his legs began to thrash involuntarily. The hangman knew from experience that death didn’t come immediately to hanged men, and for this reason he often tugged on victims’ feet to break their necks and put an end to the torment. But it was obvious that no one here had any interest in mercy. Kuisl jerked and strained; he could hear blood pounding in his head and, in the background, the crowd’s cries and laughter.
“Look at them flounder! The scaffold is like a dance floor!”
When the hangman opened his eyes again, it was as if a red veil hung in front of his face. The crowd’s voices merged in a senseless, meaningless melee. Images rose within and flashed all around him. He saw himself in the Great War, sword in hand, and in the background a city in flames. Then there was blackness. He saw his father die beneath a hail of stones; he saw soldiers seeking recruits as they passed through Schongau, waving to little Jakob at the side of the road; and finally, he saw himself in his mother’s lap with a soiled headless little wooden doll.
Mama, why does Daddy kill people?
The bloody veil before his eyes moved on like a storm cloud, and behind it a soft, warm blackness appeared, with a tiny light shining at its center. The light grew closer and closer, opening onto a tunnel. At its end stood a form wreathed in light.
Mother, I’m coming home to you… I’m coming…
“Stop! In the name of the city, stop at once!”
Suddenly Kuisl felt himself falling. When he landed with a thud on the hard crates below, his body, which had been drifting off into another realm, suddenly reasserted itself with intense earthly pain. The light and the tunnel disappeared, and at that moment, blissfully, air came streaming back into his lungs, somehow cold and hot at once. His throat burning, he rolled on his side, spitting up bitter bile. When he felt the unpleasant taste on his tongue, he knew he was still alive.
“Everyone stand back! Back to your houses, or I’ll have you all thrown in the stocks and whipped! Do you hear me? That’s an official city order!”
Kuisl opened his blood-encrusted right eye to see a man in front of him dressed in a fur-trimmed cloak and official crimson cap. A half-dozen city guards stood defiantly at his side on the crates, crossbows trained on the crowd below. Snarling like fierce toy dogs, if less playful, the crowd backed away, bit by bit. Only a handful of spectators seemed to object, but in no time the bailiffs gained the upper hand and drove them all into the narrow streets along the Danube. Within a few minutes the uproar had subsided and the docks were as deserted as on a Sunday morning during mass.
Panting, Kuisl stood up and staggered toward the edge of the scaffold, where Teuber was doubled up in a pool of his own vomit, the bandage on his chest soaked in blood. The Regensburg executioner coughed and spat but for the time being seemed to have at least regained consciousness. Kuisl knelt down beside his friend and passed his hand through Teuber’s sweaty hair.
“You think I’ll let you die on me here?” the exhausted Schongau hangman gasped. His throat felt like it was on fire, and he could speak only in fits and starts. “Better forget that idea… I didn’t drag you here all the way from Weidenfeld so that you could give up now. We hangmen are tough dogs. Don’t forget that!”
Teuber seemed to nod; then he turned away like a sick animal and didn’t stir. His breath whistled and rattled, though, as if he wanted to let everyone know he wasn’t dead yet.
“We’ll take him home,” an offi
cial’s voice spoke up from Kuisl’s right. “His wife will take care of him. The rest is in God’s hands.”
Kuisl turned around and looked straight into the eye of the man with the crimson hat. He had an old wrinkled face and wore a pince-nez on his nose, but his gaze was as sharp and clear as that of a man in his thirties.
“So you’re this Jakob Kuisl fellow,” Mamminger said, looking him up and down with a severe but curious gaze. “You haven’t made it very easy on us. You can’t be locked up, and torture won’t make you confess-and evidently you can’t be hanged either. Who are you? The devil? A ghost?”
The hangman shook his head. “Just a Kuisl,” he murmured. “We’re a tough breed.”
Mamminger laughed. “I’ll believe you there! Indestructible, the whole lot of you-your daughter and future son-in-law included.” He turned to a guard alongside him. “Cut this man’s bonds; he’s suffered enough. Then bring the other two over here. Now that the mob has cleared out, they have nothing to fear.”
The bailiff cut the ropes from Kuisl’s wrists and jumped down from the scaffold. Shortly thereafter he returned with Simon and Magdalena.
“Thanks to the Virgin Mary and all the saints in heaven! You’re alive!” When the hangman’s daughter caught sight of her father again, she was unrestrainable. With outstretched arms she rushed to the scaffold, clambered swiftly up the pile of crates, and wrapped her arms around her father, squeezing him so hard he thought he was being strangled a second time.
“I don’t want you ever to leave me again, do you hear?” she whispered, placing her hands on his face as if she still couldn’t believe he was alive. “Promise?”
“And don’t you ever leave me, either, shameless wench,” Kuisl replied. “Just think what you’ve done to your mother, vanishing from Schongau like that. She must be crying her eyes out day and night.”
He let out a chest-rattling cough as Magdalena ran her hand through his hair. “We’re on our way home now,” she said, “but first you’ve got to get better. You’ve got a fever-that much is clear-and there’s something wrong with your shoulder as well.”
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