Magdalena heard him at the last moment. She leapt forward and turned around to see how her father landed hard on the ground right behind her. Just before the impact Jakob Kuisl had realized who was underneath him and rolled to the side. Now he rose to his feet, angrily brushing snow and fir needles from his doublet.
“Are you crazy?” he hissed. “Why are you are you running through the forest like a highwayman? Shouldn’t you be home with Mother, helping her grind herbs? Stubborn woman!”
Magdalena swallowed hard. Her father was known for his sudden outbreaks of rage. Nevertheless, she looked him straight in the eye as she answered.
“Mother told me you were here on account of the Stechlin woman. And so I thought I might be able to help you.”
Jakob Kuisl laughed out loud.
“Help me? You? Help your mother; there’s enough work to do there. And now shove off, before you’re in for a spanking.”
Magdalena crossed her arms.
“You can’t just send me away like a little girl. At least tell me what you’re intending to do. After all, Martha brought me into the world. As long as I can remember, I have carried herbs and ointments to her place every week. And now I shouldn’t be concerned about her fate at all?”
The hangman sighed. “Magdalena, believe me, it’s better like this. The less you know, the less you can gossip. It’s enough that you have a fling with the young physician. People are already talking.”
Magdalena smiled her innocent little girl’s smile, with which she had always been able to wangle candy from her father.
“You like Simon too, don’t you?”
“Stop that,” he grunted. “Who cares if I like him. He’s the physician’s son, and you’re the hangman’s daughter. So stay away from him. And now off you go to help your mother.”
But Magdalena wasn’t ready to give up yet. As she was searching for words, her eyes roamed the forest. Behind a hazel-nut bush she suddenly noticed something bright and white.
What if that was…?
She hurried over and dug up a white star-shaped flower that she handed her father with dirt-stained hands.
“It’s a hellebore,” he said, raising the flower to his nose and sniffing it. “It’s been a long time since I saw one hereabouts. You know they say witches make an ointment from it that helps them fly on Walpurgis Night.”
Magdalena nodded. “Goodwife Daubenberger from Peiting told me about it. And she believes that the murders of the children are somehow connected with Walpurgis Night.”
Her father looked at her incredulously. “With Walpurgis Night?”
Magdalena nodded. “She thinks it can’t be a coincidence. In three days it’ll be the witches’ sabbath, and then they’ll fly and dance along the Hohenfurch Road, and—”
Jakob Kuisl interrupted her brusquely. “And you believe this rubbish? Go home and do the washing. I don’t need you here.”
Magdalena looked at him angrily. “But you just told me that there are witches and flying ointment!” she shouted, kicking against a fallen tree trunk. “Now what’s the truth?”
“I said that’s what people say. That’s something different,” Kuisl said. He sighed, and then he gave his daughter an earnest look. “I believe that there are evil people,” he continued. “And I don’t care if they are witches or priests. And, yes, I believe there are potions and salves that make you believe you’re a witch. That make you wicked and like a cat in heat and, for all I care, that make you fly.”
Magdalena nodded. “Goodwife Daubenberger knows the ingredients of this flying salve.” In a hushed voice, she listed them. “Hellebore, mandrake, thorn apple, henbane, hemlock, belladonna…The old woman showed me a number of herbs in the forest. We even found a baneberry plant once.”
Jakob Kuisl looked at her incredulously.
“A baneberry plant? Are you sure? I haven’t seen one in my entire life.”
“By the Holy Virgin, it’s true! Believe me, Father, I know all the herbs around here. You’ve taught me a lot, and Goodwife Daubenberger showed me the rest.”
Jakob Kuisl eyed her skeptically. Then he asked her the names of several herbs. She knew them all. When she had answered all of his questions satisfactorily, he asked for a certain plant and whether she knew where it could be found. Magdalena thought briefly, and then she nodded.
“Take me there,” said the hangman. “If it’s true I’ll tell you what I’m planning.”
After a good half hour’s walk they had reached their destination: a shady clearing in the forest, surrounded by rushes. Before them lay a dried-up pond dotted with grassy islets. Behind that was a swampy meadow in which something purple was somewhat visible. There was the scent of a bog and peat in the air. Jakob Kuisl closed his eyes and breathed in the aroma of the forest. Among the resinous pine needles and the damp smell of moss he could distinguish the gentle fragrance of something else.
She was right.
Simon Fronwieser’s anger had cooled a little. After the quarrel with his father he had hurried to the market square with a red face and eaten a small breakfast of dried apple rings and a piece of bread at one of the many stalls there. As he was chewing on the tough, sweet rings his anger subsided. There simply was no point in getting angry with his father. They were far too different. It was much more important to keep a cool head. Time was pressing. Simon frowned.
The patrician Jakob Schreevogl had told him that the Elector’s secretary would arrive in Schongau in a few days’ time to pronounce his sentence. Before then a culprit had to be found, as the aldermen had neither the inclination nor the means to feed the prince’s representative and his entourage longer than necessary. Furthermore, court clerk Lechner needed peace and quiet in his town. Unless order was restored by the time His Excellency Wolf Dietrich von Sandizell appeared, the clerk’s authority in Schongau would be seriously jeopardized. Therefore, they had three days left, perhaps four at the most. It would take the entourage of soldiers and servants that long to make their way to Schongau from the distant country residence at Thierhaupten. Once the secretary was in town, neither Simon nor the hangman nor the Almighty could save Martha Stechlin from the flames.
Simon stuffed the last apple ring into his mouth and crossed the crowded market square. Time and again he had to step out of the way of maids and farmers’ wives at the farmstands quarreling over meat, eggs, and carrots. One or the other gave him a longing glance. Without paying any attention to it, he turned into the Hennengasse, where Sophie’s foster parents lived.
The red-haired girl had been continually on his mind. He was certain she knew more than she let on. Somehow she was the key to the mystery, even if he wasn’t sure what exactly her role in it was. Yet as he reached the small house wedged in between two larger half-timbered houses in need of a fresh coat of paint, a bitter disappointment awaited him. Sophie hadn’t come home for two days. Her foster parents had no idea where she was.
“That brat will do whatever she likes,” grumbled Andreas Dangler, the linen weaver, who had taken care of the child since her parents’ death. “When she’s here she eats us out of house and home, and when she’s supposed to be working she’ll just hang around in town. I just wish I’d never agreed to the whole business.”
Simon wanted to remind him that the town paid him a handsome compensation for taking care of Sophie, but he contented himself with a nod.
Andreas Dangler continued to fume: “I wouldn’t be surprised if she was hand in glove with that witch,” he said, spitting on the ground. “Her mother, the wife of Hans Hörmann, the tanner, was just the same. She cast a spell on her husband, driving him to an early grave, and then she died of consumption herself. The girl was always stubborn, thought herself to be something superior to everyone else and wouldn’t sit at a table with us weavers. Now she has what she deserves!”
He was leaning against the door frame, chewing on a chip of pinewood. “If I had my way, there’d be no need for her ever to return here. She has probably run off before the same thing happened t
o her as did to the Stechlin woman.”
As the linen weaver continued his complaints, Simon sat down on a dung cart next to the house and took a deep breath. He had the feeling he wasn’t going anywhere like this. He’d have loved to smack the nagging Dangler right in the face. Instead, he only interrupted his grumbling. “Did you notice anything about Sophie lately? Has she been acting differently?”
Andreas Dangler looked him up and down. Simon was fully aware that he must look like a perfect dandy to the linen weaver. With his high leather boots, his green velvet overcoat, and his fashionable Vandyke he would appear to the simple tradesman like an effeminate city dweller from Augsburg, the distant metropolis. His father was right. He wasn’t a local, and there was no point in pretending he was.
“What’s that got to do with you, you quack doctor?” asked Dangler.
“I’m the physician in charge of the Stechlin woman’s torturing,” Simon exaggerated. “Therefore, I should like to gain an impression of the woman, so that I know what powers of witchcraft she may possess. Now, has Sophie ever spoken of the Stechlin woman?” The linen weaver shrugged. “She did say once that she’d like to become a midwife herself. And when my wife was sick she had the necessary medicine right on hand. I suppose she got those from the Stechlin woman.”
“Anything else?”
Andreas Dangler hesitated, then he seemed to recollect something. He grinned. “I saw her once as she was drawing that sign in the sand back there in the courtyard. When I saw her she wiped it away at once.”
Simon pricked up his ears.
“What kind of a sign?”
The linen weaver thought for a moment, then he took the pinewood chip from his mouth, bent down, and drew something in the dust.
“It looked something like that,” he finally said.
Simon tried to recognize anything in the blurry drawing. It resembled a triangle with a squiggle at the bottom.
It reminded him of something, but every time he thought something was coming back to him, the memory faded away. Again he looked at the drawing in the dirt, then he wiped it away with his foot and walked off toward the river. There was one other thing to do today.
“Hey!” Dangler called after him. “Now what does the sign mean? Is she a witch?”
Simon walked faster. The noise of the fully awake town had soon drowned out the shouts of the linen weaver. From afar, he could hear the blacksmith’s hammer; children were driving a flock of cackling geese past him.
After a few minutes the physician had reached the Hof Gate, which was located right next to the Elector’s residence. Here the houses looked sturdier and were built exclusively of stone. And there was less garbage lying around in the streets. The Hof Gate quarter was the neighborhood where the respected tradesmen and raftsmen lived. Those who had acquired some wealth moved to this part of town, away from the smelly tanners’ quarter down by the river or the butchers’ quarter, which lay a little to the east, with its common tailors and carpenters. Simon briefly greeted the sentry at the gate and walked on to Altenstadt, which was only about a mile away from Schongau to the northwest.
The sun shone rather gently, as it was still early on an April morning, but it nevertheless stung the physician’s eyes. His head ached, as well, and his mouth felt dry. His hangover from the previous night’s binge with Jakob Schreevogl was coming back. He knelt to have a drink from a brook near the side of the road. When a horse-drawn wagon piled high with wine barrels rumbled past him, he had enough presence of mind to jump on the back and crawl forward to the barrels that were lashed down. The wagon driver took no notice, and shortly afterward he arrived in Altenstadt.
Simon’s destination was Strasser’s inn, which was in the middle of the village. Before he had gone to the Schreevogls’ last night, the hangman had given him five names—the names of the children who had routinely visited Martha Stechlin’s house: Grimmer, Kratz, Schreevogl, Dangler, and Strasser. Two were dead, two were missing. There remained the last ward, that of Strasser, the innkeeper in Altenstadt.
Simon pushed open the low door that led into the lounge. A smell of cabbage, smoke, stale beer, and urine hit him. Strasser’s was the only inn in town. Anyone looking for something better went to Schongau. Here one came to drink and forget.
Simon sat down on a wooden stool at a table decorated with knife marks and ordered a beer. Two wagon drivers who were already sipping at their tankards at this early hour eyed him with suspicion. The landlord, a bald, potbellied man in a leather apron, shuffled to his table with a foaming mug and pushed the brew toward him.
“To your health,” he mumbled and started to go back to the counter.
“Take a seat,” said Simon, pointing at the empty stool next to his.
“Can’t right now, I have customers, I’m sure you can see.” He turned away, but Simon grabbed his arm and gently pulled him down.
“Please take a seat,” he said again. “We have to talk. It’s about your ward.”
The innkeeper Strasser glanced cautiously at the wagon drivers, but they seemed to be absorbed in conversation. “About Johannes?” he whispered. “Have you found him?”
“Has he disappeared?”
Franz Strasser heaved a sigh and settled into a chair next to the physician. “He did, yesterday at noon. He was to look after the horses in the stable, but he didn’t return. I guess he’s run off, the little bastard.”
Simon blinked. The inn was only dimly lit, and the drawn shutters allowed very little light to enter. On the windowsill, a pinewood chip was glowing faintly.
“How long has Johannes been your apprentice?” he asked the landlord.
Franz Strasser thought. “Over three years,” he said after a while. “His parents were both from here, from Altenstadt. Good people, but weak chested. She died in childbirth, and the father followed her to the grave just three weeks later. Johannes was the youngest. I took him in, and he has always been well cared for here, so help me God.”
Simon sipped at his mug. The beer was watery and flat.
“I hear he was over in Schongau a lot,” he asked.
Strasser nodded. “Right. Every hour he could spare. The devil knows what he did over there.”
“And you had no idea where he might have gone?”
The landlord shrugged. “His hideout, perhaps.”
“Hideout?”
“He spent a few nights there,” said Strasser. “Every time I gave him a whipping for doing mischief, he went off to his hideout. I tried to ask him about it once, but he said nobody would ever find it and he’d be safe there even from the devil.”
Lost in thought, Simon sipped his beer. Suddenly, he didn’t care about the taste anymore.
“Were there others who knew it too…this hideout?” he asked cautiously.
Franz Strasser frowned. “Could be,” he said. “He did play with other kids, he did. Once they smashed an entire shelf of beer mugs here. They went into the lounge, snatched a loaf of bread, and knocked over the mugs as they ran away, the little bastards.”
“What did the children look like?”
Strasser had worked himself up into a rage.
“Nothing but bastards, the whole lot! Only mischief on their minds, all those orphans from the town. Ungrateful riffraff. They should be humble and glad that someone’s taking care of them, and instead they just get fresh.”
Simon took a deep breath. His headache was coming back.
“What they looked like is what interests me,” he whispered.
The innkeeper stared, thinking it over. “There was a redheaded girl with them. Witches’ hair…I tell you, they’re good for nothing.”
“And you really have no idea where that hideout could be?”
Franz Strasser looked irritated.
“Why are you so interested in that boy?” he asked. “Has he done anything to make you look for him so urgently?”
Simon shook his head.
“It’s not important.” He put down a copper penny for the bee
r and left the gloomy room. Franz Strasser watched as he left, shaking his head.
“Damned bastards!” he called after the physician. “If you see him, give him a few behind the ears. He deserves it!”
CHAPTER
8
FRIDAY
APRIL 27, A.D. 1659
TEN O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING
THE COURT CLERK SAT AT THE BIG COUNCIL TABLE in the town hall drumming his fingers to the rhythm of some military march whose melody kept going through his mind. His gaze passed over the pudgy faces of the men sitting in front of him. Red, sagging cheeks, watery eyes, thinning hair…Even the modish cut of the coats and the carefully starched lace neckerchiefs could not disguise the fact that these men had passed their prime. They clung to their power and their money because, in Lechner’s opinion, nothing else was left for them. In their eyes was a helplessness that made him almost pity them. In their small, beautiful town the devil was loose, and they could do nothing about it. The Stadel had burned down, some of them had lost a lot of money, and something out there was taking their children from them. The servant girls and laborers, the peasants and the simple people, expected that they, the masters of the town, would do something about it. But they were all at a loss, and so they looked at Lechner as if he could do away with the disaster with a snap of his fingers or a scratch from his quill pen. Lechner despised them, even if he would never let it show.
Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.
He rang his handbell and opened the meeting.
“Many thanks for having come on such short notice and interrupting your business, which is doubtlessly important, to attend this shortly convened meeting of the inner council,” he began. “But I believe it is necessary.”
The six aldermen nodded eagerly. Burgomaster Karl Semer passed his lace kerchief over his sweaty forehead. The deputy burgomaster Johann Püchner wrung his hands and muttered agreement. Otherwise there was silence. Only Wilhelm Hardenberg, the old superintendent of the almshouse, pursed his lips and uttered a curse toward the ceiling. He had just been calculating how much the fire at the Stadel would cost him. Cinnamon, sweetmeats, bales of high-quality cloth, all reduced to ashes.
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