All afternoon and evening they had talked, and all of a sudden they could hear the ringing of the six o’clock bell from the parish church. In another half hour the gates of Schongau would be closed. They knew that they would never get back in time. And so they went to an abandoned barn nearby, where Simon had already slept on previous occasions, and there they remained for the night. They talked on, laughing over the pranks they played as children long ago. Schongau, its gossiping burghers and both of their fathers were far, far away. From time to time Simon ran his hand across Magdalena’s cheek or stroked her hair, but every time his fingers approached her bodice she smiled and pushed him away. She did not yet want to give herself to him, and Simon accepted it. At some time in the night they had fallen asleep next to each other like two children.
At the break of dawn, the creaking of the barn door woke Simon out of a light sleep.
They had settled down high up under the roof, from where a ladder descended to the barn floor. Carefully, the physician peered around a bale of straw and far down to the barn floor. He saw that the door was open a crack and the first light of dawn was shining through. He was sure that he had closed the door the evening before, if only to keep out the cold. Silently he slipped on his trousers and cast a last glance at Magdalena, who was still asleep. Directly below him, hidden by the wooden floor of the loft, he could hear shuffling steps approaching the ladder. Simon felt around in the straw for his knife, a perfectly honed stiletto he had already used for dissecting corpses and amputating the limbs of wounded men. With his right hand, he firmly gripped the handle, and with his left hand he pushed an especially large bale of straw directly to the edge of the loft.
Below him a figure appeared. He waited for a moment, then gave the bale a last shove so that it fell directly onto the figure. With a piercing cry Simon jumped after it with the intention of pulling the stranger to the floor and, if necessary, stabbing him in the back.
The man ducked to the side without even looking up and the bale hit the floor next to him, bursting into a cloud of dust and straw. At the same time the man raised his arms and warded off Simon’s attack. The physician felt strong fingers grabbing his wrists in a viselike grip. Groaning with pain, he released the stiletto. Then the figure rammed a knee into his abdomen so that he sank forward to the floor. All went dark before his eyes.
Blind with pain he crawled around on the floor, desperately feeling for his knife. A boot came down on his right hand, softly at first, then harder and harder. Simon gasped for air as something started to crack inside his wrist. Suddenly the pain eased. The figure, which he was able to see only as through a fog, had removed the foot from his hand.
“If you seduce my daughter again I’ll break both your hands and lay you out on the rack, understand?”
Simon held his abdomen and crawled some distance away.
“I didn’t…didn’t touch her,” he groaned. “Not like you think. But we…we love each other.”
The response was a dry, suppressed laugh.
“I don’t give a damn! She’s a hangman’s daughter, have you forgotten that? She is dishonorable! Do you want to expose her to even more ridicule, just because you can’t control yourself?” Jakob Kuisl was now standing directly over Simon and rolled him over on his back with his foot so that he was able to look directly into his eyes.
“Be glad I didn’t castrate you on the spot,” he said. “It would’ve saved you and some girls in town a whole lot of trouble!”
“Leave him alone, Father.” Magdalena’s voice came from the loft above. She had been awakened by the noise of the fight and was looking down, still sleepy-eyed and with straw in her hair. “If anything, I seduced Simon and not the other way around. And besides, if I am dishonorable anyway, then what does a little more matter?”
The hangman shook his fist at her. “I didn’t teach you reading and curing the sick so that you could get yourself knocked up and shamed and chased out of town. Can you imagine me having to place the mask of shame on my own daughter!”
“I…I can provide for Magdalena.” Simon, still rubbing his groin, replied again. “We could go to another town, and there we could…”
Another blow hit him on his unprotected side, in his kidneys, so that he doubled up again, gasping.
“What could you do? Nothing. Do you want to go begging or what? Magdalena is going to marry my cousin in Steingaden, that’s been agreed. And now come down here!”
Jakob Kuisl shook the ladder. Magdalena’s face had become white.
“Who is it I’m supposed to marry?” she asked, her voice flat.
“Hans Kuisl of Steingaden, an excellent match,” growled the hangman. “I talked to him about it just a few weeks ago.”
“And this is the way you’re telling me, here to my face?”
“One way or the other, I would have told you sooner or later.”
Another bale of straw hit the hangman’s head, nearly knocking him down. This time he hadn’t expected it. Simon couldn’t help grinning in spite of his pain. Magdalena had inherited her father’s quick reactions.
“I’m not going to marry anybody,” she screamed down. “Especially not fat Hans from Steingaden. His breath stinks, and he no longer has any teeth! I’m staying with Simon, just so you know!”
“Stubborn wench,” growled the hangman. But at least he seemed to have given up the idea of dragging his daughter home. He headed for the exit, opened the door, and the morning sun flooded the barn. Briefly he stopped in the light.
“By the way,” he muttered as he walked, “they found Johannes Strasser dead in a barn, in Altenstadt. He, too, had the mark on him. I heard it from the servant girl at Strasser’s inn. I’m going to have a look at that boy. If you want to, you can come along, Simon.”
Then he stepped out into the cool morning. Simon hesitated briefly. He glanced up at Magdalena, but she had buried herself in the straw and was sobbing.
He looked up at her and whispered, “We…we’ll talk later.” Then he followed the hangman out, limping.
For a long time they walked along in silence. They passed the raft landing, where the first rafts were already tying up at this early hour, then turned to the left on the Natternsteig to reach the road to Altenstadt. They deliberately avoided going straight through town, as they wanted to be alone. Here on the narrow footpath winding its way below the town wall, not a soul could be seen.
Finally, Simon spoke up. He had been thinking it over for a long time and was choosing his words carefully.
“I…I’m sorry,” he began haltingly. “But it is true, I love your daughter. And I can provide for her. I have attended the university, even though I didn’t finish. I ran out of money. But I have enough to hold my head above water as an itinerant surgeon. That, together with all that your daughter knows…”
The hangman stopped and looked down from the rise into the valley below, where the forest extended all the way to the horizon.
He interrupted Simon without turning his eyes from the scene in front of him. “Do you have any idea what it means to earn your daily bread out there?”
“I’ve already traveled around with my father,” replied Simon.
“He cared for you, and for that you should be forever thankful,” said the hangman. “But this time you would be alone. You would have to take care of your wife and your children. You would have to go from one country fair to another, a quack advertising his cheap tinctures like sour beer, getting rotten cabbage thrown at him and being mocked by peasants who know nothing about your healing arts. The learned physicians would make sure that you get thrown out as soon as you set foot in their town. Your children would die of hunger. Is that what you want?”
“But my father and I, we always had an income…”
The hangman spat on the ground. “That was during the war,” he continued. “When there is war, there’s always something one can do. Sawing off limbs, cleaning out wounds with oil, dragging off the dead, and covering them with lime. Now the war is
over. There are no more armies to follow. And I thank God for that!”
The hangman started walking again and Simon followed a few steps behind him.
After a few minutes of silence, he asked, “Master, may I ask you a question?” Jakob Kuisl continued walking and spoke without turning around.
“What do you want?”
“I heard you haven’t always been in Schongau. You left this town when you were about my age. Why? And why did you return?”
The hangman stopped again. They had almost circled the entire town. Before them, on the right, the road to Altenstadt appeared. An oxcart trundled slowly along the road. Beyond, the forest stretched all the way to the horizon. Jakob Kuisl remained silent for such a long time that Simon began to think he would never receive an answer. Finally the hangman spoke.
“I didn’t want a trade that forced me to kill,” he said.
“And what did you do instead?”
Jakob Kuisl laughed softly.
“I killed all the more. Indiscriminately. Aimlessly. In a frenzy. Men, women, children.”
“You were a…soldier?” asked Simon carefully.
The hangman was again silent for quite some time before answering.
“I joined Tilly’s army. Scoundrels, highwaymen, but also honest men and adventurers, like myself…”
“You told me once that you were in Magdeburg…” Simon asked again.
A brief shudder went through the hangman’s body. Even here in Schongau, people had heard the horror stories about the fall of the town in the far north. The Catholic troops under General Tilly had practically leveled the place, and only very few inhabitants had survived the massacre. Simon had heard that the soldiers had slaughtered children like lambs, had raped women, and after that had nailed them to the doors of their homes like our crucified Savior. Even if only half the stories were true, it was enough to make Schongauers utter prayers of thanks for having been spared such a bloodbath.
Jakob Kuisl marched on. Walking briskly, Simon caught up with him on the road to Altenstadt. He sensed that he had said too much.
“Why did you come back?” he asked after a while.
“Because a hangman is necessary,” mumbled Jakob Kuisl. “Otherwise everything goes to the dogs. If there has to be killing, then at least it should be the right kind, according to the law. And so I came home to Schongau so that things would be in order. And now be quiet. I have to think.”
Simon tried one last time: “Will you think it over again, about Magdalena?”
The hangman gave him an angry look from the side. Then he walked on at such speed that Simon had trouble keeping up with him.
They had been walking side by side for a good half hour when the first houses of Altenstadt appeared. From the few sentences Kuisl had uttered during that time, Simon was able to gather that Johannes Strasser had been found dead very early that morning in his foster father’s stable. Josepha, one of the servant girls at the inn, had discovered him among the bales of straw. After telling the innkeeper, she ran over to the hangman’s house in Schongau to get some Saint-John’s-wort. When woven into a wreath it was supposed to help ward off evil powers. The servant girl was convinced that the devil had taken the boy. The hangman gave Josepha the herb and listened to her story. He left shortly thereafter, stopping only to give his daughter’s lover a good thrashing before continuing on his way. In the gray morning light he had simply followed their tracks and had easily found the barn.
Now they were both standing in front of the inn at Altenstadt, which Simon had visited only a few days earlier. They were not alone. Local peasants and wagon drivers were crowded in the square around a makeshift bier nailed together from a few boards. They were whispering—some of the women held rosaries in their hands and two servant girls knelt at the head of the bier and prayed, their bodies swaying back and forth. Simon also recognized the village priest of Altenstadt in the crowd and heard mumbled verses in Latin. When the people in Altenstadt noticed that the hangman was approaching, some of them made the sign of the cross. The priest interrupted his litany and stared at the two, his eyes flashing with hostility.
“What is the Schongau hangman doing here?” he asked suspiciously. “There’s no work for you here! The devil has already done his work!”
Jakob Kuisl wouldn’t be put off. “I heard there was an accident. Perhaps I can help?”
The priest shook his head. “I told you already, there’s nothing to be done. The boy is dead. The devil surely got him and branded him with his mark.”
“Just let the hangman come!” It was the voice of Strasser, the innkeeper. Simon recognized him among the peasants standing around the bier. “Let him see what that witch did to my boy, so that he may give her an especially slow death!” The face of the innkeeper was white as chalk and his eyes glowed with hatred as he looked back and forth between the hangman and his dead foster son.
Inquisitively, Jakob Kuisl stepped closer to the bier. Simon followed him. It was nailed together from planks and covered with fresh pine twigs. The scent of their sap could not entirely cover the stench coming from the corpse. Johannes Strasser’s body was already showing black spots on the limbs, and flies were buzzing around his face. Someone had mercifully put two coins on the open eyes that were wide with horror as they stared up at the sky. There was a deep cut below the chin which extended nearly from one ear to the other. Dried blood stuck to the boy’s shirt, which was crawling with flies as well.
Simon couldn’t help wincing. Who would do such a thing? The boy was twelve years old at the most and his greatest sin so far had probably consisted of swiping a loaf of bread or a pitcher of milk from his foster father. Now he lay here, pale and cold, having met a bloody death at the end of a much too short, unhappy life. Tolerated but never loved, an outcast even in death. Even now there was no one who would shed sincere tears for him. Strasser stood at the bier with his lips pressed together, furious and full of hatred for the murderer but not actually grieving.
The hangman turned the Strasser boy’s body gently on its side. Below the shoulder blade was the purple mark, blurred but still quite visible, a circle with a cross extending beneath it.
“The devil’s mark,” whispered the priest, crossing himself. Then he intoned the Lord’s Prayer.
“Pater noster, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum…”
“Where did you find him?” asked Jakob Kuisl without taking his eyes from the corpse.
“In the stable, all the way in back, hidden under some bales of straw.”
Simon looked around. It was Franz Strasser who had spoken. Full of hatred, the innkeeper looked down on what had once been his ward.
“He must have been lying there all the time. Josepha went to look this morning because of the smell. She thought it was some dead animal. But then it turned out to be Johannes,” he mumbled.
Simon shivered. It was the same kind of cut that little Anton Kratz had a few days ago. Peter Grimmer, Anton Kratz, Johannes Strasser… What about Sophie and Clara? Had the devil caught them too by now?
The hangman stooped down and began to examine the corpse. He brushed his fingers across the wound, looking for other injuries. When he did not find anything he sniffed at the body.
“Three days, no more,” he said. “Whoever killed him knew his business. A clean cut through the throat.”
The priest eyed him angrily from the side. “That’s enough now, Kuisl,” he barked. “You can go. This is the church’s business. You look after that witch in your own town, that Stechlin woman! She’s responsible for everything here, after all!”
Strasser, standing next to him, nodded. “Johannes was often at her place. Together with the other wards and with that redhead Sophie. She bewitched him, and now the devil is coming for the souls of the little children!”
Many people could be heard murmuring and praying in the crowd. Strasser felt encouraged.
“Tell those big shots in town,” he shouted at the hangman, his face red with wrath,
“that if they don’t clean up that brood of witches soon, we’ll come and get them ourselves!”
Some of the peasants agreed loudly as he continued his harangue. “We’ll hang them on the highest gable and light a fire underneath. Then we’ll see who else is in bed with them!”
The priest nodded deliberately. “There’s truth to that,” he said. “We cannot just look on as our children fall victim to the devil, one by one, without stopping him. The witches must burn.”
“The witches?” asked Simon.
The priest shrugged. “It is obvious that this cannot be the work of one single witch. The devil is in league with many of them. And furthermore…” He lifted his index finger as if to provide the final proof in a logical chain of arguments. “The Stechlin woman is in jail, isn’t she? Then it must be someone else! Walpurgis Night is coming very soon! Most likely Satan’s lovers are already dancing with the Evil One in the forest at night and kissing his anus. Then they swarm into town, naked and besotted, to drink the blood of innocent little children.”
“Come on, you don’t believe that, do you?” interjected Simon, his voice somewhat uncertain. “These are just horror stories, nothing more!”
“The Stechlin woman had flying salves and witch hazel in her house,” cried one of the peasants farther back in the crowd. “Berchtholdt told me so. He was there during the torture. Now she cast a spell to make herself unconscious so as not to betray her playmates! And on Walpurgis Night they’ll come and get more children!”
Franz Strasser nodded in agreement. “Johannes was in the forest a lot. They probably lured him there. He always babbled something about some kind of a hiding place.”
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