The Council of Twelve

by Oliver Pötzsch

  “Is it that bad?” Kuisl asked.

  Deibler laughed grimly. “You’ll see for yourself in a moment.”

  By now they were on the road outside the city. The air was mild, almost springlike. The wet snow was dripping from the trees and falling down in lumps; the roads were so muddy that the wagons traveling to Munich had a hard time getting through. Up ahead, Kuisl saw a large crowd gathered around the execution platform. The people jeered and hollered, and a handful of lads were throwing snowballs at the platform. Something round was lying atop a pillar.

  “Bloody hell, the crowd has grown,” Deibler groused. “Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to come back after all. But it’s too late now.”

  The first few spectators had recognized Michael Deibler in his red coat. The people went quiet and made room for the three hangmen. Dozens of hostile eyes followed them. An icy snowball hit Kuisl’s neck, but he didn’t even blink. He knew people could smell fear, just like animals. The air was laden with tension, as before a thunderstorm.

  “Hey, Deibler,” one of the bystanders yelled. “Are you hangmen killing each other now? That wouldn’t be the worst thing for the city.”

  A few people laughed, but most just kept staring at them hatefully.

  “The other two are next!” another young man shouted. He was wearing a bloodstained apron—probably a butcher’s journeyman who had run here in a hurry. “Deibler is knocking off his cousins just like he killed the poor girls.”

  “How dare you, you—” Michael Deibler spun around and was about to grab the lad by his collar when Kuisl pulled him back.

  “Stay calm,” he whispered. “Or you’ll be next.”

  Kuisl looked straight ahead. They were close enough to the platform now for him to see what lay on top of the column.

  It was the head of Master Hans.

  Cleanly separated from the body, it sat atop the pillar like a huge, bloody pearl. The white hair moved in the breeze; the red eyes stared into the distance; the mouth was twisted into a grin. It looked as though Hans were laughing, as if his own death were a good joke.

  Hans’s torso lay in front of the pillar. Arms and legs had been neatly cut off and arranged next to the body like meat in a shop display.

  And so we meet again, Jakob Kuisl thought. Say hello to the devil, dear cousin.

  Strangely, he felt no satisfaction. Only a quiet sense of grief, much to his surprise. With the trained eye of an executioner, Kuisl studied the individual body parts. They had been cut off cleanly, with an ax or a large, sharp knife.

  “My God,” Georg breathed next to his father. “Like a quartered thief.”

  Deibler nodded. “The first travelers coming through this morning asked in town about the executed robber with the creepy red eyes and the white hair. Master Hans is somewhat well known in Munich now, so it wasn’t long before I heard about it.” He sighed. “I never liked him, but no hangman should end his days like this.”

  “Well, at least he’s got it over and done with,” Kuisl said. “While we are up to our necks in shit, by the looks of it.”

  While the crowd had first kept away from them as if they were lepers, they now came closer. The butcher’s journeyman raised his cleaver.

  “Those hangmen only bring misfortune,” he crowed. “Let’s hang them, and our girls will be safe again.”

  Jakob Kuisl sized up the crowd from the corner of his eye. He, Georg, and Michael could certainly manage a few of them, but not the whole throng. Kuisl knew executioners had been lynched by mobs before—usually when the hangman botched an execution. That was how his father had died. Was he going to share that fate now?

  “Follow me,” Michael Deibler whispered. “Before they pounce on us like wolves.”

  He ran around the platform, and Kuisl and Georg followed him. Behind a small door at the back of the platform, stairs led to the top. The door could be bolted from the inside. Moments later, the three hangmen stood by the pillar atop the execution site and looked down at the raging masses.

  Kuisl realized they had merely gained a short breather. The people were already picking up rocks and throwing icy lumps of snow. A few bold men started climbing the platform.

  Kuisl had no idea what to do. He looked over to the city, whose walls and fortifications weren’t far away. Then he looked again.

  Several dark spots were approaching on the Neuhausen Road.

  The hangman squinted. He could still rely on his eyesight, despite his ripe old age. “Talk,” he whispered at Deibler.

  The Munich hangman gave him a puzzled look, but Kuisl nudged him. “Go ahead and say something. Doesn’t matter what, as long as you keep going.”

  “Um, I’ve never been a very good orator . . . ,” Deibler replied.

  “If you don’t talk now, you’re a dead orator, damn it,” Kuisl snarled at him. “So think of something.”

  Deibler swallowed, then he cleared his throat. “Dear people of Munich,” he began, raising his arms placatingly. “You all know me—though perhaps not as well as the gallows birds I’ve sent flying in the past.”

  An elderly farmer laughed, and Deibler continued in a steadier voice: “But most of all, you know my Burgi. Who hasn’t gone to see her when they were plagued by a boil on the backside? Who hasn’t bought a cough syrup from her, or something for scabies or aching limbs?”

  “Or something for one very particular limb!” a man shouted from the back, and everyone hooted with laughter.

  Kuisl smiled to himself. Deibler did pretty well for someone who thought he wasn’t a good public speaker. He was building trust between himself and the angry mob. And he knew that while the people might not like him, his wife was very popular.

  “Do you really think I did this?” shouted Deibler, pointing at Hans’s cut-up body. “My Burgi knows me better than anyone else in this world—ask her. She gives me a kick up the backside if I try to drown one of her countless cats.”

  The people laughed again, and Deibler went on. “I’m the hangman of this city, not some kind of monster. I don’t need to kill secretly at night.” He gestured toward Kuisl and Georg. “And the same goes for my cousins from Schongau and Bamberg.”

  “If it wasn’t you executioners, then who was it?” a young woman with matted hair called out. “Ever since your accursed council decided to meet here, we women aren’t safe anymore. Bad luck sticks to you like pitch.”

  The crowd grumbled and swore, and the mood changed again. Some of the younger fellows tried to climb the platform again.

  “I’ll say it again!” shouted Michael Deibler. “We hangmen are no murderers or bringers of misfortune. We’re only doing our jobs, just like all of you. And I swear by God, when I’m on this scaffold with the murderer of our girls and my cousin, I’ll make sure his execution is long and slow.”

  Deibler’s last words were drowned out by angry and disappointed shouts. Jakob Kuisl kept an eye on the road. The black dots had come closer. He could make out individual men now. To his enormous relief, he’d been right. It was city guards, a whole delegation of them, carrying muskets and halberds. At their head marched Josef Loibl, easily recognizable by his shiny cuirass.

  “God in heaven,” Georg sighed. “I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy to see a bunch of zealous bailiffs.”

  The crowd started when they saw the guards, then people began to disperse. Some of them kept shouting for a while, and a few more snowballs were thrown, then it was all over. Josef Loibl arrived at the execution site with his men and looked at Master Hans’s severed head with disgust.

  “What in God’s name is this?” he asked eventually.

  “This is the Weilheim hangman, who was expertly quartered by someone last night,” Michael Deibler replied after he and the two others had climbed down from the platform. He wiped the sweat off his forehead. Kuisl saw that he was trembling slightly. “The people thought we executioners had something to do with it.”

  “Well, I can’t blame them, since the victim was quartered,” Loibl
said, studying the body parts. “Especially since it looks like a professional job.”

  “Any butcher could do that,” Kuisl said. “You only need a sharp knife or an ax.” He pointed at the platform. “One thing is for certain: the person who did this is also the murderer of the girls—of the last three, at least.”

  “Is that so?” Loibl turned to Kuisl with surprise. “What makes you think that?”

  “It seems Master Hans knew something,” Deibler said, coming to his friend’s aid. “He gave some hints about the dead girls and acted strangely. He must have known the murderer and might have tried to blackmail him. So the murderer got rid of him.”

  “Hmm, but why quarter him?” Loibl stroked his mustache. “Wouldn’t it have been enough to stick a knife in his back or cut his throat?”

  “For Christ’s sake, that’s exactly why I’m saying it was the same murderer,” Kuisl swore. “That madman doesn’t merely kill his victims, he executes them. That’s what he did with the girls, and now with Hans, too.”

  “And with the young woman who’d been lying in a rock cellar for decades?” Loibl added mockingly. “The crazy old man must have knocked Hans over the head with his cane first.”

  Georg muttered something, and Kuisl snarled at him, annoyed.

  “What are you muttering? If you have something to say, spit it out.”

  Georg cleared his throat. “I said, treason. Quartering is the punishment for traitors.”

  “Treason . . . Hmm, you’re right.” Kuisl frowned and thought. Something had been bothering him for a while. He felt sure there was one important piece to the puzzle he had overlooked so far. But as it did every time he tried to grab hold of the thought, it slipped away.

  Quartering is the punishment for traitors . . .

  Before Kuisl could think any further, Loibl interrupted him. “As far as I know, this Hans was brought to our attention yesterday. Apparently, he harassed your younger daughter.” He eyed Jakob Kuisl suspiciously. “I might conclude you had something to do with his death. An affronted father and executioner with revenge on his mind, and now this . . .”

  Deibler groaned. “Not again. Damn it, Josef. We hangmen have nothing to do with these murders.”

  “Who knows.” Loibl’s eyes were still on Kuisl. “I’m watching you, big fellow.”

  “Do what you want.” The Schongau hangman pointed at the gruesome body parts on the platform. “But first we should get Master Hans—or what’s left of him—off there, before more curious onlookers turn up. And he can’t be buried in a cemetery as an executioner. So we might as well bury him here. Even this bastard deserves as much.”

  Loibl nodded reluctantly. “You’re probably right, hangman. I’ll send a priest to say a prayer at the grave. Nobody’s going to care two hoots about this fellow, anyhow.” He turned to his guards. “All right, fellows, let’s clean up this mess.”

  They helped the guards carry Hans’s remains to a lone willow tree. They buried him silently under a pile of rocks so no animals could get him.

  While Michael Deibler and Georg waited, Jakob Kuisl took the opportunity to ask the captain a question. He wanted to clear up something that had been nagging at him. Loibl was a little surprised, but didn’t mind telling Kuisl what he wanted to know.

  The hangman nodded.

  Another piece of the puzzle . . .

  When the last stone was placed on top, Kuisl regarded the nameless grave in silence. Hans had been a monster, he had almost tortured Barbara, and now he was lying there like a dead rabid dog. Kuisl should have been pleased, but he wasn’t. Hans had been a hangman like himself, an outcast.

  A cousin.

  He might have committed awful things in his life, but lying underneath this willow was no murderer, but a victim. The murderer still walked free, free to commit other cruelties.

  If Kuisl was honest with himself, that’s what bothered him the most.

  Master Hans had taken his secret to the grave.

  On the busy Sendlinger Street, three women walked toward a gloomy future.

  Bakers advertised their bread in loud voices; a butcher whetted his knife for a squeaking pig lying bound on the muddy ground in front of him; two Jesuit students from wealthy homes ran across the street to Saint Michael College. The three women looked like simple maids, wearing plain linen dresses, aprons, and woolen scarves around their heads and shoulders. Each of them carried a bundle of washing, like so many Munich washerwomen. Only a careful observer would have noticed that the youngest was trembling and was gently pushed along by one of the older women.

  And all three were subtly made up.

  From the corner of her eye, Magdalena watched Agnes, who had put her arm around young Carlotta’s shoulder and was talking to her in soothing tones. Magdalena felt nervous, too, but she tried not to show it.

  “You’ll see, it won’t be as bad as you think,” Agnes whispered to Carlotta. “At first, all they want is a little kiss here and there, and for you to gaze at them adoringly. And a slap on the backside never hurt anyone.”

  “And . . . and if they want more?” Carlotta asked reluctantly.

  “Then close your eyes and let it pass like a thunderstorm.” Agnes smiled wanly. “It’s usually over just as fast.”

  Magdalena touched the small knife she had hidden underneath her apron. It was a tool from the manufactory, used to cut off leftover thread. She was determined to only wield it in an absolute emergency—although she wasn’t sure exactly what would qualify as one.

  When Uffele and Mother Joseffa had told her early that morning what her new task was going to be, she had pretended to be shocked, resisting at first, then nodding reluctantly. Mother Joseffa had smiled triumphantly; she’d probably seen many girls respond the same way.

  “Just think about it,” Agnes said cheerfully to Carlotta as they passed Old Peter and its cemetery. “Weaving, you only get a few lousy kreuzers, whereas here, you’ll earn as much in a few days as you normally would in half a year. Men are crazy about us, especially now that whores are harder and harder to come by. And . . .” A coughing fit shook Agnes. “You’re still young. Do you want to toil at the loom for the rest of your life?” She shot an angry look at Magdalena. “I’ll soon be done with this, anyway. Uffele is always on the lookout for fresh meat for his customers.”

  And he makes an absolute killing, Magdalena thought. As long as no one catches him.

  Whoring had indeed become increasingly restricted in recent decades. The previous ruler of Bavaria, Duke Wilhelm V—known as “the Pious”—had issued several laws banning the dishonorable trade from the city. Even the Munich whorehouse had been shut down. Unlike the garishly made-up prostitutes who secretly searched for customers on the streets of Munich, Uffele’s girls looked like innocent maidservants and worked not on the streets but inside the homes of wealthy men—often right under the unsuspecting wives’ noses. Magdalena reckoned Uffele’s business yielded a huge profit, perhaps even more than he made with the silk manufactory.

  The three women had reached the Graggenau Quarter near the Residenz, where the wealthier citizens lived. The houses here were all magnificent buildings several stories high; some of them looked like small palaces. The streets were clean and empty, no peddlers to be seen anywhere. Instead, guards patrolled the streets, casting suspicious glances at Magdalena and the two others. But since they looked like maids and carried bundles of washing, the soldiers let them pass every time.

  Mother Joseffa had told them that morning where they were going to spend the next few days. Agnes was going to stay with an older patrician who made his money in the cloth trade; Carlotta was destined for a young suitor from a rich house who wanted to have another adventure before getting married. Joseffa had announced Magdalena’s client as the jackpot: it was no lesser man than the city treasurer, Daniel Pfundner himself, the person responsible for Munich’s finances.

  “You can make a lot of money at Pfundner’s,” Joseffa had told Magdalena. “His wife is dying and looks
awful, so I hear. Anni, who was there before you, earned plenty.”

  Magdalena realized then that the last girl to work for Pfundner had been found dead in the Au creek only four days ago.

  Would she share the girl’s fate?

  Agnes was the first to leave them. She stopped outside a large house near Schwabinger Gate, gave them one last nod, then disappeared inside. Magdalena and Carlotta continued in silence until they came to an even grander house. Carlotta closed her eyes and trembled.

  “You don’t have to do this,” Magdalena said. “You can just turn around and leave. You can go anywhere you like.”

  “Anywhere I like?” Carlotta laughed sadly. “That’s what I thought when I arrived in this accursed city with my little brother. I’m all Basti has left. Everyone else is dead. I promised him that we’d have it better than our parents one day. And now he lives in the gutter.” She nodded with determination, suddenly looking much older than her fifteen years. “I’m going to get through this, just like I’ve gotten through many other things. And with the money, Basti and I will move to a warm inn and eat roast, ham, and cheese for supper.” She squeezed Magdalena’s hand. “You’ve been very kind. I wish you good luck.”

  More luck than Anni would be good, Magdalena thought.

  She gave the girl one last hug and watched her walk toward the house, praying Carlotta was right—that it wouldn’t be that bad and she’d be able to use the money for herself and her brother.

  But she struggled to believe it.

  Lost in gloomy thoughts, Magdalena continued to the address Joseffa had given her. The house stood on a quiet lane near a church and was a three-story whitewashed building with an ostentatious bowfront. The coat of arms on the double doors showed scales with coins, but Magdalena knew she wasn’t allowed to knock here. Instead, she turned down a narrow path, barely wider than her shoulders, that led to the servants’ entrance. Timidly, she used the bronze knocker. After a while, an arrogant-looking older footman in a tatty uniform opened the door.