“I—I’m supposed to examine you first,” the surgeon stuttered. “To determine whether you’re fit for questioning, you understand. Please remove your shirt.”
Kuisl unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it over his head, revealing a hairy chest marked by a number of scars from old gunshot wounds. The little physician fumbled around, anxiously eyeing the guards. He looked Kuisl in the eye briefly as he felt for his heartbeat. Finding it calm and measured, the doctor nodded ceremoniously.
“The offender is more than fit for questioning,” he said, looking toward the closed-off area. “Strong as an ox. He won’t keel over so fast. In my estimation we can proceed.”
Only a soft whisper could be heard from the niche behind the latticework. Finally Elsperger took his seat on a bench whose backrest, oddly, extended only half its length. Teuber noticed Kuisl’s bemused glance.
“The other half of the bench is for me,” the Regensburg executioner said with a grin. “We disreputable hangmen don’t deserve a backrest. But I don’t get to sit down very much anyway.”
“That’s right, Teuber,” a harsh voice finally said behind the lattice. It sounded like an older man accustomed to being obeyed. “Enough chitchat. Let’s begin.”
Teuber nodded. “As you wish.”
Once again the Regensburg executioner turned and whispered in Kuisl’s ear. “Confess, Kuisl. I promise you a quick, clean death.”
“Get to work, hangman,” Kuisl growled. “Leave the rest to me.”
A second voice with a strong Bavarian accent could be heard now behind the lattice, higher and brighter than the first. Kuisl assumed it belonged to the youngest council member. “Teuber, first show the man the instruments and explain their purpose. Maybe that will make him more cooperative.”
“Save yourself the trouble,” Kuisl said. “You know who I am. You don’t have to explain to a hangman what he does.”
Teuber sighed and led his colleague to the rack. With huge, callused hands he tied Kuisl’s hands and feet to a roller at each end of the rack so not even the slightest movement was possible.
“Jakob Kuisl of Schongau,” the harsh voice intoned once more from behind the lattice. “You stand accused of the murders of Andreas Hofmann and his wife, Lisbeth, née Kuisl, on the morning of the fourteenth of August in their very own bathhouse. Do you acknowledge your guilt?”
“As guilty as our Savior,” Kuisl replied.
“Do not blaspheme our Lord,” the young Bavarian replied. “You will just make everything worse.”
“We have evidence, Kuisl,” said the old man with the rasping voice. “We found the will. You had poison in your possession. For the last time, confess!”
“Good heavens, those were medicines!” Kuisl swore. “My sister was deathly ill. I came to visit her to try to cure her, nothing more. This is a damned setup, don’t you see that?”
“A setup?” asked the Bavarian, amused. “Now who do you think would have wanted to set you up?”
“I don’t know myself,” Kuisl muttered. “But when I find out, I’ll—”
“Lies, nothing but lies,” the old man interrupted. “This is pointless; we’ll have to torture the suspect. Teuber, put the spiketooth roller under him.”
The Regensburg executioner lifted Kuisl’s upper body until his back arched like a bridge, then inserted a roller covered in thin spikes between the rack and his body. When the executioner let go of him, Kuisl’s back dropped onto the roller and the iron spikes bore deeply into his flesh. Kuisl clenched his jaw but didn’t utter a sound.
“Now turn the wheel,” the Bavarian ordered.
Teuber moved to the head of the rack and began turning a crank so that Kuisl’s arms and legs were stretched in opposite directions. Bones cracked, beads of sweat appeared on Kuisl’s brow, but still he remained silent.
Then a third voice sounded behind the lattice, quiet and throaty, of indeterminate age, but as sharp as a saw.
“Jakob Kuisl of Schongau,” the man whispered. “Can you hear me?”
Kuisl shuddered. His back arched upward as if a fire had been lit beneath him. He knew this voice from his distant past. It had sought him out in the dungeon, and now it was here to torment him like something out of a nightmare.
How is this possible?
“Dear little hangman,” the voice whispered. “I know you’re a stubborn old bastard, but believe me when I tell you that we’ll cause you more pain than you could ever imagine. And if you don’t confess today, then you will tomorrow or the day after. We have time, plenty of it.”
Kuisl pulled against the ropes with such force that the blood- and soot-stained rack nearly toppled.
“Go to hell, damn it!” he screamed. “Whoever you are, go back to where you came from!”
The guards seized their halberds, and the little surgeon jumped up anxiously from the bench.
“Shall I bleed him a bit so he’ll calm down?” Elsperger muttered. “With loss of blood, they tire quickly.” But the Schongau hangman’s furious shouts drowned him out.
Teuber took firm hold of Kuisl’s hands and bent down close over him. “Damn it, what’s the matter with you, Kuisl?” he whispered. “This is just the beginning. You’re only going to make everything much, much worse.”
Kuisl tried hard to breathe evenly.
Got to calm down… Have to find out who is behind the grille.
Again the third voice spoke.
“Teuber, it’s time to show this monster how serious we are,” the unknown man whispered with an enjoyment audible to Kuisl alone. “He who refuses to hear shall feel. Put the blue fire to him.”
Kuisl turned his head in despair, but Teuber was already outside his field of vision. Nearby he heard a sound he knew only too well: a long, drawn-out hiss and sizzle, like the sound of fat being dropped into a hot pan. Then the infernal odor of sulfur wafted through the torture chamber.
Kuisl clenched his jaw. No matter what happened, they wouldn’t hear him scream.
Magdalena was stirring an ointment of butter, arnica, resin, and chamomile in a wooden crucible. The pleasant aroma more or less distracted her from the stench that permeated the space around her.
Since the early-morning hours, more and more beggars had been arriving at the underground hall with their various ailments. The hangman’s daughter would have guessed there were almost two dozen now, but the exact number was hard to determine given the vault’s irregular shape and the dim torchlight. The beggars lay, crouched, and leaned in corners and tiny niches. They came with scabies; open sores on their legs; hacking coughs; and sudor anglicus, English sweating sickness; and whatever their ailment, all wanted to be treated by Simon and Magdalena. By now it was almost noontime.
They had just finished treating an especially difficult case. The left leg of old Mathis was covered with festering wounds, some of them already infested with maggots.
“When the principessa finishes preparing her ointment, it would be nice if she could help me clean out these wounds,” the young medicus said, glancing up from his work to Magdalena. “Of course, only if she doesn’t find it beneath her dignity.”
The hangman’s daughter sighed softly. Simon was still out of sorts because she’d spent the prior evening with Silvio. A dozen times she reassured him she hadn’t enjoyed herself at the ball at all, and that her curiosity had nearly cost her her life in the Venetian’s garden. Still, Simon was in a huff. And though she could understand that somewhat at first, his fussing had begun to get on her nerves—mainly because she’d scarcely slept that night. At least the beggars had brought her her travel bag from the Whale; she’d put on a halfway clean dress, and in her linen skirt and gray bodice she felt once more like the simple daughter of the Schongau hangman. Yet none of that prevented Simon from treating her as if she’d just spent a fabulous and decadent night at a glittering ball.
“You can take your principessa and shove it,” she snapped angrily. “And going forward, you can spare me your whining.”
Sull
enly, Magdalena took the salve to Simon and, with some tweezers, helped to pluck maggots from the leg of a snoring man she’d plied beforehand with a generous portion of brandy. Simon used a tattered cloth as a curtain to block off a niche that served as their examination room. He arranged some planks as a bed, as well as a wobbly chair and a table on which he laid out his few medical instruments and books.
“It’s only because I worry,” Simon whispered after a while, still cleaning the wound. “It’s not a good idea for you to be gadding about Regensburg by yourself. You see what can happen when you get involved with a runty provincial aristocrat like him.”
“Oh, I see, but you, sir, can march straight into a band of revolutionaries and listen to a raftmaster spout off all sorts of foolishness. That’s a good idea?”
“At least now we know why this trap was set for your father,” Simon replied.
Magdalena frowned. Simon had told her about his experience the night before with the freemen on Wöhrd Island. Nevertheless, she remained skeptical. There were just too many unanswered questions.
“I’m not sure I really understand it all,” she said, laying the tweezers aside. “This freeman Gessner believes the Regensburg patricians lured my father here with some letter from his sister, forged a will, and then posted guards at the scene of the crime. All that just so they could frame him for murder? Why should they do that? They could just as well have framed some random person. These things happen in every big city. They didn’t have to drag my father all the way from Schongau just for that.”
Simon set a bowl of dirty water down on the table and began to bandage the beggar’s leg with scraps of halfway clean cloth. “You’re right; it’s a roundabout way of doing it,” he said. “But this way no one asked any questions. The patricians wanted to eliminate one of the freemen’s leaders without arousing suspicion. They clearly succeeded in that.”
“That just sounds too simple,” Magdalena mumbled. “There’s a catch here somewhere. Why, for instance, was the bathhouse under surveillance until just last night? Something important must have been inside.”
“Hofmann’s pharmacy looked like it had been hit by a tornado,” Simon replied. He sat down on a stool, rubbed the sweat from his forehead, and tried to think. “Certainly someone was looking for something in there—”
“Perhaps there was some piece of evidence they wanted to destroy,” Magdalena interrupted, “something that would have revealed the real reason for the murder. And now…”
“And now this someone thinks we know, too!” Simon continued excitedly. “They think we found something in the bathhouse that could implicate them.” He sprang up from his stool. “That just might be it!”
“That would also explain the strange hooded man who tried to kill me twice yesterday,” Magdalena said. “Once in the coffeehouse and later in Silvio’s garden. The Mämminger fellow who spoke with the stranger is the Regensburg city treasurer, a patrician! I bet Mämminger hired him as an assassin to silence us both.”
Simon nodded. “I’m certain this is the same man who locked us in the bathhouse basement and nearly burned us alive. As fast as possible we’re going to have to—”
Magdalena put a finger to his lips. Without a word, she pointed to the curtain, then pulled it aside in a single motion. Behind it Nathan’s grinning face appeared.
“Ah, I thought I heard someone calling for me,” the beggar king said. “May I help you with something?”
Simon groaned softly. Nathan had probably overheard their entire conversation! Simon still wasn’t sure how much he could trust the beggar king.
“I’m sure if we needed help you would have heard about it,” the medicus replied, pointing to his sleeping patient. “In any event, this patient needs his rest, and so do we. We’re nearly dying of hunger.”
Nathan clapped his hands together. “Ah, well, it just so happens that I’ve gotten my hands on some delicious treats for you—under the table, so to speak. It’s not much. The guards in Haid Square were especially vigilant today. But for a little lunch it’ll do nicely.”
He led Simon and Magdalena to the large table in the middle of the hall, where some bowls of bread, cheese, and apples, as well as a magnificent leg of pork, awaited them. Nathan’s helpers had also managed to swipe a mug of foaming brown beer from right under the tavern keeper’s eyes.
“Help yourselves!” the beggar king said. “You’ve really earned it today.”
Simon bit into the pork and washed it down with a gulp of beer. Only now did he realize how hungry he was. Magdalena, too, hadn’t really had much to eat since the night before at the Venetian’s ball. She reached for the apples, which she devoured eagerly one after the other.
Nathan took a seat next to them and watched as they ate. He reminded Simon of a sly old crow patiently waiting for a crumb to fall from the table.
“I did, by the way, accidentally overhear your little discussion,” Nathan said, picking his golden teeth. Then he turned to Simon with a conspiratorial look. “So do you really believe that Mämminger sent a hired assassin after you?”
The medicus just shrugged and continued chewing, but Magdalena nodded. “Everything points in that direction,” she replied, reaching for a mug of beer. “The treasurer seems to think we’ve found proof of his guilt, and now he wants us out of the way.”
Nathan snickered and took a bite of cheese. “Proof?” he finally scoffed. “And what kind of proof would that be? Perhaps Mämminger dropped his signet ring somewhere in the bathhouse? Or you found a bloody silver dagger engraved with initials in his kitchen drawer, or—”
“Nonsense,” Simon mumbled. “It must be something serious, something that has to be kept hidden at all costs… some kind of secret.”
Lost in thought, he ran his fingers across the tabletop, which was dusted in a thin layer of flour from the fresh-baked bread. Still pondering, he rubbed it between his fingers.
Flour?
Spinning around, Simon took Magdalena by the shoulder so abruptly she choked on her beer.
“The tracks in the cellar!” he exclaimed. “How could I have forgotten?”
“Tracks?” Nathan inquired, puzzled. “In what cellar?”
The medicus held out his right hand and placed his floury finger under the beggar king’s nose. He looked around cautiously and lowered his voice. “There’s a hidden storage room at the bottom of the bathhouse well. We found a few sacks of flour down there, which the rats had been nibbling. I had a closer look at them, and this flour…” Simon paused a moment to think. “There were tracks in it, big footprints, and they stopped directly in front of the wall. One of the tracks was cut off midway as if…”
“As if the trail continued on the other side!” Magdalena finished his sentence excitedly. “Damn! Why didn’t you say something earlier?”
“I—I completely forgot,” Simon stammered. “Just as I was going to take a closer look, the place caught fire and we had to run for our lives—or don’t you remember? The tracks in the flour were just about the last thing I was thinking about at the moment.”
Magdalena sighed. “Well, there’s only one way to find out whether you’re right,” she said, standing up from the table.
“And what would that be?”
The hangman’s daughter grinned. “We’ve got to go back to the bathhouse tonight and take a closer look.”
“But the house was completely destroyed in the fire,” Nathan said. “How can you expect to find anything there?”
“I hardly believe the fire made its way into the well,” Magdalena said. “And the fire does give us one advantage. This time we don’t need to worry about being locked inside a burning building. Thanks, by the way, for the meal.”
An apple in hand, she returned to the makeshift ward to treat the next patient.
Jakob Kuisl lay on the wood floor of his cell and tried to forget his pain.
The Schongau hangman had retreated to his innermost being, where a bright sun sent its warming rays into the v
ery tips of his fingers, filling him with pleasant thoughts.
A meadow of spring flowers, lilies of the valley with dew on their leaves, the bright laughter of the twins and Magdalena…
Kuisl knew from his own agonizing interrogations that people could bear a lot of pain if only their beliefs were strong, if they felt close to God, or if, like Kuisl, they were firmly convinced of their own innocence. His father once told him about an elderly woman who was tortured more than sixty times in the notorious Schongau witch trial. The stubborn old God-fearing midwife denied the accusations against her until she was finally released. Jakob Kuisl wondered how many sessions he could endure. Thirty? Forty?
The hangman groaned, trying to find a position that would minimize his pain. It was impossible for him to lie on his back because it was there the spikes had rolled through his flesh on the rack. Gaping black and red burn wounds covered his thighs, and he could scarcely move his arms. For over half an hour Teuber had turned the screws, and his thumbs, index fingers, and both shinbones had turned blue and pulsed in pain as if an iron hammer were pounding them still.
Kuisl knew this was just the first stage of his torture. Early the next morning they would start with stretching by ropes. They would tie his arms behind his back and raise him from the ground this way, attaching weights of as much as a hundred pounds to his legs. The third voice behind the lattice had demanded all through the last session that they start the stretching as soon as possible. Kuisl sensed the two other Regensburg aldermen were rather put off by their colleague’s blatant hatred, but they didn’t interfere as the third man kept issuing increasingly brutal orders.
The third man…
Kuisl had been racking his brain the last few hours trying to remember where he’d heard that voice before, and though the pain made it almost impossible to concentrate, he continued to rummage through his memory. He recalled the hateful look of the stranger on the raft. Could the third voice belong to him? Something deep inside Kuisl told him he’d known the raftsman long ago. But he couldn’t possibly be an inquisitor. Teuber told Kuisl that those selected to oversee the torture were always rich, respected citizens; this raftsman, on the other hand, was a simple man and probably not even from Regensburg.