Kuisl blinked and tried to guess the time. From far off he could hear cries and laughter, and a dim light fell through the hatch, causing the dust in the air to shimmer. Probably early afternoon.
At that moment he heard footsteps in the corridor outside the cell. The bolt slid aside, and the Regensburg executioner entered. He carried a flickering torch and a linen sack, which he opened now, arranging its contents on the floor. In the dim light Kuisl could make out a few clay vessels, some rags, bouquets of dried herbs, and a large bottle of brandy.
“Kuisl, Kuisl,” Teuber muttered, handing the Schongau hangman the uncorked bottle. “One thing is clear; the Regensburg aldermen tried everything: burning sulfur, the rack, thumb screws, and Spanish boots—all in one day! I’ve never seen anything like that before.” He shook his head. “They want to see you hang, and sooner rather than later.”
Kuisl nodded and took a deep swig of brandy. The alcohol seemed to wash through his entire body, rinsing away the worst of the pain.
“Well? Do you still believe I killed my own sister?” he asked, wiping his bloody, swollen hand across his lips.
Teuber opened one of the pots and spread a cooling ointment over a burn on Kuisl’s thigh where, just a few hours before, he had applied burning sulfur.
“What I think is of no importance,” he replied. “They told me to get you ready for tomorrow, and then we’ll proceed. They don’t trust the quack doctor to do it right, so it’s up to me. Those damned patricians! Now turn around.”
Kuisl rolled on his side so the Regensburg executioner could treat the wounds on his back. He had to hand it to Teuber—he was a master of his craft. He knew how to harm, but he knew how to heal as well. Years of experience working with burns, dislocated shoulders, and broken bones had made the Regensburg hangman an excellent doctor.
“You know, it’s funny, Teuber,” Kuisl said with his eyes closed. “First we hurt the people, then we nurse them back to health…”
“And in the end we kill them.” Teuber nodded. “I’ve given up thinking about it. I do my work; that’s all there is to it. Now your fingers.”
Kuisl held his swollen blue thumbs out to the Regensburg executioner, who had crushed them only a few hours before. Now the executioner rubbed them with a fragrant yellow ointment that smelled of marigold and arnica. When he finished, he repeated this on Kuisl’s legs, where Spanish boots—with iron uppers and spikes inside—had left colorful, shiny bruises.
“You know that I’m innocent,” Kuisl whispered, clenching his fists to better endure the pain in his legs. “I’ve seen it in your eyes. You also believe that something’s not right with one of the inquisitors. Admit it.”
Pausing, Teuber stared at the man across from him for a long time. “Damn, you’re right,” he said at last. “The one alderman is spewing vitriol the way some people breathe fire and brimstone. Almost as if it was his sister whose throat you slit.”
“For God’s sake, I didn’t…” Kuisl burst out, but he calmed down again, as there was no point in arguing now. The Regensburg executioner was his only ear to the outside world.
After a few deep breaths Kuisl asked, “Do you know the three aldermen?”
Teuber shrugged. “One of them is probably the president of the council, Hieronymus Rheiner. As far as I know, he’s the oldest member of the council. Rheiner is also the president of the court that tried your case.”
“Of course!” Kuisl interrupted. “The president at my trial the day before yesterday. How could I have forgotten?”
“The youngest one I recognized by his voice,” Teuber continued. “That’s Joachim Kerscher from the tax office, a little braggart whose father bought him the position.”
Kuisl nodded. The chief of the tax office was responsible for municipal taxes and thus an extremely powerful man. Of course, the hangman was interested in someone else. “What about the third man?”
There was a long pause.
“Who is the third man?” Kuisl grew impatient.
Teuber shook his head. “I don’t know. I’ve heard that voice somewhere before, but I can’t say where.”
“Can you find out for me who he is?”
By now the Regensburg executioner had bandaged Kuisl’s back with clean cloth.
“Not even if I wanted to,” Teuber replied. “The identity of the third inquisitor always remains secret, to ensure impartiality. He won’t be named in any document, or found in any record either. So, that’s the end of that.”
He patted Kuisl lightly on the shoulder and started to pack the clay pots back into his bag.
“We’ll see each other again tomorrow morning when I resume your torture,” he said with a sigh, and turned to leave. “I’ll leave the torch for you, since it’s so gloomy down here.”
“Teuber,” Kuisl whispered. “Damn it, I’ve got to know who the third man is! I’m absolutely certain he has something to do with the murder. If I knew his name, I could send Magdalena to find out more about him, then maybe everything would end well after all. The judgment may not be passed until I confess under torture, but I don’t know how much longer I can hold out. So don’t let me down!”
“Hang it! I tell you I can’t do it!” Teuber wrung his callused hands, unable to look Kuisl in the eye. “I have five children, and they all need their father. If I start poking around now, I’ll end up on the scaffold right there with you. But in chains and minus my sword. Don’t you get it?”
“I have children, too, Teuber,” the Schongau hangman answered calmly. “Young twins, beautiful children. And my eldest daughter is somewhere out there trying to save my life.”
Standing in the doorway, Teuber pressed his lips tightly together and clutched his linen sack as if trying to wring blood out of it.
“We’ll see each other again in the morning,” he said finally. “Try to get some sleep.”
He slammed the door behind him and slid the bolt closed. Kuisl could hear his rapid footsteps retreat down the passageway. It almost seemed he wanted to run.
Kuisl stared pensively at the grimy cell wall in front of him. The torch Teuber left hanging on a ring was half burned down now, but by its light the Schongau hangman was able to get a clear look around his cell for the first time. The stinking chamber pot, the wedge of wood that served as his pillow, the scribbling on the wall… Kuisl studied the strange script that had troubled him so greatly the day before. It still glared out at him in the very middle of the back wall, directly under the line from the mercenary’s song, which he’d carefully scratched out.
P.F.K. Weidenfeld, anno domini 1637…
That was a quarter of a century ago. The hangman tried to remember what was going on back then, what the name and date brought to mind. Had he ever known anyone by that name?
P.F.K. Weidenfeld…
Back then Kuisl’s colonel had already promoted him to sergeant, and even though he was only twenty-two years old, he commanded a large number of mercenaries. Many of the older, more seasoned soldiers objected on account of his youth, but after the first battle most didn’t say another word. Kuisl taught them discipline and respect, two virtues the lansquenets knew about only through stories. Kuisl lived with the horror and terror of war, the nightmares of murder, robbery, and rape, all those years, but the memories grew within him like a poisonous mushroom. At least he had done what he could to stanch senseless bloodshed by his own men.
But what bloodshed was sensible?
P.F.K. Weidenfeld…
With torch in hand, Kuisl walked along the wall, trying to decipher the rest of the scribblings.
All of a sudden he noticed something.
The Weidenfeld inscription as well as some of the others were new! They had been carved into the wooden wall with a sharp knife, and they shone in a much lighter color than the older ones—so someone must have carved them just recently.
Just for him.
Softly the hangman began murmuring the names he’d been trying to forget all these years.
Magdeb
urg, Breitenfeld, Rain on the Lech, Nördlingen…
Familiar names from the Great War, battlefields where Kuisl served as a mercenary and where he pillaged, blasphemed, whored, and murdered. Images and smells came back to him now like dark storm clouds.
Good God!
The torch smoked in front of him, and another greater torture began.
This time it penetrated to his innermost being.
“Lord Almighty! Just look at what the fire has done here!” Simon whispered, pointing to what was left of the bathhouse, which had collapsed in a smoldering heap. A thunderstorm overnight had transformed much of the ruin into a muddy mountain of black, splintered beams. The walls had fallen in on three sides. Shattered tiles, scorched window frames, scraps of cloth, and broken pots were scattered all over the street, evidence that scavengers had already helped themselves. Only the chimney still rose up out of the devastation as a reminder that a stately building had once stood on this spot.
The medicus shook his head. “We certainly won’t find anything here. Let’s just go back.”
Magdalena, too, looked sadly at the ruins. While she had to admit she hadn’t expected to find her aunt’s house so completely destroyed, she didn’t want to give up so easily.
“How much time do we have?” she asked Nathan, who stood beside her now, gnawing on an old chicken bone.
The beggar king picked at something stuck between his gold teeth. “My boys will signal me when the guards return to patrol this area,” he said. “At the moment the bailiffs are down at St. Emmeram’s Square, so it will probably be a while before they come back. I’ll whistle when they do.”
Magdalena nodded. She was happy to have Nathan and a dozen beggars along. The beggar king had advised her to wait to visit the ruin until the early-morning hours because the city guards would be nearing the end of their shifts, eager to be relieved, and thus patroling only halfheartedly. Although Simon had been against involving the beggars in their plans at first, it hadn’t been hard to convince him: in a city like Regensburg it was never a good idea to wander about alone at night, but in the company of Nathan’s colleagues they were as safe in the streets as Lazarus in the lap of Abraham. Here again it was evident how helpful the beggars guild could be. All along the Weißgerbergraben they posted lookouts to send word at the slightest sign of danger.
“Then let’s not waste any time,” Magdalena whispered.
With a lantern in hand, the hangman’s daughter searched the pile of charred beams for an opening she could slip through.
“Magdalena,” Simon whispered. “The place will collapse and bury you. Perhaps it would be better if we—”
“Just come along,” she interrupted Simon curtly. “I, at least, am not going to let my father down.”
She nudged a beam to one side, setting off a chain reaction that ended with a portion of the mountain of debris collapsing with a great crash. She jumped aside as a cloud of ash rained down on them.
“What did I tell you?” Simon whispered. “You’re digging your own grave!”
Magdalena pointed to a new opening in the debris. “At least now we’ve found a way in,” she said. “This is about where the boiler chamber with the well must have been.”
She crouched down and crawled into the ruin, holding the lantern in front of her, and in just a few moments disappeared inside. Simon murmured a quick prayer and crawled in after her. If they were going to die, then at least they would die together.
“Good luck,” he could hear Nathan call after him. “Don’t worry. If the whole thing collapses, we’ll dig you out, dead or alive.”
“Thanks, that’s very kind of you,” Simon scoffed, though he knew the beggar king could no longer hear him.
The medicus could feel his back scrape against the charred beams, and a muddy layer of ash and dirt clung to his knees. They were making their way through a tunnel of masonry stones and large pieces of rubble when Magdalena’s lantern brightened in front of him and the space around him opened up.
He rose to his feet carefully, realizing they’d in fact made it back into the bathhouse boiler room. Most of the equipment here was unrecognizable, though: the brick oven had burst into pieces, and the copper kettle used to heat bath water seemed to have completely disappeared. It took a while for Simon to notice shiny black pieces on the floor that reminded him of slag. The kettles had melted! What hellish temperatures must have prevailed here!
Meanwhile, Magdalena pushed aside a pile of bricks and gazed into a black hole directly beneath her.
“The well shaft,” she said. “The rungs are still here. Now it gets interesting.”
With these words she began her descent. Before long the medicus heard her call again. “Simon, you were right! This—this is unbelievable!”
When she fell silent, Simon leaned over the hole. “Magdalena, what’s wrong?” he whispered. “Are you still there?”
“I’m here in the back.” The voice of the hangman’s daughter echoed strangely, as if she were now much farther away.
“Is there really a secret passageway?” Simon asked excitedly.
“It’s best you come down and see for yourself.”
Simon reached for the iron rungs, casting a quick glance at the splintered beams and loose stones above him. If the roof caved in now, they’d either drown or starve to death down in the well. He couldn’t imagine Nathan and his beggars taking up shovels and digging them out.
Hand over hand, the medicus climbed down the rungs into the shaft until he reached the opening. The flames had gutted the hidden storage room, and the sacks and boxes they found there on their last visit were reduced to ash. But Simon discovered something else now.
Farther back there was yet another entryway, this one only waist-high. Simon ducked into the low opening. The ground was strewn with charred wood, some of it still marked with whitewash. He had to smile.
A secret wooden door painted white and hidden behind the sacks. Hofmann was a clever fellow!
Carefully he peered inside. In the large room before him the fire had left its mark, though not so thoroughly as in the first room. In one corner stood a charred table; a blackened shelf that had fallen from the wall now lay on the floor. In the middle of the room the chimney of a huge stone furnace rose up to the ceiling, and all around it were smashed pots and splinters of glass that he suspected were once polished lenses.
Simon stepped over the broken glass and ran his hand along the balance bar of a scale: still warm, scorched and twisted almost beyond recognition by the heat.
“I’ll be damned if this wasn’t an alchemist’s workshop,” he whispered. “Your uncle is looking stranger and stranger by the minute.”
“I wonder whether Hofmann’s murderer searched this room,” Magdalena said.
Simon thought for a moment, then nodded. “It’s quite possible he didn’t. Your uncle kept his laboratory well hidden. I assume the fireplace is connected to the chimney in the boiler room so no one would notice he was down here working with distillation flasks. A bathhouse operator has to always keep the water boiling, after all, and thus the chimney was always smoking.”
“But what does that have to do with the patricians?” Magdalena picked up a piece of a glass lens and examined it as if this shard might hold the answer to all her questions. “Until now we’ve assumed the aldermen had my uncle killed because he was one of the leaders of the freemen—retaliation, nothing more.”
“Apparently it’s not that simple,” Simon replied. “It’s safe to say that someone was looking very hard for this secret room. The terrible mess in the apothecary’s room on the second floor is evidence of that.”
“Could Mämminger be behind it?” Magdalena asked.
“He has something to do with it at least.”
The medicus continued reflecting on this as he made his way through the room, now and then picking up a fragment of pottery or a piece of melted glass. Underneath the toppled bookshelf he found a few scorched boards connected by thin bars, and th
en, as he continued rummaging around, he came upon a few small blackened bones.
Animal bones.
“It appears your uncle was keeping animals in cages down here,” Simon said. “Not especially large ones. These bones could have come from rats or cats.”
Disgusted, he tossed the bones aside and walked to a far back corner of the room, where a knee-high pile of ash still smoldered. Carefully he reached into the faintly glowing black mass.
Slowly he sifted the warm ashes through his fingers, letting them fall to the ground. There were bits the fire hadn’t consumed entirely, which shimmered bluish white in the lantern light. Sniffing them, he recognized the same slightly sweet odor he had noticed a few days earlier while inspecting the moldy flour in the bathhouse supply room. Could this enormous pile of ash be simply burned flour? Or was this the remains of some alchemical powder he’d never heard of?
What the devil had Hofmann been doing down here?
He suddenly heard a loud crack and stones began falling to the ground. A moment later the world around them seemed to explode.
“Damn it, the house is collapsing!” Simon shouted. “I was afraid it would. Let’s get out of here fast!”
Magdalena was already in the front supply room, scrambling like a cat up the rungs. Before Simon followed her, he frantically filled his purse with the bluish ash. Maybe he’d have a chance later to examine the powder more closely. Then he, too, rushed off toward the well shaft.
A loud thundering sound suggested the beams were breaking apart under the weight of the rubble. Up in the boiler room Magdalena stood amid the melted kettles while rubble and stones hailed down on her.
“The way out is blocked!” she shouted, pointing at the narrow tunnel now closed off by a mountain of bricks. The roof above them was creaking and starting to sag, and at any moment they knew they’d be buried beneath it.