The Beggar King

  Not until early evening of the second day did the last of the aldermen leave the house, whispering to one another. Unfortunately neither one-legged Hans nor Brother Paulus, who was disguised as a mendicant monk, got close enough to understand what they were saying. And as night fell rapidly over the city, it seemed nothing else unusual would happen for a while.

  Then, long after midnight, the securely locked massive portal of the patrician’s mansion suddenly opened and Mämminger himself scurried out into the street, wearing a cape and a hat drawn down so far over his face the dozing beggars almost didn’t recognize him.

  But once they did, they promptly notified Simon and Magdalena. It was clear even to the most dimwitted vagabond that a patrician sneaking through Regensburg in the dead of night, and without a guard, must have something to hide.

  And soon enough they’d find out what.

  Kuisl, confess!… One more turn of the crank… Confess!… Put more sulfur matches under him… Confess!… Tighten the screws… Let him feel the lash… Confess! Confess! Confess!

  Jakob Kuisl tossed and turned as pain surged through his body in waves. Whenever pain subsided into a dull ache in one place, it resurfaced somewhere else with a vengeance: an all-consuming fire that ate away at him, wormed its way into his dreams even now, in the middle of the night, as he lay in a stupor in his cell.

  The Schongau hangman knew all methods of torture and had applied most of them himself at one time or another. He’d seen pain flash in hundreds of pairs of eyes, but now he felt that pain in his very own body.

  He thought he would have been able to endure more.

  He’d suffered three days of torture now. On the second day they stopped just before his right arm was wrenched from its socket—not to spare him, Kuisl was certain, but to let his body recover for the torture yet to come. This morning they began with the Spanish Donkey, a vertical board whose sharp upper edge he had to straddle while his legs were weighted with stones. In the afternoon the Regensburg executioner repeatedly applied thumb and leg screws and forced burning matches under Kuisl’s fingernails.

  Kuisl had remained silent. Not a whimper crossed his lips, not even once; he threw all his strength into the curses he shouted at his prosecutors. And from behind the lattice the voice of the third man could still be heard, taunting him.

  You have children, don’t you? And a beautiful wife as well… Tighten the screws… Confess!

  The man knew about Kuisl’s family; he knew the name of his wife. He knew all about him. And yet he remained a mere shadow behind the wooden lattice, a monster from the past that Kuisl couldn’t place.

  Who was this man? Who was Weidenfeld?

  On the morning of the third day they introduced the Maiden’s Lap, a chair covered with sharpened wooden spikes on which the victim had to sit for hours with bare buttocks while the spikes dug into his flesh. In the afternoon Teuber put him back on the rack and almost finished the work of dislocating his right shoulder.

  It was during this part of the torture that the unknown third man delivered his next blow. So casually that the two other inquisitors didn’t notice, he whispered a few words, more pointed than any of the rest, that cut Kuisl to the quick.

  Don’t believe for a second that your daughter can help you now…

  These words pulled the ground out from under Kuisl’s feet. The third man not only knew his wife; he also knew his daughter! And he knew she was here in Regensburg! Had he intercepted the letter? Had he already abducted her?

  Despite the fetters, Kuisl almost succeeded in breaking himself free of the rack now. The combined strength of four city guards was needed to force him back down on the board and tie him up again. Kuisl didn’t speak another word, and the bailiffs finally took him back to his cell. It took three men to do so since, with his shins crushed, Kuisl could no longer walk. His left arm hung limp at his side, and his hands, bright purple now, had swollen up like pig bladders.

  As he lay there in his cell and drifted off into a half sleep, an endless nightmare played over and over in his mind. When the pain woke him again—as had so often been the case in the last few days and nights—it took him a while to get his bearings again. To judge by the darkness, it was already night. Moaning, he pulled himself up to a wall until he crouched in a halfway bearable position on the floor.

  All of a sudden he heard a soft scraping sound. It took a while for him to realize it was the bolt to the cell door sliding back slowly. Silently, the door swung open and a dark figure stood in the entry.

  “Have you come to get me again, you wretched swine?” the Schongau hangman rasped. “The sun isn’t even up yet. Decent people are asleep at this hour. Be so good as to come back in an hour or so.”

  “Hurry up, you blockhead,” the figure in the door whispered. Only now did Kuisl realize this was no bailiff but Teuber. “We don’t have much time!”

  “What in the world…?” Kuisl started to straighten up, but as soon as he got to his feet, he collapsed again like a sack of grain. Pain surged once more through his swollen legs, and despite the cool night air he was feverish and bathed in sweat.

  Cursing softly, Teuber bent down to the injured man. He pulled a long set of pliers from his bag and, with one vigorous snap, cut through the rusty chain.

  “Keep still now.”

  He struggled to pull the Schongau hangman back to his feet again, laid Kuisl’s good arm over his own shoulder, wrapped his own arm tight against Kuisl’s chest, and dragged the heavy body into the hall.

  “What—what are you doing?” Kuisl said, shivering. “Where are the damned guards?” He winced as a fresh wave of pain rolled through his body.

  “I sent them off to dream for a while,” Teuber whispered. “It took me two days to make the potion, but the virtue of that patience is that they won’t taste it in the wine now, especially with just a few drops in each gallon.” He grinned as he continued to lug Kuisl toward the exit. “And in case you’re wondering about the bailiff in the corridor, he’s shitting and vomiting up everything in his body as we speak. That’s what good old Christmas rose can do. Oh, well, he’ll survive.”

  They arrived at the low vaulted room where five soldiers lay snoring among two empty wine jugs. With only a few torches flickering dimly on the walls, the room was blanketed in near total darkness. Along one side cannons and coaches were dimly visible.

  “Why… are you… doing this?” Kuisl stammered, clinging tightly to the Regensburg executioner who, despite his powerful arms, struggled to keep Kuisl on his feet. “They’ll… flay you alive when they find out what you’ve done.”

  “If they find out.” Teuber pulled a large bunch of keys from his jacket and opened the door leading out into the city hall square. He pointed to the guards snoring behind them. “I prepared the sleeping potion so that it would look as if a heavy bout of drinking knocked them out. The guard in the hall got a bad tummy ache, and a stupid bailiff must have been so drunk he didn’t close the door to your cell properly. I certainly had nothing to do with it.” He smiled coolly as he steered the nearly unconscious Kuisl toward a cart nearby, but Kuisl sensed a slight trembling in his colleague’s voice.

  “But in case any of them become suspicious, they’re welcome to put me on the rack,” he said softly. “The fine patricians can dirty their own hands for once.”

  By this point Kuisl was lying in a cart that smelled of decay and human excrement. Teuber spread a few old rags and a load of damp straw over the Schongau hangman, then took his seat on the coach box and clicked his tongue. His old gray mare set off, pulling the cart into a nearby lane.

  “I hope the stench doesn’t kill you before your wounds,” Teuber said. Grinning, he cast a backward glance at his load of animal carcasses, rotten vegetables, and excrement. “But I can carry you safely through town on the knacker’s wagon. I hardly think the city guards are interested in what exactly is rotting under there.”

  “Where… are we going?” Kuisl groaned. He saw dark roofs and façades
pass by overhead while the wagon rumbled over the cobblestones—a jolting reminder of the innumerable contusions, broken bones, and burned flesh he’d suffered in recent days.

  “We can’t go to my house,” Teuber said. “That’s the first place they’d think to look for you. Besides, my wife’s against sheltering a murderer. But I know a good hiding place. You’ll like it there. The proprietress of the inn takes good care of…” He hesitated before going on. “Let’s say she keeps a very close eye on her guests, most of them men.”

  Simon and Magdalena slunk from house to house, always keeping their distance from the hooded figure in front of them. Nathan was by their side, as well as Hans Reiser, who had since recovered. The four followed Mämminger’s small lantern through little back alleys until he turned off Scherergasse and headed south. At one point they encountered a foul-smelling cart with a sinister broad-shouldered man sitting on the coach box, but both Mämminger and his pursuers retreated into dark doorways as the phantom passed.

  Simon sensed Mämminger intentionally chose a roundabout way to avoid pursuit. Only after a full quarter-hour did the treasurer arrive at the cathedral square. Mämminger’s steps echoed across the pavement as he hurried along the right side of the church, turning at last into a graveyard behind the cathedral. Simon and the others ducked behind a cluster of weathered headstones and watched the patrician make his way cautiously down a row of freshly dug graves, cursing softly whenever his leather boots stuck in mud left by the recent thunderstorm. On a column at the edge of the graveyard a light flickered, and in its faint glow Simon saw Mämminger climb over another burial mound and sneak toward a low back door that led into the rear of the cathedral. Within moments he’d disappeared inside.

  “It will attract too much attention if all four of us follow him,” Magdalena whispered from behind one of the gravestones. “I suggest Simon and I go in after him. Hans can wait here while Nathan creeps around to the main portal, in case Mämminger tries to escape that way.”

  The beggar king frowned. “Not a bad plan… for a woman. But I’d like very much to know what His Excellency the treasurer expects to find in there. So Simon and I will go and—”

  “Oh, no you won’t,” Magdalena interrupted. “It’s my father’s life at stake, so I will go.”

  “We’ll tell you all about it later over a nice glass of wine, Nathan. I promise,” Simon added. “Now let’s go, or Mämminger will slip through our fingers.”

  Nathan was about to protest, but then he waved his agreement and disappeared among the gravestones. Simon and Magdalena approached the little door and opened it quietly. Inside, under an enormous cupola, a few flickering candles provided as much light as they did shadow, and except for a bit of moonlight falling in through the stained-glass windows, it was almost completely dark inside.

  They entered the cathedral from the right of the apse. From there Simon and Magdalena could make out the huge columns of the nave, which rose straight up to disappear in the darkness of the cupola. From altars on all sides saints glowered down at them, and from a stone arch on their left a silver chain dangled over a well. An immense bronze sarcophagus stood in the center of an aisle ahead of them, and a life-size statue of a cardinal knelt before the crucifix on top.

  Simon, who noticed that every step they took was echoing from the walls, signaled to Magdalena to stop moving and remain still beside the altar.

  Soon, from the south aisle, they heard a soft creaking sound of iron scraping on iron. A moment passed; then they heard the shuffle of leather-soled shoes receding. To the west, where the main portal was located, a small crack appeared and a narrow bar of light shone in, contrasting with the deep darkness of the interior.

  “Damn!” Simon whispered. “He’s escaping through the main entrance! He must have a key, and now we can only hope that Nathan’s following him.”

  “Shouldn’t we go after him?” Magdalena asked.

  Simon shrugged. “I think there’s no point. If we leave through the main portal, he’ll be able to see us from the square or he’ll have disappeared already. What luck!”

  He stamped his foot angrily. The sound carried through the vault like a thunderclap, startling the medicus.

  “We can at least try to find out what he was doing here,” Magdalena consoled him. “Come, let’s have a look.”

  They ran to the south aisle, from where the rasping sound had come, Simon lighting the way with a votive candle he’d taken from a side altar.

  “Look!” he whispered after a short while, pointing to muddy footprints on the floor. “This is where Mämminger must have walked. You can still see the tracks!” Unsure what to do next, he scanned the chapel. “But what, for heaven’s sake, was he doing here?”

  His glance landed on a small recessed altar displaying a triptych dedicated to Saint Sebastian. A middle panel showed the martyr lashed to a tree and pierced with arrows. And on the altar stood a gilded statuette holding a purse in one hand and an arrow in the other.

  It took Simon a while to notice what was strange about the figure.

  While all the other proportions were correct, the arrow was much too long and too thick, looking more like a spear or a silver tube. Bending down to examine the arrow in the candlelight, Simon noticed the arrow wasn’t firmly attached to the hand, and in the top third there was a groove, as if the spear consisted of two parts screwed together.

  Screwed together?

  Simon turned to Magdalena. “The scraping sound!” he exclaimed. “I think I now know what—”

  Once again a small strip of light shone through the crack at the main portal, and shortly after, they could hear the door close softly. Magdalena pulled Simon away from the altar and behind a column.

  “It looks like Mämminger’s come back,” she whispered excitedly. “Do you think he forgot something?”

  Simon shook his head. “I think someone is coming to pick up the message.”

  “The message?” Magdalena asked. “What message?”

  Simon put his finger to his lips, silencing her as they observed a dark figure tiptoe down the center aisle and approach the niche. When the stranger reached the altar, Magdalena had to put her hand over her mouth to keep from screaming. It was the man who had tried to kill her! At his side he still carried the deadly rapier, but now that he’d taken off his hood, she was able to see his face—narrow and ferret-like with tiny eyes that nervously darted back and forth and just faint thin lines for eyebrows. His head was like an enormous balloon, its size emphasized by his baldness and disproportionate atop an otherwise small frame. He was dressed inconspicuously in knee breeches, leather boots, and a short coat over a mouse-gray shirt. He looked around in every direction, his gaze passing over the very column behind which Magdalena and Simon were hiding. The hangman’s daughter quickly drew back, hoping the man hadn’t seen her.

  When they heard the scraping sound again, Magdalena looked out from behind the column to witness the stranger unscrewing the little silver arrow. He removed a thin, rolled-up document, smiling briefly as he unfolded the letter and began to read.

  A hiding place for messages! Magdalena realized. Mämminger leaves notes in the cathedral for his hired assassin!

  She remembered how indignant the treasurer had been when the stranger had asked to speak with him in Silvio’s garden. What had Mämminger said to him then?

  What’s so urgent that we can’t communicate in the usual way?

  This was the usual way. A brilliant hiding place! No honorable city financier had to dirty his hands in direct contact with less reputable personages. Presumably they could exchange messages in the dark niche even during the day.

  And presumably the stranger would now place his response to Mämminger in the tube. Then she and Simon could quite easily—

  Something startled her out of her thoughts. At first she couldn’t figure out what, but then she was conscious of a soft sound—more the hint of a sound than anything. The stranger seemed to notice it as well. Again he turned h
is monstrous, hairless head in all directions like some kind of snake, but when he detected nothing suspicious, he held the note over an altar candle, and a blue flame shot up, reducing the secret message to ashes.

  Suddenly Simon seized Magdalena by the shoulder. She turned around, terrified, while the medicus pointed frantically at a shadow cast against the cathedral wall. Enlarged to gigantic proportions, the form scurried from column to column, but as it moved farther from the altar and out of range of the candlelight, the shadow disappeared as quickly as it had come. It was a while before Simon and Magdalena noticed the man just a few steps away, lurking behind the pews with a drawn dagger. He was far smaller than the shadow suggested. It was Silvio Contarini.

  The trip in the knacker’s cart through the city’s back streets seemed endless. The Regensburg executioner kept stopping to shovel more feces, dead rats, and garbage onto his cart. Even though it was against the law to be out on the street in Regensburg after dark, an exception was clearly made for the hangman. The few night watchmen they encountered looked aside and made the sign of the cross once the wagon had rumbled by. It brought misfortune to look a hangman in the eye, especially at night when people said the souls of the damned he’d executed accompanied him through the streets.

  When they finally reached their destination, Kuisl struggled to raise his head. Before them stood a fortress-like building consisting of three towers and a courtyard at the center. In contrast to the surrounding houses, light still burned in the windows of the tower to the right, and Kuisl could hear the distant laughter of women.

  “Peter’s Tower,” Teuber whispered. “The city guard has a garrison of a dozen soldiers billeted here.” He winked at the hangman. “If you want to hide someone, the best place is where the enemy least expects. That’s an old mercenary saying. Wait here. I’ll be right back.”