“As God is my witness, I wanted no such thing,” said Matthias Augustin. “All I wanted was the money.”
“Your damned money,” said the hangman. “It’s blood money. I want none of it. Take it—you can eat it as far as I’m concerned!”
He reached under his coat and drew out a small dirty linen bag. With disgust he threw it onto the table, where it burst open. Gold and silver coins poured over the tabletop and rolled jingling to the floor.
The old man looked on, his mouth wide open. Then he leaned over the table and grabbed the coins.
“My treasure! My money!” he panted. “I shall die with dignity. My house will live on!” He began to count the coins.
“A pity, really, all that money for a moneybags like you,” grunted Jakob Kuisl. “I’m wondering if I should take it away from you again.”
Fearfully Matthias Augustin looked across at him. He stopped counting, his fingers trembled.
“You wouldn’t dare, hangman,” he hissed.
“And why not?” said Kuisl. “Nobody would notice anything. Or are you going to tell the council that I took Ferdinand Schreevogl’s treasure away from you? Money that actually belongs to the church and you have unlawfully embezzled?”
Matthias Augustin looked at him with suspicion.
“What do you want, hangman?” he asked. “You’re not interested in the money. What then?”
Jakob Kuisl lunged over the table with his massive body until his face was directly in front of the old man’s toothless mouth.
“Can’t you guess?” he mumbled. “I want you to persuade the council and the Landgrave that there is no witch. That it was all a children’s game with elderberry juice and magic rhymes. So that the midwife will be freed and this persecution will be over. Help me do this, and you can have your goddamned money.”
Matthias Augustin shook his head and laughed.
“Even if I wanted to do that, who would believe me? There were deaths, the Stadel burned down, the soldiers at the building site…”
“The destruction at the building site was an act of vandalism by some burghers who didn’t want a leper house there. A trifle…” Simon interjected, when he had understood what the hangman was leading up to. “The Augsburgers started the Stadel fire,” he hastened to add. “But so as not to upset neighborly relations, there will be no further consequences. And the dead children…”
“Peter Grimmer fell into the river, an accident, as the physician here can confirm,” he continued in measured tones. “And the others? Well now, the war hasn’t been over all that long. The region is swarming with robbers and highwaymen. In any case, who’s going to bother with a couple of orphans when he can save the town with a lie?”
“Save…the town?” asked Matthias Augustin, astonished.
“Well,” Simon added, “if you don’t present the Landgrave with a good story, he’ll hunt down more witches and keep on until half the women in Schongau are burned at the stake. Remember the witch trials in your childhood, when dozens of women were burned. The council will support you and swallow a few small lies if you see to it that the past does not repeat itself. You alone have enough influence to persuade the aldermen and the Landgrave. Use it! I’m sure you know all the mean little secrets that each of them has, which you can use to persuade them if necessary.”
Matthias Augustin shook his head.
“Your plan won’t work. Too much has happened…”
“Think of the money,” the hangman interrupted him. “The money and your reputation. If we tell the people out there what kind of villains you and your son are, probably nobody will believe us. We ourselves know that we lack proof. But who knows? Somewhere something will stick…I know the people. They gossip, and even the fine people come to me from time to time for a love potion or a salve for warts, and so people start to talk…”
“Stop, just stop it!” Matthias Augustin cried. “You have persuaded me. I will do my utmost. But I can’t promise you anything.”
“We can’t promise anything either,” said the hangman, deftly sweeping up the money from the table into his big coat. The old man tried to protest, but a glance from the hangman made him fall silent.
“Come to my house in two days, after the big council meeting,” said Jakob Kuisl. “I’m quite sure your son will be needing a jar of arnica.” He looked down at Georg Augustin almost sympathetically as he lay huddled upon the floor, still unconscious. A small pool of dried blood surrounded his black locks. Then the hangman turned to the father again.
“Perhaps I can also find an elixir in my closet that will reduce your pain. Believe me, we shabby barbers and army surgeons know one or two mysteries that the university doctors still haven’t heard of.”
He went to the door and waved his goodbye with the bag. “If the council gets it right, this bag will change its owner. If not, I’ll throw it in the Lech. It’s up to you.”
Simon followed him out. Before he shut the door, he could hear the old man groaning once more. The cramps had started again.
The council meeting two days later was one of the strangest ever to take place in Schongau. Matthias Augustin had used the whole of the previous day to put the squeeze on individual members of the inner council. He had found something against every one of them. With threats, flattery, and persuasion he was able to bring every one of them over to his side. When he finally convinced the court clerk Johann Lechner, there was nothing more in the way of the final plan.
When the Landgrave appeared at the council meeting in the morning, he was confronted by a unanimous group of enlightened burghers who considered the slightest suspicion of witchcraft as belonging in the realm of legend. The investigations conducted by the council had determined without doubt that the witches’ signs were nothing but a children’s game, the fire at the Stadel was an act of revenge by the depraved Augsburg thugs, and the murdered children the victims of shady elements hiding in the forests around Schongau. All of it no doubt very sad, but no cause for mass hysteria.
In addition, by a stroke of luck, the former mercenary soldier and robber Christoph Holzapfel was arrested by the Landgrave’s men on the morning of the third of May. Magdalena, the hangman’s daughter, identified him immediately as her abductor, and by the evening the wicked soldier had confessed, in the keep, to having murdered three little children from Schongau out of pure malice.
Remarkably, no torture was necessary to obtain this confession. But the hangman must have shown him the instruments during the short time that he was alone with the abductor of his daughter. In any case, the murderer was afterward prepared to make a written confession, which he signed with his left hand. The right hand hung down like a damp red rag and seemed to be only held together by skin and sinew.
The Landgrave made a few lame attempts to have the Stechlin woman tried for witchcraft after all. But as she had not confessed up to then, he would have had to apply to Munich for permission to continue the torture. The four burgomasters and the court clerk made it clear to him that he could not rely on their support.
The final touch was supplied by old Matthias Augustin, who described in lively detail before the whole council the horrors of the last great witchcraft trial of 1589. Even the Landgrave did not want to do anything to bring that about again.
And so at noon on May 4, 1659, the entourage of the Landgrave Count Wolf Dietrich von Sandizell set out again for his estate at Thierhaupten, from there to direct the destinies of Schongau at a distance. As the soldiers in their shining breast-plates rode through the town gates, the burghers waved a long farewell to their lord. Noisy children and barking dogs accompanied the carriage as far as Altenstadt. The burghers all agreed it had been nice to see such important people close up. It was even nicer to see them ride away.
The hangman went to the keep and had the door unlocked by the bailiffs. Martha Stechlin lay sleeping among damp straw and her own foul-smelling excrement. Her breathing was regular, and the swelling on her forehead had gone down. Jakob Kuisl bent do
wn to her and patted her cheek. A smile came to his face. He remembered how this woman had stood by his side at the birth of his children—the blood, the screaming, and the tears. Strange, he thought. People fight with tooth and nail when they come into the world, and when they have to go they fight too.
Martha Stechlin opened her eyes. It took some time before she found her way out of her dreams back into the prison.
“What is it, Kuisl?” she asked, not yet fully conscious. “Will it go on? Have you come to hurt me again?”
The hangman smiled and shook his head.
“No, Martha. We’re going home.”
“Home?”
The midwife sat up. She blinked, as if she wanted to see if she wasn’t still dreaming. Jakob Kuisl nodded.
“Home. Magdalena has been tidying up a bit at your house, and young Schreevogl has contributed heaps of money. For a new bed, pots and pans, whatever you need. It’ll do for the beginning. Come, I’ll help you up.”
“But why?”
“Don’t ask now. Go home. I’ll tell you about it later.”
He grasped her under the arms and pulled her to her feet, which were still swollen. Martha Stechlin limped along at his side toward the open door. Sunlight flowed in from outside. It was the morning of May fifth, a warm day. The birds were twittering, and from the town they could hear the cries of the maids and housewives haggling in the marketplace. From the fields the scents of summer and flowers wafted over to them, and if you closed your eyes you could even hear the murmuring of the Lech. The midwife stood in the doorway and let the sun shine on her face.
“Home,” she whispered.
Jakob Kuisl wanted to support her by taking her under her arms, but she shook her head and pulled away. Alone she limped along the alley toward her little house. At the next bend in the road, she disappeared.
“The hangman, a friend of humanity—who would have thought it?”
The voice came from another direction. Jakob Kuisl looked around and saw the court clerk strolling toward him. He was wearing his dress coat, the brim of his hat was turned up jauntily, and in his right hand he held a walking stick. The hangman nodded a wordless greeting, then he turned to go on.
“Would you care to come for a little walk, Kuisl?” Johann Lechner asked. “The sun is smiling, and I think we should have a good talk. What’s your yearly salary, actually? Ten gulden? Twelve? I find you are underpaid.”
“Don’t worry, I’ve earned a lot this year,” the hangman growled without looking up. He filled his pipe calmly. The inside of the bowl seemed to him to be of more interest than the man standing in front of him. Johann Lechner remained standing and played with his stick. There was a long silence.
“You knew it, didn’t you?” Jakob Kuisl asked at last. “You knew it all the time “
“I always had to think of the interests of the town,” said Lechner. “Nothing else. That’s all that counts. It seemed to me to be simpler that way.”
“Simpler!”
The court clerk fiddled with his stick. It looked as if he was searching for notches in the handle.
“I knew that old Schreevogl owed a lot of money to Matthias Augustin. And it was clear to me that as a respected businessman he must have had more money than was mentioned in his will,” he said, blinking in the sunlight. “And I knew about the old man’s eccentric sense of humor. So when the sketch of the building site disappeared from the archives, it was clear that someone was very interested in the site. First I suspected young Schreevogl, but he had no access to the archives…Finally I realized that Ferdinand Schreevogl had certainly told his friend Augustin about the hiding place behind the oven tile. From then on it was all clear. Well, I’m pleased that everything has turned out for the best.”
“You’ve covered up for Augustin,” Jakob Kuisl grumbled as he drew on his pipe.
“As I said already, for the good of the town. I couldn’t understand that business with the mark. Anyway…who would have believed me? The Augustins are a powerful family in Schongau. It seemed that the death of the midwife would resolve all the problems at once.”
He smiled at Kuisl.
“Wouldn’t you really like to come for a little walk?”
The hangman shook his head silently.
“Well, then,” said the clerk. “A good day to you, and God’s blessing.”
Swinging his stick he disappeared in the direction of the Lech Gate. Burghers who saw him greeted him courteously, raising their hats. Before he disappeared into a narrow street, Jakob Kuisl thought he saw Lechner raise his stick once again as if he wanted to send him a distant greeting.
The hangman spat. Suddenly his pipe didn’t taste good anymore.
EPILOGUE
ONE SUNDAY MORNING IN JULY 1659, THE HANGMAN and the physician were sitting together on the bench in front of the hangman’s house. The smell of freshly baked bread drifted over to them from the house. Anna Maria Kuisl was preparing the midday meal. There would be hasenpfeffer with barley corn and turnips, her husband’s favorite dish. Out in the garden, the twins Georg and Barbara were playing with Magdalena, their big sister. She had pulled a clean bedsheet over her head and, thus disguised as a frightening river spirit, ran through the flowering meadows. Screaming and laughing the children fled from her, seeking protection from their mother in the house.
Lost in thought, Jakob Kuisl puffed on his pipe and observed this scene. He was enjoying the summer and did only what was necessary. The trash in the streets had to be swept up every week, and now and then a dead horse had to be removed, or someone needed a salve for itching and stings…Over the past two months he had earned enough that he could afford to be a bit lazy. For the execution of the remaining soldier, Christoph Holzapfel, the town had paid him ten whole guilders! The condemned soldier, who had been arrested shortly after the arrival of the Landgrave, had been broken on the wheel to the applause of the watching crowd. Outside the town the hangman had broken his arms and legs with a heavy wagon wheel and braided him on the wheel next to the scaffold. Christoph Holzapfel lived, screaming, for another two days; finally Jakob Kuisl had pity on him and strangled him with a neck iron.
The body of André Pirkhofer, killed on the building site, was hung in chains next to his countryman, as was the corpse of Christian Braunschweiger, whom the townspeople, even after his death, referred to as “the devil” while crossing themselves three times. His charred corpse, shrunk to the size of a child, was removed from the tunnels before the entrance was sealed off once and for all. His lips were burned off and his scalp shriveled, so that the teeth stood out, grinning. The bony left hand shone out white among all the black flesh, and people said that even from the gallows it seemed to beckon. Two weeks later, the devil’s entire body was just bone and mummified skin; nevertheless the council let it hang longer as a dreadful warning until the bones fell off one by one.
The fourth soldier, Hans Hohenleitner, was never found. Most likely the Lech had washed him down toward Augsburg, where the fish ate his corpse. But all this was of no more interest to Jakob Kuisl. Altogether the hangman of Schongau had earned more than twenty guilders in the past two months. That should be enough for some time.
Simon sipped his coffee, which Anna Maria Kuisl had kindly brewed for him. It tasted strong and bitter and drove the weariness out of his body. Last night had been strenuous. A feverish infection was going around in Schongau. It was nothing really serious, but people were demanding the new powder from the West Indies, which the young physician had been prescribing since last year. Even his father seemed to be persuaded of its efficacy.
Simon glanced over at the hangman. He had news that he did not wish to keep any longer from his friend and mentor.
“I was at the Augustins this morning,” he said, as casually as possible.
“Well?” inquired Jakob Kuisl. “What’s the young fool doing? I haven’t heard anything from him since his father’s death last month. Seems that he’s devoting himself diligently to the business, so people
say.”
“He is…ill.”
“A summer fever? May God see to it that he sweats and shivers for a long time.”
Simon shook his head.
“It’s more serious. I discovered red patches on his skin, which are gradually spreading. In many places he has no feeling anymore. I believe…he has an infection. He must have caught it during his last journey to Venice.”
“Leprosy?”
The hangman was silent for a moment. Then he laughed loudly.
“Augustin a leper! Who would have thought that? Well, then, he’ll be very pleased that the leper’s house is nearly finished. First of all the half-wit sabotages the building and then he must move in himself. Say what you like: God is just, after all.”
Simon had to chuckle. But immediately his conscience started to trouble him. Georg Augustin was a bad man, a lunatic, a child murderer who had, moreover, tortured him. The scar on Simon’s thigh still hurt. But in spite of this, he would not have wished this disease on even his worst enemy. Georg Augustin’s body would slowly rot away while he was still alive.
To turn their minds to other thoughts, Simon changed the subject.
“This betrothal of Magdalena with the Steingaden hangman,” he began.
“What about it?” Kuisl grumbled.
“Are you really serious about it?”
The hangman took a puff on his pipe. It was some time before he answered.
“I turned him down. The wench is too stubborn. He doesn’t deserve that.”
A smile spread over Simon’s face. It seemed that a heavy weight had been lifted from his mind.
“Kuisl, I’m really very—”
“You be quiet!” the hangman interrupted him. “Or I might change my mind.”
Then he stood up and went to the door. Without a word he motioned to Simon to follow him.