“But why are those two meeting secretly in the church?” Barbara objected, now visibly unsure of herself. “Why doesn’t Buchner simply go to the doctor’s house, if it’s just about getting some medicine, as you believe?”
“What do I know? Because Buchner happened to be in the church, that’s all.” Magdalena shook her head. “Don’t you realize that with your clumsy snooping you’re just making more trouble for us?”
“You can’t talk to me like that,” Barbara said furiously. “You’re always treating me like a child, and I’m not going to put up with it any longer. It’s enough that I have to clean up after Father, like a maid.”
“Everyone in this family has to pull their weight, even if you don’t like it,” Magdalena replied coolly. “And until you have a husband to look after you—”
“I guess that means you’re off the hook, sister,” Barbara said. “Back then, Lechner gave you permission to marry out of your class, but how about me? Do I have to marry the gravedigger or end up an old maid? You can forget about that.”
“Quiet, for God’s sake!” shouted Jakob, pounding the table so hard that the plates rattled in the cupboard and little Paul crept under the bench by the stove, whining. “If you don’t stop at once, I’m going to lock you two harpies in the stocks. We’re a family. Have you forgotten that?”
Magdalena and Barbara fell silent, and Jakob continued in a calmer voice. “Matthäus Buchner is in charge of construction work at the parish church, and he personally owns the three lime kilns in this area.” The hangman watched as the smoke from his pipe rose toward the ceiling. Suddenly he looked as gentle as a lamb. “The construction work in the church is the biggest deal since the Tower of Babel for Buchner, and he’s making a killing on it. Almost every day I see him harassing his workers there, so it’s not unusual that he meets the accursed quack doctor in the bell tower.”
“But how about the meeting last night in the old cemetery?” Barbara quickly replied. She had calmed down a bit, but she still cast a defiant glance at Magdalena. “Did I just imagine that, too?”
Magdalena sighed. She took her younger sister by both hands, and Barbara reluctantly let herself be led to the table. “I do understand your desire to help Father,” Magdalena said, “but believe me, young lady, you’re in way over your head. Don’t you understand what you’ve done? Now not only is the doctor mad at us, but the first burgomaster is, too. Matthäus Buchner has never liked us Kuisls. He’s been trying for years to cut back even more on the rights of the dishonorable class. Basically, he’s just waiting to strike back, and you’re giving him the excuse.”
Barbara sat on the bench, looking grim, while Paul had wandered off to a corner of the room and was trying to shoo away a lost chicken. From time to time there was a furious cackling.
“I’m sure those two are up to some mischief,” Barbara mumbled after a while. “I just wanted to help.”
Magdalena nodded as if she understood, but her thoughts were racing. Three years ago, after the death of the old burgomaster, Karl Semer, Matthäus Buchner took over as chairman of the town council. Magdalena knew that Buchner, along with a few other members of the council, had been trying for some time to get rid of her father as the hangman because he was so stubborn and wouldn’t follow orders. A couple of times already Jakob had terminated a torture on his own because he thought it didn’t make much sense. Only the younger third burgomaster, Jakob Schreevogl, was on their side. Years ago, Kuisl had saved the life of Schreevogl’s daughter, Clara, and ever since then, the patrician was indebted to him. But in this case, there probably wasn’t much he could do.
Suddenly Magdalena felt sick. She bent over and held her hand in front of her mouth.
“What’s the matter?” her father asked. “Didn’t the mutton stew we had for breakfast agree with you? I’ll admit it was a bit rancid, but still quite edible.”
Magdalena shook her head. “I’m . . . all right now.” She sat up and tried to smile confidently. “In any case, we need to keep quiet now.” With raised eyebrows she turned to her father. “That applies especially to you—no boorish behavior, no late-night drinking binges—”
“Hey, that’s no way to talk to your father,” Jakob interrupted. “In any case I’ll be out of your way here for a while. Tomorrow at the crack of dawn, Lechner is taking me to Oberammergau.”
Magdalena looked at him with surprise. “What did you just say?” she asked. “And you’re just telling us now?”
“Until just now you two women have been arguing,” Jakob grumbled.
In a few words he told them about his conversation with the secretary about the murder in Oberammergau.
“A crucifixion in the cemetery?” Barbara gasped. The gruesome news seemed to make her completely forget her argument with Magdalena. “That’s awful! And it would be a shame if the Passion play were canceled this year because of it. I’ve also been thinking of going there . . .”
“To look around for a man?” Jakob asked. “Forget it. Not without my permission. The reputation you have here is already more than I can take.”
“That’s mean!” wailed Paul, who had been listening closely to what his grandfather had to say. “You’ll let Peter help you torture and execute people in Oberammergau—why not me?”
“You’re not going anywhere,” Magdalena scolded. “Your brother is going to school there and won’t be hanging around the dungeon.” She rubbed her tired eyes and turned to her father. “Well, perhaps it’s not a bad idea for you to get out of the line of fire for a while. I just hope that before long Simon will—”
There was a knock on the door, and Magdalena cringed. “Maybe that’s the constable again, only this time he’s coming to pick up Barbara,” she said gloomily. “What a fine family we have.” She went and opened the door, and outside stood a messenger in a mud-splattered coat. His horse was grazing nearby in the noontime sun. The young man anxiously eyed Jakob, who was still sitting on the bench smoking his pipe. Everywhere in the area around Schongau, the executioner was well known and feared.
“Calm down, he’s not going to chop your head off,” Magdalena said impatiently as she pointed to the leather mail pouch the messenger was holding in his hand, “unless you bring us bad news. So what is it?”
“Eh, I have a letter from your husband, the bathhouse keeper,” the man answered uncertainly. “He gave it to me this morning in Oberammergau. It’s already paid for.” He pulled out the letter and handed it to her, then lowered his head. After she’d given him an additional kreuzer, he jumped onto his horse with a sigh of relief and rode off.
Magdalena unfolded the wrinkled paper and started to read.
“And just what does my honorable Herr Son-in-Law desire?” Jakob Kuisl inquired. “Has my grandson forgotten to take his schoolbooks?”
Magdalena shook her head silently as all the blood started draining from her face. For a moment she was so angry she didn’t know how to answer.
“Well, it looks like Martha and I will have to manage the bathhouse by ourselves for a while,” she said finally, digging her fingers into the little sheet of paper. “Simon will be staying longer in Oberammergau. I can only hope no major problems come up here in Schongau while he’s away, and by that I mean no more than we already have.”
Another wave of nausea came over her.
5
OBERAMMERGAU, EARLY IN THE AFTERNOON OF MAY 6, AD 1670
SIMON LEANED AGAINST A GRAVESTONE and watched as the simple wooden coffin was slowly lowered into the grave in front of the priest. At the head and foot of the long pinewood box stood the two stocky Faistenmantel brothers as they entrusted the soul of their younger brother to the Lord. They lowered the coffin on ropes, their faces rigid as masks, their lips pressed tightly together. A bell in the tower of the Oberammergau village church announced the burial.
“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” intoned Father Herele as he scattered a handful of earth over the grave.
Almost the entire village had assembled
at the cemetery, standing silently between the stone crosses marking the graves or squeezed against the wall. The gnarled fingers of woodcarvers clutched their old, battered hats as most of them looked heavenward, as if some explanation would come from up there for the calamity that had been visited on their town. The large cross on which Dominik Faistenmantel had been crucified had wisely been removed from the stage, but the platform that had been nailed together was there still, reminding the mourners of what had happened three nights ago.
Judge Johannes Rieger had just that day released the body for burial, allegedly because the postmortem examinations were only now concluded, though there were rumors in the village that in this way Rieger wanted to show Konrad Faistenmantel who was in charge in Oberammergau. In the first row in front of the grave, leaning on his cane, stood the father of the dead man, the head of the town council. His face was flushed with anger and his nostrils flared out like those of a wild bull. It looked to Simon as if Faistenmantel had brought the stick not so much for support as to use as a weapon.
“Father, why does the fat man look so angry?” asked Peter, holding Simon’s hand. That morning the boy had been in Georg Kaiser’s class for the first time, along with three dozen children from the village. Simon hadn’t had any chance yet to ask Peter how he’d liked it, as he’d been so busy with the bathhouse.
“The man lost his son,” he explained in a whisper. “Something like that makes people angry—mean and angry. They look for someone to blame for what is inexplicable.”
“His son was murdered, wasn’t he?” Peter asked anxiously.
Simon nodded. He hadn’t told Peter exactly what happened, but perhaps he’d heard it from the other children.
It was already past midday. Simon had spent all of yesterday and part of today finding his way around in the bathhouse and treating his first patients. After initial hesitation, more and more Oberammergauers had come to his door. Just as Konrad Faistenmantel had said, the fever had indeed overcome a large number of people in the village.
Simon’s predecessor, old Landes, had evidently treated such illnesses with bloodletting and enemas, drastic remedies that Simon strongly opposed. He was actually amazed the patients didn’t get sicker or even die from blood loss or exhaustion. Simon instead gave patients a potion of ground china bark and willow root, which seemed to show initial promise.
Now Simon saw a visibly overtired Georg Kaiser approaching. After his class in the morning he’d held a play rehearsal in the dance hall of the Schwabenwirt tavern, even though he had no idea who would be playing the part of Jesus after the arrest of Hans Göbl.
“Well?” Simon whispered to his friend. “Did you have a good rehearsal?”
Kaiser groaned. “Successful? It was a fiasco.” He lowered his voice. “Half the actors didn’t even come, and the other half just stood around talking about the murder. What else could you expect? Urban Gabler, the wagon driver playing the part of the apostle Thomas, was impossible. He seemed only half awake, and the others weren’t much better. I’m surprised—”
The priest interrupted his reading from the Bible and cast an angry glance in their direction. Georg Kaiser stopped briefly, then he continued in a whisper. “I’m surprised the Göbls came to the burial now that one of them is in jail as a suspect.” He nodded toward a group of men and women standing silently off to one side. “The judge told me they actually found in Göbl’s room the page of text Dominik had reported missing—the crucifixion scene, where Christ dies on the cross. No doubt Hans stole the page from his competitor to make trouble for him. Well, the constables took Göbl straight to Ettal and put him in the dungeon.”
“Even if Göbl stole part of the text, that still doesn’t mean he actually killed Dominik.” Simon looked across the graveyard at the assembled Göbl family. “I feel sorry for them. If they come to the burial service, then everyone will say how shameless they are, and if they don’t come, people will be even angrier at them, as that would almost amount to a confession of guilt.”
“But we would have a more peaceful burial,” Kaiser whispered, pointing at Konrad Faistenmantel, who looked like he was about ready to explode. “I can feel it in my old bones . . . There’s trouble coming.”
“The ways of the Lord are unfathomable,” the priest was saying. “None of us knows why the Lord has taken our beloved Dominik from us—”
“But I know how!” Faistenmantel interrupted angrily. “He was vilely murdered by a member of the infamous Göbl clan, and the judge told me they have the proof.”
“Please,” Father Herele whispered, with a pleading glance. “Didn’t we agree there would be decorum, at least here in the cemetery?”
But the chubby financier couldn’t be put off. He pointed his walking stick at the Göbls, who had gathered along the wall of the cemetery. “It was those people back there, probably all of them together,” he shouted. “They couldn’t get over the fact that a Faistenmantel was playing the role of Jesus. Jealousy has poisoned their souls.”
“Shut your mouth, Faistenmantel, before I put my foot right through your pasty face,” replied Adam Göbl, the oldest man in the family, as Simon had already learned from Georg Kaiser. The tall, burly man, as rough as an unhewn wooden board, advanced toward Faistenmantel with a threatening mien.
“We didn’t kill your Dominik—that’s slander!” he shouted. “He was so muddled he probably hung himself on the cross. He was crazy and had been hearing voices for a long time.”
“How dare you insult my deceased son!” Konrad Faistenmantel roared. “You scum!” He raised his walking stick and charged Adam Göbl, who ducked, put his foot out, and tripped his archenemy. Faistenmantel landed headfirst in a mound of dirt next to a freshly dug grave.
“My dear parishioners, please, I beg you!” the priest wailed, so excited that he forgot himself and reverted to his broad Swabian accent. “It’s bad enough when you come to blows on your way back from visiting the taverns, but please control yourselves in the cemetery.”
But his pleading was to no avail. The two Faistenmantel brothers came to the aid of their father, and together they all ran toward the Göbls. A wild brawl ensued. Gradually, the other mourners joined in, some taking one side, some the other. Fists flew, curses were flung back and forth, and soon the men, young and old, were battling among the gravestones, while the women and children fled, crying and screaming.
“Stop this! Stop at once!” came the priest’s voice again. “God sees us, God is looking down on us. What will He think of us?” But no one was listening.
Simon, Peter, and Georg Kaiser sought shelter behind a gravestone. A few rocks hit the stone, then there was a thud as a heavy body flew against it.
“We’ve got to do something,” Simon gasped, holding his arms protectively around Peter. “They’ll bash each other’s heads in.”
“Oh, this isn’t that bad,” Kaiser assured him. “I know these folks, and nobody will get killed. We have a brawl like this here at least once a month. On the other hand . . . in the cemetery? And with so many people?” He shook his head as rocks continued to rain down on the gravestone. “I really don’t know how I can continue with the rehearsals under these conditions. As long as the Göbl boy is locked up in prison, peace will not return to this place.”
Something struck the gravestone again and Simon cringed. He was about to get up and run toward the exit gate when suddenly a sharp voice rang out.
“In the name of the elector, you will stop at once, or I shall have my hangman put you all in chains!”
Simon was stunned. But that’s impossible, he thought. How in the world . . .
He was so astonished he didn’t notice that Peter had slipped away and was curiously peeking out from behind the gravestone.
The boy let out a loud cheer. “Grandpa!” he shouted. “I’m so happy to see you here. Now nothing bad can happen to us anymore.”
And with that he ran toward the new arrivals.
The hangman saw his grandson running toward h
im and spread out his arms. All around him, the men stopped fighting, fell silent, and stared at the huge broad-shouldered man in the black garb of an executioner as he put his arms around the boy and lifted him up into the air.
“Now that Grandpa is here, everything will be all right,” Peter cheered. “Right, Grandpa? If these people give us any trouble, you’ll bash their heads in?”
“I’m not going to bash anyone’s head in, if he doesn’t deserve it,” Jakob grumbled and set Peter down gently.
Even if the hangman would never admit it, he was delighted to see Peter again. The boy would never become a good executioner, in contrast to his brother, Paul, as he was much too tender and weak. He was very bright and well read, though, which Jakob almost valued more than a good brawl like the one happening at present.
The Oberammergauers’ eyes shifted now to the coach standing in front of the cemetery, its door open. Inside, the Schongau secretary, Johann Lechner, was looking disapprovingly at the brawlers down below.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing, brawling in a cemetery?” he shouted. “Do you have no respect for the dead? We’ve arrived here in this godforsaken town not knowing what to expect, and the first thing we see is a riot.”
In the silence that followed, Jakob had a chance to scrutinize the crowd, exhausted by the fight. Some of them had facial abrasions, others were grimacing in pain and holding their hands to their heads, but evidently there were no major injuries. Jakob also discovered Simon, who was still sheltering behind a gravestone and was staring, flabbergasted, at his father-in-law.
“Kuisl!” Simon shouted. “Why—”
“We have no time now for a sentimental family reunion,” Lechner interrupted. “You can take care of that later.” He brushed from his coat the dirt that had splattered up from the road during their headlong rush in the coach.
They’d made the trip from Schongau to Oberammergau over muddy, rutted roads in just four hours. During their journey, Lechner had sat inside the coach while Jakob and the five guards rode alongside. The secretary’s dapple-gray horse was allowed to trot along behind without being saddled. The young lads were visibly uncomfortable to be traveling with an executioner through the lonely, forested region. They hadn’t exchanged a word with Kuisl during the entire trip and had turned away when he looked at them.