“According to what I’ve heard, the church has already been sufficiently desecrated by a hanged man dangling from the balcony,” Jakob said. “The presence of a hangman here doesn’t make much difference.”
Jakob had learned of Sebastian Sailer’s death just an hour before. He’d been in the bathhouse, leafing through the small number of medical books that had belonged to the deceased medicus, brooding over the carved figurines on the table, and had already lit his third pipeful of tobacco that day. Ever since Xaver Eyrl had fled from the dungeon in Ettal, there was nothing more for Jakob to do in the monastery, so he’d taken temporary quarters with Simon, who had brought him along on this short walk.
“I asked the hangman to come, because hanging is his, uh . . . special field,” Simon said hastily. “It’s possible he can figure out exactly what happened in the chapel.”
Johannes Rieger managed a thin smile. “I tend to doubt that,” he replied, pointing to a bald-headed man who had just appeared behind him in the entrance portal and was nervously rubbing his hands. “The Unterammergau sacristan found Sailer and cut him down from the balcony. The poor devil hanged himself, and that’s all there is to it. Your visit is in vain.”
“I probably forgot to lock the side door,” the sacristan admitted sheepishly. “I didn’t notice until early this morning, and that’s when I found Sailer dead, hanging from the balcony.”
“Hmm. It seems he strung himself up with a calving rope,” Jakob said.
Rieger looked at him, bewildered. “What calving rope?”
“Well, the one that was hanging here recently alongside the trough on a rusty ring.” The hangman walked the few steps over to the trough next to the sacristan’s house and pointed to a short piece of rope still tied to the ring. “The rope was just recently cut off. Didn’t any of you learned gentlemen notice that?”
“Hmm. Sailer actually did hang himself on a calving rope,” Rieger mumbled. Then he shrugged. “But what does that tell us?”
“It tells us that Sailer didn’t decide to kill himself until he got here,” Jakob replied. “He hadn’t been planning it for a long time, and so no one helped him.”
“Nonsense, I’m sure Xaver Eyrl did it,” said a third man, who evidently had been waiting inside the church and now walked back toward them at the portal. It was Franz Würmseer, staring coldly at the hangman and Simon. “It sounds like him. The fellow was evidently insane. He killed poor Sebastian and then hanged him up here.”
Jakob stopped short. He’d expected to see the Ammergau judge here, but not Franz Würmseer. Clearly the two knew one another better than he thought.
“May we enter the church, or not?” Simon asked.
Rieger seemed undecided, but finally he wearily raised his hands. “Oh, all right, but only because you’re the medicus.” He nodded disparagingly at the hangman. “See to it that the dishonorable fellow doesn’t accidently touch the holy monstrance.” He stepped aside, and Jakob and Simon entered the Unterammergau Sacred Blood Chapel.
The church consisted of one long nave with a choir and apse at the east end and niches along the sides containing painted wooden figures. On the high altar stood a silver monstrance, gleaming almost ethereally in the sunlight falling through the windows. On the stone floor directly beneath the loft lay Sebastian Sailer, his head twisted to the side. The rope hadn’t yet been removed and still hung from his neck like a dog’s leash.
Johannes Rieger pointed at the carvings in the loft behind them, where another piece of knotted rope dangled. “This is where he hanged himself. The sacristan found him this morning before lauds and cut him down. Since then, no one has touched him. Hey! I said no one—”
Without paying attention to Rieger’s protests, Jakob walked over to the dead man and bent down. Sebastian Sailer’s dead eyes stared back at him; his blue tongue hung from his lips like a garden slug. There was a purple ring around his neck where the rope had been. Jakob Kuisl had seen hanged men so often he was not shocked, and went about examining the corpse with a professional eye—like a butcher looking at a dead calf. He palpated the corpse, thinking.
“There’s no sign of a struggle,” he murmured finally. “No blow to the back of his head. This man went willingly, without any help.” He examined the knot directly behind the neck. “This is the way suicidal people tie the rope,” he said. “They don’t know the knot has to be behind the ear for the neck to break quickly. This way it lasts much longer.” He bent down even closer to the corpse and began sniffing with his huge hooked nose.
“What’s he doing there?” asked Franz Würmseer in disgust.
“Ah . . . he’s smelling the corpse,” Simon replied. “Perhaps it looks a bit unusual, but it tells us a lot.”
“It looks bizarre, damn it,” Rieger said. “Tell him to stop.”
“Sailer died here yesterday,” Jakob said suddenly, getting to his feet. “I would say in the evening, after the sacristan left. Rigor mortis and decomposition have already set in. He was sober—one or two beers at the most—and . . .” He looked through Sailer’s pockets, finally pulling out a small wooden object from his left pants pocket. “Well, look at this,” he mumbled, “here’s our old friend again.”
“The damned Pharisee.” Franz Würmseer suddenly turned very pale and ran his hand nervously through his hair. “Will there be no end to this?”
“Ha! If we need any more proof that Eyrl is involved in this, here it is,” Rieger hissed.
“He must be involved in it somehow,” Simon replied, “but how? That’s still a mystery. Eyrl might have—”
Loud footsteps could suddenly be heard outside the church portal, and shortly afterward the door was yanked open and an angry Schongau secretary appeared in the nave. Johann Lechner was trembling with rage.
“How dare you not inform me immediately about this!” he shouted at the Ettal judge. “I had to learn from some farmers I just happened upon that there’s another corpse.”
“I would have told you in time, Your Excellency,” Rieger replied through pursed lips. He pointed to Jakob Kuisl. “But in any case your hangman is already here, and we thought he’d inform you,” he added haughtily. “Didn’t he?”
Only then did Lechner notice the hangman and Simon. His eyes contracted to narrow slits.
“You haven’t heard the end of this, Kuisl,” Lechner threatened. “We’ll talk this afternoon over in the monastery. Now leave me alone with these people for a while.” He pointed at Simon. “You, too, out with you both.”
Jakob bowed. As he walked past Franz Würmseer he casually handed him the carved figurine. “Here, as a remembrance of your colleague. Put it over your fireplace, perhaps along with your own.” Würmseer dropped the carving as if it had stung him.
Without another word, Jakob and Simon left the church and found three of the Schongau soldiers standing outside around the trough next to the sacristan’s house, talking quietly. As the hangman approached, they fell silent.
“What’s the meaning of this?” Simon asked angrily. “Why did Lechner send us out? We could have given him some information about the deceased.”
“I can do that this afternoon,” Jakob replied. “The important thing is what we discovered.”
“Discovered?” Simon looked at him skeptically. “Do you think Sailer was given one of these Pharisees before he hanged himself? Honestly, I’d always suspected that.”
“No, that’s not it, you idiot. What’s much more interesting is that Würmseer recognized the little figurine right away.” Jakob grinned. “If I recall correctly, only Rieger, the abbot, and Secretary Lechner knew about the figurines—they were the only ones present during Xaver’s questioning.”
“Maybe Rieger told Würmseer about them,” Simon replied, but Jakob waved his hand dismissively.
“It was dark in the church. Franz Würmseer was standing some distance from the corpse, yet he knew right away what he saw. That can only mean one thing, namely—”
“Namely, that he himself got a f
igurine just like it,” Simon gasped, “and that’s why he turned so pale.”
“One more reason to have a closer look at him.”
Once again Jakob turned around to look at the church that stood like a white pearl in the midst of the rolling meadows. He clung tightly to the other object, about as long as a finger, that he’d found next to the Pharisee in the dead man’s pocket.
A chip of wood with a clean break in it.
Jakob’s mind was working feverishly, as he knew even the smallest clue often was of great importance—little stones in a mosaic that would eventually come together to form a complete picture. He enjoyed this intense reflection—it helped him forget his mundane worries and also his yearning for alcohol.
The hangman was back.
Barbara closed her eyes and thought of all the wonderful things that had happened in her life over the last few years.
A flowering meadow in May . . . The dance at the county fair with Jockel Leidinger . . . The smell of hay after a night in the barn . . . The sweet smell of tobacco smoke when Father sits happily with the family at the table . . . The handsome boy Matheo in Bamberg . . . Picking woodruff with Magdalena . . .
The memories helped her calm down a bit. Nevertheless, fear kept crawling back into her subconscious like a spider. She’d hardly slept a wink since last evening in the Schongau dungeon, thinking that Master Hans could come at any minute and take her off to the torture chamber. Now it was almost midday and the hangman still hadn’t appeared. What was going on? Was it part of the torture that the prisoner was kept waiting and wondering whether Hans would pull out their fingernails first or their toenails?
In the last few hours she’d started to wonder what was happening outside her cell. A few times she’d heard the guards at the door whispering to one another, and now and then someone hurried past her barred window. In addition, Paul had visited her that morning and thrown a folded note down the airshaft. The brief message was from Martha Stechlin.
Courage! It said. Help is coming soon.
Was it possible that Magdalena had returned from Oberammergau with Lechner? Had Burgomaster Buchner already been deposed? But if so, why was she still here in the dungeon?
Once again she heard steps, the pattering steps of a child, and soon between the bars she could see Paul’s dirty little face peering down the airshaft.
“Paul!” she called out in relief. “What’s going on outside there? Is Mama back yet?”
Paul shook his head sadly. “No, she’s away.” But suddenly a wide grin spread across his face. “But Stechlin wants me to tell you to be ready. And she wants me to pester the guards.” Triumphantly he pulled a slingshot from his trouser pocket and loaded it with a rock the size of a plum. “This one is for fat Karl.”
“Be ready? What do you mean by that, Paul? Wait . . .”
But Paul had already disappeared. Shortly afterward, Barbara heard an angry cry of pain.
“You just wait, boy!” shouted the man, apparently fat Karl. “I’ll beat you black-and-blue for that. If your mother ever comes back, she won’t recognize you.”
There were the sounds of heavy boots running down the street, along with Paul’s taunts, that had made many other people furious, not least of all his own family.
“Paul!” she cried softly, even though she knew her nephew could no longer hear her, then she whispered a curse. There was so much she wanted to ask Paul, and now he was running down the street with the guards in pursuit. If they got their hands on him, it was possible they’d throw him in the dungeon as well. He’d done too much in recent days to anger them.
She was so lost in thought she realized someone was at the door only after it had swung open with a loud creaking sound. Her heart started pounding—her time had come. Master Hans had come to take her away. Whatever happened she’d try to maintain her dignity as long as possible. Her lips tightly pressed, she turned around and . . . cried out loud with surprise.
In the doorway stood Martha Stechlin and Jakob Schreevogl, the deputy burgomaster.
“We don’t have much time,” the patrician whispered. “The guard will soon give up trying to catch Paul and return. Right now we need to escape.”
Barbara was at a loss for words. “You . . . mean I am . . .” she stammered.
“Come now, girl,” Stechlin urged. “There’s no time to talk. We’ll explain everything once we’ve escaped.”
She tugged at Barbara’s sleeve and the girl stumbled after her, dazed. Outside in the corridor young Andreas was standing and waving impatiently.
“Fat Karl could come back at any moment,” he whispered. “He doesn’t know I’m here. I told him before I had a stomachache and had to go out to the privy.” He smiled at Barbara. “Your father and your sister were always good to me and my family. You saved my little Annie when she had a bad fever and the priest had already come to give her the last rites. My family will always remember the Kuisls for that. You still have many friends in Schongau. Now, let’s go!”
“Thank you,” Barbara whispered as Stechlin pulled her out the door, where Jakob Schreevogl was waiting. The tall patrician looked around nervously, then threw a dirty blanket over her and put a bell in her hand that people with infectious illnesses had to carry around with them. “Here, take this,” he ordered. “I would rather have waited until nightfall, but then it might be too late. Anyway perhaps you can help us.”
“Help?” Barbara was completely confused. Things were getting stranger and stranger. First she was escaping from the dungeon and the torture chamber with the help of the deputy Schongau burgomaster, and now the patrician was saying he needed her help. What was this all about?
Martha Stechlin grinned at her with her four remaining teeth. “Just keep ringing,” she said, pointing at the bell. “We don’t want to infect anyone, do we?”
Luckily the fortress stood close to the city wall and a number of small, almost deserted lanes. The three of them hurried down the street. Jakob Schreevogl walked ahead and Martha Stechlin came along behind him, holding Barbara by the elbow as if she were a deathly ill old woman, and Barbara kept ringing her bell. At an intersection near St. Sebastian Cemetery they met two young women drawing water from a fountain who looked at the strange group curiously.
“Yes, yes, a bad thing, this smallpox,” Martha wailed loudly. “Comes faster than the wind. The dear old woman only wanted to care for her sick husband, but the illness doesn’t spare even good Christian souls, does it?”
The two women didn’t answer but quickly ran off.
Twice again they met passersby, but people always fled when they saw the midwife with the supposedly infectious patient and heard the bell.
After a while Barbara heard shouts coming from the fortress. Evidently the second guard had returned and found the door to the dungeon open. Jakob Schreevogl walked faster. “We’ll be at Martha’s soon,” he said, breathing heavily, “and then we can catch our breath.”
Soon thereafter they arrived at the house, which bordered directly on the city wall and was surrounded by a wild herb garden. It was a small, rickety old place that Barbara had known since early childhood. Martha Stechlin pushed her inside and quickly closed the door behind her and Jakob Schreevogl. Paul, who was in the main room crouched down in front of the stove, jumped up and embraced his aunt warmly.
“You look like a witch,” he said, laughing and pulling on the blanket.
“Cut that out,” Stechlin scolded him. “Tell me where the guard is.”
“Ha! I hit fat Karl right in the middle of the forehead.” Paul smirked. “He’ll have a bump as big as a ram’s horn.”
“Did he see which way you went?” Jakob Schreevogl asked impatiently.
Paul shook his head and grinned. “I climbed up onto a roof, then I jumped across the street. Karl just snorted and shook his fist.”
“Well done.” Schreevogl nodded with relief, then he pointed to a bench in one corner. “Have a seat,” he said to Barbara, pushing aside a stone mortar and a fe
w jars filled with herbs. “We have some things to discuss.”
Barbara put down the dirty, stinking blanket and sat down while Martha brought a jug of diluted wine, a loaf of bread, and some cheese. Only now did Barbara realize how hungry she was. Fear of torture had robbed her of her appetite since the day before. She eagerly broke off a piece from the warm, steaming loaf and put it in her mouth.
“I think they’ll soon be here to search the house,” Jakob Schreevogl ventured. “After all, dear Martha is an old friend of the Kuisl family. We don’t have much time, so I’ll be brief.” He leaned forward and squeezed Barbara’s hands. “From now on my fate and yours are closely linked. I hope very much that I won’t wind up on the torture rack and come to regret this, but by God, what could I do? Your father saved the life of my daughter, Clara, years ago. Now I’ll pay him back and save the life of his daughter.” He made a fist. “How did it get to this? The town is going to hell!”
“What happened?” asked Barbara after washing down the bread and cheese with some wine. In the meantime Paul had crouched back down again in front of the stove and was playing with Martha Stechlin’s cat.
“Buchner is going to dissolve the council,” Schreevogl said with a grim look. “He intends to rule as a dictator with only the help of the two councilmen who remain loyal to him. Lechner will be removed from office.” The patrician’s voice had lowered to a whisper. “I know that from reliable sources. Tomorrow evening, in a final council meeting, he intends to separate the wheat from the chaff. Anyone siding with Buchner will be spared, and the rest will be thrown in the dungeon. That’s the real reason the burgomaster called for Master Hans—to pressure the few remaining councilors to sell the city to the bishop of Augsburg, an outrageous lie in order to accuse us of high treason, but it gives Buchner the chance to set himself up as the town’s savior.”