“What is wrong, my dear?” she murmured, handing her a cup of a hot peppermint tea, which had just been bubbling on the hearth.
Magdalena poured out her heart to the midwife in bitter words, and when she was finished, Martha nodded compassionately.
“That’s just the way men are,” she whispered, “never content with what they have. But sooner or later, they always come back. My Hans…God bless his soul…” Her voice broke and she wiped her eyes as if trying to brush away a tear.
“What about your husband?” Magdalena asked, happy to turn attention away from her own troubles. “You never told me about him.”
“He was always flirting with the girls,” Martha said. “He was never home; he always hung out in the taverns, the dirty swine…” A smile crossed her lips. “But I loved him. Even when we couldn’t have children and people began to gossip, we stayed together. No random strumpet was going to come along and change that.” She winked at Magdalena.
“What became of him?” The hangman’s daughter wiped the tears from her eyes as the warmth of the fire spread up her legs.
The midwife was staring off into space. “He caught the plague. I buried him more than ten winters ago, and since then, I have been alone.”
In the silence that followed, the only thing audible was the crackling of the fire on the hearth. Magdalena bit her lip. Why had she asked? Embarrassed, she sipped on the steaming cup.
Finally, the midwife arose and walked over to her shelves, which extended from the shrine in the corner of the room all the way to the hearth. “So be it!” she said. “Life goes on.” Her gaze wandered along the line of jars and pots on the shelves. The jars were all freshly glazed and labeled according to their contents. The midwife opened a few of them and shook her head.
“I’ll need some dried melissa,” she murmured. “And ergot, if nothing else works.”
“What for?” Magdalena asked, walking over to her. “Are you expecting another difficult birth?”
Magdalena had been Martha Stechlin’s apprentice for half a year, and in that time Magdalena had assisted in five difficult births. Only in difficult cases did people call for the midwife. Often women gave birth without help, alone, or with only the immediate family present, whether in a warm living room, in the stable, or sometimes even in the field. If Stechlin was looking through her jars now, there had to be another critical case pending.
“Frau Holzhofer…” Martha Stechlin started to say.
Magdalena gasped. “The wife of the second burgomaster?”
The midwife kept searching through the jars. “Holzhofer’s wife is already past due,” she said. “If the child doesn’t come by next week, we’ll have to give her ergot.”
Magdalena nodded. Ergot was a fungus that grew on rye and oats, a strong poison that caused the notorious St. Anthony’s fire, but in small doses could induce labor.
“And now you don’t have any more?” she asked.
Martha Stechlin had now arrived at the last row of jars. “No, no ergot, melissa, artemisia, or sundew. And your father has none left, either!” She sighed. “It looks like I’ll have to make a trip to Augsburg in this awful cold! The apothecary there is the only place I can get ergot or artemisia in the winter. But what can I do? If anything happens to his wife, Holzhofer will blame it on me, and then they’ll throw me out of my house or set it on fire…”
Suddenly, the hangman’s daughter had an idea. She smiled broadly at the midwife and announced, “I can go!”
“You?” The midwife made an incredulous face, but Magdalena nodded eagerly.
“I’d like to get away from Simon for a while, in any case. I’ll leave with the first ferry tomorrow morning, and we’ll see how he gets along without me.” The more Magdalena thought about it, the more she liked the idea. “Just write down for me what you need and where I’m supposed to go in Augsburg,” she continued, speaking rapidly. “My father certainly needs a few pills and herbs as well, so I can spare you both a trip.”
The midwife stared at her, mulling it over. Then she shrugged. “Why not?” she muttered. “After all, you want to become a midwife. It can only be a good thing for you to see what an apothecary looks like from the inside. And Augsburg…” She smiled at Magdalena. “Well, the city will take your mind off things. Just be careful that you don’t go haywire. You have never in your life seen so many people,” she said, clapping her hands excitedly. “But now, let’s get to work! The marigold leaves must be finely ground and the lard rendered, because Kornbichler’s wife wants her ointment this evening!”
Magdalena smiled and proceeded to pour the fragrant dry leaves into a mortar. The air smelled of hot goose fat, and Stechlin’s chatter sounded like a trickling watermill. Simon, her father, and the dead priest suddenly seemed far, far away.
When Jakob Kuisl opened the trunk, memories of a completely different life came flooding back.
The box had been stored for years in the attic of the hangman’s house, hidden behind rolls of rope and broken barrels where no one could see it. The hangman had carried it down into the main room of the house and opened it now with the key he had been keeping safe. Putting aside a folded, moth-eaten army uniform, he took out first the dismantled barrel of a matchlock musket, then its polished inlaid handle, a pouch of lead bullets, and a chain holding wooden powder kegs, also known among mercenaries as the “Twelve Apostles.” He pulled the bayonet out of its sheath and tested its sharpness with his thumb. After all these years, the steel was still just as sharp and shining as the executioner’s sword, which had been hanging in the devotional corner of his house for ages.
At the very bottom of the trunk lay a little cherrywood box. Jakob Kuisl unsnapped the lock and opened it carefully. Inside were two well-oiled wheel lock pistols. The hangman passed his hand over their polished handles and cool iron cocking hammers. These pistols had cost a fortune, but at that time, money was of no importance. In a drunken frenzy, you just grabbed whatever you wanted, helped yourself. Kuisl’s eyelids twitched. Suddenly, a shadow fell over his memory.
Legs wriggling up in the branches of a tree, a flickering fire, the crying of a little girl coming from the blackened ruins. The sound of laughing men playing dice around a mountain of bloody clothing and glittering trinkets…a charred baby’s rattle…
He had been a troop leader, a so-called “sword player” who always fought on the front lines with a double-edged sword, as his father had. He received double pay and the largest portion of the spoils.
He had been one of the best, the perfect killer…
A charred baby’s rattle…
With a shake of his head, the hangman tried to wipe away the memory. He closed the cherrywood box before any further dreams could pour forth.
Hearing the door squeak, he wheeled around as Magdalena came storming in, her face beet red. She had hurried back from Stechlin’s house just in time, before the watchmen closed the gates to the city. Now she was eager to tell her father the news.
“Father, I must leave for Augsburg tomorrow morning on an errand for Stechlin! Please allow me…” She stopped short when she saw the trunk. “What is that?”
“Nothing that concerns you,” her father grumbled. “But if you really want to know, they are weapons. Tomorrow the hunt for the robbers begins.”
Magdalena examined the bayonet, the soiled mercenary’s uniform, and the gun, all of them set out neatly side by side on the table. She stroked the copper-reinforced barrel of the musket.
“Where did you get these?”
“From before.”
The hangman’s daughter turned away from the weapons and looked her father in the eye. “You’ve never told me about before. Mother told me you were a brave soldier, is that right? Why did you go to war?”
Jakob was silent for a long time. “What do you want to do with your life?” he asked finally.
Magdalena shrugged. “Do I have a choice? As your daughter, I either marry a butcher or an executioner. You don’t have the choice o
f doing anything else, either.”
“War is cruel, you know,” the hangman replied, “but it makes people free. Anyone can kill, and if he’s smart about it, he can even become a sergeant or a sergeant major and will have more money than he can ever waste on liquor.”
“Then why did you come back?” Magdalena replied.
“Because with killing, it’s just like with everything else in life…Everything has its place.”
And for the hangman, that was the end of the matter—he had nothing further to say. He closed the trunk and gave his daughter a challenging look. “So you want to go to Augsburg? Why?”
Magdalena explained that the midwife needed some important ingredients and wanted to send her to the big city to get them. “And she wants me to get a bezoar for her, too!” she said excitedly.
“A bezoar?”
“A stone from the stomach of a goat, which helps with infertility and difficult births and—”
“I know what a bezoar is,” the hangman interrupted harshly. “But why does Stechlin need it?”
Magdalena shrugged. “The wife of the second presiding burgomaster, Holzhofer, is pregnant, but the child won’t come. She asked Stechlin for a bezoar.”
“The Holzhofer woman is going to have to fork out a heap of money for that,” the hangman grumbled. “A bezoar is not cheap, and that means you’ll have to carry a lot of money with you to Augsburg.”
Magdalena nodded. “Stechlin will give it to me first thing in the morning.”
“And what if you’re robbed?”
Magdalena laughed and gave her father a kiss on the cheek. “Are you worried about me? Don’t forget I’m the daughter of the Schongau hangman! People are more afraid of me than I am of them.” She smiled. “Please let me go! Mother said I’d have to ask you. I’ll take the ferry first thing tomorrow morning, and there will be a group of Augsburg merchants on board on the way back. What can happen?”
Jakob Kuisl sighed. It was always hard for him to deny his daughter anything. “Very well,” he said finally. “But only if you also bring something back for me. Let’s see what I need…”
He crossed the room, where, on the opposite wall, a huge cupboard reached right up to the ceiling. The drawers and shelves were overflowing with parchment scrolls and books, and some drawers were open, revealing countless pouches, crucibles, and phials. Though it was the middle of winter, the entire room smelled like summer—rosemary, ginger, nutmeg, and cloves. The hangman’s apothecary, passed down in his family from generation to generation, was known all around Schongau. Not even the midwife—to say nothing of the physician—had a collection of herbs, medicines, and poisons to rival the Kuisls’.
On a wobbly table in the middle of the room, a flickering torch smoked in a rusty holder. In its dim light, Magdalena noticed a few books open on the table, among them Dioscorides’s work on medicinal plants and a book she had never seen before in a foreign language.
“Are you looking up something because of Koppmeyer’s poisoning?” she asked inquisitively.
“Maybe.” Without another word, Jakob Kuisl examined his stock of herbs and powders and put together a list for Magdalena.
“I also need a few things you won’t get from an apothecary,” he said. “Dried belladonna and thorn-apple seeds. Also, some alum, saltpeter, and arsenic. I know the fellows there, and if you just hand them a few extra kreuzer, they’ll give you the stuff without any problems. And if they don’t…” He grinned. “Just say the Schongau hangman sent you. That has always worked.” Suddenly, his face darkened.
“But you’re leaving so suddenly…That doesn’t have anything to do with Simon, does it?”
Magdalena scowled. “I don’t give a damn about Simon. He can get along without me for once.”
Jakob Kuisl turned back to his list of medicines. “Well, if that’s what you think, at least you’ll miss all the killing.” His face darkened. “You don’t have to get pulled into all this, but it’s clear to me that we haven’t seen the end of it.”
Magdalena moved closer to him. “Do you know now who the men could have been who attacked you in the church?”
The hangman shook his head. “I’ll find out eventually, then God help them.” The candle cast flickering shadows across his face.
In moments like this, Magdalena feared her father. That’s the way he looks, she thought, when he wraps a noose around someone’s neck or breaks his bones on the wheel, one by one.
“I know that at least one of the men visited Koppmeyer before his death,” she said finally. She told him about her conversation with the dyer woman and the strange golden cross the woman had seen around the stranger’s neck. When she had finished speaking, her father shook his head.
“Templars, Latin verses, a golden cross with two crossbeams…The whole thing is getting more and more confusing!” He pounded his fist on the table so hard the pages of the book flew up. “In any case, Simon is going to the castle on the hill above Peiting tomorrow morning to see if he can find any clue there. Perhaps we’ll know more then about the people who are chasing us or about these confounded Templars who are making fools of us all.”
For a moment, Magdalena was tempted to reconsider her plans. What if Simon actually found a treasure up in the old ruins? Or if the strangers were lying in wait for him there? Wouldn’t he need her help? But then she thought about the trip on the ferry, the big city, the new smells and faces. She wanted to get away from everything—and from Simon, too.
She kissed her father on the forehead and went upstairs, where her mother and the twins were already asleep.
“Take good care of yourself, Father,” she whispered. “And of Simon, too.” Then she disappeared into her bedroom.
In the flickering light of the torch, Jakob Kuisl hunched down again over his books. Belladonna, nightshade, wolfsbane…There were many drawings of poisonous plants here, but none had an effect like the one that had made him as stiff as a corpse in the crypt. That preparation had to have come from some distant land—that much was certain. But how did those men get a hold of a poison like that? Did they themselves come from this distant place? Were they itinerant monks from a far-off monastery? One had spoken a peculiar dialect.
And Latin.
Suddenly, the strange words that he overheard in the crypt came back to him.
Deus lo vult…God wills it…
With a sigh, he closed the book and began cleaning the musket. He would have to get up early the next morning for the hunt. Johann Lechner had summoned the men to report to the marketplace on the ringing of the six o’clock bell. Young Fronwieser could go ahead and deal with the Templars, riddles, and assassins. Jakob Kuisl would chase the thieves; that was something the hangman could do better than anyone.
Leonhard Weyer cursed and whipped his horse. The animal whinnied, reared up on its hind legs, and pushed its rear hooves even deeper into the snow. Night was falling, and the Augsburg merchant had to squint to see through the heavy, blowing snow.
They were too late! They had left Schongau at the crack of dawn, but by noon, they should have known they would never make it to Füssen by nightfall. Weyer had decided to take the old road through the forest, which was longer but mostly unused, particularly now in wintertime. Bandits preferred to lie in wait along the broad military road along the Lech River, and the Augsburg clothier was certain that no bandit would sit here, freezing his ass off all day on the off chance he’d meet a solitary farmer with a wagonload of fodder for his livestock. Besides, Weyer had told only his closest friends in Augsburg and Schongau that he’d be taking this route, and in contrast to other times, he had taken just a simple wagon for this trip, leaving his comfortable well-sprung carriage behind in Augsburg. Who would ever suspect anything? Weyer felt safe, but that didn’t change the fact that night was falling and they still had not reached a village.
Around noon, snow had begun to come down harder, and his four servants made almost no progress getting the wagon through snow drifts that were three f
eet deep in places. Now, as night was falling, they could hardly see their hands in front of their faces. On both sides, the road was lined with tall pines that reached up like black fingers to the sky. Their two packhorses snorted and struggled to pull the wagon through the knee-high snow. Again and again, the servants had to climb down and push when the wheels got stuck in the slush and half-frozen puddles. The servants flailed away at the tired Haflingers, but no matter how hard they beat them, they wouldn’t move any faster. And now the wagon was stuck again in a drift. Shoveling and cursing, two servants tried to dig it out while the other two pushed the overloaded wagon from behind.
“Damn, can’t you go any faster? In an hour it will be pitch black here!”
While his gray horse pranced around nervously, Weyer stood there in his fur-lined mittens, panting and rubbing his cold hands together. He was wearing a snow-covered bearskin hat and a knee-length coat of smooth, shiny fur, but still, he was cold to the bone. His breath formed little white clouds in front of him and hoarfrost settled on his eyebrows and his freshly trimmed goatee.
He looked around anxiously. Like a black shroud, darkness had enveloped the pine trees at the edge of the road and was advancing slowly toward the small group. He cursed again and shouted at the servants, who were wearily pushing the wagon through the snowdrifts. It was at least half an hour to the nearest town! He had already given up on reaching Füssen that day and would be happy just to reach the safety of a cheap village inn. His plan had been perfect! Because of the bandits along the highway, no other large-business owner in Augsburg had dared to leave the safety of the city walls. When they did, it was in a large group guarded by dreadfully expensive mercenaries. Because Weyer had set out for Schongau alone, before everyone else, he would be able to dictate prices—if he ever got to Füssen. Nervous, he reached under his coat for the loaded pistol hanging on his belt. He had brought along four of his strongest men, and all were armed with sabers and clubs. Even the coachman was armed with a crossbow. But would all this be enough to hold off a ferocious, hungry band of highwaymen? Weyer shook his head. But really, would bandits be wandering around on such a lonely stretch of road? Nobody knew he was traveling here with such valuable cargo.