The Council of Twelve Read online

  “Talk to Father,” Magdalena replied grimly. “I would love to know if he was aware that Hans was a member of the Council of Twelve.”

  Now Jakob Kuisl arrived at the frozen pasture, too. He was breathing heavily and his head was bright red—Magdalena couldn’t tell whether from anger or exertion. And he reeked of beer from the hangmen’s christening.

  When Kuisl saw that his younger daughter was still missing, he cursed. “Jesus bloody Christ, that girl is a nail in my coffin. First she makes me look like a fool in front of the entire council, and then she just runs away. Widmann is the richest hangman in the country, and he almost bit. And now this!”

  “Did you know Master Hans was on the council?” Magdalena asked sharply. “Tell me, did you know?”

  “No, damn it, I didn’t know. I . . . I . . .” Kuisl’s anger evaporated like water on a hot stone. Still breathing heavily, he sat down on a snow-covered pile of timber next to the church. Suddenly, he looked exhausted.

  “Believe me, if I had known, I would have given Deibler hell,” he muttered. “I can understand why Barbara doesn’t want to see Hans.” The hangman rubbed his reddened eyes. “But now he’s here, and life goes on. Like it always does.”

  “Can someone please tell me what you two are talking about?” Georg asked impatiently.

  “Hans nearly tortured your sister,” Magdalena said angrily. “At the order of the Schongau Town Council, when Father was in Oberammergau two years ago. Barbara still has nightmares from those days. Master Hans had already shown her the instruments. We never told you because . . . because . . .” She broke off.

  “Because you thought I’d do something stupid?” Georg asked. “I probably would have.”

  “Hans was merely doing his job,” Kuisl said quietly, though his fists were clenched. His voice sounded husky. “They had given the order, and he was the executioner. We’re only tools of the high and mighty.”

  “And so you torture the daughter of a colleague, because you’re just a tool? This is your daughter we’re talking about.” Magdalena spat on the ground. “You disgust me, Father. All that killing and torturing, the bargaining with your sons and daughters, it’s repulsive.”

  “You know we didn’t choose our profession,” Georg replied bitterly. He stepped next to his father, and Magdalena noticed again how similar they were.

  “You just said you would do something stupid to Master Hans for your sister,” she said. “And now you’re saying torturing people is just part of your job. So are you just a tool as well, Georg?”

  “I was speaking as a brother, not an executioner.” Georg sighed. “Even if we wanted to, we can’t do things any differently. You know that, Magdalena. Our profession has been in our family for centuries. Being hangmen is what God has chosen for us.”

  “May God help me so my children won’t have to say that one day,” Magdalena replied coolly. “And now excuse me, I’m going to continue to look for my little sister.”

  She turned and walked off. Only now did she notice how cold it was. She’d been hot when she was running, but now she was shivering, and with the cold, her anger gradually cooled off, too. Georg was right, of course. But it was just so unfair! Her father had wanted to marry her to the Steingaden hangman years ago, and in hindsight, she considered herself incredibly lucky to have been allowed to marry Simon, the Schongau bathhouse surgeon. It appeared her sister wouldn’t be so lucky. And now Barbara was somewhere out there, possibly doing something stupid.

  Seeing Master Hans again had probably roused memories in Barbara, dark memories, buried deeply. Barbara had never told her older sister what had happened in Schongau in those days, but Magdalena had a vague idea: awful things that had to do with not only Master Hans but other men, too. Perhaps Barbara had been raped. But she never spoke about it.

  First the pregnancy, and now Master Hans, Magdalena thought. Everyone has a breaking point.

  Without paying much attention to where she was going, she had walked back to the Isar Bridge. Would her sister have crossed the bridge and gone into town?

  Magdalena decided it was worth a try. Leaving Au behind, she walked onto the wooden bridge that formed the only way into the city from the east. And it was accordingly busy. Carriages and carts drawn by massive steers rolled past Magdalena. A half dozen guards stopped every single vehicle and collected the bridge toll. Farther ahead, several wagons rumbled down the steep access road to the raft landing, from where the freight was shipped to Freising, Landshut, or all the way to the Danube and on to Vienna. A thought struck her.

  The raft landing!

  Why hadn’t she thought of it sooner? If Barbara really wanted to run away, the raft landing was the perfect place. She only needed to hop aboard one of the countless rafts to leave Master Hans, her pigheaded father, and yes, her whole family behind forever. Magdalena gathered her skirt and ran down the access road to the piers and landings.

  The raft landing was as busy as ever. Two rafts laden with oil and wine had just arrived; three others were taking off. Magdalena’s eyes frantically searched the crowd of merchants, raftsmen, and travelers, but she couldn’t see Barbara anywhere. Several barges were bobbing at the piers farther back. Had Barbara asked a fisherman or an itinerant merchant to take her with them? Magdalena ran north along the raft landing until boats and people became sparser. She walked past a row of wooden storage sheds and saw numerous tunnels and cellars that had been dug into the bank along the river, probably to store perishable goods. In such rock cellars, the temperatures remained freezing even in the middle of summer, especially if they had been filled with ice. Magdalena watched a group of men storing crates and barrels, but other than that, no one else was this far down the raft landing. The shouts of the raftsmen and the horns sounding departures seemed far away now.

  A hunched figure sat at the far end of the last pier.

  Magdalena immediately recognized her.

  “Barbara!” she called out. “Thank God, Barbara. I’m so glad to see you.”

  She ran along the slippery icy walkway, almost fell, and finally wrapped her arms around her little sister. At first it seemed like Barbara was going to push her away. She stiffened, but then she laid her head against Magdalena’s shoulder and cried bitterly. Her whole body quaked.

  “Everything is going to be all right, darling,” Magdalena said soothingly and held her sister tight. “Everything’s going to be fine.”

  “Nothing’s going to be fine,” Barbara sobbed. “Absolutely nothing!”

  “Hans can’t hurt you,” Magdalena said. “I’m going to speak with Deibler. We’ll find somewhere else to stay and—”

  “I don’t give a damn about blasted Hans,” Barbara burst out. “The devil take him!” Her body was racked by another crying fit. “Don’t you understand?” she continued after a while. “When I saw Hans, everything came back to me. Everything those men . . .” She broke off. “I don’t want to marry at all. No hangman, no knacker, no gravedigger, not even a fat merchant or blacksmith. They’re all monsters.”

  “Not all of them,” Magdalena objected. “Think of Simon or Georg.”

  Barbara gave a desperate laugh. “I can hardly marry either of them.”

  “But that Näher from Kaufbeuren doesn’t seem so bad. Will you promise me to at least take a look at him?” She squeezed Barbara’s hand. “But most importantly, you must promise me one thing: don’t run away again without telling me. If it comes to that, I want to know where you are.”

  Magdalena thought once more about the dead girl in the creek. She had probably run away from home, too, in the hope of finding her luck in the city.

  “Promise me,” she asked her sister again.

  “I . . . I promise.” Barbara nodded, and the two sisters hugged tighter than ever before. For a brief moment, Magdalena felt like she was holding the little girl she used to sing lullabies to.

  We will always stick together, no matter what. Nothing can break our family. That’s what makes us strong.


  Just then, a commotion broke out behind them. Magdalena let go of her sister and looked around. About twenty paces away, the men who had been hauling crates and barrels into the icy cave moments ago were now clearly agitated about something. They were carrying something out of the cellar, a longish bundle that didn’t seem particularly heavy. But the men were handling it as cautiously as if it were a sack of gunpowder. The shouting grew louder, and some of the men made the sign of the cross.

  “Let’s go find out what’s going on,” Magdalena said.

  They walked over to the group of men, who had set the bundle down on the ground near the last pier. Some of them were muttering prayers; all had taken off their hats.

  “Evil is coming to the city,” a broad-shouldered raftsman whispered. “First the impaled girl at the upper raft landing, and now this.” Trembling, he pointed at the bundle. “I’m telling you, the dead are returning.”

  Peering between the men’s shoulders, Magdalena finally saw what was lying on the ground. She winced, and Barbara gave a soft cry.

  The dead are returning . . .

  Shocked, Magdalena stared at the face of a mummy, while tiny snowflakes fell into the empty black eye sockets. The mummy’s mouth was wide open, as if in a final, desperate scream that no one had heard.

  Or in a curse, Magdalena thought.

  “God help this city,” one of the raftsmen said quietly. “Fetch the guards before this thing comes back to life.”

  4

  THE LOWER RAFT LANDING, FEBRUARY 3, AD 1672

  MOVE ALONG, PEOPLE! GET OUT of the way!”

  A half dozen guards were struggling to make their way through the crowd on the raft landing. From an alleyway above the river, Jakob Kuisl watched the people pushing and shoving each other to get a glimpse of the corpse. Only around the strangely bent body itself, which was still lying near the last pier, had the people of Munich left an empty circle, as if they feared the ominous thing might suddenly come back to life.

  “God damn it, if you don’t make way this instant, I’ll give you a taste of this.” Raising his sword, the first of the guards—presumably the captain—started dealing blows left and right with the flat side of the blade. Grumbling, the crowd finally began to yield.

  “So you’re saying it’s a mummy?” Jakob Kuisl asked his eldest daughter, who was standing next to him. Magdalena shrugged.

  “At least, it looks like the one you once told me about. A stiff puppet covered with leather. Don’t the Egyptians use them to make this powder you’re selling to people for a lot of money?”

  Kuisl snorted. “Ha! It’s probably just dirt and ground mouse droppings. Believing is everything.” He pointed to the corpse. “That’s definitely a person. Or at least it used to be one.”

  Following the gruesome discovery, Magdalena had sent one of the many street children over to Au with the message for her father that she had found Barbara. The news of the mummy in the rock cellar had spread faster than wildfire, and Kuisl had already heard all about it by the time he reached the bridge. Michael Deibler and Georg had gone with him, and now Georg was holding the visibly shaken Barbara in his arms. Kuisl hadn’t had a chance to speak with his younger daughter yet—he was just relieved to find her alive and well.

  “Shall we go down and take a closer look at this mummy?” he asked, turning to Michael Deibler.

  The Munich hangman grinned. “I thought you’d never ask. Let’s go, you nosy old dog. I know the captain. Josef Loibl is almost as grouchy and uncommunicative as you, but he’s not a bad fellow.”

  Kuisl and Deibler took a narrow flight of steps down to the raft landing while Georg stayed with the two women. Unlike the guards, the hangmen had no trouble pushing their way through the crowd. People were quick to make room when they saw who was approaching: an over-six-foot-tall, bearded hulk, together with the well-known Munich executioner.

  Finally the two men reached the group of guards, who were standing around the corpse and awaiting further orders. The captain, an old warhorse with a scarred, stubbled face and the only one of the guards to wear a cuirass, eyed the hangmen with suspicion.

  “I’m afraid you’re too late, Deibler,” he said. “She’s already dead, can’t execute her anymore.”

  “But perhaps the one who did this,” Jakob Kuisl retorted.

  He looked down at the bundle in the snow. It was clearly the corpse of a young woman. Her facial features and the high cheekbones beneath the skin were well preserved, just like the formerly blonde hair, now brittle and dull like old straw. Her mouth stood open in a silent scream, exposing a row of healthy white teeth. Kuisl estimated the girl had been around eighteen years old—roughly the same age as Barbara. She wore a plain skirt with an apron, like those customary for maidservants. Her body was bent, as though the dying woman had curled up like a sick cat. Parts of her fingers, toes, and nose were missing, probably chewed off by rats, and her skin resembled tanned leather.

  The executioners could make out the remains of leather restraints around her wrists and ankles, and scraps of a gag sticking to her lips.

  The captain stood beside the two hangmen, his head tilted back, trying to size up Kuisl. “And who do you think you are, big fellow, dishing out advice to me?” he snapped. “You’re not from Munich, anyway. I’d remember your face.”

  “He’s the Schongau executioner,” Michael Deibler replied. “We’re holding our guild meeting in Au over Candlemas, remember?” He winked at the captain. “You didn’t want us in the city.”

  “And that’s how it should be. And now, hangman, pack your giant away and go back to—”

  “Have you had a look at the bag yet?” Kuisl cut in.

  The captain gave him an irritated look. “What?”

  “The bag.” Kuisl pointed at the corpse. “On her apron. Maybe its contents will give us a clue.”

  Loibl turned red. “Us? Now listen here, you block—”

  “Just let him,” Deibler interrupted with a sigh. “He’ll do what he wants anyway. And he actually knows a thing or two about dead bodies. Besides”—he gave a thin smile—“none of you wants to touch the corpse. People are already whispering about the return of the dead and witchcraft, so you might as well let us dishonorable executioners do the job. We wouldn’t want any upstanding citizens to get their hands dirty.”

  “Well, all right, then, go ahead.” Reluctantly, Loibl stepped aside, but Kuisl noticed the glint of relief in his eyes.

  The Schongau hangman leaned over the dead girl, whose stiff clothes and leathery skin were covered in a thin layer of ice. The bag hanging at her side was as dry as old timber, and when Kuisl tried to open it, it fell apart. Inside, he found a few rusty kreuzers, a small medallion, and some dried plants that crumbled between Kuisl’s fingers and blew away with the next gust of wind.

  “Ha, nothing but rubbish,” the captain said. “I knew this wouldn’t get us anywhere.”

  “Rubbish can tell a story, too,” Kuisl replied, studying the items in his palm. He sniffed at the last plant crumbs sticking to his fingertips. Then he closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

  “This girl came to Munich from somewhere around Altötting not long after the Great War,” he started in a monotone, keeping his eyes closed. “She was unmarried, found employment as a simple maidservant, and fell ill in her final days. Someone tied and gagged her and walled her alive in the rock cellar over there.”

  Everyone was silent with astonishment for a while, and then the captain burst out laughing. “Holy hell, who are you? A wizard or just a good liar? No one can possibly know all that just by looking at the body.”

  “Like I said, he’s the Schongau executioner,” Michael Deibler said with a grin. “Murder is his passion. He did something very similar with a dead girl in Au yesterday.”

  “Another dead girl in Au?” Loibl frowned, then shrugged. “People are dropping like flies over there. But that’s Gustl’s problem, the clerk. None of my business.” He turned back to Kuisl. “And now tell me why
you think you know so much about this dead bit of meat, big fellow?”

  Kuisl stood up and gestured toward the dead body. “She’s young and isn’t wearing a ring, so she probably didn’t have a husband. The rusty kreuzers were minted in 1647 and bear the Latin name of Elector Maximilian, the father of the current elector. Those coins aren’t in circulation anymore—so she’s been dead for at least twenty years. Her clothes tell us that she was a plain maidservant, like so many young girls who come to Munich to find their luck.”

  “Twenty years. Hmm, you might be right.” Deibler nodded. “Those rock cellars are as cold as the devil’s asshole, and drafty from countless little cracks. A dead body would dry like a stockfish.”

  “The cave the men found her in had been walled shut quite a while ago,” Loibl added. “You can tell by the mortar and bricks. They just opened it today. Perhaps she was already dead when the fellow put her there. No one noticed the body, they closed the hole, and—”

  “For crying out loud, she was bound and gagged,” Kuisl interrupted. “Why would the murderer go to this trouble if she was already dead? Also, I don’t see any external injuries. I’m telling you, the bastard walled her in when she was still alive.”

  Loibl spat on the ground. “So what? This happened decades ago, so it doesn’t concern us. Most likely, the murderer is just as dead as his victim.”

  Around them, the guards struggled to keep the crowd at bay. People were still shouting excitedly, and several strong lads pushed their way closer to the corpse.

  “It’s a ghost, I can see it clearly!” one of them yelled. “A living dead person! Drive a stake through her heart, like the other one!”

  “I’ll drive a stake up your ass if you don’t shut up!” Loibl shouted back. He took a threatening step toward the young men, and they retreated, protesting. For a while, people remained relatively quiet.

  Deibler grinned. “Perhaps finding out what happened to the poor girl wouldn’t be so bad after all, Josef. Otherwise the taverns are going to be crawling with ghost hunters by tomorrow, wielding their stakes and crosses.”