The Poisoned Pilgrim_A Hangman's Daughter Tale Page 13

  “How did you ever find us in this crowd, Father?” Magdalena asked as they walked through the mass of people up to the church.

  “I went down to see cousin Graetz,” the hangman grumbled. “At first there was just a dumb, red-headed farm boy there who didn’t want to let me in, but then Michael came along with his knacker’s wagon and told me my good son-in-law was caring for the sick even here in Andechs.”

  “Does Graetz know why you’re here?” Simon asked anxiously. “Perhaps for the time being it’s better—”

  “How dumb do you think I am? As far as Graetz knows, I’m here on a pilgrimage. That made a lot of sense to him—he said I needed it.” Kuisl clapped his hands impatiently. “But now enough of this chitchat. Tell me what happened to ugly old Nepomuk and what—for heaven’s sake—you have to do with all of it.” He looked around angrily. “Damn crowds. I know why I never go on pilgrimages.”

  “I think I know a place where we’ll be undisturbed,” Magdalena replied with a grin, thinking about how much her father hated big crowds. That’s why the hangman always dreaded a public execution. “Follow me,” she called to the others, “there’s something I wanted to show you, in any case.”

  Crossing the crowded church square, with its piles of stones and sacks of mortar, she headed toward the little gate she’d discovered the previous night. Followed by the others, she took the narrow path on the other side of the monastery wall, which led shortly to a chapel in the forest. The noise of the crowd receded; they met no one but a grim-looking woodcutter; then finally they were alone. The children crawled happily around the remains of a stone wall, and Simon gave them some pine cones and beechnuts to play with.

  “This is where I heard the music yesterday,” Magdalena said softly.

  “What damned music?” Kuisl growled. “Speak up, girl, before I have to put the thumb screws on you.”

  Magdalena sat down on a fallen tree trunk not far from the chapel and started to recount what she and Simon had learned in the last three days. She told her father about the two dead men, the bloodbath in the watchmaker’s workshop, and the automaton that had vanished along with its master. Then she told him about the two attempts on her life.

  “Someone by the wall here took a shot at me,” she said finally. “The strange thing is that I didn’t hear a shot, just a hissing sound.”

  “A hissing? Maybe it was a bolt from a crossbow…” Her father scrutinized the trees around them, stopping suddenly in front of a beech where he scratched a bullet out of the bark with his finger. He frowned and held it up for them to see. “This is fresh,” he grumbled, “a rather high caliber. Are you really sure, girl, you didn’t hear a shot?”

  “Father, I may be stubborn, but I’m not deaf.”

  “Strange.” Kuisl rubbed the heavy, misshapen piece of lead in his callused fingers. “There’s actually only one weapon this could come from, and it’s very rare and valuable. I saw it only once, in the war.”

  “So it was Nepomuk,” Simon interrupted excitedly. “After all, he was a mercenary and—”

  “Nonsense.” The hangman spat on the ground in disgust. “When this happened, Nepomuk had already been in the dungeon a long time; you told me that yourself. So stick to the facts. These little monks are dubious characters, and if they themselves aren’t involved, they’re just trying to find someone to blame.”

  “Just the same,” Simon objected, “your friend Nepomuk is keeping something from us. Evidently he was carrying out some experiments with Virgilius before the watchmaker disappeared.”

  Kuisl rubbed the side of his huge nose, thinking. “Then I should no doubt have a serious talk with Nepomuk.”

  “And how do you plan to do that?” asked Magdalena. “Are you going to just knock on the dungeon door, say you’re the Schongau hangman, and ask whether you can torture the prisoner just a bit to hear what he has to say? Andechs is under the jurisdiction of the court in Weilheim, don’t forget. If the governor learns you’re snooping around his district, you’ll quickly wind up on the rack yourself.”

  “Give me a moment. I’ll come up with something,” Kuisl grumbled. “I always think of something. Now let’s go visit my cousin Michael,” he said, turning toward the gate. “The children are hungry, and so am I. You’ll see, it’s a lot easier to think with a full stomach and a good pipe to smoke.”

  They walked out onto the church square still teeming with pilgrims. The workmen had now roped off an area near the south wing in order to continue the construction work without interruption. Many pilgrims were looking up anxiously at the holes in the charred roof; some of them grumbling because the main door to the church had been blocked briefly. Simon watched a group of angry pilgrims gather around the entrance.

  “It’s taken me a week to walk here from Augsburg,” an old man complained. “A whole damned week. And now they won’t even let me into the church. This is a disgrace.”

  “Let us pray that the monastery is restored to its full splendor in time for the Festival of the Three Hosts,” a richly dressed patrician said worriedly. “It doesn’t look ready now. Will we have to march among the sacks of mortar and blocks of stone? I’ve paid my tithes… and for what?”

  “We’ve thought about returning home to Garmisch,” a little old woman added in a trembling voice. “First there was that fever going around, and now they say some kind of monster is haunting the monastery.”

  “A monster?” asked an old man next to her with a shudder of delight. “What do you know about it?”

  “Well, people say…” the old woman began, but she paused as a procession of Benedictines came out a side door of the church. Singing loudly, some carried smoking censers that they swung back and forth. The crowd fell to its knees and the monks strode past them with heads held high. Simon recognized the abbot among them, as well as the fat cellarer, the novitiate master, and the hook-nosed prior, Jeremias. Just before the monks entered the main building of the monastery, Simon noticed how the prior gave him a look of disgust. Then the monks disappeared inside.

  The medicus rubbed his forehead, trying to sort out his thoughts. The abbot, the prior, and all the others from the monastery council seemed to be hiding something from him. How would he ever learn what that was? This monastery seemed like an enchanted place to which only a few chosen people had access. How could he ever hope to advance to the inner circle? Simon cursed under his breath.

  His thoughts were interrupted by another large monk with a cowl pulled down over his face. For a brief moment the medicus thought he was looking at his father-in-law in a Benedictine robe, but then he realized this was only Brother Martin, the large carpenter who’d discovered him and Magdalena at the watchmaker’s house the day before.

  Suddenly an idea flashed through his head.

  Only a few are chosen…

  He couldn’t help but grin. It seemed he’d found a way to learn more about the monks and their secrets. It would take a bit of planning, but then nothing would really stand in his way.

  Of course, he knew his father-in-law would balk at the plan.

  Long after the three Schongauers had disappeared, the man remained standing there, his eyes full of hatred.

  After listening to them from his hiding place, he finally disappeared into the crowd in the church square. Beneath the folds of his robe, a strange tingling feeling came over him as he watched the large, broad-shouldered man leave. The giant was not at all as stupid as he looked. He would have to watch out for this huge man who’d correctly guessed the weapon used and asked the right questions. Moving quietly, the man scurried behind the monastery wall like a fat toad that had surfaced only briefly to warm itself in the sun. Not until he reentered the dark forests of the Kien Valley did he feel safe again. Nevertheless, he couldn’t shake a nagging fear that the plan might fail.

  Now there were three of them poking their noses around in the monastery. If he wasn’t careful, soon half of Andechs would be pursuing him. This girl had foiled his plans twice. He’d have
to make sure she wouldn’t be able to do that again. The next time he’d have to proceed more carefully. Perhaps poison, a silent blade in the night, a message that would lead her into a trap… There were so many possibilities.

  Next time he’d have to make sure his assistant clearly understood how important it was to get rid of this girl. Sometimes the fellow was just a bit too sensitive; feelings were like a poisonous fog surrounding a person, and before you realized it, it could be too late. He himself knew how powerful feelings could be. Too often they left a gaping wound in the soul that wouldn’t heal.

  From far away, he heard the old, familiar melody and felt how it helped bring back his old sense of security. Nothing could hold him back now—certainly not this rabble from Schongau.

  There were only five days left before his dream would finally become a reality.

  7

  ERLING, TUESDAY, JUNE 15, 1666 AD

  WHAT ARE YOU asking me to do? Are you out of your mind?” The Schongau hangman was sitting in the knacker’s house, having just lit his pipe a second time. When Simon hesitantly explained his plan, the hangman dropped his pipe on the floor, and Magdalena quickly picked it up before her two children could get a close look at the smoking bowl of tobacco. They had already broken a clay jug in the small room and dumped out a box of grain.

  “Well, I do think it’s the only way we can learn more about this monastery and its residents,” Simon replied hesitantly. “And Magdalena is right: if you want to speak with your friend Nepomuk, it certainly can’t be as an executioner on a pilgrimage.”

  “Aha, but as a stinking monk, eh?” He spat on the floor. “Out of the question. I can’t even recite the full credo or bow like these priests.”

  “But you don’t have to,” Magdalena cooed gently. “A little humility would go a long way. You’ll see, you’ll make a wonderful monk.” She handed her father his pipe and smiled cheerfully, to which the hangman responded with a grunt.

  “How hard can it be?” she continued. “Simon simply introduces you as a wandering Franciscan monk who’s helping him to care for his patients. Your friend Nepomuk is in jail, and the pilgrimage is looking more and more like a procession of the sick and the dying. Ever since this strange fever broke out, the abbot is happy to have anyone to help. No one is going to ask you to sing and pray—all you have to do is to keep your eyes open.”

  “A hangman as a monk,” Kuisl spat out the word with such contempt that his grandchildren crawled back into their mother’s lap, terrified. “Out of the question. Even a blind man would see through it. There has to be another way.”

  Simon looked at Magdalena and sighed softly. He knew it wouldn’t be easy to get his father-in-law to go along with the plan. The idea had just come to him when he noticed the hefty Brother Martin in his robe in the procession of Benedictine monks. The robe was a perfect disguise to learn more about the inner circle of the Andechs monks. The Brothers knew Simon already, but his father-in-law seemed a better choice anyway. Grumpy and uncommunicative as he was, he could just as easily pass himself off as a Carthusian monk vowed to silence. At noon Simon told Magdalena about his plan, and since then, she’d been waiting for her cousin, the knacker, and his silent redheaded assistant to leave the house so she could speak with her father in peace and quiet.

  Peace and quiet was just relative, however, for the two little ones kept pulling at each other’s hair and tossing clay bowls off the shelves.

  “Good Lord, Magdalena,” Simon flared up. “Can you see to it that the kids are quiet when adults have something important to discuss?”

  “Ah, and why doesn’t the lord and master of the house do that himself?” Magdalena picked up little Paul, who was crying because his brother had taken away a carved wooden donkey, and put him in her lap. “You could spend a bit more time caring for your sons.”

  “Everything in its time,” Simon replied, somewhat peeved. “Now we have to concentrate on learning more about a few of the monks.” After one more stern look, he turned to his father-in-law again.

  “You can see for yourself, we’ve taken care of everything. What can go wrong?”

  The medicus had found a black robe in a box in the monastery guesthouse, and now passed it hesitantly across the table to Kuisl. It was moth-eaten and the hems were somewhat moldy, but at least it was more or less the right size. After Magdalena made a few alterations it would look like a suitable robe for an itinerant mendicant.

  “The Minorites wear almost the same robes as the Benedictines,” Simon explained with angelic patience. “Nobody will notice that we have made a few little changes; and if you pull the hood way down over your face, not even your own wife would recognize you.”

  “Leave Anna out of this, you blasted son-in-law,” the hangman growled threateningly. “I’m not going to put up with—”

  “For God’s sake, Father,” Magdalena suddenly interrupted, pounding the table so hard that little Paul began to whimper again. “Can’t you see that’s the only way we can learn more about these murders? It’s your friend who’ll be burned at the stake, not ours.” She jumped up and strode to the door with the two boys. “If you like, we can just all go back home, watch the trial from there, and just pray to the savior in the Altenstadt basilica. Simon and I don’t have to be here.”

  “Ah, you forget the abbot asked me to write another report,” Simon murmured. “If we both just get up and go now, it will look suspicious, as if we’re trying to flee. After all, until recently we were under suspicion ourselves. They’ll come looking for us and put us on trial with Nepomuk. To judge by the way the prior keeps staring so angrily at me, he’d rather see me burned at the stake today than tomorrow.”

  “Just stop where you are, you fresh woman,” Kuisl grumbled, beckoning to his daughter, who was still standing at the door. Then, with disgust, he unfolded the torn black robe and examined it. “I’ll never in my life fit into that.”

  “I can let out the seam a bit at the bottom,” Magdalena said hopefully, as she returned to the table. “And I’ve also found a nice white cord big enough to go around your fat belly. Does that mean you’ll do it?”

  The hangman shrugged. “I’ll never get into the monastery wearing this. Never. Forget it. But perhaps the disguise will get me in to have a few words with Nepomuk. Have you two thought about a rosary?”

  Simon held his hand in front of his mouth so his father-in-law wouldn’t see his smile. Jakob Kuisl was the stubbornest fellow in the whole Priests’ Corner, but besides that he was the best friend anyone could have. In his heart, the medicus knew the hangman wouldn’t abandon the ugly Nepomuk. With a triumphant gesture he reached under the table and brought out a carved wooden rosary. Kuisl responded with a grateful grunt.

  “Now we have to discuss calmly what we’re going to say to the abbot,” Simon said, relieved. “After all, Maurus Rambeck will have to give permission for a Minorite Brother to care for the sick in his monastery.” He pulled a little Bible from his vest pocket and motioned to his father-in-law. “And then it won’t hurt to memorize a few psalms just in case you have to pray and don’t know how to do that.”

  The hangman leaned forward and tapped Simon on the chest. “Believe me, boy,” he growled softly, “if your beautiful plan fails, you’re going to have to pray yourself. Or better yet, you should do it now.” He stood up and put on the moldy robe. “If even one little monk recognizes me, we’ll be so deep in shit that even the archangel himself won’t be able to get us out.”

  Less than an hour later, Simon and the hangman climbed the steep stairs to the abbot’s study on the second floor of the east wing. Magdalena stayed with the children in the knacker’s house, where the two children wouldn’t let their mother, whom they had missed so long, out of their sight. Before that, the hangman’s daughter had lengthened the ripped robe and cleaned off the worst of the dirt. Kuisl was now wearing the black robe of a Minorite with a white cord around his belly, while a wooden rosary dangled from his neck, swinging back and forth lik
e a pendulum. Simon looked approvingly at his father-in-law, who looked in the robe like the incarnate scourge of God. Kuisl would have made a good priest, though Simon doubted anyone could expect much leniency from him. At least he’d keep a firm grip on his flock.

  “This robe itches like the claws of a demon,” the hangman cursed. “I really don’t understand how priests can wear something like this day in and day out.”

  “You forget that monks often whip themselves and slide through the church on their knees,” Simon reminded him with a grin. “To say nothing of fasting. Pain is clearly the pathway to God.”

  “Or to truth.” said Jakob, wiping the sweat from his brow. “Maybe I should use the robe the next time I torture someone.”

  They had now arrived at the door to the abbot’s study. Simon knocked timidly. When there was no answer, the medicus tentatively pushed down the door handle and the tall door swung open. The setting sun shone in softly through the glass windows, casting light on the rows of shelves covering the entire back wall. In front of the shelves sat Maurus Rambeck at his desk, musing over a pile of books. The abbot seemed not to have noticed their arrival.

  “Ah, Your Excellency?” Simon said cautiously. “Excuse the interruption, but…”

  Only now did Maurus Rambeck jump up. A single little drop of sweat landed on a piece of paper in front of him. Hastily the abbot pushed some of the books aside.

  “Ah, the bathhouse surgeon from Schongau,” Rambeck murmured with a wan smile. Once again Simon noticed how pale the abbot had become since the day before. His right hand trembled slightly as he raised it in a blessing. “Do you have any news about the two tragic deaths, a clue perhaps that will help us?”

  Simon shook his head regretfully. “No, Your Excellency, but I’ll have a closer look at the corpses today. At the moment I’m too busy with the sick pilgrims.”