The Beggar King: A Hangman's Daughter Tale (US Edition) Page 6

  Go on, go and tell people, and I promise I’ll make your life hell!

  At that moment a fist-size rock, followed by a second and a third, flew in through an open window. The women heard a crash as the flask burst, and hot oil splashed Stechlin in the face. The midwife staggered backward, bumped into the table, and finally collapsed onto the ground, screaming and covering her eyes with her dirty apron. More stones came crashing in, shattering the pots and phials on the shelves where they landed.

  Magdalena ran to the window and peered warily over the sill. Outside, in the middle of the lane, stood a group of smirking young men, apprentices and journeymen, none of them older than twenty. The hangman’s daughter immediately recognized three of Michael Berchtholdt’s sons among them.

  “Brew your stinking potions down in the Tanners’ Quarter, hangman hussy!” spluttered a lanky, pimply boy making an obscene gesture. Peter Berchtholdt was no more than sixteen years old. “Father says you’re responsible for what happened to our maid! You gave her the draught that turned her into a witch. Now she’s gone, and you’re to blame, you pernicious, murdering witch!”

  Magdalena seethed with rage as never before. She burst out the door into the street and, after running up to the group of boys, kicked young Berchtholdt in the groin. He folded up like a jackknife as he fell with a groan to the ground, his face flushed, unable to speak, much less defend himself. Everything happened so fast that none of the other boys had been able to intervene.

  Arms akimbo, Magdalena looked down at the master baker’s son. “I’ll tell you who the murderer is,” she shouted, turning her fury to the two other Berchtholdt boys standing uncertainly off to one side. “Your father gave Resl the poison himself because it was he who fathered the child, and now he wants to blame it on me. Believe it or not, your father is a dirty liar and a murderer! Now get out of here, all of you, or I’ll scratch your eyes out before you can say hallelujah.”

  She raised her right hand, showing off her long, dirty fingernails. Peter was still lying on the ground in front of her. The boy hesitated—for a brief moment Magdalena thought she recognized something like doubt in his eyes—but then he pulled himself together, struggled to his feet, and staggered back to his brothers.

  “You’ll be sorry for what you said about our father,” shouted the eldest Berchtholdt. “I will tell him, and then he’ll see to it that Kuisl has to chase his own daughter with a whip through town and throw her in the stocks.” He spit on the ground and made the sign of the cross with his right hand.

  As the boys turned to leave, Magdalena shouted after them. “Wipe your own ass first, mama’s boys! You Berchtholdts are nothing but cowards and loafers!”

  She looked up; several windows had opened now and a dozen pairs of eyes stared down at the ruckus.

  “And all you up there are not one bit better! Not one bit! To hell with you all!”

  Cursing loudly, she stomped back into the midwife’s house, where Stechlin now sat at the large table holding a damp cloth to her scalded face. Magdalena was relieved to see that apart from a few red blotches on her skin, no real damage had been done. The midwife’s eyes had thankfully escaped injury, but the broken glass and the green puddle on the floor showed the stones had shattered more than just a flask and a few phials. Magdalena felt as if a stone had struck her straight in the heart.

  Only now did she break down, leaning on the midwife and sobbing, as wave after wave of grief and pain surged through her body. Stechlin whispered softly to her, stroking the young girl’s hair as if she were a child. Finally the midwife whispered, “They will never accept us; it’s like a law of nature, like budding, blooming, and dying. You must try to live with this.”

  Magdalena rose. Her eyes were red and swollen from crying, but her gaze was firm and unyielding. “To hell with the laws,” she whispered. “I’ll never accept them—never. I’ll do what suits me, now more than ever!”

  Stechlin moved away a bit and cast a furtive glance at Magdalena. There was no doubt about it—the girl really was the Schongau hangman’s daughter.

  A few hours later Magdalena’s anger had subsided a bit. She and her mother were busy getting the twins ready for bed, a job that always occupied her so completely she had no time left for gloomy thoughts.

  “Just one more story, Magda,” little Barbara pleaded. “Just one more! Tell us the one about the queen and the house in the forest! You haven’t told us that one for a long time!”

  Magdalena laughed and carried her nine-year-old sister up the narrow stairs to the bedroom. Her back ached under the weight of the squirming child. The twins had grown an astonishing amount in the last year, and soon she wouldn’t be able to lift Barbara anymore. Clearly they took after their father.

  “Oh, no, it’s time to go to bed,” Magdalena said with feigned severity as she put her little sister in bed, covered her up, and blew out a smoking pine chip standing on a stool in the corner. “Look, your brother’s eyes are already closed.”

  She pointed at Georg, Barbara’s twin brother, who in fact seemed to be asleep in his narrow little bed.

  “Then at least sing something for me,” Barbara pleaded, trying hard not to yawn.

  With a sigh, Magdalena began to sing a soft lullaby. Her little sister closed her eyes, and soon her breathing was regular and calm and she seemed to drift off to sleep.

  The hangman’s daughter looked down at Barbara, stroking her cheek tenderly. She loved her younger brother and sister, even if they sometimes got on her nerves. To Georg and Barbara their father was a growling bear who fought off bad men but was loving and tender with them, his own children. It almost made Magdalena a bit jealous that the hangman seemed to develop a kindlier attitude as he grew older. When she’d misbehaved as a little girl, she’d received a good spanking, but with the twins, her father usually just growled his displeasure—which didn’t necessarily achieve the desired effect.

  Magdalena was thinking about her father in faraway Regensburg when she heard footsteps behind her. Her mother smiled as she entered the room.

  Anna-Maria Kuisl had the same long, black locks as her daughter, the same bushy eyebrows, and the same temper, as well. Jakob Kuisl had often complained he was married to two women, both of whom had a tendency to flare up. When they both were angry with him, he would often go and brood over the medical books that he kept in his pharmaceutical closet.

  “Well?” Anna-Maria asked softly. “Are the children finally asleep?”

  Magdalena nodded and stood up from the bed, exhausted. “A dozen stories and certainly a hundred rounds of bouncing up and down on my knees playing horsie! That should be enough.”

  “You spoil them too much.” The hangman’s wife shook her head. “Just like your father. He was like that with his little sister.”

  “Lisbeth?” Magdalena asked. “Did you know her well?”

  Anna-Maria bit her lip, and Magdalena sensed that her mother really didn’t want to talk about Magdalena’s aunt, certainly not on such a beautiful summer evening. Just the same, she persisted with her question until her mother was finally persuaded to tell the story.

  “After Lisbeth and Jakob’s mother died, she lived here in the house with us,” Anna-Maria said. “She was so young—almost a child—but then this owner of a bathhouse came along and took her back to Regensburg with him. Your father cursed and scolded, but what could he do? She didn’t care a whit what her big brother thought—she was just as stubborn as he was. She just packed up her things and left. For Regensburg, of course…”

  She stared blankly into space for a while, as if some macabre image had arisen from the past like a monster emerging from a dark abyss. She remained silent for a long while.

  “Why?” Magdalena finally asked, breaking the silence.

  Anna-Maria merely shrugged. “Love, perhaps? But to tell you the truth, I think she just couldn’t stand it here anymore. The constant whispering, the evil glances, how people would make the sign of the cross whenever she passed by.” She si
ghed. “You know yourself it takes a thick hide to be a hangman’s daughter and stay in a place like this.”

  “Or maybe just stupidity,” Magdalena said softly.

  “What did you say?”

  Magdalena shook her head. “Nothing, Mama.” She sat down on a stool in the corner and looked at her mother in the moonlight that fell through the open shutters.

  “You never told me how you met Papa for the first time,” she said finally. “I know so little about you. Where did you grow up? Who are my grandparents? You must have had a life before Father came along.”

  In fact, her mother had always kept silent about her past. Father, too, never spoke about his time as a mercenary. Magdalena could vaguely remember Mother crying a lot, and in her mind’s eye Magdalena could still see her father rocking her mother gently in his arms to console her. But this was a very distant memory, and in listening to her parents speak, it almost seemed as if their life hadn’t begun until Magdalena was born. Everything before that was darkness.

  Anna-Maria turned away and glanced out the window and across the river. Suddenly she looked very old.

  “Much has happened since I was a child,” she said. “Much that I don’t want to be reminded of.”

  “But why?”

  “Let’s leave it at that, child. We’ll save the rest for another day, perhaps when your father returns from Regensburg. I don’t have a good feeling about this trip.” She shook her head. “I dreamed of him just last night, and it wasn’t a nice dream but a bloody one.”

  Anna-Maria stopped speaking and laughed. But it sounded like a tormented laugh.

  “I’m already behaving like a silly old woman,” she said finally. “It must have something to do with that accursed Regensburg. Believe me, a curse lies over this region, a bloody curse…”

  “A curse?” Magdalena frowned. “What do you mean by that?”

  Her mother sighed. “As a child I went to Regensburg often. I went to the market there with your grandmother, as we lived not far from the city. Whenever we passed by the city hall, Grandma said that the noblemen inside were plotting wars.” She closed her eyes briefly, then continued in a soft voice. “It made no difference whether it was against the Turks or the Swedes; it was always the little people on the anvil who had to suffer the blows. Why did your father have to go to Regensburg, of all places?”

  “But the war ended long ago,” Magdalena interrupted with a laugh. “You’re seeing ghosts!”

  “The war may be over, but the scars remain.”

  Magdalena didn’t get to ask her mother what she meant, because at that moment they heard footsteps and whispers in front of the house.

  And in the next moment chaos broke out.

  Simon washed the sweat from his face at a little washbasin in the consulting room, then buttoned his jacket and stepped warily out of the house.

  All day the young medicus had been treating consumptive farmers, feverish children, and old women covered in boils. Since the hangman had been away, over a week now, more patients than ever had visited the Fronwieser house in the Hennengasse. Simon’s father had retired upstairs to his room with a terrible hangover and needed treatment himself. Simon had his hands full. Only now, after sundown, did he find the time to visit Magdalena down in the Tanners’ Quarter. He needed to speak with her, alone, to discuss Michael Berchtholdt’s threats. Just the day before he’d agreed with Magdalena that she should enter an official complaint against the master baker, but in the course of the day he’d begun to wonder whether that really was such a sensible idea. Berchtholdt still held a seat in the city’s Outer Council, and his voice carried weight—in stark contrast to Simon’s, and especially Magdalena’s as the eldest daughter of the dishonorable Schongau hangman.

  In the meanwhile night had fallen. With lantern in hand, the medicus crept through the pitch-black streets of Schongau. At every corner he paused and listened for the footsteps of the night watchmen. Only when the streets were completely silent did he dare proceed, always on the lookout for curious neighbors who might happen to be watching from their windows. No one in Schongau was permitted out after nightfall, and anyone the constables caught would face a hefty fine. On account of an occasional late night of drinking and his frequent visits to Magdalena, Simon had already parted with a not insignificant amount of money. If he was caught just once more, he ran the risk of being put in the stocks or having to wear the scold’s bridle. The medicus shuddered at the thought of being punished by none other than Magdalena’s father—and of being the laughingstock of the entire town.

  When Simon noticed light flickering down by the Lech Gate, he quickly covered his lantern with his jacket. Relieved, he then realized that the light was coming from the gatekeeper, Josef. The old constable had often let him pass through the narrow one-man door so he might visit the Kuisls. A modest bribe of brandy or watered-down theriaca was cheaper for Simon than the punishment for being caught leaving the city at night. As he drew closer, however, he noticed something odd. Josef’s face was as white as chalk, and his lips were pinched tightly together.

  “Where—where are you going at this late hour?” the old man stammered, clutching his halberd tightly as if he might fall over without it.

  “Oh, come now, Josef.” He raised his hands in a conciliatory gesture. “You know I’m going to see Magdalena. How about a nightcap, as usual?” He pulled a little corked bottle out from under his jacket.

  The constable shook his head nervously. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea tonight. It would be better for you to stay in town.”

  “Why…” Simon began. At that moment he heard sounds down below, a rattling and howling, all to the accompaniment of an out-of-tune fiddle. The medicus didn’t bother finishing his sentence, pushed the watchman aside, and ran to the doorway.

  “Fronwieser, no!” Josef shouted after him. “You’re going to regret it!”

  Simon wasn’t listening anymore. He unhooked the rusty latch, ducked through the shoulder-high door, and ran down the street toward the raft landing. As he ran, he saw bright lights flickering in the Tanners’ Quarter. The noise was coming from that direction, and the sound was getting louder, swelling to a thunderous beat that reminded him of the Swedes’ drumming just before they set fire to the town long ago. One man appeared to be shouting, and a chorus of voices answered—then the drumming continued. Simon could at last identify the lights as hand-held torches and lanterns, little points of light all in a row, advancing like a glittering snake toward its goal.

  The hangman’s house.

  Simon stumbled more than he ran—the cobblestones by the raft landing were still slick from the thunderstorm earlier that night—but finally he arrived at the Tanners’ Quarter and ducked behind a cart laden with sweet-smelling hay to watch what was unfolding.

  Two or three dozen young men had gathered there, journeymen from Schongau and a few farmhands from the surrounding villages. They had blackened their faces with soot, and some of them wore sacks over their heads, their eyes peering out through slits and flashing white in the light of the torches. Despite their disguises Simon recognized a number of them by their voices and their gaits. In their hands they held threshing flails, rattles, and scythes with little bells attached in places. One of the journeymen had donned a hairy devil mask and leaped about in a sort of wild, demonic dance.

  In the middle of the mob stood a man with a blackened face, a black coat, and a hat adorned with two white rooster feathers. It took the medicus a moment to realize that this was in fact Michael Berchtholdt. With his long, flowing robe and painted face, the lean master baker appeared bigger and more menacing. The others fell silent as Berchtholdt began to speak in a steady, strident singsong.

  “The hangman girl, this Kuisl whore, she practices on you, and more. The belly swells, all plump and round, but her physician makes her sound. ’Tis true, my friends?”

  The chorus of masked faces roared its reply in one voice: “’Tis true!”

  “Then now yo
u know just what to do!”

  The rattling and stomping resumed once more, swelling now to an infernal racket. Meanwhile, in the nearby houses shutters had opened, but the faces that peered out seemed more amused than frightened by the clamorous, bloodthirsty mob below. How often, after all, did they get to see such a spectacle in sleepy little Schongau?

  Simon crouched even lower behind the cart, trying desperately to figure out what to do. He’d heard of Vehmic tribunals and their secret vigilante proceedings, though never in Schongau. Their victims were often loose women or other members of society who had in some way offended the moral order: village drunks, lecherous priests, greedy estate farmers, or millers who had defrauded their customers. The medicus had heard that the accused were sometimes whipped and chased through the fields, but in most cases they suffered only the humiliation of public ridicule delivered in lines of satirical verse. Just last year in Kinsau, a few towns away, the young men of the village had smeared human waste all over the walls of the building belonging to the bathhouse owner and hoisted a manure cart up onto his roof. The victim had watched the spectacle in silence, knowing there wasn’t much he could do against the majority of villagers.

  This last thought worried Simon. He couldn’t imagine Magdalena would ever tolerate such abuse without fighting back. Would she physically assault her accusers? Claw at their sooty faces with her nails? How would the men react? The physician looked uncertainly at the shuttered windows of the hangman’s house, just as Michael Berchtholdt started to declaim another satirical verse.