The Poisoned Pilgrim Read online

  “Oh, God, the Semers,” Simon groaned. “We’re not being spared anything today. It looks as if they’ve found a friend.”

  In the meantime, the innkeeper had approached the new guests. “Ah, Count von Wartenberg,” he murmured, bowing so deeply it looked as if he was about to polish his guest’s shoes. “What an honor to be able to greet a representative of the House of Wittelsbach in my modest tavern. It’s been a long time since—”

  With an impatient wave of his hand, the man with the Van Dyke silenced the stout innkeeper. “Stop buttering me up and get me a private room,” he growled. “I have something important to discuss with these two gentlemen.”

  “As you wish, as you wish.” Bowing deeply again, the innkeeper led the count and the two Semers into a separate area of the tavern. As young Sebastian Semer strode past Magdalena and Simon, he gave them a fleeting, disgusted glance.

  “Look, Father,” he whined. “Even lowlife bathhouse surgeons and hangman’s women patronize the Andechs tavern nowadays. The Holy Mountain is not what it used to be.”

  Karl Semer looked down at the two Schongauers and frowned. “I don’t think the tavern keeper knows everyone patronizing his establishment, my son. In my tavern something like that wouldn’t happen. Dishonorable people have no place there.” Impatiently he took his son by the shoulder. “But come now, we have more important things to do. I hear they serve an exquisite, though expensive Tokay here—just the right thing for concluding our business.”

  The two disappeared into the side room with the distinguished gentleman. Simon looked over at Magdalena, who had turned white as chalk and was biting her lip.

  “This pompous Semer clan,” she hissed. “Jakob Schreevogl told me the two plan to make a killing here during the Festival of the Three Hosts. The very sight of them makes me sick.”

  “Don’t always get so worked up.” Simon passed his hand through her hair sympathetically. “In any case, there’s nothing you can do to change it. I’d just like to know what the Semers have to do with a genuine nobleman from the House of Wittelsbach. If it’s true they have really arrived—anyone doing business with the family of the Bavarian elector is very well-off.”

  Magdalena blew her nose loudly and took a last deep gulp of wine. “I expect they’ll palm some cheap pilgrim’s candles and prayer books off on the count, which the fine gentleman will dispose of for even more money,” she murmured. She stood up, stretched, and tossed a few coins on the table. “And now, let’s go. The Semers have spoiled this tavern for me, and you still have your damned report to write, too.” She sighed and turned toward the door. “Damn, all I really wanted to do in Andechs was pray.”

  Outside, in a dark corner of the monastery garden, a figure in a black robe crouched down, observing the couple from Schongau with suspicion as they strolled down the steep pathway toward Erling. The man uttered a curse just as he had learned to do in the war. Even though God forbade it, it always made him feel better and helped to drive away the bloody scenes. Nevertheless, he remained anxious.

  Ever since this bathhouse surgeon and his girl had appeared, things had been going badly. First the failed experiment, then the dead assistant and the argument with Virgilius—and what, for God’s sake, was the curious woman up to in the tower? Had she become suspicious? Had she discovered something up there?

  The man smiled and waved casually as a few singing pilgrims passed by, but the pilgrims drew away from him as if they could sense that nothing good would come from him. He was accustomed to people reacting fearfully when they saw him. Striking fear in the hearts of men used to be his calling, but now his face did the work. The contorted grimace of the devil in the garb of a monk. That’s what they said about him when he took the vows many years ago and cast aside his old life. But he could not cast away his face.

  Or his past.

  Grumbling furiously to himself like a fat blowfly, Brother Johannes reentered the apothecary’s house, where worry, stench, and a decomposing corpse awaited him.

  He didn’t know this was just the beginning.

  In the meantime, Jakob Kuisl sat alongside the city moat, not far from his house, cutting little whistles out of the reeds for his grandchildren.

  He’d bought some dried fruit and a few candied nuts for the children, which they were now devouring with great appetite. Their mouths were sticky with honey and their hands filthy with grime. The hangman grinned—it was good their mother couldn’t see them this way.

  At the thought of the children, his face suddenly darkened again. It wasn’t just that his wife was sick; his grandchildren were now in danger, too. The warning from Hans Berchtholdt had been unmistakable: if Kuisl reported the warehouse theft to the Schongau secretary, the children would be in real danger. And even if he did nothing, Hans Berchtholdt was burning for revenge. Who was to say he wouldn’t be lying in wait for the two little ones here along the moat or down by the river? It would just take one push, and they would disappear beneath the waves in an instant.

  Grimly, the hangman took out his tobacco pouch and began stuffing his pipe. As always when he was thinking, he needed that heavenly weed, which a few friends, wagon drivers from Augsburg, brought him every month. As the first puffs of smoke rose up, he was already feeling noticeably more relaxed, but in the next moment the sound of footsteps interrupted his reveries.

  “Confound it! Can’t one ever get a moment’s peace around here?” Kuisl grumbled.

  As he turned around, he saw his son Georg emerge from willow trees. The boy was carrying the slingshot he had used just a few hours ago to drive away the Berchtholdt brothers. And behind him came his sister Barbara, with her dark, tangled, shoulder-length locks, wearing a white blouse that barely concealed the first signs of her changing figure.

  Georg and Barbara were twins, but as different as they could be. Barbara was chatty, with the same impudent tongue as her older sister, Magdalena, and promised to be just as beautiful. Georg, on the other hand, was as hefty as an unhewn piece of wood and as silent as his father. As an executioner’s apprentice, the thirteen-year-old boy helped from time to time at executions and could look forward to his examination and certificate in a few years—a proper beheading.

  “When Mama learns you bought candy for the two little ones again, she’s going to scold,” Barbara warned him, smiling as she drew closer.

  “Watch out or I’ll give you a proper thrashing, rascal,” the hangman mumbled. “Didn’t I tell Georg to clean out the knacker’s wagon? And then I find him down at the warehouse with a slingshot in his hand. What were you doing down there?”

  “I was going to shoot sparrows with the others,” Georg replied tersely. His voice wasn’t as deep as his father’s, but it already sounded just as grim. “But then all I met were a few gallows birds.”

  “You ought to be glad he was down there, Father,” Barbara interrupted. “They could hear Berchtholdt screaming way up in the Tanners’ Quarter. I can’t imagine what he would have done with the children if Georg hadn’t come along with the others.”

  “Oh, nonsense. I could have handled them easily enough,” the hangman grumbled.

  “Twelve men?” Georg laughed. “Father, don’t overdo it. You’re not getting any younger.”

  “Young enough to deal with the Berchtholdt gang, though. In the war I killed small fry like that by the dozens. I wasn’t much older than you back then, but strong enough for two. What it takes is strength and smarts.”

  Kuisl took a drag on his pipe and watched the smoke ascend. While Barbara went down to the moat with the two children, his son sat down alongside him on a rock and stared into the swirling water. After a while, Jakob silently handed him the pipe. Georg grinned. He knew his father would never say thank-you for anything, but this gesture was more thanks than a thousand words—it was the first time the old man had offered him a drag on his pipe. Georg closed his eyes and breathed in the sweet smoke, then puffed it out again like a little dragon.

  “How’s Mother?” Kuisl final
ly grumbled.

  Georg shrugged. “She sleeps a lot. Martha made her a potion of linden blossoms and willow bark and is with her now.”

  “Willow bark is good; it reduces the fever.”

  There was another long pause before Georg finally cleared his throat. “You said before I’m just as old now as you were in the war…” he began, haltingly. “What did you mean by that? You never told me much about what happened then.”

  “Because there’s nothing to tell except slashing, stabbing, and killing.” The hangman spat brown tobacco juice into the meadow. “And anyone who comes back can only hope the war doesn’t haunt his dreams. What is there to tell?”

  “At least you got to meet Mother there,” Georg interjected. “And you saw the world.” He turned and pointed toward the walls of the city, visible through the trees, adding sarcastically, “Not just little stinking Schongau.”

  “Believe me, the world stinks just the same everywhere: it smells of death, disease, and horseshit, and it doesn’t matter whether you’re in Paris or in Schongau.” The hangman looked earnestly at his son. “We can only see to it that it smells a little better. Put your nose in a book, boy. It always smells better there.”

  Georg sighed. “You know I’m not very keen on reading. It’s different with Barbara—she reads Paré and Paracelsus as if she’d written them herself. And I stutter even when I read the Lord’s Prayer.”

  “Nonsense,” Jakob hissed. “You’re just lazy. A hangman who can’t read isn’t any better than a knacker. What are you going to live on? We hangmen don’t just kill; we cure, as well. That’s how we earn most of our money. And how can you heal if you can’t read books?”

  “I think I’m better suited for killing than for healing, Father.”

  The slap hit the boy so hard his lip broke open and drops of blood fell on his leather vest. Stunned, he rubbed his face; the pipe lay in front of him in the grass.

  “How can you talk such nonsense?” his father growled, his face white with fury. “What do you want to do with the rest of your life—just break bones and chop off heads? Do you want to remain an outcast whom people run from and only dare to visit at night to buy a piece of hangman’s rope or a little bottle of blood?” Kuisl picked up the pipe from the ground and knocked out the ashes. “Is that what you want? To sweep up other people’s shit and do their dirty work? I thought I had taught you better than that.”

  “But… but what else can we do?” Georg stuttered. “We’re not allowed to learn any other vocation. Hangmen remain hangmen—isn’t that the way it always was? Did you ever hear of anyone who became something different?”

  Suddenly Kuisl’s eyes went blank, as if he were looking far back into the past. “Perhaps…” he murmured. “Yes, perhaps I knew someone.”

  The bodies twitching up in the branches of the oak… The young regimental hangman walks down the rows of the outlaws; one after the other, he lays nooses around their necks and pulls the whimpering young men up into the treetop with his strong arms… Only Jakob sees the tears streaming down the hangman’s cheeks, the tremble coursing through his powerful, hulking body, the silently mumbled curses… Jakob knows the man’s fears all too well, for they are his own… At night, his friend lies next to him, staring into the starless heavens, and swears an oath that Jakob himself made many years before… In the morning, his friend is gone, and only his weapons are left behind, still lying by the fire. The captain curses like the devil and sends a search party out after the deserter, Jakob among them. At noon, when the men return shaking their heads, Jakob silently thanks God. He sharpens his sword and tries to forget…

  “By God, yes,” Kuisl murmured after an eternity. “I knew someone like that, someone who tried. Heaven knows what he’s doing now, but at least he tried. It’s just me, stupid bastard that I am, who returned from the war to keep hanging people.”

  He laughed softly. Then he dragged on his pipe until a small ember began to glow bright red again.

  “Damn,” he finally continued, pointing with the stem of his pipe to his two grandchildren frolicking around and shouting cheerfully with Barbara in the shallow water.

  “If I weren’t here, then you wouldn’t be, either, would you? And neither would the little bed wetters. For that alone I’ll be glad to chop off a few more heads.”

  4

  ERLING, EARLY ON THE MORNING OF MONDAY, JUNE 14, 1666, AD

  AT SUNRISE, SIMON rose with a groan from his prickly straw bed in the knacker’s house.

  He’d worked till late in the night on his report for the abbot. In it, he mentioned a possible murder weapon he’d discovered the evening before by the pond. On a long net leaning against the side of the walkway, he found drops of blood that could have come from the back of the dead noviate’s head. But Simon could suggest neither a suspect nor a motive.

  The medicus would have liked to sleep a bit longer, but Michael Graetz rose before sunrise, noisily prepared a breakfast for his guests, and then left, whistling and singing, to visit a farmer nearby. After that, sleep was out of the question. In any case, the events of the previous day kept going through Simon’s mind. He sat down at the rickety table and, lost in thought, served himself some steaming porridge.

  “Can you be a bit quieter when you smack your lips, or do you want to wake the dead?” Magdalena rubbed her eyes and stared at Simon angrily.

  “Well, at least when you grouse like that it seems you’re on the road to recovery.” Simon grinned and pointed at the second bowl of porridge. “Want some breakfast?”

  Magdalena nodded, then stood up and dished out some porridge. She did in fact seem to have recovered and ate with an appetite that reminded Simon of a hungry wolf.

  “I’ll deliver my report to the abbot this morning,” he said, wiping his mouth. “First, I’ll stop by to see this watchmaker Virgilius. From some of the things he said, I’m guessing he knows more about Brother Johannes than he wanted to tell me yesterday.”

  “Do you think perhaps that Johannes killed his own apprentice?” she asked, taking another serving of porridge. “I wouldn’t put anything past that ugly toad. I can feel he’s covering up something.”

  “Actually, it’s no business of ours,” Simon sighed. “If only I’d kept my big mouth shut when I was talking with the abbot. But now one more visit won’t make any difference. In any case, I’d like to take you along to have a look at that bizarre automaton,” he said, getting up from the table. “What do you say? Do you want to come?”

  “To admire my rival? Why not?” Magdalena laughed. “Watch out—if I don’t like her, I’ll yank out a few screws, and after that your nutty companion Virgilius won’t be able to use his doll for anything but an expensive scarecrow.”

  Shortly thereafter they strolled through the village, up the hill toward the monastery, then took the little trail branching off to the right to the watchmaker’s house. The sun had already risen above the treetops and shone brightly and warmly now on the freshly painted stone building with the little garden in front. Simon walked past the daisies and poppies and up to the door. He was about to knock when he noticed it was already ajar.

  “Brother Virgilius?” he called into the room. “Are you there? I brought someone along whom I’d like you to…”

  Noticing the stench of sulfur and gunpowder, he stopped short. He also sensed another odor, which at another time and place he might have experienced as pleasant.

  The odor of grilled meat.

  “What’s going on?” Magdalena asked, amused. “Did you catch the monk in bed with his doll?”

  “Evidently Brother Virgilius has been experimenting again,” Simon murmured. “Let’s hope nobody got hurt this time.”

  As he pushed against the door, he met with resistance, as if something heavy was right behind it. Groaning, he pushed harder, and the odor became stronger. Heavy clouds of smoke issued through the crack; then suddenly something sprang out of it like a snake.

  A pale, bloated arm.

  With a lo
ud cry, Simon jumped back, stumbling and landing on his back in the middle of the daisies. Magdalena, too, stepped back, trembling and pointing to the arm that hung lifeless in the doorway at knee-height, its fingers pointing accusingly at the shocked couple.

  “Someone… someone must be lying behind the door,” Simon stuttered, as he slowly rose to his feet.

  “And whoever that is, is likely dead as a doornail.” Magdalena gathered her courage, struggled to open the door, and in the gradually dispersing smoke, gazed on a scene of horror. The room looked as if a demon had been unleashed in it.

  Directly in front of them lay the corpse of the young assistant, Vitalis. The novitiate’s head was angled oddly, as if some superhuman force had broken his neck; his shirt and parts of his trousers were burned, and beneath the clothing, burned flesh was visible on his back and legs. His arm was extended toward the door as if in a last desperate attempt to flee, and his face, seared by the flames, grimaced in fear, his mouth wide-open and eyeballs turned upward.

  “My God,” Simon panted. “What happened here?”

  In the room itself, tables and chairs had been overturned, the valuable pendulum clock lay in pieces on the floor, and the two halves of the copper sphere had rolled into a corner. Only the crocodile dangled from the ceiling as before, staring with lifeless eyes on the chaos below.

  “If Virgilius was really experimenting with gunpowder, he’s blown himself up, along with everything else here, and has dissolved in a cloud of smoke.” Magdalena stepped into the room and looked around warily. “In any case, he’s not here.”

  Simon stooped down to pick up the head of a doll that had rolled in front of him, its forehead shattered and eyes smashed in. Perplexed, he was turning the porcelain head over in his hands when something crossed his mind.