The Council of Twelve Read online

  “I must apologize if I was a little gruff earlier,” Michael Deibler said to Magdalena. Only now did she notice the warm, friendly eyes in the grouchy-looking face. Deibler had taken off his woolen coat, and underneath he wore a clean white shirt with a lace collar and a vest of dyed fustian. The Munich executioner was no pauper. “It’s no easy task to organize this guild meeting,” he continued. “And then those dead girls . . .”

  “Dead girls?” Simon looked at the hangman with confusion. “Are there more?”

  Deibler slowly nodded. “Well, it’s the second girl this week. Of course, it could be a coincidence. But both cases are rather unusual.”

  “What happened to the other girl?” Magdalena asked. Thirstily, she reached for the mug of beer a maid had set down in front of her.

  “Nasty story,” Deibler said darkly. “They found the poor wretch by the raft landing, near Sendlinger Gate. Some log drivers pulled her out of the water.”

  “Did she drown?” Magdalena asked. “That doesn’t sound very unusual.”

  “Uh, no. She was impaled.”

  Simon and Magdalena froze for a moment; the noise of the tavern suddenly seemed to come from far away. Magdalena pushed her beer aside, her thirst gone.

  “Impaled?” Simon repeated. “You mean someone hammered a stake through her heart? That’s terrible!”

  “Indeed.” Deibler nodded. “It used to be a common form of execution in my great-grandfather’s time. They used to believe the angry soul of the deceased was nailed to the earth that way. Sometimes the stake would be inserted through the anus, and the condemned person would be sat upon it. It would make for a very slow—”

  “Jesus Christ, spare us the details,” Simon exclaimed, having grown pale. “What do you know about the victim?”

  “Well, she was one of those countless young girls who come to Munich in the hope of a better life. As far as I’m aware, they don’t even know her name.” Deibler sighed and took a long sip of his beer. “I feel sorry for those girls from the country. They come to Munich to find work as maidservants, but often they only find misery. She probably fell victim to some drunk bastard.”

  “But who went on to impale her?” Magdalena frowned. “I don’t know . . .”

  “Hey, you, are you B-Barbara Kuisl?” the fellow with the bulbous nose suddenly slurred—the Passau executioner, Kaspar Hörmann, presumably. Until then he hadn’t uttered a word, but now he seemed to have woken from his trance. His white shirt was speckled with gravy and beer stains, and his hat lay trampled on the ground.

  Magdalena gave him only a brief glance. “No,” she replied curtly. “Barbara is my younger sister. She’s gone upstairs.”

  Kaspar Hörmann giggled. “I knew you were too old.”

  “How dare you—” Magdalena flared up, but Hörmann held up his hands apologetically.

  “I didn’t . . . mean it like that,” he mumbled. “I only meant, to . . . to marry.” He pointed at the unconscious young man at his side. “My charming son, Lothar, heard about your sis-sister. Your father wrote us a letter.”

  Magdalena turned white. She looked over at Jakob Kuisl, who was still engaged in conversation with the Regensburg hangman. They had already amassed a row of empty mugs in front of them.

  You can’t be serious, Father, Magdalena thought.

  “M-my Lothar is a strong lad,” Hörmann said and pulled up his son by his hair. Lothar gawked like a calf, his teeth crooked and his nose already turning like his father’s. He burped loudly once, then Hörmann let his son’s head fall back on the tabletop. “He may drink a little too much, but he’ll make a good hangman one day. I’m sure your father and I will come to an agreement.” Grinning, Hörmann raised his mug to Magdalena, who turned away in disgust.

  “Barbara is going to scratch Father’s eyes out once she sees who he has chosen for her,” she whispered to Simon. “We can only hope the other candidates are better looking.” To her annoyance, she realized Simon was somewhere else in his thoughts.

  “What’s the matter with you?” she asked. “You were strange earlier, too, with the dead girl.”

  “It’s about those coins your father found,” Simon replied, making sure no one else could hear him. “I think I’ve seen coins just like those before—the ones the merchants from Verona paid me a few days ago.”

  Magdalena listened intently as Simon told her about his suspicions. “So you think the coins all come from the same mint?” she asked eventually. “The same counterfeit money?”

  “Not really counterfeit, just too light. And they’re all brand new. The dead girl’s coins looked just as new, and I’m pretty sure they had the same embossing.” Simon rubbed his nose. “But to be absolutely sure, I’d have to take another look at them and hold them in my hand.”

  “I’m sure that could be arranged—Michael Deibler confiscated them. I don’t think he’ll just keep them.” Magdalena looked over to Deibler, who was talking to the red-haired executioner from Memmingen and laughing loudly. She smiled. “He doesn’t seem like a bad fellow, for a hangman.” She reached for her mug and raised it to Simon. “Let’s just make the most of this trip, damn it. Maybe Barbara’s other suitors won’t be as bad as this one.” She took a large gulp of her drink and wiped the foam from her lips. “At least the beer is tasty in Munich.”

  A few hours later, two drunken figures made their way through the lanes of Au. They swayed a little and had to hold on to each other from time to time. Beggars, scoundrels, and cutthroats watched their progress from dark nooks and crannies. Usually, drunks were easy prey for thieves, who were as numerous as stones in the Isar River here in Au. But no one touched these men.

  That was probably because one of them was the Munich hangman, and the other one looked very big and dangerous.

  Potential robbers crossed themselves and turned the other way. After all, they might one day depend upon the hangman’s goodwill—or at least a quick hand at their execution.

  The two men stopped at the Au creek, and the giant stuck his head into the water. Then he shook himself like a wet dog.

  “Brrr, that’s better,” Jakob Kuisl growled. “I think the last beer was off.”

  “Damn it, I hope for your sake this won’t turn out to be a waste of time,” Michael Deibler grumbled. “I should never have agreed to come along. Do you have any idea how much I still have to prepare for tomorrow? And my Walburga must be worried sick.”

  “Your dear Walburga would be even more worried if she knew her husband had been lying under the table with all the other drunks at the Radl Inn not long ago,” Kuisl replied with a grin. “You should be glad I got you out of there.”

  “You’re probably right. Damn that godforsaken booze!” Deibler dipped his head into the ice-cold water, too. When he straightened up again, he gave a roaring laugh. “You turn up here and immediately stick your nose in someone else’s business. So it’s true what they say, even outside hangmen’s circles: you and that scrawny medicus, you’re a real pair of sleuths.”

  “Well, my son-in-law’s more like a puppy,” Kuisl replied with a wink. “And now let’s go. I want to get to bed before sunrise.”

  He walked ahead and Deibler followed, still swaying slightly. Kuisl had boozed with the other executioners for half the night, especially with Philipp Teuber from Regensburg, who was a good friend. Kuisl didn’t drink as much as he used to a few years ago, since he’d promised his daughters, but an executioners’ meeting was a rare occasion, and the Munich beer tasted exceptionally good.

  But a nagging thought had kept Jakob Kuisl from fully enjoying himself all evening, ever since he’d fished that dead girl from the water. He simply had to double-check, if only to satisfy his curiosity. And curiosity had always been a better friend to the Schongau hangman than alcohol had. Therefore, he’d asked Michael Deibler to take him to the house of the Au clerk.

  In an alleyway near an old paper mill stood a house that looked a little more solid than the shacks around it. Deibler had told Jakob Kui
sl on the way that Au didn’t have its own prison, so the clerk sometimes locked suspects in one of his rooms at home until the trial—sometimes even in his sitting room.

  Kuisl hoped the girl’s body would still be there, too.

  Michael Deibler knocked at the door with a grim expression. The short walk had sobered him a little, but he still struggled to stand upright.

  “Gustl, open up, for heaven’s sake!” he shouted, bracing himself against the wall. “It’s me, the hangman!”

  A moment later, they could hear a thud from inside the house, as if someone had rolled out of bed.

  “By the Holy Virgin,” Gustl’s squealing voice rang out. “I swear I haven’t done anything, I—”

  “Idiot!” Deibler said, cutting him off. “Open the door, we’re not going to hang you. We just need to”—he swallowed back a hiccup—“check something.”

  The door opened, and an ashen-faced clerk in his nightgown stood in front of them. “I can’t sleep anyway with the dead body in my house,” Gustl said, shivering. “The priest wouldn’t wake up to take care of the wench. But first thing tomorrow—hey!”

  The two hangmen pushed past the clerk into the sitting room, and Kuisl knocked his head on the low doorframe on the way. He grumbled irritably. As if his head wasn’t sore enough already.

  The body was lying on a table in the middle of the room, poorly covered with a cloth. The sight sobered Kuisl instantly. He hadn’t noticed before how appallingly thin the girl in front of him was, and how young. She couldn’t have been older than sixteen or seventeen years, with pale skin, reddish-blonde hair, and a remarkable number of freckles for wintertime. The hangman was overcome with pity for this girl, who only yesterday had the same dreams and worries as so many other young women. Kuisl imagined the body on the table was Barbara. But then he pushed the thought aside and focused on his task. He leaned over the girl . . .

  And sniffed.

  “Hey, what’s he doing?” Gustl started up from behind. “This is my house, he can’t do that. That’s disgusting.”

  “This is the Au prison, and my friend is helping to solve a crime,” Michael Deibler said, still struggling with his hiccups. “So shut your mouth, Gustl.” The battle against the hiccups made Deibler appear even grumpier than usual. His face was as pale as a ghost. Frightened, Gustl stepped back and didn’t say another word.

  “So? Find anything?” Deibler asked after a while.

  Kuisl deeply inhaled the smell of the dead body, which had begun to stink a little despite the cold. The hangman had always been able to rely on his nose, but the faintly sweet smell he had noticed earlier that evening had vanished. Just like the dilated pupils. Down by the creek, the girl’s pupils had appeared wider to him than those of other dead bodies. Or had he been mistaken? He leaned close to the open mouth. There was still a faint trace of the smell here. His nose wandered down to her hands, which had clenched into fists in her final struggle. Kuisl was about to turn away when he thought he saw something sparkle between the fingers of her left hand.

  “She’s holding something,” he said with a frown. He turned to the clerk. “Do you have a pair of pliers? Rigor mortis has already set in, I can’t get into her fist.”

  “Oh God, don’t tell me you want to—” Gustl started, but Kuisl cut him off.

  “I think I can just . . .” He pushed against the hand until they heard a loud cracking. The clerk winced.

  “Ha, here we are!” Triumphantly, the hangman pulled out a thin chain with a tiny medallion. He took a closer look.

  “Hmm, a woman with a crown and halo. The Virgin Mary, I guess. I wonder what it was doing in her hand.”

  “Perhaps it was meant to protect her?” Michael Deibler suggested.

  “Well, whatever it means, at least I think I know what the poor thing died of,” Kuisl replied. “But I’d have to cut her open to know for sure.”

  Gustl groaned, and Deibler didn’t seem too enthusiastic, either. “Damn it, Kuisl!” Deibler spat. “I could lose my job over this. If the Munich judge finds out—”

  “Come on, you’re just as curious as I am to find out what this murder is about,” Kuisl replied. “So don’t be like that. It wouldn’t be the first time a hangman cut open a corpse.”

  “Yes, but not that of a murder victim. I’ve done it with gallows birds that no one claimed, out of curiosity, or if someone offers good money for a thief’s heart. The Munich judge even gave me express permission. But this can get us both in serious trouble.”

  Kuisl shrugged. “Not if I stitch her up neatly afterward and put her dress back on. No one will notice a thing.”

  Deibler hesitated, then sighed. “All right, then, for truth’s sake.”

  He handed Gustl, who had been listening to their conversation with wide eyes, two silver coins. “These are from the girl’s purse,” Deibler said. “You can keep them if you keep your mouth shut. You’ll get another thaler in one week. But if you talk . . .” The Munich hangman looked at him darkly.

  “I-I’ll be as silent as the grave,” Gustl stammered and quickly slipped the coins away.

  “Then let’s do it.” Kuisl pulled the girl’s dress up. He got out his knife, which he sharpened as frequently as his executioner’s sword, and made the first insertion from the breastbone downward.

  The hangman had cut open dozens of bodies in his life. Like Deibler, he was fascinated by the insides of humans, of which very little was known as yet. Kuisl believed he had more medical knowledge than most studied physicians from here to Schongau. He was the proud owner of a small Latin library at his house, hundreds of medicines, and countless surgical instruments, which he sometimes lent to his son-in-law.

  But he’s the physician, and I’m just a dishonorable hangman, Kuisl thought.

  Once he had cut through the thin layer of skin and fat at the top, followed by the connective tissue, he carefully pushed the innards aside. He briefly examined each organ, but he was mainly interested in one in particular—a plump red sack. When he found the stomach just beneath the breastbone, he slit it open, and out came a blackish-red mass.

  Floating in the mass were seeds and half-digested skins. A familiar sweet scent wafted through the room, confirming Kuisl’s suspicion. He grinned triumphantly.

  “Just like I thought,” he said.

  “By God, what did you think?” Deibler groaned, holding his nose shut. “Tell me! I already feel sick, anyway.”

  Gagging sounds from the next room indicated that Gustl hadn’t been able to stand the sight and smell of the dead body any longer. Jakob Kuisl threw the cloth back over the corpse and turned to the Munich hangman.

  “Her stomach is full of deadly nightshade,” he explained. “The poor thing must have eaten a whole bowlful of the berries—as a compote, I’m guessing, maybe mixed with blueberries or blackberries. I already smelled it earlier. Her pupils were still dilated down by the creek, so she hadn’t been poisoned long before she was found.” He pointed at the body under the sheet. “Her stomach was the proof.”

  “Hmm, so you think she poisoned herself, tied the sack of stones around her waist, and jumped into the creek?” Deibler asked.

  Kuisl thought. He would have liked to smoke a pipe, but he already had a headache from all the smoke in the tavern. “Deadly nightshade is nasty stuff,” he said contemplatively. “Three, four berries make you lusty, but any more and delirium sets in, until death. The wide pupils show that the girl was already out of her mind when she came to the creek. You don’t tie a bag of stones around yourself in that state. And someone would have noticed something—poison victims scream and rave as if they’re possessed.”

  “So what do you think?” Deibler jutted out his chin. “Go on. I can tell you’ve got a suspicion. It’s written all over your face.”

  “I believe someone poisoned this girl. The berries must have been preserved or dried, because she couldn’t have picked any fresh ones in winter. She probably devoured the berries with great appetite—I also saw traces of som
e kind of pastry in her stomach. The murderer waited for the poor thing to die and then carried her to the Au creek, tied a bag of rocks around her, and threw her in.”

  “Maybe that explains the medallion,” Deibler said. “Maybe she hoped it would reverse the poisoning and reached for it as she lay dying.”

  “Not even the mother of God could have helped her with that amount of berries in her stomach. Either way . . .” Kuisl nodded at the body. “This was no suicide, but cunning murder, Michl. And the murderer is somewhere out there.” He stretched wearily. “And now fetch me some needle and thread, so we can still get a few hours of sleep before the meeting.”

  As he stitched the corpse back up, Kuisl couldn’t shake the feeling of having overlooked something—something to do with the dead girl and his autopsy. But he was too exhausted to think clearly.

  And so this important detail slowly vanished from his consciousness again.

  3

  AU, FEBRUARY 3, AD 1672

  TWO MEN CROSSED THE ISAR Bridge to Au late that morning. One of the men had a limp, and the other was tall and broad shouldered and had no trouble making his way through the crowd with his intimidating stature. He carried a sack on his back and looked around intently. His bushy beard hadn’t seen a barber in a long time.

  And his nose was just as big and crooked as his father’s.

  Magdalena spotted her brother and uncle from over a hundred paces away. Waving, she ran toward them.

  “Georg, Georg!” she called out. “Over here!”

  Now Georg recognized her, too. He raised his arm and walked faster, so that the older man struggled to keep up. Jakob Kuisl’s brother, Bartholomäus, had limped since childhood, but it hadn’t stopped him from becoming an excellent executioner. He had been the hangman of Bamberg for many years now and also had a seat in the Council of Twelve. Georg, his nephew and journeyman, was supposed to take over from him one day. Jakob Kuisl had never gotten over the fact that his own son had chosen Uncle Bartholomäus, the more successful hangman, instead of staying in Schongau with his father.