The Play of Death Read online

  “And you?” asked Simon. “Do you also believe it was this Göbl?”

  Georg Kaiser had such a fit of coughing that he had to hold on to the shelves. When he’d gotten himself together and could speak again, he shook his head. “That’s not like him. Besides, Göbl couldn’t have tied Dominik to the cross all by himself and then set the cross upright. There had to be accomplices. You said that yourself last night.” He appeared lost in thought. “On the other hand, the Faistenmantel and the Göbl families have been feuding for a long time. The Göbls are painters—they see to it that the carvings are painted artistically, and in this way have risen to become the second most powerful family in town. Just like the Faistenmantels, they’re members of the so-called Council of Six that decides the town’s destiny.”

  “Let me guess,” Simon replied. “In this Council of Six, are they all feuding with one another?”

  “Let’s just say they’re all headstrong—and that’s why the Passion play is so important. It binds together the residents of the town, at least once every ten years.” Kaiser’s mien turned grim, and he sat back down at the table.

  “I’ll never understand why you came back to your birthplace,” Simon mused, shaking his head. “I mean, you had it all in Ingolstadt—a position at the university, a large apartment, a loving wife . . .”

  “Back then, ten years ago, when my Grete died,” Kaiser said softly, “I was suddenly alone. I couldn’t stand living in that large, beautiful professor’s house in Ingolstadt all by myself, and that’s no doubt the reason I came back eight years ago. This is where I was born. It’s my home.”

  “I’m sorry,” Simon replied. “That was really dumb of me.”

  “Forget it.” Georg waved his hand dismissively. “But you’re right, it’s hard to understand. Let’s just say, at least I know the people here, and I have a job.” He smiled. “The children love me, and a few of them will probably continue with their education later. I’ll definitely be able to make a scholar out of your son, perhaps a priest or—”

  Simon laughed. “Anything but a priest. Your gloomy Oberammergau grouch is more than I can take. What’s his name? Herele? Sounds like a sour-faced Swabian.” He frowned. “The venerable Father seems to have something against me, just like this judge Johannes Rieger. Just the fact that I’m from Schongau made me a thorn in his flesh.”

  “People here don’t like it when strangers stick their noses in our business—even if they come from just a few miles away.” Kaiser winked. “But don’t worry—as long as Konrad Faistenmantel is watching after you, you have nothing to fear in Oberammergau.”

  “Oh, isn’t that just fine,” Simon groaned. “Now I feel a lot safer.”

  Suddenly he had a hunch that the stranger who had entered the house earlier was perhaps not a harmless peddler or a tramp. In addition, Simon couldn’t imagine that Hans Göbl would crucify anyone just because he was intent on taking away his part in the Passion play. There had to be more to it than that.

  Georg Kaiser cleared his throat loudly, interrupting Simon’s thoughts. “It’s time I told you something about your patients and what you’re in for,” he began sardonically. “Over on that corner lives old Frau Reiser, presently suffering from a bad cough, just like most people here. Adam Zwink, the blacksmith, has been suffering from rheumatism for a long time, and his wife has a green, slimy discharge that you should take a careful look at, and . . .”

  Stoically, Simon listened to all the individual case histories, many of which resembled the symptoms he heard so often from his Schongau patients, though many of the Oberammergauers seemed to be suffering from a fever. Sympathetically, the Schongau medicus watched as Kaiser, pale and unshaven, kept coughing during his report. It seemed he had a bad case himself.

  The longer Simon listened, the more he became convinced that the weekly salary of twelve guilders wasn’t overly generous after all.

  In the high mountains above Ammergau, fog lay over the peaks like a huge funeral shroud. Ravens cawed loudly as they circled the rocky, snow-covered cone of Kofel Mountain, which had been standing watch over this region for hundreds of thousands of years.

  The Kofel had witnessed the coming of the little men dressed in furs and leather who performed bloody sacrifices at the foot of the mountain they revered as their god. Soon after that, it had looked down stoically on the Roman armies that had hewn a road through its gorges and over its passes on their way to war. It took no sides in the battle between the men in armor and the men in furs and leather, and no avalanche had come down to wreak destruction upon the warriors. The mountain had simply watched as they bashed each other’s skulls in. New blood, new sacrificial offerings followed. The screams of the tortured and executed men could be heard up on the rocky, ice-cold summits where eagles had built their eyries.

  The mountain was indifferent—as it had always been.

  Then came the knights, and with them the castle whose building blocks had been ripped from the mountain’s body. The castle had crumbled long ago, and only scattered, moss-covered blocks of stone gave evidence of its builders’ childish desire for power.

  A monastery had been built, and pilgrims and merchants had made their way through the mountain’s passes, bringing with them war and the Plague. Like tiny ants the two-legged creatures had poured into the valley in a steady stream, always enthusiastic, eager not to offend the mountain—and when they died, others came to replace them.

  They played a strange, senseless game.

  The Kofel had seen so many of them it wasn’t surprised at the strange new creatures now coming through the passes. They were small, even smaller than the other creatures, wearing pointed hats and using ice axes and shovels to dig their way through the snow, which even now, in May, lay as heavy as lead over the rock.

  The little creatures hummed a song, no doubt to make the work easier, but it was a sad song and their hoods trembled slightly, as if they were crying.

  Their ice axes made tiny holes in the mountain’s side.

  Chop . . . chop . . . chop.

  The hacking and humming were carried away by the wind. Chop . . . chop . . . chop.

  Sometimes, at intervals that were just moments for the mountain but centuries for the creatures, the Kofel stirred. Then the earth rumbled and shook, and the little buildings inhabited by men collapsed.

  The mountain was listening to its own inner voice.

  Soon it would stir again.

  But until then it would observe the strange little creatures with their pointed hats, their ice axes, and their sad song.

  Chop . . . chop . . . chop.

  Chop . . . chop.

  Chop.

  The mountain was indifferent to them and their plans.

  4

  SCHONGAU, THE MORNING OF MAY 5, AD 1670

  GRUMBLING, AND WITH HIS HEAD pounding, Jakob Kuisl stomped along behind the diminutive Constable Andreas, who kept turning around anxiously to eye the hangman. It had just occurred to Jakob that he’d left his beloved tobacco back at the house. A few puffs would perhaps have helped his mood a bit, but then he remembered that the secretary, Johann Lechner, despised tobacco. If Schongau had not been a Catholic town through and through, the secretary could have been viewed as a crotchety, pleasure-hating Protestant.

  The constable and the hangman walked together through the stinking Tanners’ Quarter down by the river. The odd pair was observed from the windows above by the tanners as they hung out their leather hides to dry. A few called down some taunting remarks, but most were silent or simply made the sign of the cross when the hulking giant walked past.

  The executioner was a feared man in Schongau, avoided by everyone. In addition to executions and torture, Kuisl was also responsible for cleaning up dirt and garbage in town and making sure that dead animals were not left lying too long in the streets. He was also considered a skillful healer. Despite all these useful occupations, the good citizens of Schongau shunned Jakob Kuisl as much as possible. The very sight of an executio
ner supposedly brought misfortune; accidental contact with the hangman had cost many respectable workers their membership in the guild.

  As he climbed the hill toward the Lech Gate with the constable, the hangman was fighting his hangover and racking his brain, trying to figure out the last time he’d spent an evening without getting sloshed. That must have been before the time he learned his son, Georg, would not return to Schongau. Jakob’s younger grandson, Paul, seemed interested in his family’s trade, but as he was just six years old, he was of course much too young. It was unlikely that Jakob would live long enough to take him on as his successor.

  His family legacy would die out, and there was nothing he could do about it.

  They passed through the Lech Gate, entering Schongau from the south, where the small, shabby taverns that in recent years had been Jakob’s second home were located. Usually the hangman would sit at a table alone, away from other guests, silently drinking his beer. People didn’t dare to criticize him publicly, but he could feel their stares like daggers in his back.

  Jakob looked up at the plaster falling from the taverns, the junk shops, and the homes of the workers. Then his eyes passed over piles of garbage, the crumbling city wall, and all the beggars and injured war veterans huddling in the entryways to the houses. The hangman couldn’t help thinking back to his childhood, when Schongau was a rich, powerful city. Merchants from far away came through town via the Lech River and the major commercial routes, bringing amber, spices, pickled herring, cloth, silk, and precious salt from Reichenhall and Hall in Tyrol. But since then, the major commercial routes had been relocated, and Schongau wagon drivers had complained for a long time that their business was declining more and more. Many of them had taken second jobs as laborers down on the river or in the pottery shops sprouting up in town. Money, which had once flowed so abundantly in Schongau, had gone elsewhere.

  The second Sunday mass, attended primarily by noble families, had just come to an end, and amid the sounds of many church bells, people streamed from the parish church toward the market square, which was pleasant and warm in the morning sun. People chatted, gossiped, and laughed, but when the hangman passed by, they suddenly fell silent or looked away in embarrassment. Jakob Kuisl held his head high and regarded them with disdain. He had done so much for this town—he’d driven away and executed the robbers, and ten years ago it was only his sharp thinking that led to the apprehension and execution of an insane child murderer. Kuisl’s cures had saved many lives, yet the noblemen always treated him like dirt. The poor people, however, respected and sometimes revered him.

  But all that was about to change.

  “Ah, Herr Kuisl,” came a voice from the crowd. It was Melchior Ransmayer, just exiting the church. The doctor was wearing a bandage under his wig, and his smile was thin and extremely hostile. “So they finally got you out of the house, you old drunkard and ruffian. I see the constable is already leading you to the dungeon, where you’ll pay for your vile attack.”

  “I’m not taking him to the dungeon, but to Lechner,” Andreas responded wearily. “The secretary wanted to see him and—”

  Ransmayer seemed not even to have heard the constable and stepped right up to the hangman. “I’ll make sure they whip you and drive you out of town, Kuisl,” he snarled. “You can go and join the robbers that you are accustomed to hanging. And who knows, perhaps in a few years a new hangman will put the old one on the wheel and break his bones.”

  “Better watch your tongue, Herr Doktor,” Kuisl said, looking down at Ransmayer, who was at least two heads shorter. His voice was loud enough that bystanders could hear him. “I once hanged a quack doctor just like you. He hadn’t been able to keep his fly closed either and was jumping like a goat on women in town until finally a decent man caught him in the act out in the street. He confessed on the gallows, but it didn’t save him.”

  Melchior Ransmayer turned white as a sheet. “How dare you threaten me, hangman!” he snapped. He turned to the churchgoers who had been following the argument silently and with their heads lowered up to that point.

  Ransmayer pointed at Kuisl. “This man maliciously struck me down yesterday,” he announced. “It’s a miracle I didn’t die.”

  “Indeed, that’s a miracle,” Kuisl said. “Anyone who gropes my daughter usually doesn’t see the light of day again. Barbara may only be a hangman’s daughter, but we Kuisls also have our pride.”

  Some of the more poorly dressed churchgoers nodded approvingly, but the noblemen all had angry faces.

  “All the things one has to put up with nowadays from dishonorable people,” said an old lady with a stiff ruff collar as she fumbled with her prayer book. “Stick the old hangman in a wine barrel, throw it in the Lech, and let’s find another one.”

  Another lady in a black dress agreed. “It’s time the town council puts the lower class in their place, just as Burgomaster Buchner demanded long ago. This city needs a stronger hand.” She pointed at the hangman in disgust. “You see what it leads to.”

  “Indeed,” her husband chimed in. He was the elderly Wilhelm Hardenberg, a trustee of the Holy Ghost Hospital, who in recent decades had acquired much money and an impressive paunch. He gave Kuisl a withering glance. “I remember his father well—he was just the same,” he informed the bystanders. “At that time I was still a child, but I remember very well how we threw stones at the old drunk.”

  That was too much for Jakob. He lunged like a bull at Hardenberg, who froze with fear. Only at the last moment did Andreas grab the hangman by the shirt collar, which ripped with an ugly sound.

  “Eh, it’s probably better for us to hurry over to the palace,” Andreas whispered, “before another unfortunate incident occurs here that we’ll all regret.”

  Jakob nodded slowly. He took a deep breath, then followed the constable through the broad Münzgasse, the main street of the town, while Ransmayer continued shouting behind them.

  “Your father was a drunkard, and so are you, hangman!” he cried. “You have dishonor in your blood to the seventh generation. Remember my words when they start breaking your bones.”

  Jakob Kuisl tried not to listen and continued stomping along behind Andreas.

  “Don’t pay any attention to him,” the constable said quietly. “I know enough people who hope the doctor and also old Hardenberg die of the Plague and go to hell. This town may be ruled by the rich but it’s we simple Schongau people who keep them alive . . . and the dishonorable ones too,” he said with a faint smile. “By the way, my wife needs some more of the ointment you prepared at the last full moon.”

  “She can just stop by at my house,” Kuisl said. “I won’t bite anyone’s head off, even if she’s the wife of the town constable.”

  Soon Ransmayer’s shouts faded in the distance and the street became emptier. The city dungeon now appeared in front of them, and alongside it the Schongau Palace on the northern edge of the town.

  In recent years, the inhabitants of Schongau had been trying to gradually repair the damage from the Great War, but the building in front of them hardly deserved the name “palace.” At one time, the great electors had stopped here, but now the massive structure with its war-damaged tower, dilapidated sheds, and threshing floor served only for minor administrative purposes. As he had so often done, Kuisl crossed the ivy-covered inner courtyard, where a few soldiers on duty were lounging around the rusty cannons. When they saw their colleague with the hangman, they grinned.

  “Well, you really screwed up trying to arrest the hangman, eh?” a fat old guard called. “But the hangman didn’t eat you up, even if you’re such a sweet little fruitcake.”

  “Aw, shut up,” Andreas replied. “Just tell me where Lechner is.”

  The other man shrugged. “Well, where do you think? Doing paperwork up in the office, unless maybe you’ve seen the boring old scribbler somewhere else.”

  The other guards broke out laughing but abruptly fell silent on seeing a haggard figure in the doorway at the top of
the stairs. He had a black cloak and an equally black beard with two piercing eyes in his almost unnaturally pale face.

  “The old scribbler is working on the weekly pay for the watchmen at the castle,” the man said in a voice that was soft and slightly nasal. “But I can also put off this work for a few months. On further thought, I’ll do that in at least one case.”

  The heavyset watchman cleared his throat and his face turned bright red. “Your Excellency, I’m sorry if I—”

  Lechner silenced him with a slight wave of his hand, then nodded to Jakob. “Delighted, hangman, that you’ve stopped by, even if it took longer than I expected. Did you two get lost?”

  “Eh, there were some disturbances by the church,” Andreas replied. “But thank God all of us here have a calm disposition.”

  Lechner smirked. “I know. Especially our esteemed hangman.” He motioned to Jakob. “Come on in, without the guards. We have some things to talk about.”

  Under the suspicious eyes of the watchmen, Jakob Kuisl climbed the worn steps as Lechner disappeared again inside his dark office. The executioner stooped in order to get through the low portal and found himself in an almost bare, windowless room illuminated only by the light of a few candles in the niches of the wall. Books and parchment rolls were piled on a table in the middle of the room. Lechner took a seat behind the desk and motioned for Kuisl to sit down on a low wooden stool.

  The hangman tried to remember how many times he’d sat there before. Johann Lechner worked in Schongau especially in major criminal cases as court secretary on behalf of the elector, one of the German princes entitled to elect the kaiser, the ruler of the Holy Roman Empire. Many times in the past Lechner had summoned the Schongau hangman to this room to dictate the type of execution and the harshness of the torture.