The Play of Death

by Oliver Pötzsch

  “And you’re sure you don’t want to take anyone from Oberammergau along with you?” he finally asked. “Not even a clerk or the judge?”

  “My father-in-law hasn’t returned yet, and by the time I tell Lechner it may be too late,” Simon replied. “I really just want to see what this meeting is about. Perhaps it’s something quite innocent, and if not, I can still have someone go and get Lechner.” He shrugged. “Aside from him, to tell you the truth, I don’t trust anyone, least of all the judge.”

  Georg Kaiser laughed bitterly. “I understand you all too well. Sometimes this village is one huge snake pit.” He leaned down and ran his hand paternalistically through Peter’s hair. “Well, then, come along with me,” he said in a soothing voice. “I’ll ask my maid to make you some sweet porridge before I send her home, and I have a few nice books with illustrations from the Old Testament as well as a book about local legends that we can look at together. Well, what do you say?”

  Peter cried softly, but he gave Kaiser his hand and followed him into the main room. It almost broke Simon’s heart to see his son being led away looking so sad and forlorn, but he knew it was the best solution for the boy.

  “I’ll be back soon,” he said.

  Again there was a rumble of thunder and a bolt of lightning flashed above the Kofel.

  “Thank you,” Simon said to his old friend as they left. “I know that with you he’s in good hands.”

  Georg Kaiser turned and smiled. “I always wanted children myself, but God never granted my wish. Now at least I try to be a good substitute for a grandfather.”

  “It was maybe too easy for us,” Simon replied, a little more glibly than he intended. He waved to them one last time, then turned away and ran down the deserted street to the Ammer bridge.

  The approaching storm whipped up little whitecaps on the river.

  “You stubborn beast! This way, not over there. Can’t you ever listen?”

  Magdalena kept lashing out at Franziskus with her hazel whip, but the old donkey was unmoved by her entreaties and kept turning off the path toward a little brook trickling through the moss. The last rays of the sun fell on the houses of Unterammergau, and then night descended. In addition, a violent thunderstorm was approaching, and they still hadn’t arrived at their destination.

  Magdalena had been riding along for more than four hours on the donkey Father Konstantin had kindly lent her, and more than once she had wondered if she couldn’t have made faster progress on foot. But she was still weak, had a fever, had lost her appetite, and felt sick to her stomach, which was probably due to her pregnancy. As she pulled the donkey behind her, now and then her legs would give out and she’d have to take a seat on the animal. Along the side of the road she’d picked watercress and veronica for her cough, but it hadn’t gotten much better.

  Travelers she encountered from time to time on the old trade route stared at her wide-eyed. She still wore the black monk’s robe that Brother Konstantin had put on her while she was unconscious. Her unworldly appearance riding on a donkey like a pilgrim was reinforced by her pale, exhausted face and matted hair. People gave her a wide berth, possibly thinking that anyone looking like that would stink three miles against the wind. But perhaps it was just the grim, determined look on her face.

  Magdalena had only one goal—to get to Oberammergau and give Lechner the letter from the patrician Jakob Schreevogl. The secretary had to be informed about what was going on in Schongau! This was perhaps her last chance to save Barbara from torture and certain death at the stake.

  If it’s not already too late, she thought. More than three days had passed since she left Schongau, and it was likely the torturing had already begun.

  Courage, Barbara! Courage!

  Cursing loudly, Magdalena dismounted and tried to push Franziskus back onto the road with both hands. But the animal just looked at her and brayed. To Magdalena’s ears it sounded like mockery. Then the donkey sauntered over the embankment and down to the brook.

  “You stupid beast,” Magdalena cursed, settling down exhausted on a tree trunk covered with mushrooms. Now she understood why ass was such a popular swearword. These animals could drive you crazy with their stubbornness. In an odd way the behavior of the old donkey reminded her of her father.

  With trembling hands, she pushed the hood of the robe over her head. She was freezing, and it wasn’t all because of her fever. In the last hour, a cold wind had risen, black clouds loomed up over the mountaintops, and there was a smell of rain in the air. Impatiently she watched the donkey, which had now descended to the edge of the brook, and suddenly realized what the animal was looking for so stubbornly. A rotted, dilapidated trough was standing there on a flat bed of gravel. Someone had hung a little ring of salt there on a nail, no doubt for the cows and goats in the area. Franziskus began to lick it contentedly.

  Magdalena couldn’t help smiling. The animal loved salt just like little children love candy. The few lumps of salt that Brother Konstantin had given her were used up before they were even halfway there. Now at least she knew how to get Franziskus to move along toward Oberammergau.

  Slowly she got up and walked the few steps down to the trough. The nail was rusty and loose, and when she grabbed it, Franziskus licked the back of her hand with his long, warm tongue. She finally managed to pull off the crumbling white ring.

  “Come now, good fellow,” she said, walking backward with the ring of salt up to the street. “Here’s your candy.”

  Franziskus followed her like a loyal servant and soon she was sitting atop the donkey again. She leaned forward, holding the ring of salt in front of his nose, and soon he was trotting along. That wasn’t a very comfortable position, but at least they were moving toward Oberammergau much faster now. She thought she could already make out the steeples of the town at the far end of the moor.

  While the donkey trotted along, Magdalena pondered the dreadful events of the last few days. Evidently she’d accidentally crossed paths with people planning a crime—and it had to be a big one, as a young Schongau wagon driver had already been killed, and she, too, had narrowly escaped death. She still had no idea what was behind it all. There were hints that it involved the Tyrolean who’d tried to kill her, the same Tyrolean Barbara had seen in Schongau. In addition, the man had spoken about a Master in Oberammergau.

  The Oberammergau that now lay only a quarter mile away.

  Schongau, Soyen, Oberammergau . . .

  The names rang a bell, but whenever Magdalena reached out for it, the thought vanished.

  Schongau, Soyen, Oberammergau . . . Schongau, Soyen, Oberammergau . . .

  Magdalena gave the donkey one more slap on the side, which didn’t seem to make much of an impression on him. A thin white crust of salt had formed on her hand, and she licked it. It seemed to help, as she’d perspired a lot recently. But at the same time it brought back the memory of that horrible dream in which she was drowning in the barrel as if in a coffin and at the end there was a taste of a salty fluid like blood.

  Instinctively, she shuddered.

  Like blood . . .

  She let out a muffled cry. The taste in her mouth had set in motion a chain of thought that shot through her in a fraction of a second. Glances, scraps of conversation, faint smells and tastes instantly came together like stones of a mosaic.

  Salty like blood . . .

  And suddenly Magdalena knew why she was marked for death, why Lukas Baumgartner had been silenced, and what the Tyrolean was doing in the basement in Soyen. And everything Barbara had seen in Schongau, as well as the identity of the strange Master from Oberammergau, made sense.

  “Hey, Franziskus, what the hell do I have to do to make you run faster?”

  She spurred the donkey on so forcefully that it was shocked, brayed loudly, and started to run. Magdalena leaned far down over its back and hung on for dear life. Ahead of her, the mountains came together to form a narrow valley with Oberammergau at the other end beneath the low-lying clouds.
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br />   The solution to the riddle lay right in front of her.

  16

  OBERAMMERGAU, THE EVENING OF MAY 11, AD 1670

  THE FIRST RAINDROPS WERE FALLING as Simon set out for the Döttenbichl. The drops were icy and stung his face like needles, and the wind had become so cold that the medicus was freezing in his thin overcoat. Was winter returning again now, so late in the spring? On the other hand, Simon had heard it could snow in the mountains as late as June. Once again he missed his home in Schongau, which, though only twenty miles away, felt to him like a very different, far more congenial place.

  He hadn’t met a soul on his way across the Ammer River bridge, nor on the path along the pasture, which didn’t surprise him, as no sensible person would leave their house in such weather. Only someone with evil plans . . . A gust of wind blew Simon’s felt hat off, and it swirled through the air like a bundle of straw as he cursed and staggered across the muddy field, chasing it. When the hat finally came down, it landed right in a stinking pile of cow manure. Simon carefully picked it up and brushed it off. The hat, which he’d acquired in Augsburg, was of the highest-quality felt with a red rooster feather—the only valuable article of clothing he’d taken along on his trip to Oberammergau. Strangely, the mishap angered him more than all the other misfortunes of the day. It felt more normal to get riled about something that wasn’t as strange and inexplicable as the black riders, the stone circles, strange figurines, and murdered apostles.

  After a superficial cleaning, Simon replaced the hat more securely and continued stomping ahead through the cold rain. Soon he entered the forest and followed the familiar path along the flank of the Kofel. Simon knew he’d soon come to the sloping meadow adjacent to the little hill with a clearing on top that the Oberammergauers called the Döttenbichl. He still couldn’t figure out why Franz Würmseer wanted to meet anyone in a place like this. He remembered the children’s bones he’d found there and the stories from the woman up on the Alpine meadow over the Laber.

  Over there on the accursed Döttenbichl in ancient times they sacrificed men . . .

  Even though the sun had set just minutes ago, it was already almost as dark as the dead of night. Thunder rumbled across the high peaks, and the rain gradually turned into wet snowflakes that clung to Simon’s coat and skin. His teeth chattered.

  In the darkness, the medicus could make out some flickering lights on the hill, presumably torches. Evidently, the meeting had already started. Simon began to count, then he stopped in astonishment. This was no meeting of a few men in the forest, it was a large group. More than a dozen figures were up on the hill, and from somewhere out there in the wet snow and sleet came a deep, muffled murmuring and hissing. Simon took cover behind one of the boulders at the edge of the clearing to observe the activity at a safe distance. Only then did he notice flickering lights on the other side of the hill, as well. It was an entire sea of lights.

  Who in the world are all these people?

  Despite the rain and the cold, the medicus got down on his knees and crawled closer through the wet grass, hardly noticing that cow dung was soiling all his clothes. He was much too concerned about staying out of sight to think about the sweetish stench of decomposing manure.

  Gradually he was able to make out individual figures moving slowly toward the Döttenbichl, and to his astonishment and horror he noticed not just men but women and a few children among them. The strange murmuring and hissing that he’d heard came from these people, who were all looking up at the hill, where a strange structure was being raised. Simon gasped as he recognized the shape in the flickering light.

  It was a cross.

  And hanging on the cross, upside down, was a fat man, too far away to recognize, though Simon had no doubt who it was.

  Faistenmantel! They are crucifying Konrad Faistenmantel!

  The hill, the cross, all the people . . . Simon had to put his hand in front of his mouth to keep from screaming. The sight was like a perverse variation of the Passion—as if the devil had decided to write his own play.

  And only now did he realize what this huge gathering meant.

  The murderer is . . . the entire village.

  It seemed like the entire population of Oberammergau had gathered on the Döttenbichl to sacrifice the hated council chairman to some dark power.

  About a mile away, Jakob Kuisl plodded through snow and freezing rain toward Oberammergau, where only a few lights were visible in the gathering darkness. From a distance, the village looked strangely lifeless, as if it had been abandoned in a time of war and no one had yet come back to resettle there.

  Jakob pressed his floppy hat far down over his face and leaned down to protect himself from the biting wind and lashing rain. Behind him in the Graswang Valley, flashes of lightning bathed the Kofel in an eerie light, and distant thunder could be heard rumbling like a huge beast reluctantly backing away.

  Some time ago, Jakob had angrily tossed the knapsack he’d been using as a disguise in a ditch. He’d spent half the day looking for Xaver Eyrl, a hopeless undertaking, as he had to admit to himself now. The valley and surrounding mountains offered enough hiding places for a whole army, and not one of the peddlers and other dubious characters he’d questioned between Unterammergau and Ettal had seen Eyrl.

  Nevertheless Jakob was quite sure the young woodcarver was somewhere nearby. His job wasn’t finished, as six of the ten Pharisee figurines had not yet been handed out.

  Who were they meant for?

  And why?

  Back then in the dungeon, Jakob had looked into Eyrl’s eyes and had seen an almost maniacal gleam. This man was driven and wouldn’t rest until he’d reached his goal. However, it made no sense to continue searching in the snow and sleet—there was just one reason Jakob hadn’t stopped searching earlier.

  In the darkness, he could look for a light.

  It was wet and cold, and if Eyrl was somewhere out there, he’d certainly light a campfire, and even if it was a very small one, Jakob would see it. The hangman could rely on his sight almost as much as his famous sense of smell.

  And, fellow, you’re finally going to tell me what’s going on in the village.

  Until now, though, Jakob hadn’t spotted any light, not even in Oberammergau, which seemed increasingly strange to him.

  Where are they all? Are these stupid mountain people already sleeping?

  Well, no matter what was going on, it was damned cold and he urgently wanted his pipe. As he hurried back, he looked up and saw a glint of light in the mountains about a quarter mile away, just above a meadow. At first he thought it was another flash of lightning, but the light didn’t go out, and it moved.

  Jakob put his hand up to his forehead to shield his eyes from the rain and get a better view. It was either a woodcutter with a lantern, which was improbable in this weather, or it was Eyrl moving to another hiding place.

  Lost in thought, the hangman stroked his beard, now partly encrusted with ice. To find out the truth he’d have to go up there in the maelstrom—a rather unappealing and above all dangerous undertaking.

  “Damn, Eyrl, if it’s really you, I’ll skin you alive just for making me do that.”

  Cursing, Jakob turned off the road and headed back toward the mountains.

  Lying on his belly in a cold pile of cow dung, Simon could feel the wet seeping in through his coat and then his shirt underneath. Snowflakes danced before his eyes, but he didn’t feel the cold—he was much too horrified and confused to even notice. The sight was so gruesome that he instinctively tried to huddle down even deeper into the grass and mud.

  He shut his eyes, then opened them again, but that cross still towered above the Döttenbichl with Konrad Faistenmantel hanging upside down on it. Simon shuddered, thinking of the similarity.

  Like Saint Peter, who died the same martyr’s death in Rome . . . Faistenmantel wanted to take the part of Saint Peter, and now he’s taking it on more literally than he expected.

  It was now pitch-black, bu
t in the light of the torches Simon thought he saw blood dripping down from Faistenmantel’s temples. The councilor didn’t move and was probably unconscious, if not already dead.

  The view got better when a great fire was lit up on the hill. Flames crackled and shot up into the dark night sky, and Simon could see Franz Würmseer standing alongside the cross with a dark and determined look on his face. He crossed his arms and looked down at the crowd that had formed a narrow semicircle around the hill, their faces glowing in the light from the fire. Simon was shocked to see a number of people that he recognized.

  My God, how is this possible?

  The superstitious woodsman Alois Mayer was in the crowd, as were Adam Göbl and his sons. Simon saw some of the patients he had visited in just the last few days, as well as some of the familiar actors in the Passion play, such as the young carpenter Mathis, and Josef, the farmer. Among the female players, Mary was there, as was the young Mary Magdalene, holding her two children by the hand. They were picking their noses and curiously observing the activity on the Döttenbichl. Other children sat on their parents’ shoulders to get a better view. The people looked curious and expectant. Some appeared a bit reserved, but nowhere could Simon see a trace of sympathy for the crucified man. Simon was relieved to see that Georg Kaiser was not among the spectators, and he couldn’t find the priest or the judge, either.

  Nevertheless, it appeared that a large number of Oberammergauers had gathered there in the meadow—faithful, good people who went to church on Sunday and gave their tithes to the Ettal abbot, and who were now here to witness a real-life crucifixion.

  “Dear friends!” Franz Würmseer announced in a resounding voice while holding up his hand to plead for silence. “I’m pleased to see so many of you here tonight. Some have come because I sent word to you, and others are here perhaps out of curiosity or justified anger. But the one thing uniting us all is concern for our village.” He made a dramatic pause and looked down into the crowd below as if trying to look each person in the eye. “Oberammergau has seen bad times. For years, throngs of pilgrims and merchants passed through our town. Our numbers were few, but we all were of old, honorable lineage with certified, documented rights bestowed on us by none less than the German kaiser himself. And today?” His shrill voice rose in a crescendo like the tirade of a ranting priest. “Filthy laborers have settled in our valley like ticks and bugs. They come from far away because they’ve heard of our beautiful valley, but they don’t fit in here—they speak differently, dance other dances, sing other songs. But above all, they are lazy and bring evil into our valley. What has happened recently should serve as a warning to us all.”