Magdalena sighed and continued sipping from her wineglass that was almost as thin as parchment. She hadn’t learned a single thing that might help her father, and increasingly she felt like just some pretty painted doll placed amid vases as decoration. Just what had she expected? Here she was, nibbling on partridge wings caramelized with honey while her father languished in prison! It was time to put an end to this act.
She was about to hurry toward the door when someone leaned against the wall next to her and raised his glass in a toast. The elderly gentleman with thinning hair and a pince-nez seemed strangely out of place in his simple black frock coat and old-fashioned ruff, especially in the midst of all this finery. Having overheard his conversations with Silvio, she already knew he was none less than the Regensburg city treasurer. In their negotiations concerning sweet Vin Santo and Venetian ravioli, the men had mentioned sums of money that took Magdalena’s breath away.
And the very man who had just requested an additional credit of five thousand gold ducats now stood next to her and asked, “Have you tried the sweet almond paste? It’s called marzipan. Divine!” The gentleman gallantly filled her glass with wine from a glass carafe.
Magdalena managed a smile. “If I’m honest, I don’t care so much for sweets. I’d prefer a decent roast goose.”
The treasurer chuckled. “Silvio Contarini already told me you’re a real interesting woman. May I ask where you come from?”
“Oh, from around Nuremberg,” Magdalena said, picking the first place that came to mind. “A relative of mine is the valet for the Elector’s cavalry captain.”
“I wasn’t aware the cavalry captain had a valet.”
“Well, only since very recently,” the hangman’s daughter explained without batting an eyelash. “His wife always complained that he never took off his boots, even in bed-that he went around looking more like his own horse’s groom.”
The treasurer frowned. “But doesn’t the Elector’s cavalry captain live in Munich?”
“He’s moved. In Nuremberg there’s more-uh-forest for hunting. You understand…”
Good Lord, what am I saying? Magdalena thought in despair. Is there a hole somewhere around here I can crawl into?
“Hunting can become a real passion. I hunt quite a bit myself.” The patrician raised his glass to her with a smile. Magdalena had a growing suspicion the treasurer was toying with her. Had Silvio perhaps told him who she really was?
Or had he learned it from someone else?
As the treasurer continued speaking, he looked absent-mindedly out one of the large windows. “Perhaps this cavalry captain just developed a distaste for city life, particularly now in the summer, when it stinks to high heaven and your clothes stick to your body-and then there’s the constant, even imminent, danger of fire, as well.” All of a sudden he looked at Magdalena straight on. “I expect you’ve already heard of last night’s conflagration?”
The hangman’s daughter’s halfhearted smile froze on her face. “Of course. Who hasn’t?”
“An awful affair.” The old man nodded deliberately and regarded Magdalena through his pince-nez like an exotic beetle through a magnifying lens. “The word is that it was set by two arsonists-a man and a woman. We have quite good descriptions of both, and it looks as though the responsibility’s fallen to me to deal with this wretched business. As if I don’t have enough on my plate already… But here, I’m going on and on!” The treasurer instantly transformed into a kindly old man again. “I haven’t even introduced myself yet. My name is Paulus Mamminger; I’m responsible for the financial matters in our great city.” He made a small, stiff bow.
“Certainly an important job.” Sweat was streaming down Magdalena’s back now and surely seeping through her bodice. Her desperate attempt to keep up proper formal speech sounded ridiculous, even to her own ears, and she harbored no doubts the treasurer must have seen through her long ago.
Mamminger sighed and sipped from his glass. “At present not a soul in the council envies me this job. The coming Reichstag is costing us a fortune! And alas, I can’t find enough suitable lodging for the ambassadors and noblemen!” He shook his head, giving way to a long pause.
“And why has the kaiser summoned a meeting of the Reichstag at all?” Magdalena finally asked in an attempt to keep the conversation moving. “I’ve heard it’s about the war with the Turks. Is that true?”
The treasurer grinned. “Child, where have you been hiding? Of course it is! The kaiser needs money to wage war on his most hated enemy. We don’t want those heathens laying siege to Vienna again, do we? So, Kaiser Leopold is passing the collection plate around, and we Regensburgers are stuck with the expense of playing host yet again to spoiled noblemen from all over the empire.”
He sighed deeply, and Magdalena nodded in understanding.
“Just yesterday the Palatine Elector’s quartermaster came to visit me,” he continued, “and His Excellency is insisting on moving here into the Heuport House. But this is the residence of the Venetian ambassador, and he refuses to give up his home for anyone. Perhaps you’d be so kind as to speak with him? Contarini just may listen to you.”
“I fear it’s a hopeless case.” Armed with a plateful of chocolates, Silvio had approached them unnoticed. He now placed an arm around Magdalena’s sweaty shoulder and offered her some sweets. “Dear Mamminger, you’ll never persuade me to abandon this wonderful domicile,” he said with a smile. “Unless la bella signorina somehow persuades me to settle in Schongau with her.”
Mamminger frowned. “Schongau? What do you mean, Schongau? I thought-”
“I’ll leave you gentlemen to yourselves now,” Magdalena said, curtsying awkwardly, as if she were a bit tipsy. “The wine has gone to my head-I need a bit of fresh air, I’m afraid.” She held her hand in front of her mouth and yawned, then stepped gingerly in the direction of the exit, still deflecting the mean glares of the other women.
Head held high, she strode through the door and swaggered down a broad stairway into the deserted courtyard. Only then did she allow herself to collapse, exhausted, on a bench and take some deep breaths. No doubt the women were all in a tizzy now, gossiping viciously about the clumsy country wench. Outside, here under the stars, she could at least have a bit of peace.
Almost reverently, Magdalena looked around her at this little bit of paradise in the midst of the city. Scattered among the rosebushes and lemon trees were juniper bushes trimmed into geometric figures. As tall as a man, they looked like mythical creatures in the light of the full moon. None of the guests had ventured into the garden, so the sounds of laughter and music sounded far off. Somewhere in the bushes a nightingale was singing.
Despite her idyllic surroundings, Magdalena was close to tears. Mamminger seemed to suspect something, and it was quite possible that at that very moment he was telling Silvio all about it. What was she doing here anyway, amid all these vain old goats? She wanted to be back with Simon, back in her little world of Schongau, with its faded half-timbered houses, cheap taverns, and down-to-earth farm folk. Only then did it occur to her she could never again return to Schongau; she would never again hear the sometimes gentle, sometimes scolding voice of her mother or stroke the cheeks of her peacefully sleeping siblings. Schongau was at the other end of the world, and her father was here in Regensburg, rotting away in a dark hole, awaiting execution.
A bitter taste rose in Magdalena’s throat. If only Simon were here with her! What would he say if he saw her made-up this way, in a hoop skirt and velvet jacket? The sordid mistress of the Venetian ambassador, a painted doll…
Her sobs were cut short by the sound of something creeping along the garden wall very close by.
Instinctively she slid down from the bench and crouched behind a juniper bush. From there she watched a black figure emerge from the window of a neighboring house and slip almost silently into the garden. When the stranger turned around to face her, she almost cried out.
It was the man from the coffeehouse,
the same man who’d torn the Venetian ambassador’s jacket and from whom they’d just barely escaped with their lives. As before, he wore a broad cloak with a hood drawn far down over his face and a rapier dangling at his side. His fluid movements reminded the hangman’s daughter of a spider deftly closing in on a fly caught in its web.
Magdalena was about to turn and run when she realized the man hadn’t even noticed her. He looked around warily before sitting down on a bench, as if he was waiting for something, and kept nervously scanning the broad staircase that led up to the patrician’s house and the ballroom.
Magdalena backed farther onto the dewy lawn behind the juniper bush. She was so close to the bench that she could hear the man breathing.
As the cathedral bells struck midnight, a shadow descended the stairway. Magdalena lifted her head for a moment and froze.
It was the Regensburg city treasurer!
Paulus Mamminger walked purposefully toward the stranger and sat down beside him.
“We don’t have much time,” he whispered. “Contarini will become suspicious if I stay away too long. What’s so urgent that we can’t communicate in the usual way?”
“It’s about the girl,” the stranger said, slightly hoarse. “I think she knows something.”
“Why do you think that?”
“She was at the bathhouse with the medicus. I saw them both there myself.”
Magdalena’s heart skipped a beat. He barricaded them in the well! And he set the fire! The men’s voices were now so low she could hardly hear either of them, so she crept closer to the bench inch by inch.
“How could the girl have found anything more in the bathhouse than we did?” Mamminger wondered.
“I don’t know. It’s just a suspicion, but if she really does know something, it won’t be long before Contarini learns of it, too, and then-”
A juniper branch cracked beneath Magdalena’s foot, and though she froze, it was too late. The stranger had heard something.
“What was that?” he whispered, and stood up. Like a beast of prey trying to detect a scent, he turned his head in all directions.
“Damn you!” Mamminger whispered. “If someone has been eavesdropping on us, then God help you! I should never have agreed to meet with you here!”
“Wait.” The stranger walked slowly toward the juniper bush behind which Magdalena crouched, trembling. Step by step he drew closer.
When he was nearly on top of the bush, Magdalena jumped up and threw a handful of pebbles in his face. Cursing, he swiped at his eyes, and in the ensuing confusion Magdalena ran toward some rosebushes growing up a wooden lattice on the wall of a nearby house.
“Damn it! That’s the girl! Stop her!” Mamminger cried, but the hangman’s daughter had already climbed up the shaky trellis of roses and wild raspberries to an open window. Ignoring the sound the red jacket made as it ripped and the thorns digging into her hands, she scrambled over the windowsill and tumbled into the room behind. Breathless, she saw she’d landed in the servants’ quarters. Next to a battered wooden table and a chest was a narrow bed with a girl in it, a nightcap pulled down over her head. The girl sat up, rubbed her eyes, and when she saw the hangman’s daughter began to scream.
“Excuse the interruption. I’m on my way out,” Magdalena mumbled as she ran to a door on the opposite side of the room and onto the balcony behind it. The pitch of the screaming intensified behind her, and the sound of heavy steps followed. Her pursuer was close on her heels.
Magdalena carefully lowered herself over the balcony and jumped the last few yards down. Her landing, broken by a bed of turnips and lamb’s lettuce, was surprisingly soft. Without turning around she ran through the fresh garden soil, her pointed heels sinking into the damp ground like plowshares.
Damned women’s stuff! Didn’t I tell Silvio these tiny shoes would kill my feet?
She stopped for a moment to remove her shoes, then continued on, barefoot. The stranger had to be just a few steps behind her by now; she could hear his boots slurping as they sank into the wet ground. She tramped across the vegetable garden, dashed through a small orchard, and finally arrived at a little gate in the wall.
It was locked.
Desperate, Magdalena threw herself against the warped, rotting wood. The gate gave way with a crash, and she slipped through to find herself at a forking narrow lane. On a whim she ducked behind the open gate and held her breath. She listened in stunned silence as the stranger crashed through the gate and paused briefly before dashing off again. His steps echoed down the dark lane until she couldn’t hear them at all.
Magdalena waited a bit before emerging from behind the gate. She ran in the opposite direction-it didn’t matter where, just away from this place, away from the stranger, the ball, the smug nobles and patricians-all of whom seemed like traitors. Away from Silvio.
In her tattered red dress, bare feet, and velvet jacket reduced to rags, she looked like an angel cast out from heaven.
Amid the sacks of flour in the mill, Simon let the stiletto slip from his hand as he stared back at the robed man before him. His mouth gaping, it was a while before he could speak.
“You’re here… with the freemen?” he stuttered. “But why-I mean how…?”
The Regensburg raftmaster tossed his hood to the ground.
“Yes, it’s me,” Karl Gessner replied. “You won’t give a man peace until you learn the truth. But don’t say later I never warned you. You’ve still got time to turn back.”
Simon shook his head in silence.
“That’s what I thought.” The raftmaster sighed, giving a sign to the other hooded men that they were no longer needed.
“Leave me alone with the doctor for a while,” he told them. “I hardly believe he presents a danger to us.”
“But master,” one of the hooded men stammered, “you removed your hood. The man might betray you. Shouldn’t we-”
“He won’t betray us,” Gessner interrupted, finding a seat on a bag of flour. “If what the beggar king told me is correct, then he’s on our side. You may go now.”
The men bowed and left the mill, murmuring. Simon sensed they weren’t all in agreement with their master.
“And so you’re the leader of the freemen?” the medicus said, impressed. “The Regensburg raftmaster? I expected to find a gang of outcasts, lawless…”
“Murderers and scoundrels?” replied Gessner, finishing his thought. “That’s what the patricians say, but the truth is something else.” He motioned for Simon to take a seat alongside him on one of the gray linen sacks. He pulled out a bottle from under his coat, took a long swig, and handed it to the medicus. Although Simon sipped cautiously from the bottle, he burst into a coughing fit. This was high-proof liquor. All the same, he took another deep gulp. After all the frightening things that had happened, he badly needed something to calm him down.
“To the councilmen we’re no more than a gang of criminals,” the raftmaster continued. “But really they’re the bandits.”
“What do you mean by that?” Simon asked.
Gessner stood up and began pacing among the towering sacks of grain.
“Do you see this?” He slapped his palm on one of the bulging linen sacks. “This is good flour-harvested by farmers, ground by millers, and made into bread by bakers. It’s a tremendous job that we workers do every day. We break our backs for it, and all profit goes to line the pockets of the fat merchants!” He spat into the flour dust. “In other cities the workers at least have a voice in their Inner Councils, but not here in Regensburg. Over the centuries patricians have forced us out of the council and taken all the important offices for themselves. Fifty families determine the fate of thousands, and for the last few years now only Protestants have been allowed citizenship!” The raftmaster had worked himself up into a fury. “Is that just?” he demanded, kicking over a pile of wood.
“Regensburg doesn’t even have a mayor anymore!” Gessner continued angrily. “They simply abolished the office becau
se it was filled by popular vote. Now the treasurer rules the council, and he’s one of their own. In Regensburg money rules, not the people! And all that after we fought a long and bitter war to free ourselves from the duke and the bishop. The Free Imperial City of Regensburg-ha! We could be free, but instead we allow ourselves to be led around by the nose like a flock of sheep.”
Gessner had come to the end of his speech. For a long moment there was silence, and then Simon cleared his throat.
“And what do your freemen intend to do about it?”
The raftmaster shrugged dismissively. “In England a while back they beheaded their king and founded a republic. The people won’t let themselves be bossed around so easily anymore.”
“So-revolution? Is that what you want?”
Sighing, the raftmaster sat down on the flour sacks beside the medicus and took another deep swig from his bottle. “We’ve tried peaceful means, believe me,” he said softly. “We pleaded with the council to negotiate, but derision and punishment are all we got. Three years ago the patricians hanged some of our best men for treason and displayed their impaled heads at the city gates. Since then we’ve been working in secret, but my men have grown very afraid of being found out. Most of them have families.”
“I’ve heard that the bathhouse owner Andreas Hofmann was also a freeman,” Simon replied. “Is that why he was killed?”
Gessner nodded. “Hofmann was my deputy. The patricians must have found out and cut his throat, and his wife’s, too, as a deterrent to the rest of us. But they needed a scapegoat, so-”
“And that was the Schongau hangman,” Simon interrupted.
The raftmaster laughed despondently. “He ran right into their trap! The alleged letter from his brother-in-law, the forged will-it was all a setup!”
Simon bit his lip. “Is there no way to save him?”
“I’m afraid there isn’t.” Lost in thought, the raftmaster fingered the red kerchief he wore knotted around his throat. “The patricians will have the Schongau executioner put to death as quickly as possible, if only to cover up the murders of Hofmann and his wife. The only hope we have now is to find some clear proof to present to the council.” Gessner looked at Simon questioningly. “Nathan told me you went to the scene of the crime. Did you notice anything suspicious?”
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