The Beggar King hd-3

by Oliver Pötzsch

  “It’s got to be a fever,” Simon said. “Hallucinations that-”

  “Weidenfeld!” Kuisl shouted through his pain. “He’s out for revenge!”

  “My God!” Magdalena put her hand over her mouth again. “There’s that name again. Who’s this damned Weidenfeld?”

  The alarm bells were still ringing, and over them the guards’ voices sounded suddenly much closer than before, only a few streets away now. A window opened directly above the little group, and a toothless old man in a nightcap glared down at them suspiciously.

  “Quiet, goddamn it! You good-for-nothing drunks! If you want to have a good time, take your woman somewhere else!”

  Simon grabbed the nearly unconscious hangman by the shoulder and led him quickly behind the barrels.

  “The bishop’s palace,” he whispered to Magdalena, who knelt down next to him. “We have to go there and ask the church for asylum. That’s our only chance! We certainly won’t make it out of town tonight.”

  “And do you really think the bishop will grant asylum to a suspected murderer?” Magdalena asked skeptically.

  Simon nodded enthusiastically. “Asylum in the church has been sacred since time immemorial! Only the bishop has the power to make and enforce laws on lands belonging to the church, so once your father makes it there, the city guards are powerless.”

  “Isn’t that just wonderful!” Magdalena rolled her eyes. “The bishop himself, rather than the city, will have the personal privilege of breaking my father on the wheel. What a relief!”

  “At least we’ll gain some time,” Simon replied. “I’m sure once we know what your uncle’s alchemical experiments were all about, we’ll get a better handle on what the big secret is. Then maybe we can start to prove your father’s innocence.”

  “And if not, then all this will have been for naught!” Magdalena shook her head. “Out of the question! My father’s free now. Why would I put him right back in danger again?”

  “Just look at him!” Simon pointed at Kuisl, who crouched behind a wine barrel, his head hanging down to his chest, breathing heavily. “We’ll be lucky if we can even make it to the bishop’s palace. But if we do, at least your father will get the care he obviously needs.”

  All of a sudden the voices of the guards sounded very close, their footsteps pounding on the hard-packed clay soil. Magdalena watched as two of them charged around the corner and into the narrow lane. She held her breath; she could feel her exhausted father leaning hard against the barrel, and the barrel itself was now threatening to topple under his weight. Mustering all her might, she hugged her father close, hoping to keep both him and the barrel upright. The bailiffs raced past and soon disappeared in the darkness.

  “Very well,” Magdalena whispered. “We’ll do as you say. But if they harm so much as a single hair on my father’s head, you’ll be sleeping alone for many years to come!”

  Simon smiled. “Believe me, that’s the last thing on my mind at this point. Come on, now; let’s wake the sleeping giant.”

  They gave Jakob Kuisl a few brisk slaps in the face until he came at least partway to, then each took an arm and led him away.

  “We’ll get you to the cathedral square as fast as we can,” Simon whispered. “I hope the people will just figure we’re lugging a drunk friend home.”

  “Get… your… hands… off me,” the hangman growled. “I can… walk by myself.”

  “Don’t make such a fuss, Father,” Magdalena said. “It’ll do you some good if you let your daughter help you out a bit from time to time. You’re not a young fellow anymore.”

  “Snotty little… bitch.” Kuisl gave up, collapsing into Simon’s and Magdalena’s arms. The hangman’s daughter doubted he had any idea what they planned to do with him.

  “Let’s go now!” Simon urged. “Before the guards show up again.”

  He and Magdalena stumbled through the dark city, shouldering the hangman’s dead weight between them. Kuisl collapsed again and again, forcing them to stop each time. Twice they encountered guards too busy to be bothered by a trio of revelers as they frantically poked their torches into every last nook and cranny in search of their convict. They had better things to do tonight than be distracted by a handful of drunks.

  After an anxious quarter-hour Simon and Magdalena finally came to the deserted Krauterermarkt Square, where the entrance to the bishop’s palace was located. They were disappointed to find that the doors, nearly fifteen feet high, were locked.

  “Damn!” Magdalena said. “We might have expected something like this.”

  From a distance the heavy, iron-studded portal seemed about as inviting as the gates to hell. It rose above them darkly, ending at the top in a pointed arch and alcove displaying several coats of arms. In the left wing of the door they spotted a small porthole, also shut tight.

  “How do you intend to get in?” Magdalena asked. “Just knock?”

  “You forget I have an invitation from the bishop’s brewmaster.”

  “Yes, for yourself. But does it include permission for a hangman’s daughter and a fugitive murderer?”

  Simon rolled his eyes. “Must you always be so petulant? Before, we followed your plan; now, we’re going to follow mine. Is that all right?”

  “So, then, what is it exactly you intend to do, smart aleck?”

  “Let’s put your father down somewhere first. My arms feel like they’re about to fall off.”

  They carefully led Kuisl to a little recessed area between two houses where he would be invisible to most passersby. The hangman’s face was ashen, and beads of sweat stood out on his forehead, but he was somehow able to keep more or less upright against the wall.

  “Do you think you can walk a little ways by yourself?” Simon asked.

  Kuisl nodded, teeth clenched, as the medicus quietly explained the plan. Then Simon approached the portal and gave a few loud knocks.

  It was a while before they heard shuffling steps on the other side. With a creak, the porthole opened on the pinched, unshaven face of a bishop’s guard.

  “There’d better be a good reason for knocking on my door at this godforsaken hour,” the guard growled, “or you just may be living out the rest of the summer in our modest little dungeon. Without water.”

  Gravely Simon produced his invitation from the brewmaster. “His Excellency Brother Hubertus has summoned me here,” he said, without batting an eye. “He’s expecting me right away.”

  “Now?” The soldier scratched his lice-ridden scalp. “After midnight?”

  “I’m Simon Fronwieser from the Spital Brewery,” the medicus improvised. “Your brewmaster is having problems with the fermentation of the wheat beer, and if we don’t do something about it right away, the beer will taste like horse piss by tomorrow and your bishop will be high and dry.”

  The guard frowned. The thought of being held in any way responsible for the irascible bishop’s thirst made him queasy.

  “Hey, Rupert!” he shouted to someone behind him. “Wake that fat monk in the brewery. He has a visitor.”

  Suddenly they heard hundreds of boots marching toward them from the direction of the cathedral square. A large contingent of guards was returning to their quarters. Simon could only imagine what might happen were they to discover him here.

  “Ah, would you mind opening the door?” the medicus asked. “It’s drafty out here, and I could stand to get off my feet.”

  “Hold it,” the soldier barked. “The monk will be here in a moment.”

  They could now hear distinct voices approaching from the south. Simon turned his head to see at least a dozen bailiffs armed with pikes advancing toward them from the cathedral square.

  “What difference does it make if I wait out here or wait inside?” He offered a strained smile. “Besides, I have a stomachache. The mashed peas I had for lunch must have been a bit rotten, so just open the door and-”

  “Silence, I said!” the guard interrupted. “First we’ll see if the brewmaster in fact kn
ows you. Many others have made their way here before you, hoping for asylum.”

  Now the city guards were no more than thirty paces from Simon.

  Maybe they won’t recognize me, he thought frantically. But they’ll ask questions nonetheless. A man, all alone in the middle of the night, before the door to the bishop’s palace-that’s suspicious in and of itself…

  “I’d really like to know what in hell is going on out there,” the guard said, poking his head out the porthole for a better look. “All that shouting and the bells clanging-as if the Turks were at the city gates. Well, we’ll find out soon enough, I suppose.”

  Now some bailiffs were in fact approaching the bishop’s palace. One soldier pointed his long pike at Simon and shouted something to the others. The men seemed to be moving more quickly now in his direction. Beads of sweat broke out on his forehead. Should he run? If he did, he’d have squandered his last chance.

  “Hey, you there!” cried one soldier, hurrying toward him. “What are you doing there by that door?”

  Just then a familiar voice boomed out from inside the palace. “Simon Fronwieser! Have you come to make confession or are you just dying for another sip of my heavenly wheat beer?”

  The medicus took a deep breath. Brother Hubertus had finally gotten out of bed.

  “I have good news!” his voice thundered from behind the porthole. “I now know what the powder of yours is! But let’s discuss that in peace over a mug of beer or two. Good Lord, won’t you damned numbskulls let my friend in?”

  His last words were directed at the bishop’s guards, who finally slid back the heavy bolt and opened the gigantic portal.

  “Now!” Simon cried suddenly. “Run!”

  At this instant several things happened all at once.

  Two figures emerged from the shadows on the other side of the square. Magdalena had explained to her father that as soon as Simon called for them, Kuisl would have to run for his life. He managed to pull himself together enough to run in great strides with his daughter toward the open portal. Simon, meanwhile, leaped over the threshold and pushed aside the guard, who struggled desperately to shut the door again as horrified city bailiffs approached from the right, crossbows loaded and pistols drawn as it dawned on them that the hangman was here.

  “The monster!” one shouted. “The monster is trying to escape into the bishop’s palace!”

  Bullets and arrows crashed into the masonry, and armed men ran shouting toward the portal with pikes and halberds raised. The bishop’s guard had by now freed himself from Simon’s grip and with his colleagues was trying to push the door closed. Magdalena watched the opening narrow as she ran toward it. The door was closing inch by inch, slowly yet inexorably. At the last moment she and Kuisl slipped through into the courtyard and fell gasping to the ground.

  The heavy door crashed closed, and from without came angry shouts and insistent pounding.

  Brother Hubertus stood gaping over the tangle of people at his feet, which slowly began to unravel itself.

  “What in God’s name is this all about, Fronwieser?” he asked, pointing to Magdalena and her father, who lay panting at the doorsill.

  “Grant… us… asylum,” Simon whispered with his last bit of strength. “Jakob Kuisl… is innocent.”

  Then a bishop’s guard delivered a blow that knocked him out.

  12

  REGENSBURG

  MORNING OF AUGUST 25, 1662 AD

  Do you realize the trouble you’ve caused me?” Brother Hubertus shook his head. His face, flushed with outrage, glowed like an oversize radish. Not even a third tankard of beer seemed to calm him down much. Trembling with fury, he pointed a finger at Simon and Magdalena, who sat at a table in the muggy brew house, staring at the ground like two defendants on trial.

  “I trusted you, Simon Fronwieser,” the Franciscan continued to berate him. “And what do you do? You bring the most wanted man in all of Regensburg into my house-the man they’re calling a monster, a man who’s being sought for multiple murders! The bishop has been screaming at me all morning-my ears are still ringing. We’re giving asylum to a monster! And all this at a time when His Excellency has enough trouble with the city already over the construction of the walkways above the road in town. I could rip you to shreds, Fronwieser!”

  “Jakob Kuisl is an innocent man,” Simon insisted once more. “You have my word.”

  “That’s the only thing standing between you and immediate expulsion,” Brother Hubertus said, dabbing the sweat on his forehead.

  Simon wrapped both hands around his tankard and stared down into his beer, as if somehow he might find the solution to all his problems there. Of course, his wonderful plan had ended in a fiasco. Why on earth had he thought Brother Hubertus would welcome them with open arms? Last night the Franciscan had thrown a fit when he learned how much he’d been deceived. That’s when Simon laid all his cards on the table. He told Brother Hubertus about Kuisl and the intrigue against him. He told the monk where the powder came from, as well as his suspicions about the philosopher’s stone. For the most part Brother Hubertus took it all in in silence, his lips tightly pressed. Not until Simon mentioned the floury dust in the storage room and alchemist’s workshop did the brewmaster interject a few questions. He seemed mostly interested in the quantity of powder Simon and Magdalena had found down there.

  Hubertus appeared to have calmed down a bit in the meantime, but though he continued to sip his wheat beer, he really didn’t seem to enjoy it.

  “At least it looks like your father’s feeling better,” he said, looking over at the hangman’s daughter. “He has the constitution of an ox; give him a few days and he’ll shake those shackles right off. I’ll have to assign a guard to his bedside soon enough.”

  “Does that mean my father can stay here in the bishop’s palace?” Magdalena looked hopefully at the Franciscan. Until now she’d kept silent for the most part, leaving the explaining to Simon. But this concerned the fate of her family. “You won’t turn him over to the city, will you?” she inquired. “You’ll grant him asylum?”

  “How can the bishop deny asylum to such a battered man?” Hubertus replied. “That is our damned duty as shepherds of the Lord, even when upholding this duty may-er-conflict, shall we say, with other concerns.” This last sentence he added with a sigh.

  Simon breathed a sigh of relief. Magdalena’s father was safe for the time being. The night before, they had taken Kuisl to the brewmaster’s chamber and applied fresh bandages to his wounds, and he’d been sleeping like a baby ever since. Simon had briefly examined his wounds, burns, and bruises. Neither he nor Magdalena could imagine all the suffering he’d been through in the past few days.

  “But don’t get your hopes up too much,” the fat monk continued. “I was able to persuade the bishop to allow you to stay here for only three days.” He turned to both Simon and Magdalena and held three fat fingers up to their faces. “Three days, no more. That’s all the time you have to prove this man’s innocence. Thereafter he’ll be turned over-and you along with him-to the city guards. To be clear, the only reason you have even this much time is because I interceded on your behalf. If it was up to the bishop, the whole lot of you would be rotting away as we speak in the dungeon at city hall.”

  Simon nodded timidly. “I can’t tell you how grateful I am. I’m sorry I so shamelessly abused your trust.”

  “Oh, come now!” Brother Hubertus took a big gulp from his tankard. “Enough of this pompous talk-let’s get to work.”

  “You’re right,” Simon declared with a firmer voice. “Time is precious, and so it’s all the more urgent now that you tell us what you’ve learned about the powder. Last night you implied you’d found the secret-so put an end to the suspense. What is it?”

  The Franciscan looked thoughtfully at Simon for a long while before answering. “Actually, I wanted to tell you yesterday what nasty stuff that powder is,” he began. “But tell me the truth, Fronwieser. Can I really trust you? How do I know
that you’re not looking for more of this evil stuff yourself? How am I supposed to know you’re not lying to me again? You, a doctor in the Regensburger Collegium? Bah!”

  “I give you my word as a doctor,” Simon stammered.

  “Your word’s worth nothing here,” Hubertus retorted. “Believe me, this powder is much too dangerous for me to depend on the word of any old quack who comes along.” He rose to his full, imposing height. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll make some more inquiries, and only when I’m convinced this stuff can’t cause any greater damage than it may have already, then I’ll let you in on the secret.”

  Simon stared back at him, his mouth open. “But-but then how are we supposed to help Magdalena’s father?” he stuttered. “We need to know what-”

  “Whatever you need to know or do, it’s all the same to me,” the brewmaster interrupted. “Early tomorrow morning I’ll have more to tell you. But until then the matter is too delicate. This secret could drive us all out of our minds, and if what I think is true…” His expression clouded over. “Just tend to your future father-in-law, or he may die even before his time here is up.”

  With these words, he turned to leave the brew house, teetering as he slammed the door behind him.

  The medicus sighed and drummed his fingers on the rutted tabletop.

  “And now?” asked Magdalena. “What shall we do now, you know-it-all?”

  “You heard him,” Simon replied gruffly. “We take care of your father. That’s something I know how to do at least.”

  He rose abruptly and walked past steaming vats to a little wooden door in the back of the vaulted room. It opened into a low room furnished with a simple bed and a trunk with metal fittings. This would ordinarily have been the brewmaster’s bedroom, but Brother Hubertus had made it up yesterday for Jakob Kuisl, who now lay snoring loudly on the bed, bare from the waist up. Simon leaned down and put his ear to Kuisl’s powerful hairy chest. A few hours earlier he’d given Kuisl a bit of the opium poppy extract he carried around in his bag, and as a result the hangman’s breathing was calmer now and even. Magdalena had also been keeping watch at her father’s bedside, periodically spooning hot chicken broth between his chapped lips. The medicus carefully checked the hangman’s bandages.