Nepomuk was sure the pain would be over that day. Either he would die from the torture or would, screaming and half-mad, confess to everything they asked. His subsequent burning at the stake would be a welcome relief.
Now the door opened all the way, and Nepomuk saw Master Hans on the threshold.
“Have you come to take me away?” he groaned, addressing the white-haired man with the red eyes who had tormented him over and over in his nightmares. “I almost thought you’d forgotten me.”
Master Hans shook his head. His lips were red, and his ratlike eyes seemed to glow in the dark. “The torture has been postponed,” he grumbled. “Who knows who ordered that. You seem to have powerful advocates, monk.”
“The torture… has been postponed?” Nepomuk struggled to get to his feet, but he was too weak. He fell back to the ground, groaning and glaring up at the executioner like a whipped ox. “But… but why?”
“Don’t ask me. The ways of the noble lords are unfathomable.” Master Hans picked a piece of meat from his teeth and flicked it into the putrid straw.
Then he began to curse loudly. “All that work for nothing. I had you almost to the point of confession. But they’ll pay me every penny, every penny.” He grinned. “And what does it matter? I got a nice delivery today: two new criminals. And you have a visitor.”
He stepped aside. Behind him appeared another man who had been visiting his dreams. At over six feet tall, he had shaggy black hair, a dirty coat, and a hooked nose. And he was smoking.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Jakob Kuisl growled, drawing on his pipe. “I’ve got to say Master Hans really did a thorough job. It will no doubt take a week to get a bag of maggots like you back in shape.”
“Indeed.” The Weilheim executioner at his side smiled. “A masterpiece, but unfortunately your friend was too stubborn. You could have saved yourself a lot of grief if you had just confessed, but I can also cure you for a price.”
Kuisl declined for his friend. “Never mind, Hans. You’re perhaps better at torturing, but I can take care of the healing. That requires something the dear Lord unfortunately didn’t give you.”
“And what would that be?”
“A heart.”
Kuisl handed the astonished executioner a few coins. “Take these, and leave us alone for a moment. Get out of my sight.”
With a shrug Master Hans shuffled out into the hall, where he tossed the coins in the air and deftly caught them. “You were always too soft for this line of work, Kuisl,” he called back into the dungeon. “Too much feeling just leads to bad dreams. What’s wrong, Kuisl? Do you have bad dreams?”
Without bothering to reply, Kuisl walked toward his friend crouching on the hard dirt floor in front of him. He pulled Nepomuk to him like a child and embraced him.
“It’s over, Nepomuk,” he whispered. “It’s over.”
“Over…? Over?” The fat monk stared at his friend in disbelief. His eyes were still swollen from being beaten by the Andechs hunters, and flies were circling his bloodied lips. “Do you mean I’m… free?”
“I’m not able to take you myself,” the hangman replied in a steady voice, “but the Andechs abbot swore to me by all that’s holy that he will get you out of here soon.” Kuisl grinned. “The noble gentleman owes me a favor. Without me, someone would have taken his place as abbot.”
A long, shrill shout of pain could be heard in the distance. Nepomuk trembled. “My God, who was that?” he gasped.
“Oh, I’m afraid that was the abbot’s replacement. Brother Jeremias and Brother Benedikt have already confessed to everything, but Master Hans hopes to squeeze a few more things out of them. After all, he’s paid on commission.” For a moment, Nepomuk could only look at his friend with his mouth open. He had to pinch himself to make sure he wasn’t dreaming.
“Do you mean the… the Andechs prior is over there…” he stammered.
Kuisl set him down gently again on the ground. “That’s a long story, and I’ll tell you all about it, but first let’s relax a bit in this stinking hole.” With a wink, he took out another long-stemmed pipe and a pouch of wine he had under his coat.
“I thought we could perhaps chat a little about old times,” he said warmly. “After all, that’s what I promised you the last time we met in the Andechs dungeon. Do you remember?” He offered Nepomuk the pipe and the full pouch of wine.
“To our friendship,” he said.
“To our friendship,” replied the apothecary.
Nepomuk looked at the hangman wearily, his swollen eyes filling with tears that had nothing to do with the dense tobacco smoke.
EPILOGUE
SOMEWHERE NEAR SCHONGAU ON TUESDAY, JUNE 22, 1666 AD
On Tuesday morning at eight o’clock, Jakob Kuisl knelt before a plain wayside shrine not far from his hometown. The cross, overgrown with ivy, stood a ways back from the road so the hangman didn’t fear being discovered by anyone. Kuisl hadn’t prayed for a long time, and his words came haltingly. “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name…”
He thought of the mad woman in the Kien Valley who had demanded he seek penance. So much had happened in recent decades-he had accumulated such a burden of guilt-that a simple prayer simply couldn’t suffice.
But this was at least a start.
“For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen.”
The hangman crossed himself, stood up with a groan, and continued along the road from Peiting to Schongau.
He’d stayed all day with his friend Nepomuk in Weilheim: they drank and smoked together, and above all, they told stories from the Great War. Kuisl had cleaned Nepomuk’s wounds, covered them with ointment, and wrapped them in bandages. From years of experience, he knew the wounds would heal in a few weeks but the emotional scars would remain. In his dreams, Nepomuk would be haunted by the torture for the rest of his life.
Finally, after the hangman promised to visit his friend again soon, he had set out at a leisurely pace toward Schongau in the shadow of the Hoher Pei?enberg. Magdalena, Simon, and the children had gone directly home from Andechs, and Kuisl assumed they would arrive home before him.
When he saw the silhouette of the town gleaming before him in the morning sun, a strange familiarity came over him. People here in the town on the other side of the river had never cared for him, they avoided looking at him, and those who sought out his healing services mostly did so in secret. After buying a talisman, a love potion, or a piece of a noose, they would cross themselves and proceeded to confession. But despite all that, this small, dirty, ugly town was his home.
He had none other.
Lost in his thoughts, he crossed the bridge and took a narrow, shaded path below the city wall. His prayer earlier in the forest had left him with a pleasant, unfamiliar feeling of security. But then his thoughts turned to his two younger children, the twins Georg and Barbara, and whether they had been able to control those rowdy Berchtholdt boys after his departure. Had they performed his duties as executioner-removed the garbage in the streets and carted it out of town?
But above all, he thought of his sick wife, Anna-Maria. Was she still trembling with fever? He remembered her cough had gotten a little better before he left. He’d thought of Anna often in recent days, especially when he became angry or impatient, and wondered what she would do in his place. Anna-Maria could be just as temperamental as her husband, but she always kept a cool head at the critical moment. Especially before executions, which often robbed him of sleep at night, she had always been a pillar of strength and had kept him from getting drunk.
The hangman started walking faster. He passed the outlying sheds and homes of the Tanners’ Quarter, which was crowded between the Lech and the city wall. Now in the early afternoon, many men were out in the streets, hanging foul-smelling leather hides out to dry on poles and frames. Women were standing by the river, washing and chatting. When they saw Kuisl, they turned and whispered among themselves. The hangman was accustomed to such be
havior, but something seemed especially strange about it today. Almost as if they pitied him.
What in God’s name…
Finally he reached his house, which stood somewhat off the road near a large pond. Alongside it was a shed for the knacker’s carts, and by the entrance, a lovely garden with flowers, fruit trees, and vegetables.
It was when he saw the garden that he knew that something was definitely wrong.
His wife tended it daily, but now it looked as if it hadn’t been weeded for a while. Goutweed and bindweed were growing in the flowerbeds, and slugs were crawling over the wilted, partially brown lettuce. A climbing trellis that had blown over in a recent storm hadn’t been set up again.
“Anna?” he called hesitantly. “I’m back. Can you hear me?” But there was no answer from inside the house.
After a while, the door creaked open. As soon as he saw the midwife Martha Stechlin standing in the hallway with a pale and deeply furrowed face, he knew what had happened.
“No!” he shouted, running toward the door. “No! Tell me it’s not true.”
“There was… nothing I could do,” the midwife said softly. “The fever was too strong. We took her-”
“No!”
Kuisl pushed Martha aside and staggered into the room. At the large, battered table beneath the crucifix in the corner sat his family, their vacant eyes still puffy from crying. At the center of the table stood a large bowl of steaming porridge, untouched. The hangman saw Barbara and Georg-the latter having grown a light fuzz on his upper lip-and he saw Magdalena and Simon holding Peter and Paul on their laps. The boys were sucking their thumbs in unusual silence.
They were all there except his wife, Anna-Maria. The worn stool she’d always sat on-where she’d groused, hugged, darned socks, and sung songs-was empty.
Kuisl felt a pang in his heart as painful as if he’d been run through with a sword in battle.
It can’t be. Oh, great God, if you really exist, tell me this isn’t true. It’s an evil prank. I pray to you, and you slap me in the face…
“It happened just yesterday,” Magdalena whispered in a low voice. “This plague cost many in Schongau their lives, and she was one of the last.”
“I… I should have stayed here. I could have helped her.” His broad shoulders slumped. Suddenly he looked very old.
“Nonsense, Father,” said Magdalena, shaking her head vigorously. “Don’t you think Martha tried everything? God gives us life, and he takes it away. Death was just too strong. All we can do is pray…” She stopped short, tears running down her face as Simon squeezed her hand.
“Would you like to see her?” the medicus asked his father-in-law gently. “She’s in the other room.”
Kuisl nodded, then turned away silently and moved into the next room. No one followed him.
As if she were just sleeping, Anna-Maria lay with closed eyes in the large bed they’d shared for so long. Her hair was still long and black, with only a few strains of gray. Someone had combed her hair and dressed her in a white lace nightshirt. A few flies buzzed through the room, alighting on her waxen face, and Kuisl brushed them away. Then he knelt beside the bed and took his wife’s hand.
“My Anna,” he murmured, gently stroking her cheeks. “What am I to do now that you’re no longer here? Who’s going to scold me when I’ve had too much to drink? Who will pray for me in the church? Who…” He stopped short and bit his lip. They’d been married more than thirty years. As a mercenary, he’d brought Anna back from one of the wars, and together they’d grown old. Tears ran down his scarred face-the first tears in many, many years.
He couldn’t help thinking again about what the mad woman in the Kien Valley had told him a week ago.
Repent, hangman! Soon misfortune will strike you like a bolt from the blue.
Was this the misfortune that would strike him? Was this the punishment for all the dead who had paved his way through life? Could God be so gruesome?
He heard a faint sound from the neighboring room. Magdalena had come in behind him and placed her hand on his shoulder.
“I… must tell you something,” she began hesitantly. “I don’t know if this is the right moment, but I’m sure Mother would have wanted it this way.”
Kuisl remained silent, only his raised head revealing that he was listening.
“It’s just…” Magdalena started to say. “Well… Peter and Paul will soon be sharing the little room upstairs with someone. I’m… I’m going to have another child.”
The hangman didn’t respond, but Magdalena could sense his mighty frame begin to tremble.
“Martha examined me, and she’s quite sure,” she said with a smile. “I was feeling ill a few days ago, do you remember? And now we know why I was constantly nauseated.”
Now that she’d broken the news, words poured out like a warm summer rain.
“And this time, Martha thinks it will be a girl,” she continued. “What do you think? Would you like to have a little granddaughter?”
Kuisl snorted. It seemed to Magdalena he couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry.
“As if one of you wasn’t enough,” he grumbled finally.
The hangman squeezed the hand of his wife one final time, then turned and embraced Magdalena so firmly she could hardly breathe.
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The Poisoned Pilgrim hd-4 Page 48