“It wasn’t only Peter who was with me. There were some of the others as well. They miss their mothers, that’s it.”
“Which others?”
“Well, the orphans, you know-Sophie, Clara, Anton, Johannes…whatever they’re all called. They visited me, sometimes several times a week. They played in my garden, and I made some porridge for them. They haven’t anybody else anymore.”
Jakob Kuisl remembered. He, too, had occasionally seen children in the midwife’s garden, but he had never realized that they were almost all orphans.
The hangman knew the children from seeing them in the streets. They often stood together and were avoided by the others. Several times he had intervened when other children had banded together to attack the orphans and beat them. It seemed almost as if they had some sort of sign on their foreheads that led the others to choose them again and again as victims of aggression. For a moment, his mind went back to his own childhood. He was a dirty, dishonorable hangman’s son, but at least he had parents-a blessing that meanwhile fewer and fewer children enjoyed. The Great War had taken the lives of many fathers and mothers. The city put such poor, orphaned souls under the care of a guardian. They were often citizens from the city administration, but they were sometimes master craftsmen, who also took over the possessions of the dead parents as part of the bargain. In these families, usually numerous, these children were the last link in a long chain. Barely tolerated, pushed about, rarely loved. One more mouth to feed because the money was needed. Jakob Kuisl could well understand why these children had seen something like a mother in the affectionate Martha Stechlin.
“When was the last time they were with you?” he asked the midwife.
“The day before yesterday.”
“So then, the day before the night of the murder. Was Peter also with them?”
“Yes, of course. He was such a polite boy…”
Tears rolled down the midwife’s blood-encrusted face. “He didn’t have a mother anymore. I was with her in her last hours myself. They always wanted to know everything, Peter and Sophie. What I did as a midwife and what herbs I used. They watched closely when I pulverized them in the mortar. Sophie said she would like to become a midwife one day.”
“How long did they stay?”
“Until shortly before dark. I sent them home then, because Klingensteiner’s wife sent for me. I stayed with her until early yesterday morning. By God, there are witnesses to that!”
The hangman shook his head. “That won’t help you. Yesterday evening I spoke with old Grimmer. Peter supposedly never returned home. Grimmer was at the inn until closing hour. When he went to wake his son the next morning, the bed was empty.”
The midwife sighed. “So I was the last one to see him alive…”
“That’s just it, Martha. It looks bad. Out there people are gossiping.”
The midwife pulled the coat tighter around her. Her lips tightened.
“When will you begin with the pincers and the thumbscrews?” she asked.
“Soon, if Lechner has anything to say about it.”
“Shall I confess?”
Jakob Kuisl hesitated. This woman had brought his children into the world. He owed her a favor. In any case, try as he might, he found it impossible to imagine that she could have inflicted wounds like that on Peter.
“No,” he said finally. “Put it off. Deny it as long as you can. I’ll treat you gently, I promise you.”
“And if that doesn’t help anymore?”
Kuisl drew on his cold pipe. Then he pointed the stem at Martha. “I’ll get the swine who did it. I promise you. Hold on until I have the bastard.”
Then he turned suddenly and made his way toward the outer door.
“Kuisl!”
The hangman stopped and looked round once more at the midwife. Her voice was a whisper, barely audible.
“There’s just one thing more. You ought to know.”
“What’s that?”
“I had a mandrake in my closet.”
“A man-! You know, the bigwigs hold that to be the devil’s stuff.”
“I know. In any case, it’s gone.”
“Gone?”
“Yes, disappeared. Since yesterday.”
“Have any other things gone missing?”
“I don’t know. I’d only just noticed it before Grimmer came with his people.”
Jakob Kuisl remained standing by the door, pensively sucking at the pipe stem.
“Strange,” he murmured. “Wasn’t it the full moon last night?”
Without waiting for an answer, he walked out and the door slammed shut with a great noise behind him. Martha Stechlin wrapped herself in the coat, lay down on the straw, and wept silently.
The hangman took the quickest way to the Stechlin house. His steps echoed through the alleys. A group of peasant women, loaded with baskets and sacks, looked up in astonishment at the huge man who hurried past them. They made the sign of the cross, then continued gossiping about the terrible death of the Grimmer child and about his father, the widower and drunkard.
As he walked along, Jakob Kuisl again thought about what the midwife had just said to him. The mandrake was the root of mandragora, a plant with yellow-green fruits, whose consumption had a numbing effect. The root itself resembled a tiny withered man, which is why it was often used for spells. Pulverized, it was an ingredient of the notorious flying salve, used by witches to anoint their broomsticks. It was supposed to flourish particularly well under the gallows and to thrive on the urine and sperm of those who had been hanged, but Jakob Kuisl had never seen one growing on the Schongau gallows hill. In fact the plant was excellent as an analgesic or for bringing about abortions. But if a mandrake was found in Martha Stechlin’s possession, that would mean a certain death sentence.
Who could have stolen the plant from the midwife? Someone who wanted to harm her?
Someone who wanted her to be suspected of witchcraft?
Perhaps the midwife had simply misplaced the forbidden root. Jakob Kuisl strode on faster. Soon he would be able to form a picture for himself.
A short time later he stood in front of the midwife’s house. When he saw the splintered window frame and the broken door, he was no longer sure that he would find anything significant there.
The hangman pushed at the door. With one final squeak it came off its hinges and fell inward.
In the room it looked as if Martha Stechlin had been experimenting with gunpowder and had blown herself up. The clay floor was strewn with broken earthenware pots, whose alchemical signs indicated their previous contents. There was a strong smell of peppermint and wormwood.
The table, chair, and bed had been smashed and their various parts scattered throughout the room. The kettle with the cold porridge had rolled into the corner, its contents making a small puddle, from which footprints led to the garden door at the back. Smeared footmarks were also to be seen in the herbal pastes and powders on the floor. It looked as if half of Schongau had paid a visit to Martha Stechlin’s house. Jakob remembered that along with Grimmer a good dozen men had stormed the midwife’s house.
When the hangman looked more closely at the footprints, he began to wonder. Between the big footprints were smaller ones, smeared but still clearly recognizable. Children’s footprints.
He looked around the room. The kettle. The broken table. The footprints. The smashed pots. Somewhere in his brain a bell was ringing, but he couldn’t say why. Something seemed familiar to him.
The hangman chewed the stem of his cold pipe. Then he went outside, deep in thought.
Simon Fronwieser sat downstairs in the living room near the fire and watched the coffee boiling. He inhaled the exotic and stimulating odor and shut his eyes. Simon loved the smell and taste of this strange powder; he was almost addicted to it. Just a year before, a merchant from Augsburg had brought a bag with the small hard beans to Schongau. He praised them as a wonderful medicine from the Orient. The Turks would drink themselves into a fre
nzy with coffee, and it would also lead to wonderful performances in bed. Simon was not quite sure how many of the rumors were true. He only knew that he loved coffee and after drinking it he could browse for hours in his books without getting tired.
The brown liquid was now bubbling away in the kettle. Simon took an earthenware beaker to fill it with the drink. Perhaps the effect would inspire him with more ideas about the death of the Grimmer boy. Ever since he had left the hangman’s house the previous day, he could not stop thinking about that terrible story. Who could have done such a thing? And then that sign…
The door flew open noisily, and his father entered the room. Simon knew at once that there was going to be trouble.
“You went down to see the executioner again yesterday. You showed little Grimmer’s body to the quack. Go on, don’t deny it! Hannes the tanner told me. And you were flirting around with that Magdalena too!”
Simon shut his eyes. He had indeed met Magdalena down by the river yesterday. They had gone for a walk. He had behaved like an idiot, unable to look her in the eyes, and kept throwing pebbles into the Lech the whole time. He told her everything that had come into his head since the death of Grimmer’s boy: that he didn’t believe the Stechlin woman was guilty, and that he was frightened of a new witch trial like the one seventy years before…
He had babbled on like a six-year-old, and he had really only wanted to say that he liked her. Someone must have seen them. In this blasted town you were never alone.
“Maybe I was. Why does it bother you?” Simon poured out his coffee. He avoided looking into his father’s eyes.
“Why does it bother me? Have you gone crazy!” Bonifaz Fronwieser was, like his son, of small stature, but as was the case with many small men, he could get very angry. His eyes almost popped out, the points of his already graying mustache trembled.
“I am still your father!” he screamed. “Can’t you see what you are doing? It has taken me years to build this up for us here. You could have it so good! You could become the first proper doctor in this town! And then you ruin it all by meeting this hangman’s wench and visiting her father’s house. People are talking-don’t you notice that?”
Simon looked up at the ceiling and let the sermon go over his head. By now he knew it by heart. In the war his father had made his way somehow as a minor army surgeon, where he had met Simon’s mother, a simple camp follower. Simon was seven years old when his mother died of the plague. Father and son had followed the soldiers for a few years, cauterized gunshot wounds with boiling oil and amputated limbs with the bone saw. When the war ended they had traveled through the country in search of a place to settle. Finally they had been accepted in Schongau. In the past few years, with hard work and ambition, his father had advanced to barber and then to a kind of official town doctor. But he had not studied medicine. Nevertheless, the town council tolerated him because the local barbers were incompetent, and doctors from the distant towns of Munich or Augsburg were too expensive.
Bonifaz Fronwieser had sent his son to study in Ingolstadt. But the money had run out, and Simon had to return to Schongau. Since then his father had saved every penny and looked with suspicion upon his offspring, whom he thought was a careless dandy.
“…while others fall in love with decent girls. Take Joseph, for example: he’s courting the Holzhofer girl. That’ll be a rich alliance! He’ll get on all right. But you…” His father ended the speech. Simon had not been listening for some time. He sipped his coffee and thought about Magdalena. Her black eyes, which always seemed to be smiling; the broad lips, which were moist yesterday with the red wine that she had brought to the river in a leather flask. Some drops had fallen on her bodice, so he gave her his kerchief.
“Look at me when I’m talking to you!” His father hit him with a ringing backhanded slap, so that the coffee, in a wide arc, flew through the room. With a rattle the cup fell to the floor and shattered. Simon rubbed his cheek. His father stood in front of him, slight and trembling. Coffee stains marked his doublet, which was spotted enough anyway. He knew that he had gone too far. His son was no longer twelve years old. But he was indeed his son. They had gone through so much together; he only wanted the best for him…
“I’m going to see the hangman,” whispered Simon. “If you want to stop me, you can stick your scalpel in my stomach.” Then he gathered up a few books from the table and slammed the door behind him.
“Go to Kuisl then!” shouted his father after him. “And a lot of good it may do you!”
Bonifaz Fronwieser stooped and picked up the fragments of the cup. With a loud curse he threw them through the open window out onto the street, behind his son.
Blind with anger Simon hastened through the alleys. His father was so…so…pigheaded. He could even understand the old man. It was after all about his son’s future: study, a good wife, children. But even the university had not been the right thing for Simon. Dusty old knowledge, learned by heart, still partly drawn from Greek and Roman scholars. Actually his father had never gotten much further than purges, bandaging, and bleeding. In the executioner’s house, on the other hand, a fresher wind blew, for Jakob Kuisl owned the Opus Paramirum of Paracelsus and also the Paragranum, treasures for bibliophiles, which Simon was occasionally allowed to borrow.
As he turned into the Lech Gate street, he bumped into a horde of children who were standing together in a group. From the middle of the group came a loud yammering. Simon stood on tiptoe and saw a tall, solidly built boy sitting above a girl. He was holding her down on the ground with his knees while he struck his victim again and again with his right fist. Blood flowed from the corners of the girl’s mouth, and her right eye was swollen and shut. The cluster of children accompanied every blow with shouts of encouragement. Simon pushed the jeering pack aside, grabbed the boy by the hair, and pulled him off the girl.
“Pack of cowards!” he cried. “Attacking a girl, shame on you!”
The mob retreated a few yards, but only reluctantly.
The girl on the ground sat up and wiped her hair, sticky with filth, out of her face. Her eyes looked around warily as if seeking an opening in the crowd of children through which she could escape.
The big boy drew himself up in front of Simon. He was about fifteen and half a head taller than the physician. Simon recognized him. It was Hannes, the son of Berchtholdt, the baker in the Weinstrasse.
“Don’t interfere, physician,” he threatened. “This is our business.”
“If you are knocking a little girl’s teeth out, that’s my business too,” replied Simon. “After all, I am, as you say, a physician and I must reckon up what the fun will cost you.”
“Cost me something?” Hannes scowled. He was not exactly the brightest of the group.
“I mean, if you cause the girl injury, you’ll have to pay for it. And we have enough witnesses, haven’t we?”
Hannes looked over at his comrades, puzzled. Some of them had already left the scene.
“That Sophie is a witch!” Another boy joined the discussion. “She has red hair, and moreover she was always with the Stechlin woman, just like Peter, and he’s dead now!” The others murmured in agreement.
Simon shuddered internally. It was beginning. Now, already. Soon Schongau would consist entirely of witches and people pointing their fingers at them.
“Nonsense,” he exclaimed. “If she were a witch, why would she let you beat her up? She would have flown away on her broomstick long before. Now be off with you!”
Reluctantly, the gang withdrew, but not without casting one or two threatening looks at Simon. When the boys were a stone’s throw away, he heard them shout: “He goes to bed with the hangman’s girl!”
“Perhaps she’ll put a noose around his neck!”
“Difficult to make him a head shorter, he’s short enough already!”
Simon sighed. His still fresh and tender relationship with Magdalena was no longer a secret. His father was right: people were talking.
He stooped down to help the girl up.
“Is it true that you were always at the Stechlin woman’s house with Peter?” he asked.
Sophie wiped the blood from her lips. Her long red hair was full of dirt. Simon reckoned she was about twelve years old. Under a layer of filth an intelligent face looked at him. The physician thought he remembered that she came from a tanner’s family in the Lech quarter down by the river. Her parents had died during the last outbreak of the plague, and another tanner’s family had taken her in.
The girl remained silent. Simon grabbed her shoulder firmly.
“I want to know if you were with Peter at Goodwife Stechlin’s. It’s important!” he repeated.
“Could be,” she murmured.
“Did you see Peter in the evening?”
“Goodwife Stechlin has nothing to do with it, so help me God.”
“Who, then?”
“Peter went down to the river again afterward…alone.”
“Why?”
Sophie pressed her lips together. She avoided his eyes.
“I want to know why!”
“He said it was a secret. He…was going to meet someone.”
“Who, for God’s sake?”
“Didn’t say.”
Simon shook Sophie. He felt that the girl was hiding something from him. Suddenly she broke from his grasp and ran into the next alley.
“Wait!” he cried and started to run after her.
Sophie was barefoot, and her little feet flitted lightly over the stamped earth. She had already reached the Zankgasse and ducked between some servant maids coming from the market with fully laden baskets. As Simon rushed past them, his clothing caught on one of the baskets. The maid let go of the basket, and radishes, cabbages, and carrots flew in all directions on the street. Simon heard angry cries behind him, but he could not stop, as the girl was on the verge of making her escape. She had already disappeared around the next bend, where there were fewer people in the alleys. Simon held onto his hat with one hand and continued running. On the left stood two houses with their roofs almost touching and in between was a narrow alley, just about shoulder-width, leading to the town wall. The ground was covered with rubble and trash, and at the other end Simon could see a small form running away. Cursing, the physician bade farewell to his fine leather boots greased with beef tallow and sprang over the first mound of rubble.
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