The Poisoned Pilgrim_A Hangman's Daughter Tale

by Oliver Pötzsch

  Simon wished he could pinch himself, but for that he would have needed to move his hands. He tried to open his mouth to cry for help but could barely manage to raise his lip in a nervous spasm, like a wolf baring its fangs. Grimacing convulsively, he now heard a sound quickly approaching.

  The now familiar melody of the automaton.

  The music was accompanied by a squeak and clatter, and after a while Simon realized these sounds came from the little wheels of the automaton Aurora, the same one that had been rolling around in the watchmaker’s workshop a few days ago. At that time, Simon had found the automaton, and also the music, remarkable, a technological wonder. Now the song sounded so frightening that, despite his paralysis, the little hairs on the back of his neck stood up.

  Rolling his eyes, Simon could see the door opening as the life-size automaton rumbled into the room. Aurora still looked as beautiful as the first time they’d met in the watchmaker’s house. Her red ball gown fluttered around her copper legs, her hair was put up artfully, and her lips were the color of fresh blood.

  The lifelike doll rolled a few more yards, then stopped in the middle of the room as the music slowed, then finally stopped.

  With a stiff grin, Simon could move his eyes far enough down to see the automaton. For a brief moment, time seemed to stand still; the only sound was the soft chirping of the bird.

  The figure smiled but remained silent.

  Finally it began to twitch. There was a cracking and rattling inside it as the upper body of the narrow-waisted dress teetered back and forth. For a moment, it seemed the machine might tip over, but then the lips suddenly opened like the blades of a pair of scissors.

  Simon tried to scream, but not a word came out. He could only watch as his worst fears took shape.

  From inside the puppet came a squeaking, like that of a clock that hadn’t been oiled in a long time, then a high-pitched, gravelly voice sounded.

  “Greetings, bathhouse surgeon. I have waited a long time for someone to help me while away the time. You’ll make a nice toy, don’t you think?”

  With that, Aurora had begun to speak.

  Shivering, Magdalena and her father ran through the low-ceilinged passageway that led them deeper and deeper into the mountain.

  Perhaps a good half hour had passed since they’d entered the cave, though the hangman’s daughter couldn’t be sure. Down here, time seemed to run slower. In addition, it was pitch black; the only light came from a small, warm circle around her father, who ran ahead with the torch. Behind them, all was engulfed in darkness again.

  Until now, they hadn’t encountered anything unusual. At the far end of the cave occupied by the hermit woman, a tunnel and a flight of stairs led downward. For a while they proceeded straight ahead, occasionally passing niches holding rotted pieces of wood, rusty iron implements, and whitened bones, but neither Jakob nor Magdalena stopped to examine them. She was sure that her children were down here somewhere—abducted by the same madman who’d been stalking her. And now it seemed this person had also captured her husband.

  It upset Magdalena to think that the abductor evidently assumed they knew more about him, but so far they didn’t have any idea who the Andechs sorcerer could be. The prior? The Wittelsbach count? Or perhaps someone else they didn’t even know?

  Magdalena choked with fear for her children and for Simon. She ran along behind her father as if in a trance, hitting her head from time to time on the low ceiling but not feeling the pain. Kuisl also seemed half-crazed; never had she seen him so angry.

  “If he’s done anything to the two young ones, then God help him,” he growled as they again passed a few rotted beams and bones covered with moss. “He’ll wish he’d never been born, the scoundrel.”

  It occurred to Magdalena that the old hermit woman outside the cave had spoken of a helper. Would her father be able to take on two abductors? The Schongau hangman had seen more than fifty summers come and go, and even if tried to hide it, his movements were no longer as effortless as they used to be. When the hermit woman had cursed him earlier, he looked old to Magdalena for the first time.

  Suddenly Kuisl stopped. In front of them, two similar-looking corridors forked off. From one, a slightly moldy odor emanated, and from the other, fresh air.

  “Now what?” Magdalena asked, turning to her father. “Shall we split up?”

  Kuisl looked at her skeptically. “So you can run right into this sorcerer’s arms?” he grumbled. “Forget it. It’s enough if I’ve lost my grandchildren and my chicken-hearted son-in-law to this scoundrel, without losing my daughter, as well.”

  Kuisl thought for a moment, then continued: “These are no doubt the old forgotten escape routes from the Andechs castle.” He pointed at a human skull with a bashed-in forehead that grimaced at them from atop a pile of rubbish. “Now at least we know how the castle was stormed. Someone betrayed the defenders and revealed the location of the escape tunnels. With all these bones lying about, it was certainly an ungodly massacre.” The hangman held up the torch and looked into the left-, then the right-hand tunnel. “The sorcerer uses these escape tunnels as a hiding place, no doubt,” he mused. “But to hide what? In any case it’s clear why the unfortunate Laurentius was found with the monstrance in the forest. The sorcerer dragged him here, but the Brother was able to escape and get at least partway back.” Kuisl spat on the ground angrily. “If your husband hadn’t fallen asleep, then perhaps he would have told us and we’d have known much sooner where to look.”

  “Your ranting and raving won’t get us anywhere,” Magdalena replied, annoyed. “Tell me instead which corridor to take.”

  Her father scowled. “We’ll take the one on the right,” he said finally, “the one with the moldy smell. It seems to go deeper into the mountain, and besides, it heads directly toward the monastery.”

  “How can you know down here what direction we’re headed?” Magdalena asked, surprised.

  With a grin, the hangman tapped his long, hooked nose. “This here always tells me the right direction. I’m like a blind old dog that always finds its way back home.”

  Without another word, Kuisl entered the right-hand corridor, and Magdalena followed, shrugging. She had given up trying to understand her father. In most cases she had to admit reluctantly that his quirky hunches were right.

  The moldy odor became stronger as they proceeded, until finally Magdalena thought she could place the smell: an old chamber pot that had been standing for a long time unemptied under a bed. The stench was so strong now her throat felt as if it were burning.

  Turning up her nose, she hurried along behind her father. Were they somewhere near a huge cesspool? Instinctively she looked up at the ceiling, thinking a load of feces might come falling down on them at any moment. The hangman forged ahead with determination, and a few times Magdalena thought she could see him nodding grimly in the dim light.

  “The entrance to hell,” Kuisl growled. “The old woman in Kien Valley was right. It stinks here as if Satan were just around the next corner. At least I think we’re close to solving the first of many riddles.”

  “What do you mean when you say…” Magdalena stopped suddenly, spotting a faint light reflecting from the wall on their left, pulsing like a poisonous cloud in the gloom.

  “My God, what is that?” she gasped.

  “That?” The hangman grinned. “That’s one of our riddles, even if it stinks to high heaven.”

  He approached the shining light and suddenly seemed to vanish inside it.

  “Father!” Magdalena cried out in horror. “Where are you?”

  Her heart pounding, she ran after Kuisl and realized the shimmering was coming through a narrow passageway. Stepping through a low doorway, she found herself in a basin-shaped area glowing in a soft green light. She had to look again before realizing it wasn’t the room itself shining, but just a few objects in it. On the left was a rough-hewn table with an open book on top, and alongside that, some bowls, flasks, and crucibles, all givin
g off that strange light. More books with heavy leather bindings stood there, and the table was strewn with small glowing chunks.

  The strongest light came from the opposite side of the room, where a pile of waste two yards high glowed a ghostly green, as if hundreds of glowworms were crawling over it. The stench was so strong that Magdalena thought she was going to be sick.

  “Beautiful,” Kuisl grumbled. “We’ve found the latrine in the old castle.”

  Magdalena was so fascinated by the glimmering light that it took her a while to understand what her father had just said. “The what?” she asked, confused.

  “The latrine, or rather the cesspool beneath it.” The hangman walked toward the pile and began poking around. Black clumps oozed between his fingers. Looking up, Kuisl saw a round, encrusted hole in the ceiling.

  “No doubt there was at one time a secret room up there for Their Excellencies.” Kuisl grinned. “On the toilet, we’re all the same, aren’t we? Nobleman, monk, and knacker.”

  Magdalena looked at him, puzzled. “But why is everything glowing here? The table, the bowls, these clumps…?”

  “This is where the sorcerer made his hellfire,” Kuisl replied. “Both the assistant Vitalis and Brother Laurentius had phosphorus poured over them. Remember what Simon saw when he went to inspect the corpses in the beer cellar.”

  “The glowing!” Magdalena cried. “Of course! You spoke about this phosphorus. It shines in a green light and burns like tinder. But what’s a cesspit got to do with it?”

  “Because phosphorus is made from urine vapor.” Disgusted, he dropped the hardened feces he was holding. “It takes lots of urine. This is probably the urine of at least a dozen generations of nobility. The sorcerer must have found this pit and used it for his purposes.”

  Magdalena approached curiously with her torch, but her father held her back. “Be careful,” he said. “This stuff catches fire faster than you can say amen. And with this much lying around, you could blow up the whole mountain.”

  Kuisl turned to inspect the table. He glanced at the mortars, flasks, crucibles, and finally the books, picking up an especially worn one at random.

  “This one here is written in hieroglyphics and appears to be very old,” he mumbled. “Strange, I’ve never seen anything like it…” He put it aside and reached for another, also written in an unfamiliar language. Finally, he turned to a book right in front of him bound in calf’s leather. Leafing through it, he whistled softly through his teeth.

  “If I didn’t know this work was written by a murderer and madman, I would bow down to the man. See for yourself.”

  Curiously, Magdalena approached and studied the beautiful writing. There were Latin notes in blood-red letters and sweeping initials, illustrations of puppets, individual human limbs, and mysterious apparatuses whose functions were unclear. On other pages, there were strange formulas, calculations, and recipes. It all seemed to Magdalena like Satan’s personal Bible.

  “Remarkable,” Kuisl whispered almost reverentially. “This is a collection of all sorts of mysterious knowledge, something like the De occulta philosophia by Agrippa, but much more mysterious. I’ve never seen anything like it, and whoever wrote it…”

  He stopped short, pointing excitedly at one of the last pages with illustrations of lightning striking the roof of a house. A sort of rope or wire led along the wall to the figure of a man, and under it were three Latin words: Tornitrua et fulgura.

  Lightning and thunder.

  “Nepomuk’s idea of a lightning rod,” the hangman exclaimed. “He told me about it in the dungeon, remember? This is just the way he described the rods to me at that time, and these are the same Latin words he used. That can only mean…” Excitedly he rummaged through the pile of books until he finally found another notebook, which he held up triumphantly.

  “Ha! As I thought,” he cried out. “Nepomuk’s notebook. I recognize his writing.”

  Magdalena frowned. The stinging odor made it hard for her to think. “Nepomuk’s notebook?” she asked. “But Nepomuk is in the dungeon over in Weilheim. How did that little book get here?”

  “Good old Nepomuk told me back then that the watchmaker Virgilius was very interested in the lightning rod,” Kuisl replied. “They even argued about it; Nepomuk didn’t want to tell anyone. Virgilius, however, knew someone who wanted to know more about it, and evidently that someone also stole the notebook.”

  “The sorcerer,” Magdalena shivered in the cold, moldy air. “But would he kill Virgilius and the two assistants, and make sure Nepomuk would burn for it, all because he was interested in lightning rods?”

  The hangman shook his head slowly. “I don’t know,” he finally responded. “Until now our man has done everything possible to get a hold of the three hosts. How does that all fit together?” He sighed. “A shame the abducted watchmaker was found dead in the well; I’m sure he could have explained it for us.”

  Magdalena was just about to reply when they heard a distant banging and scraping farther down the corridor.

  “It appears we have a visitor,” Kuisl grumbled, reaching for the cudgel still hanging on his belt next to the hunting knife. “Well, let’s greet our guest properly.”

  Paralyzed with fear, Simon watched the life-size puppet in the middle of the room move its red lips. It clattered and rattled as the words came out of its mouth, sounding very human.

  “This poison is astonishing, isn’t it?” Aurora said. Her high voice sounded strangely hoarse, almost squeaking. Simon was sure he’d heard it somewhere before, but in his fear he couldn’t remember when or where.

  “I brought it back from one of my many travels,” the puppet continued. “The poison comes from the West Indies. The natives there use it in hunting, but also against other men. Usually it brings immediate death, but apparently it didn’t survive the long trip unscathed—which makes it actually all the more interesting.”

  Aurora’s mouth flapped as if she were gasping for air. “I’m actually considering whether to try my experiment first on you,” the automaton said. “After all, you’re rather like a lifeless puppet in your present condition, and it would be interesting to see whether I can breathe life into you. But I probably wouldn’t have the time. The moment at which nature and faith meet in this unique synthesis is simply too brief.”

  Once again Simon tried to raise his arms and legs from the cold, hard stone floor, or to at least raise his head, but it was impossible. His whole body was paralyzed; he could see the automaton only out of the corner of his eye. He was so horrified it was almost impossible for him to think rationally.

  This is impossible, an insistent, distraught voice inside his head told him. An automaton can’t think and speak, can it? Is this the notorious golem conjured up by its master, Virgilius, who has now become its victim?

  As Simon stared up at the ceiling, where the bird was still chirping, he finally realized what had been bothering him all this time. The bird’s call was a series of identical tones, and the silver nightingale wasn’t a living creature but just a pretty toy. The lifeless skulls of nameless monsters glared at him from their places on the shelves, and the technical apparatuses among them seemed as cold and hostile as if they’d come from another planet.

  Suddenly Simon could hear soft whimpers nearby—cries and moans that were all too familiar to him. His heart skipped a beat when he realized where they came from.

  Peter and Paul! My God, my children are over there.

  He wanted to call their names, but they literally stuck in his throat—not a sound came out.

  “Oh, it appears the two children have awakened from their deep sleep,” Aurora said, smiling. “Don’t worry, my loyal assistant gave them only a few poppy-seed cakes. After all, I still need the children. You never know what your stubborn grandfather has up his sleeve, do you?” The puppet’s voice now became shriller and more hateful—quite out of character with its delicate appearance. “You’ve brought this all on yourself,” it screamed. “Why do you
have to stick your noses in things that don’t concern you? All I needed was the hosts. But no, you felt compelled to persuade good old Maurus to let you continue snooping around.”

  As the children’s whimpering grew louder, it became clear they were in the next room. Simon listened as Peter started to cry loudly and Paul shouted for his mother. The medicus thought his chest would explode. His children were terribly afraid; they were right nearby, and he couldn’t help them.

  “The poor little fellows,” Aurora’s voice sounded full of pity, even though the smile remained fixed on her face. “The little ones are calling for their mother, that bitch. A few times my helper almost got her—once up in the tower, then with the rifle, and finally with the sack of lime. Why didn’t she understand my warnings? Evidently she’s just as stubborn as her father.”

  Then Simon had an idea. Until that point, Aurora’s face had been just a vague shadow he could see out of the corner of his eye. Now he succeeded in turning his head a fraction of an inch to get a better look at her. What he saw stunned him.

  The puppet’s mouth moved even when it wasn’t talking.

  “I think we should allow the two little ones to see their father now,” a hoarse voice said close to where the automaton was standing. “What do you think, Aurora? You be good and stay here, and I’ll let the children out of their cage. I wonder what they’ll say to a father who’s become nothing more than a stiff puppet?”

  There was a sound of receding footsteps. As Aurora’s mouth continued flapping up and down, Simon could see the shadow of a man heading into the next room at the edge of his field of vision.

  Aurora crackled, squeaked, and rattled, her lips moving up and down, but she didn’t speak.

  It had been the sorcerer speaking the whole time.