The Council of Twelve

by Oliver Pötzsch

  “You want to know where the Kaufbeuren hangman went?” the little man croaked and snickered again. “Well, I might just know.”

  Georg paused. The old man must have listened to his conversation with the innkeeper. Maybe he had noticed something or seen where Näher had gone. His curiosity aroused, Georg sat down at the old man’s table. “Well, then,” he said. “Let’s hear it.”

  “Hey, hey, not so fast.” The man grinned. “Nothing’s free in this life—only death. What do I get if I tell you?”

  Georg sighed. “I’d buy you a beer, but I’m afraid I don’t get served here any longer.”

  “And I’m afraid a beer isn’t enough for my information. I want money, understood?”

  Georg hesitated. Then he reached into his pocket, cursing. He could only hope his future brother-in-law would pay him back one day. Annoyed, he pushed a few stained coins to the center of the table. “Here, that’s all I have left. But you only get it once you’ve talked and I agree that your information was worth it.”

  “You sure that’s all you’ve got? Well, at least they aren’t fake silver.” The old man eyed the handful of pennies, then he shrugged. “To heck with it! An old mason must take what he can get. I worked hard under Elector Maximilian, building the Munich fortifications, but now no one gives two hoots—”

  “I don’t have time for your moaning,” Georg said. “Tell me, where is the Kaufbeuren hangman?”

  The little man grinned broadly, revealing his only tooth. “The innkeeper doesn’t know, because he’s only been here for a year. But I remember well. The man you’re looking for has been here before. Graying hair, good clothes, from the Allgäu, judging by his speech . . . I know because I’ve been sitting here for over thirty years, always in the same place. Back when I was a young man, I used to dance here and—”

  “Where did he go?” Georg said, cutting him off again.

  “All right, all right. I know, no one cares about the stories of an old mason.” The man sulked and slurped a spoonful of his soup. Then he continued: “I used to see him here several times a year. And I think I know where he went. If I were you, I’d try the Thürlbath.”

  “The Thürlbath?” Georg gave him a puzzled look. “Where in God’s name is that?”

  “Near the Isar Gate. I’m sure you’ll find it. Knock on the door, and say you want your fiery red beard shaved.”

  “But I don’t have a fiery red beard.”

  The little man sighed. “Just do as I say. You’ll understand. Tell them Jonas sent you, that should help.” The old man giggled and pulled the coins over to him. “And now I’d like to drink my beer in peace. No offense, but the company of a hangman always spoils my appetite.” He bent over his soup; evidently, he considered their conversation over.

  “Shave my fiery red beard,” Georg muttered, rising to his feet. “What a load of nonsense. God have mercy on you if you’re pulling one over on me. I’ll find you anywhere.”

  He turned to the door. As he walked out, he heard the little man snigger once more like an evil sprite.

  Simon gasped, and his lungs hurt with every breath he took, but he clenched his teeth and pressed on. Ahead of him, Jakob Kuisl ran along a narrow, icy path that led through a dense forest close to the banks of the Isar River. According to several travelers they had passed along the way, this was the fastest route to Bogenhausen, a small village several miles northeast of Munich. As the two men hurried along, Simon’s thoughts kept returning to the words of the guard earlier.

  Apparently, someone buried a woman alive in the Bogenhausen cemetery . . .

  Simon prayed it wasn’t Magdalena. He knew it wasn’t necessarily his wife, but he couldn’t suppress his fear. Magdalena had been taken away from the manufactory in a cart that morning, Agnes told him—dead, or at least unconscious. The cart had been drawn by two seedy characters who had probably killed young women before: Uffele and Mother Joseffa. Simon still couldn’t explain how the two of them were connected to the older murders. But he was sure there was a connection.

  Burying a woman alive fit perfectly with the other murders. The culprit always killed his victims in ways used by executioners. He had drowned, strangled, quartered, walled in, impaled, and buried alive. As far as Simon knew, the latter wasn’t used anymore, because nowadays it was considered too horrible. The convict used to be tied and placed on their back so they would have to watch the dirt slowly covering them, from the feet to—finally—the head. The sentence was considered more lenient if a stake was first driven through the heart. But often enough, the unhappy man or woman would simply be left to suffocate under the soil.

  Evidently, the buried woman in Bogenhausen had tried to free herself. The guard had spoken of an arm sticking out of the ground. Had the poor woman managed to escape death in the end?

  Was that woman Magdalena?

  “Faster!” Jakob Kuisl ordered harshly and looked around for Simon. “Why are you so slow? If that unfortunate woman really is my daughter, every moment counts.”

  The hangman waved impatiently and kept running, dodging icy roots and fallen branches. Simon was amazed at the speed and strength of his aging father-in-law. He himself involuntarily slowed down the harder he thought. He struggled to keep up with his father-in-law, finally catching up with him when they reached the edge of the forest another quarter of an hour later. On their left, the Isar River rushed through the valley below. Above the steep slope lay several fallow fields with patches of snow, and behind them, a small village church with about a dozen houses. Simon breathed a sigh of relief.

  Bogenhausen. Finally.

  One last time he increased his pace. They had been running nonstop for almost an hour since their hasty departure from the guards’ headquarters. Simon was more stumbling than running by now. The two men crossed the village street and ran toward the church. A crowd had gathered in the cemetery beside it.

  The people watched the two running men suspiciously. Simon regretted that they hadn’t brought Michael Deibler along. The Munich executioner would have commanded respect from the farmers. On the other hand, it was probably for the best if the well-known hangman didn’t talk to the people. Not when it was about an alleged living dead person.

  As they got closer, Simon saw that the villagers stood around a hole in the ground. A mound of fresh soil was right next to it. Jakob Kuisl had already opened the cemetery gate and rushed toward the hole without paying any attention to the crowd.

  “Magdalena!” shouted Jakob Kuisl as he ran. “Are you there?”

  Simon followed him with a thumping heart, stumbling—and looked down into the hole.

  It was empty.

  “Where is she?” Kuisl gasped and pushed through the crowd with his huge body, almost shoving several people into the hole. He looked around urgently. “Tell me already!”

  “Hey, who do you think you are?” asked a corpulent farmer with a wide-brimmed hat. He stepped in front of the hangman with his arms folded. “You from Munich? Think you can do what you like here?”

  “I asked where the woman who was buried alive is,” Jakob Kuisl repeated harshly. He straightened up, towering over everyone present. “For God’s sake, out with it or there’ll be another funeral here soon.” Something in Kuisl’s voice told the farmer that he was dead serious.

  “The . . . priest took her to his home,” he replied, pointing at a house at the edge of the cemetery. “He said he didn’t know whether she’d make it. Do you know her?”

  “So she’s still alive?” Simon asked with relief, ignoring the question.

  “Bah, how can she be alive when she crawled out of a grave?” an old woman muttered, bent over her walking stick. She raised a finger in warning. “I’m telling you, it was a living dead person. Just went and took the freshly dug grave of my good friend Grete. And now Grete has to wait for her funeral in her cold coffin. But this was just the start. There’s going to be more dead rising from—”

  But Simon was no longer listening. He and his father-
in-law ran across the cemetery to the rectory and banged on the door. After a few moments, the priest opened up, dressed in his official regalia.

  “What in God’s name—” he began, astonished.

  But Kuisl pushed past him and ran into the living room, and from there into the bedchamber.

  A woman lay on the bed.

  She was as pale as a shroud and her eyes were closed, but a slight trembling all over her body showed that she wasn’t dead. Though with her torn, dirty dress and clumps of clay in her matted hair, she really did look like someone risen from the dead. Simon felt the tension from the last few hours drain from his body. Depleted and exhausted, he leaned on one of the bedposts.

  The woman on the bed wasn’t Magdalena.

  Simon didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed. On their way here, he had felt increasingly certain that the buried woman must be his wife. At the same time, he hadn’t given up hope of finding Magdalena alive and well in Bogenhausen. Now he was looking at a perfect stranger. The young woman on the bed was about seventeen, eighteen years old, with blonde hair and a pretty face, albeit haggard and drained of blood.

  “Eva,” Jakob Kuisl whispered beside him.

  “You . . . you know her?” The priest had entered the chamber behind them. “Does that mean you’re her father?” he asked gently. Evidently, he had already forgiven Kuisl his forceful entry.

  The hangman shook his head. “I only saw her once in Au. She works at the silk manufactory there.”

  Simon looked at the girl on the bed, astonished. So this was Eva, the third of the three friends, two of whom were dead. The young woman Magdalena had set out to rescue.

  “Did she say anything?” he asked the priest. “I mean, about who did this to her?”

  “At this point I don’t even know if she’s going to live.” The priest sighed. “We were supposed to have a funeral today. Someone must have thrown the poor thing into the grave last night or early this morning and buried her with the fresh soil. Who would do such a thing?” He looked down sadly on the skinny, trembling body. “The girl is strong, even if she doesn’t look it at the moment. She dug herself out. By God, if I hadn’t . . . if I hadn’t intervened, the villagers would have killed her. They came for a funeral, and then an arm emerges from the grave. Of course people think she’s a walking dead person—no thanks to the gruesome stories we’ve been hearing from Munich lately. Mysterious murders and a meeting of twelve dishonorable hangmen at once.” He shook himself. “May God protect our little village from such evil. Only God-fearing folk live here.”

  Simon refrained from commenting. Instead, he leaned down to Eva and examined her superficially. The girl appeared to be deeply unconscious. Her lips quivered, but no sound came out. Her entire body was covered in scratches and scrapes, probably from the fall into the hole. On a thin string around her neck hung an amulet depicting a woman with a halo. Simon cast a meaningful glance at Kuisl, who nodded in silence.

  “The wound on the back of her head,” Simon said eventually and pointed at a blood-crusted swelling. “Could that have been your virtuous, God-fearing flock?”

  The priest appeared not to notice the mocking tone. “I don’t think so. I got there in time. The wound must be from earlier.”

  “The bastard knocked her over the head and chucked her in the grave,” Jakob Kuisl growled. He clenched his fists. “If only she could tell us who did this to her. Then we’d finally have the murderer of Anni, Elfi, and all the others. She might even know where my Magdalena is. This is maddening.”

  “You seem to know more about her after all,” the priest said in a pinched tone. “Perhaps now is the time to tell me what’s going on here.”

  “It was a heavy blow,” Simon said without answering the question. He continued his examination. When he reached her fingers, he saw that all the nails were broken off. Blood had mixed with dirt, and in a few places, Simon could see the bones.

  “Jesus!” breathed Simon. “She really did dig herself out with her own hands. No wonder she’s barely alive now.” He looked at Jakob Kuisl. “If we want to find out who did this and where Magdalena is, she needs better care and medicine as soon as possible. Shepherd’s purse, arnica, perhaps a brew of linden flowers and lavender to relax the cramping . . .”

  “This is a rectory, not a bathhouse,” the priest replied with a shrug. “All I can give her is my prayers. And now I’d really like to know—”

  “That’s why we’re going to take her with us,” Jakob Kuisl interrupted the priest, giving him a pat on the back. “Nothing against your prayers, but she’s better off with us.”

  “Us?” The priest eyed Simon and Kuisl distrustfully. “Who are you two, anyhow? I can tell you one thing for certain: I’m not going to give the poor girl to a pair of gallows birds who just happened along.”

  “You can rest assured that we’re no gallows birds,” Simon replied with a tired smile. “More like men who know a lot about death as well as life. I’ll tell you everything else in just a moment.” He stood up and wiped the dirt from his hands. “But first I’d like to ask you to find us a stretcher. Fast as you can. I promise you we’ll keep this woman safe.”

  About four miles away, Georg set out to solve the mysterious disappearance of Conrad Näher once and for all.

  This late in the afternoon, the smaller lanes were almost empty, the shops in the Graggenau Quarter closed, and a damp, cold fog crept across the cobblestones. Georg tightened his coat around him and turned into Lederer Lane, a narrow alleyway only a bow’s shot away from the Isar Gate. When he’d walked down Tal Street a few moments ago, he had still passed a few carts and pedestrians, but now he was suddenly as alone as in a dark forest.

  Of the three people he had asked for directions on the way to this strange Thürlbath, two had given him evasive replies. The third one had finally told him where to go, but not without giving him strange looks that Georg couldn’t decipher. Something was up with this bath the old man at the Radl Inn had told him about.

  Georg had heard about bathhouses before. They used to have several in Schongau, too. They were places where men and women climbed into large tubs filled with hot water together, just the way God had made them. There was a bathhouse surgeon who shaved beards, pulled bad teeth, or bled people if required, but more often than not, such bathhouses were mainly for pleasure. Many an innocent child had been conceived in those wooden tubs. The accursed French disease, along with the Protestant hatred of anything impure, had caused bathhouses to die out gradually. Apparently there still was one in Munich, and Georg was curious to see it.

  At a dark street corner, a rusty tin sign above a doorway showed a bathtub and a snake. The crooked two-story building looked like it had seen better times. The shutters were nailed closed and plaster crumbled off the walls, but Georg saw light gleaming through the cracks in the windows, and occasional laughter and the amused shrieks of women could be heard from inside.

  Slowly, it dawned on Georg what this ominous Thürlbath was about and why the man he’d asked for directions had given him a queer look. Once upon a time this might have been a place for honorable citizens, but now it was a dive where cheap money got you a cheap girl or two.

  The Thürlbath was nothing more than a brothel.

  Georg remembered his conversation with Magdalena about whores the day before. He had acted indignant, but the truth was he had visited the prostitutes on Bamberg’s Rosengasse Lane plenty of times. Neither men nor women were allowed carnal pleasures before wedlock, but you needed money and permission from the city or overlord for a wedding, which was why many journeymen didn’t marry until later on in life. Until then, they had to service their needs.

  Georg did, too.

  He assumed the goings-on at the Thürlbath were known to the guards. Brothels had been banned in Munich for several decades, but apparently the officials tolerated this establishment as long as it didn’t attract too much attention. Some of the guards probably frequented this house themselves.


  Georg knocked timidly, and a small, barred hatch opened.

  “It’s after five,” a voice behind it growled. “The bath is closed. Come back tomorrow.”

  “I . . . I’ve come for a shave,” Georg replied hesitantly.

  “And what sort of a shave is that?” the other asked, a little more attentive now.

  “I . . . want to shave my fiery red beard,” Georg said, remembering the old man’s words.

  “Your red beard, you say? Let me take a look.”

  The door opened, and Georg found himself face to face with a wide, bullnecked man in a leather apron, sweat running down his forehead in streams. Georg felt a warm rush of air that smelled of spruce resin, and somewhere down the dark corridor behind the man, a woman screamed.

  “I’m the bathhouse owner,” the man grunted and glared at Georg. “And who are you? I’ve never seen you here before.”

  Georg swallowed. “Jonas sent me.”

  The bathhouse owner’s face lifted instantly. He grinned. “Old Jonas! Is he still alive, or did he speak to you from the grave?”

  “He’s in the best of health and sends his greetings,” Georg fibbed without batting an eyelash.

  “Come in, come in.” The bathhouse owner pulled him across the threshold, and Georg entered a narrow hallway with a stove. On the right was the empty bathing room, and on the left an equally empty chamber. Where had the screams come from? At the end of the hallway stood a large, man-high wardrobe. The bathhouse owner opened its doors, and steam billowed out. Georg’s eyebrows went up when he saw what the piece of furniture had concealed.

  On the other side of the wardrobe was another corridor.

  Georg followed the man into the darkness. He was immediately too hot in his winter coat. The air was as muggy and warm as right before a thunderstorm in summer. Georg heard shrieks and moans behind doors to his left and right, but the bathhouse owner didn’t seem perturbed.

  They turned left and walked down a few stairs to a longish, low-ceilinged room filled with smoke and steam. At the far end stood a large tiled stove, which gave off both intense heat and the smoke. Along the walls were benches where several men and women sat. Everyone was naked, except for a few loosely wrapped towels that barely concealed anything. Two couples amused themselves in a large tub in the middle. When Georg entered the room, the women’s eyes turned to the young hangman’s journeyman.