And yet Peter felt no triumph, only a deep sense of despair. How many times had he cursed his little brother, who had so little compassion for animals and people, who didn’t care about reading and writing and preferred to pick fights instead? But now that Paul was lying on the ground in front of him, pale and bleeding, Peter realized how much he needed his brother. They were like two halves of a circle.
Only together were they whole.
The dogs were barking so wildly that it was difficult to hear one’s own words. Peter thought he could hear someone thumping against a door and shouting. Were there people locked up down here as well? Perhaps that Eva his mother had spoken about? It wouldn’t take long for any inhabitants of the manufactory and the neighboring houses to wake up with this racket.
“You’re making a grave mistake,” Uffele said, pulling on his fetters. “A very grave mistake. I have friends in the city, everywhere. If you don’t untie me right away, you won’t live to see the next few days.”
“You . . . you dirty little thieves,” Mother Joseffa hissed, her makeup smeared. She had lost her blonde wig during the fight, and everyone could see her thin gray hair. She reminded Peter of an evil witch. “What are you doing here, anyway?” she yelled. “Stealing honest people’s daily bread.”
“Honest people?” Schorsch scoffed. He pointed at Arthur, who was jumping and whining around Peter. “Do honest people steal the prince’s dog?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Uffele replied stiffly, but Peter noticed his eyes twitch nervously. Then the shouting and thumping farther up the corridor started again. Uffele heard it, too, Peter could tell by his face. He seemed rattled.
“Who is that?” Schorsch asked. “Who else have you locked up down here? Spit it out!”
“I’m not saying another word,” Uffele replied coolly. “Not until you untie me.”
“Shut up, you bastard!” Luki punched the bound man, and Uffele glared at him while a thin rivulet of blood ran from the corner of his mouth.
“If you don’t do exactly as we tell you, I’m personally going to feed you to the dogs,” Luki continued in a threatening tone. “They’re rather hungry, you know.”
Peter listened. Between the barking and yelping, he could clearly hear shouts and clanging.
Shouts of a woman. Shouts of a woman he knew very well.
“Mother!” he called out.
And then he ran up the corridor.
Sheltered by the artificial rock, Jakob Kuisl watched as Daniel Pfundner and Master Frießhammer packed the suspicious utensils into the crates and chests. Kuisl’s eyes were empty, his tension drained, and he felt tired and old.
Too old for this kind of adventure. Too old to protect my daughter.
He had hoped urgently that these two men would lead him to Magdalena, or at least tell him what all those recent murders were about. But now he’d discovered they had followed the wrong lead. The conversation Magdalena had overheard in Pfundner’s house had had nothing to do with the missing girls. What was it the bald man had said to Pfundner?
We must take them away before we’re found out.
Magdalena had been convinced the man was referring to the girls, but he had only meant the counterfeiting dies in the grotto. The pair of criminals must have expected to use the secret counterfeiting workshop for much longer, but the rapid progress on the palace and the masquerade had foiled their plans. Now they were getting rid of anything suspicious before any ball guests discovered the hidden cave. Kuisl clenched his fists. Those two bastards should climb the scaffold, no doubt—but they weren’t the murderers of the girls.
Or were they?
Anni, the dead girl from the Au creek, had been forced to work as a prostitute at Pfundner’s house, and Elfi and Eva had been whored out to wealthy patricians’ houses as well. What about Frießhammer? Kuisl frowned. There must be a connection. It was probably right in front of him, obscured by all the wrong leads. Why couldn’t he see it?
There was only one way to find out if Pfundner knew anything: Kuisl had to ask him. And the hangman began by doing the easiest thing he could think of.
He stepped forward.
“For God’s sake, Father,” Georg hissed. “What the hell are you doing?”
But it was too late. Pfundner had spotted Kuisl. Even in the dim light of the lanterns, Jakob Kuisl could see the treasurer’s face turn white. He tried to imagine what Pfundner was looking at: a huge hangman with a hood who had come to punish him, the counterfeiter caught in the act, by boiling him in seething oil.
“God in heaven!” Daniel Pfundner burst out. He dropped the sack he’d been holding and stared at Kuisl as if at a ghost. Frießhammer had seen the hangman, too. He squealed like a pig and jumped for cover behind the table. Kuisl raised one hand.
“We need to talk,” he said. “I’m not here to—”
At that moment, several things happened simultaneously. Kuisl heard a sound he knew too well from the war: the buzz of a crossbow string. Apparently the bald Roman wasn’t as defenseless as he’d first assumed. He must have kept a loaded crossbow under the table. The hangman instinctively stepped to the side and the bolt flew past him, but in the same instant, one of the bronze dies struck him on the temple. Pfundner appeared to have overcome his fright fast and reached for the next-best weapon.
Kuisl saw black for a moment from the heavy blow, but vaguely perceived Daniel Pfundner reaching for another die. Now Georg came storming out of the shadows and launched himself at the men.
I’m really getting old, Kuisl thought once more as he fell to the ground. Beaten by a Roman in tin armor and a milksop with a mask . . .
Meanwhile, Georg had reached Frießhammer and threw him on the table. Harlequin and Roman panted as they fought, sending several crucibles crashing to the ground. Another heavy die hit Kuisl right in the face. He felt warm blood run from his nose.
With the blood came rage.
The hangman struggled to his feet and roared as he threw himself at Daniel Pfundner, who was just going for a third die. Before he had the chance to throw it, Kuisl reached him and dealt him such a powerful blow to the chin that Pfundner was hurled against the plaster wall. A chunk of wall came off and shattered into a white cloud. Kuisl raised his fist for another strike, but he was still slightly dizzy. He stumbled and missed. From the corner of his eye, he saw Georg fighting Frießhammer’s tin sword with his wooden one.
Daniel Pfundner used the brief respite to grab a fire poker that was leaning against one of the wooden tubs. Kuisl dodged the blow, and the poker scraped across his beard like a botched shave. Seething with anger, the hangman grabbed the heavy tub and hurled it into Pfundner, who screamed out in pain and staggered backward. Nonetheless, the treasurer managed to run toward the stairs, and Kuisl followed him, gasping for breath. He had almost caught up with Pfundner when he slipped and fell on the icy steps.
“Jesus bloody Christ, stop, you goddamned bastard!”
Cursing, Kuisl scrambled to his feet, but Pfundner had already reached the door to the grotto. He ran outside and slammed the door shut behind him. Kuisl thought he heard a soft click. He threw himself against the door, but it wouldn’t budge. The treasurer must have locked it from the outside.
Kuisl angrily hammered his fists against the rock, which gradually turned into white plaster dust and crumbs. The hangman was like a growling giant trapped inside a mountain. Blood flowed from his nose and forehead, and still he rammed his shoulder against the wall again and again. He might not have been the fastest, but he was still strong. Very strong.
Once, twice, three times he threw himself against the plaster wall.
On the fourth try, he was through.
Kuisl staggered outside. He didn’t see Pfundner anywhere, but the moon shone brightly and the hangman soon spotted tracks leading away from the grotto. Pfundner appeared to drag his right leg—Kuisl must have hit him hard. He thought about Magdalena, who had almost become Pfundner’s whore, and he was filled with d
eep hatred. If he caught hold of the dirty bastard, he’d hang him by his own genitals.
But first he needed to talk to him.
Jakob Kuisl followed the tracks like a wolf that had smelled blood. He hoped Georg could handle the Roman by himself. If he let Pfundner get away now, he’d never find out whether the man knew anything about the murders.
The tracks led from the grotto into the forest, along a low wall, then turned abruptly to the right, where a man-high boxwood hedge and wilted rosebushes were dusted with powdery snow. Kuisl followed the hedge until he reached a sort of entrance. Someone had tried to conceal their tracks in a hurry. Behind the gap in the hedge, another hedgerow led left and right in a wide arch. Kuisl soon realized why Pfundner had chosen to run here.
He stood at the entrance to a labyrinth.
Even though the treasurer had tried to conceal his footprints, Kuisl could still make them out in the snow. He followed them to the right, around a bend . . .
And stared at untouched snow.
The hangman cursed softly.
Smart little prick . . .
He had fallen for one of the oldest tricks, one Jakob himself had made use of several times during the war. Pfundner had taken a few steps in one direction and then walked back in his own prints. Kuisl turned around and was soon back at the spot where the treasurer appeared to have turned. There was a small gap in the hedge and a pile of snow in front of it.
The snow that had fallen off the branches when Pfundner crept through the opening.
Kuisl bent down, pushed through the gap, and found more tracks on the other side. He clenched his teeth and hurried on. How big was this infernal labyrinth? Kuisl knew that the nobility liked to build such mazes out of hedges, some as large as entire villages. This one must have been quite new and probably merged with the forest behind, which made it even more difficult to navigate.
Kuisl realized he wasn’t really wearing enough clothes for a long walk outside, and he figured the same went for the treasurer in his silly costume. On top of that, Pfundner was injured, and the hangman saw more and more drops of blood in his tracks. Perhaps they came from the fight, or maybe he’d scratched himself on the thorns in the hedge. Kuisl was bleeding, too, though only a little. At least the winter air was helping him think straight again.
Despite his body mass, Kuisl was starting to feel cold. He knew he couldn’t run through this maze forever. Most importantly, he would have to find his way back out later. Absentmindedly, he played with the frayed edge of the hangman’s cloak.
Loose threads . . .
He remembered a Greek myth he’d once read as a child. It had been written in an old book his father had bought off a peddler. Some hero or other had chased a beast through a labyrinth and, to avoid getting lost, he’d used a thread.
Kuisl hoped this labyrinth wasn’t so big that he’d end up naked.
He opened the seam at the bottom of the cloak and tied the thread to one of the rosebushes. Then he continued to follow the tracks.
The amount of blood in the prints was increasing, and judging by the tracks, Pfundner’s leg was getting worse. He appeared to have fallen several times. He wouldn’t last much longer. From time to time Kuisl thought he heard panting and scraping behind the hedgerows. The treasurer couldn’t be far. Whenever the tracks led to a dead end, Pfundner had pushed his way through the hedge; parts of his costume hung caught in the thorns.
When Kuisl came to the next fork in the path, clouds suddenly pushed in front of the moon, and the night turned pitch black. A cold wind picked up and blew white clouds of snow through the hedgerows. The footprints became almost invisible. Kuisl uttered a curse. He couldn’t lose the treasurer now.
“Pfundner!” he shouted against the howling wind. “If you can hear me, listen! I don’t want to hurt you!”
For a while, everything remained silent. Then Kuisl heard someone laugh hoarsely nearby.
“Let’s hear it, then!” the treasurer shouted back. “But don’t think I’ll agree to anything. I don’t even know who you are.”
I’m your hangman, Kuisl was about to say, but thought better of it.
“It doesn’t matter who I am. The only thing you need to know is that I don’t care what you’re doing in that grotto. Whether you forge money or steal the throne from under the electress’s ass, it’s all the same to me.”
“Is that right?” Pfundner’s voice sounded a little uncertain. “Then why are you following me?”
“What’s your connection to the dead girls?”
The treasurer didn’t say anything for a while, then he broke out in loud laughter. “Oh, that’s why you’re after me? Because you think I’m this killer of girls everyone’s been talking about?”
In fact, Kuisl had no idea. He was still completely in the dark regarding the identity and motive of the murderer. First he’d suspected Master Hans, then Conrad Näher or one of the other council members, but every lead had turned out false. In the course of his long life, the hangman had solved many cases, but this time he seemed to have reached his wits’ end.
And now he was standing in a labyrinth of ice and snow, freezing his ass off. It was ludicrous.
“I believe you know something,” Kuisl continued as the cold crept up his legs like needles. “The dead girl from the Au creek, Anni, she was working for you as a whore. And her friends Elfi and Eva were also prostitutes in wealthy homes, sent by Uffele. They had to die, too. It’s always whores and young women, isn’t it? They are punished as women and executed. So, what do you know about it? Is Uffele behind it all?”
“By God, I swear, I have no idea,” Pfundner shouted against the wind. He sounded much closer now, as if he was standing behind the nearest hedge. “Why do you even want to know? You’re not from the city guard, are you? Or did Loibl send you?”
Kuisl replied with a question: “Why did Anni have to die? Speak up, and I swear I’ll leave you in peace.”
“Who gives a damn about those girls?” yelled Pfundner. “They’re nothing but dirty harlots. They come to Munich like birds in the spring, and some don’t make it through the winter. Who cares?”
I care, Jakob Kuisl thought. I care about those girls. Most of all, I care about my Magdalena.
“Why did Anni have to die?” he repeated.
“I don’t know,” Pfundner whined. “Jesus, do you have any idea how cold it is? I hadn’t seen that . . . Anni for quite a while. She was no longer any good to me, and I told Uffele. He sent me a new girl.”
And I know who that was. Kuisl ground his teeth, but he reined in his anger.
“Why was she no longer any good to you?” he asked calmly. He sensed he was close to solving the mystery.
“Because . . . because she was pregnant, damn it,” Pfundner burst out. “The stupid wench let herself fall with child. Who needs a pregnant whore? I told her to get rid of it and gave her a pile of thalers to keep quiet. She probably bragged about it, and someone robbed her and cut her throat. I don’t know anything else, I swear.”
Kuisl forgot to breathe for a moment. Pfundner’s words hit him harder than the bronze die earlier. One sentence in particular.
Who needs a pregnant whore?
He thought of all the individual murders that had looked like executions. Strangling, drowning, impaling, burying alive . . . Punishments for women.
For murderesses.
The hangman picked up his thread and made his way back toward the exit.
I told her to get rid of it . . .
“Hey, what are you doing?” screamed Pfundner behind him. “Why are you leaving? I . . . I need your help! I’m freezing and injured. Get me out of here. I beg you, by God! Don’t leave me alone in this goddamned labyrinth. Help me!”
But the hangman was no longer listening.
For the first time since he’d set foot in Munich, he knew he was on the right track. He hurried back through the maze while Pfundner’s calls for help grew fainter and fainter.
The Anger Wolves and Au Do
gs held trial in a storage room deep down below the silk manufactory. The boys sat on bales of cloth, broken looms, dusty chests, and rolls of yarn, glaring at their two prisoners, manufactory director Lukas van Uffele and brothel keeper Joseffa. The two Venetians were tied up in the next cell, their wounds dressed as well as the boys had been able to in the basement.
Magdalena sat leaning against a bundle of old rags, exhausted and shaken. She still had a pounding headache and felt sick. Whenever she tried to stand up, everything went black. Uffele and Joseffa must have made her drink at least half a bottle of brandy the night before, probably mixed with some other drugs, and she’d been unconscious for almost twenty-four hours. Now she knew how her father felt after he’d gone on a bender.
But she was still alive—unlike Anni, Elfi, and perhaps Eva, too. The boys had searched every room in the basement for the girl but found nothing. At least Paul’s life was no longer in danger.
Magdalena cast a loving glance at Peter, who was sitting between her and the sleeping Paul like an attentive guard. When her eldest son had opened the door to her prison cell, she had squeezed him as tightly as if she’d just emerged from the depths of a lake. Then they had rushed to Paul’s side. Peter had done a good job as doctor. The injury wasn’t as bad as they’d first feared—the bullet had gone through. They’d been able to loosen the tight bandage and dress the wound with fresh strips of cloth. Peter had had the idea to give his brother a few spoonfuls of the brandy from the bottle in Magdalena’s cell, so now he was sound asleep, his breathing regular. Magdalena knew that as soon as they were back at the executioner’s house, Walburga would be able to give him the medicine he needed. But before they left this cursed building for good, she wanted to make Uffele and Mother Joseffa talk.
She wanted to solve the mystery of the dead girls once and for all.
“What are you going to do with us?” Uffele snarled, tugging at his ties. “Kill us? You don’t have the guts. And why should you? We haven’t done anything. So what’s the meaning of this?”
The Council of Twelve Page 44