hissed the clerk. “Witchcraft.”
The hangman nodded. “But that doesn’t mean that the Stechlin woman…”
“Midwives are expert in such matters!” Lechner had raised his voice more than he usually did. “I have always warned against permitting such women in our town. They are keepers of secret lore, and they ruin our wives and children! There’ve always been children around her lately, haven’t there? Peter among them. And now they find him in the river, dead.”
Jakob Kuisl longed for his pipe. He would have loved to clear the room of evil thoughts with its smoke. He was fully aware of the aldermen’s prejudice against midwives. Martha Stechlin was the first midwife whom the town had officially appointed. These women with their feminine wisdom had always been suspect to men. They knew potions and herbs; they touched women in indecent spots; and they knew how to get rid of the fruit of the womb, that gift of God. Many midwives had been burned as witches by men. Jakob Kuisl, too, knew all about potions and was suspected of sorcery. But he was a man. And he was the executioner.
“I want you to go to the Stechlin woman and make her confess,” Johann Lechner said. He turned to his notes again and was scribbling. The matter was finished for him.
“And if she won’t confess?” asked Kuisl.
“Then you show her your instruments. Once she sees the thumbscrews she’s bound to soften.”
“You need the council’s approval for that,” whispered the hangman. “I can’t do it alone, and neither can you.”
Lechner smiled. “As you know, the council meets today. I’m certain that the burgomaster and the other notables will follow my suggestion.”
Jakob Kuisl reflected. If the council agreed today to begin torture, the trial would proceed like clockwork, and the end would be torture and probably death at the stake. Both were the executioner’s responsibility.
“Tell her that we’ll begin the questioning tomorrow,” said Lechner, as he continued scribbling in one of the files on his desk. “Then she has time to think it over. If she insists on being stubborn, however, well…well, we’ll need your help.”
His pen continued scratching across the paper. In the market square, the church bell struck eight. Johann Lechner looked up.
“That’ll do. You may leave now.”
The hangman rose and turned to the door. As he pushed the handle, he heard once more the clerk’s voice behind him.
“Oh, Kuisl.” He turned around. The clerk spoke without looking up. “I’m aware you know her well. Make her talk. That’ll save her and you unnecessary suffering.”
Jakob Kuisl shook his head. “She didn’t do it. Believe me.”
Now Johann Lechner looked at him again straight in the eye.
“I don’t think that she did it, either, but it’s what’s best for our town, believe
The hangman didn’t reply. He ducked under the low doorway and let the door fall shut behind him.
When the hangman’s footsteps in the street had faded away, the clerk returned to his files. He tried to concentrate on the parchments before him, but that was difficult. Before him lay an official complaint from the city of Augsburg. Thomas Pfanzelt, a Schongau master raftsman, had transported a large pack of wool that belonged to Augsburg merchants together with a heavy grindstone. Owing to its weight the cargo had fallen into the Lech. Now the Augsburgers demanded compensation. Lechner sighed. The everlasting quarrels between the Augsburgers and the Schongauers were getting on his nerves. And especially today he couldn’t be bothered with such petty grievances. His town was on fire! Johann Lechner could almost see how fear and hatred were eating their way from the outskirts to the very center of Schongau. There had been whispering in the inns last night already, both in the Stern and the Sonnenbrau. People were talking about devil worship, witches’ sabbaths, and ritual murder. After all the plagues, wars, and storms, the situation was explosive. The city was a powder keg, and Martha Stechlin could be the fuse. Lechner twisted his quill nervously between his fingers.
The clerk knew Jakob Kuisl as a clever and considerate man, but the question couldn’t be whether or not the Stechlin woman was guilty. The town’s welfare was a weightier matter. A short trial would help bring a long- sought-for peace back to the town.
Johann Lechner gathered his parchment scrolls, stashed them in the shelves along the wall, and set out for the Ballenhaus. The grand council meeting would begin in half an hour and there were still things to do. He had requested the town crier to summon all members of the council: the inner council and the outer council, as well as the six commoners. Lechner wanted to get everyone behind this.
After crossing the market square, which was busy at this hour, the clerk entered the Ballenhaus. The storage hall was more than twenty feet high, and inside it crates and sacks were piled high awaiting transport to distant cities and countries. Blocks of sandstone and trass were stacked in one corner and the fragrance of cinnamon and coriander filled the air.
Lechner climbed the wide, wooden stairway to the upper floor. As the official representative of the Elector he had no business in the town council, but since the Great War the patricians had become accustomed to having a strong arm in upholding law and order. So they gave the clerk full authority. It was almost natural that by now he chaired the council meetings. Johann Lechner was a man of power, and he had no intention of yielding it.
The door to the council chamber was open and the clerk was surprised to see that he was not as usual the first to arrive. Karl Semer, the presiding burgomaster, and the alderman Jakob Schreevogl had come before him and seemed engaged in lively conversation.
“And I am telling you that the Augsburgers are going to build a new road, and then we’ll be sitting here like a fish on dry land,” Semer shouted at Schreevogl, who kept shaking his head. The young man had joined the council just six months before, replacing his late father. Several times already this tall patrician had clashed with the burgomaster. Unlike his father, who had been close friends with Semer and the other council members, he had a will of his own. And he wasn’t going to let himself be intimidated by Semer now.
“They can’t do that, and you know it. They have tried already once, and the Elector stopped them.”
But Semer would have none of that. “That was before the war! The Elector has other things on his mind now! Believe an old soldier, the Augsburgers are going to build their road and then we’ll have these goddamn lepers to deal with, not to mention this terrible murder story…The merchants will avoid us like the plague!”
Johann Lechner cleared his throat as he entered and stepped to the head of the U-shaped oak table that occupied the entire room. Semer, the burgomaster, hurried to greet him.
“Good that you are here, Lechner. I have tried to persuade young Schreevogl here to change his plans concerning the house for lepers. And right away! The Augsburg merchants are digging our graves, and if news should spread that we have at our very gates…”
Johann Lechner shrugged.
“The leper house is a church matter. You can speak with the priest, but I don’t believe you’ll have any luck. And now will you please excuse me?”
The clerk pushed past the stout burgomaster and unlocked the door that led to the back room. Here, an open cabinet with pigeonholes and drawers crammed with parchments towered to the ceiling. Johann Lechner climbed onto a stool and pulled out the papers that would be needed for the meeting.
As he was doing this, his eye fell on the file concerning the leper house. Last year the church had decided to build a new home for lepers outside of town on the road to Hohenfurch. The old one had collapsed decades ago, but the disease had not subsided. Lechner shuddered at the thought of the vicious epidemic. Next to the plague, leprosy was the most dreaded of afflictions. Those who contacted it rotted alive—nose, ears, and fingers would drop off like decayed fruit. At the end, the face would be nothing but a mass of flesh with no resemblance to anything human. As the disease was highly contagious, the poor souls were usually chased out of town or had to carry bells or clappers so that people could hear them from afar and avoid them. As an expression of mercy, but also to prevent further infection, many towns built so-called leprosaria, which were ghettos outside the city walls where the sick eked out their miserable existence. Schongau, too, was planning to build such a leper house. For the past six months there had been much activity at the construction site on the road to Hohenfurch, but the council was still arguing over that particular decision.
When Johann Lechner returned to the council chamber, most members of the council had already arrived.
