“Nonsense, the dog was howling. The devil must have taken a shit in your ears.”
There was laughter. The shouts of the others became fainter.
“Hogwash. I am sure it was a child…”
Under Sophie’s strong hands, Clara was tossing back and forth. Sophie was still holding her mouth closed even though she was afraid of suffocating the girl. But Clara could not be allowed to scream. Not now!
Suddenly she could hear a frightened panting above her. “Look, the dog!” called Franz Strasser. “He’s starting to dig! There is something here!”
“True, he’s digging…what in the world is he…”
The other man’s voice turned to loud laughter.
“A bone, a stupid bone, that’s what he’s dug up! Ha-ha, that’s sure a devil’s bone!”
Franz Strasser began cursing. “You stupid cur, what are you doing? Leave it alone or I’ll beat you to death!”
More kicks and whimpering. Then the steps retreated. After a while, nothing could be heard anymore. Nevertheless Sophie’s hand remained clamped over Clara’s mouth. She held her delicate head as in a vise. The sick girl’s face had turned blue by now. Finally Sophie released her, and Clara sucked air into her lungs, gasping, as if she were about to drown. Then her breathing became more regular. The shadows had withdrawn. She drifted into a quiet sleep.
Sophie sat next to her and wept without making a sound. She had almost killed her friend. She was a witch; people were right. God would punish her for what she had done.
While Martha Stechlin was being tortured, Simon Fronwieser was sitting in the hangman’s house making coffee. He was still carrying a handful of the foreign beans in a small pouch on his belt. Now he had ground them up in the executioner’s mortar and had set a pot with water on the fire. When the water was at a boil he used a pewter spoon to put a little of the black powder in the pot and stirred. Immediately, a sharp aromatic fragrance spread through the house. Simon held his nose directly over the pot and breathed it in. The scent cleared his head. Finally he poured some of the brew into a mug. As he waited for the grounds to settle he thought about everything that had happened in the past few hours.
After their brief detour to Altenstadt he had walked Jakob Kuisl home, but the hangman did not want to disclose the meaning of his enigmatic words at the end of their visit to Strasser’s. Even when Simon had insisted, he only told him to be available during the night, and that they had come quite a bit closer to the solution. Then the otherwise grim hangman smiled quietly. For the first time in days, Simon had the feeling that Jakob Kuisl was highly pleased with himself.
This bliss was instantly disrupted when they arrived at the hangman’s house in the Lech quarter. Two bailiffs were already waiting at the door to tell Jakob Kuisl that the Stechlin woman was again ready to be interrogated.
The hangman’s face suddenly turned white.
“So soon?” he murmured, stepping inside and reappearing a short time later with the necessary tools. Then he took Simon briefly aside and whispered in his ear, “Now we can only hope that Martha remains strong. In any case, be at my house tonight at the stroke of midnight.”
Then he had trudged off behind the bailiffs, up to the town, with a sack slung over his shoulders filled with thumb-and leg screws, ropes, and sulfur sticks that could be inserted under the fingernails and lit. The hangman walked very slowly, but finally he disappeared beyond the Lech Gate.
When Anna Maria Kuisl stopped to pick up Simon in front of the house a short time later, she found him staring into space. She poured him a goblet of wine, ran her hand over his hair, and then went to market with the twins to buy bread. Life went on, even if three little boys were dead and a presumably innocent woman was suffering unspeakable torture at this very moment.
Simon went into the hangman’s spare chamber carrying the steaming brew and started to leaf aimlessly through some books. But he couldn’t really concentrate and the letters danced before his eyes. Almost gratefully he looked around when the squeaking door behind him announced a visitor. Magdalena was standing there, her face tearstained, her hair tangled and unkempt.
“Never, never will I marry the Steingaden hangman,” she sobbed. “I’d rather go and drown myself!”
Simon winced. With all the ghastly events of the last few hours he had completely forgotten Magdalena. He slammed the book shut and took her in his arms.
“Your father would never do such a thing, not without your consent,” he said, trying to console her.
She pushed him away. “What do you really know about my father!” she cried. “He is the hangman. He tortures and kills, and when he isn’t doing that, he sells love potions to old hags and poison to young sluts to kill the brats inside them. My father is a monster, a fiend! He’ll marry me off for a few guilders and a bottle of brandy without batting an eye! To hell with my father!”
Simon held her tightly and looked into her eyes. “You mustn’t speak like this about your father! You know that it’s not true. Your father is the hangman, but God knows somebody must do it after all! He is a strong and a wise man. And he loves his daughter!”
Crying she clung to Simon’s doublet, shaking her head again and again. “You don’t know him. He is a monster, a monster…”
Simon was standing at the window looking vacantly into the herb garden, where the first green shoots were starting to appear in the brown earth. He felt so helpless. Why couldn’t they simply be happy together? Why were there always people telling them how to live their lives? His father, Magdalena’s father, the whole damn town…
“I just talked with him, with your father…about us,” he began suddenly.
She stopped sobbing and looked up to him questioningly.
“And what did he say?”
Her eyes were so full of hope that he impulsively decided to lie.
“He…he said that he would think it over. That first he wanted to see if I was good for anything. Once the matter with Martha Stechlin was settled, he would make up his mind. He won’t exclude the possibility, that’s what he said.”
“But…but that’s wonderful!”
Magdalena wiped the tears from her face and smiled at him with puffy eyes.
“That means all you have to do is help him get Martha Stechlin out of the keep.” With every word her voice became firmer. “Once he sees that you’ve got something inside your head he will also trust you with his daughter. That has always been what counted for my father. That a person should have something inside his head. And that’s what you are going to prove to him now.”
Simon nodded but avoided looking directly at her. In the meantime Magdalena had again gotten a hold of herself. She poured a goblet of wine and emptied it in one gulp.
“What did you find out this morning?” she asked, wiping the back of her hand across her mouth.
Simon told her about the death of the Strasser boy, and that the midwife had regained consciousness. He also told Magdalena of her father’s hints and their planned meeting in the coming night. She listened attentively and only here and there interjected a short question.
“And you say Strasser had noticed that Johannes had often been covered with clay?”
Simon nodded. “That’s what he said. And then your father gave him such a funny look.”
“Did you get to look at the dead boy’s fingernails?”
He shook his head. “No, but I believe your father did.”
Magdalena smiled. Simon suddenly thought he was looking into her father’s face.
“What are you grinning about? Do tell me!”
“I think I know what my father wants to do with you tonight.”
“And what is that?”
“Well, he probably wants to have another look at the fingernails of the other boys.”
“But they were buried long ago in the cemetery at Saint Sebastian’s!”
Magdalena gave him a wicked grin. “And now you know why you’ll only get going at midnight tonight.”
Simon’s face turned white. He had to sit down.
“You…you think?”
Magdalena poured herself another goblet of wine. She took a deep gulp before continuing.
