Most patricians in the town council, including the burgomasters, were opposed to the building because they were afraid of financial losses. That’s ridiculous, if you remember that even Augsburg has a leper house like that.”
He shook his head and then turned contemplative again.
“But would they destroy the building site and kill witnesses, let alone children? I can’t imagine that in my wildest dreams…”
They were both startled by the sound of loud coughing and turned around.
A pitch-black form emerged from the well, pulling itself up on a rope. The bailiffs picked up their weapons and headed for the well, clutching their halberds in fear. The figure that pulled itself over the edge of the well looked like the devil himself. It was black with soot from head to toe, and only the eyes were shining white. His clothes were singed and bloodstained in many places, and between his teeth he was holding a larchwood cudgel, the tip of which was glowing red. Now he threw it out onto the ground.
“Jesus bloody Christ! Don’t you know your own hangman? Quick, get me some water before I’m completely burned to a crisp.”
The bailiffs withdrew, frightened, while Simon hurried to the well.
“Kuisl, you’re alive! I thought the devil…God, I’m so happy!”
The hangman hoisted himself over the edge of the well.
“Don’t waste your words. The damned swine is where he should’ve been long ago. But my Magdalena is still in the hands of those cutthroats.”
He limped to a water trough to wash himself off. It took some time for the hangman’s face to appear beneath thick layers of soot. He cast a glance at Jakob Schreevogl and the children, and nodded approvingly.
“You saved her. Well done,” he growled. “Go back to Schongau now with them and the alderman, and we’ll meet at my house. I’m going to look for my daughter.”
He picked up his cudgel and headed for the Hohenfurch Road.
“You know where she is?” Simon called after him.
The hangman nodded, almost imperceptibly.
“He told me. Toward the end. Eventually you can get anyone to talk…”
Simon gulped.
“What about the bailiffs?” he called after Jakob Kuisl, who had already reached the road that led to Hohenfurch. “Won’t you take them to…help you?”
The last words he said only to himself. The hangman had already disappeared around the corner. He was very, very angry.
Magdalena was stumbling along the road to Schongau. Her clothes were torn and wet, and she was shaking violently. Her head was still aching, too, and she was tormented by thirst and the fact that she hadn’t slept all night. Again and again she kept looking around to see if the second soldier might be following her after all, but there was no one on the road-not even a peasant who could have given her a ride on his oxcart. Ahead of her, Schongau with its protecting walls sat proudly on its hill. To her right was the gallows hill, now deserted. Soon, very soon, she’d be home.
Suddenly she saw in front of her a small dot in the distance, a person with a limp hurrying toward her. The form grew larger, and when she blinked she realized that it was her father.
Jakob Kuisl ran the last few yards, even though it was difficult for him. He had a deep cut in the right side of his chest and one in his left upper arm. He had lost a good deal of blood, and he had twisted his right ankle during the struggle down in the tunnel. But considering all that, he was feeling remarkably well. The hangman had sustained graver injuries during the Great War.
He wrapped his arms around his daughter and patted her head. She almost disappeared within his broad chest.
“The things you do, Magdalena!” he whispered almost tenderly. “Getting yourself caught by a dumb soldier…”
“I won’t do it again, Father,” she answered. “Promise.”
For a while they held each other in silence. Then she looked him in the eyes.
“Father?”
“Yes, Magdalena?”
“About me marrying Hans Kuisl, the Steingaden hangman, you know…Are you going to think that over again?”
For a moment Jakob Kuisl was silent, and then he smiled.
“Yes, I’m going to think that over. But now let’s go home.”
He wrapped his massive arm around his daughter again, and then side by side they walked toward the town, which was just awakening to a new day as the sun rose above it in the east.
CHAPTER 16
TUESDAY MAY 1, A.D. 1659 SIX O’CLOCK IN THE EVENING
From a window in the Council Chamber the court clerk Johann Lechner was looking down on the colorful scene in the market place below. He could hear the bells from the town parish church pealing the six o’clock hour. It was already dusk, and small fires were burning in braziers set up on tripods around the sides of the square. Children were dancing around them, and in front of the Ballenhaus the youngsters had erected a maypole, adorned with colored ribbons and a wreath of green boughs. A few minstrels were standing on a newly built pinewood stage still smelling of resin, tuning their fiddles and lutes. There was a whiff in the air of things boiling and frying.
Lechner’s gaze wandered over the tables that had been put out for the May Day celebration. Burghers in their holiday attire were sitting around and enjoying the bock beer provided free by burgomaster Karl Semer. There was singing and laughter, but in spite of it all, the clerk could feel no holiday mood.
That damned witch was still unconscious, and the Landgrave was expected this very evening. Johann Lechner was horrified at the thought of what would happen then. Investigations, torturing, spying, suspicions…If only the Stechlin woman had confessed, everything would have been all right. They could have had their trial and sent her to the stake. My God, she was as good as dead anyway! Death at the stake would have been a happy release for her and for the town as well!
Johann Lechner leafed through the old documents about the witch hunt of two generations ago. He had taken them down again from the archives near the council chamber. Eighty arrests, countless torturings…sixty-three women burned! The great wave of persecution had begun when the district judge had taken the matter into his hands and then finally the Duke himself had spoken. Then there was no more holding back. Lechner knew that witchcraft was a smoldering fire that would eat its way through society if not stopped in time. Now, presumably, it was too late.
The door squeaked on its hinges and he turned around. Jakob Schreevogl, his face red, was standing in the council chamber. He addressed the clerk with a trembling voice.
“Lechner, we must speak. My daughter has been found!”
The court clerk jumped up. “She’s alive?”
Jakob Schreevogl nodded.
“I’m very happy for you. Where was she found?”
“Down at the building site for the leper house,” the alderman said, still gasping for breath. “But that isn’t all…”
Then he told the court clerk what Simon had told him. After hearing just a few words, Johann Lechner had to sit down. The young patrician’s story was simply too unbelievable.
When Schreevogl had finished, Lechner shook his head.
“Even if it’s true, nobody is going to believe us,” he said. “Least of all the Landgrave, the Elector’s representative.”
“If we have the inner council behind us,” the patrician broke in, “and we plead unanimously for the release of the Stechlin woman, then the Landgrave must also agree. He can’t go above our heads. We are free burghers,
