“He is…ill.”
“A summer fever? May God see to it that he sweats and shivers for a long time.”
Simon shook his head.
“It’s more serious. I discovered red patches on his skin, which are gradually spreading. In many places he has no feeling anymore. I believe…he has an infection. He must have caught it during his last journey to Venice.”
“Leprosy?”
The hangman was silent for a moment. Then he laughed loudly.
“Augustin a leper! Who would have thought that? Well, then, he’ll be very pleased that the leper’s house is nearly finished. First of all the half-wit sabotages the building and then he must move in himself. Say what you like: God is just, after all.”
Simon had to chuckle. But immediately his conscience started to trouble him. Georg Augustin was a bad man, a lunatic, a child murderer who had, moreover, tortured him. The scar on Simon’s thigh still hurt. But in spite of this, he would not have wished this disease on even his worst enemy. Georg Augustin’s body would slowly rot away while he was still alive.
To turn their minds to other thoughts, Simon changed the subject.
“This betrothal of Magdalena with the Steingaden hangman,” he began.
“What about it?” Kuisl grumbled.
“Are you really serious about it?”
The hangman took a puff on his pipe. It was some time before he answered.
“I turned him down. The wench is too stubborn. He doesn’t deserve that.”
A smile spread over Simon’s face. It seemed that a heavy weight had been lifted from his mind.
“Kuisl, I’m really very-”
“You be quiet!” the hangman interrupted him. “Or I might change my mind.”
Then he stood up and went to the door. Without a word he motioned to Simon to follow him.
They went through the living room, which smelled of fresh-baked bread, across to the little workroom. The hangman, as always, had to stoop to get through the low doorway. Behind him Simon entered the holy of holies. Once again he looked reverently at the massive cabinet, which reached up to the ceiling.
Immediately the young physician was overcome with the urge to open the cabinet so as to browse through the books and folios. As he moved toward it he almost stumbled over a small chest standing in the middle of the chamber. It was made of polished cherrywood, with silver fittings and a solid-looking lock, with the key still in it.
“Open it,” said the hangman. “It belongs to you.”
“But…” Simon interjected.
“Consider it as payment for all your trouble,” he said. “You helped me to rescue my daughter and also save the woman who brought my children into the world.”
Simon knelt and opened the chest. The lid sprang open with a little click.
Inside there were books. At least a dozen.
They were all new editions. Scultetus’s
Simon rummaged through them, turning pages. A treasure lay before him, much greater than the one they had found in the tunnels.
“Kuisl,” he stammered. “How can I ever thank you? It’s too much! That…it must have cost a fortune!”
The hangman shrugged.
“A few golden coins more or less. Old Augustin didn’t notice it.”
Simon sat up, shocked.
“You mean, you-?”
“I believe that Ferdinand Schreevogl would have wanted it like that,” said Jakob Kuisl. “What use would so much money be to the church or the old moneybags on the council? It would have taken on dust just as it did down below in that hole. Now off you go and start reading, before I regret it.”
Simon gathered the books together, shut the chest, and grinned.
“Now you can borrow a few books from me when you want to. If in return, Magdalena and I…”
“You rascal, be off with you!” The hangman gave him a gentle slap on the back of the head so that Simon almost tripped over the threshold with the chest. He ran outside and along the banks of the Lech through the tanners’ quarter, into town, over the cobblestones of the Munzstrasse, and into the narrow stinking alleys, until he arrived panting at his house.
He would have a lot of reading to do today.
