father still hadn’t returned. Finally, three figures in dark robes had crept out of the same church window they had pried open before and disappeared into the darkness. Magdalena could hear from far off the whinnying and hoofbeats of their horses as they left.
Where was her father?
Finally, she hurried to the rectory to awaken Magda and the gaunt sexton. Together they opened the door to the church, while Magda, terrified, kept making the sign of the cross, praying, and staring up into the night sky. If someone was really still lurking around in there, the shock would probably kill both of them, Magdalena thought. But the church was empty. The stone slab above the crypt had been moved aside, but even after Magdalena had descended the stairway-despite Magda’s praying and moaning-she had not been able to find anything. Evidently, there had been a struggle in both underground rooms, which were littered with refuse. In the back room, the sarcophagus had clearly been examined again. Bones and scraps of material lay around the room, but the sarcophagus stood just as her father and Simon had left it, with its lid closed. A strange fleeting feeling came over her as she looked at the sarcophagus, but she couldn’t figure out what it was. It almost seemed as if she could sense the presence of her father. But he was still nowhere to be seen.
Fearful, she finally spent the night in the rectory and returned home early the next morning. Her mother was already up and standing in the doorway, her eyes red with tears.
“Where were you?” she asked. “And where is your father?”
For a brief moment, Magdalena was tempted to lie to her mother: She had been called to work overnight as a midwife in Altenstadt, and her father was sleeping off a night of carousing at Strasser’s Tavern. But then it all came out.
“I…I just don’t know,” was all she could say, sobbing, before burying her face in her mother’s bosom. Sitting at the table inside, Anna Maria Kuisl finally learned the whole truth about her husband’s uncertain fate.
“How often have I told your father not to meddle in other people’s affairs!” she scolded. “Don’t we have enough problems already? But no, he won’t listen. He pokes his nose in books and other people’s garbage, and now he’s putting his own daughter in danger once again! To hell with him!”
Anna Maria Kuisl’s unique method of conquering her fear for her husband was by scolding and cursing. The more she cursed, the more relief she got. In the end, she often told him just to drop dead-although she really loved him. Anna Maria Kuisl herself came from a family of hangmen in Kempten. Death and horror were nothing new to her, but no one could take away her fear for her family. On the other hand, she simply couldn’t imagine that Jakob had been killed and buried by three dastardly murderers who were just passing through. They couldn’t do this to Jakob Kuisl, the hangman of Schongau, that goddamned pigheaded smart aleck!
Of course, Jakob Kuisl picked the most unfavorable of all possible moments to return home. The door creaked and his broad frame appeared in the doorway, still covered with stone dust, dirt, and crushed bone. His forehead and arm were bleeding, his hands badly skinned, and every one of his muscles was painful and stiff as a board. No doubt that was the reason he couldn’t duck when the pot of porridge came flying through the air at him.
“You bullheaded clod! How often have I told you to keep your daughter out of this when you go poking your nose around?”
Jakob Kuisl wiped the warm porridge from his shirt and stuck his finger in his mouth. “You got any more, or was that all for today? Doesn’t taste half bad…” he muttered.
A clay cup came flying through the air at him, but this time he was ready. Though his upper body was stiff, he managed to turn away so that the cup smashed into pieces against the wall behind him.
“How dare you even show up here,” his wife shouted. But her anger already seemed to have cooled somewhat. Besides, she didn’t have any more ammunition. “I’ve been worried sick about you two.”
The patter of little feet could be heard coming down the stairs. The seven-year-old twins, Georg and Barbara, stood there in their nightshirts, blinking at them from behind the railing.
“Mama, why does Papa have porridge all over his jacket?”
“Because Mama was scolding him.” Anna Maria Kuisl went up the stairs. “Because you have such a stubborn damned father. It’s outrageous. Now put some clothes on before you freeze to death.”
She disappeared upstairs with the children while Jakob grinned and pointed to Magdalena and to the pot on the floor.
“What do you say? Would
Magdalena smiled. “Well, Father, the main thing is that you’re back.” Then she picked up the battered pot, took it back to the kitchen, and put fresh water on to boil.
Early that afternoon, Simon Fronwieser stopped by the hangman’s house and reported what he and Benedikta had learned. The return trip from Steingaden to Schongau had been uneventful. Just after they’d left, they came upon an armed party of merchants who accompanied them to Schongau. The merchants hadn’t seen a trace of robbers. Perhaps they looked too well armed for them, Simon thought. Or they still remembered Benedikta and preferred to hide in the forest and lick their wounds.
Benedikta stayed at the Goldener Stern Inn, where she hoped to finish some important correspondence. Anna Maria Kuisl had taken the twins into the forest to gather firewood. She was still angry at her husband and, for that reason, was staying out of his way. Jakob knew that this would all pass over by the next day, at the latest.
Now Jakob and Simon were sitting at the table in the main room, thinking about everything that had happened the day before. A roughly mortared tile stove in the corner spread a pleasant warmth, and on the table a piece of wood was burning in a torch holder, bathing the low-ceilinged room in a gentle glow. Under the bench, a few chickens were scratching around in their cages.
Magdalena made an herbal broth that the men sipped morosely. Simon yearned for a cup of coffee, but Magdalena had refused to serve him the stimulating beverage. In his present condition, she said, a calming herbal drink would be just the right thing for him. In general, Magdalena seemed sullen and uncommunicative, and Simon had the feeling that she also refused him the coffee because he had traveled to Steingaden with Benedikta. At some point, when he touched her skirt, she retreated to the stove and avoided looking him in the eye.
Both the hangman and the physician had bandages on their foreheads. Jakob Kuisl had a bandaged hand as well, but that didn’t keep him from holding a cup in one hand and a smoking pipe in the other. He told Simon briefly about being attacked in the crypt, and now they were discussing what to do next.
“Let’s summarize what we know, again,” Simon began. “In the crypt under the Saint Lawrence Church are the bones of a Knight Templar; that’s at least what we can assume from reading the inscription on the sarcophagus.” He slurped listlessly on his herbal brew before continuing. “The church itself once belonged to the Knights Templar many years ago before the latter sold it to the Premonstratensians. The seller was a certain Friedrich Wildgraf, the local master of the Order of the Knights Templar in the German Empire. Benedikta assumes-”
“Oh, just stop already with this Benedikta!” Magdalena interrupted angrily. “Maybe you weren’t really in Steingaden until noon today; maybe you were making love in some stable, then showed up here holding hands this morning, and the whole story about the robbers is one big cock-and-bull story-”
“Be quiet, Magdalena, and stop talking such nonsense. Help us figure this out; that would be more helpful.”
Her father’s voice was calm and composed, but Magdalena knew she couldn’t take this much further. She and Simon had already had a heated argument earlier in the afternoon, and Simon had assured her that nothing had happened between him and Benedikta. But the way he looked down when he spoke to her made her fear the worst.
“Maybe the remains in the crypt belong to this Friedrich Wildgraf,” she suggested.
“That’s also what Benedikta assumes,” Simon replied, shrugging.
“Nonsense.” From a flask under the table, the hangman poured something strong into his cup of herbal brew. “This Templar sold the property. Why would he want to be buried there? Anyway, such a noble gentleman has certainly found a better place to bide his time until Judgment Day than in our dilapidated Saint Lawrence Church, of all places.”
Neither Simon nor Magdalena could argue with that.
“Whatever the case,” Simon continued, “what’s down there is certainly the grave of a Knight Templar. That old fart Koppmeyer finds it, talks too much, and suddenly he’s dead.”
“Probably poisoned by the three men that Magdalena and I saw in the church yesterday,” Jakob Kuisl grumbled. “They were looking for something there. What the hell could it be?”
