her lip. Why had she asked? Embarrassed, she sipped on the steaming cup.
Finally, the midwife arose and walked over to her shelves, which extended from the shrine in the corner of the room all the way to the hearth. “So be it!” she said. “Life goes on.” Her gaze wandered along the line of jars and pots on the shelves. The jars were all freshly glazed and labeled according to their contents. The midwife opened a few of them and shook her head.
“I’ll need some dried melissa,” she murmured. “And ergot, if nothing else works.”
“What for?” Magdalena asked, walking over to her. “Are you expecting another difficult birth?”
Magdalena had been Martha Stechlin’s apprentice for half a year, and in that time Magdalena had assisted in five difficult births. Only in difficult cases did people call for the midwife. Often women gave birth without help, alone, or with only the immediate family present, whether in a warm living room, in the stable, or sometimes even in the field. If Stechlin was looking through her jars now, there had to be another critical case pending.
“Frau Holzhofer…” Martha Stechlin started to say.
Magdalena gasped. “The wife of the second burgomaster?”
The midwife kept searching through the jars. “Holzhofer’s wife is already past due,” she said. “If the child doesn’t come by next week, we’ll have to give her ergot.”
Magdalena nodded. Ergot was a fungus that grew on rye and oats, a strong poison that caused the notorious St. Anthony’s fire, but in small doses could induce labor.
“And now you don’t have any more?” she asked.
Martha Stechlin had now arrived at the last row of jars. “No, no ergot, melissa, artemisia, or sundew. And your father has none left, either!” She sighed. “It looks like I’ll have to make a trip to Augsburg in this awful cold! The apothecary there is the only place I can get ergot or artemisia in the winter. But what can I do? If anything happens to his wife, Holzhofer will blame it on me, and then they’ll throw me out of my house or set it on fire…”
Suddenly, the hangman’s daughter had an idea. She smiled broadly at the midwife and announced, “I can go!”
“You?” The midwife made an incredulous face, but Magdalena nodded eagerly.
“I’d like to get away from Simon for a while, in any case. I’ll leave with the first ferry tomorrow morning, and we’ll see how he gets along without me.” The more Magdalena thought about it, the more she liked the idea. “Just write down for me what you need and where I’m supposed to go in Augsburg,” she continued, speaking rapidly. “My father certainly needs a few pills and herbs as well, so I can spare you both a trip.”
The midwife stared at her, mulling it over. Then she shrugged. “Why not?” she muttered. “After all, you want to become a midwife. It can only be a good thing for you to see what an apothecary looks like from the inside. And Augsburg…” She smiled at Magdalena. “Well, the city will take your mind off things. Just be careful that you don’t go haywire. You have never in your life seen so many people,” she said, clapping her hands excitedly. “But now, let’s get to work! The marigold leaves must be finely ground and the lard rendered, because Kornbichler’s wife wants her ointment this evening!”
Magdalena smiled and proceeded to pour the fragrant dry leaves into a mortar. The air smelled of hot goose fat, and Stechlin’s chatter sounded like a trickling watermill. Simon, her father, and the dead priest suddenly seemed far, far away.
When Jakob Kuisl opened the trunk, memories of a completely different life came flooding back.
The box had been stored for years in the attic of the hangman’s house, hidden behind rolls of rope and broken barrels where no one could see it. The hangman had carried it down into the main room of the house and opened it now with the key he had been keeping safe. Putting aside a folded, moth-eaten army uniform, he took out first the dismantled barrel of a matchlock musket, then its polished inlaid handle, a pouch of lead bullets, and a chain holding wooden powder kegs, also known among mercenaries as the “Twelve Apostles.” He pulled the bayonet out of its sheath and tested its sharpness with his thumb. After all these years, the steel was still just as sharp and shining as the executioner’s sword, which had been hanging in the devotional corner of his house for ages.
At the very bottom of the trunk lay a little cherrywood box. Jakob Kuisl unsnapped the lock and opened it carefully. Inside were two well-oiled wheel lock pistols. The hangman passed his hand over their polished handles and cool iron cocking hammers. These pistols had cost a fortune, but at that time, money was of no importance. In a drunken frenzy, you just grabbed whatever you wanted, helped yourself. Kuisl’s eyelids twitched. Suddenly, a shadow fell over his memory.
He had been a troop leader, a so-called “sword player” who always fought on the front lines with a double- edged sword, as his father had. He received double pay and the largest portion of the spoils.
He had been one of the best, the perfect killer…
With a shake of his head, the hangman tried to wipe away the memory. He closed the cherrywood box before any further dreams could pour forth.
Hearing the door squeak, he wheeled around as Magdalena came storming in, her face beet red. She had hurried back from Stechlin’s house just in time, before the watchmen closed the gates to the city. Now she was eager to tell her father the news.
“Father, I must leave for Augsburg tomorrow morning on an errand for Stechlin! Please allow me…” She stopped short when she saw the trunk. “What is that?”
“Nothing that concerns you,” her father grumbled. “But if you really want to know, they are weapons. Tomorrow the hunt for the robbers begins.”
Magdalena examined the bayonet, the soiled mercenary’s uniform, and the gun, all of them set out neatly side by side on the table. She stroked the copper-reinforced barrel of the musket.
“Where did you get these?”
“From before.”
The hangman’s daughter turned away from the weapons and looked her father in the eye. “You’ve never told me about
Jakob was silent for a long time. “What do you want to do with your life?” he asked finally.
Magdalena shrugged. “Do I have a choice? As your daughter, I either marry a butcher or an executioner. You don’t have the choice of doing anything else, either.”
“War is cruel, you know,” the hangman replied, “but it makes people free. Anyone can kill, and if he’s smart about it, he can even become a sergeant or a sergeant major and will have more money than he can ever waste on liquor.”
“Then why did you come back?” Magdalena replied.
“Because with killing, it’s just like with everything else in life…Everything has its place.”
And for the hangman, that was the end of the matter-he had nothing further to say. He closed the trunk and gave his daughter a challenging look. “So you want to go to Augsburg? Why?”
Magdalena explained that the midwife needed some important ingredients and wanted to send her to the big city to get them. “And she wants me to get a bezoar for her, too!” she said excitedly.
“A bezoar?”
“A stone from the stomach of a goat, which helps with infertility and difficult births and-”
“I know what a bezoar is,” the hangman interrupted harshly. “But why does Stechlin need it?”
Magdalena shrugged. “The wife of the second presiding burgomaster, Holzhofer, is pregnant, but the child won’t come. She asked Stechlin for a bezoar.”
“The Holzhofer woman is going to have to fork out a heap of money for that,” the hangman grumbled. “A bezoar is not cheap, and that means you’ll have to carry a lot of money with you to Augsburg.”
Magdalena nodded. “Stechlin will give it to me first thing in the morning.”
“And what if you’re robbed?”
Magdalena laughed and gave her father a kiss on the cheek. “Are you worried about me? Don’t forget I’m the daughter of the Schongau hangman! People are more afraid of me than I am of them.” She smiled. “Please let me go! Mother said I’d have to ask you. I’ll take the ferry first thing tomorrow morning, and there will be a group of
