The Dark Monk

“Nonsense,” Kuisl said as he stuffed his two freshly oiled wheel lock pistols with powder, still chewing on his cold pipe. “We need every man down below. Now, off you go!”

He nodded at Jakob Schreevogl once again, then put both pistols in his belt and, with the loaded musket slung over his shoulder, climbed down the rungs with Wiedemann; the blacksmith, Kronauer; and two other workers. For a moment, he wondered whether it might have been better to leave the two patrician boys up above. It was possible they would panic, do something rash, and blow the group’s cover. But when he thought of their shining sabers, dapper hats, and polished rifles, he couldn’t help but smile.

They wanted to play soldier. Now they’d have a chance to see what it was really like.

Magdalena felt as if she were flying. Standing at the very front of the raft, she watched water rush against the rough-hewn logs to her right and left. Now and then, the raft bumped into shattered ice floes or broken icicles that eddied and sank to the bottom of the Lech. They rushed past slopes on both sides that fell steeply down to the river from hilltops of snow-covered beeches. The raftsmen’s laughter and commands sounded like an unending song. Farther downriver, the Lech exited the narrow gorge and wound its way through a snow-covered landscape dotted with darker spots marking the locations of towns and small groves of trees.

On the left, the little town of Landsberg appeared. Its formidable town walls and towers had been partially dismantled and taken away during the Great War. The hangman’s daughter had heard stories about how the little town had suffered much more than Schongau in the war. Many Landsberg girls, fearing they would be raped by marauding soldiers, jumped from watchtowers into the Lech and drowned. Magdalena remembered now that Benedikta, too, came from this town. These thoughts of the war and of her rival suddenly cast a pall over a trip that had been so pleasant up to then.

“Some girls staring into the waves have fallen in.” The deep voice tore her out of her musings. She turned to see the Augsburg merchant Oswald Hainmiller, who was gnawing on a goose wing and offered her a second piece. Fat dripped from his lips, soiling his trimmed Vandyke beard and white pleated collar. The fat merchant was going on forty and wore a silver buckle and a wide belt that strained against his paunch. The red rooster feather on his hat fluttered in the breeze. Magdalena thought it over for a moment, then reached for the goose wing and took a healthy bite. Except for a few spoonfuls of oatmeal, she hadn’t eaten anything all morning.

“Thanks very much!” she said with a full mouth before directing her gaze back to the turns in the river ahead.

Hainmiller grinned. “How long are you staying in our beautiful city?” he asked, wiping grease from his cheek with his lace-trimmed sleeves. “Will you have to go right back to your shabby little town?”

Hainmiller spoke in the broad Augsburg dialect that Schongauers hated so much because it reminded them of the free imperial city’s snobbishness. Magdalena had booked passage that morning from the merchant. Oswald Hainmiller was bringing wine, oil, tin, spices, and a large cargo of lime with him, and Magdalena’s presence was a welcome opportunity for him to while away the time and to boast a bit until they arrived in Augsburg that evening.

Magdalena sighed. The fat merchant had been trying to strike up a conversation with her ever since they left Schongau. It didn’t look as if he would ever give up. Even when Magdalena told him she was the daughter of the Schongau hangman, he kept hitting on her. In fact, that seemed to excite him only more. Magdalena resigned herself to her fate and smiled back.

“I’ll be able to stay only a day,” she said. “Tomorrow, I’ll be heading back.”

“One day!” the merchant cried, gesturing heavenward as a sign of despair. “How will you be able to appreciate the beauty of this city in just one day? The new town hall, the bishop’s palace, all the fountains! I have heard about Schongauers who were so overwhelmed when they first arrived they had to sit down-the sight was just too much for them.”

The sight of you is too much for me, Magdalena thought, trying to concentrate on the whitecaps in front of her. This fat braggart was already spoiling her visit to Augsburg with all this talk. She was truly looking forward to seeing the city, which had been one of the greatest and most beautiful in Germany before the war.

“Do you know yet where you are going to sleep?” The merchant’s face took on a ferret-like appearance.

“I…My father gave me the name of a good inn by the river,” she said, and could feel her blood beginning to boil. “Food and lodging for only four kreuzers per night.”

“But in return, you’ll have to share your bed with a whole army of fleas and bedbugs.” Oswald Hainmiller stepped very close to her now and was petting her skirt. She could see goose fat forming droplets in his beard. “At my house there is a four-poster with white linen, and you’d have to share that only with me. Perhaps I’d even pay you four kreuzers for the night,” he whispered in her ear, moving so close now that she could smell the alcohol on his breath.

“Cut it out!” Magdalena snapped, pushing him away. “I may be just the hangman’s daughter, but I’m not available.”

The merchant didn’t back off. “I know you girls,” he slobbered. “First you resist, but then you’re all the more willing.”

The wine, combined with the sight of Magdalena, had clearly made Hainmiller more and more lecherous during the last hours of the trip. “Don’t make such a fuss,” he said, grabbing her bodice.

Magdalena pushed his hand away, disgusted. “Wash your mouth out before you say another word,” she replied. “You stink like a dead rat.”

She struggled to free herself from his grip and ran to the middle of the raft, where two Schongau raftsmen were guiding the vessel with long poles. She knew them by sight from Semer’s tavern. They looked over at her hesitantly but didn’t intervene. Magdalena cursed. She was probably nothing more in these men’s eyes than the hangman’s tramp getting her just deserts.

For Oswald Hainmiller, the whole thing became more and more of a game. He ran after her, grinning, while she fled past the raftsmen toward the back of the raft. She clambered over crates and packages, past millstones and sacks of marble and salt. Finally, she reached the back of the raft, but the merchant was still close behind her.

“Very good,” Hainmiller purred, tugging at her bodice. “Here, at least we won’t be disturbed.”

Magdalena looked around. To her left, she spotted a large wooden cart full of quicklime, shrouded with a makeshift linen cover. Thinking quickly, she removed the waxed tarp, hoisted herself up, and skipped along the edge of the cart, smiling and swaying her hips suggestively.

“Come on!” she called to the merchant, who by now was out of breath. “If you want me, you’ve got to come up here and get me.”

Oswald Hainmiller hesitated a moment, then pulled his fat body up onto the side of the cart and edged his way toward her. “In just a second…just a second…I’ll have you,” he groaned.

When he’d gotten just an arm’s length away, Magdalena suddenly gave him a shove, and he waved his hands wildly in the air trying to catch his balance.

“You damn slut!” he roared before falling headfirst into the cart.

A cloud of white dust covered him, and before long, he started to scream. The quicklime was in his eyes, in his mouth, and in every little open cut. Writhing, he coughed and finally pulled himself out of the cart. His coat and the jacket underneath were covered with white spots that started eating away at the cloth wherever there was any moisture. Magdalena jumped down from the cart and grinned. At the very least, Oswald Hainmiller would need a new wardrobe before his next tryst. And perhaps a new face.

After hesitating briefly, she took two handfuls of the white powder and carefully filled the side pockets of her overcoat, being careful that the strong, caustic powder didn’t get wet and eat through her clothing, too. Who knows, maybe she could use it again.

“I’ll…I’ll make you pay for this, you hangman’s wench!” Hainmiller, panting and half blind, leaned over the back of the raft to wash his burning eyes in the water. Seconds later, he was squirming and screaming on the floor of the raft as the powder, hissing and smoking, reacted with the water. “You damned slut!” he howled, crawling across the logs in search of a clean rag to wipe his face. “You won’t enjoy anything in beautiful Augsburg, that I promise you!”

“From now on, leave me alone,” she shouted, moving to the front again, where the Schongau raftsmen stared at her curiously. “You, too,” she shouted, “you lecherous, cloven-hoofed scum! You’re all trouble!”

Sitting down on a crate in the bow, she wrapped her arms around her knees and stared straight ahead. Her