instructions in the letter had been clear.
Johann Lechner counted out the freshly minted coins that had accompanied the letter. The money would help the city, as would the executions. Once again, the clerk was at peace with himself and the world.
Simon and Benedikta arrived in Schongau early in the evening. During the entire trip back, they’d been wondering about the strange words on the plaque, but also about the man who had watched them from the top of the fir. Was he part of the same gang that had been spying on them on the way to Wessobrunn? But why, then, hadn’t the robbers attacked? Why were the two of them being observed and followed?
Simon escorted Benedikta to her quarters at Semer’s inn, where she convinced him to remain a while for a glass of wine in the tavern.
“Is it possible these are the same men who were hanging around this area a few days ago?” Simon asked. “The same ones who ambushed the hangman in the crypt? Magdalena told her father about a few black-robed strangers in Strasser’s Tavern in Altenstadt who were speaking Latin. Perhaps they’ve been following us the entire time, and-”
“Magdalena is a little girl who probably doesn’t know a word of Latin,” Benedikta interrupted. “Perhaps they were just itinerant Benedictines saying their prayers before they ate.” She winked at him. “You’re beginning to look at every stranger like a murderer.” She put her hand around Simon’s arm, but he quickly pulled away.
“Don’t you sense that our every move is being watched?” he asked with alarm. “A highwayman who doesn’t attack, the man in the fir…That can’t all be a coincidence!”
“I think you’re just imagining things!” Benedikta laughed. “Now I’ll tell you what
“I know what I saw.” There was a long pause. When Simon spoke again, he decided to put all his cards on the table. “You’re right,” he said. “Perhaps it’s all just my imagination. Perhaps Andreas Koppmeyer was murdered for some completely different reason. Tell me, Benedikta, your brother surely must have left a will. What does it say?”
Benedikta stared back at him in astonishment and took a deep breath. “So that’s what you think!” she finally blurted out. “You suspect
“What does the will say?” Simon persisted.
Benedikta looked at him angrily, with her arms crossed. “I can tell you. I’m inheriting a leather-bound Bible from my brother, an old armchair, and a cookbook he wrote himself. And forty guilders that will hardly make up for the losses my wine business has incurred in the meanwhile.” She leaned over to Simon. “Those are his personal bequests. Everything else goes to the church!”
Simon winced. He hadn’t once stopped to think that the priest’s possessions would, in fact, for the most part, revert back to the church after his death. In all likelihood, Benedikta had probably inherited no more than these few worthless things.
“And if that were the case,” she continued, now in such a rage that other guests turned around to look at her, “why on earth would I want to hang around Altenstadt near the scene of the crime? Wouldn’t I have just poisoned my brother, gone back to Landsberg without anyone noticing, and waited there for news of his death? Nobody would have suspected anything.” She stood up quickly, knocking over her chair. “Simon Fronwieser, you’re really out of line.” Benedikta ran out, slamming the door behind her.
“Well, Fronwieser?” The brewer’s journeyman, Konstantin Kreitmeyer, looked over at him and grinned. “Trouble with women again? Better stay with your hangman’s daughter. She’s crazy enough for you.”
Some other brewer’s journeymen at Kreitmeyer’s table laughed and made a few obscene gestures.
Simon swallowed the rest of his wine and stood up. “Oh, shut your mouths!” He put a few coins on the table and left the tavern to a further chorus of lewd remarks.
Instead of turning into the Hennengasse and going home, Simon headed toward the Lech Gate. He couldn’t possibly sleep the way he felt now. He had acted like such a fool with Benedikta! How could he even imagine she’d poison her own brother? Further, the journeyman’s words had set him thinking of Magdalena again. Was she already on her way home from Augsburg? Perhaps her father had heard from her. Simon longed for a hot cup of coffee. The only thing awaiting him at home was work and a carping father who was fed up with his son’s escapades. The last time Simon visited the hangman, he brought Anna Maria a little bag of coffee beans, and he wondered now whether the hangman’s wife would brew him a cup of his favorite drink. He decided to pay the Schongau executioner a visit.
Before long, he was down in the Tanners’ Quarter, knocking on the front door of Kuisl’s house. The moment Anna Maria Kuisl opened the door, he could see something was wrong. The face of the otherwise vivacious woman seemed pale and drawn.
“It’s good you have come,” she said, motioning for Simon to enter. “Maybe you can cheer him up a little. He’s started to drink again.”
“Why?” asked Simon, taking off his wet coat and torn jacket and hanging both up to dry alongside the stove.
Anna silently eyed the ruined clothing, then went to look for a needle and thread in a drawer. “Lechner says my husband has to break Sheller on the wheel,” she said as she started sewing up the torn garment. “It’s going to happen in three days, even though Jakob gave his word to the robber chief. It’s a rotten group up there in the city council-they have money coming out their ears, but don’t care a bit about honor and decency!”
The medicus nodded. He’d become accustomed to the hangman’s excesses. Before executions, Kuisl would go on drinking binges, but amazingly, when the time came for the actual execution, he’d always completely sobered up again.
Simon let Anna Maria grumble on while he went over to the main room, where he found the hangman leaning glassy-eyed on the gallows ladder and brooding. The sweet odor of alcohol and sweat drifted through the room. On the table, a few opened books lay alongside an open bottle of brandy, and in a corner of the room, the pieces of a smashed beer stein flashed in the dim light. Kuisl’s face shone in the light of the fire as he prepared to take another mighty swig.
“Drink with me or leave me alone,” he said, slamming the bottle back down on the table. Simon put a fat- bellied clay cup to his mouth and sipped on its contents. It was something very strong that the hangman made from the fermented apples and pears from his orchard. Presumably, there were also a few herbs mixed in, which the medicus didn’t even want to know about.
“We found a new riddle in Wessobrunn,” Simon said abruptly. “Some words up in a linden tree. I thought you might be able to make some sense out of them.”
Kuisl belched loudly and wiped the corner of his mouth. “Who gives a damn? But go ahead, spit it out. You can’t just keep it to yourself.”
Simon smiled. He knew how curious the hangman was, even when he was stoned. “It goes like this:
Kuisl nodded, then translated aloud. “
He picked up the bottle again with a vacant look, one that Simon had trouble reconciling with Kuisl’s other, sensitive and educated side. People were always astonished that the executioner knew Latin so well, even when he was completely soused. They would be even more astonished if they looked around the hangman’s library and saw all the books in German, Latin, and even Greek, written by scholars still completely unknown in most German universities.
“But it
Kuisl rubbed his temples, trying to think clearly. “Well, it’s not anything from the Bible that I can remember,” he growled. “And I know most of those biblical aphorisms. You wouldn’t believe how pious people become when it’s time for them to die. I’ve heard it all, but never these words.”
Simon swallowed before continuing. Jakob Kuisl’s father had been the local hangman before him, and before that, his grandfather-a true dynasty of executioners now extending over a whole host of Bavarian cities and towns.
