“Which others?”
“Well, the orphans, you know—Sophie, Clara, Anton, Johannes…whatever they’re all called. They visited me, sometimes several times a week. They played in my garden, and I made some porridge for them. They haven’t anybody else anymore.”
Jakob Kuisl remembered. He, too, had occasionally seen children in the midwife’s garden, but he had never realized that they were almost all orphans.
The hangman knew the children from seeing them in the streets. They often stood together and were avoided by the others. Several times he had intervened when other children had banded together to attack the orphans and beat them. It seemed almost as if they had some sort of sign on their foreheads that led the others to choose them again and again as victims of aggression. For a moment, his mind went back to his own childhood. He was a dirty, dishonorable hangman’s son, but at least he had parents—a blessing that meanwhile fewer and fewer children enjoyed. The Great War had taken the lives of many fathers and mothers. The city put such poor, orphaned souls under the care of a guardian. They were often citizens from the city administration, but they were sometimes master craftsmen, who also took over the possessions of the dead parents as part of the bargain. In these families, usually numerous, these children were the last link in a long chain. Barely tolerated, pushed about, rarely loved. One more mouth to feed because the money was needed. Jakob Kuisl could well understand why these children had seen something like a mother in the affectionate Martha Stechlin.
“When was the last time they were with you?” he asked the midwife.
“The day before yesterday.”
“So then, the day before the night of the murder. Was Peter also with them?”
“Yes, of course. He was such a polite boy…”
Tears rolled down the midwife’s blood-encrusted face. “He didn’t have a mother anymore. I was with her in her last hours myself. They always wanted to know everything, Peter and Sophie. What I did as a midwife and what herbs I used. They watched closely when I pulverized them in the mortar. Sophie said she would like to become a midwife one day.”
“How long did they stay?”
“Until shortly before dark. I sent them home then, because Klingensteiner’s wife sent for me. I stayed with her until early yesterday morning. By God, there are witnesses to that!”
The hangman shook his head. “That won’t help you. Yesterday evening I spoke with old Grimmer. Peter supposedly never returned home. Grimmer was at the inn until closing hour. When he went to wake his son the next morning, the bed was empty.”
The midwife sighed. “So I was the last one to see him alive…”
“That’s just it, Martha. It looks bad. Out there people are gossiping.”
The midwife pulled the coat tighter around her. Her lips tightened.
“When will you begin with the pincers and the thumbscrews?” she asked.
“Soon, if Lechner has anything to say about it.”
“Shall I confess?”
Jakob Kuisl hesitated. This woman had brought his children into the world. He owed her a favor. In any case, try as he might, he found it impossible to imagine that she could have inflicted wounds like that on Peter.
“No,” he said finally. “Put it off. Deny it as long as you can. I’ll treat you gently, I promise you.”
“And if that doesn’t help anymore?”
Kuisl drew on his cold pipe. Then he pointed the stem at Martha. “I’ll get the swine who did it. I promise you. Hold on until I have the bastard.”
Then he turned suddenly and made his way toward the outer door.
“Kuisl!”
The hangman stopped and looked round once more at the midwife. Her voice was a whisper, barely audible.
“There’s just one thing more. You ought to know.”
“What’s that?”
“I had a mandrake in my closet.”
“A man—! You know, the bigwigs hold that to be the devil’s stuff.”
“I know. In any case, it’s gone.”
“Gone?”
“Yes, disappeared. Since yesterday.”
“Have any other things gone missing?”
“I don’t know. I’d only just noticed it before Grimmer came with his people.”
Jakob Kuisl remained standing by the door, pensively sucking at the pipe stem.
“Strange,” he murmured. “Wasn’t it the full moon last night?”
Without waiting for an answer, he walked out and the door slammed shut with a great noise behind him. Martha Stechlin wrapped herself in the coat, lay down on the straw, and wept silently.
The hangman took the quickest way to the Stechlin house. His steps echoed through the alleys. A group of peasant women, loaded with baskets and sacks, looked up in astonishment at the huge man who hurried past them. They made the sign of the cross, then continued gossiping about the terrible death of the Grimmer child and about his father, the widower and drunkard.
As he walked along, Jakob Kuisl again thought about what the midwife had just said to him. The mandrake was the root of mandragora, a plant with yellow-green fruits, whose consumption had a numbing effect. The root itself resembled a tiny withered man, which is why it was often used for spells. Pulverized, it was an ingredient of the notorious flying salve, used by witches to anoint their broomsticks. It was supposed to flourish particularly well under the gallows and to thrive on the urine and sperm of those who had been hanged, but Jakob Kuisl had never seen one growing on the Schongau gallows hill. In fact the plant was excellent as an analgesic or for bringing about abortions. But if a mandrake was found in Martha Stechlin’s possession, that would mean a certain death sentence.
Who could have stolen the plant from the midwife? Someone who wanted to harm her?
Perhaps the midwife had simply misplaced the forbidden root. Jakob Kuisl strode on faster. Soon he would be able to form a picture for himself.
A short time later he stood in front of the midwife’s house. When he saw the splintered window frame and the broken door, he was no longer sure that he would find anything significant there.
The hangman pushed at the door. With one final squeak it came off its hinges and fell inward.
In the room it looked as if Martha Stechlin had been experimenting with gunpowder and had blown herself up. The clay floor was strewn with broken earthenware pots, whose alchemical signs indicated their previous contents. There was a strong smell of peppermint and wormwood.
The table, chair, and bed had been smashed and their various parts scattered throughout the room. The kettle with the cold porridge had rolled into the corner, its contents making a small puddle, from which footprints led to the garden door at the back. Smeared footmarks were also to be seen in the herbal pastes and powders on the floor. It looked as if half of Schongau had paid a visit to Martha Stechlin’s house. Jakob remembered that along with Grimmer a good dozen men had stormed the midwife’s house.
When the hangman looked more closely at the footprints, he began to wonder. Between the big footprints were smaller ones, smeared but still clearly recognizable. Children’s footprints.
He looked around the room. The kettle. The broken table. The footprints. The smashed pots. Somewhere in his brain a bell was ringing, but he couldn’t say why. Something seemed familiar to him.
The hangman chewed the stem of his cold pipe. Then he went outside, deep in thought.
Simon Fronwieser sat downstairs in the living room near the fire and watched the coffee boiling. He inhaled the exotic and stimulating odor and shut his eyes. Simon loved the smell and taste of this strange powder; he was almost addicted to it. Just a year before, a merchant from Augsburg had brought a bag with the small hard beans to Schongau. He praised them as a wonderful medicine from the Orient. The Turks would drink themselves into a frenzy with coffee, and it would also lead to wonderful performances in bed. Simon was not quite sure how many of the rumors were true. He only knew that he loved coffee and after drinking it he could browse for hours in his books without getting tired.
