“Goodwife Stechlin has nothing to do with it, so help me God.”
“Who, then?”
“Peter went down to the river again afterward…alone.”
“Why?”
Sophie pressed her lips together. She avoided his eyes.
“I want to know why!”
“He said it was a secret. He…was going to meet someone.”
“Who, for God’s sake?”
“Didn’t say.”
Simon shook Sophie. He felt that the girl was hiding something from him. Suddenly she broke from his grasp and ran into the next alley.
“Wait!” he cried and started to run after her.
Sophie was barefoot, and her little feet flitted lightly over the stamped earth. She had already reached the Zankgasse and ducked between some servant maids coming from the market with fully laden baskets. As Simon rushed past them, his clothing caught on one of the baskets. The maid let go of the basket, and radishes, cabbages, and carrots flew in all directions on the street. Simon heard angry cries behind him, but he could not stop, as the girl was on the verge of making her escape. She had already disappeared around the next bend, where there were fewer people in the alleys. Simon held onto his hat with one hand and continued running. On the left stood two houses with their roofs almost touching and in between was a narrow alley, just about shoulder-width, leading to the town wall. The ground was covered with rubble and trash, and at the other end Simon could see a small form running away. Cursing, the physician bade farewell to his fine leather boots greased with beef tallow and sprang over the first mound of rubble.
He landed directly in a heap of refuse, slipped, and fell on the seat of his pants in a mass of rubble, rotten vegetables, and the fragments of a discarded chamber pot. He could hear the sound of distant footsteps. He groaned and rose to his feet as one story higher a window shutter was opened. Startled faces looked down on a rather shaken physician, who was carefully removing cabbage leaves from his coat.
“Mind your own business!” he shouted up at them. Then he limped off in the direction of the Lech Gate.
The hangman looked through the glass at a heap of yellow stars, which were glittering in the light of the tallow candle. Crystals like snow, each one perfect in its form and arrangement. Jakob Kuisl smiled. When he dipped into the mysteries of nature, he was sure that there must be a God. Who else could create such lovely works of art? Man’s inventions could only ape those of his Creator. On the other hand, it was the same God who ensured that people died like flies, carried off by plague and war. It was difficult in such times to believe in God, but Jakob Kuisl discovered Him in the beauties of nature.
Just as he was carefully distributing the crystals on a piece of parchment with his tweezers, there was a knock at the door. Before he could say anything, the door of his study opened a crack. A current of air blew in and moved the parchment toward the end of the table. With a curse Jakob grabbed at it and prevented it from being blown down. Some of the crystals disappeared into a crack in the table.
“Who in the name of three devils?”
“It’s Simon,” said his wife, who had opened the door. “He wants to bring the books back. And he would like to talk to you. He says it is very important. And don’t swear so loud, the children are asleep.”
“Let him come in,” growled Kuisl.
When he turned toward Simon he saw a deformed face. Not until then did the hangman notice that he still had his monocle in his eye. The doctor’s son, on the other hand, was looking into a pupil as large as a ducat.
“Just a toy,” grumbled Kuisl, taking the brass-mounted lens out of his eye. “But sometimes fairly useful.”
“Where did you get that?” asked Simon. “It must be worth a fortune!”
“Shall we say I did a favor for an alderman, and he repaid me in kind.” Jakob Kuisl sniffed. “You stink.”
“I’ve…I had an accident. On the way here.”
The hangman, with a dismissive gesture, passed the lens to Simon and pointed to the little yellow heap on the parchment.
“Just take a look at that. What do you think it is?”
With the monocle, Simon bent over the little grains.
“That’s…that is fascinating! I’ve never seen such a perfect lens…”
“What about the grains, that’s what I want to know.”
“Well, from the smell I would say it’s sulfur.”
“I found it together with a lot of clay in little Grimmer’s pocket.”
Simon abruptly took down the monocle and looked at the hangman.
“Peter? In his pocket? But how did the sulfur get there?”
“That’s what I’d like to know too.”
Jakob Kuisl reached for his pipe and began to fill it. Meanwhile Simon walked up and down in the little room and told about his encounter with the orphan girl. Occasionally Kuisl growled; otherwise he was fully occupied with filling and lighting his pipe. When Simon had finished his story, the hangman was already enveloped in a haze of tobacco smoke.
“I visited the Stechlin woman,” he said finally. “The children had indeed been with her. And a mandrake is missing.”
“A mandrake?”
“A magic herb.”
Jakob Kuisl told briefly of his meeting with the midwife and of the chaos in her house. Again and again there were long pauses while he drew on his pipe. Meanwhile Simon seated himself on a wooden stool and fidgeted impatiently.
“I don’t understand it at all,” said the young physician at last. “We have a dead boy with a witches’ mark on his shoulder and sulfur in his pocket. We have a midwife as a prime suspect, from whom a mandrake has been stolen. And we have a gang of orphans who know more than they will admit. None of this makes sense!”
“Above all we have very little time,” mumbled the hangman. “The Elector’s secretary is coming in a few days. Between now and then I have to make the Stechlin woman the culprit, otherwise the council will be on my back.”
“And what if you simply refuse?” asked Simon. “Nobody can demand that you…”
Kuisl shook his head. “Then they’ll send another, and I can look for a new job. No, it’ll have to be like this. We must find the real murderer, and right soon.”
“We?”
The hangman nodded. “I need your help. People don’t like talking to me. The fine people turn up their noses as soon as they see me in the distance. Although…” he added with a smile, “they would turn up their noses at you now.”
Simon looked down at his spotted, foul-smelling doublet. It was still covered with brown spots. A tear in his hose ran from the knee down the left leg. A faded lettuce leaf hung from his hat…to say nothing about the splotches of dried blood. He would need new clothes and had no idea where the money for them would come from. Perhaps if the murderer was caught the council might contribute a few guilders.
Simon thought over the hangman’s proposition. What had he to lose? Not his reputation anymore; that was already ruined. And if he wanted to continue seeing Magdalena in the future, it would be an advantage to be on good terms with her father. And then there were the books. Just now there lay next to the monocle on the table a tattered work of the Jesuit Athanasius Kirchner, who wrote of tiny worms in the blood. That priest had worked with a so-called microscope, which could magnify things many more times presumably than Kuisl’s monocle. The possibility of reading this book at home, alone in bed with a hot cup of coffee…
Simon nodded. “Good, you can count on me. By the way, the book on the…”
The doctor’s son got no further in expressing his wish. The door flew open, and Andreas the jailer staggered into the room, panting for air.
“Forgive me for disturbing you so late,” he gasped. “But it’s urgent. They told me I would find Fronwieser’s son here. Your father needs help!”
Andreas’ face was as white as a sheet. He looked as if he had seen the devil incarnate.
