“Anton Stecher says he saw it with his own eyes,” said Schreevogl and again took the hand of his wife, who was sobbing quietly to herself. He shook his head. “Until now I always believed that all this with the children and the murders had a natural explanation, but now…” Schreevogl’s voice faltered. He turned to Simon. “What do you think, then?” he asked the physician.
Simon shrugged. “I don’t believe anything that I haven’t seen for myself. And I see that the house was broken into and that the child has disappeared.”
“But the street door was locked.”
“An experienced man with a skeleton key, nothing easier than that.”
Schreevogl nodded. “I see,” he said. “Then Anton Stecher was lying.”
“Not necessarily,” answered Simon. He pointed to the hay cart under the window. “I think it happened this way. A man got through the front door with a skeleton key. Clara heard him and bolted the door of her room. He broke down this door and there was a struggle. Finally he jumped out of the window with Clara right into the hay wagon. Then he made off with her.”
Schreevogl frowned. “But why did he jump out of the window with the child? Couldn’t he have just gone out again through the front door?”
Simon could think of no quick answer. Instead he asked: “Clara was an orphan, wasn’t she?”
Schreevogl nodded. “Her parents died five years ago. The town assigned her to us as a ward. But we treated her exactly like one of our own children. My wife was particularly fond of her.”
Tears came to his eyes. He wiped them away hastily. His wife had turned away from the men and was crying quietly into the pillows.
Meanwhile the crowd under the window had grown larger. A noisy disturbance could be heard. Simon looked out. Newcomers were arriving, bringing torches. Something big seemed to be happening down there.
The physician thought a bit. Anton Kratz had been an orphan too, and Peter Grimmmer had grown up without a mother—and all of them had been at Martha Stechlin’s the night before the first murder…
“Did your Clara often visit the midwife Martha Stechlin?” he asked the alderman. Jakob Schreevogl shrugged.
“I don’t always know where she went. It’s possible…”
“She went to the midwife’s quite often,” his wife interrupted him. Maria Schreevogl’s voice was now firmer. “She told me herself that they met at her house. I thought nothing of it…”
“Two days ago, in the morning, when little Grimmer died,” Simon asked, “did you notice anything unusual about Clara?”
Jakob Schreevogl thought for a moment, then he nodded. “She was very pale and wouldn’t eat her breakfast. We thought she was beginning to run a fever…Finally, later in the day, she did become ill. When she heard about little Peter, she went up to her room and didn’t come down again until the evening. We thought it would be better to leave her alone for a bit. After all, Peter was her playmate.”
“She had the mark on her.”
“What!” Simon started up from his thoughts.
Maria Schreevogl had raised her head and gazed into the distance. Then she repeated: “She had the sign on her.”
Jakob Schreevogl looked incredulously at his wife. “What are you saying?” he whispered.
Maria Schreevogl stared at the wall in front of her as she spoke: “In the evening I gave her a bath in the tub. I thought a hot bath with herbs would drive away the fever. She resisted, but finally I got her undressed. Then she tried to hold her shoulder underwater, but I saw it. It was the same sign they’re all talking about, very faded, but still visible.”
Simon could scarcely speak. “A circle with a cross under it?” he asked at last.
Maria Schreevogl nodded.
There was a long pause. Only the angry cries of the crowd outside could be heard. At last Jakob Schreevogl sprang up. His face was bright red.
“Why didn’t you ever mention it to me, damn it?” he shouted.
His wife began to cry again. “I…I…didn’t want to believe it. I thought, if I didn’t think about it, it would go away…” She began to sob once more.
“You stupid woman! We might have saved her! We could have asked her what the sign means. Now it’s too late!”
Jakob Schreevogl rushed out of the room and disappeared, slamming the door. Simon ran after him. Standing on the stairs, he heard loud cries from below. “Let’s go!” someone cried. “We’ll get her!”
Simon changed his mind and ran downstairs. Outside he encountered a mob armed with torches, scythes, and pikes heading off toward Munzstrasse. He could even recognize some of the bailiffs. There was nothing to be seen of the court clerk and the other aldermen.
“What are you doing?” Simon screamed after the mob.
One of the rioters, the tanner Gabriel, turned round. He had told Simon about the accident with little Grimmer. “We’re going to get the witch before she takes any more of our children,” he said.
His face was twisted into a strange grimace in the reflected light of the torches and his teeth shone bright white in the darkness.
“But the Stechlin woman is in prison,” Simon said, trying to calm them down. “Anyway, they say it was a man who took little Clara.”
“It was the devil!” roared another. Simon recognized him as Anton Stecher, the eyewitness who claimed to have seen the abductor.
“He had a white hand of bone, and he was flying! That Stechlin hag brought him here by witchcraft!” he cried, as he hurried after the others.
“But that’s nonsense!” Simon shouted into the darkness, but nobody seemed to hear him anymore. Suddenly he was aware of noisy steps behind him. Jakob Schreevogl had hurried downstairs, a lantern in his right hand, his sword in the left. He seemed to have recovered his composure again.
“We must go after them and stop them before there’s a bloodbath,” he said. “They are completely out of control.” Simon watched as he headed into the Munzstrasse, then chased after him.
As he ran, he turned to the alderman and asked, “Then you don’t believe in witchcraft anymore?” he asked.
“I don’t believe in anything anymore,” panted Schreevogl, as they turned into the Weinstrasse. “Neither in the devil nor the Heavenly Father. And now let’s hurry, before they break open the door of the keep!”
The court clerk Johann Lechner was looking forward to a warm bath. He had instructed the servants to heat the boiler down in the court kitchen. In the meantime the wooden tub in his room had been lined with linen sheets and half-filled with hot water. Lechner opened his doublet and hose, laid his clothes neatly over the chair, and with a shudder of pleasure slid into the tub. It smelled of thyme and lavender. Brushwood and rushes were strewn on the floor. The clerk needed this bath urgently to think it all through.
Everything was happening so fast. There were now two dead children and a Stadel burnt to the ground. Lechner was still not quite sure there was any connection between the two events.
It was quite possible that the Augsburgers had set fire to the Stadel. The Schongauers’ transport monopoly had long been a thorn in their side. And hadn’t it happened once before, a long time ago? The clerk resolved to have a look at the records.
But it seemed too far-fetched to him that the Augsburg raftsmen would kill Schongau children. On the other hand…the Stadel fire, the horrible murders, and then the damned leper house being planned just outside town, only because the church had set its mind on it. There were certainly enough reasons to avoid Schongau at the present time and choose another route. So it was the Augsburgers who profited most from all the terrible events in the town. In his long years as clerk to the council Lechner had learned one thing above all else: if you want to know who is responsible for anything, ask who benefits from it.
Lechner put his head under the water and enjoyed the warmth and silence that surrounded him. Peace at last, no boring discussions, no quarrelsome aldermen seeking only their own advantage, no intrigues. After a minute he ran out of air and had to surface, spluttering.
Whether or not there was a connection between the fire and the murders, there was one sure way to restore
