in the light.
“By the way,” he muttered as he walked, “they found Johannes Strasser dead in a barn, in Altenstadt. He, too, had the mark on him. I heard it from the servant girl at Strasser’s inn. I’m going to have a look at that boy. If you want to, you can come along, Simon.”
Then he stepped out into the cool morning. Simon hesitated briefly. He glanced up at Magdalena, but she had buried herself in the straw and was sobbing.
He looked up at her and whispered, “We…we’ll talk later.” Then he followed the hangman out, limping.
For a long time they walked along in silence. They passed the raft landing, where the first rafts were already tying up at this early hour, then turned to the left on the Natternsteig to reach the road to Altenstadt. They deliberately avoided going straight through town, as they wanted to be alone. Here on the narrow footpath winding its way below the town wall, not a soul could be seen.
Finally, Simon spoke up. He had been thinking it over for a long time and was choosing his words carefully.
“I…I’m sorry,” he began haltingly. “But it is true, I love your daughter. And I can provide for her. I have attended the university, even though I didn’t finish. I ran out of money. But I have enough to hold my head above water as an itinerant surgeon. That, together with all that your daughter knows…”
The hangman stopped and looked down from the rise into the valley below, where the forest extended all the way to the horizon.
He interrupted Simon without turning his eyes from the scene in front of him. “Do you have any idea what it means to earn your daily bread out there?”
“I’ve already traveled around with my father,” replied Simon.
“He cared for you, and for that you should be forever thankful,” said the hangman. “But this time you would be alone. You would have to take care of your wife and your children. You would have to go from one country fair to another, a quack advertising his cheap tinctures like sour beer, getting rotten cabbage thrown at him and being mocked by peasants who know nothing about your healing arts. The learned physicians would make sure that you get thrown out as soon as you set foot in their town. Your children would die of hunger. Is that what you want?”
“But my father and I, we always had an income…”
The hangman spat on the ground. “That was during the war,” he continued. “When there is war, there’s always something one can do. Sawing off limbs, cleaning out wounds with oil, dragging off the dead, and covering them with lime. Now the war is over. There are no more armies to follow. And I thank God for that!”
The hangman started walking again and Simon followed a few steps behind him.
After a few minutes of silence, he asked, “Master, may I ask you a question?” Jakob Kuisl continued walking and spoke without turning around.
“What do you want?”
“I heard you haven’t always been in Schongau. You left this town when you were about my age. Why? And why did you return?”
The hangman stopped again. They had almost circled the entire town. Before them, on the right, the road to Altenstadt appeared. An oxcart trundled slowly along the road. Beyond, the forest stretched all the way to the horizon. Jakob Kuisl remained silent for such a long time that Simon began to think he would never receive an answer. Finally the hangman spoke.
“I didn’t want a trade that forced me to kill,” he said.
“And what did you do instead?”
Jakob Kuisl laughed softly.
“I killed all the more. Indiscriminately. Aimlessly. In a frenzy. Men, women, children.”
“You were a…soldier?” asked Simon carefully.
The hangman was again silent for quite some time before answering.
“I joined Tilly’s army. Scoundrels, highwaymen, but also honest men and adventurers, like myself…”
“You told me once that you were in Magdeburg…” Simon asked again.
A brief shudder went through the hangman’s body. Even here in Schongau, people had heard the horror stories about the fall of the town in the far north. The Catholic troops under General Tilly had practically leveled the place, and only very few inhabitants had survived the massacre. Simon had heard that the soldiers had slaughtered children like lambs, had raped women, and after that had nailed them to the doors of their homes like our crucified Savior. Even if only half the stories were true, it was enough to make Schongauers utter prayers of thanks for having been spared such a bloodbath.
Jakob Kuisl marched on. Walking briskly, Simon caught up with him on the road to Altenstadt. He sensed that he had said too much.
“Why did you come back?” he asked after a while.
“Because a hangman is necessary,” mumbled Jakob Kuisl. “Otherwise everything goes to the dogs. If there has to be killing, then at least it should be the right kind, according to the law. And so I came home to Schongau so that things would be in order. And now be quiet. I have to think.”
Simon tried one last time: “Will you think it over again, about Magdalena?”
The hangman gave him an angry look from the side. Then he walked on at such speed that Simon had trouble keeping up with him.
They had been walking side by side for a good half hour when the first houses of Altenstadt appeared. From the few sentences Kuisl had uttered during that time, Simon was able to gather that Johannes Strasser had been found dead very early that morning in his foster father’s stable. Josepha, one of the servant girls at the inn, had discovered him among the bales of straw. After telling the innkeeper, she ran over to the hangman’s house in Schongau to get some Saint-John’s-wort. When woven into a wreath it was supposed to help ward off evil powers. The servant girl was convinced that the devil had taken the boy. The hangman gave Josepha the herb and listened to her story. He left shortly thereafter, stopping only to give his daughter’s lover a good thrashing before continuing on his way. In the gray morning light he had simply followed their tracks and had easily found the barn.
Now they were both standing in front of the inn at Altenstadt, which Simon had visited only a few days earlier. They were not alone. Local peasants and wagon drivers were crowded in the square around a makeshift bier nailed together from a few boards. They were whispering—some of the women held rosaries in their hands and two servant girls knelt at the head of the bier and prayed, their bodies swaying back and forth. Simon also recognized the village priest of Altenstadt in the crowd and heard mumbled verses in Latin. When the people in Altenstadt noticed that the hangman was approaching, some of them made the sign of the cross. The priest interrupted his litany and stared at the two, his eyes flashing with hostility.
“What is the Schongau hangman doing here?” he asked suspiciously. “There’s no work for you here! The devil has already done his work!”
Jakob Kuisl wouldn’t be put off. “I heard there was an accident. Perhaps I can help?”
The priest shook his head. “I told you already, there’s nothing to be done. The boy is dead. The devil surely got him and branded him with his mark.”
“Just let the hangman come!” It was the voice of Strasser, the innkeeper. Simon recognized him among the peasants standing around the bier. “Let him see what that witch did to my boy, so that he may give her an especially slow death!” The face of the innkeeper was white as chalk and his eyes glowed with hatred as he looked back and forth between the hangman and his dead foster son.
Inquisitively, Jakob Kuisl stepped closer to the bier. Simon followed him. It was nailed together from planks and covered with fresh pine twigs. The scent of their sap could not entirely cover the stench coming from the corpse. Johannes Strasser’s body was already showing black spots on the limbs, and flies were buzzing around his face. Someone had mercifully put two coins on the open eyes that were wide with horror as they stared up at the sky. There was a deep cut below the chin which extended nearly from one ear to the other. Dried blood stuck to the boy’s shirt, which was crawling with flies as well.
Simon couldn’t help wincing. Who would do such a thing? The boy was twelve years old at the most and his greatest sin so far had probably consisted of swiping a loaf of bread or a pitcher of milk from his foster father. Now he lay here, pale and cold, having met a bloody death at the end of a much too short, unhappy life. Tolerated but never loved, an outcast even in death. Even now there was no one who would shed sincere tears for him. Strasser stood at the bier with his lips pressed together, furious and full of hatred for the murderer but not actually
