enough gossiping as is.”
She smiled at Magdalena, but the hangman’s daughter knew that her mother was being serious. She was a practical, strait-laced woman who cared little for her daughter’s dreams. Also she thought it was a waste of time that her father had taught Magdalena to read. A woman who buried her nose in books was regarded with suspicion by the men. And if she was the hangman’s daughter on top of that and liked to flirt with the lads, then she wasn’t far from the pillory and the scold’s bridle. More than once, the hangman’s wife had prophesied in the darkest tones how her husband would have to clap his own daughter into the shrew’s fiddle and lead her through town at the end of a rope.
“All right, Mother,” said Magdalena and set the mortar down on the bench. “I’m taking the laundry down to the river.”
She grabbed the basket of soiled bedsheets and walked through the garden and down to the Lech River. Her mother’s eyes followed her pensively.
Right behind the house, a well-worn path led past herb and flower gardens, barns, and handsome houses down to the river, to a place where the water had shaped a shallow cove. Magdalena gazed at the whirling eddies that were forming in the middle of the river. It was springtime, and the water was high, reaching the roots of the birches and carrying along branches and entire trees. For a moment Magdalena believed she saw something that looked like a shred of linen in the earth-brown waters, but when she looked more closely, she saw just branches and leaves.
She bent down, took the laundry from her basket, and started scrubbing it on the damp gravel. She was thinking of the festival at St. Paul’s Fair three weeks ago, especially how she had danced with
Magdalena was humming a song now and rhythmically slapping the laundry on the gravel.
She was so absorbed in her thoughts that at first she believed the screaming was only in her imagination. It took her a while to realize that the cries were coming from somewhere upstream.
A woodcutter from Schongau up on the steep bank was first to see the boy. He’d grabbed hold of a tree trunk and was spinning around like a tiny leaf in the foaming water. Initially, the woodcutter was not sure that the tiny thing down there in the rushing water was really human. But when it started to kick and struggle wildly he called to the raftsmen who were getting ready for their first run to Augsburg in the early-morning fog and asked for help. Not until just before Kinsau, four miles north of Schongau, did the riverbank flatten out, with the Lech calm enough for the men to try to reach the boy. They tried to pull him from the water with their long poles, but each time he slid away like a slippery fish. At times he went under completely, remaining beneath the surface for a troubling length of time, then popped up again like a cork at a different spot.
Once more the boy gathered enough strength to pull himself up onto the slippery log and raise his head above the surface to breathe. He reached for the pole with his right hand, his fingers outstretched, but he missed. With a loud thud, the log bumped against the other logs that were clogging the raft landing. The impact caused the boy to lose his grip; he slipped down and sank among dozens of gigantic floating tree trunks.
Meanwhile the raftsmen had steered toward the small pier at Kinsau. Tying their rafts together with great haste, they carefully ventured onto the treacherous surface of the logs closest to shore. Balancing on the slippery logs was a challenge even for these well-seasoned raftsmen. It was easy to lose one’s grip and be crushed to a pulp between the mighty beech and fir trunks. But the river was calm at this spot, and the trunks just bobbed up and down lazily.
Soon two men had reached the log with the boy. They prodded in the gaps with their poles in hopes of feeling a soft object. The logs underneath their feet began to wobble and roll. Again and again the men had to get their balance; their bare feet were slipping on the glistening bark.
“I’ve got him,” the larger and stronger of the two suddenly called out. With his powerful arms he pulled both boy and pole from the water and tossed them to the safety of the shore like a fish on a hook.
The raftsmen’s calls had made others aware of the emergency. Washerwomen from nearby Kinsau had come running to the river together with some wagon drivers. Now they were all standing on the rickety pier, gazing at the dripping clump at their feet.
The burly raftsman brushed the boy’s hair from his face, and a murmur went up from the crowd.
The boy’s face was blue and puffy, and the back of his head was crushed in as if he’d been struck hard with a heavy piece of wood. He was groaning. Blood was oozing through his wet coat, soaking the pier and dripping into the river. This boy had not just fallen into the water. Someone must have pushed him, and that someone had dealt him a fierce blow before that.
“Why, that’s Josef Grimmer’s boy, the son of the wagon driver in Schongau,” a man exclaimed. He was standing close by with his wagon and team of oxen. “I know the kid. He used to come to the landing site with his father. Quick, put him on the wagon. I’ll drive him to Schongau.”
“And somebody run and tell Grimmer that his boy is a-dying,” a washerwoman screamed. “Good Lord, and him having lost so many kids already!”
“It would be better to tell him right away,” the stocky raftsman grumbled. “This one’s not going to last long.” He slapped at some nosy boys standing around. “Run along. And fetch the barber or the physician.”
As the boys took off toward Schongau, the injured child’s groans grew fainter. He was shaking all over and seemed to be muttering something. A last prayer? He was about twelve years old and looked skinny and pale like most children his age. He must have eaten his last square meal weeks ago, and the watery barley broth and watery beer he had consumed over the past few days had made his cheeks hollow.
The boy’s right hand kept reaching out; his murmuring rose and ebbed like that of the Lech River beneath him. One of the raftsmen was on his knees, bending over the boy to hear what he was saying. But the murmuring gave way to gurgling, and bright red bubbles of blood and saliva trickled from the corners of his mouth.
They lifted the dying child onto the wagon, the driver cracked his whip, and they rumbled along Kinsau Road to Schongau. It was a journey of over two hours, and as they moved along, more and more people joined the silent procession. When they finally reached the landing site in the nearby town, more than two dozen onlookers followed the wagon: children, peasants, crying washerwomen. Dogs were yapping at the oxen, someone was mumbling a Hail Mary. The driver brought the vehicle to a halt at the jetty next to the storage shed. Two of the raftsmen lifted the boy off with great caution and gently placed him on some straw right by the shore of the rushing, gurgling Lech River that was flowing restlessly against the pillars.
The murmur of the crowd was suddenly interrupted by heavy footsteps on the pier. The boy’s father had been waiting off to one side, as if he were afraid of the last and final moment. Now deathly pale, he pushed his way through the throng.
Josef Grimmer had had eight children, and they had all died, one after the other, from the plague, diarrhea, fever, or simply because the good Lord had willed it. Hans was six years old when he fell into the Lech and drowned while playing. Marie, aged three, had been run over by drunken mercenaries on their horses in a narrow lane. His wife, together with their youngest child, had perished in childbirth. Little Peter was all that was left to old Grimmer. And as he saw him lying before him, he knew that the Lord would be taking this last son away from him as well. He fell on his knees and tenderly brushed the boy’s hair from his face. The child’s eyes were closed already, his chest was heaving convulsively, and a few moments later a spasm shook the little body. Then there was silence.
Josef Grimmer raised his head and screamed his grief across the Lech. His voice was high and shrill like a woman’s.
The scream reached the ears of Simon Fronwieser along with the sound of pounding downstairs at the front door. The physician’s house in the Hennengasse was just a stone’s throw from the river. Earlier, Simon had looked up from his books several times, distracted by the shouting of the raftsmen. Now that the screams were resounding through the narrow lanes of the town, he knew that something must have happened. The knock at the door grew more urgent. With a sigh he closed one of his hefty anatomy volumes. Like all the others, this book never went below the surface of the human body. The composition of the humors, bleeding as a universal remedy…Simon had read these same litanies far too many times, but they hadn’t really taught him anything about the inside of the body. And nothing would change today, as along with the knocking there was now shouting downstairs.
“Doctor, doctor! Quick, come! Grimmer’s boy is lying in his blood down at the landing site. It doesn’t look
