Elector’s secretary will be here with bag and baggage, and then all hell will break loose. If we can’t produce a culprit, he’ll undertake the search himself. And then God help us! It won’t be just
Abruptly he turned away and hurried back to the road that led to Schongau. The watchmen followed him.
“Kuisl!” he called back when he reached the road. “You will come with me, and the others too! We’re going to squeeze a confession out of the Stechlin woman. And if necessary I’ll force speech out of a dead woman today!”
Slowly, the mists of the morning rose.
As the last of them left the site, a quiet sound of weeping was heard from somewhere.
Martha Stechlin was still unconscious and therefore not in a condition to be questioned. She had a high fever and was mumbling in her sleep as Bonifaz Fronwieser held his ear to her chest.
“The sign…the children…all deception…” She uttered scraps of words.
The old physician shook his head. He looked up submissively at Johann Lechner, who was leaning against the cell door and observing the medical examination with increasing impatience.
“Well?” inquired Lechner.
Bonifaz Fronwieser shrugged. “It doesn’t look good. This woman has a high fever. She’s probably going to die before she regains consciousness again. I’ll bleed her, and—”
Johann Lechner gestured dismissively. “Oh, leave that rubbish. Then she’ll die on us all the sooner. I know you quacks. Isn’t there another way to bring her around for a short time, at least? After she’s confessed she can die, as far as I’m concerned, but first we must have her confession!”
Bonifaz Fronwieser was thinking. “There are certain remedies, which I unfortunately don’t have at my disposal.”
Impatiently Johann Lechner drummed against the cell bars with his fingers. “And who has these certain remedies?”
“Well, the hangman, I suppose. But that is devil’s stuff. Draw a large quantity of blood and the midwife —”
“Watchman!” Johann Lechner was already on the way out. “Bring the hangman to me. He must bring the Stechlin woman around, and quickly. That’s an order!”
Hurried steps departed in the direction of the tanners’ quarter.
Bonifaz Fronwieser approached the clerk apprehensively. “Can I be of assistance to you in any other way?”
Lechner only shook his head shortly. He was deep in thought. “Go. I’ll call for you when I need you.”
“Your pardon, sir, but my fee.”
With a sigh, Johann Lechner pressed a few coins into the physician’s hand. Then he turned back to the interior of the keep.
The midwife lay on the floor of her cell, breathing with difficulty. Near her, now almost illegible, the sign was still on the ground.
“Satan’s whore,” hissed Lechner. “Say what you know, and then go to hell.” He kicked the midwife in the side, so that she rolled, groaning, onto her back. Then he wiped out the witches’ sign and crossed himself.
Behind him someone rattled the iron bars. “I saw her draw that sign!” cried Georg Riegg. “And I threw a stone at her straight away, to stop her putting a spell on us. You can rely on old Riegg, can’t you, sir?”
Johann Lechner spun round. “You miserable bungler! It’ll be your fault if the whole town burns down! If you hadn’t hurt her, she could sing her devil’s song now, and we’d have peace at last! But, no, now the Elector’s secretary is coming. And just when the town has no more money anyway. You stupid fool!”
“I…don’t understand.”
But Johann Lechner was not listening to him anymore. He had already walked out onto the street. If the hangman could not bring the Stechlin woman around by midday, he would have to call a council meeting. Things were getting out of his control.
CHAPTER
13
MONDAY
APRIL 30, A.D. 1659
EIGHT O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING
MAGDALENA WAS STRIDING UP THE STEEP ROAD from the Lech to the market square with a basket in hand. She could think of nothing but the events of the previous night. She hadn’t slept a wink, and yet she was wide awake.
When Johann Lechner saw that the midwife was indeed unconscious and severely injured, he had dismissed the hangman and the physician, cursing violently. Now they were sitting in the hangman’s house, tired, hungry, and at their wit’s end. Magdalena had volunteered to go to the market to buy beer, bread, and smoked meat to help to revive them. After she had purchased a loaf of rye bread and a good cut of bacon in the market square, she turned to the inns behind the Ballenhaus. She avoided the Stern since Karl Semer, its landlord and the town’s presiding burgomaster, was currently on bad terms with her father. Everyone knew that the hangman had taken the side of the witch. So she went over to the Sonnenbrau to get two mugs of beer.
When she stepped back into the street with the foaming tankards, she heard whispering and giggling behind her. She looked around. A group of children clustered around the door of the inn, eyeing her, partly out of fear, partly out of curiosity. Magdalena was making her way through the throng of children when she heard several voices strike up a little song behind her. It was an insulting rhyme with her name in it.
Angrily, she turned around.
“Who was that? Speak, if you dare!”
Some of the children ran away. Most, however, remained and looked at her, smirking.
“Who was that?” she asked again.
“You’ve put a spell on Simon Fronwieser, so that he follows you everywhere like a puppy, and you’re hand in glove with the Stechlin woman, that witch.”
A boy with a crooked nose, approximately twelve years old, had spoken. Magdalena knew him. He was the son of Berchtholdt, the baker. He looked her in the eye defiantly, but his hands were shaking.
“Is that so. According to whom?” Magdalena asked calmly, attempting a smile.
“According to my father,” the Berchtholdt boy hissed. “And he says you’ll be next to end up burning at the stake.”
Magdalena gave him a provocative stare. “Anybody else who believes this sort of rubbish? If so, shove off now, or else you’ll get one behind the ears.”
Suddenly she had an idea. She reached into her basket and took out a handful of candied fruit. Actually, she had bought it at the market for her siblings. She smiled as she spoke on.
“For everybody else, I might have some candy, if they want to tell me a thing or two.”
The children pushed closer to her.
“Don’t take anything from the witch!” Berchtholdt’s son yelled. “There’s sure to be a spell on the fruit that’ll make you sick!”
