already prayed three rosaries, but that didn’t help either.”
Simon looked at him thoughtfully. Suddenly his expression lightened up.
“Well, I may have something that could help you. A powder from the West Indies…” He pulled out a small bag and looked apprehensively up at the sky.
“Actually it should be taken as long as the noonday sun is straight overhead. It’s almost too late now.”
The bailiff Georg coughed a second time and reached for the little bag.
“I’ll take it, sir. Right now. How much is it going to cost?”
Simon handed him the medicine.
“For you, only five pennies. However you must dissolve it in brandy, otherwise it has no effect. Do you have any brandy?”
Georg started to think. The physician thought that he would have to help him along, but then the bailiff’s face lit up.
“I can get some brandy. Over at the inn.”
Simon nodded and took the money.
“Good thinking, Georg. Run over there quickly. It won’t take you long to get back.”
Georg took off while the second guard stood undecidedly at his post. Simon looked at him pensively.
“Do you also have a cough?” he asked. “You look so pale. Any chest pains?”
The guard seemed to think it over, and then he looked over to where his colleague was just disappearing into the inn. Finally he nodded.
“Then go run after him, see to it that he gets more brandy,” said Simon. “Each of you must dissolve it in a goblet, better even, two goblets full.”
The bailiff’s sense of duty was wrestling with the prospect of one or two goblets of brandy, and for medicinal purposes to boot. Finally he followed his friend.
Simon grinned. He had learned a few things from the hangman by now. Amazing what can be done with a little bag filled with clay!
The physician waited another moment until the two were out of sight. Then he looked around carefully. The market square was empty. He quickly opened the big door a crack and slipped inside.
A smell of spices and musty linen greeted him. Sunlight fell in narrow strips through the large, barred windows. It was already getting dark in the hall and shadows were creeping across the room. Bags and crates were stacked one on top of the other like sleeping giants against the wall. Alarmed, a rat scurried out from behind a crate and disappeared in the darkness.
Simon crept up the wide steps to the upper level and listened at the door to the council chamber. When he could not hear any sound he opened it carefully. The room was empty. Half-full wine pitchers and crystal glasses were standing on the big oaken table in the middle of the room, and the chairs around it were pushed back. A huge oven with green tiles, some of them painted, sat in the corner. Simon held his hand against it. It was still hot. It looked as if the aldermen had left the room for only a short recess and would return at any moment.
Simon crept through the room and tried as best he could to keep the floorboards from creaking. On the eastern wall hung a yellowed oil painting showing the Schongau aldermen assembled around the oaken table. He looked at it closer. At first glance he realized that it had to be quite old. The men were wearing the ruffled collars that were fashionable a few decades ago. The jackets were stiff, black, and buttoned all the way up. The faces with their carefully trimmed goatees were severe and expressionless. Still, he thought he could recognize one of the men. The alderman in the center, the one with the piercing eyes and the bare hint of a smile must be Ferdinand Schreevogl. Simon remembered that the old Schreevogl had once been presiding burgomaster of the town. The patrician held in his hand a document covered with writing. Simon thought he also knew the man next to him. But where had he seen him before? He thought about it, but much as he tried, he could not think of a name. He was certain that he had seen him lately, but of course now as a much older man.
Then he suddenly heard voices and laughter down on the market square. The two bailiffs had apparently followed his recipe. He grinned. It was quite possible, though, that the medicine was taken in a somewhat higher dose than prescribed.
Simon softly tiptoed through the council chamber. He crouched down as he passed the windows with the lead-lined panes so as not to be seen from the outside. Finally he reached the small door to the archive. He pushed the handle down. It was locked.
Cursing softly he reproached himself for his stupidity. How could he have been so naive as to think that the door would be unlocked? Of course the court clerk had locked it! After all, it led to his holy of holies.
Simon was about to turn back, but then he thought some more. Johann Lechner was a reliable man. He had to see to it that at least the four burgomasters had access to the archive, even if he happened to be absent. Did this mean that each of the burgomasters had a key? Hardly. It was much more likely that the court clerk would be keeping the key here for the others. But where?
Simon gazed around at the Swiss pine ceiling with its carved scrolls, the table, the chairs, the wine pitchers…There was no cabinet, no chest. The only large piece of furniture was the tiled oven; a monstrosity at least two paces wide and reaching almost to the ceiling. Simon walked over to it and gave it a closer look. In one row, about halfway up, scenes of country life were depicted on the painted tiles. A farmer with a plow, another farmer sowing, pigs and cows, a girl with geese…In the center of the row was a tile that looked different from the others. It showed a man with the typical wide hat and the ruffled collar of an alderman. He was sitting on a chamber pot brimming over with paper scrolls. Simon tapped on the tile.
It sounded hollow.
The physician took out his stiletto, inserted the blade into a crack and pried the tile out. It slid easily into his hand. Behind it was a tiny niche in which something was glittering. Simon smiled. As far as he knew, old Schreevogl had this oven built during his tenure as burgomaster. In the stovemakers’ guild he had been considered a real artist. Here, one could also see something more––that he had also had a sense of humor. An alderman defecating scrolls? Would Johann Lechner’s father, the court clerk at the time, have recognized himself in the drawing?
The physician removed the copper key, fitted the tile back into its place, and returned to the door that separated him from the archives. He inserted the key into the lock and turned it. With a slight squeak the door opened inward.
The room behind it smelled of dust and old parchment. Only a small barred window opened on the market square. There was no other door. The afternoon sun fell through the window; dust particles floated in the light. The space was almost empty. Along a rear wall stood a small, unadorned oaken table and a rickety chair. All along the left side there was a huge cabinet that reached almost to the ceiling. It contained innumerable little drawers stuffed with documents. Heavy leather-bound folios stood on the larger shelves. Several books and loose pages lay on the table, and next to them a half-full glass inkwell, a goose quill, and a half-consumed candle.
Simon groaned softly. This was the court clerk’s domain. For him all of it had a certain order, but for the physician it was only a confusing collection of parchment rolls, documents, and tomes. The so-called town records were not books at all, but a huge box of loose slips of paper. How could anyone find the map of a parcel in here?
Simon approached the cabinet. Now he realized that letters were painted on the drawers. They were distributed apparently without rhyme or reason over the rows of shelves, abbreviations obviously familiar only to the court clerk and perhaps the members of the inner council. RE, MO, ST, CON, PA, DOC…
The last abbreviation gave Simon pause. The Latin word for a deed, a record, or any kind of instrument was
