and I don’t think the Landgrave will let them off so easily.”
There was silence for a short time.
“The midwife or your daughter. It’s your choice,” Johann Lechner said.
Then he went over to the window. From the north the call of a horn could suddenly be heard. The court clerk stuck his head out in order to hear exactly where it was coming from. He blinked.
“His Excellency, the Landgrave,” he said, turning toward the patrician, who sat as if turned to stone at the council table. “It looks as if you’ll have to make your decision quickly.”
The boys playing down by the Hof Gate were the first to see the Landgrave. The Elector’s deputy arrived by way of the Altenstadt Road traveling in a magnificent coach drawn by four horses. On each side rode six soldiers in full armor, with open helmets, pistols, and swords. The first soldier was carrying a horn, with which he announced the arrival of the Landgrave. Behind the coach came a second carriage, which was used for transporting the servants and the chests with the necessities that His Excellency required for the trip.
The gate had already been closed at this hour, but now it was quickly reopened. The horses’ hooves clattered over the cobblestones, and most of the burghers who had gathered on the market square for the feast now ran down to the gate to see the arrival of the highborn man with a mixture of admiration and skepticism. Only rarely did such distinguished gentlemen come to visit little Schongau. Previously the Landgrave had visited the town more often, but that hadn’t happened for a long time. Nowadays, any aristocrat who visited the town was a welcome spectacle and a change from the daily routine. At the same time the burghers were aware that the Landgrave and his soldiers would eat up their meager provisions. In the Great War, hordes of mercenaries had more than once descended on the town like locusts. But perhaps the Landgrave wouldn’t stay all that long.
Crowds lined the streets, through which the procession advanced slowly toward the marketplace. The people chatted and whispered and pointed to the silver-bound chests in which the Landgrave, no doubt, carried his valuable household goods. The twelve soldiers looked straight ahead. The Landgrave himself was invisible behind a red damask curtain that covered the coach door.
Once they had arrived at the marketplace, the coach stopped directly in front of the Ballenhaus. Dusk had already fallen over the town, but the birch logs were still glowing in the braziers, so that bystanders could see a form in a green doublet descending from the coach. At the Landgrave’s right dangled a dress sword. His beard was neatly trimmed, his long silky hair combed, and his high leather boots were brightly polished. He glanced briefly at the crowd, then strode toward the Ballenhaus, where the aldermen were already assembled at the entrance. Only a few of them had managed to don appropriate attire for the occasion on such short notice. Some had the corner of a shirt sticking out from under their doublet, and the coat buttons had been put in the wrong buttonholes. More than one passed his fingers through his untidy hair.
Burgomaster Karl Semer stepped forward to greet the Landgrave and offered his hand rather hesitantly.
“It is with—um—joyous anticipation that we have so long awaited your arrival, Your Excellency,” he commenced, stuttering slightly. “How nice that your arrival coincides with the May Day festival. Schongau is proud to be permitted to celebrate the beginning of summer with you, and—”
The count interrupted him with a brusque gesture and surveyed, in a rather bored way, the coarsely made tables, the maypole, the little fires, and the wooden stage. It was obvious that he had experienced more splendid feasts than this.
“Well, I am also pleased to see my Schongau once more,” he said finally. “Even if the occasion is a sad one…Anyway, has the witch confessed?”
“No, unfortunately she very cleverly fell into a swoon at the last questioning,” the court clerk Johann Lechner replied. With Jakob Schreevogl he had just emerged from the door of the Ballenhaus to join the group. “But we are quite confident that she will come to before tomorrow. Then we can proceed with the questioning.”
The count shook his head disapprovingly.
“You are no doubt aware that the use of torture in your questioning requires approval from Munich. You had no right to begin before you have it.” He waved a threatening finger, half seriously, half playfully.
“Your Excellency, we thought we could speed up the procedure by—” the court clerk began, but he was immediately interrupted by the Landgrave.
“No, you may not! First the approval. I’m not getting mixed up in arguments with the Munich court council! I’ll send a messenger as soon as I’ve seen for myself what the situation is. But tomorrow…” He looked up at the clear, starry sky. “Tomorrow I should first like to go hunting. The weather looks promising. I’ll see about the witch later.”
The count chuckled.
“She’s not going to fly away in the meantime, hey?”
Solicitously, burgomaster Semer shook his head. Johann Lechner’s face became pale. He rapidly calculated the expenses that the town would incur if the count really intended to wait for the approval from Munich. The soldiers would stay for a good month, perhaps longer…That meant board and lodging for a month, and also inquiries, suspicion, spying! And the matter would not stop with one witch.
“Your Excellency,” he began. But Count Sandizell had already turned to his soldiers.
“Unsaddle!” he commanded. “And then enjoy yourselves! We’ll join in the feast. Let us greet the summer. I can see that fires are already burning. Let us hope that here in a few weeks a much larger fire will burn, and that the devilry in this town will at last come to an end!”
He clapped his hands and looked up at the stage.
“Play up, musicians!”
The minstrels strummed nervously at a country dance. At first hesitantly, but then more confidently, the first pairs stepped out to dance. The celebrations began. Witches, witchcraft, and murder were temporarily forgotten. But Johann Lechner knew that all this would drive the town to its ruin before many days had passed.
The hangman knelt down before Martha Stechlin and changed the bandage on her forehead. The swelling had gone down. Where Georg Riegg’s stone had struck her, there was an ugly black-and-blue bruise. And the fever seemed to have gone down. Jakob Kuisl nodded, satisfied. The brew of linden flowers, juniper, and elderberries that he had given her that morning seemed to help.
“Martha, can you hear me?” he whispered and patted her cheek. She opened her eyes and looked at him vacantly. Her hands and feet were swollen like balloons from the torture. Everywhere dried blood covered her body, which was only barely concealed by a dirty woolen blanket.
“The children are…innocent,” she croaked. “I know now how it was. They…”
“
The midwife looked astonished.
“You know that they had looked at the sign at my house?”
Jakob Kuisl grunted in agreement. The midwife raised herself from her reclining position.
“Sophie and Peter were always interested in my herbs. Especially the magic ones. They wanted to know everything. I showed the mandrake to Sophie once, but that’s as far as it went! I swear it to God! I know what can happen. How quickly the gossip spreads. But Sophie wouldn’t leave me alone, and then she must have had a closer look at the signs on the jars…”
“The bloodstone. I know,” the hangman interrupted her.
“But that is really quite harmless,” the midwife began to sob. “I give the red powder to women when they bleed down there, infused in wine, nothing evil in it, by God…”
“I know, Martha, I know.”
“The children drew the sign on their own bodies! And as to the murders, by the Holy Virgin Mary, I have nothing to do with them!”
Her body shook as she broke into a fit of sobbing.
“Martha,” Jakob Kuisl said, trying to calm her down. “Just listen. We know who killed the children. We do not know who gave the murderer his orders, but I’m going to find him, and then I’ll come and fetch you out of here.”
“But the pain, the fear, I can’t stand it anymore,” she sobbed. “You’ll have to hurt me again!”
The hangman shook his head.
“The Landgrave has just arrived,” he said. “He wants to wait for approval from Munich before they question you any further. That’ll take time. Till then you are safe.”
