breeze blew across the courtyard and carried the last of the smoke away. Now that the fire was out, it felt as quiet as a cemetery. Anna-Maria rocked the children silently in her lap.
“Looks as if we’ll have to spend the night in the barn,” she said. “We can start cleaning up tomorrow. The whole attic is black with soot.”
Magdalena stared at her in disbelief. “Pardon me? They set your house on fire and all you think of is cleaning up?”
Her mother sighed. “What else is there to do? You heard what Lechner said. None of those men will be held accountable.” Angrily she tapped her daughter on the chest. “And don’t think for another moment that you can keep playing the hero. That’s over and done with! This time we were lucky, but the next time it could be the children burned to death in their beds. Is that what you want?” She looked intently at her daughter, who pursed her lips. “I’ll ask you again: Is that what you want?”
“Your mother is right,” Simon said. “If we go after Berchtholdt, then next time they just may burn your house to the ground. The man is an alderman, after all, and has the people on his side.”
Looking up into the overcast night sky, Magdalena took a deep breath of the fresh air the rain had brought. For a while no one spoke a word. “You don’t really think they’ll leave us be, do you?” she whispered at last. “For them I’m fair game, now more than ever.”
Her mother looked at her crossly. “Because you take it too far! Lechner is right. A hangman’s girl and a medicus-it isn’t proper. You’ve got to quit carrying on, or else it’ll come to an even worse end. You can’t marry; that’s against the law. And after what happened tonight, you know they won’t leave you in peace until you start keeping your hands off each other.” Anna-Maria stood up, brushing the soot from her dress. “For far too long your father has just stood by and watched, Magdalena. But this is the end. As soon as he returns, we’ll send a letter to the executioner in Marktoberndorf. I heard his wife died in childbirth, and he would be a good match for you, with a big house and-”
Magdalena leaped up in a rage. “So you want to hide me away, so I don’t give you any more trouble. Is that right?”
“Suppose it is?” her mother answered. “It’s only to protect you and everyone else. You’re obviously incapable of doing that yourself.”
Without another word, Anna-Maria took the twins by the hand and went to the barn, where she made up straw beds for them. For a moment it appeared that Magdalena was about to call after her, but then Simon put his arm around her shoulder from behind. Her whole body started to tremble as she began to cry silently.
“She surely doesn’t mean it that way,” Simon whispered. “Let’s go to sleep now. Tomorrow when the sun comes up-”
Suddenly Magdalena wrapped her arms around Simon as if she would never let him go. She clung so fiercely to him that he could feel the firmness of her body through their wet garments, and she kissed him long and passionately on his bloodied lips.
“This very night,” she whispered finally.
Simon looked at her quizzically. “What do you mean?”
Magdalena put her finger to his lips. “Mother is right. As long as we’re here, they’ll hound us. Too much has happened already, and the next time it might not just be us who get hurt; something could happen to the children. We can’t allow that.” She looked deep into Simon’s eyes. “Let’s get away from here, this very night. I mean it.”
Before Simon could reply, she went on hastily: “Berchtholdt will never leave us in peace. If the matter with Resl gets out, he’ll be thrown off the council. He won’t risk that, so he’ll do anything in his power to see that I keep my mouth shut. One way or another.”
“You mean, we should leave Schongau… for good?” Simon held her tightly. “Do you know what that means? We’ll have nothing, nobody will know us, we’ll-”
Magdalena stopped him with another kiss. “Stop your blathering,” she whispered. “Don’t think I don’t know myself that it will be hard. But it’s obvious we can’t stay here any longer. You heard what Lechner said. A medicus and a hangman’s daughter… ‘that will never do’…”
“And where shall we go?”
Magdalena hesitated only briefly before answering. “Regensburg. Anything is possible there.”
A roll of thunder signaled another rain shower passing over the town. Simon pulled Magdalena close and kissed her until, locked in a tight embrace, they sank to the ground in a puddle of blood, mud, and horse piss.
A small bundle of humanity in the midst of the thundering downpour.
4
REGENSBURG
AUGUST 19, 1662 AD
The hangman kicked the iron-plated door so hard that the cell walls shook. Like a caged animal, he’d been pacing for hours, stooped over in the tiny chamber. His thoughts circled with him as he paced.
They’d been holding him in this dungeon for five days now. The room was made entirely of wood, an almost perfect cube built so low that Kuisl couldn’t stand upright inside it. Aside from a tiny hatch that opened once a day so that a foul-smelling soup and some bread could be passed to the prisoner, the room had no windows, and the darkness was so complete that even after hours in it, all he could make out were vague outlines. Fastened around Kuisl’s right ankle, a chain clanked as he trudged from one corner of the cell to the other.
The only piece of furniture was a hollowed-out wooden block that served as a toilet. A while ago, in a fit of rage, he’d picked it up and heaved it against the wall, a deed he now regretted, as the stinking contents had splashed all over the cell and had even managed to soil Kuisl’s cape. Never in his entire life had the Schongau hangman felt so powerless. He was convinced by now that someone had set a trap for him, a trap he’d stumbled into like a clumsy oaf. Whoever had so gruesomely murdered his sister and her husband was now attempting to frame him.
It made no difference that he declared his innocence when the guards entered the bathhouse, that he swore on his soul he’d only just discovered the two bodies moments before. The verdict had been decided at the outset, a fact that became amply clear when he saw the captain’s smirk. Now everything came into focus-his hasty arrest at the gate, his feeling of being watched, the unlocked door to the bathhouse. They had laid the bait and he’d taken it.
Ever since the Regensburg city guards had locked him in this cell, he’d been racking his brain to understand just who might be behind this conspiracy. He didn’t know a soul in the city, and presumably people here didn’t even know that Lisbeth Hofmann came from a hangman’s family in Schongau. Or could this be some kind of payback for his impudence toward the constables at Jakob’s Gate? Was it merely an accident that he crossed paths with the malevolent, scar-faced raftsman?
He was roused from his thoughts by loud footsteps echoing down the corridor outside his cell door. In the little window next to the door appeared the face of the captain with the shiny cuirass. “Well, country boy,” he said, twirling his mustache and smiling. “Have we softened you up a bit? A few days in this cell always does that to a person. And if not, the hangman has his own special ways of loosening your tongue… so to speak.”
When Kuisl didn’t answer, the captain continued. “In the meantime we’ve questioned the witnesses and inspected your pack.” He shook his head with feigned severity. “I don’t know much about herbs, but what you have in there is a bit more than a man might need for a cough, don’t you think? Opium, night-shade, hellebore… What were you planning to do with all that? Poison the whole city?”
Kuisl had been crouching in a corner so that the captain couldn’t see his face in the dark. “Those are medicinal herbs,” he said. “My sister was sick, as I’ve told you a hundred times. Her husband wrote me a letter, and I came here from Schongau to help her.”
The soldier furrowed his brow. “You don’t actually look like a physician, not even like a bathhouse owner. So, what are you?”
“I’m the Schongau hangman.”
There was a short pause; then the captain spluttered. He laughed so hard, in fact, that it sounded as if he
