Magdalena struggled to compose her thoughts. “Well…” she stammered, “do they know who’s responsible?”
The old man nodded enthusiastically. “They caught the fellow!” he squeaked. “Hofmann’s brother-in-law, a bear of a man, a real monster. They say he came from somewhere near Augsburg… Never heard of the place before, myself.”
“Was it perhaps… Schongau?” Simon asked in an undertone.
The old man furrowed his brow. “Schongau… yes! Do you know the murderer?”
Magdalena shook her head quickly. “No, no, that’s just what somebody told us. Where have they taken this… monster to now?”
The old man stared at them with increasing suspicion. “Well, of course, to one of the dungeons by city hall. You’re not from around here, are you?”
Without answering, Magdalena pulled Simon by the sleeve into a small side street away from the bathhouse, where the old man was already starting to spread rumors among the onlookers about the strangers who apparently knew the monster.
“I’m afraid your father’s in real trouble,” Simon whispered, looking warily in all directions. “Do you really think that-”
“That’s rubbish!” Magdalena said angrily. “Why would my father ever do anything like that? His own sister! It’s absurd!”
“So now what do we do?”
“You heard it yourself. He’s somewhere in city hall,” Magdalena replied curtly. “So we’ll go there; we have to help him.”
“Help? But how do you imagine…” Simon started to say, but the hangman’s daughter had already set off down the fetid, narrow lane, tears of rage and grief running down her cheeks.
Her dream of a new life had been cruelly shattered before it had even begun.
A dark figure broke away from the crowd in front of the bathhouse and silently followed the two newcomers. No onlooker would later recall someone crouched in the shadow of a nearby house, only steps away from Simon and Magdalena, someone as unremarkable as a wall or a parked cart-motionless, ever present, and unnoticed by all.
The man had long ago perfected this ability, lurking in the alcoves and doorways of burned-out cities, biding his time. He had feigned death on the battlefield only to slit the throats of foolish profiteers who tried to loot corpses of their weapons, clothing, and coins. He was a master of deception and, even more than that, of metamorphosis. He’d been living as someone else for so many years now that he was in danger of losing himself completely in this other identity-the identity of someone who had long been dead.
But then the past had come knocking at his door, reminding him who he really was. The burning desire for revenge returned and filled him with new life.
It wasn’t part of the plan that the hangman’s daughter would also stay in Regensburg, but it wasn’t without a certain irony. The man closed his eyes briefly and chuckled softly to himself. Had he believed in God, he would have uttered a prayer of thanks and donated a twelve-pound candle to the church.
Instead, he simply spat on the pavement and picked up the trail again.
The square in front of city hall was full of idlers this Sunday afternoon, as well as the pious who were streaming from the cathedral as mass came to an end. And then there was the usual crowd of beggars. It hadn’t been hard for Simon and Magdalena to find this spot. Basically they let themselves be carried along by the current of the crowd that streamed down the wide paved road from the Wei?gerbergraben and deposited them directly in front of the new city hall.
The three-story building had been partially finished just the year before, and the plaster gleamed white in the hot midday sun. To its left towered an even higher building with painted glass windows and richly decorated oriels. Through the wide portal came group after group of mostly older men, garbed in costly and, in some cases, rather exotic robes and deeply engaged in conversation. Snippets of sentences reached Simon and Magdalena in strange dialects they could only partially comprehend. So this, then, was the famous Reichssaal-the Imperial Hall, where the rich and mighty met with the kaiser to determine the destiny of the German Reich and to confer on how best to manage the ever-present and ever-increasing danger posed by the Turks. The raftsmen mentioned that the meeting would take place a few months from now, and apparently preparations were already under way.
Magdalena nudged Simon and pointed to a narrow doorway between the Reichssaal and the new city hall, where two watchmen stood guard with halberds. The gate behind them stood open, but the two bailiffs shared an expression as watchful as it was surly. And behind the gate was a dark archway.
“Look!” the hangman’s daughter whispered. “The dungeon next to the city hall. That must be what the old man meant!”
Simon shrugged. “And what now? Push our way past the guards, knock down the doors to the dungeon, and smuggle the hangman out in your little travel bag?”
“You idiot!” Magdalena replied. “I just want to talk to him and find out what happened. Perhaps then we can figure out how to help him.”
“And just how do you propose to do that? They won’t let anyone in there.”
Magdalena, who seemed to have calmed down somewhat, flashed him a devious grin. “We need someone to distract them while I have a look around in there. Can you do that?”
Simon looked at her in disbelief. “You’re asking me to…”
She grinned again and kissed him on the cheek. “You’re always quick on your feet; just think of something.”
Then she headed briskly for the door, where the guards were already eyeing her expectantly.
“Have you got the monster locked up good and tight?” she asked them blithely. “Down in the Wei? gerbergraben, the most blood-curdling stories are going around. They say the man is as big as a tree and tore the heads off the bathhouse owner and his wife like they were nothing more than chickens. What’s going to happen if he gets out, eh?”
The guards’ expressions went from attentive to boastful. “Let that be our concern, woman,” one of them replied gruffly. “We’ve put all kinds of rascals in here under lock and key.”
“Really?” Magdalena pursed her lips and batted her eyelashes. “Uh, like who?”
One of the guards puffed out his chest. “Well, you’ve probably heard of Hans Reichart, the swine who robbed and murdered five townfolk-stabbed them in the back, no less. We chased that shameless bastard all over city, but in the end the hangman got him on the wheel and impaled that broken bag of bones on a stake. As a reward, we each got to keep one of Reichart’s fingers.” The watchman held up his left hand and crossed himself superstitiously. “No one’s so much as stolen a kreuzer from me since.”
Magdalena swallowed hard. It was clear her father risked a similar fate.
“I wish I’d been there for the chase,” she said finally. “You’re both such big, strapping fellows.” She winked and ran a finger down the breastplate of one of the guards, with a quick but suggestive glance downward. “Up top, I mean, of course.”
The soldier grinned back. “You’re welcome to have a look down below, you know.”
At that moment laughter and noise erupted nearby, and with a sigh, the guards broke off their brief flirtation and turned their heads to watch as a young man climbed onto a cart and began loudly extolling the virtues of some elixir.
“Dear citizens of Regensburg, step up and taste my newest miracle cure! This theriaca is brewed from dried snake meat and a secret mixture of exquisite herbs I myself gathered in cemeteries by the light of the full moon. It works wonders for cases of infertility, toothache, and stomach pain. On my honor, I swear it will give sight to the lame and make the blind walk again.”
“Stay here, girl,” one watchman growled, beckoning to his comrade to follow. “Let’s see what all this racket is about before I get to tell you about how I worked over Schaidinger not long ago, a dirty dog who robbed the offertory box.”
“Oh, um… wonderful,” replied Magdalena, smiling grimly as the determined watchmen headed toward the cart.
Beads of sweat on his brow, Simon waved about a little bottle he’d hastily removed from his satchel: a
