of trouble.
Inch by inch, the point of a needle closed in on a wide-open eye. The beggar’s head quivered, but the strong hands of the guard held him, vise-like, while two other guards pinned his arms to his sides. The old man had stopped whimpering and just stared in pure horror at the needle about to pierce his eye. There was no escaping now.
“Good God, keep still, man,” Simon whispered, trying to focus fully on his quivering target. “I can help you, but only if you don’t move.”
Sweat streamed down the medicus’s face as the merciless August sun burned down on the marketplace. The onlookers’ boisterous cries had quieted now to a tense murmur. What they were witnessing here was better than the usual cheap theater traveling hucksters had to offer, especially since no one knew how this drama might end.
The watchman had spotted old Hans Reiser in the crowd and selected him as the ideal candidate for the self-proclaimed medicus to demonstrate whether he really was a master of his art or just some pathetic quack, as most onlookers suspected. For years old Reiser had been shuffling around the square with milky eyes. He was once a well-respected glassblower, but his trade had almost completely destroyed his eyesight. Now he was nothing more than a grumbling old man, without money or family-a blind old dotard whose presence at city hall increasingly irritated the watchmen.
The old beggar suffered from the gray stare-a disease of the eye in which the afflicted has the sensation of seeing the world as if through a waterfall, thus giving the condition its Greek name: cataracts. The pupils, gray in color, looked like two marbles. The operation could only benefit the watchmen: either Reiser would be cured and wouldn’t annoy them anymore, or he would die. That would bring them relief as well-and as for the medicus they could prosecute him for quackery and hang him and be done with it.
All in all, a perfect solution.
Simon knew he’d never live to see next week if he didn’t heal the beggar right here and now in the middle of the city square. Whether Magdalena managed to find her father was of secondary importance at the moment. He tried to put everything else out of his mind and concentrate only on the incision he was about to make. The needle was now just a few tenths of an inch from the pupil, and the beggar’s eye stared up at him like the moon, round and full. The medicus knew that removing a cataract was one of the most difficult of all medical procedures, and it was for this reason-as long as anyone could remember-that it was performed mostly by traveling barber surgeons, who could be far, far away by the time complications developed. Simon himself had performed the operation only twice in his life. It involved inserting the needle sideways into the white of the eye and pressing the clouded lens to the bottom of the eye. Just one slight tremble, the tiniest false move, and the patient could go blind, and even die as the result of subsequent infection.
When the needle pierced the eye, the beggar jerked and screamed. A second incision followed in the other eye. This time Reiser whimpered but held still, his defiance broken. Simon held the needle against the eye for a while to keep the lens in place, then, as he withdrew it, staggered backward. The back of his shirt was soaked, and sweat was streaming down his face. Only now did he notice that a hush had fallen over the crowd.
“I’ll put a dressing on it now,” Simon said, his voice weak. “You’ll have to wear it a few days, and then we’ll see whether-”
“Good Lord!” Reiser interrupted Simon as he held his hands up to his face and shouted with joy. “I can see again! By God, I can see again!”
The raggedy beggar stumbled across the square, grasping wildly at passersby. It did in fact appear he’d been cured of his blindness, even though his plodding movements suggested he’d not yet regained his sight completely. Elated, Reiser ran his hands over every face within reach, grasping at coattails and the brims of hats. Many backed away in disgust-some even pushed the beggar away-but Reiser didn’t lose heart. The old man staggered over to his savior, missing him twice in his attempt to embrace him. He finally managed on the third pass, pulling Simon firmly to his breast.
“You-you are a sorcerer!” he cried out. “Look, everyone, see for yourself-this man can work magic!”
“I… don’t think that’s the right word,” Simon whispered, but Reiser dashed across the square again, embracing complete strangers as he continued pointing at Simon. “This man is a sorcerer, a real sorcerer! Believe me!”
The medicus cast a cautious glance at the watchmen, to whom this word alone gave the sudden opportunity-in spite of his successful operation-to seize him and send him to the gallows. Might this be enough to have him burned at the stake?
At this very moment Simon caught sight of Magdalena as she sneaked out through the main gate and waved at him furtively. He feigned a move in one direction, then dashed off in the other, disappearing into the crowd.
“Stop the sorcerer!” the guards shouted behind him. “In the name of the kaiser, stop him!”
Simon knocked over a vegetable stand, sending cabbages rolling across the pavement and tripping up one of the guards. Another guard crashed into a maidservant and became entangled in a brawl with some indignant bystanders. Simon darted into a narrow alley leading away from city hall and toward the cathedral. Panting, he leaned against the side of a house to catch his breath. When he turned to pick up his things, he noticed he’d lost one of his two bags, the one containing most of his clothing, including his new petticoat breeches and his French- tailored jacket! At least he’d managed to hold on to his books and medical instruments.
Just as he was about to slip into the shadows of the narrow alleyway, he felt a hand on his shoulder. He started, then turned around to face a grinning Magdalena.
“Didn’t I say you can’t be left alone for a minute?”
The hangman’s daughter gave him a kiss on the cheek and nudged him gently in the direction of the cathedral. They could still hear angry shouts and curses from the city hall square.
“It would be best if we don’t show our faces here again for a while,” she whispered, now in a serious tone. “We already have enough problems as it is!”
Simon nodded, still panting. “I say we take the suggestion of the raftmaster and go looking for that peculiar inn. It looks like we’re going to need a cheap place to stay for a while.”
“The
As they rounded the next corner, a shadow followed. Dirty boots slid almost soundlessly through the dung- and trash-filled lane, almost as if they floated on air.
Hunched over, Jakob Kuisl moved from one end of the cell to the other. It was just four paces wide, but he had to keep moving if he wanted to keep his thoughts running.
Outside he could hear excited voices, shrill shouts and cries. Something seemed to be going on out in the market square, and Kuisl could only hope the tumult had nothing to do with Magdalena and Simon. Why-damn it- were the two of them in Regensburg at all? Had they set out after him because something had happened in Schongau? The hangman shook his head. His daughter would certainly have told him if that had been the case. Most likely his impudent girl had gotten it into her head to pay her sick old aunt a visit and take in a bit of the city life in Regensburg. The Schongau clerk, Lechner, would certainly be looking for Magdalena! It was her job, after all, in her father’s absence, to cart manure from the city streets, and she would be lucky if they didn’t throw her in the dungeon when she returned home for shirking her duty. And that cock of the walk Simon along with her! But Kuisl himself would most certainly be the first to give his daughter a good whipping.
The hangman paused at the thought that he might never again be in a position to reprimand his daughter, because it was here in Regensburg that he would die. Really, it was an act of providence that Magdalena and Simon had followed him-they were his only hope now of escaping death on the gallows. Besides, his anger at his reckless daughter was at least a welcome distraction from his memories. Though he’d scraped the writing off the wall, the old mercenary song took him back to a time he would rather have forgotten. But the seed of remembrance had been sown, and in the darkness and idleness of this cell his thoughts kept returning to the past.
Each time he reached the far end of his cell, his gaze fell on the blank space where the line from the song had been etched, and memories flashed through his mind like lightning-the murder, the violence, the brutality all came back to him now.
Instinctively, Jakob Kuisl began to hum the beginning of the song:
