HIS BLADE KEEN AND STEADY
The hangman listened to himself hum it, but the tune sounded as if it were coming from the mouth of another man.
He bit down hard on his lip until he tasted blood.
5
REGENSBURG
AUGUST 19–20, 1662 AD
The eye stared in cold as marble-unblinking, motionless, and dry-without betraying the slightest flicker of emotion. At times Katharina believed no being existed behind this eye; that instead an evil, monstrous doll was observing her like a caged bird or a beetle scampering back and forth inside a jar.
Katharina couldn’t recall how long she’d been imprisoned in this room. Five days? Six? Or more? There was no window for light to enter, only a small hatch in the door through which a gloved hand supplied her with food, drink, and white candles in exchange for her chamber pot. Her only contact with the outside world was through a small fingernail-size hole above this hatch, and though Katharina had tried and tried, all she could see through it was a dark, torch-lit corridor. Now and then she could make out the sound of soft music in the distance, though it wasn’t the kind of music she knew from fairs and church festivals, but solemn and ceremonial, composed of trumpets, harps, and reeds.
It sounded to Katharina a little like the music of angels.
She’d discovered the eye would visit her at regular intervals. Sometimes the visit was announced by shuffling and scraping at the door, and very rarely she would hear the sound of feet dragging or a soft, melodic whistle. But more often than not, only a prickling sensation between her shoulder blades alerted her that, when she turned around, the eye would be there again, staring at her, cool and curious.
Long ago she’d given up calling for help. At first she’d cried, cursed, and screamed until all that remained of her voice was a reedy squawk, but when she realized that this did no good and just made her hoarse, she curled up into herself like a sick cat and retreated far inside her head, where recently everything seemed jumbled together- horrible visions, visions of people impaled on stakes and tortured, of decapitated bodies and the corpses of infants with contorted limbs, of green long-necked monsters throwing helpless souls into vats of boiling oil. But there were also wanton images: naked young boys and tender young girls who caressed her in her dreams, fairy-like creatures who held her high in their arms and carried her to the mountain peak of Brocken, where she joined both men and women in wild orgies.
Sometimes Katharina would cry and laugh at the same time.
Whenever her thoughts came briefly into focus, she tried to remember what had in fact brought her here. She’d been hanging around behind the old grain market, heavily made-up the way men liked it, with brightly colored hair and a full flowing skirt that she had only to lift to service her clients. Katharina knew her work wasn’t without risks. In contrast to many other prostitutes, she worked without a madam. Her friends bought protection from Fat Thea or someone else and paid a pretty penny for it, but Katharina worked alone. If the guards caught her, she would be thrown into the stocks in the city hall square, then whipped and chased out of town the very next day. It had happened to her twice already, first when she was only fifteen years old. Now in her early thirties, Katharina was an experienced prostitute and knew how to avoid the bailiffs. And if she got caught-well, she could always bribe them with her body.
But now misfortune had visited her at last, a nameless misfortune, a misfortune that she could never have imagined in even her worst nightmares.
The man had worn a black coat and a hat drawn over his face. His voice was refined and pleasant, not like one of those crude raftsmen whose breath stank of booze as he nailed her like a board to the wall. She knew this man had money to spend. He led her to a hidden doorway and pulled out a little silver bottle. The warm liquid inside tasted sweet like wine and went down as smooth as honey. The next thing she could remember was falling onto a bed in a strange room where the man covered her body with a thousand kisses. It hadn’t been unpleasant. On the contrary, for the first time in a long while she’d felt desire welling up inside her again. When she finally came to much later, she was still lying in the same room, but with a pounding headache now. Her gums felt as if they were on fire.
There was no doubt the stranger had provided generously for her. In one corner of the room stood a bed made up with white linens, and in the other corner, a chamber pot. A table had been prepared with cheese and white bread on silver platters and wine in a fragile glass goblet. Never before in her life had she tasted white bread-it was heavenly, without husks, grit, or hard kernels. In the following days she was fed more white bread and other delicacies-sausages, sliced ham, creamy butter… As time passed, Katharina began to suspect she was being fattened up like a goose, but she kept right on eating, as it was her only diversion amid the endless, monotonous hours, the only way she could drive away the tormenting thoughts.
Once again Katharina felt a tingle creep across her back. She turned around and looked directly into the eye.
It was studying her. Something scraped along the outside of the door.
It was time for the next course.
Avoiding the main streets, Magdalena and Simon made their way through a labyrinth of narrow lanes and shadowy back courtyards piled high with rubbish and excrement. The squalid children and hapless, wounded veterans of the Great War who occupied these places stared out at them as they passed. Old soldiers leaning on crutches, some with horrible scars and burns on their faces, held out their hands as the two strangers hurried by in silence. Everywhere, mangy, scraggy dogs roamed the streets, snarling at them in packs. This was the other face of Regensburg, the dirty underside that had nothing whatsoever in common with the clean paved streets, the stately parliament building, the cathedral, and the towering houses where the patricians lived. This was a place of poverty and disease, where the daily battle for survival was waged.
More than once Simon thought he saw a figure peering at them from around a corner, someone pursuing them, lying in wait for just the right moment to plunge a dagger into their ribs or snatch their few belongings. But oddly enough the beggars and the wounded left them alone. Simon was sure this had less to do with him than it did with Magdalena, whose steady gait and fierce gaze showed possible thieves and muggers she wasn’t an easy target. They could sense that the hangman’s daughter was one of their own.
“If this tavern doesn’t materialize soon, I’m going to die of thirst right here in the middle of the street,” Simon lamented, wiping the sweat from his brow. Again he cursed himself for having eaten that salty, greasy sausage down by the river.
The heat continued to build palpably in the narrow lanes. Several times already they’d asked halfway reputable-looking passersby for directions to the Whale. Each time they’d been sent off in a different direction, and now they found themselves somewhere behind the cathedral, supposedly just a stone’s throw from the elusive tavern.
“Surely it can’t be much farther,” Magdalena said, pointing ahead to a broad boulevard spanned by tall stone arches. “Those must be the arches they told us about. We just need to turn right here, and we’ll be there.”
As they walked, the hangman’s daughter briefly recounted what had happened to her father. A few words were enough to give the medicus cause to worry. Was it really possible someone had framed the hangman? And if so, why? Simon wasn’t especially enthused about Kuisl’s idea to go looking for clues at Hofmann’s house. He dreaded the thought of breaking into the bathhouse that night. What if someone caught them? No doubt they would be deemed the hangman’s accomplices, thrown into the very next cell, then led to the gallows alongside him. But the medicus knew he wouldn’t be able talk Magdalena out of it. Once the hangman’s daughter had set her mind to something, there was no turning back.
At last they emerged from the labyrinth of narrow lanes and turned right, into a wide paved boulevard with huge stone arches overhead. Nestled discreetly between two warehouses stood a lopsided, two-story gabled house that looked as though it had been standing there since time immemorial. Above the entrance dangled a rusty metal
