for their love. They’d always dreamed of getting married, but strict town statutes wouldn’t permit that. They’d been courting for years, and their relationship was like a desperate game of hide-and-seek. As the daughter of the hangman, Magdalena wasn’t allowed to associate with the higher classes. Executioners were dishonorable, just like gravediggers, bathhouse owners, barbers, and magicians. Accordingly, marriage to a physician was out of the question, but that didn’t keep the couple from clandestine meetings in the fields and barns around town. In the springtime two years ago, they’d even made a pilgrimage together to Altotting, basically the only longer time they’d been together. In the meantime the affair between the medicus and the hangman’s daughter had become a hot topic of conversation in the Schongau marketplace and taverns. Moreover, Simon’s father, old Bonifaz Fronwieser, was urging his son with increasing insistence to finally settle down with a middle-class girl. That was actually essential in advancing Simon’s career as a doctor, but he kept putting his father off-and meeting secretly with Magdalena.
“Maybe we should go to Regensburg, too,” Simon whispered between kisses. “A serf gains his freedom after living a year and a day in the city. We could start a new life…”
“Oh, come now, Simon.” Magdalena pushed him away. “How often you’ve promised me that! What will become of me, then? Don’t forget I’m dishonorable. I’ll just end up picking up the garbage again, no matter where I am.”
“Nobody knows me there!”
Magdalena shrugged. “And what will I do for work? The cities are full of hungry day laborers and-”
Simon held his finger to her lips. “Just don’t say anything now-let’s forget it all for just a while.” His eyes closed, he bent down and covered her body with kisses.
“Simon… no…” Magdalena whispered, but her resistance was already broken.
At that moment they heard a crackling sound in the willow tree above them.
Magdalena looked up. Something seemed to be moving there in the branches. All of a sudden she felt something warm and slimy hit her and run slowly down her forehead. She put up her hand to feel it and realized it was spit.
She heard giggling and then saw two boys, about twelve years old, quickly climb down the tree. One of them was the youngest son of the alderman and master baker Michael Berchtholdt, with whom Magdalena had often exchanged strong words.
“The doctor is kissing the hangman’s daughter!” the second boy shouted as he ran away. Disgusted, Magdalena wiped the rest of the spit from her forehead. Simon jumped up and shook his fist at the smirking boy.
“You impertinent little brats!” he shouted. “I’m going to break every bone in your bodies!”
“The hangman’s daughter can do that better than you!” cackled the second boy, disappearing into the bush. “Do it on the rack, you scum!”
Then little Berchtholdt stopped short. He turned and looked at Simon defiantly, with clenched teeth, trembling slightly as the medicus charged after him like a madman, his shirt open and his jacket undone.
“It wasn’t me,” he squealed as Simon raised his hand to strike. “It was Benedikt! I swear! Actually, we were just looking for you because-uh-”
Simon had raised his hand to strike the boy when he noticed that young Berchtholdt was staring open- mouthed at the half-naked hangman’s daughter, who was trying to hide as best she could behind a rock while she buttoned up her bodice. The physician gave the boy a gentle poke on the nose strong enough to send the boy reeling backward into the mud.
“Didn’t the priest teach you any sense of decency?” Simon chided. “If you keep staring like that, God will strike you blind. So what are you up to here?”
“My father sent me,” the boy mumbled. “He wants to see the Kuisl girl.”
“Old Berchtholdt?” asked Magdalena, stepping out from behind the rock, now fully dressed. “What could he possibly want from me? Or is he sitting up there somewhere in the tree staring at me, too?”
The Schongau master baker was known around town as a lecherous old philanderer. He’d made a pass at Magdalena some years back and been rebuffed. Since then he’d been spreading gossip that the hangman’s daughter was in league with the devil and had cast a spell on the young medicus. Three years ago the superstitious baker had almost succeeded in having the midwife, Martha Stechlin, burned at the stake for alleged witchcraft-something Magdalena’s father had just barely been able to prevent. Since then Berchtholdt had harbored a deep hatred for the Kuisls and, whenever he could, tried to make life miserable for them.
“It’s on account of his maid, Resl,” the boy said as he continued to stare at Magdalena’s low neckline. “She has a fat stomach and is screaming like crazy.”
“Does she have a child on the way?” Magdalena asked.
Puzzled, the boy just stood there, picking his nose. “No idea. People think the devil has gotten into her. You should have a look, my father says.”
“Aha, so now I’m good enough for him.” She looked at the boy suspiciously. “Doesn’t he want to go see Stechlin?”
“Berchtholdt would rather cut his own guts out than send for the midwife,” interjected Simon, who’d dressed himself in the meantime. “You know, he still thinks Stechlin is a witch and would love to see her burn. Anyway, many people in town think you’re just as good a midwife as she is, maybe even better.”
“Enough of your nonsense!” Magdalena tied her wet hair up into a bun as she continued talking. “I only hope there’s nothing seriously wrong with Berchtholdt’s maid. Now come along, let’s go!”
The hangman’s daughter hurried down the narrow towpath to the Lech Gate, turning around to Simon once more as she ran. “Perhaps we’ll need a professional physician, even if it’s just to go and fetch water.”
As soon as they arrived at the narrow Zankgasse, Magdalena was sure this was no ordinary birth. Through the small bolted windows of the baker’s house the screams sounded more like a cow awaiting slaughter than a woman giving birth. Farmers and workers had come running to the door of the bakery and were whispering anxiously to one another. When Simon and Magdalena approached, the group stepped back reluctantly.
“Here comes the hangman’s daughter to drive the devil out of the baker’s maid,” somebody said.
“I say they’re both witches,” an old woman whispered. “Just wait, and we’ll see them fly out through the chimney.”
Magdalena pushed her way past the gossiping women and tried not to take what they were saying too seriously. As the hangman’s daughter, she was accustomed to people thinking of her as the spawn of Satan, and ever since she started working for the midwife, her reputation had grown even worse. Mostly it was the men who were convinced the hangman’s daughter could prepare magic elixirs and love potions, and in fact, a few of the aldermen had already obtained such preparations from her father. Up to now, however, Magdalena had always refused to swindle people with such nonsense, primarily to avoid arousing even more suspicions about her being the devil’s consort. But to no avail, she had to admit to herself with a sigh.
As the crowd continued whispering and gossiping, she entered the bakery with Simon, where they were received by Michael Berchtholdt, who looked as white as a sheet. As so often, the scrawny little man smelled of brandy, and his eyes were ringed in red circles as if he’d passed a sleepless night. He was rubbing a dry bouquet of mugwort between his fingers to ward off evil spirits. His wife, who was just as skinny, knelt before a crucifix in a corner of the room, murmuring prayers, which were, however, drowned out by the screams of the maid.
Resl Kirchlechner lay by the fire on a bench covered with dirty straw. She writhed in pain as if a fire burned inside her. Her face, hands, and legs were covered with red pustules, and the tips of her fingers had turned a shiny black. Her belly was distended into a little round ball and almost looked like a foreign object on her otherwise spindly body. Magdalena presumed that, until now, the maid had wrapped her dress tightly around herself to conceal the pregnancy.
At just that moment, the young woman sat up as if someone had rammed a broomstick up her back. Her eyes were vacant and her dry lips opened as she let out a long, drawn-out scream.
“He’s in me!” she gasped. “My God, he’s eating through my body and tearing out my soul!” A loud moan followed. “Oh… I can feel his teeth. I can hear his lips smacking as he gnaws through my belly! I want to spit him out like a rotten piece of fruit!” She made a retching sound as if preparing to regurgitate something large and undigested.
“My God, what is that?” Simon asked in horror from the doorway.
“Can’t you see? The devil is in her!” Maria Berchtholdt moaned from the corner of the room, rocking back and
