The Beggar King

The man with the icy voice spat in the river again and stood up in a single motion. “Leave that to me. We’ll catch both of them-the mouse as well as the fat rat.”

Jakob Kuisl woke to a stomach growling as loud as a bear. He was overwhelmed by hunger.

Good, he thought. If I’m hungry at least I know I can’t be dead.

He opened his eyes and stared into the darkness. It was night; alongside his bed a beeswax candle flickered atop a trunk. Next to it some kind soul had placed a jug of wine, a bowl of soup, and a loaf of bread. Kuisl vaguely recalled how his daughter had fed him like an infant just a short while ago. A wave of relief passed through his body: the third inquisitor hadn’t gotten his hands on Magdalena! What else had happened? They had fled together through the streets of Regensburg and sought refuge at the bishop’s palace. Young Simon had mentioned something about asylum, and shortly after that Kuisl had passed out again. In brief waking moments he remembered Magdalena, her voice shaking, speaking about the inscriptions in the dungeon, about the third inquisitor, and about his escape.

And then there was something else, too: he thought he remembered a man bending down over his bed at some point during the night. The stranger, whose face was hidden in shadow, had passed his fingers over the hangman’s throat and whispered just one word.

Weidenfeld.

Kuisl blinked as a shudder ran through his body. The impression was so vivid, he believed he’d even smelled the man. Kuisl had felt a hand on his sweaty shirt. Evidently his nightmares had followed him to this place as well, but for the moment they were mostly drowned out by hunger and thirst.

He was about to sit up and reach for the bread when he felt the strap across his chest. Surprised, he looked down to find leather bonds on his arms and legs tying him to the bed. He cursed softly. The bishop’s guards had apparently locked him in this room and tied him to this bed. Panicked, he pulled at the straps, but they didn’t give even the slightest. After a few minutes of struggle fat beads of sweat broke out on his forehead, and his hunger and thirst were starting to make him crazy. Should he call for help and beg the guards to loosen his bonds, just for a moment? He didn’t want to give them the satisfaction. Perhaps they’d allow his daughter to come feed him again like a toothless old man on his deathbed. That made him shudder. He’d rather die of thirst than degrade himself like that.

So he kept tugging at the straps, thrashing back and forth until he felt the strap around his left foot begin to loosen. The hangman shifted his legs until, at last, he could slip first his right and then his left foot out of the bonds. Although he’d worked his way at least partially free, the straps around his chest and arms were as tight as if they’d been riveted to him. Kuisl threw himself so violently to the side that the bed tipped over with a crash, pinning him beneath it.

With bated breath he lay still on the ground and listened.

Had the guards heard him? All was quiet. Perhaps the bailiffs were asleep in another wing of the bishop’s palace, assuming he was still too weak to break free.

After a few minutes Kuisl tried to get upright in spite of the bed strapped to his back. He struggled to get a look around the room. He needed something sharp to tear the straps, but the room was empty except for the bed and the trunk. He’d have to look elsewhere. Swaying and grunting, he got to his feet like an animated wardrobe; the bed on his back made him even broader across than he already was. With his right hand he grabbed the door handle and pressed down cautiously. Perhaps…?

Creaking softly, the door swung outward.

Kuisl grinned. The bishop’s bailiffs had indeed forgotten to lock him inside! Stooping, he staggered through the doorway and groped around in the darkness before him like a clumsy giant. He had to be careful not to stumble or he’d wake up the entire palace. Step by step he moved quietly through a vaulted room with a stone ceiling and high windows letting in moonlight. In this dim light Kuisl noticed large copper buckets atop brick ovens and sacks of wheat and hops, some of them open, scattered across the floor. But it was the aroma that told Kuisl definitively this was a brewery.

The fragrance of malt and hops made his thirst almost unbearable. He had to free himself at once! He could just dunk his head into one of the beer tubs and take a long draught. He could-

The hangman stopped short. In the moonlight it looked as though someone else had the same idea. Directly in front of Kuisl, in one of the large brewing kettles, he could just make out the figure of a man pitched head over heels into one of the vats, with only his legs sticking out-looking for all the world like an enormous stirring spoon. His brown cassock had slipped open, revealing two pale, massive thighs.

Kuisl could only stand there with his mouth open in a grimace. In a moment all thoughts of thirst and hunger had vanished. The man in the beer kettle had clearly drowned in the brew.

There are worse ways to die, the hangman thought regretfully.

A sound from behind caused him to wheel around. Only a few steps away Simon and Magdalena stood, fully dressed, though their faces were dirty and sweaty, as if moments before they’d been hard at work.

“Papa!” Magdalena scolded. “What’s all this noise? You mustn’t…”

Then her eyes happened upon the corpse in the beer vat. She froze. Simon, too, was at a loss for words.

“My God, that’s Brother Hubertus!” the medicus shouted finally, raising his hand to his mouth in horror. After a moment of silence he looked suspiciously at Kuisl, still staggering around with the bed on his back. “Did you do anything to…?”

“You fool!” Kuisl spit. “How could I have done anything like that with forty pounds of wood on my back!”

And for the first time the couple noticed the bed tied to the hangman’s back. Despite the dead monk in the vat, Magdalena had to bite her lips to keep from laughing out loud.

“For heaven’s sake, Father! When Simon told you to stay in bed he didn’t mean for you to carry the bed around with you.”

“Be still, silly woman, and help me cut off these straps,” Kuisl said. “There’s a dead man in front of you, so please pull yourself together.”

Simon hurriedly cut through the leather bands with his stiletto. Careful not to make a sound, they lowered the bed to the floor before turning to deal with the corpse whose head was still submerged in the mash. With their combined strength they pulled the monk from the vat.

Brother Hubertus’s eyes were frozen open in horror. Slimy green catkins stuck to the fringe of hair that ringed his tonsure, and his face was even more bloated now than it had been in life. Magdalena pulled the wet cassock, which reeked of stale beer, over his ankles while Simon mouthed a silent prayer. Kuisl nudged him, pointing to a purple bruise that ringed the brewmaster’s neck.

“He was strangled,” he concluded. “No easy task, especially considering what an ox of a man the clergyman was. A strong man did this, one who knew how exactly how to go about it.” He peered down into the brown liquid sloshing around in the vat. “In fact, I’m pretty sure it must have been two men. One to hold him over the edge while the other strangled him.”

“Good Lord!” Simon closed his eyes for a moment. “I’m sure it was on account of the powder. The good monk wanted to make some more inquiries, and he clearly went to the wrong person!”

“The baldheaded murderer!” Magdalena whispered. “I bet he bribed the guards to get in. We’ve got to get out of here as quickly as possible!”

Kuisl frowned. “Powder? Murderers? What the hell is going on here, for Christ’s sake?”

“That’s what we’d like to know.” Simon gave the dead Franciscan monk at their feet a look of pity. Then he explained to the hangman in brief, halting words all that had happened the past few days.

Kuisl listened in silence and finally shook his head. “What a cesspool of iniquity we’ve gotten ourselves mired in! The story gets more colorful by the minute!” On his fingers he ticked off what he’d learned: “We have a secret alchemical workshop where you find a strange powder. My brother-in-law gets himself killed for producing it, and in addition he’s supposedly a member of this secret freemen group.” He shook his head incredulously. “And who are they anyway?”

“They’re a secret affiliation of tradesmen opposing the patricians,” Simon explained. “The raftmaster, Karl Gessner, is their leader, and your brother-in-law was his deputy. At first we thought the patricians wanted to make an example of him, as a warning to others. But that can’t be the answer. There’s more behind it than that…” He drew his finger absently through the brown beer suds. “Gessner told me yesterday that Andreas Hofmann was