apparently seeking something like the philosopher’s stone in his secret workshop. Whether that’s true or not, I believe this powder goes right to the heart of the matter. That would explain why the culprit was so intent on covering up his motive in the bathhouse murders.”
“Philosopher’s stone? Bah!” Kuisl spat into the vat. “I always knew my brother-in-law was an idle dabbler. But that’s complete nonsense! Alchemy is just a hobby for bored noblemen and the pampered sons of the patricians. And even if there’s anything to it, it can’t be motive enough for the murders-or the third inquisitor wouldn’t have been so aggressive. That wasn’t any decent kind of torture; it was revenge, pure and simple.” He pointed his finger at Magdalena, who looked back at him with wide eyes. “The dirty bastard knew the name of your mother, and he knew about you. Philosopher’s stone or not, someone’s out for revenge. But I’ll give him so much to chew on he’ll choke!”
“For heaven’s sake, not so loud!” Simon whispered. “There have to be guards out front, and if they hear us, we might as well just hop into the kettles and boil ourselves to save them the trouble!”
Kuisl bit his lip and kept quiet.
“What happened with my letter, by the way?” he asked finally, in a markedly softer voice. “The message I sent you through Teuber? I asked you to find out more about this Weidenfeld fellow. And-did you find anything?”
Magdalena shrugged. “I received a letter, but it wasn’t from you.
“Damn it!” Kuisl kicked the brew kettle so hard that brown liquid splashed over the side. “If only I had something to smoke, I’m sure I’d remember where I know that name.”
He searched frantically in his linen shirt and pants pockets for a few buds of tobacco. Then he froze, pulling out a little roll of paper tucked in his breast pocket. He apprehensively unrolled the soiled scrap of paper and had to squint to read the words.
In the next moment he turned as white as a sheet.
“Father, what’s wrong?” Magdalena asked anxiously. “What’s on the paper?”
Slowly, as if in a trance, Kuisl shook his head.
“It’s nothing.” He crumpled the paper and returned it to his breast pocket. “Just a scrap of paper, nothing more.”
His daughter gave him skeptical look. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, for God’s sake!” he snapped. “Don’t give me any backtalk. I’m still your father.”
Magdalena raised her hands in appeasement. “Of course. Everyone has his secrets. I only wonder-”
“Let’s deal with that later,” Simon interjected. “First we have to dispose of the dead monk. If the guards find him, they’re going to blame us.”
Kuisl nodded, though his expression had since turned stony. He absent-mindedly stroked his breast pocket. “Very well,” he announced. “Let’s get to it.”
Together they lifted the fat monk’s corpse, carried it back to the beer kettle, and watched as his body sank, gurgling, into the brown brew. But his head kept bobbing to the surface, dotted with hops catkins. Only after Kuisl dumped a few bags of grain on top of him did the monk disappear in the brew.
Satisfied, Kuisl used his trousers to dry his hands, which were by now so bloodstained and dirty it looked as though he’d just dragged a dead cow to the knacker. Simon shuddered. He kept forgetting his future father-in-law was a master of killing. As a hangman, Kuisl had probably seen more corpses than there were apples on any given apple tree. And the vacant look in Kuisl’s eyes continued to trouble Simon. Just what was written on that piece of paper he’d so hurriedly hidden away in his pocket?
The medicus suddenly recalled why they were awake at this hour of the night in the first place.
“We have to get away from here as quickly as possible,” he whispered. “At once, if we can. I suggest we leave the bishop’s palace and find a place to hide in the ruins in the west of the city; they look as if they’ve been abandoned since the Great War. When things have calmed down, we’ll try to get out of town.”
“The bishop’s guards will hardly see us off with a party,” Kuisl mused. His face was still pale and his mind in some faraway place.
Simon grinned. “Well, I do have some good news, for a change. Magdalena and I spent the past day exploring the bishop’s palace in search of escape routes. In the back of the brew house we came upon a walled-up door that evidently dates from Roman times.” He pointed to the rear of the vault, where beer kegs were stacked almost to the ceiling. “The door directly borders the main road north of the bishop’s palace. We removed a few of the stones and felt a draft come through. It looks as if this door just may lead out of the compound.”
“Show me,” Kuisl said.
Magdalena and Simon led him into a corner of the brew house behind a stack of barrels, where they saw the outline of a doorway barely wide enough for a man to pass through. Some stones had been removed, and through the tiny opening a faint stench of garbage and excrement wafted in. Never in his life would Simon have imagined he’d find such a stink so pleasant.
The smell of the city.
“Get your things together,” Kuisl said. “Meanwhile, I’ll remove these stones, one at a time so nobody will hear a thing.”
“Will that be too much of a strain, Father?” Magdalena asked anxiously. “Simon thinks you should take care of yourself and-”
“When I need a nursemaid, I’ll let you know,” the hangman groused. “As long as I’m able to break a man’s bones, I can break down a little wall.”
Magdalena grinned. Her father was clearly well on his way to recovery.
“I was just asking,” she said. “We’ll be right back. Don’t be too hard on the stones, all right?”
Together she and Simon hurried through the vaulted room and slipped through a small passage into the brewmaster’s kitchen. Outside, the moon shone brightly enough that Magdalena could see a guard leaning wearily on his pike. But the guard was thankfully too far from the kitchen window to recognize her. Smoked sausages and fragrant legs of pork hung from the ceiling on hooks, and baskets of fresh fruit and bread lined the windowsills alongside handwritten cookbooks and an old book on herbs.
“The fat brewmaster must have been a gourmand; he really seems to have known his way around a kitchen.” Magdalena nodded approvingly as she plucked a few sausages from a hook. “I’m really sorry about what happened to him; I’m sure he was a really decent fellow.”
Simon sighed. “He was. I regret having gotten him mired in this. I should never have-”
“We haven’t got time for regrets right now,” Magdalena interrupted in a whisper. “Save your prayers until we get to Saint Michael’s Basilica in Altenstadt, or light a votive at church back in Schongau, if you prefer. Right now, though, this is a matter of life and death for us and for my father, and that’s my first concern.”
“You’re right.” Simon filled a wineskin with dark Malvasian wine from a little keg next to the hearth. “Right now what worries me most is your father. What in the world was on that piece of paper? When he read it, it was as if someone had whitewashed his whole face.”
“Who can tell what’s going on with my father?” Magdalena replied softly. “Sometimes I think not even Mother knows all his secrets. He’s never once spoken of his experiences in the war, even though that’s when the two met.”
“Wait, your mother isn’t from Schongau?” asked Simon, astonished. “I always thought-”
Magdalena shook her head. “She comes from around here. But whenever I’ve asked about my grandparents, or the time before I was born, she just falls silent.”
“Do you think that damn Weidenfeld fellow dates back to that time, too?”
“Maybe, but that’s just a hunch.” Magdalena shouldered her bundle. “We’ll probably never know for sure. You’re right, you know. We’ve got to get out of this loathsome city as fast as we can. My mother even said that Regensburg is cursed. Let’s forget about all these secrets and just get back home to Schongau.”
Without another word, she hurried out into the brew house. Simon packed one more wedge of cheese in his bundle and followed. As he left, he took a last look into the kettle, but Brother Hubertus hadn’t resurfaced; his body was still drifting somewhere down below in the cloudy brew.
