had aroused his suspicion. Bowing a few times, the medicus took leave of the grim watchman and proceeded down the ramp. He waited a few yards before he dared to stand up straight.
At that moment he heard banging and pounding across the water. Not far from where he stood, mill wheels turned in the swift current, powering huge hammers and millstones inside the island’s several buildings and sheds. Clattering sawmills stood side by side with rattling grain, fulling, and paper mills. The island was a single rumbling beast, and Simon could almost feel its vibration underfoot.
His goal was in sight. Now he only hoped his hunch was right.
The island was overgrown with low bushes, and it took Simon some time to orient himself in the daylight, but he finally recognized the big wooden gabled building to which Nathan had brought him that night. He slackened his pace, still uncertain what he might find inside. Was the mill being guarded?
On the spur of the moment he decided to avoid the main door and first take a quick look inside through one of the windows. He clambered up onto a stack of wood against the side of the building until he reached the sealed window shutters. Bending a slat to one side, he stared into the half darkness.
There wasn’t much to see. Just as last time, sacks of grain and flour were scattered throughout, and at the rear an enormous millstone creaked and groaned, driven by a water wheel on the building’s shore side. Simon was about to turn away when he spotted an especially large sack that had fallen from a larger pile and now lay by itself in the middle of the large room.
The sack was moving.
Simon blinked and took another look. Indeed, the big sack quivered and shook. Only now did the medicus realize it wasn’t a sack of grain at all but a person tied into a tight bundle. When this person rolled to the side and Simon saw her face, he had to suppress a scream.
It was Magdalena!
Her hair wet and tousled, her face pale, she trembled from head to toe. Nevertheless, her eyes flashed with anger, reminding Simon of a captured lynx.
Seconds later several figures emerged from the shadows inside the mill. Two were hefty thugs with broad shoulders and the fixed gazes of men accustomed to carrying out orders. Simon thought he recognized at least one of them from the raft landing. The third was different-small, he wore a red shirt with white ribbons and, on his head, one of those chic musketeer hats Simon so wished he could afford.
The man was Silvio Contarini.
Crossing his legs, the Venetian took a seat on a sack of grain and scrutinized the quivering bundle in front of him. During the whole trip on the river Magdalena had struggled in vain to free herself from her bonds. In the meantime she seemed to have tired, and her movements had grown weaker. Silvio shook his head regretfully.
“It’s really such a shame that our relationship had to come to this.” He sighed. “But the ways of the Lord are inscrutable. Believe me, I adore you all the same-your courage, your intelligence, and, of course, your beauty.”
“You miserable dwarf!” Magdalena barked as she tried to get up. “I’ll cut off your tiny little prick if you so much as touch me again!”
“
“What kind of damned experiment?” Magdalena snapped, a hint of uncertainty resonating in her voice. “Give it to me straight for once.”
Silvio settled onto his sack of grain as he might a chaise longue, folding his arms behind his head and looking around the mill as if for the first time. Wholly satisfied, he turned back to Magdalena.
“So tell me, what do you think all this is here?”
“Grain. Flour. What else?” the hangman’s daughter snapped.
Silvio nodded. “
“Freshly harvested and threshed from fields I leased around Regensburg,” he continued. “We’ve taken great pains to produce grain so pure. In fact, the color comes from a simple fungus that grows on the grain during warm, wet summers. The farmers fear it, but its effects are truly astonishing. You could almost say these grains are blessed by God. They give humankind the
“My God!” Magdalena panted. Her face turned a shade whiter. “Saint Anthony’s Fire! Then inside all these grains is…”
Silvio nodded. “Ergot. Indeed. God’s poison. It offers man a vision of Judgment Day. Those who partake of it behold a vision of heaven… and hell. It’s said the grain is as old as humankind.” Again the grain trickled through his fingers. “Entire villages have given themselves up to the Almighty God after a taste. Men who’ve eaten bread baked with ergot-laced flour have gone into ecstasies, identifying witches and devils in their midst and destroying them. Twitching and dancing, they move through the streets singing our Savior’s praise. A purifying poison! I can proudly say that never has such a great amount of ergot been produced by the hand of man.” He gestured grandly at the sacks piled up all over the mill as a rapturous smile spread across his lips.
“Enough for an entire city.”
From his hiding place Simon watched the Venetian stand up and stride down the line of sacks like a commander inspecting his troops. Simon’s heart was racing. They should have guessed this from the start! Bluish, musty powder. Ground ergot! This fungus grew not only in rye but in other types of grain as well-and on more than one occasion it had infected entire grain fields, resulting in mass intoxication. People who ate contaminated bread went mad, and many even died. Only in very small quantities did it have any healing power, and even then it was primarily used to induce labor or abort a pregnancy. Now this madman intended to poison an entire city!
Simon cursed himself for not having considered this possibility before. Just the day before they’d left for Regensburg, the baker, Berchtholdt, had poisoned his maid, Resl, with ergot. The medicus had never seen the stuff in Schongau, so his father must have been storing it secretly. Before that Simon’s last experience with it was at the university in Ingolstadt.
He remembered the bathhouse owner’s illustrated herbarium, in which some types of grain had been highlighted. In his secret alchemist workshop Hofmann must have been producing an especially pure form of ergot. It had been right in front of Simon’s eyes all this time!
Desperately Simon tried to think of a way out, for himself and for Magdalena. The Venetian’s two hulking henchmen had withdrawn to a corner of the mill below and were taking turns drinking from a clay jug that-to judge from their blissful expressions-must have contained some high-proof brandy. All the same, the medicus was sure the thugs were still sober enough to present a real danger. What should he do? Alert the city guards? By the time the blundering bailiffs made it here from the bridge, Silvio would be long gone, and Magdalena with him. And who was to say that the patricians weren’t in on it themselves? Hadn’t Mamminger tried to get a hold of this powder, too? Hadn’t he hired a murderer to do just that?
At that moment Simon heard movement behind him. When he turned around, he was horrified to find another of Silvio’s servants climbing the woodpile like a cat. So there were three of them! This one had apparently been keeping watch by the door.
When the servant realized Simon saw him, too, he uttered a loud curse and reached for Simon’s foot a few inches away. The medicus kicked frantically and struck the man in the face. The servant tumbled back with a scream, bringing down some logs with him. As the whole pile started to shift, Simon could feel logs slipping beneath him and knew that at any moment he could be crushed among them like grain in a millstone.
He straightened up, trying to regain his balance atop the tumbling logs, and just managed to save himself with a daring leap to the side. With a loud crash, the logs on which he’d just been standing toppled to the ground. He watched the servant desperately try to crawl out from under the thundering chaos. In the next moment, however, a heavy trunk, which surely weighed a ton, crashed down on the man, silencing his cries abruptly.
The timbers were still rolling down all around Simon. A sudden, heavy blow to his shoulder knocked him down, and a long timber rolled over his thigh, pinning him to the ground. He shifted back and forth, pushing against
