way for them, as if they had some infectious disease.
As Magdalena and Simon headed down toward the Lech Gate, they could feel the looks directed at their backs for a long time.
3
SCHONGAU
AUGUST 13–14, 1662 AD
Late in the night Simon was awakened by noises outside the Fronwieser home. He reached for a stiletto he always kept in the trunk next to his bed. But judging from the pounding on the door and the crude cursing that followed, it could only be his father, who, no doubt, was staggering home from some tavern out behind the Ballenhaus.
Simon rubbed his eyes and stretched. Ever since that afternoon he had wanted to speak with his father about the ergot, but Bonifaz Fronwieser had disappeared without a trace. That was no cause for concern, as in recent months the old man had often vanished for days, boozing his way through the taverns of Schongau, Altenstadt, and Peiting. Once he finally ran out of money, he’d find a barn, sleep it off, and return home the next day, disheveled and hung-over. After a few weeks’ respite, he would start up all over again. Simon guessed that at the local taverns his father had already freely distributed the two guilders he’d fetched for the ergot.
The young medicus sighed and reached for a cold cup of coffee on the trunk next to his bed. The bitter brew helped him to bear his father’s increasingly erratic moods. In recent years their quarreling had escalated. Bonifaz Fronwieser had been an army surgeon before he found a position as doctor in Schongau. Simon’s mother had died long ago, and his father wanted nothing more than to see his son better off in this life than he’d been. So, he’d sent Simon to the university in Ingolstadt, where the latter spent less energy on his studies than he did money on clothes, card games, and pretty women. Around the time Simon returned from Ingolstadt without a diploma, his father started drinking.
His father’s loud singing interrupted Simon’s thoughts. The young medicus listened as his father threw his boots in the corner, then promptly collapsed. With a loud crash, a few dishes fell to the floor and shattered. Blinking, Simon noticed the first light of day filtering through the shutters. He got up and started to dress. It was probably pointless to speak with his father now, but anger was rising in Simon, and he couldn’t go back to sleep.
As he started down the steep staircase, he could see his father sitting on a bench downstairs. With a vacant look, old Fronwieser pushed a few rusty coins across the table, apparently all that remained from his drinking spree. Alongside him was a cup half full of brandy. Without saying a word, Simon picked it up and poured the contents onto the floor. It was only then that his father seemed to notice him.
“Stop that!” the father said angrily. “I’m still your father.”
“You sold ergot to Berchtholdt,” Simon said in a flat voice.
His father stared at him with small, tired eyes. For a moment it seemed he was going to deny it, but finally he shrugged. “And if I did… what business is it of yours?”
“The baker gave the ergot to his maid, Resl, and she died yesterday from taking it.”
There was a long pause, and Bonifaz appeared unwilling to reply.
Finally, Simon continued, “She screamed so loud that all of Schongau could hear it-like a pig being slaughtered. But you were out carousing and didn’t hear a thing, I’m sure.”
Old Fronwieser folded his arms over his chest and threw his head back defiantly. “I gave the stuff to Berchtholdt because he positively begged for it. What he did with it is his business and doesn’t concern me. If his maid-”
“You told him it would be better to take too much than too little!” Simon interrupted, his voice quivering. “You gave him the ergot as if it were herbal tea or arnica, but it’s poison! Deadly poison! You’re nothing but a charlatan, a quack!”
The last words, which slipped out by accident, sent his father over the edge.
“Quack?” he growled, digging his fingernails into the tabletop. “You call me a goddamned quack? Let me tell you who’s a quack in this town. It’s your damned hangman! Folks are always begging him for their elixirs and their salves. Now that he’s away, I finally have a chance to make a little money, and you make me out to be a murderer! My own son!” The old man stood up and pounded the table so hard the cups on the wall started rattling. “The damned hangman! That quack! That devil! I’ll burn his house down.”
Closing his eyes, Simon turned his face toward the ceiling. Bonifaz’s jealousy had been a thorn in his side for years, a thorn tipped in poison. Many Schongauers preferred to take their sicknesses and little aches and pains secretly to the hangman rather than to the town doctor. This was, of course, far cheaper, and moreover executioners were considered better not only at treating the broken bones and external injuries they had often themselves inflicted but also at healing internal diseases. By virtue of their experience with torture and executions, they had a more thorough understanding of the human body than any doctor with a university diploma.
What angered old Fronwieser most, however, was that his son was a good friend of the executioner. The young medicus had learned more from Kuisl than from his own father and the entire faculty of Ingolstadt University put together. The hangman owned books on medicine that couldn’t even be found in most libraries. He knew every poison and medicinal herb and had studied writings that traditional scholars considered the work of the devil. Simon idolized the hangman and was in love with his daughter-two things that got under Bonifaz’s skin and made him seethe with rage.
As the old man continued his rant about the hangman and the hangman’s family, Simon walked over to a pot of hot water that had been standing on the hearth all night. He knew he would need some coffee if he hoped to withstand the next few minutes.
“I’m not going to be scolded by the likes of someone who’d go to bed with the hangman’s daughter.” His father’s tirade was approaching its climax. “It’s a wonder, in any case, that you’re at home and not out with that little harlot of yours.”
Simon’s hands curled around the hot rim of the pot. “Father… I beg you!”
“Ha! You’re
“Father, stop it! At once!”
But by now Bonifaz had worked himself into a frenzy. “If only your dear mother knew!” he scoffed. “It’s just as well the reaper carried her off so long ago-it would have broken her heart. For years we tramped along behind the military, serving them as field surgeons, saving every last kreuzer I could so that our son might attend the university and have a better life someday. And what did you do? You squandered the money in Ingolstadt and wasted your time loafing around with riffraff.”
Simon was still clutching the pot by its rim. Although it had become painfully hot from the fire, he seemed barely to notice the heat, and his knuckles turned white with the force of his grip.
“Magdalena is not riffraff,” he said slowly. “Nor is her father.”
“He’s a damned quack and a murderer, and his daughter is a whore.”
Without a second thought, Simon flung the pot against the wall. With a loud hiss, the near-boiling water splashed over the shelves, table, and chairs, filling the room with a cloud of steam. Dumbfounded, Bonifaz looked back at his son. The pot had just barely missed his face.
“How dare you…” he began.
But Simon was not listening anymore. He dashed out the door into the early-morning light with tears streaming down his face. What had gotten into him? He’d almost killed his own father!
Distraught, Simon tried to pull his thoughts together. He had to get out of here, away from this stifling town that was making a recreant of him, a town that forbade him to marry the woman he loved, a town that tried to prescribe everything he did or thought.
He stepped out into the narrow street where foul-smelling garbage was pushed into huge piles. All of
