the flames were the only sounds in the room.
Finally, when she had had enough, she put down the pestle and ran her hand through her husband’s black hair, which was beginning to show the first signs of gray.
“What’s the trouble, Jakob?” she asked softly. “Don’t you want to tell me what happened in Regensburg?”
The hangman shook his head slowly. “Not today. I need some time.”
When Kuisl finally cleared his throat, he looked his wife directly in the eye.
“I’d just like to know one thing…” he began haltingly. “Back then, in Weidenfeld, when I saw you for the first time…”
Anna-Maria bit her lip and drew back. “We weren’t ever going to talk about that again,” she whispered. “You promised me that.”
Kuisl nodded. “I know. But I have to know, or it’ll tear me apart worse than the rack.”
“Then what is it you want to know?”
“Did any of those men touch you? You know what I mean-did they attack you? Philipp Lettner perhaps, that filthy bastard?” Kuisl put his hand on his wife’s shoulder. “Please tell me the truth! Was it Lettner? I swear it won’t change anything between us.”
For a long time the only sound in the room was the crackling birchwood on the hearth.
“Why do you want to know that?” Anna finally asked. “Why can’t things stay the way they were? Why must you hurt me?”
“Yes or no, for God’s sake!”
Standing, Anna-Maria walked over to the family altar and turned the crucifix around so the wooden Jesus faced the wall.
“The Savior doesn’t need to hear this,” she whispered. “No one does, except us.” Then, haltingly, she began to speak. She left nothing out. Her voice was hard and even, like the pendulum of a clock.
“Do you know how I washed myself after that?” she said finally. She stared off into space. “I washed for hours in the icy brooks along the way, in the rivers, ponds, whatever pool of water there was. But it didn’t help. The filth remained, like a mark of Cain that only I could see.”
“You kept silent a long time,” the hangman said softly. “You’ve never said a word about this until today.”
Anna-Maria closed her eyes for a moment before she continued. “When we got to Ingolstadt, I slipped away from you for a while. I went to visit an old midwife down by the river. She gave me a powder to get rid of it. The blood flushed it out-it was nothing but a little red clot.” Tears welled up in her eyes. “A week later, we made love for the first time. I held on to you, and I thought of nothing else.”
Kuisl nodded, his gaze transfixed by the past. “You clawed at my back. I couldn’t figure out whether out of pleasure or pain.”
Anna-Maria smiled. “The pleasure helped me forget the pain. The pleasure, and the love.”
“The powder from the midwife,” he asked. “What was it?”
His wife bent over him and ran her finger across the creases in his face. They were deep, like furrows in a field, and she knew each one intimately.
“Ergot,” she whispered. “A gift from God, or from the devil-take your pick. Just don’t take too much or you’ll fly off to heaven and never return.”
“Or to hell,” the hangman replied.
Then he took his wife in his arms and held her tight until all that remained of the birch on the hearth were glowing embers.
