The Hangman's Daughter by Oliver Pötzsch
“I used to work for the old man, over at his kiln. They sure got in each other’s hair, and then the old man told him that he was giving the land to the church for the leper house, and that heaven would reward him for it, and then he told his son to go to hell.”
“And young Schreevogl?”
“He cursed mightily, mainly because he’d already planned a second kiln here. Now the church got it all.”
Simon wanted to ask more questions, but a crashing noise caused him to whirl around. It was the hangman who had jumped over a stack of boards and was now running across the road toward the forest. There, almost swallowed up in the fog, Simon was able to make out another form, crouched down and running through the trees toward the high bank of the Lech.
Simon broke away from the surprised carpenter and ran diagonally across the clearing, hoping to cut off the other person. When he reached the edge of the woods, he was only a few yards behind him. From the right he could hear branches breaking as the hangman drew nearer, panting and swinging his cudgel.
“Run after him! I’ll stay on the right so he won’t escape over the fields,” he panted. “We’ll get him up on the steep bank at the latest.”
Simon was now in the middle of a dense pine forest.
He couldn’t see the fleeing person anymore, but he could hear him. In front of him twigs kept snapping, and muffled steps were moving away rapidly on the needle-covered ground. At times he thought he could distinguish a vague shape between the branches. The man, or whoever it was in front of him, was running in a crouch and somehow…strangely. Simon noticed that he was breathing harder, and there was a metallic taste in his mouth. It had been a long time since he had run so long and so fast. Come to think of it, it had been since his childhood. He was accustomed to sitting in his room reading books and drinking coffee, and he hadn’t done much running in recent years, except for those few times when he had to flee from angry fathers of pretty burghers’ daughters. But that, too, had been a while back.
Simon was losing ground to the runner in front of him and the snapping of twigs became less audible. From far off to the right he could hear the splintering of wood. That had to be the hangman, bounding like a wild boar over the fallen trees.
A few moments later Simon had reached the bottom of a small depression. The slope on the other side rose steeply before him. Somewhere beyond it began the bank of the Lech. Instead of pine trees, low intertwined bushes grew there, making it almost impossible to break through. Simon pulled himself up on one of the bushes and, with a curse, let go of it immediately. He had reached right into a blackberry bush and his right hand was now covered with small thorns. He listened, but all he could hear was splintering wood behind him. Now he saw the hangman coming from that direction. Kuisl leaped over a moldy tree trunk and finally came to a stop in front of him.
“So?” asked Jakob Kuisl. He too was breathless from the chase, even if not nearly as much as the physician. Simon shook his head while bending over with a stitch in his side. “I think we’ve lost him,” he panted.
“Damn,” the hangman cursed. “I am sure it was one of the men who destroyed the building site.”
“Then why did he come back?” asked Simon, still out of breath.
Jakob Kuisl shrugged. “Don’t know. Maybe he wanted to see first if the site had been abandoned. Perhaps he wanted to see it once more, and perhaps he just wanted to look for his good tobacco.” He hit his truncheon against a stunted fir tree. “Whatever. We’ve lost him in any case.” He looked up the steep slope. “He must be pretty strong if he can climb this. Not everybody could.”
In the meantime the physician had sat down on a moss-covered stump and was hard at work pulling the blackberry thorns out of his hand. A multitude of tiny mosquitoes swarmed around his head, looking for a good place to find blood.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said, waving his arms to ward off the mosquitoes.
The hangman nodded and walked ahead a few steps. Suddenly he stopped and pointed to the ground. In front of him lay an uprooted tree. At the spot where it had been rooted in the ground there was now a patch of moist, loamy soil. Two boot imprints were plainly visible in the center. The left one was less clear and ended in a sliding footprint.
“The limping man,” whispered Jakob Kuisl. “It really was one of the soldiers.”
“But why did they destroy the leper house? And what does that have to do with the dead children?” Simon asked.
“That’s something we shall soon find out. Very soon,” muttered the hangman. His eyes wandered once more over the crest of the hill. For an instant he thought he saw a human form up there, but then clouds of mist drifted by once more. He pulled the small tobacco pouch from his coat pocket and started to fill his pipe as he walked along.
“At least the devil has good taste,” he said. “You have to grant the bastard that much.”
As for the devil, he was standing at the top of the slope and, hidden behind a beech tree, looking down at the two small figures directly below him. Next to him lay a large boulder. For a moment he was tempted to get the rock rolling. It would loosen other rocks as it fell, setting off an avalanche of gravel, rock, and dead branches that would descend on those two down there and possibly bury them. His pale skeletal hand reached for the boulder, but then the taller of the two figures suddenly turned his head in his direction. For a brief moment he looked into the man’s eyes. Had the hangman seen him? He pressed himself back against the beech tree and dismissed his idea. This man was too strong and agile. He would hear the rockslide coming and would jump to the side. The little quack was no problem, a snoop whose throat he would cut the next time they met in some dark corner of town. But the hangman…
He should not have come back here. Not in broad daylight. Of course they would examine the building site at one time or another. But he had lost his tobacco pouch, and that was something they might be able to trace to him. Besides, he had a nagging suspicion. Therefore he had decided to look into things himself. Only the others mustn’t know anything about it. They were waiting for the devil to come and pay them off. If the workmen were to start building again, they would simply return and pull everything down once more. That was their order. But the devil was shrewd and had figured out right off that there was more than that to this business. And so he had returned. That the little snoop and the hangman had shown up at the same moment was annoying. But they didn’t catch him and he would simply give it another try at night.
He had told the others to look for the girl, but they had only reluctantly followed his order. They still obeyed him because they were afraid of him and had already accepted him earlier as their leader. But they were contradicting him more often now. They couldn’t understand how important it was to eliminate the children. They had caught the little boy at the very start, and now they figured that the others would be terrified. They did not understand that the business had to be finished. The mission was in danger, and the payment was at risk. These dirty little brats who thought they could get away from him! A filthy little gang, squealing piglets whose throats had to be slit to make the shrill sounds in his head stop.
Shrill tolling of bells, crying of women, high-pitched wailing of infants that makes one’s eyeballs burst…
Again, mist clouded his vision and he had to cling to the beech trunk so as not to topple down the slope. He bit his lips until he could taste blood, and only then did his mind clear. First he would have to eliminate the girl, then the snoop, and then the hangman. The hangman would be the most difficult. A worthy opponent. And then he would straighten things out down there at the building site. He was certain that the moneybags had kept something from him. But you can’t fool the devil. And if anyone tried to, the devil bathed in his blood.
He breathed in the scent of fresh earth and delicate flowers. Everything was all right now. With a smile on his lips he walked along the edge of the hill until he was swallowed up in the forest.
When Simon and Jakob Kuisl returned
Under the suspicious looks of the market women and craftsmen, the physician and the hangman walked through the entrance gate of the town’s parish church. A cool silence received them as they stepped into the town’s largest house of worship. Simon’s gaze wandered over the tall pillars with their peeling plaster, the darkened windowpanes, and the rotting choir seats. A few solitary candles were burning in dark side aisles and cast their flickering light upon yellowed frescoes.
Much like Schongau, the Church of the Assumption had seen better days. Quite a few Schongauers felt it would have made more sense to put money into the renovation of the church than into the construction of the leper house. The belfry more than anything else looked really dilapidated. In the inns across the street, people already painted dark pictures of what would happen if that tower were to collapse during Mass some day.
Now it was Saturday noon, and only a few old women were sitting in the pews. Once in a while one of them would get up and walk over to the confessional on the right side and emerge after some time, murmuring and running a rosary through her bony fingers. Jakob Kuisl sat in the rear pew observing the old women. When they noticed him they murmured their prayer with ever greater fervor and pressed close against the wall of the main aisle as they scurried past him.
The hangman was not welcome in church. His assigned seat was all the way in the back to the left, and he was always the last to receive communion. Still, Jakob Kuisl made it a point even today to give the old women his friendliest smile. They acknowledged it by crossing themselves and quickly leaving the church.
Simon Fronwieser waited until the last of them had exited the confessional and then stepped inside it himself. The warm voice of the parish priest, Konrad Weber, could be heard through the tight grate of the wooden window.
“Misereatur tui omnipotens Deus, et dimissis peccatis tuis, perducat te ad vitam... May almighty God have mercy on thee, and having forgiven thee thy sins, bring thee to life…”
“Father, I don’t come to confess,” whispered Simon. “I only need some information.”
The Latin whispering stopped. “Who are you?” asked the priest.
“It’s me, Simon Fronwieser, the surgeon’s son.”
“I don’t see you often at confession, even when I am told that you have every reason for it.”
“Well, I…I shall improve, Father. In fact I’ll be confessing right now. But first I must find out something concerning the leper house. Is it true that old Schreevogl left you the land on the Hohenfurch Road, even though he had actually promised it to his son?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“The destruction at the leper house. I would like to find out what’s behind it.”
For a long time the priest said nothing. Finally he cleared his throat.
“People say that it was the devil,” he whispered.
“And you believe that?”
“Well, the devil can appear in many ways, also in human form. It’ll be Walpurgis Night in a few days, then the Evil One will mate once more with certain godless women. It is said that long ago witches’ sabbaths were held on that piece of land.”
Simon flinched.
“Who says so?”
The priest hesitated before continuing.
“People say so. The spot on which the little church is being built is where sorcerers and witches are said to have caroused in the past. A long time ago there used to be a chapel there, but it fell into ruin just like the former leper house. It’s as if some evil spell lies over the area…” The priest’s voice became a whisper. “They have found an old pagan stone altar there, which fortunately we were able to destroy. This was one more reason for the church to build a new leper house and chapel there. Evil must yield when it is touched by God’s light. We sprinkled holy water over the entire site.”
“Apparently without success,” murmured Simon. Then he continued his questioning: “Had old Schreevogl already left this piece of land to his son? That is, was he already recorded as an heir?”
The priest cleared his throat.
“You knew old Schreevogl? He was a…well, yes, a stubborn old codger. One day he came to see me at the parish house, all upset, and told me that his son did not understand the least thing about business and that he would now like to leave the land down there at the Hohenfurch Road to the church. We changed his will, and the provost witnessed it.”
“And not long after that he died…”
“Yes, from a fever. I gave him last rites myself. Still on his deathbed, he spoke of the piece of land, saying that he hoped we would have much joy from it and would be able to do much good. He never forgave his son. The last person he wanted to see was not Jakob Schreevogl but old Matthias Augustin. Those two had been friends ever since they served together on the town council. They had known each other ever since childhood.”
“And even on his deathbed he did not take back the donation?”
The priest’s face was now close to the wooden lattice.
“What should I have done?” he asked. “Tell the old man to change his mind? I was glad that I could finally get that piece of land without spending a single guilder. The way it is situated makes it ideal for a leper house. Far enough from the town and yet close to the road…”
“Who do you think destroyed the building site?”
Father Konrad Weber fell silent once more. Just when Simon thought that he would say nothing more, he spoke up once again, in a very low voice.
“If the destruction goes on like this I won’t be able to defend my decision to build the leper house before the council much longer. Too many are opposed. Even the provost feels that we cannot afford such a building. We shall have to resell the land again.”
“To whom?”
Again, silence.
“To whom, Father?”
“Until now, nobody has shown any interest. But I could well imagine that young Schreevogl might soon show up at the parish house…”
Simon stood up in the narrow confessional and turned away.
“Thank you very much, Father.”
“Simon?”
“Yes, Father?”
“The confession.”
With a sigh Simon sat down once more and listened to the priest’s monotonous words.
“Indulgentiam, absolutionem et remissionem peccatorum tuorum tribuat tibi omnipotens et misericors Dominus…May the almighty and merciful Lord grant thee pardon, absolution, and remission of thy sins…”
It was going to be a long day.
When Simon finally left the confessional, Father Konrad Weber paused for a moment. He felt as if he had forgotten something. Something that was on his tongue just before and he couldn’t remember it now. After thinking about it for a short while, he returned to his prayers. Perhaps it would come to him later.
Simon sighed as he stepped from the dark church out into the open air. The sun had moved over the rooftops by now. Jakob Kuisl had gone to sit on a bench near the cemetery and was sucking on his pipe. With eyes closed, he was enjoying the first warm day of spring and the excellent tobacco he had found at the building site. He had left the cool church a while ago, and when he saw Simon approaching, he blinked.
“Well?”
Simon sat down next to him on the bench. “I believe we have a clue,” he said. Then he told him of his conversation with the priest.
Lost in thought, the hangman chewed on his pipe. “All this talk abo
Simon nodded. “It’s possible. After all, he had wanted to build a second kiln there, as he told me himself. And he’s ambitious.”
Suddenly Simon remembered something.
“Resl, the waitress at Semer’s inn, told me about the soldiers meeting someone upstairs at the inn,” he exclaimed. “One of them was limping, she said. That must have been the devil we saw today. Perhaps it was Jakob Schreevogl who met with the devil and the other soldiers up there at the inn.”
“And what does all of that have to do with the fire at the Stadel, with the symbols and with the dead children?” Jakob Kuisl asked while he continued sucking on his pipe.
“Perhaps nothing at all. Perhaps the Stadel mess and the children are really the work of the Augsburgers. And young Schreevogl only took advantage of all the excitement in order to destroy the building site without being noticed.”
“While his ward was being abducted?” The hangman rose, shaking his head. “That makes no sense! If you ask me, there are just too many coincidences all at once. Somehow it ought to fit together: the fire, the children, the symbols, the ruined leper house. Yet we don’t know how…”
Simon rubbed his temples. The incense and the priest’s Latin babbling had given him a headache.
“I don’t know what to do anymore,” he said. “And time’s short. How much longer will Goodwife Stechlin remain unconscious?”
The hangman looked up to the belfry, where the sun had already passed the crest of the roof.
“Two days at the most. And then Count Sandizell will arrive, the representative of the Elector. If we don’t have the true culprit by then, they won’t screw around for long, and the midwife will be done for. They’ll want to get rid of the count and his entourage as quickly as possible. He only costs them money.”