“The Hofmann bathhouse, eh?” The young fellow grinned, revealing two remaining teeth. When Kuisl addressed him in his broad Schongau dialect, the young man sensed a chance to make some easy money. “You’re not from around here, are you? Don’t worry, I can take you there, but it will cost you a couple of kreuzers.”
The hangman nodded and handed the derelict a few old coins. Then he quickly seized the beggar’s wrist and twisted it until it cracked softly. “If you cheat me or run off,” the Schongau executioner whispered, “or mislead me or tip off your buddies and try to ambush me, or if you even think about doing any of that, I will find you and I will break your neck. Do you understand?”
The fellow nodded anxiously and swiftly decided against his original plan.
Together they turned left, away from the stone portal and onto the next major thoroughfare. Once more Kuisl was astonished at how many people were bustling about in Regensburg at this hour of the day. They all seemed to be in a hurry, as if the day itself were somehow shorter here than the days in Schongau. The hangman had trouble keeping up with the beggar through the labyrinth of the busy little streets. A few times he felt a hand reaching for his purse, but a severe glance or a well-aimed shove sufficed to dissuade the would-be pickpocket each time.
Finally, they seemed to be nearing their destination. This lane was wider than the preceding ones, and a tiny brook polluted with excrement and dead rats flowed languidly down the middle of it. Kuisl sniffed the air-sharp and rotten, an odor that the hangman knew only too well. Strips of leather hung like flags from balconies and windows. It was clear he was in the Tanners’ Quarter.
The beggar pointed to a large building at the end of a row of houses on the left, where an opening in a narrow gate led down to the Danube. The house looked neater than the others, freshly plastered, its trim painted bright red. The bathhouse coat of arms, a tin banner depicting a green parrot in a golden field, hung above the entryway, squeaking in the wind.
“Bathhouse Hofmann,” the man said. “As promised, bone cruncher.” He bowed and stuck his tongue out at the hangman before disappearing into a little side street.
As Kuisl approached the bathhouse, he again had the unmistakable feeling of being watched, perhaps from one of the windows across the way. But when he turned around, he couldn’t see anything behind the leather hides covering each window.
Damned city crowds! They’re driving me crazy!
He knocked on the solid wooden door in front of him, only to discover it was already open. With a loud creak, it swung slowly inward, opening on a dimly lit room.
“Lisl!” Kuisl called into the darkness. “It’s me, Jakob, your brother! Are you home?”
A strange feeling of homesickness came over him, memories from his childhood when he’d looked after his little sister. Lisbeth had been so happy to escape Schongau, to get away from the place where she had always been-just like Kuisl’s own daughter now-the free-spirited hangman’s daughter. She really seemed to have made it in the city, but now she was deathly ill and far from home…
Kuisl stood in the doorway, his heart pounding.
Cautiously he entered the room. It took some time for his eyes to adjust to the dim light of the large, long room that extended the length of the house. Fragrant reeds had been spread over the smoothly planed wooden floors, and from somewhere in the house he heard the steady sound of water dripping-a gentle, steady tapping.
Tap… tap… tap.
Kuisl slowly stepped further into the house. Wooden partitions divided the room into private niches at regular intervals along either side. The hangman could see that each contained a bench and, next to it, a large wooden tub.
In the last tub on the left he found his little sister alongside her husband.
Elisabeth Hofmann and her husband, Andreas, lay with their heads tilted back and their eyes open wide, as if they were watching some invisible spectacle play out across the ceiling. For a brief moment the hangman thought the couple was taking their morning bath; only then did he notice that both were fully clothed. Lisbeth’s right arm hung over the edge of the tub, and something dripped from the tip of her index finger to the floor like heavy melted wax.
Tap… tap… tap.
Kuisl bent over the tub and passed his hand through the lukewarm water.
It was deep red.
He jumped back, the hair on the back of his neck standing up straight. His little sister and her husband were bathing in their own blood! Now Kuisl saw the slit across Lisbeth’s throat, grinning up at him like a second mouth. Her black hair floated like a matted net on the surface of the bloody water. The slit in Andreas Hofmann’s neck was so deep that his head was almost severed from his body.
“Oh, God, Lisl!” Kuisl cradled his little sister’s head in his arms and passed his hand gently through her hair. “What happened? What’s happened to you?” He clenched his jaw as his eyes filled with tears, the first tears he’d shed in years.
Why? Why didn’t I get here sooner?
His sister’s face was as white as chalk. He held her in his arms and rocked her back and forth, stroking the hair from her forehead as he’d always done when she was a child in bed, restless with fever. In a deep, faltering voice he began to sing an old nursery rhyme.
Maikafer flieg, dein Vater ist im Krieg, deine Mutter ist im… May bug fly, your father’s gone to die, your mother is in…
A sound made him pause.
He turned around to find a contingent of at least five guards quietly entering the room. Two had crossbows trained on him and stood poised to shoot as a third slowly approached him with his sword drawn.
It was the captain from that morning.
The man twirled his mustache and smiled at Kuisl as he pointed at the two corpses. “Looks as if you have a problem on your hands, country boy.”
“But not all of the St. John’s Wort! Good Lord, girl! Pay attention!”
Magdalena was startled by the voice of Martha Stechlin shouting right into her ear. The hangman’s daughter, who had been busy spooning herbs into a pot, knew how important it was to use just the right quantities of ingredients. But her thoughts were far, far away. When the midwife shouted at her, Magdalena couldn’t say for the life of her how much St. John’s Wort she’d already put in the copper kettle over the fire. The strange aroma coming from the green liquid bubbling in the pot distracted her even further.
“How often must I tell you: follow the recipe!” Stechlin grabbed the spoon from her hand and began stirring the remaining ingredients into the kettle herself. “You might get away with that when you make green oil,” she mumbled, “but if that were to happen with belladonna or lily of the valley, we’d be convicted for brewing poison and end up burned at the stake. So please, do pay attention!”