The blood drained instantly from Gessner’s face, and his whole body seemed to turn to stone. For a moment he was speechless.
“You-you-are…?” he stammered.
Magdalena looked at him anxiously. “Is there something wrong?”
It took a moment for the raftmaster to get a hold of himself again. When he pulled himself together at last, he laid his hand on Magdalena’s shoulder. “You’ve chosen an unfortunate time to come to Regensburg.” The words came out slowly and ominously. “It’s said that your aunt…” He faltered.
“What’s wrong with my aunt?” said Magdalena, pulling away from the raftmaster. “Out with it!”
Gessner shook his head sadly. “I don’t know all the details-perhaps it’s best you have a look for yourself. Josef!” he waved one of the laborers over. “Take these people to the Wei?gerbergraben. Right now!”
The man nodded and turned to leave. Again Magdalena tried to get the raftmaster to talk, but he turned aside, busily hammering heavy nails into a barrel.
“Come on,” said Simon, nudging her gently. “We’re not going to learn anything more here.”
Magdalena turned away, her mouth set, and followed Simon and the workman as they disappeared down a narrow lane. As they left the dock area, though, they heard the raftmaster’s voice behind them.
“God be with you!” Gessner called after them. “And remember the Whale! Perhaps you’ll find someone there who can help you.”
A few blocks away the harsh reality awaited them.
As the two breathlessly approached the bathhouse, they could see right away that something wasn’t right. The entrance was blocked with a heavy chain and guarded by a grim-faced watchman, halberd in hand. Curious onlookers were milling about in the street, whispering to one another, while their close-lipped guide cleared out without another word to Simon or Magdalena about Lisbeth Hofmann.
The hangman’s daughter tapped one of the bystanders on the shoulder and pointed at the building. “What happened in there? Why is everyone standing around gaping?” she asked as casually as possible, though she couldn’t keep her voice from trembling. A white-haired old man in front of her had a sparkle in his eyes that betrayed something had happened here and, thank God, it hadn’t happened to him.
“The bathmaster and his wife,” he whispered. “Found in a pool of their own blood. It happened almost a week ago, but the house is still under guard. There’s something strange going on here.”
Magdalena’s face went ashen. “Are the bathhouse people dead, then?” she asked hoarsely, as if she didn’t already know the answer.
The man giggled like a child. “Dead like two old nags at the slaughterhouse. They say the blood ran ankle-deep in there. Must have been an awful mess.”
Magdalena struggled to compose her thoughts. “Well…” she stammered, “do they know who’s responsible?”
The old man nodded enthusiastically. “They caught the fellow!” he squeaked. “Hofmann’s brother-in-law, a bear of a man, a real monster. They say he came from somewhere near Augsburg… Never heard of the place before, myself.”
“Was it perhaps… Schongau?” Simon asked in an undertone.
The old man furrowed his brow. “Schongau… yes! Do you know the murderer?”
Magdalena shook her head quickly. “No, no, that’s just what somebody told us. Where have they taken this… monster to now?”
The old man stared at them with increasing suspicion. “Well, of course, to one of the dungeons by city hall. You’re not from around here, are you?”
Without answering, Magdalena pulled Simon by the sleeve into a small side street away from the bathhouse, where the old man was already starting to spread rumors among the onlookers about the strangers who apparently knew the monster.
“I’m afraid your father’s in real trouble,” Simon whispered, looking warily in all directions. “Do you really think that-”
“That’s rubbish!” Magdalena said angrily. “Why would my father ever do anything like that? His own sister! It’s absurd!”
“So now what do we do?”
“You heard it yourself. He’s somewhere in city hall,” Magdalena replied curtly. “So we’ll go there; we have to help him.”
“Help? But how do you imagine…” Simon started to say, but the hangman’s daughter had already set off down the fetid, narrow lane, tears of rage and grief running down her cheeks.
Her dream of a new life had been cruelly shattered before it had even begun.
A dark figure broke away from the crowd in front of the bathhouse and silently followed the two newcomers. No onlooker would later recall someone crouched in the shadow of a nearby house, only steps away from Simon and Magdalena, someone as unremarkable as a wall or a parked cart-motionless, ever present, and unnoticed by all.
The man had long ago perfected this ability, lurking in the alcoves and doorways of burned-out cities, biding his time. He had feigned death on the battlefield only to slit the throats of foolish profiteers who tried to loot corpses of their weapons, clothing, and coins. He was a master of deception and, even more than that, of metamorphosis. He’d been living as someone else for so many years now that he was in danger of losing himself completely in this other identity-the identity of someone who had long been dead.
But then the past had come knocking at his door, reminding him who he really was. The burning desire for revenge returned and filled him with new life.
The hangman had returned…
It wasn’t part of the plan that the hangman’s daughter would also stay in Regensburg, but it wasn’t without a certain irony. The man closed his eyes briefly and chuckled softly to himself. Had he believed in God, he would have uttered a prayer of thanks and donated a twelve-pound candle to the church.
Instead, he simply spat on the pavement and picked up the trail again.
The square in front of city hall was full of idlers this Sunday afternoon, as well as the pious who were streaming from the cathedral as mass came to an end. And then there was the usual crowd of beggars. It hadn’t been hard for Simon and Magdalena to find this spot. Basically they let themselves be carried along by the current of the crowd that streamed down the wide paved road from the Wei?gerbergraben and deposited them directly in front of the new city hall.
The three-story building had been partially finished just the year before, and the plaster gleamed white in the hot midday sun. To its left towered an even higher building with painted glass windows and richly decorated oriels. Through the wide portal came group after group of mostly older men, garbed in costly and, in some cases, rather exotic robes and deeply engaged in conversation. Snippets of sentences reached Simon and Magdalena in strange dialects they could only partially comprehend. So this, then, was the famous Reichssaal-the Imperial Hall, where the rich and mighty met with the kaiser to determine the destiny of the German Reich and to confer on how best to manage the ever-present and ever-increasing danger posed by the Turks. The raftsmen mentioned that the meeting would take place a few months from now, and apparently preparations were already under way.
Magdalena nudged Simon and pointed to a narrow doorway between the Reichssaal and the new city hall, where two watchmen stood guard with halberds. The gate behind them stood open, but the two bailiffs shared an expression as watchful as it was surly. And behind the gate was a dark archway.
“Look!” the hangman’s daughter whispered. “The dungeon next to the city hall. That must be what the old man meant!”
Simon shrugged. “And what now? Push our way past the guards, knock down the doors to the dungeon, and smuggle the hangman out in your little travel bag?”
“You idiot!” Magdalena replied. “I just want to talk to him and find out what happened. Perhaps then we can figure out how to help him.”
“And just how do you propose to do that? They won’t let anyone in there.”