“I’ll tell you about that some other time,” she whispered. “Simon’s with me. Now tell me what’s happened to you and how I can help. The guards will come back at any moment!”
“Good Lord, who gave you two permission to just get up and leave Schongau!” Kuisl cursed. “Your mother’s probably worried to death, and surely Lechner’s hopping mad with nobody home shoveling the shit! When I get out of here, I’m going to give your ass such a whipping that-”
“Papa,” Magdalena whispered, “you really have more important things to worry about. So tell me what happened!”
“It was a trap,” Kuisl whispered once he’d calmed down. “Someone killed Lisl and her husband and wants to pin the murder on me now.” Quickly he reported what had happened since he’d arrived. “I don’t know what dirty bastard did this to me,” he finally muttered, “but by God, when I find him, I’ll break every last bone in his body.”
“But you’ve got to get out of here first,” Magdalena replied.
She looked around frantically for a key, but in vain. Finally she began to rattle the door handle.
“Quit that,” her father said. “I can’t get out of here, unless you can prove before the awful inquisition begins that someone else bloodied his hands with this dirty deed; then perhaps they’ll put off the torture.”
Magdalena frowned. “But how do we do that?”
Her father’s mouth was now very close to her ear-she could smell his familiar scent, sweat and tobacco.
“Go to my brother-in-law’s house and try to find some kind of clue,” he whispered. “Anything. I’ll bet the culprits didn’t try very hard to cover their tracks. Why should they? They’ve already got their suspect in custody.”
Magdalena nodded. “And if we don’t find anything?”
“Then your father will meet his Maker. The Regensburg hangman, so I hear, is savage.”
There was a lengthy pause; then voices sounded from just outside the dungeon gate.
“I think someone’s coming,” Magdalena whispered.
Kuisl pushed his fingers through the little hole and pressed his daughter’s hand so hard she almost cried out.
“Quick now,” the hangman said, “Get out!”
The hangman’s daughter took one last look into her father’s eyes before she turned and hurried down the corridor. Just as she was about to set foot in the vaulted anteroom, the watchman she’d been speaking with stepped in front of her.
“Well? Is the werewolf sprouting fur?” He ran his hands over her bodice and pushed her back down the long hallway. “Do you want to have a look at my fur?”
Magdalena pointed back down the hallway. “But-but the monster isn’t there anymore. The door to the cell was just standing wide open.”
“What the devil?”
Pushing her aside, the watchman ran toward the cells. In a flash Magdalena was in the sooty vestibule again. From there she could see sunlight streaming in through the open gate. Without slowing down, she fled past the astonished guards still playing dice and hurried toward the exit, then out the front gate.
When she finally reached the city hall square again, she could see that Simon had gotten himself into a mess of trouble.
Inch by inch, the point of a needle closed in on a wide-open eye. The beggar’s head quivered, but the strong hands of the guard held him, vise-like, while two other guards pinned his arms to his sides. The old man had stopped whimpering and just stared in pure horror at the needle about to pierce his eye. There was no escaping now.
“Good God, keep still, man,” Simon whispered, trying to focus fully on his quivering target. “I can help you, but only if you don’t move.”
Sweat streamed down the medicus’s face as the merciless August sun burned down on the marketplace. The onlookers’ boisterous cries had quieted now to a tense murmur. What they were witnessing here was better than the usual cheap theater traveling hucksters had to offer, especially since no one knew how this drama might end.
The watchman had spotted old Hans Reiser in the crowd and selected him as the ideal candidate for the self-proclaimed medicus to demonstrate whether he really was a master of his art or just some pathetic quack, as most onlookers suspected. For years old Reiser had been shuffling around the square with milky eyes. He was once a well-respected glassblower, but his trade had almost completely destroyed his eyesight. Now he was nothing more than a grumbling old man, without money or family-a blind old dotard whose presence at city hall increasingly irritated the watchmen.
The old beggar suffered from the gray stare-a disease of the eye in which the afflicted has the sensation of seeing the world as if through a waterfall, thus giving the condition its Greek name: cataracts. The pupils, gray in color, looked like two marbles. The operation could only benefit the watchmen: either Reiser would be cured and wouldn’t annoy them anymore, or he would die. That would bring them relief as well-and as for the medicus they could prosecute him for quackery and hang him and be done with it.
All in all, a perfect solution.
Simon knew he’d never live to see next week if he didn’t heal the beggar right here and now in the middle of the city square. Whether Magdalena managed to find her father was of secondary importance at the moment. He tried to put everything else out of his mind and concentrate only on the incision he was about to make. The needle was now just a few tenths of an inch from the pupil, and the beggar’s eye stared up at him like the moon, round and full. The medicus knew that removing a cataract was one of the most difficult of all medical procedures, and it was for this reason-as long as anyone could remember-that it was performed mostly by traveling barber surgeons, who could be far, far away by the time complications developed. Simon himself had performed the operation only twice in his life. It involved inserting the needle sideways into the white of the eye and pressing the clouded lens to the bottom of the eye. Just one slight tremble, the tiniest false move, and the patient could go blind, and even die as the result of subsequent infection.
When the needle pierced the eye, the beggar jerked and screamed. A second incision followed in the other eye. This time Reiser whimpered but held still, his defiance broken. Simon held the needle against the eye for a while to keep the lens in place, then, as he withdrew it, staggered backward. The back of his shirt was soaked, and sweat was streaming down his face. Only now did he notice that a hush had fallen over the crowd.
“I’ll put a dressing on it now,” Simon said, his voice weak. “You’ll have to wear it a few days, and then we’ll see whether-”
“Good Lord!” Reiser interrupted Simon as he held his hands up to his face and shouted with joy. “I can see again! By God, I can see again!”
The raggedy beggar stumbled across the square, grasping wildly at passersby. It did in fact appear he’d been cured of his blindness, even though his plodding movements suggested he’d not yet regained his sight completely. Elated, Reiser ran his hands over every face within reach, grasping at coattails and the brims of hats. Many backed away in disgust-some even pushed the beggar away-but Reiser didn’t lose heart. The old man staggered over to his savior, missing him twice in his attempt to embrace him. He finally managed on the third pass, pulling Simon firmly to his breast.
“You-you are a sorcerer!” he cried out. “Look, everyone, see for yourself-this man can work magic!”
“I… don’t think that’s the right word,” Simon whispered, but Reiser dashed across the square again, embracing complete strangers as he continued pointing at Simon. “This man is a sorcerer, a real sorcerer! Believe me!”
The medicus cast a cautious glance at the watchmen, to whom this word alone gave the sudden opportunity-in spite of his successful operation-to seize him and send him to the gallows. Might this be enough to have him burned at the stake?