At this very moment Simon caught sight of Magdalena as she sneaked out through the main gate and waved at him furtively. He feigned a move in one direction, then dashed off in the other, disappearing into the crowd.
“Stop the sorcerer!” the guards shouted behind him. “In the name of the kaiser, stop him!”
Simon knocked over a vegetable stand, sending cabbages rolling across the pavement and tripping up one of the guards. Another guard crashed into a maidservant and became entangled in a brawl with some indignant bystanders. Simon darted into a narrow alley leading away from city hall and toward the cathedral. Panting, he leaned against the side of a house to catch his breath. When he turned to pick up his things, he noticed he’d lost one of his two bags, the one containing most of his clothing, including his new petticoat breeches and his French-tailored jacket! At least he’d managed to hold on to his books and medical instruments.
Just as he was about to slip into the shadows of the narrow alleyway, he felt a hand on his shoulder. He started, then turned around to face a grinning Magdalena.
“Didn’t I say you can’t be left alone for a minute?”
The hangman’s daughter gave him a kiss on the cheek and nudged him gently in the direction of the cathedral. They could still hear angry shouts and curses from the city hall square.
“It would be best if we don’t show our faces here again for a while,” she whispered, now in a serious tone. “We already have enough problems as it is!”
Simon nodded, still panting. “I say we take the suggestion of the raftmaster and go looking for that peculiar inn. It looks like we’re going to need a cheap place to stay for a while.”
“The Whale!” Magdalena rolled her eyes. “What sort of cheap tavern do you think it’ll turn out to be?” She turned to leave. “I only hope it doesn’t stink of fish.”
As they rounded the next corner, a shadow followed. Dirty boots slid almost soundlessly through the dung- and trash-filled lane, almost as if they floated on air.
Hunched over, Jakob Kuisl moved from one end of the cell to the other. It was just four paces wide, but he had to keep moving if he wanted to keep his thoughts running.
Outside he could hear excited voices, shrill shouts and cries. Something seemed to be going on out in the market square, and Kuisl could only hope the tumult had nothing to do with Magdalena and Simon. Why-damn it-were the two of them in Regensburg at all? Had they set out after him because something had happened in Schongau? The hangman shook his head. His daughter would certainly have told him if that had been the case. Most likely his impudent girl had gotten it into her head to pay her sick old aunt a visit and take in a bit of the city life in Regensburg. The Schongau clerk, Lechner, would certainly be looking for Magdalena! It was her job, after all, in her father’s absence, to cart manure from the city streets, and she would be lucky if they didn’t throw her in the dungeon when she returned home for shirking her duty. And that cock of the walk Simon along with her! But Kuisl himself would most certainly be the first to give his daughter a good whipping.
The hangman paused at the thought that he might never again be in a position to reprimand his daughter, because it was here in Regensburg that he would die. Really, it was an act of providence that Magdalena and Simon had followed him-they were his only hope now of escaping death on the gallows. Besides, his anger at his reckless daughter was at least a welcome distraction from his memories. Though he’d scraped the writing off the wall, the old mercenary song took him back to a time he would rather have forgotten. But the seed of remembrance had been sown, and in the darkness and idleness of this cell his thoughts kept returning to the past.
Each time he reached the far end of his cell, his gaze fell on the blank space where the line from the song had been etched, and memories flashed through his mind like lightning-the murder, the violence, the brutality all came back to him now.
Instinctively, Jakob Kuisl began to hum the beginning of the song:
There is a reaper, Death’s his name…
HIS BLADE KEEN AND STEADY
To mow us is ready…
The hangman listened to himself hum it, but the tune sounded as if it were coming from the mouth of another man.
He bit down hard on his lip until he tasted blood.
5
REGENSBURG
AUGUST 19–20, 1662 AD
The eye stared in cold as marble-unblinking, motionless, and dry-without betraying the slightest flicker of emotion. At times Katharina believed no being existed behind this eye; that instead an evil, monstrous doll was observing her like a caged bird or a beetle scampering back and forth inside a jar.
Katharina couldn’t recall how long she’d been imprisoned in this room. Five days? Six? Or more? There was no window for light to enter, only a small hatch in the door through which a gloved hand supplied her with food, drink, and white candles in exchange for her chamber pot. Her only contact with the outside world was through a small fingernail-size hole above this hatch, and though Katharina had tried and tried, all she could see through it was a dark, torch-lit corridor. Now and then she could make out the sound of soft music in the distance, though it wasn’t the kind of music she knew from fairs and church festivals, but solemn and ceremonial, composed of trumpets, harps, and reeds.
It sounded to Katharina a little like the music of angels.
She’d discovered the eye would visit her at regular intervals. Sometimes the visit was announced by shuffling and scraping at the door, and very rarely she would hear the sound of feet dragging or a soft, melodic whistle. But more often than not, only a prickling sensation between her shoulder blades alerted her that, when she turned around, the eye would be there again, staring at her, cool and curious.
Long ago she’d given up calling for help. At first she’d cried, cursed, and screamed until all that remained of her voice was a reedy squawk, but when she realized that this did no good and just made her hoarse, she curled up into herself like a sick cat and retreated far inside her head, where recently everything seemed jumbled together-horrible visions, visions of people impaled on stakes and tortured, of decapitated bodies and the corpses of infants with contorted limbs, of green long-necked monsters throwing helpless souls into vats of boiling oil. But there were also wanton images: naked young boys and tender young girls who caressed her in her dreams, fairy-like creatures who held her high in their arms and carried her to the mountain peak of Brocken, where she joined both men and women in wild orgies.
Sometimes Katharina would cry and laugh at the same time.
Whenever her thoughts came briefly into focus, she tried to remember what had in fact brought her here. She’d been hanging around behind the old grain market, heavily made-up the way men liked it, with brightly colored hair and a full flowing skirt that she had only to lift to service her clients. Katharina knew her work wasn’t without risks. In contrast to many other prostitutes, she worked without a madam. Her friends bought protection from Fat Thea or someone else and paid a pretty penny for it, but Katharina worked alone. If the guards caught her, she would be thrown into the stocks in the city hall square, then whipped and chased out of town the very next day. It had happened to her twice already, first when she was only fifteen years old. Now in her early thirties, Katharina was an experienced prostitute and knew how to avoid the bailiffs. And if she got caught-well, she could always bribe them with her body.
But now misfortune had visited her at last, a nameless misfortune, a misfortune that she could never have imagined in even her worst nightmares.