Not until early evening of the second day did the last of the aldermen leave the house, whispering to one another. Unfortunately neither one-legged Hans nor Brother Paulus, who was disguised as a mendicant monk, got close enough to understand what they were saying. And as night fell rapidly over the city, it seemed nothing else unusual would happen for a while.
Then, long after midnight, the securely locked massive portal of the patrician’s mansion suddenly opened and Mamminger himself scurried out into the street, wearing a cape and a hat drawn down so far over his face the dozing beggars almost didn’t recognize him.
But once they did, they promptly notified Simon and Magdalena. It was clear even to the most dimwitted vagabond that a patrician sneaking through Regensburg in the dead of night, and without a guard, must have something to hide.
And soon enough they’d find out what.
Kuisl, confess!.. One more turn of the crank… Confess!.. Put more sulfur matches under him… Confess!.. Tighten the screws… Let him feel the lash… Confess! Confess! Confess!
Jakob Kuisl tossed and turned as pain surged through his body in waves. Whenever pain subsided into a dull ache in one place, it resurfaced somewhere else with a vengeance: an all-consuming fire that ate away at him, wormed its way into his dreams even now, in the middle of the night, as he lay in a stupor in his cell.
The Schongau hangman knew all methods of torture and had applied most of them himself at one time or another. He’d seen pain flash in hundreds of pairs of eyes, but now he felt that pain in his very own body.
He thought he would have been able to endure more.
He’d suffered three days of torture now. On the second day they stopped just before his right arm was wrenched from its socket-not to spare him, Kuisl was certain, but to let his body recover for the torture yet to come. This morning they began with the Spanish Donkey, a vertical board whose sharp upper edge he had to straddle while his legs were weighted with stones. In the afternoon the Regensburg executioner repeatedly applied thumb and leg screws and forced burning matches under Kuisl’s fingernails.
Kuisl had remained silent. Not a whimper crossed his lips, not even once; he threw all his strength into the curses he shouted at his prosecutors. And from behind the lattice the voice of the third man could still be heard, taunting him.
You have children, don’t you? And a beautiful wife as well… Tighten the screws… Confess!
The man knew about Kuisl’s family; he knew the name of his wife. He knew all about him. And yet he remained a mere shadow behind the wooden lattice, a monster from the past that Kuisl couldn’t place.
Who was this man? Who was Weidenfeld?
On the morning of the third day they introduced the Maiden’s Lap, a chair covered with sharpened wooden spikes on which the victim had to sit for hours with bare buttocks while the spikes dug into his flesh. In the afternoon Teuber put him back on the rack and almost finished the work of dislocating his right shoulder.
It was during this part of the torture that the unknown third man delivered his next blow. So casually that the two other inquisitors didn’t notice, he whispered a few words, more pointed than any of the rest, that cut Kuisl to the quick.
Don’t believe for a second that your daughter can help you now…
These words pulled the ground out from under Kuisl’s feet. The third man not only knew his wife; he also knew his daughter! And he knew she was here in Regensburg! Had he intercepted the letter? Had he already abducted her?
Despite the fetters, Kuisl almost succeeded in breaking himself free of the rack now. The combined strength of four city guards was needed to force him back down on the board and tie him up again. Kuisl didn’t speak another word, and the bailiffs finally took him back to his cell. It took three men to do so since, with his shins crushed, Kuisl could no longer walk. His left arm hung limp at his side, and his hands, bright purple now, had swollen up like pig bladders.
As he lay there in his cell and drifted off into a half sleep, an endless nightmare played over and over in his mind. When the pain woke him again-as had so often been the case in the last few days and nights-it took him a while to get his bearings again. To judge by the darkness, it was already night. Moaning, he pulled himself up to a wall until he crouched in a halfway bearable position on the floor.
All of a sudden he heard a soft scraping sound. It took a while for him to realize it was the bolt to the cell door sliding back slowly. Silently, the door swung open and a dark figure stood in the entry.
“Have you come to get me again, you wretched swine?” the Schongau hangman rasped. “The sun isn’t even up yet. Decent people are asleep at this hour. Be so good as to come back in an hour or so.”
“Hurry up, you blockhead,” the figure in the door whispered. Only now did Kuisl realize this was no bailiff but Teuber. “We don’t have much time!”
“What in the world…?” Kuisl started to straighten up, but as soon as he got to his feet, he collapsed again like a sack of grain. Pain surged once more through his swollen legs, and despite the cool night air he was feverish and bathed in sweat.
Cursing softly, Teuber bent down to the injured man. He pulled a long set of pliers from his bag and, with one vigorous snap, cut through the rusty chain.
“Keep still now.”
He struggled to pull the Schongau hangman back to his feet again, laid Kuisl’s good arm over his own shoulder, wrapped his own arm tight against Kuisl’s chest, and dragged the heavy body into the hall.
“What-what are you doing?” Kuisl said, shivering. “Where are the damned guards?” He winced as a fresh wave of pain rolled through his body.
“I sent them off to dream for a while,” Teuber whispered. “It took me two days to make the potion, but the virtue of that patience is that they won’t taste it in the wine now, especially with just a few drops in each gallon.” He grinned as he continued to lug Kuisl toward the exit. “And in case you’re wondering about the bailiff in the corridor, he’s shitting and vomiting up everything in his body as we speak. That’s what good old Christmas rose can do. Oh, well, he’ll survive.”
They arrived at the low vaulted room where five soldiers lay snoring among two empty wine jugs. With only a few torches flickering dimly on the walls, the room was blanketed in near total darkness. Along one side cannons and coaches were dimly visible.
“Why… are you… doing this?” Kuisl stammered, clinging tightly to the Regensburg executioner who, despite his powerful arms, struggled to keep Kuisl on his feet. “They’ll… flay you alive when they find out what you’ve done.”
“If they find out.” Teuber pulled a large bunch of keys from his jacket and opened the door leading out into the city hall square. He pointed to the guards snoring behind them. “I prepared the sleeping potion so that it would look as if a heavy bout of drinking knocked them out. The guard in the hall got a bad tummy ache, and a stupid bailiff must have been so drunk he didn’t close the door to your cell properly. I certainly had nothing to do with it.” He smiled coolly as he steered the nearly unconscious Kuisl toward a cart nearby, but Kuisl sensed a slight trembling in his colleague’s voice.
“But in case any of them become suspicious, they’re welcome to put me on the rack,” he said softly. “The fine patricians can dirty their own hands for once.”
By this point Kuisl was lying in a cart that smelled of decay and human excrement. Teuber spread a few old rags and a load of damp straw over the Schongau hangman, then took his seat on the coach box and clicked his tongue. His old gray mare set off, pulling the cart into a nearby lane.
“I hope the stench doesn’t kill you before your wounds,” Teuber said. Grinning, he cast a backward glance at his load of animal carcasses, rotten vegetables, and excrement. “But I can carry you safely through town on the knacker’s wagon. I hardly think the city guards are interested in what exactly is rotting under there.”