The heavy door crashed closed, and from without came angry shouts and insistent pounding.
Brother Hubertus stood gaping over the tangle of people at his feet, which slowly began to unravel itself.
“What in God’s name is this all about, Fronwieser?” he asked, pointing to Magdalena and her father, who lay panting at the doorsill.
“Grant… us… asylum,” Simon whispered with his last bit of strength. “Jakob Kuisl… is innocent.”
Then a bishop’s guard delivered a blow that knocked him out.
12
REGENSBURG
MORNING OF AUGUST 25, 1662 AD
Do you realize the trouble you’ve caused me?” Brother Hubertus shook his head. His face, flushed with outrage, glowed like an oversize radish. Not even a third tankard of beer seemed to calm him down much. Trembling with fury, he pointed a finger at Simon and Magdalena, who sat at a table in the muggy brew house, staring at the ground like two defendants on trial.
“I trusted you, Simon Fronwieser,” the Franciscan continued to berate him. “And what do you do? You bring the most wanted man in all of Regensburg into my house-the man they’re calling a monster, a man who’s being sought for multiple murders! The bishop has been screaming at me all morning-my ears are still ringing. We’re giving asylum to a monster! And all this at a time when His Excellency has enough trouble with the city already over the construction of the walkways above the road in town. I could rip you to shreds, Fronwieser!”
“Jakob Kuisl is an innocent man,” Simon insisted once more. “You have my word.”
“That’s the only thing standing between you and immediate expulsion,” Brother Hubertus said, dabbing the sweat on his forehead.
Simon wrapped both hands around his tankard and stared down into his beer, as if somehow he might find the solution to all his problems there. Of course, his wonderful plan had ended in a fiasco. Why on earth had he thought Brother Hubertus would welcome them with open arms? Last night the Franciscan had thrown a fit when he learned how much he’d been deceived. That’s when Simon laid all his cards on the table. He told Brother Hubertus about Kuisl and the intrigue against him. He told the monk where the powder came from, as well as his suspicions about the philosopher’s stone. For the most part Brother Hubertus took it all in in silence, his lips tightly pressed. Not until Simon mentioned the floury dust in the storage room and alchemist’s workshop did the brewmaster interject a few questions. He seemed mostly interested in the quantity of powder Simon and Magdalena had found down there.
Hubertus appeared to have calmed down a bit in the meantime, but though he continued to sip his wheat beer, he really didn’t seem to enjoy it.
“At least it looks like your father’s feeling better,” he said, looking over at the hangman’s daughter. “He has the constitution of an ox; give him a few days and he’ll shake those shackles right off. I’ll have to assign a guard to his bedside soon enough.”
“Does that mean my father can stay here in the bishop’s palace?” Magdalena looked hopefully at the Franciscan. Until now she’d kept silent for the most part, leaving the explaining to Simon. But this concerned the fate of her family. “You won’t turn him over to the city, will you?” she inquired. “You’ll grant him asylum?”
“How can the bishop deny asylum to such a battered man?” Hubertus replied. “That is our damned duty as shepherds of the Lord, even when upholding this duty may-er-conflict, shall we say, with other concerns.” This last sentence he added with a sigh.
Simon breathed a sigh of relief. Magdalena’s father was safe for the time being. The night before, they had taken Kuisl to the brewmaster’s chamber and applied fresh bandages to his wounds, and he’d been sleeping like a baby ever since. Simon had briefly examined his wounds, burns, and bruises. Neither he nor Magdalena could imagine all the suffering he’d been through in the past few days.
“But don’t get your hopes up too much,” the fat monk continued. “I was able to persuade the bishop to allow you to stay here for only three days.” He turned to both Simon and Magdalena and held three fat fingers up to their faces. “Three days, no more. That’s all the time you have to prove this man’s innocence. Thereafter he’ll be turned over-and you along with him-to the city guards. To be clear, the only reason you have even this much time is because I interceded on your behalf. If it was up to the bishop, the whole lot of you would be rotting away as we speak in the dungeon at city hall.”
Simon nodded timidly. “I can’t tell you how grateful I am. I’m sorry I so shamelessly abused your trust.”
“Oh, come now!” Brother Hubertus took a big gulp from his tankard. “Enough of this pompous talk-let’s get to work.”
“You’re right,” Simon declared with a firmer voice. “Time is precious, and so it’s all the more urgent now that you tell us what you’ve learned about the powder. Last night you implied you’d found the secret-so put an end to the suspense. What is it?”
The Franciscan looked thoughtfully at Simon for a long while before answering. “Actually, I wanted to tell you yesterday what nasty stuff that powder is,” he began. “But tell me the truth, Fronwieser. Can I really trust you? How do I know that you’re not looking for more of this evil stuff yourself? How am I supposed to know you’re not lying to me again? You, a doctor in the Regensburger Collegium? Bah!”
“I give you my word as a doctor,” Simon stammered.
“Your word’s worth nothing here,” Hubertus retorted. “Believe me, this powder is much too dangerous for me to depend on the word of any old quack who comes along.” He rose to his full, imposing height. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll make some more inquiries, and only when I’m convinced this stuff can’t cause any greater damage than it may have already, then I’ll let you in on the secret.”
Simon stared back at him, his mouth open. “But-but then how are we supposed to help Magdalena’s father?” he stuttered. “We need to know what-”
“Whatever you need to know or do, it’s all the same to me,” the brewmaster interrupted. “Early tomorrow morning I’ll have more to tell you. But until then the matter is too delicate. This secret could drive us all out of our minds, and if what I think is true…” His expression clouded over. “Just tend to your future father-in-law, or he may die even before his time here is up.”
With these words, he turned to leave the brew house, teetering as he slammed the door behind him.
The medicus sighed and drummed his fingers on the rutted tabletop.
“And now?” asked Magdalena. “What shall we do now, you know-it-all?”
“You heard him,” Simon replied gruffly. “We take care of your father. That’s something I know how to do at least.”
He rose abruptly and walked past steaming vats to a little wooden door in the back of the vaulted room. It opened into a low room furnished with a simple bed and a trunk with metal fittings. This would ordinarily have been the brewmaster’s bedroom, but Brother Hubertus had made it up yesterday for Jakob Kuisl, who now lay snoring loudly on the bed, bare from the waist up. Simon leaned down and put his ear to Kuisl’s powerful hairy chest. A few hours earlier he’d given Kuisl a bit of the opium poppy extract he carried around in his bag, and as a result the hangman’s breathing was calmer now and even. Magdalena had also been keeping watch at her father’s bedside, periodically spooning hot chicken broth between his chapped lips. The medicus carefully checked the hangman’s bandages.
The bishop’s bailiffs had tied the hangman to the bed with ropes, but Simon very much doubted these fetters could hold him there for long. The Schongau executioner had the constitution of a bear and, in keeping with that, seemed to have fallen into a deep winter’s sleep. The wounds on his back, arms, and legs no longer festered, and the inflammation had begun to go down overnight. Simon was hopeful Kuisl would be well on his way to recovery within a few days.