Just in time for his next torture session, he thought gloomily.
He felt a hand on his shoulder. Magdalena gave him a sympathetic look.
“I’m really sorry about what happened earlier,” she said softly. “I know you meant well. We’ve always found a way out. Let’s wait and see-we just might again.”
Simon smiled wearily and nodded. “You’re right. We’ll make out, all three of us.” But his voice sounded strangely hollow. For the first time since their arrival in Regensburg he couldn’t shake the feeling that their situation might be hopeless after all.
“At least he probably won’t remember a thing about all this.” The hangman’s daughter gestured toward her father, whom she hadn’t seen for such a long time. Kuisl slept as sweetly as if he were back home in his own bed.
“One thing is clear,” Magdalena continued. “We can’t escape with him now, not in his present condition. And as long as we sit around here in the bishop’s palace, we’ll never find out what there is to know about this powder. This fat monk is just putting us off.”
Simon frowned. “At least I was right in thinking that there was something special about the stuff. It may hold the key to all our questions-and it’s dangerous. Brother Hubertus seems to have great respect for it. A secret that could drive us all out of our minds…” He quietly pondered the brewmaster’s strange words. “Just what in the world could Brother Hubertus have meant by that?”
“It’s already starting to drive me out of my mind.” Magdalena sighed. “A powder that the Regensburg patricians are chasing after as they would a murderer-or God knows who else! What on earth could it be?”
“Perhaps it really is something like the philosopher’s stone,” Simon whispered. “But what exactly this stone is…” He shook his head. “This kind of thinking won’t get us very far. Let’s wait until morning to see whether Hubertus lets us in on his secret. If not, we’ll try to escape with your father before the bishop has him locked up in the dungeon.”
“And how do you think we’re going to manage that?” Magdalena asked incredulously. “The guards in the courtyard outside rattle their sabers every time I so much as poke my head out the brewery door.”
“No idea. But there’s no point in sitting here twiddling our thumbs. We might as well start looking around here.” Shrugging, Simon headed back into the brewery, waving cheerfully through the window at the suspicious bailiffs outside. “There’s got to be more than one exit in this whole place,” he mused. “We just have to find it.”
The Danube flowed past the city like a sluggish ribbon of black slime. Dead fish, cabbage stalks, and shredded fishnets bobbed up and down along the rotting posts of the pier. Not a breath of air stirred in the midday heat, and the stench hung heavily over the pier, permeating the shutters of every building around the harbor.
On the pier, hidden behind shipping crates piled high, two men were seated atop two large wooden tethering posts. They didn’t even smell the infernal stench. The hatred within them was so great it blocked out everything else. Their hatred was a poison that had eaten away at them year after year, leaving room in their hearts and their minds for only one thought.
Revenge.
“But how could that happen!” one of them complained, cracking his knuckles so loudly the sound echoed across the deserted waterfront. “We were so close, and then he slipped away like a mouse into a hole. Now he’s feasting at the bishop’s palace and pleading for asylum! What a goddamned disgrace!”
“The bishop can’t let him stay there forever,” the other calmly replied. His voice was prickly, cold, like the dead of winter. “He won’t dare let a mass murderer loose.”
“How did Kuisl even manage to escape the dungeon in the first place, huh? There’s something not right there. They say the guards fell asleep. Bah!”
The other nodded. “I have a suspicion about that; if I’m right, Teuber just may have the pleasure of torturing his children with his very own hand. But first things first…” Vacantly, he watched the bloated carcass of a wild duck float by. After a pause he continued, his voice impassive. “Sooner or later the bishop’s going to have to turn Kuisl over, and then we can pick up where we left off.”
“And if he doesn’t?” snapped the other. “These priests love to play games with the city. It’s quite possible Kuisl will remain there until pigs grow wings and fly. I can’t wait that long! I’ve been waiting for this moment for years. I want my vengeance. I want-”
“Silence!” the man with the cold voice interrupted, slapping his companion’s face so hard he nearly fell headlong into the harbor. “You’re like a child, and someone’s taken your damn toy away. Do you think I don’t want revenge, too? He read the inscription on the cell wall, and I got him to the point where he almost recognized me down in the torture chamber-and no doubt in his nightmares as well…” His lips curled into a thin smile; then he grew serious. “But we have to be careful, or the others could start asking questions. I have worked a very long time to make sure no one in Regensburg would recognize me or my old name. At the inquisition I was a little too… ardent, and that was a mistake. We’ve got to remain calm-both of us. Also on account of the other matter.”
The second man whimpered and pinched his nose as a mixture of blood and green snot dripped into the Danube below. As so often, anger swelled within him. Why did he put up with this man? Why didn’t he just snap his neck? Instead, the second man swallowed his rage, just as he had his entire life.
“So what would you suggest, then?” he asked.
The man with the icy voice spat into the water. “You’re right,” he said. “We don’t know when the bishop is going to release him. Besides, his daughter and that smart aleck, the quack, are with him. They’re working hand in glove with the fat brewmaster. And they know about the Holy Fire…”
“Goddamn it! How do you know that?”
“The little weasel told me. The blasted little schemer knows everything about those two and thinks we ought to come up with some kind of a plan as quickly as possible.” He grinned. “But don’t worry-I have something in mind.”
“What?” the second man asked hopefully. He admired how the other man could throw together a plan. He was cunning, so damned shrewd!
But the other man hesitated. When he did begin to speak, his speech was clipped. He had thought it all out very carefully, and now they just had to be sure they didn’t make any mistakes. “We have to lure the mouse from its hole again,” he whispered. “With some kind of bait. But we have to find a way to get at him first.”
“You want to go into the bishop’s palace?”
The man nodded. “I know a few of the guards there, so that shouldn’t be difficult. I’ll leave a little note for Kuisl that he won’t forget as long as he lives.” Again, the corners of his mouth twitched into a thin smile. “We’ll have to bring him back to where it all began. We should have done that long ago, just him and us. That’s how it has to be.”
The second man nodded enthusiastically. “Just the two of us-and him! Like before! Kuisl will wish he was back in the torture chamber!” Suddenly he scowled. “But suppose the fat brewmaster already knows too much; suppose the others have explained the Holy Fire to him?”
The man with the icy voice spat in the river again and stood up in a single motion. “Leave that to me. We’ll catch both of them-the mouse as well as the fat rat.”
Jakob Kuisl woke to a stomach growling as loud as a bear. He was overwhelmed by hunger.
Good, he thought. If I’m hungry at least I know I can’t be dead.
He opened his eyes and stared into the darkness. It was night; alongside his bed a beeswax candle flickered atop a trunk. Next to it some kind soul had placed a jug of wine, a bowl of soup, and a loaf of bread. Kuisl vaguely recalled how his daughter had fed him like an infant just a short while ago. A wave of relief passed through his body: the third inquisitor hadn’t gotten his hands on Magdalena! What else had happened? They had fled together through the streets of Regensburg and sought refuge at the bishop’s palace. Young Simon had mentioned something about asylum, and shortly after that Kuisl had passed out again. In brief waking moments he remembered Magdalena, her voice shaking, speaking about the inscriptions in the dungeon, about the third inquisitor, and about his escape.