“Good fellows,” he said. “Told them to wait here for me. The men will be glad to see you again-most of them, in any case.”
Simon swallowed hard. Soon Hans Reiser, Brother Paulus, and two other beggars emerged from behind the barrels, waving and grinning when they caught sight of Simon. Hans Reiser, whose eyes were apparently fully healed now, spread his arms wide to welcome the medicus.
“Simon!” he cried out. “You just up and left us and knocked out the king’s teeth to boot! That’s no way to behave! And where have you left Magdalena?”
“This isn’t the time for long explanations,” Nathan said. “I’ve forgiven Simon and his girl. Everything else I’ll tell you along the way.” He looked around. “Where are Trembling Johann and Lame Hannes?”
“Down at the tavern by the Stone Bridge,” Hans replied. “A great day for thieves. The mill on the Wohrd is burning, and everyone’s standing there gawking at it and-”
“I know,” the beggar king snapped. “Quit blathering and get the others. We’ll all meet outside Peter’s Gate. Now, get moving.”
Hans headed off with a shrug, while Simon hurried through the city with the other four. As word spread around town that the Wohrd was on fire, people came running from every direction to congregate on the raft landing, making it difficult for the ragged band of beggars to navigate the narrow streets. But no one stopped them, and not a single person wasted so much as a glance on Simon.
How comforting! I look just like one of them, he thought as he glanced down at his wet, mud-stained jacket and sighed. When this is all over, I’ll be lucky if the beggars let me sleep at Neupfarr Church Square and maybe bring me a piece of stale bread now and then.
Soon they arrived on the other side of the city at Peter’s Gate, where guards were still searching farmers’ wagons. By now Nathan had told the other beggars all that had happened at the mill. Whistling cheerfully, he turned left toward a tumbledown shed that leaned against the city wall, looking as if it might collapse at any moment.
Carefully the beggar king opened its rotten wooden door and motioned to the others to follow. Inside, Simon was astonished to find a narrow door in the city wall just wide enough for one man to pass through. Nathan tapped on the door-two long knocks and three short-and soon a bearded, boozy-eyed guard appeared.
“So many of you?” the man asked, assessing the group with bloodshot eyes. “This will cost you extra.” Suspiciously he eyed Simon, who just stood there, soaking wet and trembling. “You look somehow familiar to me. Where-”
“This is Quivering August,” Nathan interjected, pressing a few dirty coins into the hand of the confused guard. “He just joined us, the poor old dog. He has the English sweating sickness and probably won’t last long.”
The guard stepped back a pace in horror. “Good Lord, Nathan! Couldn’t you have told me that sooner? Get out of town, and take your infected friends with you!”
The man crossed himself and spat. Giggling, the beggars stepped out into the turnip and wheat fields that bordered the city wall. The door slammed shut behind them.
“These one-man doors are a wonderful invention!” Nathan gushed, as they turned southward onto a broad highway. When they spotted Hans and two other beggars waiting for them in a radiant field of wheat, Simon assumed they’d made it out of the city through a similar door.
“Anyone can leave the city, any time of day or night, if he pays enough,” the beggar king told Simon as they continued on. “That is, if he’s not wanted for murders or intending to poison the Reichstag. But even then, if the price is right-I love this city!”
He spread his arms to heaven and, still whistling, set out at the head of the strange retinue-a dirty, ragged band of men, some hobbling, some babbling, but all determined to save the great city of Regensburg from destruction.
It seemed as if Philipp Lettner had pronounced a curse on Jakob Kuisl that made his arms and legs as heavy as lead.
The pain returned to the hangman’s left shoulder, compounded by the hornet stings on his back and face. He staggered backward, raising his right hand mechanically to ward off his opponent’s blows, but it was only a matter of time before Lettner would find an opening and deal him a coup de grace.
Friedrich Lettner still lay on the floor in the middle of the church, gasping for air. The hornet stings seemed to affect the broad-shouldered giant much more than his slender brother. Friedrich’s hands had swollen to twice their normal size, and he was vomiting saliva and bile, his breath constricted, as if someone had clamped iron buckles across his chest and was pulling them tighter and tighter. The worst, however, was his bloated, scarred face, which glistened bright red from the stings, like the head of a freshly slaughtered pig. Out of the corner of his eye Kuisl noticed the man had started to twitch and seemed to be growing weaker. Once more Friedrich arched his back as if he’d been struck, then collapsed like a monstrous doll.
“For Friedrich, you scoundrel!”
With a shout, Philipp Lettner lunged, his katzbalger cutting through the air toward Kuisl’s head. The hangman ducked this blow only to be faced with yet another.
“For Karl!”
Again Kuisl stepped aside just in time, but his movements were slower now and he was tiring. The fever came and went in waves-the ground beneath his feet as soft as butter-and he sensed he might not be able to fend off the next blow. Then his legs gave out beneath him, and he fell to his knees. Raising his head with great effort, he found Lettner standing over him, gloating, his sword held high in both hands. Lettner drew his hands back and to the right to get a good angle on Jakob’s neck. Spellbound, the hangman stared back at his enemy; Lettner was about to do to Kuisl what Kuisl had been perfecting his whole life.
A clean decapitation.
“You don’t really deserve such a merciful death, Kuisl,” Philipp Lettner growled. “I’m doing this only for old times’ sake. Well, that and-” He bared his fanglike teeth. “How many people can say they’ve beheaded an honest-to-God executioner? I’m sure the devil himself would have a laugh at this. So off to hell with you!”
Kuisl lowered his head, closed his eyes, and waited for the blow that would end it all.
It didn’t come.
Instead, an almost ethereal silence prevailed, one interrupted only by a loud metallic whir. When Kuisl looked up, he was astonished to find Philipp Lettner standing before him, wide-eyed and dazed. The katzbalger lay on the church floor. Lettner clutched desperately at a charred, splintered beam that protruded from his stomach, staring down in disbelief, as if he just couldn’t comprehend he might really be dying-as if, up until this moment, he’d never imagined his own death could be part of some divine plan.
He slowly toppled over and didn’t stir again. Once the light left his eyes, they stared blankly at the collapsed roof of the church, where two swallows chirped furiously at each other, then flew off.
Behind Lettner stood Philipp Teuber. Although the Regensburg executioner swayed, he was still standing. He wiped his hands on his bloodstained jacket with care, hands that had wielded the charred wooden cross only moments ago.
“Let’s hope that old thing was consecrated,” he said, tapping his foot against the raftmaster, who lay impaled on the floor in front of him. Teuber had gored Lettner using the tip of the crucifix like a spear. “Perhaps that will drive the evil out of him,” he said.
“For a bastard like that, you’d have to douse him in holy water, then dunk him in the baptismal font-and even that might not do any good,” Kuisl answered hoarsely.
Still swaying, the Regensburg executioner smiled. With a stony gaze he regarded the bolt in his chest.
“I… don’t… feel… very well,” he spluttered. “The bolt…”
Kuisl pointed at Friedrich Lettner’s corpse where a few hornets still circled about. “At least there won’t be another bolt,” he said. “Every villain has his weakness, and for this one it wasn’t the big arrow but countless little stings. I hope the poison doesn’t-”