Deep in thought, she wandered across the market square. Night was falling and a traveling merchant was hawking scissors, knives, and all sorts of bric-a-brac. The fragrance of honey-roasted hazelnuts filled the air. Magdalena looked around, rubbing her hands together to keep warm. It was snowing lightly now, but at this time of day, there were only a few Schongau residents passing through the square, anyway. Wrapped in more or less ragged clothing, they walked stooped over so snow wouldn’t blow directly in their eyes. Magdalena looked into their empty, gaunt faces. The Great War had ended just a few years before and people were still suffering the consequences. The residents of the once-wealthy city had fallen victim to pestilence, sickness, and hunger. Even now, only the snow covered the crumbling masonry on the walls and the frozen piles of excrement in the streets. Interspersed among the houses were ruins of buildings whose roofs had caved in, silent witnesses to whole families wiped out by the plague. In recent decades, the city had lost more than a third of its inhabitants to the plague, and almost every family had mourned the loss of at least one member. As a child, Magdalena had often seen carts filled with dozens of corpses heading toward the new St. Sebastian Cemetery. The old cemetery by the parish church had filled up long ago and now this new fever had come over the city!
On the spur of the moment, Magdalena decided to go to Semer’s tavern. She still had a few coins in her pocket, and a warm drink would certainly do her some good after all the day’s aggravation. The very thought of it raised her spirits. Her hand was already on the doorknob when she glanced through the bull’s-eye window to the left of the entrance.
What she saw hit her like a slap in the face.
Behind the glass, slightly blurred, she could make out Simon and Benedikta sitting at a table. The two seemed engrossed in something or other, and in the dim light of the candles, she thought she could see Simon put his arm around her. Magdalena shuddered. At first she was tempted to tear open the door, grab a heavy mug off one of the shelves, and throw it at Simon. But instead, she just ran across the marketplace, unable to think clearly, tears running down her cheeks before turning to ice.
When she came to her senses, she was standing near the Kuh Gate. The midwife’s house was just a few yards away, and without giving it a further thought, she tore open the door and stormed in.
Martha Stechlin looked up in astonishment. She was sitting at a table in the main room, crushing some dried herbs in a mortar. She was about to give the young woman a tongue-lashing but changed her mind when she noticed how pale Magdalena was and how she was trembling.
“Girl, what is wrong with you?” she asked with concern. “This isn’t because of the Steigenberg woman, is it? You don’t have to worry; the child is well and you don’t have to…”
Magdalena shook her head, then broke down in tears again. The midwife guided her over to the table, sat her down gently on one of the wooden stools, and stroked her hair.
“What is wrong, my dear?” she murmured, handing her a cup of a hot peppermint tea, which had just been bubbling on the hearth.
Magdalena poured out her heart to the midwife in bitter words, and when she was finished, Martha nodded compassionately.
“That’s just the way men are,” she whispered, “never content with what they have. But sooner or later, they always come back. My Hans…God bless his soul…” Her voice broke and she wiped her eyes as if trying to brush away a tear.
“What about your husband?” Magdalena asked, happy to turn attention away from her own troubles. “You never told me about him.”
“He was always flirting with the girls,” Martha said. “He was never home; he always hung out in the taverns, the dirty swine…” A smile crossed her lips. “But I loved him. Even when we couldn’t have children and people began to gossip, we stayed together. No random strumpet was going to come along and change that.” She winked at Magdalena.
“What became of him?” The hangman’s daughter wiped the tears from her eyes as the warmth of the fire spread up her legs.
The midwife was staring off into space. “He caught the plague. I buried him more than ten winters ago, and since then, I have been alone.”
In the silence that followed, the only thing audible was the crackling of the fire on the hearth. Magdalena bit her lip. Why had she asked? Embarrassed, she sipped on the steaming cup.
Finally, the midwife arose and walked over to her shelves, which extended from the shrine in the corner of the room all the way to the hearth. “So be it!” she said. “Life goes on.” Her gaze wandered along the line of jars and pots on the shelves. The jars were all freshly glazed and labeled according to their contents. The midwife opened a few of them and shook her head.
“I’ll need some dried melissa,” she murmured. “And ergot, if nothing else works.”
“What for?” Magdalena asked, walking over to her. “Are you expecting another difficult birth?”
Magdalena had been Martha Stechlin’s apprentice for half a year, and in that time Magdalena had assisted in five difficult births. Only in difficult cases did people call for the midwife. Often women gave birth without help, alone, or with only the immediate family present, whether in a warm living room, in the stable, or sometimes even in the field. If Stechlin was looking through her jars now, there had to be another critical case pending.
“Frau Holzhofer…” Martha Stechlin started to say.
Magdalena gasped. “The wife of the second burgomaster?”
The midwife kept searching through the jars. “Holzhofer’s wife is already past due,” she said. “If the child doesn’t come by next week, we’ll have to give her ergot.”
Magdalena nodded. Ergot was a fungus that grew on rye and oats, a strong poison that caused the notorious St. Anthony’s fire, but in small doses could induce labor.
“And now you don’t have any more?” she asked.
Martha Stechlin had now arrived at the last row of jars. “No, no ergot, melissa, artemisia, or sundew. And your father has none left, either!” She sighed. “It looks like I’ll have to make a trip to Augsburg in this awful cold! The apothecary there is the only place I can get ergot or artemisia in the winter. But what can I do? If anything happens to his wife, Holzhofer will blame it on me, and then they’ll throw me out of my house or set it on fire…”
Suddenly, the hangman’s daughter had an idea. She smiled broadly at the midwife and announced, “I can go!”
“You?” The midwife made an incredulous face, but Magdalena nodded eagerly.
“I’d like to get away from Simon for a while, in any case. I’ll leave with the first ferry tomorrow morning, and we’ll see how he gets along without me.” The more Magdalena thought about it, the more she liked the idea. “Just write down for me what you need and where I’m supposed to go in Augsburg,” she continued, speaking rapidly. “My father certainly needs a few pills and herbs as well, so I can spare you both a trip.”
The midwife stared at her, mulling it over. Then she shrugged. “Why not?” she muttered. “After all, you want to become a midwife. It can only be a good thing for you to see what an apothecary looks like from the inside. And Augsburg…” She smiled at Magdalena. “Well, the city will take your mind off things. Just be careful that you don’t go haywire. You have never in your life seen so many people,” she said, clapping her hands excitedly. “But now, let’s get to work! The marigold leaves must be finely ground and the lard rendered, because Kornbichler’s wife wants her ointment this evening!”