Magdalena smiled and proceeded to pour the fragrant dry leaves into a mortar. The air smelled of hot goose fat, and Stechlin’s chatter sounded like a trickling watermill. Simon, her father, and the dead priest suddenly seemed far, far away.
When Jakob Kuisl opened the trunk, memories of a completely different life came flooding back.
The box had been stored for years in the attic of the hangman’s house, hidden behind rolls of rope and broken barrels where no one could see it. The hangman had carried it down into the main room of the house and opened it now with the key he had been keeping safe. Putting aside a folded, moth-eaten army uniform, he took out first the dismantled barrel of a matchlock musket, then its polished inlaid handle, a pouch of lead bullets, and a chain holding wooden powder kegs, also known among mercenaries as the “Twelve Apostles.” He pulled the bayonet out of its sheath and tested its sharpness with his thumb. After all these years, the steel was still just as sharp and shining as the executioner’s sword, which had been hanging in the devotional corner of his house for ages.
At the very bottom of the trunk lay a little cherrywood box. Jakob Kuisl unsnapped the lock and opened it carefully. Inside were two well-oiled wheel lock pistols. The hangman passed his hand over their polished handles and cool iron cocking hammers. These pistols had cost a fortune, but at that time, money was of no importance. In a drunken frenzy, you just grabbed whatever you wanted, helped yourself. Kuisl’s eyelids twitched. Suddenly, a shadow fell over his memory.
Legs wriggling up in the branches of a tree, a flickering fire, the crying of a little girl coming from the blackened ruins. The sound of laughing men playing dice around a mountain of bloody clothing and glittering trinkets…a charred baby’s rattle…
He had been a troop leader, a so-called “sword player” who always fought on the front lines with a double-edged sword, as his father had. He received double pay and the largest portion of the spoils.
He had been one of the best, the perfect killer…
A charred baby’s rattle…
With a shake of his head, the hangman tried to wipe away the memory. He closed the cherrywood box before any further dreams could pour forth.
Hearing the door squeak, he wheeled around as Magdalena came storming in, her face beet red. She had hurried back from Stechlin’s house just in time, before the watchmen closed the gates to the city. Now she was eager to tell her father the news.
“Father, I must leave for Augsburg tomorrow morning on an errand for Stechlin! Please allow me…” She stopped short when she saw the trunk. “What is that?”
“Nothing that concerns you,” her father grumbled. “But if you really want to know, they are weapons. Tomorrow the hunt for the robbers begins.”
Magdalena examined the bayonet, the soiled mercenary’s uniform, and the gun, all of them set out neatly side by side on the table. She stroked the copper-reinforced barrel of the musket.
“Where did you get these?”
“From before.”
The hangman’s daughter turned away from the weapons and looked her father in the eye. “You’ve never told me about before. Mother told me you were a brave soldier, is that right? Why did you go to war?”
Jakob was silent for a long time. “What do you want to do with your life?” he asked finally.
Magdalena shrugged. “Do I have a choice? As your daughter, I either marry a butcher or an executioner. You don’t have the choice of doing anything else, either.”
“War is cruel, you know,” the hangman replied, “but it makes people free. Anyone can kill, and if he’s smart about it, he can even become a sergeant or a sergeant major and will have more money than he can ever waste on liquor.”
“Then why did you come back?” Magdalena replied.
“Because with killing, it’s just like with everything else in life…Everything has its place.”
And for the hangman, that was the end of the matter-he had nothing further to say. He closed the trunk and gave his daughter a challenging look. “So you want to go to Augsburg? Why?”
Magdalena explained that the midwife needed some important ingredients and wanted to send her to the big city to get them. “And she wants me to get a bezoar for her, too!” she said excitedly.
“A bezoar?”
“A stone from the stomach of a goat, which helps with infertility and difficult births and-”
“I know what a bezoar is,” the hangman interrupted harshly. “But why does Stechlin need it?”
Magdalena shrugged. “The wife of the second presiding burgomaster, Holzhofer, is pregnant, but the child won’t come. She asked Stechlin for a bezoar.”
“The Holzhofer woman is going to have to fork out a heap of money for that,” the hangman grumbled. “A bezoar is not cheap, and that means you’ll have to carry a lot of money with you to Augsburg.”
Magdalena nodded. “Stechlin will give it to me first thing in the morning.”
“And what if you’re robbed?”
Magdalena laughed and gave her father a kiss on the cheek. “Are you worried about me? Don’t forget I’m the daughter of the Schongau hangman! People are more afraid of me than I am of them.” She smiled. “Please let me go! Mother said I’d have to ask you. I’ll take the ferry first thing tomorrow morning, and there will be a group of Augsburg merchants on board on the way back. What can happen?”
Jakob Kuisl sighed. It was always hard for him to deny his daughter anything. “Very well,” he said finally. “But only if you also bring something back for me. Let’s see what I need…”
He crossed the room, where, on the opposite wall, a huge cupboard reached right up to the ceiling. The drawers and shelves were overflowing with parchment scrolls and books, and some drawers were open, revealing countless pouches, crucibles, and phials. Though it was the middle of winter, the entire room smelled like summer-rosemary, ginger, nutmeg, and cloves. The hangman’s apothecary, passed down in his family from generation to generation, was known all around Schongau. Not even the midwife-to say nothing of the physician-had a collection of herbs, medicines, and poisons to rival the Kuisls’.
On a wobbly table in the middle of the room, a flickering torch smoked in a rusty holder. In its dim light, Magdalena noticed a few books open on the table, among them Dioscorides’s work on medicinal plants and a book she had never seen before in a foreign language.
“Are you looking up something because of Koppmeyer’s poisoning?” she asked inquisitively.
“Maybe.” Without another word, Jakob Kuisl examined his stock of herbs and powders and put together a list for Magdalena.
“I also need a few things you won’t get from an apothecary,” he said. “Dried belladonna and thorn-apple seeds. Also, some alum, saltpeter, and arsenic. I know the fellows there, and if you just hand them a few extra kreuzer, they’ll give you the stuff without any problems. And if they don’t…” He grinned. “Just say the Schongau hangman sent you. That has always worked.” Suddenly, his face darkened.
“But you’re leaving so suddenly…That doesn’t have anything to do with Simon, does it?”
Magdalena scowled. “I don’t give a damn about Simon. He can get along without me for once.”
Jakob Kuisl turned back to his list of medicines. “Well, if that’s what you think, at least you’ll miss all the killing.” His face darkened. “You don’t have to get pulled into all this, but it’s clear to me that we haven’t seen the end of it.”
Magdalena moved closer to him. “Do you know now who the men could have been who attacked you in the church?”
The hangman shook his head. “I’ll find out eventually, then God help them.” The candle cast flickering shadows across his face.