“I had nothing to do with the priest!” the Swabian shouted angrily. “He didn’t have to be killed right away. It would have been enough to…well, silence him.”
“Well, he’s silent now,” the scarred man replied. He threw his dagger and it lodged in a rotted stump, quivering.
“Brother Nathanael is right,” replied the third, a monk dressed in black who gave off a strong scent of violets, even here outside. He was as gaunt and haggard as a dried-out, cracked log. He was the only one of the three monks who hid his face under his cowl. “The priest was too dangerous. Deus lo vult!”
“Where’s all this leading?” the Swabian lamented. “First the priest, then the hangman…The Master didn’t send us out to do that!”
“The Master’s words were more than clear.” The tall, haggard monk leaned in to Brother Avenarius now. While the perfume nauseated the fat Swabian, Avenarius would never dare to say anything about it. The haggard man was their leader, even though he seemed to act stranger with each passing week.
“The Master has ordered us to bring the treasure back to where it belongs,” the man with the violet scent whispered. His mouth looked like a red spot in the depths of his black cowl. “Nothing else matters. In any case, the hangman escaped. He’s alive. I saw him just yesterday with the others at Saint Michael’s Basilica.”
“You what?” The monk with the scar jumped up, but the haggard one restrained him.
“It’s fine. God obviously did not want the hangman to die. He needs him still as some small part in His great plan. We can assume that his daughter, the hangman’s girl, got away from us for the same reason. An astonishing woman…” He stopped as if he were reflecting. “Her name is Magdalena. It’s strange, I once knew someone by that name…”
Suddenly, he clapped his hands. “Now let’s report to the Master.”
The gaunt man jumped over the wall and beckoned the others to follow. Seeing a disappointed look in the face of his scarred colleague, he tried to cheer him up. “If they really find the treasure, their work is done, Nathanael. God won’t allow the heretics’ sacrilege to spread again. We destroyed them once and we shall succeed this time as well. Every memory of it must be destroyed. Your time will come.”
The monk with the curved dagger nodded grimly; then the three set out like tracking dogs after a fresh scent.
7
JAKOB KUISL WALKED along the steep slope of the Ammer Gorge, looking down at the rushing river over two hundred feet below. Ice floes drifted along the surface, bumping into one another, piling up in bizarre formations that reminded the hangman of a crooked, worn-out flight of stairs. Below, darkness was already approaching, and before long the temperature would drop. Slowly, the sun dipped below the tree line, bathing the faces of the search party in the last rays of golden sunlight.
“We need to stop for today,” Hans Berchtholdt mumbled behind him. “It’s like hunting for a needle in a haystack.”
Almost from the very start of the hunt, the baker’s son had expressed doubts about the undertaking, and then the other patrician sons had followed suit. How would they ever find a band of robbers in the vast Schongau forest? Wasn’t this a job for soldiers and simple constables, anyway? Even if some of the young men had been keen on the idea at first-they hoped to finally have a chance to play real war games-the cold, strenuous march had robbed them of their last bit of enthusiasm. Now all they wanted was to go home.
Jakob Kuisl kept a careful eye on the other bank of the river, hoping to spot any sign of suspicious movement. Highway banditry had always plagued the Bavarian forests, but since the Great War, it had become practically impossible to travel from city to city without an armed escort. Several times a year, Kuisl strung up a few thugs on Gallows Hill, some no older than fourteen, but it did no good. Hunger and desire trumped fear of the hangman. And this winter, the gangs of robbers were larger than they had been in many years. Their leader, Hans Scheller, had rallied almost two dozen of his cronies, among them former mercenaries, but also farmers whose fields, barns, and livestock had been destroyed in the war, as well as their women and children.
“Hey, Kuisl, I’m talking to you! Let’s go home. You can keep looking by yourself.”
Kuisl gave the baker’s son a scornful look. “We’ll check out one last hiding place; then you can go home to your warm feather bed. You do look completely frozen, or does the red nose come from the boozing?”
Hans Berchtholdt turned even redder. “Don’t get smart with me, butcher!” he shouted, putting his hand on his sword. “I won’t let someone like you lecture me. It’s a disgrace that Lechner put you in charge!”
“Watch your tongue, Berchtholdt!” said Jakob Schreevogl, who up to that point had been walking ahead silently with the hangman. “You heard yourself what the clerk said. Kuisl knows what he is doing better than any of us, and so he’s the leader.”
“Berchtholdt is right, Schreevogl!” This time it was Sebastian Semer, son of the presiding burgomaster. In a tight-fitting doublet with copper buttons and an elegant round hat adorned with a rooster feather, he looked quite out of place here in the forest. In addition, the cold seemed to be getting the best of the young patrician in his thin leather boots. His voice trembled-whether from the cold or out of some unconscious anxiety about confronting the hangman, Jakob Kuisl couldn’t tell. “It’s unheard of that a butcher and executioner is ordering around honorable citizens,” Semer finally said. “I…I…shall complain to my father!”
“Yes, yes, do that, and get started before nightfall.”
Kuisl stomped ahead, hoping that the group would follow. He could feel his authority slipping away. He could count on the fingers of one hand the men who trusted him in this endeavor: Jakob Schreevogl; old Andre Wiedemann, whom he had known since the war; perhaps the blacksmith, Georg Kronauer; and a few workers. The rest followed him because the clerk ordered them to and because they feared the hangman.
Kuisl sighed under his breath. Most people didn’t consider executioners honorable citizens because the job involved things that no one else wanted to do: torturing and hanging criminals, removing dead animals from town, sweeping up the streets, and preparing magic drinks and extracts. For the sons of the aldermen, the very idea that such a person should give them orders was an abomination. Kuisl could sense clearly that resistance was brewing.
Under his breath, he cursed Lechner for having put him in this situation. Was it possible that Lechner just wanted to get rid of him? For far lesser reasons people had lynched hangmen. If the next hideout was empty like the rest, the hunt for robbers was over for him, too.
When he stepped out from behind the next dense grove of pines, however, he knew at once that they were on the right track this time.
From down below in the gorge, smoke rose toward them-just a thin column, but easy to see in the cold winter air. Kuisl grinned. He had been sure the scoundrels were hiding out somewhere around here. When he planned the hunt, he knew there was little point in just stumbling through the forest hoping to happen on individual bandits. The region around Schongau was a wilderness of forests, gorges, and steep hills. Around each town, only small areas were farmed, and beyond them the primeval forest took over, endless and profound.
The hangman knew this area better than anyone else. In recent years, he had combed miles of the forest for healing and poisonous plants. He knew every major cave, every ruin, every hiding place. They had already been to three possible hideouts that day, and now, at the fourth, their luck seemed to have changed. From the beginning, Kuisl suspected he would find something here at Schleyer Falls.