“So now I’ll take you to your mother,” the hangman grumbled. “Just quit rubbing that fish head through my hair.” Kuisl took the foul carcass from Peter’s hands, tossed it in the water, and then stomped along the path to the landing site in Wartaweil.
Soon the hangman had left the few houses behind him and entered the shady forest that surrounded the monastery on all sides. He had decided to take a little-used path to avoid being annoyed again by another chatterbox on a pilgrimage. The children seemed to enjoy their grandfather’s rolling strides and squealed with delight. Again and again Peter pointed out birds and squirrels poised on tree branches over the path that stared back down curiously on the teetering, six-armed monster. The three-year-old gave the animals imaginary names and sang a little song in a squeaky voice.
“May bug fly, your father’s gone to die,
your mother is in Pommer Land…”
“What crazy songs your mother teaches you,” Kuisl cursed, but soon he was humming along softly, too. In the meantime, the constant swaying and singing had put little Paul to sleep in his sling.
The path quickly became steeper, and as Kuisl made his way up the mountain, sweating and panting, he couldn’t help thinking about how many pilgrims had taken the same path to the Holy Mountain before him. At one time there had been over forty thousand present just for Pentecost, and now, for the Festival of the Three Hosts, huge crowds were also expected. The hangman could imagine that a warlock locked up in the monastery would be troubled by all this pious activity, and for that reason he also imagined they would try to set Nepomuk’s trial for the next day or so.
Deciding to take a shortcut, Kuisl hastened his steps, abandoning the narrow serpentine path up the mountain, and climbed directly up the slope. Now and then he came upon old, weathered steps-moss-covered stones-amid the beeches, but mostly he had to struggle through knee-high thickets. Ahead he saw some boulders placed in a circle that looked almost like the foundation of a tower. The hangman threw back his sweaty head and tried to guess how far it might still be to the monastery.
“Look, Grandpa, a witch. Are you going to burn her?” Peter pointed to an especially large boulder, at least forty feet high, in a clearing to the right. A gnarled linden tree was growing on top of it, so in the shadows of the surrounding forest it looked, in fact, like a stooped old woman.
“Nonsense, lad,” Kuisl growled. “That’s no witch, that’s a-” Only then did he realize what the boy was actually pointing at. At the foot of the rock stood the entrance to a cave. There before a small fire sat an old, gray-haired, barefoot woman wearing a dirty, torn dress tied around her waist. She rose slowly with the help of a cane and hobbled painfully toward the hangman and his grandchildren. When she finally stood face to face with Kuisl, he looked into her milky white eyes and realized she was completely blind.
“May the Lord bless you,” the woman murmured, extending her withered hand. “Is it you, Brother Johannes? Have you brought me a little beechnut porridge again?”
“I… I’m only a pilgrim on the way to Andechs,” Kuisl replied hesitantly. “Tell me, old woman, is this the way to the monastery?”
The old woman was visibly shocked, and it took a while for her to relax again.
“A burden of great sin lies upon you,” she whispered. “Great sin! I can feel that. The devil’s rock has led you to me, hasn’t it?”
“Devil’s rock?” Kuisl shook his head. “Woman, I have no time for your nonsense. I have two lads here who need their mother. So tell me… is this the way-”
“This is the entrance to hell,” the woman hissed, pointing to the cave behind her. Her voice took on a hard tone now, and the whites of her eyes seemed to glow from the inside. “I am standing guard over it because Satan has come back to earth, but I have no power over him. He sings, he groans, he moans; I can hear him in the night when he forces his way through the bowels of the mountain with his Plague-infested body.” When she reached for Kuisl with her cadaverous hand, he took an instinctive step backward. “Beware, wanderer! I can sense you follow in the footsteps of Lucifer. Who are you? A mercenary overcome by misfortune? A murderer? How many men have you killed? Tell me, how many?”
“I am the Schongau executioner,” Kuisl growled. He could feel the hair standing up on the back of his neck. “Ask the city council-they keep the books. Now let me through before I kill one more person.” The hangman brushed the old woman’s hand aside and hurried past her.
Angrily the old woman pounded her crooked cane on the ground. “It is no accident that the Lord has sent you this way,” she shouted after him. “Hear the truth, hangman! Judgment is at hand. I can hear the demons digging. They are worming their way through the world, they are reaching out through moldy leaves with their long claws. Soon they will be here, very soon. Repent, hangman! Soon misfortune will strike you like a bolt of lightning.”
The children were starting to cry, and Kuisl hastened up the steep path until the old woman’s voice was only a distant echo. His heart was pounding, and not just from exertion. The woman had touched something deep within him, something black, dark, in the very depths of his soul. It was as if all the dead men in the last decades, all those tortured, hanged, beheaded, or broken on the wheel had called out at the same time for revenge. He couldn’t help thinking of his dream the night before, the memories of the war that had flashed through his mind.
How many men have you killed? Tell me, how many?
For the first time in a long while Jakob Kuisl felt real fear.
He shook himself and hurried along the path through the trees. Branches seemed to reach out to seize him, leaves brushed against his face, the children whined and wailed, and Peter kept pulling at his hair like an angry little gnome on his shoulders.
Kuisl staggered forward, almost falling, but finally pushed one last green branch aside. Now he looked out on a sunny clearing of meadows and fields where ears of light brown barley waved in the wind. Beyond these, in the bright light of early afternoon, lay the monastery.
The horror had vanished.
Suddenly the hangman couldn’t help laughing out loud. Like a child, he’d let himself be scared by an old woman babbling about revenge and retribution. What in the world was wrong with him? Was he turning into an anxious child afraid of old wives’ tales? It was high time to hand the children over to Magdalena and concentrate on his real reason for being here.
With renewed courage Kuisl hiked along the fields toward the monastery, but in secret he decided to pray and beg for forgiveness in the coming days.
Not that he really believed in any of this, but it couldn’t hurt, either.
Magdalena was awakened by the rattling cough of an old man on a simple wooden plank bed to her right. Gasping, the old man spat a green clump of phlegm onto the reeds on the floor.
Disgusted, the hangman’s daughter turned away. Since the night before, she’d been laid out in a wing of the monastery-a horse stable no longer in use, which the abbot made available for the sick. Only a handful of patients were there in the early morning, but their numbers had increased dramatically in the last few hours. She estimated that over two dozen moaning, snoring, wailing pilgrims were housed now in the provisional hospital. Wrapped in thin woolen blankets, they lay shivering in flea-infested beds and on bales of straw on the ground. The damp old quarters stank of manure and human excrement, while outside they could hear pilgrims singing on their way to the monastery to pray for a good harvest, a healthy child, or simply a peaceful year without war, hunger, and pestilence.
Carefully Magdalena tested the fragrant herbal dressing on her neck. The wound wasn’t deep-the strange projectile had only grazed her. Nevertheless, she had passed out briefly due to exhaustion and loss of blood. What troubled her even most was the fear of whoever was lying in wait for her the night before along the monastery wall.