Suddenly he stopped. Kuisl didn’t notice in time that his big right foot protruded through the crack in the door.
“What the hell-” Brother Benedikt started, but at that moment, the door hit him hard in the face. Screaming, the monk fell to the floor, holding his bloody nose. The novitiate master also fell back against the wall and watched horror-stricken as a giant man rushed out of his cell toward the exit.
“Stop that man,” screamed Brother Benedikt. “Stop that fraudulent Franciscan! I knew from the start we couldn’t trust him. He’s the devil in human form.”
Brother Laurentius took a few cautious steps, but the librarian’s last words had clearly made him even more anxious than before. He fell to his knees, made the sign of the cross, and watched as the black-robed giant fled out the door.
After her meeting with the abbot in the monastery’s enchanted garden, Magdalena hurried back to the clinic. She couldn’t stop thinking about her conversation with Rambeck, his stories of ancient gods and rattling automata. She desperately needed to talk to Simon. Perhaps he’d find time to go for a little walk and she could leave the boys with Matthias for a while.
On entering the former horse stable, she quickly saw that even more sick people had arrived, among them some of the masons from Schongau. They rolled about, moaning, on their beds while Schreevogl went from one to the other dispensing cold compresses. The patrician had changed noticeably in recent days. His doublet, once so spotless, was smudged, and there was a long rip in his trousers, but he seemed nevertheless almost cheerful as he walked down the rows of patients. He looked up bright-eyed and greeted Magdalena as she entered.
“Oh, Magdalena,” he cried. “You’re surely looking for Simon.” Holding a steaming cup in his hands, he pointed toward the rear of the room. “He’s back there mixing some medicine, but I’m afraid he won’t have much time for you.”
“We’ll see if my husband has time for me,” she said, clenching her teeth. It came out angrier than intended.
Carrying both boys in her arms, she squeezed past several beds and finally found Simon in the back standing beside a table where he weighed various ground herbs on a little scale, then placed them into a pot. Concentrating, his eyes narrowed to little slits and his eyebrows twitched nervously. He had just carefully measured out the greenish powder onto the scale with a little spoon.
“Simon, I have to talk to you. The abbot-” she began.
The sudden sound made the medicus jump and spill the powder on the table.
“Damn, Magdalena,” he cursed. “How can you startle me like that? Look what you’ve done. Now I have to start weighing it all over again. You know yourself how precious angelica root is.”
“Forgive me for talking to you; I’m only your wife,” she replied snippily. “I thought the gentleman might perhaps have time to take a little walk with me and his children-if he even remembers that he has children. Here, may I introduce you?” she said, holding the two boys out toward him. “This is your father.”
Simon stared at her blankly, his thoughts apparently far away. “A walk?” he mumbled finally. “Do you have any idea what I’m doing here? If I can’t heal the count’s son, we’ll never take a walk again-because I’ll be dead. And at this moment his life-and mine-hang in the balance.”
“Simon,” Magdalena said, this time in a more conciliatory tone, “don’t you think all this is too much for you? The matter of my father and this sorcerer, the murders, all the sick people, and now the count’s son. A walk could do you a world of-”
“Once this is over, I’ll walk with you and the children to the moon, if you want.” He looked at her with tired, reddened eyes. “But until then you’ll somehow have to get along without me. I’m sorry, but this here comes first.” A brief smile crossed his face. “In the meantime, by the way, I’ve continued reading the book by Girolamo Fracastoro, and it’s extremely interesting. I think I’m almost at the point of solving the secret of this illness. If I only knew-”
“Master Fronwieser, come quickly. We have a new patient.”
Shrugging, Simon turned away and hurried toward the entrance, where Schreevogl was just bringing in an old woman who was barely able to stand. She kept mumbling prayers and was coughing heavily.
“Bring her back to me, Schreevogl,” Simon called. “Someone died here last night and there’s a bed free.”
With clenched lips Magdalena watched as her husband laid some dirty straw-filled pillows down on the bed and then returned to the table to resume his weighing.
“Three ounces each of barberry and buckbean, two ounces of angelica…” he murmured without looking up. He seemed to have forgotten Magdalena already.
The hangman’s daughter stood there silently for a while, holding one child in each hand. She squeezed them so hard they began to whimper. After a while, she turned away and led them toward the exit.
“Come, you two,” she said in a tired voice, staring vacantly ahead. “Papa has no time today. He has to help other people. We’ll see if Matthias can play with you.”
A dozen miles away in Weilheim, the torture began.
At noon the bailiffs opened the hatch to Nepomuk’s dungeon and let down a ladder. The monk briefly considered just refusing to go, but then they no doubt would beat him and drive him up the ladder rung by rung. He therefore decided to willingly climb up the blood-and dirt-soiled ladder toward the light.
Nepomuk blinked in the bright sunlight falling through the narrow windows of the tower. After his eyes had grown accustomed to the light he saw four guards and Master Hans. The Weilheim executioner brushed back the snow-white hair from his forehead and looked his victim up and down with piercing red eyes, as if trying to guess how much pain the criminal would tolerate.
“The Weilheim district judge wants to dispose of this matter as soon as possible,” he said in a pleasant voice that seemed out of character with a white-haired monster of a man. “That suits me; I’ll just get my money sooner. Take him away.” Master Hans beckoned to one of the guards carrying a pole almost fifteen feet long with a ring of iron spikes on front. Nepomuk had never before seen such an instrument.
“Since the monastery informs us you are a sorcerer, we will do everything necessary to make sure you can’t touch us,” Master Hans explained briefly. He opened up the spiked ring at the end of the pole, placed it around Nepomuk’s neck, and carefully closed it again. As soon as the spikes dug into Nepomuk’s skin, the first drops of blood appeared. The monk realized that if he put up the slightest resistance, the spikes would dig deep into his flesh and split open his throat like dried-out leather.
“Let us proceed,” Master Hans said, slamming the trapdoor over the hole. “The tongs are no doubt glowing red by now.”
As the guard tugged briefly on the pole, Nepomuk stumbled forward a few steps and almost fell into the spikes before catching himself again and staggering forward carefully behind the men like a yoked ox. They dragged him down a long corridor lined with dungeons behind whose doors he could hear wailing and moaning. At one point, Nepomuk saw a crippled hand with only three fingers waving to him through one of the barred openings.
Master Hans walked alongside Nepomuk, looking straight ahead and humming an old familiar tune that Nepomuk knew from his days as a mercenary.
“I was once a hangman in the war,” Nepomuk groaned as he stumbled forward. “I executed some deserters, one of them a witch-a crazy old woman. I never thought she was one, though.” He turned toward the executioner hopefully. “Look at me. Do you really think I’m a warlock?”
Master Hans shrugged his powerful shoulders. “What I think or don’t think is of no importance. The high and noble gentlemen believe it, so I will torture you until you finally believe it yourself.”
They were now descending a winding stone staircase. Through a window, Nepomuk could see the hills and forests outside Weilheim, covered with green beeches and oaks swaying gently in the summer breeze. The tower dungeon was at the west end of the city wall, so on the left Nepomuk caught sight of the Alps. It was a gorgeous day with a dry wind, the kind that gave someone the feeling he could see forever. Then the window disappeared and the stairway continued winding down into the depths of the fortress.