The stranger made the sign of the cross and smiled. Carefully, he put the stone plaque down on the ground again and hid behind the gravestones, waiting for the three to come back out of the basilica.
Simon’s initial elation at finding the clue in the basilica quickly turned into confusion and anger, and the reason was walking along defiantly beside him. Without speaking a word, he and Magdalena descended the narrow pathway back down to Schongau. The hangman’s daughter nearly slipped a few times, but when Simon reached out to help her, she brushed his hand aside. Just what was wrong with her? Not a word of approval about his find, just this silence.
Jakob Kuisl had gone his own way back in Altenstadt, grumbling about having to pick something up from the blacksmith down on the Mühlenweg as he disappeared into a narrow lane. The clerk had ordered him to report to the marketplace with a group of citizens the next day to begin a search for the robbers in the Schongau forests. For that reason, Simon knew he wouldn’t be able to count on the hangman in the next few days. He also suspected Kuisl stayed behind in Altenstadt for another reason-sensing that there were bad feelings between Magdalena and himself. Kuisl wanted to give them some time alone. But his plan had backfired. Ever since they had started the hike back to Schongau, they had not exchanged a word, and just as they were arriving at the Hof Gate, Simon blew his top.
“Magdalena, just what is wrong with you?”
“What’s wrong with me?” She glared at him. “You should ask yourself, instead, what’s wrong with you! Flirting with this Benedikta. I’m good enough for cleaning and cooking, but this Benedikta is a fine lady!”
Simon could only roll his eyes. “Magdalena, we have already talked about this. There is nothing between me and Benedikta Koppmeyer,” he tried to convince her, choosing his words carefully. “She saved my life; she is an amazing woman, but-”
“An amazing woman! Bah!” Magdalena stopped and glared at him. “She can talk fine, the amazing woman. She has beautiful, expensive clothes, but underneath it all, she is nothing but a dolled-up tramp!”
“Magdalena, I forbid you-”
“No, you can’t forbid me from doing anything, you scoundrel!” Magdalena worked herself into a rage. “Do you think I can’t see how you flirt around with other girls behind my back? But because I’m just the hangman’s daughter, it doesn’t matter. People are bound to gossip, anyway. I’m telling you, Benedikta is a slut!”
“Aha! A slut?” Simon lost his patience now, and his voice took on an icy tone. “This…slut has more decency and education than you’ll ever have in three lifetimes. She knows how to behave, she speaks proper German without stammering and stuttering, and she can even speak French! She is a refined lady and no foul-mouthed hangman’s girl!”
The chunk of ice hit him right on the nose so that, for a brief moment, he felt faint. When he gathered his wits again, he felt warm blood flowing down his face, forming a pattern of red dots in the snow.
“Magdalena!” he shouted, still holding his nose and snuffling. “Stay here. I didn’t mean it that way!” But the hangman’s daughter had already passed through the Hof Gate and vanished.
Cursing under his breath, he hurried toward town, taking care that the blood didn’t drip onto his expensive petticoat breeches. Why did Magdalena always have to be so ill-tempered? He knew that what he had said was pretty stupid, and he wanted to ask her forgiveness, take her in his arms, and tell her that she was the only one he really wanted. But the hangman’s daughter was nowhere in sight.
“Magdalena!” he shouted over and over, looking everywhere in the little side streets. “Come back! I’m sorry!”
Passersby gave him strange glances, but he held his head down and hurried along. She had to be somewhere! At the next street corner, he stumbled over a little dog and it ran off whimpering. On and on he went, passing ox carts and glancing nervously at heavily clothed figures, shadowy figures barely visible in the snow that was starting to fall. Magdalena had simply disappeared. As he turned into the Münzgasse, he heard a familiar voice behind him.
“Simon?”
He turned around. Standing in front of the portal of the Church of the Ascension was Benedikta, eyeing him with concern. Apparently, she was just coming out of the Schongau parish church.
“You’re bleeding!” she exclaimed. “What happened?”
“Nothing,” he muttered. “I…fell, that’s all.”
“Let me have a look.” She walked over to him and started to dab determinedly at the blood on his face with her lace handkerchief. And although her touch burned, it felt good, too.
“A sheet of ice in front of the Hof Gate,” he sniffed softly as she continued to wipe his nose. “I slipped.”
“You need hot water to clean the wound. Come.” Like a mother, she took his arm and pulled him along behind her.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“To Semer’s Tavern, where I’m staying,” she said. “In the restaurant we can surely get a bowl of water and a cup of mulled wine for you. And then you can tell me if you have found out anything in the meanwhile.”
Simon hesitated. Actually, he wanted to keep looking for Magdalena, and his father would be waiting for him at home. This damned fever was claiming more and more victims who needed treatment. But how could anyone object to a cup of mulled wine? Magdalena had probably already made it back to the tanners’ section of town and was sitting in her father’s house and sulking. It was probably better anyway to wait until the worst of her anger had passed.
There was also a lot to tell. So much had happened in the last few days, and Simon simply needed someone to talk to. In happy anticipation, he staggered along behind Benedikta toward Semer’s Tavern. When she opened the door, his swollen nose took in the fragrance of freshly baked pastries and warm wine.
Magdalena wiped the tears from her eyes as she ran half blind through the streets of Schongau, not even noticing people she passed along the way. She was just so…furious. How could Simon be so cruel to her? Perhaps it was true they were not a good match-she, a hangman’s daughter, a butcher’s girl, the offspring of a dishonorable family; he, an educated medicus, someone who could speak well and wore polished boots and a coat with shiny buttons, and who was adored by the women in town. But he, too, came from a poor family! His money and his clothes were borrowed or donated by one or another of his fawning admirers. Magdalena clenched her teeth. She had watched this spectacle far too long, and this was finally the limit. She might well be a dishonorable, dirty hangman’s daughter, but she still had her pride.
The sound of a child coughing and whining tore her from her thoughts. Without paying much attention to where she was going, she had turned off into a small side street just after the Hof Gate and wandered through narrow lanes into the Women’s Gate area, where the poorer residents lived. The air reeked of tanning solution. Acrid clouds of steam billowed from a dyer’s cottage where freshly dyed gray linen smocks hung out to dry on wooden frames. Magdalena looked around and listened. The crying was clearly coming from the workshop. As the hangman’s daughter walked by the ramshackle thatch-roofed hut, she saw a pale woman with sunken cheeks standing in the low doorway.
“You are Kuisl’s daughter, aren’t you?”
Magdalena could find nothing hostile in the way the woman looked at her, so she stopped and nodded.
“They say you’re a good midwife,” the woman continued. “You helped the dairyman’s wife in the birth of her twins, and both are still alive. And you gave a powder to the blue-dyer’s daughter, the young hussy, to get rid of the fetus…”
Magdalena looked around carefully in all directions. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said softly.