Benedikta Koppmeyer’s face, already pale, seemed to become even more diaphanous as she stared at the medicus in disbelief. “Is it true?” she whispered. “Andreas is dead?”
“What does this mean?” Magdalena asked now, too. “Simon, explain yourself!”
Inwardly, Simon cursed the tactlessness of the dour, boneheaded hangman. He had seen him behave this way many times, yet Simon was always irritated by his coarse behavior, which was so unlike that of the Jacob Kuisl he knew who would spend hours poring over books or playing catch in the yard with his seven-year-old twins, Georg and Barbara.
After some hesitation, the medicus began to recount the morning’s events. As he spoke, the priest’s sister seemed to get a hold of herself again. She listened intently, with clenched fists and a look that showed Simon that this elegant woman had dealt with other tragedies in her life before this.
“I don’t know what’s going on here,” she said finally. “But it at least explains the letter my brother sent me. He wrote of a strange discovery and that he didn’t know whom to turn to. My brother and I”-she hesitated for a moment and closed her eyes briefly, her lips tightening into two narrow lines-“were very close, and this is not the first time he asked me for advice in an important matter. He always listened to his little sister,” she said, forcing a smile.
“May I ask when exactly you received the letter?” Simon asked in a soft voice.
“Three days ago…And I left at once.”
“Where are you from?” Simon replied.
Benedikta Koppmeyer looked at him in bewilderment. “Haven’t I mentioned that? I come from Landsberg, farther down the Lech River. My late husband had a wine business there, which I have been managing for several years.”
And apparently not badly, Simon thought as he studied the elegant clothing of the merchant’s widow. Once again, he was struck by her delicate features, which were beginning to show the first signs of age. Her mouth was slightly austere and hard-this woman was accustomed to giving orders-but at the same time, her eyes exuded an almost childlike charm. The cut of her clothes befit the latest French fashion and her whole appearance exuded noblesse, something that Simon all too often missed in Schongau.
He straightened up. “I assume you’d like to see your brother again,” he said.
The merchant woman nodded, straightened up, and pulled her red hair into a bun. Finally, she followed the medicus outside. “Évidemment,” she whispered as she brushed past Simon in her flowing dress.
The medicus was thrilled. The distinguished lady from Landsberg not only dressed in the French fashion, but she also knew how to speak French! What a remarkable woman!
Magdalena hurried after them. If Simon had turned around, he would have noted the somber expression on her face. However, the medicus was still lost in thought about the elegant, urbane stranger.
After a good hour, the three set out on their way back to Schongau. They had laid out Koppmeyer’s corpse in the charnel house next to the church, and Simon and Magdalena left his sister alone with her brother for a while. When Benedikta Koppmeyer returned, she still looked pale but had pulled herself together again.
Jakob Kuisl had left, which didn’t surprise Simon very much. Many people had problems with the gruff, sometimes offensive nature of the executioner, but Simon knew him well enough by now to overlook that. He imagined that anyone who had hanged, beheaded, and quartered dozens of criminals in his lifetime just couldn’t ever be a humanitarian, too. Simon still had a clear memory of the last execution a little less than a year ago. One of the mercenaries responsible for the brutal murders of children in Schongau had met his end on the wheel. Jakob Kuisl had broken every bone in his body and then waited two more days to garrote him. During the whole procedure, with all the shouting, screaming, and crying, Kuisl had not shown a bit of emotion. No flinching, no trembling, nothing.
They walked side by side in silence. Simon looked over at Benedikta Koppmeyer as she took her horse by the bridle and led it through the deep snow. She seemed lost in thought, obviously completely absorbed in grief over her dead brother. Simon did not dare to speak to her. Magdalena was silent, too, her eyes fixed straight ahead on the road. Simon tried to cheer her up once or twice, but her responses were surly and monosyllabic, and at last he gave up. What was wrong with her? Had he done something to offend her? He loved this girl, even if he knew that a marriage with the dishonorable hangman’s daughter was out of the question. His father kept trying to convince him to pursue a rich burgher’s daughter in Schongau. Simon was popular with the women in town. He dressed in the latest fashion, maintained a neat appearance, and always had a charming compliment on his lips. Women could overlook that he was a short man, only five feet tall, and he had had liaisons with a few of them in barns around town. Since he had met Magdalena, however, things were different. He was fascinated by this woman’s temperament, but also by her education and knowledge of medicinal and poisonous herbs, even when Magdalena’s stubbornness and occasional angry outbursts complicated their far-too-infrequent trysts.
On the other hand, what woman was simple?
After a short while, the forest gave way to open fields. Beyond that, the Lech River appeared like a green ribbon winding its way through the snow, and high on a hill, with the clear winter sky as a backdrop, stood the city of Schongau with its towers and walls. Simon felt relief as they passed through the city gate with its two sleepy guards. Benedikta, walking next to him, seemed more than exhausted. She had decided to seek quarters at the Goldener Stern Inn until the matter of her brother’s death was cleared up. The medicus wanted to talk her out of it, but a glance from her silenced him. The merchant’s widow did not look as if she would tolerate opposition.
Simon’s thoughts returned to the crypt and the inscription on the coffin.
Non nobis, Domine, non nobis, sed nomini tuo da gloriam…
Where had he seen these words before? Was it at the university in Ingolstadt? No, it wasn’t that long ago. In Schongau, then? In the city there were really only three places to find more books than just the Bible and a few farmers’ almanacs. The first was Simon’s bedroom, namely in a chest next to his bed, where he also liked to while away the hours during the day. The second was a small room in the executioner’s house where Jakob Kuisl kept a cabinet of books on herbs and poisons, but also writings about the latest therapies. The third, finally, was the heated library of the patrician Jakob Schreevogl, a book lover who had become Simon’s friend after the murders of the children last year, when the medicus had saved the life of the patrician’s daughter.
Schreevogl…library…
Something clicked in Simon’s mind.
Without waiting for the women, he ran through the city gate, startling the two constables who had dozed off.
“Where you going, Simon?” Magdalena called after him.
“Have to…take care of…something…” Simon blurted out as he ran. Then he disappeared around the next corner.
“Does he do that often?” Benedikta asked Magdalena as she walked along beside her.
The hangman’s daughter shrugged. “You can ask him yourself. Sometimes I think I don’t really know him.”
Simon ran down the Münzgasse, past the town hall. In the square behind that were rows of elegant patrician homes, three-story buildings with ornate balconies, stucco work, and colorful murals attesting to their owners’ prosperity. The city may have suffered during the Great War, but the city fathers had managed to keep themselves afloat in a new era. Payment of an exorbitant ransom had just barely managed to save Schongau from destruction by the Swedes. Enemy troops had burned down buildings on the outskirts of town, but the houses here in the market square still retained some of the splendor of past centuries when Schongau had been an important center of commerce. Only the crumbling plaster and peeling, faded paint gave evidence that the city on the river continued to waste away. Life continued elsewhere-in France, the Netherlands, perhaps even Munich and Augsburg-but certainly not in the Bavarian Priests’ Corner at the edge of the Alps.