She smiled uncertainly. “An… an angel?”
Brother Johannes nodded eagerly. “An angel sent to me to announce Jakob’s coming.” He looked at her earnestly, and suddenly the maniacal expression vanished from his face.
“By God,” he whispered. “Your father is the only one who can still save me.”
Plumes of smoke rose into the sky above Schongau like the shadows of restless spirits.
As he had the day before, Jakob Kuisl sat beside the moat, looking down into the same green water where just a hundred years ago women who had murdered their children had been drowned. Kuisl liked this lonely place, as people very rarely wandered into it. The moat was regarded as cursed because so many poor souls had met their ends here, and the people of Schongau believed you could hear the dead crying here when the moon was full. Kuisl had never heard anything-on the contrary, the moat was a place of silent tranquility that the hangman missed all too often in town.
Kuisl needed rest. He wondered what to do about the Berchtholdt brothers. Was it advisable to go to the secretary and tell him about the thefts in the warehouse? At one time, Kuisl wouldn’t have hesitated, but now his two grandchildren were there, and they were in danger. Would the Berchtholdts really attack innocent children?
No matter how hard Kuisl tried to achieve clarity, his thoughts kept returning to the past. His conversation the day before with his son Georg had awakened memories of the war-the many dead and the battles, but above all the only true friend he’d ever had in his life. Together they’d gone through hell; they’d stood together in the front lines when they were attacked. They’d been almost the same age, like brothers.
But above all, they were bound together by a fate that separated them from all others.
As Kuisl stared into the water mirroring the willows along the bank, he suddenly had the bitter taste of gunpowder in his mouth, and in the distance he imagined he could hear shouting and the clanging armor.
It was as if he were looking through a tunnel as an indistinct image emerged at the other end.
Drums beat; flutes play; smoke and the scent of frying mutton are in the air. Eighteen-year-old Jakob wanders from campfire to campfire. As far as he can see, there are colorful tents alongside the dirty canvas-covered wagons belonging to the sutlers-the peddlers, traders, and whores who follow the army. In the foreground are the hastily dug trenches, and in the distance, the city they will storm the next day.
Will he still be alive tomorrow?
Jakob has been traveling with the army for five years. The pimply drummer boy has become a broad-shouldered man, a fearsome warrior who always stands in the frontlines with his two-handed sword. The captain awarded him a master’s certificate for the long sword, and his men fear him because they know his sword is thirsty for blood, a magic blade that moans when battle begins.
A hangman’s sword.
With the sword strapped to his back, he strides through the camp. The mercenaries who know him step back and cross themselves. The hangman’s son is not a welcome guest here; he is respected but not loved.
When Jakob senses someone looking at him, he turns around to see the ugliest fellow he’s ever met. With a face swollen like a pig’s bladder, eyes bulging, and mouth crooked, the stranger crouches like a fat toad in front of a campfire. It takes Jakob a moment to realize that the stranger is smiling.
A fine blade indeed,” says the stranger. His voice sounds soft and intelligent, out of character with his face. “No doubt cost a lot. Or did you steal it?”
“What business is that of yours?” Jakob grumbles. He is about to turn away when the other reaches behind him to extract his own sword from a pile of rags. A two-hander without a point-almost seven feet long, with a blood groove and short crossguard-it looks remarkably like Jakob’s sword.
Inherited the sword from my father, who was fetched by the devil,” the ugly stranger says with a grin. “In Reutlingen, where I come from, people say it shouts for blood on execution day. But ever since I was a little kid, I’ve never once heard it shout. It’s only the others who do the shouting.”
Jakob laughs softly. For the first time in a long while.
Now the Reutlingers will have to do their dirty work by themselves,” he growls. “Serves ’em right, the fat old moneybags.”
As the ugly man nods and runs his huge hands over the freshly sharpened blade, Jakob knows he has found a friend for life.
The Schongau hangman tossed a stone in the moat. As little waves spread in circles, his image in the water dissolved. He stood up and headed for home, his heart pounding.
It wasn’t good to awaken too many old memories.
For a long time, Magdalena could only stare at the monk in the Andechs dungeon in disbelief.
“You… You know my father?” she finally asked.
Brother Johannes was still kneeling in front of her. Now he crossed himself and struggled to his feet.
“Let’s say I knew him,” he murmured. “Better than my own brother. But I didn’t know he’d gone back to Schongau and become an executioner again. We’ve not been in touch for more than thirty years.” He laughed and raised his hands to heaven. “It’s a miracle that I’m now meeting his daughter. Perhaps everything will turn out well, after all.”
Magdalena looked at him skeptically. “Even if you knew him, why should everything turn out for the better now? How could my father help you?”
“You’re right.” Brother Johannes sighed and crouched down in his corner again.
“I’ll probably wind up burned at the stake soon, but if anyone could help, it would be your father, believe me. I don’t expect he’s lost any of that quick mind, has he?”
Magdalena had to smile. “Nothing of his sharp mind or his pig-headedness. Was he always like that?”
“He was the most pig-headed damn guy in the whole regiment. A great fighter and smart as a whole army of Jesuits.” Johannes grinned, then he began his story: “We had known each other since the battle at Breitenfeld. We were both hangmen’s sons and both running away from our former lives. War is a great equalizer-there’s no better place to start over again. We understood each other from the start.” He laughed, causing his swollen lip to burst open again. Cursing, he wiped the blood from his mouth. “I got a job as a whipping boy and had soon worked my way up to our regiment’s executioner. Your father, despite his dishonorable status, became a sergeant, something very few simple people manage to do. He was so damned clever that he figured out almost every case of theft in his regiment. Every unauthorized raid, every rape.” Johannes’s face darkened. “Then it was my job to string up the poor bastards. I can still see them in my dreams, twitching and thrashing about up in the trees. My God, how I hated that.”
For a while, the only sounds were the chirping sparrows outside the window.
“Is that why you became a monk?” Magdalena finally asked. “Because you were no longer able to stomach the killing?”
Johannes nodded hesitantly. “Jakob… he… could simply handle death better,” he continued in a halting voice. “He’d run away from home, just like me, because he didn’t want to be a hangman, but really he never gave it up.” He raised his hands dismissively. “Not bloodthirsty-not that-but rather an… an… archangel like Michael who came down to earth with his sword to vanquish evil. I couldn’t do it… the constant torturing and killing…”
The Brother clapped his hands over his face to hide his tears. “Finally, I deserted. Without a word I just left and wandered about for years until I found a place to stay here in Andechs more than ten years ago. My apothecary’s license was forged, but that didn’t bother the abbot at the time. All that mattered to Father Maurus Friesenegger was that I knew about herbs. The new abbot, Maurus Rambeck, also knows about my past. But if the others learn about it… a hangman disguised as a monk and apothecary.” He laughed bitterly. “What does it matter? Nothing matters anymore.”