Like an ever-grinning, life-size nutcracker, the puppet kept opening and shutting its mouth, while its soft melody echoed through the hallways and off the rock faces, until it seemed to be playing everywhere at the same time.
Though this was a love song, here in the lonely depths of the mountain, it sounded sad.
Sad and uncanny.
5
SCHONGAU, LATE EVENING, MONDAY, JUNE 14, 1666, AD
The Schongau hangman stared at the letter in his hand and felt his pulse quicken. It was rare that a messenger brought him a message in person. Just touching an executioner could in some regions cost an honorable man his reputation and his job. So this document had to be important.
“Where does it come from?” Kuisl asked the courier, who had arrived on horseback and stood before him now looking down at the ground, crossing himself in a gesture meant to ward off evil spirits. His coat was dripping from the thunderstorm that had just passed through Schongau.
“From… from Andechs,” the messenger mumbled. “From the Holy Mountain. The letter is from your daughter.”
Kuisl grinned. “Then she surely had to pay you something extra to come down here to the hangman’s house.”
“I was on my way to Schongau anyway,” the messenger answered hesitantly. “First thing tomorrow I head out for Augsburg. In any case, your daughter has astonishing… powers of persuasion. Not at all like…”
“Like a dull hangman’s girl? Is that what you wanted to say?”
The messenger winced. “Oh, God, no! Quite the contrary. She’s an extremely talkative and very attractive young lady.”
“She gets that from her mother,” Kuisl growled, somewhat more obligingly. “Talking all the time, even when there’s absolutely nothing to talk about.”
The hangman pulled out a few coins to hand to the messenger, but he waved him off. “Ah, that’s not necessary,” he stammered. “Your daughter and that bathhouse surgeon already paid for it. Farewell.” Anxiously, he bowed and disappeared in the cold, wet twilight.
“Yeah, you can kiss my…” Kuisl grumbled before returning to the living room, where his wife had just had another coughing fit. Her fever hadn’t worsened in the last two days, but it hadn’t gone down, either. She still lay semiconscious on a bench by the oven. At least the two little ones were sleeping upstairs. Peter and Paul had been romping around all evening near their sick grandmother.
“Is there news from Magdalena?” the hangman’s wife gasped. “I hope it’s nothing serious.”
“Whatever it is, she charmed the dickens out of the messenger.” With his rough hands, Kuisl broke the simple wax seal and unfolded the letter. “So it won’t be so…” He stopped short. Only his lips read on, silently. Finally he had to find a seat on a stool.
“What’s the trouble?” his wife asked. “Did something happen?”
“No.” Kuisl tore at his hair. “It’s nothing, at least not what you think it is. It’s something… else.”
“Good Lord, do I always have to drag everything out of you, you stubborn damned Schongauer?”
Once more the hangman’s wife started to cough violently. When she had calmed down again, Kuisl continued haltingly. “Magdalena… she… she apparently met the ugly old Nepomuk. I haven’t heard a word from that bastard for almost thirty years, and then out of the blue he pops up in Andechs. I could wring the neck of that fat weasel.”
“Nepomuk? The Nepomuk?”
The hangman nodded. “He’s in a jam. It looks like he’s become a monk.” He spit onto the reeds on the floor, then pulled out his pipe and lit it from a burning wood chip.
“Nepomuk, a monk,” he said finally. “It would be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a hangman to become a priest. Nepomuk was always a sly dog; he read a lot, and thought up the craziest things for the regiment to do. But he was far too soft for killing. Who knows, perhaps in another life he would really have been a good priest…” He stopped short. “In any case, they’re trying to pin three murders on him in the monastery and accusing him of witchcraft. He’s asking for me to come and help him.”
Anna-Maria sat up carefully in bed. “And? What are you waiting for?”
“What am I waiting for?” The hangman laughed darkly. “For you to get better. And I can’t leave my two grandchildren here all by themselves.” He took a deep drag on his pipe. “I told you about the Berchtholdts. I don’t trust them not to try to hurt the children while I’m away-if only to threaten me on account of the theft in the warehouse.”
Anna-Maria seemed to be mulling this over. For a while, the only sound was the rattle in her lungs and the distant thunder.
“Then take them along,” she said finally.
“What?” Kuisl was startled out of his gloomy thoughts.
“Peter and Paul. Take them along.”
“But… but… how would I do that?” the hangman managed. “I’ll save my friend from execution while I watch the children like an old nanny?”
“Magdalena and Simon are there, too. They can take care of them-they’re the parents, after all.”
The hangman shook his head slowly. His wife’s idea was not that bad. Martha Stechlin wouldn’t be able to care for his grandchildren at present; especially now, after Simon had left, the midwife was much too busy treating sick people in the area. Anna-Maria wasn’t the only one suffering from the fever, and Kuisl didn’t have much faith in Georg and Barbara. They were both scatterbrains and couldn’t be depended on to protect the little ones from the Berchtholdts. The only option left was his wife’s…
“If I go,” he began, “what will happen to you? You’re sick, and who will take care of you when I’m not here?”
“Martha can,” Anna-Maria replied. “She knows almost as much about healing as you. And Georg and Barbara are here, too. So why not-” Again, she had to cough.
The hangman gave his wife a worried look.”You’re the most precious thing I have, Anna,” he murmured. “I would never forgive-”
“For God’s sake, get moving!” his wife shouted. “Nepomuk was once your best friend. How often you’ve told me about him. Do you want him to burn at the stake while you’re just a few miles away brewing chamomile tea?”
“No, but-”
“Then get moving, you dolt, and take your grandchildren along.” She pulled a tattered woolen blanket around her neck and closed her eyes. “And now let me sleep. You’ll see; tomorrow I’ll be much better.”
Kuisl collapsed in a heap on a stool and stared at his sick wife. They’d been together almost thirty years. At that time, Kuisl had taken Anna-Maria from a village laid waste by his regiment near Regensburg. And even if the two quarreled and growled at each other like two old dogs, they had always been close. Their ostracism by the citizens of Schongau, their love for their children, their daily work together-all that bound them together. Kuisl would never say so, and he didn’t have to, because Anna already knew that, in his own gruff way, he loved his wife more than himself.
Softly, so as not to waken Anna-Maria, Jakob stood up from the stool. He crossed to the storeroom where he kept his medicine cabinet, a few torture instruments, and a trunkful of old weapons from the war. He hesitated briefly, then opened a weathered box he’d kept with him the last forty years. On top was a moth-eaten soldier’s uniform, its once bright colors now pale and faded. Underneath were the sword, the matchlock musket, and two well-oiled wheel-lock pistols.
Lost in thought, Kuisl passed his hands over the barrel of the guns while memories came rushing back. He closed his eyes and saw himself standing in the frontlines beside Nepomuk, his best friend, as they marched toward the Swedes…