She still shook her head. The hangman turned the screw still tighter. No movement, only her lips became narrower, a pale red streak like a closed door.

"d.a.m.n it, are you s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g it up properly?" Michael Berchtholdt asked the hangman. Jakob Kuisl nodded. As proof, he opened the screw and held the tortured woman's arm up. Her thumb was one blue bruise, and blood seeped out from under the thumbnail.

"The devil is helping her," whispered the baker. "Lord G.o.d, protect us..."

"We shan't get any further like this." Johann Lechner shook his head and put the quill, with which he intended to make notes, back on the table. "Bailiffs, bring me the chest."

Two of the town watchmen handed the clerk a small chest, which he lifted to the table and opened.

"Look here, witch," he said. "All these are things we found in your house. What have you to say about them?"

To the astonishment of Jakob Schreevogl and the others he produced a small bag out of the chest, poured some dark brown seeds into his hand and showed them to the witnesses. The stovemaker's son took a few between his fingers. They smelled slightly of rotting flesh and their shape somewhat resembled caraway seeds.

"Henbane seeds," said the court clerk, as if he was delivering a lecture. "An important ingredient of the flying salve that witches spread on their broomsticks."

Jakob Schreevogl shrugged. "My father also used it to flavor his beer, and you aren't going to describe him, G.o.d rest his soul, as a sorcerer."

"Are you blind?" hissed Lechner. "The proof is clear. Here!" He held up a spiny capsule that looked something like a chestnut. "A thorn apple! Also an ingredient for the witches' salve, and also found at Stechlin's house. And here!" He showed them a bunch of small white flowers. "h.e.l.lebores! What they call Christmas roses! Freshly gathered. Also a witches' herb!"

"Excuse me for interrupting you," Jakob Schreevogl broke in again. "But isn't the Christmas rose a plant that is supposed to protect us from evil? Even our reverend parish priest recently praised it in his homily as a sign of new life and resurrection. Not for nothing does it bear the name of our Savior..."

"What are you, Schreevogl?" Georg Augustin interjected. "A witness or her advocate? This woman was with the children, and the children are dead or have disappeared. In her house we find the most devilish herbs and mixtures. She is scarcely imprisoned when the Stadel burns down and the devil stalks through our town. It all began with her, and with her it will come to an end."

"Exactly, you'll see in a minute," Berchtholdt scolded. "Turn the screw tighter, then she'll confess. The devil himself is holding his protecting hand over her. I have an elixir made from Saint-John's-wort here..." He produced a small bottle containing a bright, blood-red liquid and held it up triumphantly. "This'll drive the devil out. Just let me pour it down her gullet, the witch!"

"G.o.d Almighty! I don't know who is the biggest witch here," cried Jakob Schreevogl. "The midwife or the baker!"

"Quiet!" thundered the clerk. "It can't go on like this. Executioner, pull her up on the rope. Let's see if the devil will help here there too."

Martha Stechlin appeared increasingly apathetic. Her head nodded again and again to the front and her eyeb.a.l.l.s seemed to be turned strangely inward. Jakob Schreevogl asked himself if she was actually aware of what was happening around her. Without attempting any resistance, she let herself be pulled to her feet by the hangman and dragged to the rope that was dangling from an iron ring in the ceiling further in the rear of the cell. At the end of the rope there was a hook. The hangman attached this to the manacles with which the midwife's arms were tied behind her back.

"Shall I tie a stone to her underneath?" Kuisl asked the court clerk. His face was remarkably pale, but otherwise he appeared calm and collected.

Johann Lechner shook his head. "No, no, we'll try it as it is at first, then we'll see later."

The hangman pulled on one end of the rope, so that the ground slipped from under the midwife's feet. Her body bent forward a little and began to bob up and down. Something cracked. She moaned quietly. The court clerk recommenced his questions.

"Martha Stechlin, I ask you once more. Do you confess to having taken the poor lad Peter Grimmer and..."

At this moment a shudder went through the midwife's body. She began to twitch and to shake her head wildly back and forward. Saliva flowed from her mouth; her face was turning blue.

"My G.o.d, look," cried baker Berchtholdt. "The devil's in her! He wants to get out!"

All the witnesses, even the clerk, had jumped up to see the spectacle close up. The hangman had lowered the woman to the ground again, where she writhed in cramps. She reared up one more time, then she collapsed completely, her head turned to one side at an odd angle.

For a moment n.o.body said anything.

At last young Augustin spoke. "Is she dead?" he asked, intrigued.

Jakob Kuisl bent over her and put his ear to her breast. He shook his head.

"Her heart's still beating."

"Then wake her up again, so that we can continue," said Johannn Lechner.

Jakob Schreevogl was very near to hitting him in the face.

"How dare you!" he cried. "This woman is ill, can't you see that? She needs help!"

"Nonsense! The devil has gone out of her, that's all!" said baker Berchtholdt and fell to his knees. "He's surely still here in this room somewhere. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee..."

"Executioner! You will wake this woman up again! Do you understand?" The clerk's voice had taken on a rather shrill tone. "And you..." He turned to the frightened bailiffs behind him. "You fetch me a physician, and quickly!" The bailiffs ran upstairs, relieved to be able to escape from this h.e.l.lish place.

Jakob Kuisl took a bucket of water that was standing in the corner and dashed it in the midwife's face. There was no movement. Then he began to ma.s.sage her chest and pat her cheeks. When all this proved of no avail, he reached into the chest behind him and brought out a bottle of brandy, some of which he forced her to swallow. The rest he poured on her chest and began to knead it.

Only minutes later steps were heard on the stairs. The bailiffs were returning with Simon Fronwieser, whom they had met outside on the street.

Standing alongside the hangman, he bent down to the midwife and pinched her on the upper arm. Then he took out a needle and thrust it deep into her flesh. When she still didn't move, he held a small mirror to her nose. The gla.s.s clouded over.

"She's alive," he told Johann Lechner. "But she's in a deep swoon, and heaven alone knows when she'll wake up from it."

The court clerk let himself fall back in his chair and rubbed his graying temples. Finally he shrugged. "Then we can't examine her further. We'll have to wait."

Georg Augustin looked at him in amazement. "But the Elector's secretary...He'll be here in a couple of days and we have to present him with a culprit!"

Michael Berchtholdt, too, was pleading with the clerk: "Don't you know what's going on out there? The devil is about. We've seen it for ourselves. People want us to finish..."

"d.a.m.n it!" Johann Lechner pounded the table with his hand. "I know that myself! But at the moment we just can't continue with the questioning. Not even the devil will get a word out of her! Do you expect an unconscious woman to confess? We'll have to wait. And now everybody, up and out, all of you!"

Simon and Jakob Kuisl carried the unconscious midwife back to her cell and covered her up. Her face was no longer blue but chalk-white, her eyelids fluttered, and her breath came steadily. Simon looked at the hangman from one side.

"That was you, wasn't it?" he asked. "You gave her something to stop the torture and to give us more time. And then you told your wife to ask me to wait outside after midday so that the bailiffs would fetch me me and not my father, who perhaps might have noticed something..." and not my father, who perhaps might have noticed something..."

The hangman smiled. "A few plants, a few berries...She knew them all, she knew what she was letting herself in for. It could have gone wrong."

Simon looked at the pallid face of the midwife. "You mean?"

Jakob Kuisl nodded. "Mandrake roots, there's nothing better. I...we found some, luckily. They are very rare. You don't feel pain, the body relaxes, and the sufferings of this world are only shadowy figures on a distant sh.o.r.e. My father used to give this drink to poor sinners. However..."

He rubbed his dark beard thoughtfully.

"I put in perhaps almost too much monkshood this time. I wanted it to look real, right to the end. Just a bit more of it and the Lord G.o.d would have taken her. Now, good. We have at least gained a little time."

"How long?"

The hangman shrugged. "After one or two days, the paralysis will disappear and she can open her eyes again. And then..." He stroked the face of the sleeping Martha Stechlin once more before leaving the keep.

"And then, I fear, I shall have to hurt her very much," he said. His broad back filled the entire door frame.

CHAPTER 9.

SAt.u.r.dAY.

APRIL 28, 28, A.D A.D. 1659.

NINE O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING THE NEXT MORNING, THE PHYSICIAN AND THE hangman were sitting together in the Kuisl house over two mugs of weak beer, thinking about everything that had happened in the past few days. Simon had thought all night long about the unconscious midwife, realizing how little time they had left. He silently sipped his beer while next to him Jakob Kuisl chewed on his pipe. Magdalena's constant comings and goings in the room to fetch water or to feed the chickens under the bench didn't make thinking any easier. At one point she came and knelt down right in front of Simon and her hand brushed over his thigh as if by chance, causing a shiver to run through his body. hangman were sitting together in the Kuisl house over two mugs of weak beer, thinking about everything that had happened in the past few days. Simon had thought all night long about the unconscious midwife, realizing how little time they had left. He silently sipped his beer while next to him Jakob Kuisl chewed on his pipe. Magdalena's constant comings and goings in the room to fetch water or to feed the chickens under the bench didn't make thinking any easier. At one point she came and knelt down right in front of Simon and her hand brushed over his thigh as if by chance, causing a shiver to run through his body.

Jakob Kuisl had told him that his daughter was the one who found the mandrake root in the forest. Ever since then Simon had become even more attracted to her. This girl was not only gorgeous, she was also clever. What a pity that women were barred from entering the university. Simon was sure that Magdalena would have had no trouble holding her own in her studies against all those learned quacks.

"Would you like another beer?" asked the hangman's daughter, winking and filling up his tankard without waiting for an answer. Her smile reminded Simon that there was more to this world than missing children and self-appointed inquisitors. He smiled back at her. Then his thoughts returned to gloomier things.

The night before he had to accompany his father on a house call. Haltenberger's farmhand had come down with a bad fever. They'd given him cold compresses, and Simon's father had bled him. Simon was at least able to convince his father to use some of that ominous powder that had previously helped several times with fever and supposedly came from the bark of a rare tree. The patient's symptoms reminded him of another case in which a wagon driver from Venice had collapsed on the street in their town. A foul odor had come from the man's mouth, and his entire body was covered with pustules. People spoke of the French disease, and that the devil used it to punish those who indulged in unchaste love.

Simon would gladly have indulged in unchaste love last night, but during his rendezvous with Magdalena later on in a secret corner by the town wall, she had only wanted to talk about Goodwife Stechlin. She, too, was convinced of the midwife's innocence. Once he had tried to touch her bodice, but she had turned away. At his next attempt the night watchman had discovered them and sent them home. It was way past eight o'clock in the evening, and at that time young girls were no longer allowed out on the streets. Simon had the feeling of having missed a crucial moment, and he was not sure if luck would soon bring him another. Perhaps his father was right and he should keep his hands off the hangman's daughter. Simon was not sure if she was only toying with him or whether she really cared for him.

Jakob Kuisl couldn't fully concentrate on his work that morning either. While Simon sat there sipping weak beer and staring out the window, he mixed a salve of dried herbs and goose fat. He kept putting the pestle aside to fill his pipe. Anna Maria, his wife, was out in the field, and the twins were rollicking under the kitchen table, a few times almost knocking over the mortar. He scolded them and sent them outside into the yard. Georg and Barbara trotted off, pouting, but knowing full well that their father could not stay angry at them for long.

Simon leafed through the well-thumbed book the hangman had lying open on the table. Simon had returned two of his books and was eager to learn new things. The tome before him was not necessarily going to provide that. Dioscorides's De materia medica De materia medica was still the standard text of the healing arts even though its author, a Greek physician, had lived in the days of our Savior. Also at the university in Ingolstadt they were still teaching his methods. Simon sighed. He had the feeling that humanity was running in place. So many centuries and they had not learned anything new. was still the standard text of the healing arts even though its author, a Greek physician, had lived in the days of our Savior. Also at the university in Ingolstadt they were still teaching his methods. Simon sighed. He had the feeling that humanity was running in place. So many centuries and they had not learned anything new.

He was still surprised that Kuisl owned this book as well. In the hangman's wooden chest and medicine cabinet there were over a dozen books and innumerable parchments, among these the writings of the Benedictine nun Hildegard of Bingen and newer texts on the circulation of blood or on the location of organs in the body. Even such a recent text as Ambroise Pare's Writings on Anatomy and Surgery Writings on Anatomy and Surgery in a German translation was among them. Simon did not believe that any Schongau citizen owned more books than the hangman, not even the court clerk, who had a reputation as a great scholar in town. in a German translation was among them. Simon did not believe that any Schongau citizen owned more books than the hangman, not even the court clerk, who had a reputation as a great scholar in town.

As Simon leafed through the Greek's text he wondered why he and the hangman could not simply leave the case of the midwife alone. Probably it was precisely this rejection of the obvious, this continuous probing prompted by curiosity, that created a bond between them. That, and a good portion of obstinacy, he thought with a smile.

All of a sudden his finger stopped on a page. Next to a drawing of the human body there were drawings of a few symbols for alchemistic ingredients. One of them showed a triangle with a squiggle below.

It was the old symbol for sulfur.

Simon knew it from his university days, but now he remembered where he had last seen this symbol. It was the symbol that the linen weaver Andreas Dangler had shown him, the same symbol that his foster child Sophie had drawn in the dirt in their backyard.

Simon pushed the book across the table to Jakob Kuisl, who was still crushing herbs in the mortar.

"This is the old symbol I told you about! The symbol Sophie drew! Now I recognize it again!"

The hangman looked at the page and nodded.

"Sulfur...the stink of the devil and of his playmates."

"I wonder if they really...?" Simon asked.

Jakob Kuisl chewed on his pipe. "First the Venus symbol, and now the symbol for sulfur...well, it is strange."

"Where did Sophie learn such symbols?" Simon asked. "Only from the midwife. She must have told her and the other children about them. Perhaps she did teach them witchcraft after all." He sighed. "Unfortunately we can no longer ask her about it, in any case not now."

"Nonsense," the hangman growled. "The Stechlin woman is no more witch than I am. The children probably discovered the symbols in her room, in a book, on vials, bottles, who knows where."

Simon shook his head. "The symbol for sulfur maybe," he said. "But the Venus symbol, the witches' symbol? You said yourself that you've never seen such a symbol in her house. And if you had, then she would be a witch after all, wouldn't she?"

The hangman continued crushing the herbs in the mortar even though they had long been ground into a green paste.

"The Stechlin woman is no witch, and that's that," he growled. "Let's forget about her, and instead find the devil who is going through our town and kidnapping the children. Sophie, Clara, and Johannes, they've all disappeared. Where are they? I'm sure that when we find them we'll also find the solution to the puzzle."

"That is, if the children are still alive," mumbled Simon. Then he became lost again in his reveries.

"Sophie did see the devil. It was down by the river," he said finally, "and he asked about the Kratz boy. Not long after that, the boy was dead. The man was tall, he had a coat and a hat with a feather in it and a scar across his face. Also he is said to have had a hand made of bone, at least that's what the girl thinks she saw..."

Jakob Kuisl interrupted him. "The serving girl at Semer's inn also saw a man with a skeleton hand in the lounge."

"True," said Simon. "That was a few days earlier, together with a few other men. The maid said they looked like soldiers. Then they went upstairs to meet someone there. But who was that?"

The hangman sc.r.a.ped the paste from the mortar into a jar, which he sealed with a piece of leather.

"I don't like it when soldiers hang around our town," he growled. "Soldiers only bring trouble. They drink, they rob, they destroy."

"Speaking of destruction..." said Simon. "Schreevogl told me the night before last that not only is the Stadel destroyed, but on the same evening someone was at the building site for the leper house. Everything was razed to the ground there. Could that too have been the work of the Augsburgers?"

Jakob Kuisl dismissed this with a wave of the hand. "Hardly," he said. "They'll only welcome a leper house here. Then they hope that fewer travelers will stop in our town."

"Well, then perhaps it's wagon drivers from somewhere else who are afraid of catching leprosy in pa.s.sing by," remarked Simon. "After all, the trade route runs not far from the Hohenfurch Road."

Jakob Kuisl spat. "Well, I know plenty of Schongauers who are just as afraid of that. The church wants the leper house, but the patricians are against it because they fear that business travelers will stay well clear of our little town..."

Simon shook his head. "And yet there are leper houses in many large cities, even in Regensburg and Augsburg..."

The hangman walked over to the apothecary's closet to put away the jar. "Our moneybags are cowardly dogs," he told Simon over his shoulder. "Some of them come and go regularly here at my house, and they tremble when the plague is still in Venice!"

When he returned he was carrying a larchwood truncheon about the length of his arm over his shoulder and grinning. "We need to take a closer look at that leper house in any case. I get the feeling that too many things are happening all at once for it to be a coincidence."

"Right away?" Simon asked.

"Right away," Jakob Kuisl said, swinging his truncheon. "Perhaps the devil is making his rounds out there. I've always wanted to give him a good thrashing."

He squeezed his ma.s.sive body through the narrow door opening to the outside, into the April morning. Simon shivered with cold. It wouldn't be surprising if even the devil were afraid of the Schongau hangman.

The building site for the leper house was located in a clearing right next to the Hohenfurch Road less than half an hour's travel from the town. Simon had watched the workmen more than once as he pa.s.sed the site. They had already set the foundations and raised brick walls. The doctor remembered having seen wooden scaffolding and a roof truss the last time. The ground walls of the little chapel next to it had also been completed.

Simon recalled how the priest had often mentioned with pride in his sermons during recent months the progress being made on the construction. In building the leper house, the church was fulfilling a long-held wish: it had always been its basic mission to care for the poor and the sick. Besides, the highly contagious lepers were a danger to the entire town. So far they had always been shunted off to the leper house in Augsburg. But the Augsburgers had enough lepers of their own, and lately they had only reluctantly accepted more. Schongau didn't want to plead for their help in the future. The new leper house would be a symbol of munic.i.p.al independence, even if many in the council were opposed to its construction.

Not much was to be seen now of that once-busy building site. Many of the walls had collapsed as if someone had rammed them as hard as they could. The truss was now a sooty skeleton reaching up to the sky, and most of the wooden scaffolds were smashed or burnt. A smell of wet ashes hung in the air. An abandoned cart loaded with wood and barrels was stuck in a ditch at the side of the road.

In one corner of the clearing there was an old well made of natural stone. A group of craftsmen were sitting on the edge, staring in complete bewilderment at the destruction. The work of weeks, if not months, was destroyed. The construction had been a living for these men, and their future was now uncertain. As of yet, the church had not said what was going to be done.