"I have to tell you one more thing. The three men..." she whispered.

"Well?"

"They didn't leave. They just went upstairs. They must've met someone up there."

Simon nodded. Anyone in Schongau who had business to discuss would go to the Stern. And anyone who wanted to do that unseen would rent a room on an upper floor. There were side doors that saved one from even having to set foot in the bar. But whom could the three men have met up there?

"Thank you, Resl."

"There's something else..." The maid looked around furtively. Her voice was barely audible as she continued, her lips almost touching Simon's ear.

"Believe me or not, but when the tall one with the scar paid for his drinks, I saw his left hand. It was just bones. I swear to G.o.d, the devil is here in Schongau, and I've seen him."

The maid jumped when she heard her name called from the bar. With a last yearning glance at the young physician she turned away.

When the girl left, Simon's eyes wandered up the magnificent facade of the inn with its gla.s.s windows and painted stucco.

Who had the men met here?

Simon couldn't suppress a shudder. It looked as if Sophie had told the truth with her story after all. Maybe the devil really had come to Schongau.

"It's time now, Martha. You've got to get up."

Unnoticed, the hangman had stepped into the little cell. He was pulling at her coat, which she had thrown over herself as a blanket. Martha Stechlin had her eyes closed and was breathing quietly. A smile was on her lips. She seemed to be in a world that was free of fear and pain. Jakob Kuisl was sorry he had to call her back to this grim reality. Here, there was going to be a great deal of pain very soon. She had to remain strong.

"Martha, the aldermen will arrive soon."

This time he shook her. The midwife opened her eyes and looked around in bewilderment for a moment. Then she remembered where she was. She brushed her matted hair from her face, and looked around like a hunted beast.

"My G.o.d, it's going to start now..." She began to cry.

"You needn't be afraid, Martha. Today I'll only show you the tools. You've got to hold out. We'll find the murderer, and then-"

He was interrupted by a squeaking sound. The gate of the keep was opening and the light of a late afternoon sun came in. Four jailers entered and took their places along the walls. They were followed by the emissaries of the council and Johann Lechner, the court clerk. With consternation Kuisl saw the three aldermen. The prisoner was only to be shown the torture instruments today. The torture to follow needed approval from Munich, and the Elector's secretary had to be present. What if the court clerk really dared to commence the painful interrogation on his own?

Johann Lechner seemed to notice the hangman's hesitation. He nodded at him encouragingly.

"Everything's in order," he said. "The three aldermen will appear as witnesses. The faster we get this matter taken care of, the faster peace will return to our town. His Excellency, Count Sandizell, will be grateful for that."

"But..." Jakob Kuisl began. The court clerk's eyes made it quite clear that there was no point in protesting. What should he do? If nothing unexpected happened, he'd have to torture Martha Stechlin today. Unless...

Unless the witnesses arrived at a different verdict.

Kuisl knew from experience that aldermen, when they were invited to interrogations, often couldn't refrain from intervening themselves. Occasionally they cut short the interrogation if they had the feeling that there was no result to be expected in spite of the torture.

He glimpsed at the three aldermen. He knew the baker Michael Berchtholdt and young Schreevogl as well. But who was the third man?

Johann Lechner, the clerk, followed the hangman's eyes. "Alderman Matthias Augustin, the third witness, is sick," he remarked casually. "He's sending his son Georg."

Kuisl nodded as he eyed the three witnesses carefully.

Michael Berchtholdt was a great zealot before the Lord. He loved to see people tortured and was convinced that Martha Stechlin was a witch who should be burned at the stake. He was already looking her up and down with eyes full of hate and fear, as if the midwife could cast a spell over him even from a distance and turn him into a rat. The hangman grinned inwardly as he contemplated the small, wizened man, whose eyes were red-rimmed from all the brandy he drank. With his gray overcoat and rumpled fur cap he did resemble one of the mice that scurried through his bakery at night.

Young Schreevogl, who had entered the dungeon behind the baker, was considered a worthy successor to his father in the council, though he was somewhat rash at times.

Kuisl had heard from other members of the council that he did not believe Martha Stechlin was guilty.

One point for us...

Jakob Kuisl eyed this scion of Schongau's foremost family of stovemakers. With his slightly aquiline nose, domed forehead, and pale face, he looked just like the hangman's idea of a true patrician. Stovemakers produced earthenware as well as tiled stoves. The Schreevogls owned a small manufactory in town where seven journeymen made pitchers, plates, and tiles. Old Ferdinand Schreevogl had worked his way from rags to riches and always had a reputation for being a little odd. He was famous for the caricatures that adorned his tiles and that ridiculed the church, the town council, and the landowners.

After his death a year ago, his son seemed to purposefully invest his inheritance rather than wasting it. Only a week ago he had hired a new man. And only reluctantly had young Schreevogl accepted the fact that his father had bequeathed his property on Hohenfurch Road to the church. It was there that the leper house was to be built.

The young stovemaker was one of the few men in town who occasionally exchanged a few words with the hangman. Now, too, he nodded at him briefly and gave him a tight-lipped but encouraging smile.

The third witness, Georg Augustin, was more difficult for Kuisl to judge. Young Augustin was known to be a rake and so far had spent most of his time in distant Augsburg and Munich, where, according to his father, he was doing business with the electoral court. The Augustins were an influential dynasty of wagon drivers in Schongau, and Georg certainly looked the part. He dressed as a dandy with a plumed hat, baggy breeches, and boots, and his gaze went right through the hangman. With obvious interest he looked at the midwife, who was huddled up in her overcoat, shivering and rubbing her toes, which were blue with frost. It was April, but the stone walls of the prison were as cold as ice.

"Let's start." The court clerk's voice cut through the silence. "Let's go to the cellar."

The bailiffs opened a trapdoor on the ground floor. From there, stairs led down to a sooty room with coa.r.s.e stone walls. In the corner to the left there was a stained rack with a wooden wheel at the head. Next to that sat a brazier in which several pairs of pincers had been rusting away for years. Here and there, stone blocks with iron halter rings lay on the floor. A chain with a hook dangled from the ceiling. Yesterday a bailiff had brought thumbscrews and more pincers from the Ballenhaus and thrown them in a corner. In another corner there was a stack of rotting wooden chairs. The torture chamber looked neglected.

Johann Lechner looked around the room with the torch. Then he regarded the hangman reproachfully.

"Well, you could've tidied up a little in here."

Jakob Kuisl shrugged. "You were in such a great hurry." Stoically, he began to distribute the chairs. "And it's been a while since the last interrogation."

The hangman remembered it well. It had been four years since he had tied the forger Peter Leitner's hands behind his back and fastened them to the hook in the ceiling. They had tied forty-pound boulders to his feet, and then his arms broke and he whimpered his confession. Previously, Kuisl had tortured him with thumbscrews and red-hot pincers. The hangman had been convinced from the start that Leitner was guilty, just as now he was convinced that Martha Stechlin was innocent.

"G.o.dd.a.m.n you, get moving! We don't have all day!"

The clerk slouched down in one of the chairs and waited for Jakob Kuisl to find seats for everyone present. With his two enormous hands the hangman struggled to lift up a heavy oaken table and put it down hard in front of Lechner. The clerk gave him another look of disapproval, then he took out his inkwell and quills and spread a parchment scroll before him.

"Let's get started."

Meanwhile, the witnesses had taken their seats. Martha Stechlin cowered against the far wall, as though looking for a mouse hole through which to make her escape.

"Let her undress," said Johann Lechner.

Jakob Kuisl looked at him with surprise.

"But didn't you first-"

"I said, let her undress. We want to search her for witches' marks. If we find any, we'll have proof she's guilty and the interrogation can proceed all the more swiftly."

Two bailiffs approached the midwife, who was huddled in a corner, her arms crossed in front of her. The baker Michael Berchtholdt licked his thin lips. He was going to get his show today.

Jakob Kuisl swore silently. He hadn't expected that. Searching for witches' marks was a common way of hunting down witches. If there were strangely shaped birthmarks on a suspect's body, that was taken as a sign from the devil. Often the hangman would then perform the needle test and push a needle into the putative witch's suspicious birthmark. If no blood came out, she was certain to be a witch. Kuisl knew that his grandfather had ways to avoid bleeding during the needle test. That way, the trial was over sooner, and the hangman got his pay sooner.

The sound of ripping fabric interrupted his thought. One of the bailiffs had torn off Martha's stinking, soiled garment. Underneath, the midwife was pale and skinny. Bruises on her thighs and forearms bore witness to yesterday morning's fight with Josef Grimmer. She pressed back against the cellar wall, trying to cover her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and genitals with her hands.

The bailiff pulled her up by her hair. She screamed. Jakob Kuisl saw how Michael Berchtholdt's little red eyes groped the midwife's body like fingers.

"Is that really necessary? At least give her a chair!" Jakob Schreevogl had jumped to his feet and tried to restrain the bailiffs, but the clerk pulled him down again.

"We want to discover the truth. And for that we have to do it. And well, all right, let the Stechlin woman have a chair."

Reluctantly, the bailiff pushed a chair to the center of the room and sat the midwife down on it. Her frightened eyes darted back and forth between the clerk and the hangman.

"Cut off her hair," said Lechner. "We want to look for witches' marks there as well."

As the bailiff was stepping toward her with a knife, Kuisl quickly grabbed the weapon from his hand.

"I'll do that."

Cautiously he cut off the midwife's straggly hair. Tufts of it fell to the ground around the chair. Martha Stechlin wept softly.

"Don't be afraid, Martha," he whispered into her ear. "I won't hurt you. Not today."

Johann Lechner cleared his throat. "Hangman, I want you to search this woman for witches' marks. Everywhere."

The baker Berchtholdt leaned over toward the clerk.

"You don't really believe he's going to find anything," he muttered. "He's hand in glove with the Stechlin woman. I've seen it myself how she slips him herbs and goodness knows what else. And Keusslin's milkmaid told me that-"

"Master Berchtholdt, we really haven't got the time for your explanations." Johann Lechner turned away in disgust to avoid the baker's foul breath. He considered Berchtholdt a drunkard and a braggart, but at least he could trust him in this matter. He wasn't that certain, though, about his second witness...Therefore he turned to Berchtholdt again.

"If it helps us establish the truth, however, we will heed your counsel," he said encouragingly. "Master Augustin, will you kindly a.s.sist the hangman in his search?"

Contently, the baker leaned back in his chair as he kept eyeing the prisoner. Meanwhile the powerful wagon driver's son rose with a shrug and slowly strolled toward the midwife. His countenance was finely chiseled and pale, as if he had seen little sun. His eyes sparkled icy blue. He looked upon Martha Stechlin almost with disinterest. Then his index finger softly moved over her skinny body, circling each breast, and finally stopped above her navel.

"Turn around," he whispered.

Trembling, the midwife turned around. His finger glided across the nape of her neck and her shoulders. It paused on the right shoulder blade and tapped on a birthmark that actually seemed larger than the others.

"What do you think of this?"

The wagon driver looked straight in the eyes of the hangman, who had been standing alongside him the whole time.

Jakob Kuisl shrugged. "It's a birthmark. What am I supposed to think?"

Augustin wouldn't give up. Kuisl had the feeling that there was a slight smirk on his lips. "Didn't the two dead children bear this kind of mark on their shoulders as well?"

The clerk and the baker sprang to their feet, and even young Schreevogl came closer, curious to inspect the mark.

Jakob Kuisl blinked and looked more closely. The brown spot was indeed larger than the other birthmarks and tapered to a fine line at the bottom. A few black hairs grew out of it.

The men stood in a circle around Martha Stechlin. The midwife seemed to have given in to her fate and allowed herself to be inspected like a calf at the slaughterhouse. A few times she whimpered softly.

"So they did," whispered the clerk as he stooped over the mark. "It does resemble the devil's sign..." The baker Berchtholdt nodded eagerly and crossed himself. Only Jakob Schreevogl shook his head.

"If this is a witches' mark, you have to burn me along with her."

The young patrician had unb.u.t.toned his shirt and pointed to a brown spot on his chest, which was covered with downy hair. Indeed this birthmark too was shaped rather strangely. "I've had this thing since the day I was born, and n.o.body has yet called me a sorcerer."

The clerk shook his head and turned away from the midwife. "This isn't getting us anywhere. Kuisl, show her the instruments. And explain what we're going to do if she doesn't tell us the truth."

Jakob Kuisl looked deep into Martha Stechlin's eyes. Then he took the pincers from the brazier and approached her. The miracle had not occurred, and he would have to begin the torturing.

At this very moment, the great bell in the tower started ringing the alarm.

CHAPTER 6.

THURSDAY.

APRIL 26, 26, A.D A.D. 1659.

FOUR O'CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON SIMON TOOK A DEEP BREATH OF SPRING AIR. FOR the first time in days, he felt fully free. At a distance he could hear the rushing of the river, and the fields were lovely in their rich green. Snowdrops shone between the birches and beeches, which had already started to blossom. Only in the shady patches between the trees could traces of snow still be seen. the first time in days, he felt fully free. At a distance he could hear the rushing of the river, and the fields were lovely in their rich green. Snowdrops shone between the birches and beeches, which had already started to blossom. Only in the shady patches between the trees could traces of snow still be seen.

He was strolling with Magdalena through the meadows above the Lech, on a footpath so narrow that he and Magdalena touched each other from time to time as if by chance. Twice she had nearly fallen, and each time she had held on to him for support. Longer than was in fact necessary.

After the conversation in the Stern, Simon had hurried down to the river. He needed a quiet moment to think things over and fresh air to breathe. He should have been mixing tinctures for his father, but that could very well wait until tomorrow. In any case Simon preferred to keep out of his father's way now. Even at the deathbed of the poor Kratz boy they had not spoken. The old man had still not forgiven him for leaving the house to visit the executioner. Sometime, as Simon knew, his anger would blow over, but until then it would be better not to get in his way too often. Simon sighed. His father came from a different world, a world in which the dissection of corpses was considered blasphemous and the treatment of the sick consisted exclusively of purges, cuppings, and the administration of evil-smelling pills. He remembered something his father had said at the burial of a plague victim: "G.o.d decides when we shall die. We should not meddle in His handiwork."

Simon wanted to do things quite differently. He wanted to meddle in the Lord G.o.d's handiwork.

Down by the Lech Gate he met Magdalena, whose mother had sent her to gather wild garlic in the wetlands. She smiled at him in that way again, and he simply followed her. A few washerwomen were standing on the Lech Bridge; he could feel how they were staring at him, but that didn't bother him.

All afternoon they rambled through the forest down by the river. When her hand brushed against his again, he suddenly felt hot. His scalp began to tingle. What was it about this girl that disturbed him so? Was it perhaps the charm of what was forbidden? He knew that he and Magdalena could never become a couple. Not in Schongau, not in this stuffy hole, where only a small suspicion was enough to send a woman to the stake. Simon frowned. Dark thoughts arose like thunderclouds.

"Is there something wrong?" Magdalena stopped and looked at him. She sensed that something was troubling him.

"It is...oh, nothing."

"Tell me, or we'll go back at once, and I'll never see you again."

Simon had to smile. "A terrible threat. Even if I believe you would never do it."

"You wait and see. Well, then, what is it?"

"It's...about the boys."