Oliver Potzsch - The Poisoned Pilgrim

After hesitating briefly, Kuisl hurried past the wet, mud-spattered pews as the wind continued to howl above him. He had no time for idle speculations. If his assumptions were right, his two beloved grandchildren were up above, at the mercy of the hail, lightning, and rain. Virgilius would wish he’d never been born.

Kuisl ran up the stairs to the balcony and, from there, up another stairway into the tower. Even now, after a full two weeks, work was far from finished. The storm whistled through the open windows, and the narrow, newly built stairs up to the belfry were steep, slippery, and groaning in the wind. The higher Kuisl climbed, the more the entire tower seemed to sway back and forth.

When he got just a few yards beneath the belfry, he stopped and listened. Thunder rumbled and lightning flashed, but amid the constant drumming of the rain, he thought he heard a shrill voice. Indeed, as he climbed higher, he could hear it more clearly.

“Hurry up,” a man screeched directly above him. “Before the storm passes. Didn’t I tell you yesterday to nail the device down? Now the storm has blown it over, and we’re losing valuable time.”

The only answer was a deep grumble, followed by the sound of a hammer pounding and a child crying.

Kuisl winced. His grandchildren were up there, and the second man was evidently Virgilius’s assistant. Cautiously, he crept up the last few steps and stuck his head through the opening into the floor of the belfry.

At first, all he could see were three bronze bells hanging between the iron-clad beams of the belfry. Fresh, new spruce flooring had been put down, but the walls were still covered with soot from the disastrous fire a few weeks before. Behind a knee-high railing on the east side, rain blew into the room through a gaping hole.

Once Kuisl had finally hoisted himself all the way through the opening, he could just barely make out behind the bells the back of a broad-shouldered man who was nailing a sort of bier upright against the wall. The wooden board was fitted with metal clamps like the ones Kuisl knew from torture racks, and a heavy wire dangled from the ceiling, connected with clamps to smaller wires.

To the left of the bier stood three people looking like a surreal caricature of a family in the raging wind: alongside the hunchback Virgilius was a distinguished looking lady with a red cape and blond hair blowing beneath a lopsided bonnet. She seemed strangely stiff, and it took Kuisl a moment to realize she was actually a life-size puppet.

Paul was clinging to the watchmaker’s arms, sobbing.

At first Kuisl wanted to rush out onto the platform screaming, but then he stopped to think this through. The risk was simply too great that Virgilius would harm the child, even throw him off the tower. The hangman decided therefore to sneak up close to the group and wait for a better opportunity. Cautiously he crept behind the belfry cage to watch.

After the broad-shouldered man finished his work, he hooked the hammer onto his belt and turned to Virgilius. Kuisl bit his lip when he finally saw the man’s face.

It was the knacker’s assistant, Matthias.

What a dirty trick these rascals played on you, involving you in this mess, young fellow, the hangman thought grimly. It would have been better if the Croatian mercenaries had killed you-it would have spared me the job now.

But Kuisl was astonished by what he saw on Matthias’s face. The young man’s eyes were strangely empty and red. It almost seemed that what was running over his cheeks were not raindrops but tears.

“What are you waiting for?” shouted Virgilius now against the storm. “Place Aurora in the bier as we discussed.” Then he lowered his voice and attempted a smile. “You do want your tongue back, don’t you? I can get it back for you. Just as I can breathe life into this puppet, I can give you back your voice, as well. Believe me! If you start doubting now that we are so close to our goal, all will be in vain.”

As Matthias approached the automaton hesitantly, he continued to look back at Paul. The boy stretched out his little arms toward the mute assistant, and his cries turned into screams that even drowned out the thunder.

“Damn it, I tell you nothing will happen to the boy,” Virgilius shouted when he saw the anxious expression on Matthias’s face. He was rocking the child mechanically, but the motion didn’t calm the boy down. “He’s only my hostage. As soon as all this is over, you can have the brat again. I promise. Now get to work quickly, before the lightning strikes.”

Matthias grumbled and nodded, then picked up the puppet with his powerful arms and leaned her against the bier. The clamps snapped shut around her stiff arms and legs; then the assistant attached the thin wires to the clamps and placed another wire around Aurora’s porcelain neck like a noose.

Evidently Virgilius had applied makeup to the automaton in preparation for its last great scene, because black and red trickles of makeup ran down her waxen face. Grinning, she looked out at a storm raging in full fury over the church steeple.

“Now all we need to do is wait for the right moment,” Virgilius shouted over the noise, dancing wildly like a dervish. “The lightning will enter the wire, pass through my beloved Aurora, and then-”

A loud crack was followed by an earsplitting rumble. The strike, which must have hit very nearby, was so powerful that Kuisl instinctively jumped to one side. From the corner of his eye, he saw that Virgilius, his eyes wide with hatred, had spotted him behind the bells.

“Aha, do you see now why I need the child as a hostage?” he screamed, turning to Matthias. “This hangman and his whole damned family. When you first told me about them, I knew they would give me trouble. Didn’t I tell you a dozen times to get rid of that inquisitive woman?”

Now Matthias had seen the hangman, as well. He stood uncertainly in the middle of the platform, surrounded by the raging storm like a rock in the sea. He seemed paralyzed with indecision.

“Get him, Matthias,” Virgilius roared. “He wants to destroy our plan. Don’t you understand? Think about your voice.”

Kuisl stood up behind the belfry, looking calmly into the tearful eyes of the knacker’s boy, raising his hands in a gesture of friendship. “You know this is wrong, don’t you, Matthias?” Kuisl said. “You can’t fool me. I’m a hangman. I’ve seen many murderers, but you are not one-at least not a murderer of children.” Cautiously, he advanced toward the silent assistant, who was still frozen in place. “If you overcome me in a fight, this madman will make short work of the boy-he will throw him from the tower. The boy means something to him only as long as he can use him to blackmail me. And you mean nothing to him, either.”

“That’s… that’s not true, Matthias,” Virgilius interrupted. “Think how I cared for you when you were young. Haven’t I taught you everything, the writing, the experiments, the apparatuses? Haven’t I given you a language to use for making yourself understood even without a tongue?”

The watchmaker clung tightly to the screaming and struggling Paul. “Yes, he’s crying now,” he continued unctuously. “He’s afraid-that’s understandable-but you, too, were afraid when you came to my laboratory the first time. Do you remember? You were a small, mute child without parents, an outcast, ridiculed by others, and I was the first to give you something that makes you a better person than all these boors. Knowledge. And if you’re patient just a while longer, I’ll give you back your voice. Aurora, you, and I will be a family. We’ll adopt this boy and-”

“Where’s my second grandchild, you monster?” the hangman shouted, approaching Virgilius with a menacing look. Paul saw his grandfather now and tried to squirm out of the grip of the hunchback, but Virgilius held him in a vicelike grip.