Oliver Potzsch: The Poisoned Pilgrim

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Jakob Kuisl growled, drawing on his pipe. “I’ve got to say Master Hans really did a thorough job. It will no doubt take a week to get a bag of maggots like you back in shape.”

“Indeed.” The Weilheim executioner at his side smiled. “A masterpiece, but unfortunately your friend was too stubborn. You could have saved yourself a lot of grief if you had just confessed, but I can also cure you for a price.”

Kuisl declined for his friend. “Never mind, Hans. You’re perhaps better at torturing, but I can take care of the healing. That requires something the dear Lord unfortunately didn’t give you.”

“And what would that be?”

“A heart.”

Kuisl handed the astonished executioner a few coins. “Take these, and leave us alone for a moment. Get out of my sight.”

With a shrug Master Hans shuffled out into the hall, where he tossed the coins in the air and deftly caught them. “You were always too soft for this line of work, Kuisl,” he called back into the dungeon. “Too much feeling just leads to bad dreams. What’s wrong, Kuisl? Do you have bad dreams?”

Without bothering to reply, Kuisl walked toward his friend crouching on the hard dirt floor in front of him. He pulled Nepomuk to him like a child and embraced him.

“It’s over, Nepomuk,” he whispered. “It’s over.”

“Over…? Over?” The fat monk stared at his friend in disbelief. His eyes were still swollen from being beaten by the Andechs hunters, and flies were circling his bloodied lips. “Do you mean I’m… free?”

“I’m not able to take you myself,” the hangman replied in a steady voice, “but the Andechs abbot swore to me by all that’s holy that he will get you out of here soon.” Kuisl grinned. “The noble gentleman owes me a favor. Without me, someone would have taken his place as abbot.”

A long, shrill shout of pain could be heard in the distance. Nepomuk trembled. “My God, who was that?” he gasped.

“Oh, I’m afraid that was the abbot’s replacement. Brother Jeremias and Brother Benedikt have already confessed to everything, but Master Hans hopes to squeeze a few more things out of them. After all, he’s paid on commission.” For a moment, Nepomuk could only look at his friend with his mouth open. He had to pinch himself to make sure he wasn’t dreaming.

“Do you mean the… the Andechs prior is over there…” he stammered.

Kuisl set him down gently again on the ground. “That’s a long story, and I’ll tell you all about it, but first let’s relax a bit in this stinking hole.” With a wink, he took out another long-stemmed pipe and a pouch of wine he had under his coat.

“I thought we could perhaps chat a little about old times,” he said warmly. “After all, that’s what I promised you the last time we met in the Andechs dungeon. Do you remember?” He offered Nepomuk the pipe and the full pouch of wine.

“To our friendship,” he said.

“To our friendship,” replied the apothecary.

Nepomuk looked at the hangman wearily, his swollen eyes filling with tears that had nothing to do with the dense tobacco smoke.

SOMEWHERE NEAR SCHONGAU ON TUESDAY, JUNE 22, 1666 AD

On Tuesday morning at eight o’clock, Jakob Kuisl knelt before a plain wayside shrine not far from his hometown. The cross, overgrown with ivy, stood a ways back from the road so the hangman didn’t fear being discovered by anyone. Kuisl hadn’t prayed for a long time, and his words came haltingly. “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name…”

He thought of the mad woman in the Kien Valley who had demanded he seek penance. So much had happened in recent decades-he had accumulated such a burden of guilt-that a simple prayer simply couldn’t suffice.

But this was at least a start.

“For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen.”

The hangman crossed himself, stood up with a groan, and continued along the road from Peiting to Schongau.

He’d stayed all day with his friend Nepomuk in Weilheim: they drank and smoked together, and above all, they told stories from the Great War. Kuisl had cleaned Nepomuk’s wounds, covered them with ointment, and wrapped them in bandages. From years of experience, he knew the wounds would heal in a few weeks but the emotional scars would remain. In his dreams, Nepomuk would be haunted by the torture for the rest of his life.

Finally, after the hangman promised to visit his friend again soon, he had set out at a leisurely pace toward Schongau in the shadow of the Hoher Pei?enberg. Magdalena, Simon, and the children had gone directly home from Andechs, and Kuisl assumed they would arrive home before him.

When he saw the silhouette of the town gleaming before him in the morning sun, a strange familiarity came over him. People here in the town on the other side of the river had never cared for him, they avoided looking at him, and those who sought out his healing services mostly did so in secret. After buying a talisman, a love potion, or a piece of a noose, they would cross themselves and proceeded to confession. But despite all that, this small, dirty, ugly town was his home.

He had none other.

Lost in his thoughts, he crossed the bridge and took a narrow, shaded path below the city wall. His prayer earlier in the forest had left him with a pleasant, unfamiliar feeling of security. But then his thoughts turned to his two younger children, the twins Georg and Barbara, and whether they had been able to control those rowdy Berchtholdt boys after his departure. Had they performed his duties as executioner-removed the garbage in the streets and carted it out of town?

But above all, he thought of his sick wife, Anna-Maria. Was she still trembling with fever? He remembered her cough had gotten a little better before he left. He’d thought of Anna often in recent days, especially when he became angry or impatient, and wondered what she would do in his place. Anna-Maria could be just as temperamental as her husband, but she always kept a cool head at the critical moment. Especially before executions, which often robbed him of sleep at night, she had always been a pillar of strength and had kept him from getting drunk.

The hangman started walking faster. He passed the outlying sheds and homes of the Tanners’ Quarter, which was crowded between the Lech and the city wall. Now in the early afternoon, many men were out in the streets, hanging foul-smelling leather hides out to dry on poles and frames. Women were standing by the river, washing and chatting. When they saw Kuisl, they turned and whispered among themselves. The hangman was accustomed to such behavior, but something seemed especially strange about it today. Almost as if they pitied him.

What in God’s name …

Finally he reached his house, which stood somewhat off the road near a large pond. Alongside it was a shed for the knacker’s carts, and by the entrance, a lovely garden with flowers, fruit trees, and vegetables.

It was when he saw the garden that he knew that something was definitely wrong.

His wife tended it daily, but now it looked as if it hadn’t been weeded for a while. Goutweed and bindweed were growing in the flowerbeds, and slugs were crawling over the wilted, partially brown lettuce. A climbing trellis that had blown over in a recent storm hadn’t been set up again.

“Anna?” he called hesitantly. “I’m back. Can you hear me?” But there was no answer from inside the house.

After a while, the door creaked open. As soon as he saw the midwife Martha Stechlin standing in the hallway with a pale and deeply furrowed face, he knew what had happened.

“No!” he shouted, running toward the door. “No! Tell me it’s not true.”