Oliver Potzsch: The Poisoned Pilgrim

“As you wish, as you wish.” Bowing deeply again, the innkeeper led the count and the two Semers into a separate area of the tavern. As young Sebastian Semer strode past Magdalena and Simon, he gave them a fleeting, disgusted glance.

“Look, Father,” he whined. “Even lowlife bathhouse surgeons and hangman’s women patronize the Andechs tavern nowadays. The Holy Mountain is not what it used to be.”

Karl Semer looked down at the two Schongauers and frowned. “I don’t think the tavern keeper knows everyone patronizing his establishment, my son. In my tavern something like that wouldn’t happen. Dishonorable people have no place there.” Impatiently he took his son by the shoulder. “But come now, we have more important things to do. I hear they serve an exquisite, though expensive Tokay here-just the right thing for concluding our business.”

The two disappeared into the side room with the distinguished gentleman. Simon looked over at Magdalena, who had turned white as chalk and was biting her lip.

“This pompous Semer clan,” she hissed. “Jakob Schreevogl told me the two plan to make a killing here during the Festival of the Three Hosts. The very sight of them makes me sick.”

“Don’t always get so worked up.” Simon passed his hand through her hair sympathetically. “In any case, there’s nothing you can do to change it. I’d just like to know what the Semers have to do with a genuine nobleman from the House of Wittelsbach. If it’s true they have really arrived-anyone doing business with the family of the Bavarian elector is very well-off.”

Magdalena blew her nose loudly and took a last deep gulp of wine. “I expect they’ll palm some cheap pilgrim’s candles and prayer books off on the count, which the fine gentleman will dispose of for even more money,” she murmured. She stood up, stretched, and tossed a few coins on the table. “And now, let’s go. The Semers have spoiled this tavern for me, and you still have your damned report to write, too.” She sighed and turned toward the door. “Damn, all I really wanted to do in Andechs was pray.”

Outside, in a dark corner of the monastery garden, a figure in a black robe crouched down, observing the couple from Schongau with suspicion as they strolled down the steep pathway toward Erling. The man uttered a curse just as he had learned to do in the war. Even though God forbade it, it always made him feel better and helped to drive away the bloody scenes. Nevertheless, he remained anxious.

Ever since this bathhouse surgeon and his girl had appeared, things had been going badly. First the failed experiment, then the dead assistant and the argument with Virgilius-and what, for God’s sake, was the curious woman up to in the tower? Had she become suspicious? Had she discovered something up there?

The man smiled and waved casually as a few singing pilgrims passed by, but the pilgrims drew away from him as if they could sense that nothing good would come from him. He was accustomed to people reacting fearfully when they saw him. Striking fear in the hearts of men used to be his calling, but now his face did the work. The contorted grimace of the devil in the garb of a monk. That’s what they said about him when he took the vows many years ago and cast aside his old life. But he could not cast away his face.

Or his past.

Grumbling furiously to himself like a fat blowfly, Brother Johannes reentered the apothecary’s house, where worry, stench, and a decomposing corpse awaited him.

He didn’t know this was just the beginning.

In the meantime, Jakob Kuisl sat alongside the city moat, not far from his house, cutting little whistles out of the reeds for his grandchildren.

He’d bought some dried fruit and a few candied nuts for the children, which they were now devouring with great appetite. Their mouths were sticky with honey and their hands filthy with grime. The hangman grinned-it was good their mother couldn’t see them this way.

At the thought of the children, his face suddenly darkened again. It wasn’t just that his wife was sick; his grandchildren were now in danger, too. The warning from Hans Berchtholdt had been unmistakable: if Kuisl reported the warehouse theft to the Schongau secretary, the children would be in real danger. And even if he did nothing, Hans Berchtholdt was burning for revenge. Who was to say he wouldn’t be lying in wait for the two little ones here along the moat or down by the river? It would just take one push, and they would disappear beneath the waves in an instant.

Grimly, the hangman took out his tobacco pouch and began stuffing his pipe. As always when he was thinking, he needed that heavenly weed, which a few friends, wagon drivers from Augsburg, brought him every month. As the first puffs of smoke rose up, he was already feeling noticeably more relaxed, but in the next moment the sound of footsteps interrupted his reveries.

“Confound it! Can’t one ever get a moment’s peace around here?” Kuisl grumbled.

As he turned around, he saw his son Georg emerge from willow trees. The boy was carrying the slingshot he had used just a few hours ago to drive away the Berchtholdt brothers. And behind him came his sister Barbara, with her dark, tangled, shoulder-length locks, wearing a white blouse that barely concealed the first signs of her changing figure.

Georg and Barbara were twins, but as different as they could be. Barbara was chatty, with the same impudent tongue as her older sister, Magdalena, and promised to be just as beautiful. Georg, on the other hand, was as hefty as an unhewn piece of wood and as silent as his father. As an executioner’s apprentice, the thirteen-year-old boy helped from time to time at executions and could look forward to his examination and certificate in a few years-a proper beheading.

“When Mama learns you bought candy for the two little ones again, she’s going to scold,” Barbara warned him, smiling as she drew closer.

“Watch out or I’ll give you a proper thrashing, rascal,” the hangman mumbled. “Didn’t I tell Georg to clean out the knacker’s wagon? And then I find him down at the warehouse with a slingshot in his hand. What were you doing down there?”

“I was going to shoot sparrows with the others,” Georg replied tersely. His voice wasn’t as deep as his father’s, but it already sounded just as grim. “But then all I met were a few gallows birds.”

“You ought to be glad he was down there, Father,” Barbara interrupted. “They could hear Berchtholdt screaming way up in the Tanners’ Quarter. I can’t imagine what he would have done with the children if Georg hadn’t come along with the others.”

“Oh, nonsense. I could have handled them easily enough,” the hangman grumbled.

“Twelve men?” Georg laughed. “Father, don’t overdo it. You’re not getting any younger.”

“Young enough to deal with the Berchtholdt gang, though. In the war I killed small fry like that by the dozens. I wasn’t much older than you back then, but strong enough for two. What it takes is strength and smarts.”

Kuisl took a drag on his pipe and watched the smoke ascend. While Barbara went down to the moat with the two children, his son sat down alongside him on a rock and stared into the swirling water. After a while, Jakob silently handed him the pipe. Georg grinned. He knew his father would never say thank-you for anything, but this gesture was more thanks than a thousand words-it was the first time the old man had offered him a drag on his pipe. Georg closed his eyes and breathed in the sweet smoke, then puffed it out again like a little dragon.

“How’s Mother?” Kuisl finally grumbled.

Georg shrugged. “She sleeps a lot. Martha made her a potion of linden blossoms and willow bark and is with her now.”