Oliver Potzsch - The Poisoned Pilgrim

He held his breath as Magdalena walked determinedly to the crooked door of the Erling knacker’s house and knocked. Once again Simon thanked God they’d left the two little ones with their grandfather in Schongau.

A light flared up again in the belfry. Like a huge evil eye, it shined out into the night, searching for something in the forests of the Kien River valley. But neither Simon nor Magdalena noticed. The figure in the tower clung to a charred beam and let the wind pass through his hair. Flashes of lightning appeared on the horizon-large, small, jagged, straight. Up here, so close to heaven, the man felt most clearly God’s presence. Or was it a different higher power, one much stronger than that of the good, kindly Maker who believed love could heal men but had let his own son perish on the cross?

Love.

He let out a malicious laugh. As if love could accomplish anything. Could it save a human life? Could it survive death? If so, then only as a thorn in the side, a wound that festered and wept and ate away at your insides till all that was left was an empty shell. A sack full of maggots where worms feasted.

With lifeless eyes, the man looked on the little band of pilgrims far below, struggling through the thunderstorm and the rain, singing a pious hymn, bowing down, praying. Their belief was so strong one could actually feel it, and up here in the tower he felt it the strongest-like a bolt of lightning, the finger of heaven infusing him with divine power. He had been wondering for a long time how to make his dream a reality, and now the goal was close at hand.

He placed the lantern on the floor, looked around, and got to work.

SCHONGAU IN THE PRIESTS’ CORNER, SUNDAY MORNING, JUNE 13, 1666 AD

"Damn it! Keep your dirty paws away from my sacred crucibles before I send you back to bed without breakfast.”

The Schongau hangman was sitting at the dining room table trying to keep his three-year-old grandson Peter from eating the ground herbs in an ancient stone vessel. The plants weren’t poisonous, but Jakob Kuisl couldn’t say what the effect on the boy would be of a mixture of arnica, St. John’s wort, mountain lovage, and nettles. At the very least the boy would get diarrhea, which made the hangman shudder when he thought about how few clean diapers were still left.

“And tell your brother not to pester the chickens to death, or I’ll chop his head off myself.”

Paul, who had just turned two, was crawling through the fragrant rushes strewn under the table, reaching his little arms out at the chickens running through the room, cackling noisily.

“Good Lord in heaven!”

“You mustn’t be so strict with them,” said a weak voice from the bed in the next room. “Think of our Magdalena when she was little. How often did you tell her not to pluck the hens while they were alive, but she did it anyway.”

“And each time she got a good licking for it.” With a grin, Kuisl turned to his wife. Seeing her lying there in the bed, pale, rings under her eyes, he at once turned serious again. Anna-Maria had been suffering with a bad fever since last night. It had come over her like a cold wind, and now she lay there trembling under thick woolen blankets and a few tattered wolf and bear pelts. The herbs in the crucible, mixed with hot water and honey, would-he hoped-give her a little relief.

Kuisl eyed his wife with concern. Recent years had left their mark on her. She was approaching fifty, and though she was still a beautiful woman, her face was deeply furrowed. Her black hair, once so shiny, had become dull and interspersed with strands of gray. With only her pale head sticking out from under the blankets, she reminded Jakob of a white rose beginning to wither after a long summer.

“Try to sleep a bit, Anna,” the hangman said gently. “Sleep is still the best medicine.”

“Sleep? How?” She laughed softly, but the laugh quickly turned into a coughing fit. “You run around shouting so much, it’s practically a sacrilege,” she gasped finally. “In the meantime, the two little ones knock our stoneware pots from the shelves if you’re not right there to keep an eye on them. Of course, the master of the house never sees that sort of thing.”

“What the devil-”

And in fact, little Peter had climbed up onto a bench by the stove while Kuisl wasn’t looking, and at that moment was pulling himself up on the rough pine shelves, reaching for a jar of last autumn’s preserves. The jar slipped from his hands and landed on the ground with a crash, spilling its contents all over the floor. The hangman’s house looked like the scene of a botched execution.

“Look, Grandpa, there’s blood.” Wide-eyed, Peter pointed to the mess on the floor, then finally stuck his finger in it and sucked on it. “Good blood.”

Kuisl clapped his hands over his head and let out another curse. Then he grabbed the two loudly protesting troublemakers by the scruff of the neck and carried them out into the yard. Once the door slammed closed, the hangman started picking the cherries up from the floor, getting the gooey mess all over him in the process.

“Let’s hope they both fall in the well,” he grumbled. “Damned hoodlums.”

“You mustn’t say things like that,” his wife replied from the bed. “Magdalena and Simon would never forgive us if something happened to the little ones.”

“Magdalena and Simon,” Kuisl spat noisily into the reeds on the floor. “I don’t want to even hear about them. Why do the two of them have to hang around the Holy Mountain? For a whole week!” He shook his head and wiped his hands on his worn leather apron. “Two rosaries in the Altenstadt basilica would have been enough. One for each of the brats.”

“The Dear Lord meant only the best for us, and we should thank him,” his wife scolded. “It wouldn’t hurt you to go on a pilgrimage, either, what with all the blood on your hands from the people you’ve executed.”

“If it’s on my hands, then it’s also on the hands of every one of the goddamned Schongau aldermen,” Kuisl grumbled. “Until now I’ve always been good enough to hang the thieves and murderers.”

“You’ll have to clear that with your Savior.” Anna-Maria coughed again and closed her eyes wearily. “I don’t feel well enough today to fight with you.”

Suddenly, footsteps could be heard outside, and then a loud pounding on the door. Kuisl opened it and found the midwife Martha Stechlin standing there holding the whining children, one in each hand.

“Are you out of your mind, Kuisl? I found these two down by the moat…” she started to say. Then her gaze fell on the hangman’s spotted red shirt and she let out a scream. “My God,” she cried. “Are you killing people now in their own homes?”

“Nonsense.” Embarrassed, the hangman ran a hand through his black hair, which was just beginning to gray. “It’s just cherry juice. The two brats knocked the jar over, and I threw them out of the house.”

Martha laughed briefly, but then frowned. “You mustn’t leave the children outside alone,” she scolded. “Think of Huber’s boy who drowned in the Lech this spring. And little Hans, the Altenstadt tavernkeeper’s son, who broke all his bones recently when he was run over by a carriage. Why do you men always have to be so thickheaded? Idiots!”

Kuisl closed his eyes and groaned softly. Martha was, along with his wife and his daughter, the only person who could speak this way to the Schongau hangman. Usually the midwife brought the hangman a few herbs when she stopped by and, in return, took some crushed thornapple or a few ounces of human fat for her patients, or she leafed through Kuisl’s books of medicine. The hangman’s medical library and his expertise in healing were known far and wide.