Oliver Potzsch - The Beggar King

“Stop that!” the father said angrily. “I’m still your father.”

“You sold ergot to Berchtholdt,” Simon said in a flat voice.

His father stared at him with small, tired eyes. For a moment it seemed he was going to deny it, but finally he shrugged. “And if I did… what business is it of yours?”

“The baker gave the ergot to his maid, Resl, and she died yesterday from taking it.”

There was a long pause, and Bonifaz appeared unwilling to reply.

Finally, Simon continued, “She screamed so loud that all of Schongau could hear it-like a pig being slaughtered. But you were out carousing and didn’t hear a thing, I’m sure.”

Old Fronwieser folded his arms over his chest and threw his head back defiantly. “I gave the stuff to Berchtholdt because he positively begged for it. What he did with it is his business and doesn’t concern me. If his maid-”

“You told him it would be better to take too much than too little!” Simon interrupted, his voice quivering. “You gave him the ergot as if it were herbal tea or arnica, but it’s poison! Deadly poison! You’re nothing but a charlatan, a quack!”

The last words, which slipped out by accident, sent his father over the edge.

“Quack?” he growled, digging his fingernails into the tabletop. “You call me a goddamned quack? Let me tell you who’s a quack in this town. It’s your damned hangman! Folks are always begging him for their elixirs and their salves. Now that he’s away, I finally have a chance to make a little money, and you make me out to be a murderer! My own son!” The old man stood up and pounded the table so hard the cups on the wall started rattling. “The damned hangman! That quack! That devil! I’ll burn his house down.”

Closing his eyes, Simon turned his face toward the ceiling. Bonifaz’s jealousy had been a thorn in his side for years, a thorn tipped in poison. Many Schongauers preferred to take their sicknesses and little aches and pains secretly to the hangman rather than to the town doctor. This was, of course, far cheaper, and moreover executioners were considered better not only at treating the broken bones and external injuries they had often themselves inflicted but also at healing internal diseases. By virtue of their experience with torture and executions, they had a more thorough understanding of the human body than any doctor with a university diploma.

What angered old Fronwieser most, however, was that his son was a good friend of the executioner. The young medicus had learned more from Kuisl than from his own father and the entire faculty of Ingolstadt University put together. The hangman owned books on medicine that couldn’t even be found in most libraries. He knew every poison and medicinal herb and had studied writings that traditional scholars considered the work of the devil. Simon idolized the hangman and was in love with his daughter-two things that got under Bonifaz’s skin and made him seethe with rage.

As the old man continued his rant about the hangman and the hangman’s family, Simon walked over to a pot of hot water that had been standing on the hearth all night. He knew he would need some coffee if he hoped to withstand the next few minutes.

“I’m not going to be scolded by the likes of someone who’d go to bed with the hangman’s daughter.” His father’s tirade was approaching its climax. “It’s a wonder, in any case, that you’re at home and not out with that little harlot of yours.”

Simon’s hands curled around the hot rim of the pot. “Father… I beg you!”

“Ha! You’re begging me!” his father said, mocking him. “How often have I begged you-how often? — to put an end to this shameful affair, to help me here in my work, and to marry Weinberger’s daughter or even Hardenberg’s niece, who at least does decent work at the hospital. But no, my son carries on with the hangman’s daughter, and the whole town gossips!”

“Father, stop it! At once!”

But by now Bonifaz had worked himself into a frenzy. “If only your dear mother knew!” he scoffed. “It’s just as well the reaper carried her off so long ago-it would have broken her heart. For years we tramped along behind the military, serving them as field surgeons, saving every last kreuzer I could so that our son might attend the university and have a better life someday. And what did you do? You squandered the money in Ingolstadt and wasted your time loafing around with riffraff.”

Simon was still clutching the pot by its rim. Although it had become painfully hot from the fire, he seemed barely to notice the heat, and his knuckles turned white with the force of his grip.

“Magdalena is not riffraff,” he said slowly. “Nor is her father.”

“He’s a damned quack and a murderer, and his daughter is a whore.”

Without a second thought, Simon flung the pot against the wall. With a loud hiss, the near-boiling water splashed over the shelves, table, and chairs, filling the room with a cloud of steam. Dumbfounded, Bonifaz looked back at his son. The pot had just barely missed his face.

“How dare you…” he began.

But Simon was not listening anymore. He dashed out the door into the early-morning light with tears streaming down his face. What had gotten into him? He’d almost killed his own father!

Distraught, Simon tried to pull his thoughts together. He had to get out of here, away from this stifling town that was making a recreant of him, a town that forbade him to marry the woman he loved, a town that tried to prescribe everything he did or thought.

He stepped out into the narrow street where foul-smelling garbage was pushed into huge piles. All of Schongau smelled that way-like muck, feces, and urine. Simon staggered through the empty streets, past the closed shop doors and bolted shutters. Another sweltering day had dawned in town.

The mouse was close to Jakob Kuisl’s ear. He could feel it brush past his hair, its tiny nose grazing his cheek. The hangman tried to breathe as softly as possible so as not to frighten the little creature. It sniffed his beard where tiny bits of yesterday’s stew still clung.

In a single, rapid motion, the hangman reached up and nabbed the rodent by the tail. The mouse dangled in front of his face, squeaking and flailing its legs in the air as Kuisl calmly examined it.

Trapped, just like me. Thrashing around and getting nowhere…

He’d spent the night locked in this hole in the Jakob’s Gate Tower in Regensburg: a little room in the cellar that was apparently most often used for storage. Surrounded by rusty cannons and disassembled matchlock guns, the hangman awaited his fate.

Could he just be imagining it, or was somebody really out to get him? Some of the guards had whispered among themselves when they took him into custody, pointing at him as if they somehow already knew who he was. Kuisl thought about the leering grimace of the raftsman who’d watched him for days. And what about the farmer he’d met while waiting outside the city gate? Had he been trying to pump him for information, too? Was it possible they’d each played a part in some conspiracy against him?

Is it possible I’m just losing my mind?

Again he tried to remember where he had seen the raftsman before. It must have been long ago. In battle? A tavern brawl? Or could he be one of the many whom, in the course of his life, Kuisl had put in the stocks, beaten with whips, or tortured? Kuisl nodded. That seemed most likely. Some minor offender who had recognized the Schongau executioner. The guards had him arrested because he’d assaulted one of their colleagues. And the curious farmer-well, he’d been just a curious farmer.

So there was no conspiracy, just a series of coincidences.

Kuisl set the mouse down carefully on the ground and let go of its tail. The animal scampered off toward a hole in the wall and disappeared. And just a few moments after that, the hangman was startled by a noise. The door to his cell opened with a creak and a narrow gap appeared, letting in the dazzling morning light.