Oliver Potzsch: The Beggar King

Lechner frowned. “A hangman’s daughter, the town doctor’s wife? How do you figure that?”

“You don’t have to call him a medicus,” Magdalena replied defiantly. “If it’s only a question of the title, then Simon will…” She thought for a while, then her face brightened. “Then he’ll become a bathhouse owner.”

There was a brief silence broken only by the crows cawing from rooftops.

“Bathhouse owner?” Simon stared at her in disbelief. “Cleaning dirty wooden tubs, bleeding people, and shaving their beards? I don’t think I’d care for that. It’s a dishonorable vocation that-”

“Exactly; then you will fit in with me, ” the hangman’s daughter interrupted. “And I’ll be glad to take care of the shaving, if you really find that so disagreeable.”

Lechner shook his head thoughtfully. “Bathhouse operator? Why not? Actually, that’s not a bad idea at all. We do have one in town already, but he’s a drunken scoundrel, and the only thing he knows how to do is bleed people of their money. For all intents and purposes you’ll be working as a medicus, I guarantee that. After all, there’s no doctor in town, so you won’t have any competition.” Satisfied, he nodded. “Bathhouse operator. That could be a solution.”

“And the people?” Anna-Maria interjected. “What will people say? When I think of Berchtholdt and the way they taunted my poor Magdalena…” She shook her head. “I never want to live through a night like that again.”

“You don’t have to worry about Berchtholdt anymore,” Johann Lechner replied. “The Plague claimed him two days ago. Not even his wife shed a tear.” The secretary shrugged. “All the St. John’s Wort, rosaries, and Ave Marias in the world couldn’t save him in the end. Last night they took him down to Saint Sebastian’s Cemetery and buried him as fast as they could. May his soul rest in peace.” The secretary quickly crossed himself. “So are we agreed, Fronwieser? Bathhouse owner for life, and I’ll do what I can to get the council to approve marriage with the hangman’s daughter.”

Simon hesitated for just a moment, then they shook on it. “Agreed.”

“Just a moment,” Kuisl grumbled. “You can’t go ahead and arrange a wedding here without first asking my permission. I always said the Steingaden executioner would make a good match for Magdalena-”

“Oh, stop with that foolishness!” Anna-Maria interrupted. “You can’t keep hiding the fact that you actually like Simon, and after everything he’s done for you, it would be an outrage if you were to refuse him now. So give him your blessing, then leave the two of them be. You’ve played the surly old bear long enough.”

Kuisl stared back at his wife, his mouth hanging open in astonishment. But words apparently failed him, and he said nothing more.

“Then I’ll leave the young couple to themselves.” A hint of a smile played across the secretary’s lips as he turned and hurried abruptly off with the guards in the direction of the Lech Gate. “I’ll expect to see you in two hours at your father’s house,” he called back to Simon. “And bring your woman along; there’s a lot to be done.”

The freshly crowned bathhouse owner grinned. As so often, Simon had the feeling Lechner had achieved exactly what he wanted. Simon took Magdalena by the arm and strolled back into the town with her, toward his father’s house.

As the couple disappeared through the Lech Gate, Kuisl and his wife entered the house and went up the stairs to the room where the twins were napping. They stood for a long time in front of the little beds, holding hands and watching their children’s calm and even breathing.

“Aren’t they beautiful?” Anna-Maria whispered.

Kuisl nodded. “So innocent. And to think their papa has so much blood on his hands.”

“You numbskull! The children don’t need a hangman but a father,” she replied. “Remember, you’re the only one they have.”

A shadow passed over Kuisl’s face. He let go of his wife’s hand and stomped down the stairs without a word where he sat on the bench beneath the family altar for a long time, staring off into space and cracking his knuckles now and then.

When his wife saw him brooding there, she couldn’t help but smile. Anna-Maria had grown accustomed to her husband’s moods; she knew he’d take his time before speaking again. Sometimes it took days. Without a word, she began pounding angelica root in a stone mortar. For a long time the rhythmic scrape of the pestle and the crackle of the flames were the only sounds in the room.

Finally, when she had had enough, she put down the pestle and ran her hand through her husband’s black hair, which was beginning to show the first signs of gray.

“What’s the trouble, Jakob?” she asked softly. “Don’t you want to tell me what happened in Regensburg?”

The hangman shook his head slowly. “Not today. I need some time.”

When Kuisl finally cleared his throat, he looked his wife directly in the eye.

“I’d just like to know one thing…” he began haltingly. “Back then, in Weidenfeld, when I saw you for the first time…”

Anna-Maria bit her lip and drew back. “We weren’t ever going to talk about that again,” she whispered. “You promised me that.”

Kuisl nodded. “I know. But I have to know, or it’ll tear me apart worse than the rack.”

“Then what is it you want to know?”

“Did any of those men touch you? You know what I mean-did they attack you? Philipp Lettner perhaps, that filthy bastard?” Kuisl put his hand on his wife’s shoulder. “Please tell me the truth! Was it Lettner? I swear it won’t change anything between us.”

For a long time the only sound in the room was the crackling birchwood on the hearth.

“Why do you want to know that?” Anna finally asked. “Why can’t things stay the way they were? Why must you hurt me?”

“Yes or no, for God’s sake!”

Standing, Anna-Maria walked over to the family altar and turned the crucifix around so the wooden Jesus faced the wall.

“The Savior doesn’t need to hear this,” she whispered. “No one does, except us.” Then, haltingly, she began to speak. She left nothing out. Her voice was hard and even, like the pendulum of a clock.

“Do you know how I washed myself after that?” she said finally. She stared off into space. “I washed for hours in the icy brooks along the way, in the rivers, ponds, whatever pool of water there was. But it didn’t help. The filth remained, like a mark of Cain that only I could see.”

“You kept silent a long time,” the hangman said softly. “You’ve never said a word about this until today.”

Anna-Maria closed her eyes for a moment before she continued. “When we got to Ingolstadt, I slipped away from you for a while. I went to visit an old midwife down by the river. She gave me a powder to get rid of it. The blood flushed it out-it was nothing but a little red clot.” Tears welled up in her eyes. “A week later, we made love for the first time. I held on to you, and I thought of nothing else.”

Kuisl nodded, his gaze transfixed by the past. “You clawed at my back. I couldn’t figure out whether out of pleasure or pain.”

Anna-Maria smiled. “The pleasure helped me forget the pain. The pleasure, and the love.”

“The powder from the midwife,” he asked. “What was it?”

His wife bent over him and ran her finger across the creases in his face. They were deep, like furrows in a field, and she knew each one intimately.

“Ergot,” she whispered. “A gift from God, or from the devil-take your pick. Just don’t take too much or you’ll fly off to heaven and never return.”