Oliver Potzsch - The Beggar King

“You are free to go, Bavarian.” It was the captain of the guards at Jakob’s Gate, with his twirled mustache and gleaming cuirass. He held the door open wide, gesturing for the hangman to leave. “You’ve had enough lolling around on your ass at the city’s expense.”

“I’m free?” Kuisl asked with surprise, getting up from his bedraggled sheets.

The captain nodded impatiently, and in his eyes Kuisl noticed a peculiar nervous flicker that he couldn’t quite put his finger on.

“I hope you’ve cooled down a bit. Let it be a lesson to you not to tangle with the Regensburg city guards.”

With a face as impassive as a rock, Kuisl pushed past the captain, headed up the stairway, and stepped outside. It was early morning, but another long line of people had already formed in front of Jakob’s Gate, and merchants and farmers were streaming into the city with their full packs and carts.

I wonder if the scar-faced raftsman is among them, the hangman thought, casually observing the faces. But he couldn’t see anything that looked suspicious.

Stop thinking about it and concern yourself with your little sister!

Looking straight ahead, Kuisl left the dungeon and started out through the city. From the few letters he had had from her, he knew that Lisbeth, along with her husband, ran a bathing establishment near the Danube, right alongside the city wall. As the hangman plodded along the broad paved avenue that led away from the gate, he was now no longer certain his directions would suffice, and amid the bustling crowd he soon lost his way. Houses four stories high rose up along both sides of the road, casting their shadows on the narrow, winding streets that branched off the main road at regular intervals. Sometimes the buildings stood so close together there was barely a patch of sky visible between them. From far off Kuisl could hear bells tolling in innumerable church spires. It was only six o’clock in the morning, yet there were more people out and about on the main road than on a Saturday afternoon in Schongau. Kuisl saw many richly clothed citizens but also countless poor, among them beggars and wounded veterans of the war, holding out their hands for alms at every other street corner. Barking dogs tore past his legs and down the street, as did two little piglets, squealing loudly. Towering up into the sky to his right was an enormous church whose stone portal, adorned with columns, arches, and statues, looked as if it were the entrance to a castle. Day laborers and derelicts loitered or lay dozing on the broad stone steps. Kuisl decided to ask one of them for directions.

“The Hofmann bathhouse, eh?” The young fellow grinned, revealing two remaining teeth. When Kuisl addressed him in his broad Schongau dialect, the young man sensed a chance to make some easy money. “You’re not from around here, are you? Don’t worry, I can take you there, but it will cost you a couple of kreuzers.”

The hangman nodded and handed the derelict a few old coins. Then he quickly seized the beggar’s wrist and twisted it until it cracked softly. “If you cheat me or run off,” the Schongau executioner whispered, “or mislead me or tip off your buddies and try to ambush me, or if you even think about doing any of that, I will find you and I will break your neck. Do you understand?”

The fellow nodded anxiously and swiftly decided against his original plan.

Together they turned left, away from the stone portal and onto the next major thoroughfare. Once more Kuisl was astonished at how many people were bustling about in Regensburg at this hour of the day. They all seemed to be in a hurry, as if the day itself were somehow shorter here than the days in Schongau. The hangman had trouble keeping up with the beggar through the labyrinth of the busy little streets. A few times he felt a hand reaching for his purse, but a severe glance or a well-aimed shove sufficed to dissuade the would-be pickpocket each time.

Finally, they seemed to be nearing their destination. This lane was wider than the preceding ones, and a tiny brook polluted with excrement and dead rats flowed languidly down the middle of it. Kuisl sniffed the air-sharp and rotten, an odor that the hangman knew only too well. Strips of leather hung like flags from balconies and windows. It was clear he was in the Tanners’ Quarter.

The beggar pointed to a large building at the end of a row of houses on the left, where an opening in a narrow gate led down to the Danube. The house looked neater than the others, freshly plastered, its trim painted bright red. The bathhouse coat of arms, a tin banner depicting a green parrot in a golden field, hung above the entryway, squeaking in the wind.

“Bathhouse Hofmann,” the man said. “As promised, bone cruncher.” He bowed and stuck his tongue out at the hangman before disappearing into a little side street.

As Kuisl approached the bathhouse, he again had the unmistakable feeling of being watched, perhaps from one of the windows across the way. But when he turned around, he couldn’t see anything behind the leather hides covering each window.

Damned city crowds! They’re driving me crazy!

He knocked on the solid wooden door in front of him, only to discover it was already open. With a loud creak, it swung slowly inward, opening on a dimly lit room.

“Lisl!” Kuisl called into the darkness. “It’s me, Jakob, your brother! Are you home?”

A strange feeling of homesickness came over him, memories from his childhood when he’d looked after his little sister. Lisbeth had been so happy to escape Schongau, to get away from the place where she had always been-just like Kuisl’s own daughter now-the free-spirited hangman’s daughter. She really seemed to have made it in the city, but now she was deathly ill and far from home…

Kuisl stood in the doorway, his heart pounding.

Cautiously he entered the room. It took some time for his eyes to adjust to the dim light of the large, long room that extended the length of the house. Fragrant reeds had been spread over the smoothly planed wooden floors, and from somewhere in the house he heard the steady sound of water dripping-a gentle, steady tapping.

Tap… tap… tap.

Kuisl slowly stepped further into the house. Wooden partitions divided the room into private niches at regular intervals along either side. The hangman could see that each contained a bench and, next to it, a large wooden tub.

In the last tub on the left he found his little sister alongside her husband.

Elisabeth Hofmann and her husband, Andreas, lay with their heads tilted back and their eyes open wide, as if they were watching some invisible spectacle play out across the ceiling. For a brief moment the hangman thought the couple was taking their morning bath; only then did he notice that both were fully clothed. Lisbeth’s right arm hung over the edge of the tub, and something dripped from the tip of her index finger to the floor like heavy melted wax.

Tap… tap… tap.

Kuisl bent over the tub and passed his hand through the lukewarm water.

It was deep red.

He jumped back, the hair on the back of his neck standing up straight. His little sister and her husband were bathing in their own blood! Now Kuisl saw the slit across Lisbeth’s throat, grinning up at him like a second mouth. Her black hair floated like a matted net on the surface of the bloody water. The slit in Andreas Hofmann’s neck was so deep that his head was almost severed from his body.

“Oh, God, Lisl!” Kuisl cradled his little sister’s head in his arms and passed his hand gently through her hair. “What happened? What’s happened to you?” He clenched his jaw as his eyes filled with tears, the first tears he’d shed in years.