Oliver Potzsch - The Beggar King

Why? Why didn’t I get here sooner?

His sister’s face was as white as chalk. He held her in his arms and rocked her back and forth, stroking the hair from her forehead as he’d always done when she was a child in bed, restless with fever. In a deep, faltering voice he began to sing an old nursery rhyme.

Maikafer flieg, dein Vater ist im Krieg, deine Mutter ist im… May bug fly, your father’s gone to die, your mother is in…

A sound made him pause.

He turned around to find a contingent of at least five guards quietly entering the room. Two had crossbows trained on him and stood poised to shoot as a third slowly approached him with his sword drawn.

It was the captain from that morning.

The man twirled his mustache and smiled at Kuisl as he pointed at the two corpses. “Looks as if you have a problem on your hands, country boy.”

“But not all of the St. John’s Wort! Good Lord, girl! Pay attention!”

Magdalena was startled by the voice of Martha Stechlin shouting right into her ear. The hangman’s daughter, who had been busy spooning herbs into a pot, knew how important it was to use just the right quantities of ingredients. But her thoughts were far, far away. When the midwife shouted at her, Magdalena couldn’t say for the life of her how much St. John’s Wort she’d already put in the copper kettle over the fire. The strange aroma coming from the green liquid bubbling in the pot distracted her even further.

“How often must I tell you: follow the recipe!” Stechlin grabbed the spoon from her hand and began stirring the remaining ingredients into the kettle herself. “You might get away with that when you make green oil,” she mumbled, “but if that were to happen with belladonna or lily of the valley, we’d be convicted for brewing poison and end up burned at the stake. So please, do pay attention!”

“I’m… I’m terribly sorry,” Magdalena whispered. “I’m not quite myself today.”

“I’ve noticed,” the midwife replied. “But there’s nothing you can do for Resl anymore. We can only hope people will come back to us midwives now when they need ergot. Those doctors with their university diplomas don’t know a thing about it.”

Sighing, the hangman’s daughter put the crucibles and glasses back in the drawers. She had gone to Stechlin first thing in the morning to tell her about the baker’s maid who had met such a horrible death the day before. In the last two years a genuine friendship had developed between Magdalena and the midwife, even though Stechlin was older by almost twenty years. Neither was thought of very highly in town, even if people kept calling on them secretly for their aid. The townfolk whispered behind their backs; the men especially gave them a very wide berth, convinced that the women meddled too much in what they believed should be the dear Lord’s work.

Nevertheless, Magdalena took great pleasure in her vocation, probably because, as the daughter of a hangman, she’d been dealing with herbs almost all her life. Magdalena knew that hops dampened sexual desire in men and that lady’s mantle helped during pregnancy. She knew the preparations that made a woman fertile-as well as those that would promptly abort an unwanted fetus. Since the moment she’d learned to walk, her father had been introducing her to medicinal and toxic plants alike, and as time went on, new ones were always being discovered. By now she was almost more of an expert in the subject than the hangman himself. More than once Magdalena had spared a young maid the disgrace of raising a fatherless child by selecting the appropriate herb. The hangman’s daughter had likely saved some of those girls from murdering their own children, and from execution at the hands of Magdalena’s own father.

She’d arrived too late to save Resl Kirchlechner, however.

“The flask, quick!”

Once again Martha’s voice tore Magdalena from her gloomy thoughts. She hurried to the cabinet, found the tall flask, and set it down carefully on the table. The midwife took the pot from the hearth and poured a fine stream of the bubbling green liquid into the flask.

As the hangman’s daughter held the flask upright and watched the green liquid slowly filter to the bottom of the container, she couldn’t help thinking of the master baker’s maid. What cruel injustice that Michael Berchtholdt was still walking around, a free man, while a woman had died by his hand! Women had to bear all the shame while high and mighty, privileged men could do as they pleased! Vividly, Magdalena imagined her father with a switch in his hand, driving Berchtholdt from town. But, of course, this wasn’t realistic. Should she appeal to the town council? Tell court clerk Johann Lechner about it? No doubt she’d be laughed out of town herself. Besides, Michael Berchtholdt was dangerous, and his parting words no idle threat.

Go on, go and tell people, and I promise I’ll make your life hell!

At that moment a fist-size rock, followed by a second and a third, flew in through an open window. The women heard a crash as the flask burst, and hot oil splashed Stechlin in the face. The midwife staggered backward, bumped into the table, and finally collapsed onto the ground, screaming and covering her eyes with her dirty apron. More stones came crashing in, shattering the pots and phials on the shelves where they landed.

Magdalena ran to the window and peered warily over the sill. Outside, in the middle of the lane, stood a group of smirking young men, apprentices and journeymen, none of them older than twenty. The hangman’s daughter immediately recognized three of Michael Berchtholdt’s sons among them.

“Brew your stinking potions down in the Tanners’ Quarter, hangman hussy!” spluttered a lanky, pimply boy making an obscene gesture. Peter Berchtholdt was no more than sixteen years old. “Father says you’re responsible for what happened to our maid! You gave her the draught that turned her into a witch. Now she’s gone, and you’re to blame, you pernicious, murdering witch!”

Magdalena seethed with rage as never before. She burst out the door into the street and, after running up to the group of boys, kicked young Berchtholdt in the groin. He folded up like a jackknife as he fell with a groan to the ground, his face flushed, unable to speak, much less defend himself. Everything happened so fast that none of the other boys had been able to intervene.

Arms akimbo, Magdalena looked down at the master baker’s son. “I’ll tell you who the murderer is,” she shouted, turning her fury to the two other Berchtholdt boys standing uncertainly off to one side. “Your father gave Resl the poison himself because it was he who fathered the child, and now he wants to blame it on me. Believe it or not, your father is a dirty liar and a murderer! Now get out of here, all of you, or I’ll scratch your eyes out before you can say hallelujah. ”

She raised her right hand, showing off her long, dirty fingernails. Peter was still lying on the ground in front of her. The boy hesitated-for a brief moment Magdalena thought she recognized something like doubt in his eyes-but then he pulled himself together, struggled to his feet, and staggered back to his brothers.

“You’ll be sorry for what you said about our father,” shouted the eldest Berchtholdt. “I will tell him, and then he’ll see to it that Kuisl has to chase his own daughter with a whip through town and throw her in the stocks.” He spit on the ground and made the sign of the cross with his right hand.

As the boys turned to leave, Magdalena shouted after them. “Wipe your own ass first, mama’s boys! You Berchtholdts are nothing but cowards and loafers!”

She looked up; several windows had opened now and a dozen pairs of eyes stared down at the ruckus.