The Dark Monk (22 page)

Under his breath, he cursed Lechner for having put him in this situation. Was it possible that Lechner just wanted to get rid of him? For far lesser reasons people had lynched hangmen. If the next hideout was empty like the rest, the hunt for robbers was over for him, too.

When he stepped out from behind the next dense grove of pines, however, he knew at once that they were on the right track this time.

From down below in the gorge, smoke rose toward them—just a thin column, but easy to see in the cold winter air. Kuisl grinned. He had been sure the scoundrels were hiding out somewhere around here. When he planned the hunt, he knew there was little point in just stumbling through the forest hoping to happen on individual bandits. The region around Schongau was a wilderness of forests, gorges, and steep hills. Around each town, only small areas were farmed, and beyond them the primeval forest took over, endless and profound.

The hangman knew this area better than anyone else. In recent years, he had combed miles of the forest for healing and poisonous plants. He knew every major cave, every ruin, every hiding place. They had already been to three possible hideouts that day, and now, at the fourth, their luck seemed to have changed. From the beginning, Kuisl suspected he would find something here at Schleyer Falls.

The smoke rose through a crevice in the rock near the steep slope. The hangman knew that, below, huge limestone formations had been hollowed out by water over a period of thousands of years, concealing an extensive network of caves with entrances behind the waterfalls. Here, at Schleyer Falls, the water flowed over green moss, down to the Ammer River in the summer; now, in the winter, icicles hung down like a white curtain in front of the entrances.

Kuisl bent down to inhale the smoke, which smelled like roasted meat and burned fat. It was coming up through a natural chimney in the rock and had to be from a large campfire.

“Hangman, what’s wrong? Why—”

Kuisl motioned to the baker’s son to be silent, then pointed to the column of smoke and a small path about a hundred and fifty feet in front of them that led down into the gorge. He was about to move ahead when he caught sight of a few iron rungs that lead downward in the rock wall next to him.

“Their escape route,” he whispered. “We have to split up. You take the main body of men down the path,” he said, addressing Jakob Schreevogl. “I’ll climb down the rungs with a smaller number of people, just to make sure they don’t slip away from us like rats through this escape hatch.”

He reached into a sack he had been carrying over his shoulder, took out some torches, and distributed them to Andre Wiedemann and Georg Kronauer. “We’ll smoke them out from behind,” he said to the others. “You’ll be waiting by the entrance, and when they come out, capture as many as you can, but if anyone resists, kill him.”

The old war veteran Andre Wiedemann grumbled his approval, while Hans Berchtholdt’s face turned as white as a sheet. “Shouldn’t a few of us wait up here just in case someone slips by you?” he stammered. Like his friend, Sebastian Semer was suddenly no longer as outspoken as he had been moments before. An owl hooted somewhere, and he glanced anxiously in all directions.

“Nonsense,” Kuisl said as he stuffed his two freshly oiled wheel lock pistols with powder, still chewing on his cold pipe. “We need every man down below. Now, off you go!”

He nodded at Jakob Schreevogl once again, then put both pistols in his belt and, with the loaded musket slung over his shoulder, climbed down the rungs with Wiedemann; the blacksmith, Kronauer; and two other workers. For a moment, he wondered whether it might have been better to leave the two patrician boys up above. It was possible they would panic, do something rash, and blow the group’s cover. But when he thought of their shining sabers, dapper hats, and polished rifles, he couldn’t help but smile.

They wanted to play soldier. Now they’d have a chance to see what it was really like.

Magdalena felt as if she were flying. Standing at the very front of the raft, she watched water rush against the rough-hewn logs to her right and left. Now and then, the raft bumped into shattered ice floes or broken icicles that eddied and sank to the bottom of the Lech. They rushed past slopes on both sides that fell steeply down to the river from hilltops of snow-covered beeches. The raftsmen’s laughter and commands sounded like an unending song. Farther downriver, the Lech exited the narrow gorge and wound its way through a snow-covered landscape dotted with darker spots marking the locations of towns and small groves of trees.

On the left, the little town of Landsberg appeared. Its formidable town walls and towers had been partially dismantled and taken away during the Great War. The hangman’s daughter had heard stories about how the little town had suffered much more than Schongau in the war. Many Landsberg girls, fearing they would be raped by marauding soldiers, jumped from watchtowers into the Lech and drowned. Magdalena remembered now that Benedikta, too, came from this town. These thoughts of the war and of her rival suddenly cast a pall over a trip that had been so pleasant up to then.

“Some girls staring into the waves have fallen in.” The deep voice tore her out of her musings. She turned to see the Augsburg merchant Oswald Hainmiller, who was gnawing on a goose wing and offered her a second piece. Fat dripped from his lips, soiling his trimmed Vandyke beard and white pleated collar. The fat merchant was going on forty and wore a silver buckle and a wide belt that strained against his paunch. The red rooster feather on his hat fluttered in the breeze. Magdalena thought it over for a moment, then reached for the goose wing and took a healthy bite. Except for a few spoonfuls of oatmeal, she hadn’t eaten anything all morning.

“Thanks very much!” she said with a full mouth before directing her gaze back to the turns in the river ahead.

Hainmiller grinned. “How long are you staying in our beautiful city?” he asked, wiping grease from his cheek with his lace-trimmed sleeves. “Will you have to go right back to your shabby little town?”

Hainmiller spoke in the broad Augsburg dialect that Schongauers hated so much because it reminded them of the free imperial city’s snobbishness. Magdalena had booked passage that morning from the merchant. Oswald Hainmiller was bringing wine, oil, tin, spices, and a large cargo of lime with him, and Magdalena’s presence was a welcome opportunity for him to while away the time and to boast a bit until they arrived in Augsburg that evening.

Magdalena sighed. The fat merchant had been trying to strike up a conversation with her ever since they left Schongau. It didn’t look as if he would ever give up. Even when Magdalena told him she was the daughter of the Schongau hangman, he kept hitting on her. In fact, that seemed to excite him only more. Magdalena resigned herself to her fate and smiled back.

“I’ll be able to stay only a day,” she said. “Tomorrow, I’ll be heading back.”

“One day!” the merchant cried, gesturing heavenward as a sign of despair. “How will you be able to appreciate the beauty of this city in just one day? The new town hall, the bishop’s palace, all the fountains! I have heard about Schongauers who were so overwhelmed when they first arrived they had to sit down—the sight was just too much for them.”

The sight of
you
is too much for me,
Magdalena thought, trying to concentrate on the whitecaps in front of her. This fat braggart was already spoiling her visit to Augsburg with all this talk. She was truly looking forward to seeing the city, which had been one of the greatest and most beautiful in Germany before the war.

“Do you know yet where you are going to sleep?” The merchant’s face took on a ferret-like appearance.

“I…My father gave me the name of a good inn by the river,” she said, and could feel her blood beginning to boil. “Food and lodging for only four kreuzers per night.”

“But in return, you’ll have to share your bed with a whole army of fleas and bedbugs.” Oswald Hainmiller stepped very close to her now and was petting her skirt. She could see goose fat forming droplets in his beard. “At my house there is a four-poster with white linen, and you’d have to share that only with me. Perhaps I’d even pay
you
four kreuzers for the night,” he whispered in her ear, moving so close now that she could smell the alcohol on his breath.

“Cut it out!” Magdalena snapped, pushing him away. “I may be just the hangman’s daughter, but I’m not available.”

The merchant didn’t back off. “I know you girls,” he slobbered. “First you resist, but then you’re all the more willing.”

The wine, combined with the sight of Magdalena, had clearly made Hainmiller more and more lecherous during the last hours of the trip. “Don’t make such a fuss,” he said, grabbing her bodice.

Magdalena pushed his hand away, disgusted. “Wash your mouth out before you say another word,” she replied. “You stink like a dead rat.”

She struggled to free herself from his grip and ran to the middle of the raft, where two Schongau raftsmen were guiding the vessel with long poles. She knew them by sight from Semer’s tavern. They looked over at her hesitantly but didn’t intervene. Magdalena cursed. She was probably nothing more in these men’s eyes than the hangman’s tramp getting her just deserts.

For Oswald Hainmiller, the whole thing became more and more of a game. He ran after her, grinning, while she fled past the raftsmen toward the back of the raft. She clambered over crates and packages, past millstones and sacks of marble and salt. Finally, she reached the back of the raft, but the merchant was still close behind her.

“Very good,” Hainmiller purred, tugging at her bodice. “Here, at least we won’t be disturbed.”

Magdalena looked around. To her left, she spotted a large wooden cart full of quicklime, shrouded with a makeshift linen cover. Thinking quickly, she removed the waxed tarp, hoisted herself up, and skipped along the edge of the cart, smiling and swaying her hips suggestively.

“Come on!” she called to the merchant, who by now was out of breath. “If you want me, you’ve got to come up here and get me.”

Oswald Hainmiller hesitated a moment, then pulled his fat body up onto the side of the cart and edged his way toward her. “In just a second…just a second…I’ll have you,” he groaned.

When he’d gotten just an arm’s length away, Magdalena suddenly gave him a shove, and he waved his hands wildly in the air trying to catch his balance.

“You damn slut!” he roared before falling headfirst into the cart.

A cloud of white dust covered him, and before long, he started to scream. The quicklime was in his eyes, in his mouth, and in every little open cut. Writhing, he coughed and finally pulled himself out of the cart. His coat and the jacket underneath were covered with white spots that started eating away at the cloth wherever there was any moisture. Magdalena jumped down from the cart and grinned. At the very least, Oswald Hainmiller would need a new wardrobe before his next tryst. And perhaps a new face.

After hesitating briefly, she took two handfuls of the white powder and carefully filled the side pockets of her overcoat, being careful that the strong, caustic powder didn’t get wet and eat through her clothing, too. Who knows, maybe she could use it again.

“I’ll…I’ll make you pay for this, you hangman’s wench!” Hainmiller, panting and half blind, leaned over the back of the raft to wash his burning eyes in the water. Seconds later, he was squirming and screaming on the floor of the raft as the powder, hissing and smoking, reacted with the water. “You damned slut!” he howled, crawling across the logs in search of a clean rag to wipe his face. “You won’t enjoy anything in beautiful Augsburg, that I promise you!”

“From now on, leave me alone,” she shouted, moving to the front again, where the Schongau raftsmen stared at her curiously. “You, too,” she shouted, “you lecherous, cloven-hoofed scum! You’re all trouble!”

Sitting down on a crate in the bow, she wrapped her arms around her knees and stared straight ahead. Her mother always warned her that most men were either horny fools or unfeeling blocks of ice. It was best to have nothing to do with them. Magdalena started to cry, but not wanting any of the nosy people standing around to see how sad she was, she brushed away her tears.

At this moment, like a little child, she wished her father were there.

Jakob Kuisl slid down the bank until his feet came into contact with the first rung. An iron railing ran along the rock face before disappearing into a fissure after about fifty feet. For a moment, the hangman considered lighting the torches he’d brought along, but he decided against this, lest he warn the bandits. Inside the fissure, everything was black, but soon his eyes grew accustomed to the dark. Above him, daylight was cut off briefly as each of the men squeezed his way through the crevice. There were only five of them, but Kuisl knew he could count on each, particularly Andre Wiedemann, who had fought with him near Augsburg in the battle against the Swedish invaders. But the blacksmith and the two other men looked like seasoned veterans, too.

After another fifty feet, the railing ended at the foot of the rock chimney. In one corner, Kuisl could make out a narrow passageway and hear the sound of muffled voices and laughter inside. The men slipped to the ground carefully on both sides of the passageway, and the hangman ventured a quick glance.

Behind the knee-high entrance, a short tunnel opened onto a large cave a few feet away. Over a crackling fire, a few rabbits sizzled on a spit. Now and then a ragged figure walked past the fire. Jakob Kuisl could see more men sitting on the other side of the flames, huddled in fur and rags against the cold. Someone belched loudly, others laughed, and two others still were quarreling loudly. Jakob could also hear the whine of a small child and smell sweat, gunpowder, and burning meat in the air.

Smoke stung Kuisl’s eyes; he blinked. He had been right. They had found the winter quarters of the Scheller gang, and it looked now as if most of them had returned in the evening from their daily forays. The hangman smiled grimly. There could hardly be a better moment to put a stop to their game. From the voices, Kuisl could only guess how many there were—perhaps around thirty, among them many women and children.