The Hangman's Daughter

The room had been turned upside down. The kettle, the poker from the fireplace, the chest, and also the handsome pewter cups and plates that Magdalena had seen on previous visits were gone. Someone had pried open the chicken cage beneath the bench and made off with the chickens. Even the little house altar with its crucifix and statue of the Blessed Virgin had been stripped bare. All that was left off Martha Stechlin’s possessions was a smashed table and countless pottery shards, which were scattered across the floor. Some were adorned with alchemistic signs. Magdalena remembered having seen those symbols on the jars that the midwife had kept on a shelf next to her stove.

Standing in the middle of the room, the hangman’s daughter tried to imagine, despite the emptiness, how only a week ago the children had played with the midwife. Maybe Martha Stechlin had told them ghost stories, but maybe she had also shared her secret knowledge with them and shown them herbs and medicines. Sophie in particular seemed to be interested in those sorts of things.

Magdalena walked down the hallway and out into the yard. The midwife had been arrested only a few days before, but it seemed to Magdalena that the garden was already growing wild. The looters had yanked the tender shoots of early vegetables from the beds and had attacked the magnificent herbal garden. Magdalena shook her head. So much hatred and greed, so much senseless violence.

Suddenly she caught her breath and hurried back to the main room to look for something. It immediately met her eye.

She almost laughed at not having noticed earlier. She stooped down, picked it up, and rushed outside. In the street she actually did start to giggle, so that several burghers turned around and gave her a startled look.

They had long suspected that the hangman’s daughter was hand in glove with the witch. Now here was the final proof!

Magdalena didn’t let their looks intimidate her. Still laughing, she decided on a whim not to go home through the Lech Gate but rather through the Küh Gate. She knew a narrow, unfrequented path, little more than a trail, that followed along the base of the town wall and descended to the Lech. The April sun was warm on her face as she passed the gate. She greeted the sentry and ambled along between the beeches.

It was all so simple. Why hadn’t they thought of it earlier? It had been there before their eyes the whole time, and they simply hadn’t seen it. Magdalena pictured herself conveying the news to her father. Her fist was clutched around the object she was holding. The midwife might go free today. Well, not free, perhaps, but the torture would be suspended, and the trial would be reopened. Magdalena was convinced that now all would change for the better.

The branch hit her right on the back of her head, so that she fell forward into the mud.

She tried to push herself up, when suddenly she felt a fist grabbing her by the scruff of her neck and pushing her back into the mud. Her face lay in a puddle. When she tried to breathe, she tasted only dirt and muddy water. She struggled like a fish out of water, but her attacker kept pushing her head down. As she was losing consciousness, the hand suddenly yanked her up again. She heard a voice right in her ear.

“Let’s see what I can do with you, hangman’s wench. Once, in Magdeburg, I cut off a girl’s breasts and made her eat them. Would you like that? But first I need your father, and you, you’re going to help me with that, sweetheart.”

A second blow made her skull explode. She could no longer feel how the devil pulled her out of the water and dragged her over the embankment down to the river.

The object slipped from her hand and sank to the bottom of the puddle, where mud slowly settled on it.

Jakob Kuisl was struggling for the life of the midwife he had previously tortured. He had cleaned her head wound and applied a bandage of oak bark. Her swollen fingers were covered with a thick yellow ointment. The hangman kept dripping some tincture from a small vial into her mouth, but Martha Stechlin had difficulty swallowing. The reddish-brownish liquid oozed over her lips and trickled to the ground.

“What is that?” Simon asked, pointing at the vial.

“It’s an extract of Saint-John’s-wort, nightshade, and several other herbs that you don’t know. It’ll calm her down, but that’s all. Damn it, they should have cleaned the head wound right away. It’s already getting inflamed. Your father is a confounded quack!”

Simon swallowed, but he couldn’t argue with that.

“Where did you gather all that knowledge? I mean, you’ve never studied…”

The hangman laughed out loud as he examined the countless bruises on the midwife’s legs.