The Hangman's Daughter

He sold potions for gout and diarrhea, prescribed tobacco for toothaches, splinted broken legs, and set dislocated shoulders. His knowledge was legendary, even though he had never studied at a university. It was clear to Simon that his father just had to hate the executioner. After all, he was his toughest competitor and, in fact, the better physician…

Meanwhile Jakob Kuisl had gone into the living room again. Simon followed. The room immediately filled with great clouds of tobacco smoke—the hangman’s lone vice, but one that he cultivated intensely.

Pipe in mouth he went purposefully to the bench, lifted the dead boy onto the table, and turned back the blanket and cloth. He whistled quietly through his teeth.

“Where did you find him?” he asked. At the same time he filled an earthenware bowl with water and began to wash the face and chest of the corpse. He looked quickly at the dead boy’s fingernails. Red earth had collected under them, as if little Peter had been digging somewhere with his bare hands.

“Down by the raft landing,” said Simon. He related all that had happened up to the point where everyone had run up into town to take revenge on the midwife. The hangman nodded.

“Martha is alive,” he said, continuing to dab at the dead boy’s face. “I took her to the keep myself. She is safe there for the time being. Everything else will have to be looked into.”

As so often before, Simon was impressed by the executioner’s composure. Like all the Kuisls, he seldom spoke, but what he said had authority.

The hangman had completed washing the corpse. Together they examined the boy’s ravaged body. The nose was broken, the face beaten black-and-blue. In the chest they counted seven stab wounds.

Jakob Kuisl took a knife from his coat and tried inserting the blade into one of the wounds. On either side there was a gap at least half an inch wide.

“It must have been something wider,” he murmured.

“A sword?” asked Simon.

Kuisl shrugged. “More likely a saber or a halberd.”

“Who could have done something like that?” Simon shook his head.

The hangman turned the body over. On the shoulder was the sign, faded a bit more after being carried up from the river, but still quite visible. A purple circle with a cross under it.

“What’s that?” asked Simon.

Jakob Kuisl bent down over the boy’s body. Then he licked his index finger, rubbed it gently over the sign, and put his finger into his mouth. He smacked his lips with relish.

“Elderberry juice,” he said. “And not at all bad.” He held his finger out to Simon.

“What? But I thought it was…”

“Blood?” The hangman shrugged. “Blood would have washed away a long time ago. Only elderberry juice keeps its color so long. Just ask my wife. She gets very angry when the little ones smear themselves with it. But anyway…” He began to rub the mark.

“What is it?”

“The color is partly under the skin. Someone must have injected it with a needle or a dagger.”

Simon nodded. He had seen such works of “art” on soldiers from Castile and France. They had tattooed crosses or images of the Mother of God on their upper arms.

“But what does the sign mean?”

“A good question.” Kuisl drew deeply on his pipe, puffed out the smoke, and remained silent a long time. Then he replied, “It’s the Venus mark.”

“The what mark?” Simon looked down at the sign. Suddenly he remembered where he had seen this sign before: in a book about astrology.

“The Venus mark.” The hangman went back into the little room and reappeared with a stained leather-bound tome. He turned the pages a little while until he found the one he wanted.

“There.” He showed Simon the place. Here, too, the same sign could be seen. Next to it was a circle with an arrow pointing up and to the right.

“Venus, goddess of love, spring, and growth,” read Jakob aloud. “Countersign to that of Mars, god of war.”

“But what can this sign mean on the boy’s body?” asked Simon, confused.

“This sign is old, very old,” said the hangman, taking another puff on the long-stemmed pipe.

“And what does it mean?”

“It has many meanings. It stands for woman as counterpart to man, for life, and also for life after death.”

Simon felt as if he could not breathe anymore. And this was only partly because of the clouds of smoke that enveloped him.

“But…that would be heresy,” he whispered.

The hangman raised his bushy eyebrows and looked him straight in the eye.

“That’s just the problem,” he said. “The mark of Venus is a witches’ mark.”

Then he blew his tobacco smoke directly in Simon’s face.

Schongau lay under the light of a pale moon. Again and again it was eclipsed by clouds, and the river and the town were plunged into darkness. Down by the Lech stood a figure looking into the murmuring waters, sunk in thought. The man put up the collar of his fur-lined coat and turned toward the lights of the town. The gates had long been closed, but for men like him there was always a way in. One only needed to know the right people and have the necessary small coins handy. For this man neither was a problem.