The Hangman's Daughter

Jakob handed his father his stained overcoat, the leather cape for his shoulders, and his gloves. Slowly the huge man got dressed and wiped the hair from his forehead. Then, without a word, he walked to the far end of the room. There, between the battered kitchen bench and the house altar with its crucifix and dried roses, stood his hangman’s sword. It measured over two arm’s lengths and it had a short crossguard, and though it had no point, its edge was sharp enough to cut a hair in midair. No one could say how old it was. Father sharpened it regularly, and it sparkled in the sun as if it had been forged only yesterday. Before it was Johannes Kuisl’s, it had belonged to his father-in-law Jörg Abriel, and to his father and his grandfather before that. Someday, it would be Jakob’s.

Outside the door the bailiff was waiting, a small, slight man who kept turning his head toward the town walls. They were late as it was, and some in the crowd were probably getting impatient now.

“Get the wagon ready, Jakob.”

His father’s voice was calm and deep. The crying and sobbing of last night had disappeared as if by magic.

As Johannes Kuisl shoved his heavy frame through the low wooden doorway, the bailiff instinctively stepped back and crossed himself. Nobody in the town liked to meet the hangman. No wonder his house was outside the walls, in the tanners’ quarter. When the huge man came to the inn for wine, he sat alone at the table in silence. People avoided his eyes in the street. They said it meant bad luck, especially on execution days. The leather gloves he was wearing today would be burned after the execution.

The hangman sat down on the bench in front of his house to enjoy the midday sun. Anyone seeing him now would hardly believe that he was the same man who had been deliriously babbling not an hour before. Johannes Kuisl had a good reputation as an executioner. Fast, strong, never hesitating. Nobody outside his family knew how much drink he used to down before executions. Now he had his eyes closed, as if he were listening to a distant tune. The noise from the town was still in the air. Music, laughter, a blackbird singing nearby. The sword was leaning against the bench, like a walking stick.

“Remember the ropes,” the hangman called to his son without so much as opening his eyes.

In the stable, which was built onto the house, Jakob harnessed the thin, bony horse and hitched it to the wagon. Yesterday he had spent hours scrubbing the two-wheeled vehicle. Now he realized that it had all been in vain. Dirt and blood were eating into the wood. Jakob threw some straw on the filthiest spots, then the wagon was ready for the big day.

Though he was only twelve years old, the hangman’s son had seen a few executions up close: two hangings and the drowning of a woman three times sentenced for thieving. He was barely six when he saw his first hanging. Jakob remembered well how the highwayman wriggled and writhed at the end of the rope for almost a quarter of an hour. The crowd had cheered, and Father had come home with an extra large leg of mutton on that evening. After executions, the Kuisl family was always in for a feast.

Jakob grabbed a few ropes from the chest way back in the stable and stuffed them into a sack together with the chains, the rusty pincers, and the linen rags used for mopping up the blood. Then he tossed the sack onto the wagon and led the harnessed horse to the front of the house. His father scrambled onto the wagon and sat down cross-legged on its wooden bed, the sword resting on his powerful thighs. The bailiff walked ahead at a swift pace, glad to be out of the hangman’s reach.

“Off we go,” Johannes Kuisl called out.

Jakob pulled at the reins, and with much squeaking, the wagon started to move.

As the horse plodded along the wide lane that led to the upper part of the town, the son kept looking back at his father. Jakob had always respected his family’s work. Even if people called it a dishonorable trade, he couldn’t see anything shameful about it. Painted whores, yes, and itinerant street artists—those people were dishonest. But his father had a hard, serious trade that demanded a lot of experience. It was from him that Jakob learned the difficult craft of killing.

If he was lucky, and if the Elector permitted it, he would be able to become a master executioner in a few years. To qualify, he would have to perform a professional, technically perfect beheading. Jakob had never seen one take place, and so it was all the more important that he pay full attention today.