The Hangman's Daughter

Jakob Kuisl hesitated. This woman had brought his children into the world. He owed her a favor. In any case, try as he might, he found it impossible to imagine that she could have inflicted wounds like that on Peter.

“No,” he said finally. “Put it off. Deny it as long as you can. I’ll treat you gently, I promise you.”

“And if that doesn’t help anymore?”

Kuisl drew on his cold pipe. Then he pointed the stem at Martha. “I’ll get the swine who did it. I promise you. Hold on until I have the bastard.”

Then he turned suddenly and made his way toward the outer door.

“Kuisl!”

The hangman stopped and looked round once more at the midwife. Her voice was a whisper, barely audible.

“There’s just one thing more. You ought to know.”

“What’s that?”

“I had a mandrake in my closet.”

“A man—! You know, the bigwigs hold that to be the devil’s stuff.”

“I know. In any case, it’s gone.”

“Gone?”

“Yes, disappeared. Since yesterday.”

“Have any other things gone missing?”

“I don’t know. I’d only just noticed it before Grimmer came with his people.”

Jakob Kuisl remained standing by the door, pensively sucking at the pipe stem.

“Strange,” he murmured. “Wasn’t it the full moon last night?”

Without waiting for an answer, he walked out and the door slammed shut with a great noise behind him. Martha Stechlin wrapped herself in the coat, lay down on the straw, and wept silently.

The hangman took the quickest way to the Stechlin house. His steps echoed through the alleys. A group of peasant women, loaded with baskets and sacks, looked up in astonishment at the huge man who hurried past them. They made the sign of the cross, then continued gossiping about the terrible death of the Grimmer child and about his father, the widower and drunkard.

As he walked along, Jakob Kuisl again thought about what the midwife had just said to him. The mandrake was the root of mandragora, a plant with yellow-green fruits, whose consumption had a numbing effect. The root itself resembled a tiny withered man, which is why it was often used for spells. Pulverized, it was an ingredient of the notorious flying salve, used by witches to anoint their broomsticks. It was supposed to flourish particularly well under the gallows and to thrive on the urine and sperm of those who had been hanged, but Jakob Kuisl had never seen one growing on the Schongau gallows hill. In fact the plant was excellent as an analgesic or for bringing about abortions. But if a mandrake was found in Martha Stechlin’s possession, that would mean a certain death sentence.

Who could have stolen the plant from the midwife? Someone who wanted to harm her?

Someone who wanted her to be suspected of witchcraft?

Perhaps the midwife had simply misplaced the forbidden root. Jakob Kuisl strode on faster. Soon he would be able to form a picture for himself.

A short time later he stood in front of the midwife’s house. When he saw the splintered window frame and the broken door, he was no longer sure that he would find anything significant there.

The hangman pushed at the door. With one final squeak it came off its hinges and fell inward.

In the room it looked as if Martha Stechlin had been experimenting with gunpowder and had blown herself up. The clay floor was strewn with broken earthenware pots, whose alchemical signs indicated their previous contents. There was a strong smell of peppermint and wormwood.

The table, chair, and bed had been smashed and their various parts scattered throughout the room. The kettle with the cold porridge had rolled into the corner, its contents making a small puddle, from which footprints led to the garden door at the back. Smeared footmarks were also to be seen in the herbal pastes and powders on the floor. It looked as if half of Schongau had paid a visit to Martha Stechlin’s house. Jakob remembered that along with Grimmer a good dozen men had stormed the midwife’s house.

When the hangman looked more closely at the footprints, he began to wonder. Between the big footprints were smaller ones, smeared but still clearly recognizable. Children’s footprints.

He looked around the room. The kettle. The broken table. The footprints. The smashed pots. Somewhere in his brain a bell was ringing, but he couldn’t say why. Something seemed familiar to him.

The hangman chewed the stem of his cold pipe. Then he went outside, deep in thought.