The Hangman's Daughter

“What is the Schongau hangman doing here?” he asked suspiciously. “There’s no work for you here! The devil has already done his work!”

Jakob Kuisl wouldn’t be put off. “I heard there was an accident. Perhaps I can help?”

The priest shook his head. “I told you already, there’s nothing to be done. The boy is dead. The devil surely got him and branded him with his mark.”

“Just let the hangman come!” It was the voice of Strasser, the innkeeper. Simon recognized him among the peasants standing around the bier. “Let him see what that witch did to my boy, so that he may give her an especially slow death!” The face of the innkeeper was white as chalk and his eyes glowed with hatred as he looked back and forth between the hangman and his dead foster son.

Inquisitively, Jakob Kuisl stepped closer to the bier. Simon followed him. It was nailed together from planks and covered with fresh pine twigs. The scent of their sap could not entirely cover the stench coming from the corpse. Johannes Strasser’s body was already showing black spots on the limbs, and flies were buzzing around his face. Someone had mercifully put two coins on the open eyes that were wide with horror as they stared up at the sky. There was a deep cut below the chin which extended nearly from one ear to the other. Dried blood stuck to the boy’s shirt, which was crawling with flies as well.

Simon couldn’t help wincing. Who would do such a thing? The boy was twelve years old at the most and his greatest sin so far had probably consisted of swiping a loaf of bread or a pitcher of milk from his foster father. Now he lay here, pale and cold, having met a bloody death at the end of a much too short, unhappy life. Tolerated but never loved, an outcast even in death. Even now there was no one who would shed sincere tears for him. Strasser stood at the bier with his lips pressed together, furious and full of hatred for the murderer but not actually grieving.

The hangman turned the Strasser boy’s body gently on its side. Below the shoulder blade was the purple mark, blurred but still quite visible, a circle with a cross extending beneath it.

“The devil’s mark,” whispered the priest, crossing himself. Then he intoned the Lord’s Prayer.

“Pater noster, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum…”

“Where did you find him?” asked Jakob Kuisl without taking his eyes from the corpse.

“In the stable, all the way in back, hidden under some bales of straw.”

Simon looked around. It was Franz Strasser who had spoken. Full of hatred, the innkeeper looked down on what had once been his ward.

“He must have been lying there all the time. Josepha went to look this morning because of the smell. She thought it was some dead animal. But then it turned out to be Johannes,” he mumbled.

Simon shivered. It was the same kind of cut that little Anton Kratz had a few days ago. Peter Grimmer, Anton Kratz, Johannes Strasser… What about Sophie and Clara? Had the devil caught them too by now?

The hangman stooped down and began to examine the corpse. He brushed his fingers across the wound, looking for other injuries. When he did not find anything he sniffed at the body.

“Three days, no more,” he said. “Whoever killed him knew his business. A clean cut through the throat.”

The priest eyed him angrily from the side. “That’s enough now, Kuisl,” he barked. “You can go. This is the church’s business. You look after that witch in your own town, that Stechlin woman! She’s responsible for everything here, after all!”

Strasser, standing next to him, nodded. “Johannes was often at her place. Together with the other wards and with that redhead Sophie. She bewitched him, and now the devil is coming for the souls of the little children!”

Many people could be heard murmuring and praying in the crowd. Strasser felt encouraged.

“Tell those big shots in town,” he shouted at the hangman, his face red with wrath, “that if they don’t clean up that brood of witches soon, we’ll come and get them ourselves!”

Some of the peasants agreed loudly as he continued his harangue. “We’ll hang them on the highest gable and light a fire underneath. Then we’ll see who else is in bed with them!”

The priest nodded deliberately. “There’s truth to that,” he said. “We cannot just look on as our children fall victim to the devil, one by one, without stopping him. The witches must burn.”

“The witches?” asked Simon.