The Hangman's Daughter

He scrutinized the midwife’s body inch by inch, checking under her armpits, on her behind and between her thighs. Martha Stechlin kept her eyes closed. Even when the clerk poked his fingers into her genitals she did not weep. Finally, Lechner stopped. “The mark on the shoulder blade seems to be the most suspicious of them. We shall do the test. Hangman, the needle!”

Jakob Kuisl handed him a finger-long needle. Without hesitating the clerk pushed the needle deep into the shoulder blade. Martha Stechlin’s scream was so shrill that Jakob Kuisl winced. They were starting and there was nothing he could do about it.

Johann Lechner observed the point of entry with great interest. Finally he smiled, satisfied. “Just as I thought,” he said, returning to the desk and sitting down behind his writing implements. He started to write, speaking aloud as he did so: “Defendant’s clothes removed. I stuck her with a needle myself and discovered a point from which no blood flowed—”

“But this is no evidence,” Jakob Schreevogl objected. “Any child knows that hardly any blood flows across the shoulder bone! And furthermore—”

“Juryman Schreevogl,” replied Lechner, interrupting him. “Did you notice that this mark is at the exact same spot where the children had their marks? And that this mark, if not exactly identical, nevertheless looks very similar?”

Jakob Schreevogl shook his head. “A birthmark, nothing more. Never in a lifetime will the Elector’s secretary let you call this evidence!”

“Well, we’re not done yet after all,” said Lechner. “Hangman, the thumbscrews. This time we’ll take the other hand.”

Martha Stechlin’s screams rose from the torture cellar through the narrow windows of the keep into the town. Anyone in the vicinity briefly interrupted their work and crossed themselves or prayed a Hail Mary. Then they continued whatever they had been doing.

The burghers were sure that the witch was receiving her just punishment. She was still obstinate, but soon enough she would spit out her nefarious doings to the honorable aldermen, and then it would finally be over. She would confess her whoring with the devil, and the wild nights with him when together they drank the blood of the innocent little children and branded them with the mark of the devil. She would tell of the orgiastic dances, and how she had kissed the devil on his backside and had done everything the devil asked. She would tell of the other witches who had ridden with her through the air on their brooms, excited by pungent witches’ salve that they had smeared on their genitals. Wanton wenches, all of them! And many a good Schongauer was salivating at the mere thought of it. And many a Schongau housewife could well imagine who these other witches were: the neighbor with the evil eye, the beggar woman over in the Münzgasse, the maid who was pursuing the good, unsuspecting husband…

At a stand in the market square, Bonifaz Fronwieser was just biting into his warm pastry when Martha Stechlin’s screams could be heard coming from the dungeon. Suddenly the meat tasted old and rotten. He threw the rest to a pack of dogs running about and then headed home.

The devil had entered Clara and wouldn’t let go of her. The girl threw herself from one side to the other on her bed of brushwood. Cold sweat stood on her brow; her face was waxen like a doll’s. Again and again Clara mumbled in her sleep and at times cried out with such force that Sophie had to hold her mouth closed. At that moment the devil seemed to be very close to her again.

“He…he’s gotten hold of me. No! Go away! Go away! Hellish claws…the heart from the body…it hurts so…so much…”

Gently Sophie kept pushing her little friend back on her bed and wiped her hot brow with a wet rag. The fever had not let up. On the contrary, it had become stronger and stronger. Clara was glowing like a little oven. The drink Sophie had given her provided only temporary relief.

Sophie had now watched over her for three nights and four days. Only rarely did she go outside to gather berries and herbs or to pilfer something edible from one of the surrounding farms. Yesterday she had caught a chicken, killed it, and at night made hot soup for Clara. But she was afraid that someone would see the fire and soon went back inside. Her fears were not unfounded. She had heard footsteps in the night. They had passed very close to her hiding place and then had left again.

One time she had gone to the raft landing and had asked a boy to tell the alderman Schreevogl that his foster daughter was well. She had considered that a pretty good idea at first. But when that physician showed up in the forest, she cursed herself for it. And all the more when the devil himself appeared, coming as if from nowhere. She dropped quickly into a ditch covered with shrubs, and the man with the bony hand ran past her, toward the physician. Since then she did not know whether the young physician had been killed or had gotten away. She only knew that her pursuers were very close.