The Hangman's Daughter Part 1

The Hangman's Daughter.

A HISTORICAL NOVEL.

by OLIVER POTZSCH.

PROLOGUE.

SCHONGAU.

OCTOBER 12, A.D. 1624.

OCTOBER 12 WAS A GOOD DAY FOR A KILLING. IT had rained all week, but on this Friday, after the church fair, our good Lord was in a kindlier mood. Though autumn had already come, the sun was shining brightly on that part of Bavaria they call the Pfaffenwinkel-the priests' corner-and merry noise and laughter could be heard from the town. Drums rumbled, cymbals clanged, and somewhere a fiddle was playing. The aroma of deep-fried doughnuts and roasted meat drifted down to the foul-smelling tanners' quarter. Yes, it was going to be a lovely execution. had rained all week, but on this Friday, after the church fair, our good Lord was in a kindlier mood. Though autumn had already come, the sun was shining brightly on that part of Bavaria they call the Pfaffenwinkel-the priests' corner-and merry noise and laughter could be heard from the town. Drums rumbled, cymbals clanged, and somewhere a fiddle was playing. The aroma of deep-fried doughnuts and roasted meat drifted down to the foul-smelling tanners' quarter. Yes, it was going to be a lovely execution.

Jakob Kuisl was standing in the main room, which was bathed in light, trying to wake up his father. The bailiff had called on them twice already, and there was no way he'd be able to send him away a third time. The hangman of Schongau sat bent over, his head lying on a table and his long straggly hair floating in a puddle of beer and cheap brandy. He was snoring, and at times he made twitching movements in his sleep.

Jakob bent down to his father's ear. He smelled a mix of alcohol and sweat. The sweat of fear. His father always smelled like that before executions. A moderate drinker otherwise, he began to drink heavily as soon as the death sentence had been p.r.o.nounced. He didn't eat; he hardly talked. At night he often woke up screaming and drenched in perspiration. The two days immediately before the execution there was no use talking to him. Katharina, his wife, knew that and would move to her sister-in-law's with the children. Jakob, however, had to stay behind, as he was his father's eldest son and apprentice.

"We've got to go! The bailiff's waiting."

Jakob whispered at first, then he talked louder, and by now he was screaming. Finally the snoring colossus stirred.

Johannes Kuisl stared at his son with bloodshot eyes. His skin was the color of old, crusty bread dough; his black, straggly beard was still sticky with last night's barley broth. He rubbed his face with his long, almost clawlike fingers. Then he rose to his full height of almost six feet. His huge body swayed, and it seemed for a moment that he'd fall over again. Then, however, Johannes Kuisl found his balance and stood up straight.

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 Jorg 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. n.o.body 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. n.o.body 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 wh.o.r.es, 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.

In the meantime the wagon had entered the town along a narrow, steep lane and came to a halt in the market square. There were rows of stalls and tents along the patrician housefronts. Little girls with filthy faces sold roasted nuts and small, fragrant rolls. In one corner a group of traveling minstrels had gathered. They were juggling b.a.l.l.s and singing crude ballads mocking the child murderess. The next town fair wasn't to take place till the end of October, but the news of the beheading had reached the nearby villages. People were gossiping, eating, buying sweets, and looking forward to the b.l.o.o.d.y drama as the high point of the day.

From his seat on the wagon, Jakob looked down at the people crowding around the hangman's wagon, some laughing and some just staring in amazement. There was not much more going on here. The market square had emptied out and most Schongauers had already moved to the execution site just outside the town walls, to get good seats. The execution was to take place after the noonday ringing of the bells, and that was less than half an hour away now.

As the hangman's wagon entered the paved square, the music broke off. Someone screamed, "Hey, hangman! Have you sharpened your sword? But perhaps you want to marry her?!" The crowd howled with delight. True, it was customary in Schongau that the hangman could spare the offender if he married her. But Johannes Kuisl had a wife already, and Katharina Kuisl wasn't exactly known to be kind and gentle. She was the daughter of the infamous executioner Jorg Abriel, and people called her the "b.l.o.o.d.y Daughter" or "Satan's Wife."

The wagon rumbled across the market square, past the Ballenhaus, the building that doubled as warehouse and town hall, and toward the town wall. A tall, three-story tower stood there. Its outer walls were covered with soot and its tiny barred windows mere slits, like embrasures. The hangman shouldered his sword and descended from the wagon. Then father and son stepped through the stone gateway into the cool darkness of the tower. A narrow, worn flight of stairs led down into the dungeon. Here they found themselves in a gloomy corridor lined on both sides with heavy, iron-studded doors with tiny barred openings at eye level. Childlike whimpering and a priest's whisper emerged from a peephole on the right, and Jakob heard fragments of Latin words.

The bailiff opened the door and immediately the air was filled with the stench of urine, excrement, and sweat. The hangman's son involuntarily held his breath.

Inside, the woman's whimpering ceased momentarily, then turned into a hollow, high-pitched wailing. The child murderess knew that the end was at hand. The priest's litany, too, became louder, and prayer and screaming merged into one infernal din.

"Dominus pascit me, et nihil mihi deerit... The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want..." The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want..."

Other bailiffs approached to help drag the human bundle out into the daylight.

At one time Elisabeth Clement had been a beautiful woman with blonde shoulder-length hair, smiling eyes, and a puckered mouth that seemed to be pursed in a perpetual, slightly sardonic smile. Jakob had often seen her with other girls washing linen down at the Lech River. Now the bailiffs had shorn her hair; her face was pale and her cheeks hollow. She was wearing a sinner's shift, a simple gray shirt covered with stains. Her shoulder blades seemed to pierce the skin and the shirt. She was so gaunt that it seemed she had hardly touched the hangman's feast, the generous last meal that a condemned person was ent.i.tled to for three whole days and was traditionally provided by Semer's inn.

Elisabeth Clement had been a maid at Rosselbauer's farm. She was beautiful and therefore popular with the farmhands. They'd been attracted to her like moths to a flame; they'd given her small gifts and picked her up at the door. True, Rosselbauer did scold her for it, but it didn't do any good. They said that one lad or the other had taken a roll in the hay with her.

It was another maid who had found the dead baby behind the barn in a pit, the soil covering it still fresh. Elisabeth broke down under torture right away. She couldn't say, or didn't want to say, whose baby it was. Womenfolk in town gossiped. It was Elisabeth's beauty that had been her downfall, and that was enough to restore peace of mind to many an ugly burgher's wife. The world was no longer out of joint.

Now Elisabeth was screaming with fear, struggling and kicking as the three bailiffs tried to drag her from the hole. They tried to tie her up, but again and again she slid away like a slippery fish.

Then something remarkable happened. The hangman moved forward and placed both hands on her shoulders. Almost tenderly, the huge man bent down to the slight girl and whispered something in her ear. Jakob alone was close enough to understand his words.

"It won't hurt, Lisl. I promise. It won't hurt."

The girl stopped screaming. She was still trembling all over, but she allowed herself to be tied up now. The bailiffs eyed the hangman with a mix of awe and fear. It had seemed to them that Johannes Kuisl had whispered an incantation in the girl's ear.

Finally they stepped out into the open, where a throng of Schongauers was already waiting for the poor sinner. Whispers and murmurs filled the air; some crossed themselves, others mumbled a brief prayer. High up in the belfry a bell began to ring: a high-pitched shrill note that the wind picked up and carried across the town. Now the jeering stopped and the bell was the only sound that broke the silence. Elisabeth Clement had been one of them. Now the crowd gazed at her-a wild, captured beast.

Johannes Kuisl lifted the trembling girl onto the wagon. Again, he whispered something in her ear. Then he handed her a vial. When Elisabeth hesitated, he suddenly seized her head, pulled it back and dripped the liquid into her mouth. It all happened so quickly that only a few bystanders realized what was going on. Elisabeth's eyes glazed over. She crawled into a corner of the wagon and curled up. She was now breathing more quietly and was no longer trembling. Schongauers knew about Kuisl's potion. It was a kindness, however, that he didn't extend to all those who were condemned. Peter Hausmeir, a murderer who had also robbed the church offertory box, had felt every single blow when Kuisl smashed his bones ten years ago. He had been broken on the wheel, and he screamed the whole time, until the executioner finally shattered his cervical vertebrae.

Usually those condemned to death had to walk to the site of their execution, or they were wrapped in an animal skin and dragged behind a horse. But the hangman knew from experience that a condemned child murderess would not ordinarily be able to walk there by herself. These women would receive three liters of wine on their last day to calm them, and his potion did the rest. Most of the time, the girls were half-conscious lambs who had to be almost carried to the slaughter. That's why Johannes Kuisl preferred using the wagon. Also, its tailboard prevented certain folk from dealing the poor sinner an extra blow on her way to eternity.

Now the hangman himself was holding the reins, and his son Jakob was walking alongside. The gaping crowd thronged around the vehicle so that they could barely move forward. Meanwhile, a Franciscan friar had climbed up next to the condemned woman and said the rosary at her side. Slowly the wagon pa.s.sed the Ballenhaus and creaked to a halt north of the building. Jakob recognized the blacksmith from the Hennenga.s.se who was already waiting with his brazier. He pumped the bellows with his sinewy, callused hands to blow air into the coals, and the pincers glowed as red as fresh blood.

The two bailiffs pulled Elisabeth up. She was as limp as a puppet, and her eyes stared into s.p.a.ce. When the hangman pinched the girl's right upper arm with the pincers, she screamed, shrilly and sharply, then seemed to drop off into another world. There was smoke and a hissing noise and Jakob smelled the odor of burned flesh. His father had told him what the procedure was, yet he had to fight an urge to vomit.

Three more times, at each corner of the Ballenhaus, the wagon stopped and the procedure was repeated. Elisabeth's left arm was pinched, then her left breast, and then her right breast. Owing to the potion, however, the pain was bearable.

Elisabeth began to hum a nursery rhyme and smiled as she stroked her belly. "Sleep, baby, sleep..."

They left Schongau through the Hof Gate and followed the Altenstadt Road. Soon the execution site appeared in the distance. It was a gra.s.sy field with patches of bare soil situated between farmland and the edge of the forest. The whole of Schongau and the neighboring villages, it seemed, was a.s.sembled here with benches and chairs brought in for the aldermen. The commoners were standing in the back, pa.s.sing the time gossiping and snacking. The execution site was in the middle of the field: a masonry structure seven feet tall with wooden stairs leading to the top.

As the wagon approached the site, the crowd parted and everyone tried to catch a glimpse of the child murderess curled up on the bed of the wagon.

"Make her get up! Up! Up with her! Hey, hangman, show her to us!"

The crowd was obviously annoyed. Many had been waiting since the morning, and now they didn't even get to see the criminal. Some of the onlookers began hurling rocks and rotten fruit. A Franciscan ducked to protect his brown habit, but several apples. .h.i.t him in the back. The bailiffs tried to push back the people who were crowding in on the wagon from all sides, as if to swallow it up along with its pa.s.sengers.

Calmly Johannes Kuisl steered the wagon to the platform. There the aldermen were waiting together with Michael Hirschmann, the Elector's secretary. He was the representative of the Prince-Elector, and as such he had p.r.o.nounced the death sentence over the girl two weeks ago. Now he looked deep into her eyes once more. The old man had known Elisabeth since she was a child.

"My, my, Lisl, what have have you done?" you done?"

"Nothin'. I've done nothin', Your Excellency." Elisabeth looked at the bailiff from eyes that were already dead and kept stroking her belly.

"Our good Lord alone knows that," murmured Hirschmann.

The bailiff nodded and then the executioner led the murderess up the eight steps to the scaffold. Jakob followed. Twice Elisabeth tripped, then she took her last step. Another Franciscan friar and the town crier were waiting on the platform. Jakob surveyed the meadow below and saw hundreds of curious faces; their mouths and eyes were wide open. The aldermen had taken their seats and in the town the bell was pealing the death knell. The air was filled with the tension of expectation.

Gently, the hangman pushed Elisabeth Clement down on her knees. Then he blindfolded her with one of the linen cloths he had brought. She shivered slightly and murmured a prayer.

"Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among women..."

The town crier cleared his throat, then he proclaimed the death sentence one more time. Jakob perceived his voice only as a distant murmur.

"...that thou shalt turn to G.o.d with all thy heart and thus obtain a blessed and peaceful death..."

His father poked him in the side.

"You've got to hold her for me," he whispered as softly as possible so as not to interrupt the reading.

"What?"

"You've got to hold her shoulders and her head up, so that I hit the mark. Just take a look at Lisl-she's just going to tip over otherwise."

And in fact, the woman's body was slowly sagging forward. Jakob was confused. It had been his understanding that he was merely to watch watch the execution. His father had never mentioned the execution. His father had never mentioned helping helping. But now there was no time for hesitation. Jakob grabbed Elisabeth Clement's stubbly hair and pulled her head upward. She whimpered. The hangman's son felt his fingers damp with sweat. He held his arm out to make room for his father's sword. The trick was to strike precisely between two of the cervical vertebrae with a single blow of the sword dealt with both hands. Just a twinkling of an eye, a breath of air, and the matter would be over and done with. Over and done with, that is, if the job was done properly.

"May G.o.d have mercy on your soul..."

The town crier was finished. He produced a thin, black wooden rod, held it over Elisabeth Clement, and snapped it in two. The sharp sound of the breaking wood was audible all over the meadow.

The Elector's secretary nodded to Johannes Kuisl. The hangman lifted his sword and took a swing.

At this very moment Jakob felt how the girl's hair slipped from his sweaty fingers. Just a moment before he had been holding up Elisabeth Clement's head, but now she fell forward like a sack of flour. He saw his father's sword whiz by, but instead of striking her neck it hit her head at about ear level. Elisabeth Clement writhed about on the platform, screaming like an animal impaled on a stake, and there was a deep gash in her temple. In a pool of blood Jakob glimpsed part of an ear.

Her blindfold had fallen off and, her eyes wide with fear, she looked up at the executioner, who stood over her with raised sword. The crowd groaned in unison and Jakob felt a gagging sensation in his throat.

His father pushed him aside and swung again with the sword, but Elisabeth Clement rolled to the side when she saw the sword coming down. This time the blade struck her shoulder and cut deep into the nape of her neck. Blood spurted from the wound and splattered the hangman, his helper, and the horrified Franciscan.

On all fours, Elisabeth Clement crawled to the edge of the platform. Most Schongauers gazed at the spectacle in horror, but others shouted their disapproval and began pelting the hangman with rocks. People didn't like to see the man bungling the job.

Johannes Kuisl wanted to put an end to that. He stepped up to the groaning woman and took yet another swing. This time he struck her right between the third and fourth vertebrae, and the groaning stopped at once. But her head wouldn't come off-it was still connected by tendons and flesh, and it took a fourth blow to sever it from the body.

It rolled over the wooden planks and came to rest right in front of Jakob. He started to faint; his stomach churned, then he dropped to his knees and threw up the watery beer and oatmeal he'd had for breakfast that morning. He retched and retched until nothing would come but green bile. As through a veil he heard the screaming of the people, the railing of the aldermen and his father's heavy panting next to him.

Sleep, baby, sleep...

Just before he mercifully blacked out, Jakob Kuisl made a decision. Never would he follow in his father's footsteps; never in his life would he become a hangman.

Then he dropped headlong into the pool of blood.

CHAPTER 1.

SCHONGAU,.

THE MORNING OF A APRIL 24, 24, A.D A.D. 1659.

THIRTY-FIVE YEARS LATER.

MAGDALENA KUISL WAS SITTING ON A WOODEN bench in front of the small, squat hangman's house, pressing the heavy bronze mortar tightly between her thighs. Pounding steadily, she crushed the dried thyme, club moss, and mountain lovage into a fine green powder, breathing in the heady fragrance that offered a foretaste of the summer to come. The sun shone in her deeply tanned face, causing her to blink as pearls of sweat rolled down her brow. It was the first really warm day this year. bench in front of the small, squat hangman's house, pressing the heavy bronze mortar tightly between her thighs. Pounding steadily, she crushed the dried thyme, club moss, and mountain lovage into a fine green powder, breathing in the heady fragrance that offered a foretaste of the summer to come. The sun shone in her deeply tanned face, causing her to blink as pearls of sweat rolled down her brow. It was the first really warm day this year.

Her little brother and sister, the twins Georg and Barbara, six years old, were playing in the yard, running between the elder bushes that were just beginning to bud. Again and again, the children squealed with delight when the long branches brushed over their faces like fingers. Magdalena couldn't help smiling. She remembered how, just a few years ago, her father had chased her through the bushes. She pictured his ma.s.sive frame as he ran after her, raising his huge hands and with a big bear's threatening growl. Her father had been a wonderful playmate. She had never understood why people would cross to the other side of the street when they met in town or murmur a prayer as he approached. Only later, when she was seven or eight, had she seen how her father didn't just play with his huge hands. They were on Hangman's Hill, where Jakob Kuisl had drawn the hemp noose around the neck of a thief and pulled tight.

Nevertheless, Magdalena was proud of her family. Her great-grandfather Jorg Abriel and her grandfather Johannes Kuisl had been hangmen. Magdalena's father Jakob had been apprenticed to Granddad just as her little brother, Georg, would someday be apprenticed to their own father. Once, when she was still a child, her mother had told her at bedtime that Father had not always been a hangman. He had marched off to the Great War and only later felt the call to return to Schongau. When little Magdalena asked what he had done in the war and why he would rather cut people's heads off than put on his armor and take up his shining sword and march off to foreign lands, her mother simply fell silent and put her finger to her lips.

After she had finished grinding the herbs, Magdalena emptied the green powder into an earthenware container, which she carefully closed. After it had boiled down to a thick broth, the fragrant mixture would help women resume their interrupted menstruation-a well-known remedy used to prevent an unwanted birth. Thyme and club moss grew in every other garden, but only her father knew where to find the much rarer mountain lovage. Even the midwives from the surrounding villages came to get their powder from him. He called it "Our Lady's Powder" and thus earned one or two extra pennies.

Magdalena pushed a lock from her face. It kept falling back. She had her father's unruly hair. Thick eyebrows arched above black, glowing eyes, which seemed continually to blink. At age twenty, she was the hangman's oldest child. Her mother had given birth to two stillborn babies after her, and then to three infants that were so weak they didn't live to see their first birthday. Then the twins had come, finally. They were two noisy rascals and her father's pride and joy. Sometimes Magdalena felt something like pangs of jealousy. Georg was his father's only son and would one day be apprenticed in the hangman's trade. Barbara was still a little girl, dreaming of all the things possible in this world. Magdalena, however, was the "Hangman's Wench," the "b.l.o.o.d.y Maiden," whom n.o.body could touch and who was the object of gossip and laughter behind her back. She heaved a sigh. Her life seemed to be already prescribed. She'd marry a hangman from another town, as executioners' families always stuck together. And yet there were a few young men in town whom she fancied. Especially one...

"When you're done with Our Lady's Powder, go in and do the laundry. It won't wash itself, you know!"

Her mother's voice awakened Magdalena from her reveries. Anna Maria Kuisl looked at her daughter with disapproval. Her hands were covered with dirt from yard work and she mopped her brow before she continued.

"Dreaming of the boys again, I can tell by the looks of you," she said. "Get your mind off the boys. There's enough gossiping as is."

She smiled at Magdalena, but the hangman's daughter knew that her mother was being serious. She was a practical, strait-laced woman who cared little for her daughter's dreams. Also she thought it was a waste of time that her father had taught Magdalena to read. A woman who buried her nose in books was regarded with suspicion by the men. And if she was the hangman's daughter on top of that and liked to flirt with the lads, then she wasn't far from the pillory and the scold's bridle. More than once, the hangman's wife had prophesied in the darkest tones how her husband would have to clap his own daughter into the shrew's fiddle and lead her through town at the end of a rope.

"All right, Mother," said Magdalena and set the mortar down on the bench. "I'm taking the laundry down to the river."

She grabbed the basket of soiled bedsheets and walked through the garden and down to the Lech River. Her mother's eyes followed her pensively.

Right behind the house, a well-worn path led past herb and flower gardens, barns, and handsome houses down to the river, to a place where the water had shaped a shallow cove. Magdalena gazed at the whirling eddies that were forming in the middle of the river. It was springtime, and the water was high, reaching the roots of the birches and carrying along branches and entire trees. For a moment Magdalena believed she saw something that looked like a shred of linen in the earth-brown waters, but when she looked more closely, she saw just branches and leaves.