The Hangman's Daughter (11 page)

When Kuisl heard the voice of the court clerk he had quickly withdrawn from the fighters. Now he was sitting on one of the piles of the pier, sucking at his pipe, and observing the tumult on the landing.

It looked as if all Schongau had come down to the river to watch the spectacle. The line of people looking at the burned-out ruin went all the way back to the gate. Burning beams continued to crack and fall into the flames. The conflagration lit up the nearby forest like a midsummer bonfire as dusk slowly deepened.

In the meantime Lechner had found the watchman at the landing. He cowered before him, distraught, protesting his innocence.

“Believe me, master,” he whimpered. “We don’t know how such a fire could have broken out. I was just sitting here playing dice with Benedikt and Johannes, and when I turned around, there was the whole Stadel in flames! Someone must have set it deliberately, otherwise it wouldn’t have burned so quickly.”

“I know who started the fire,” cried Georg Riegg from the Schongau group. “It was the Augsburgers! First they kill our children, and then they set fire to our Stadel so that nobody will want to tie up their rafts here, and everyone will be frightened and avoid our town. The dirty bastards!”

Some of the Schongau wagon drivers became restive again. Stones flew and curses were heard, and it was only with difficulty that the bailiffs were able to keep the two groups apart.

“You think we’d set fire to our own goods!” cried a voice from the Augsburger group. The Schongauers began to mutter and curse. “You didn’t watch out properly, and now you want to put the blame on us! You’ll pay us back every penny!”

“But what’s that over there?” Georg Riegg pointed to the barrels and cases standing in front of the smoldering Stadel. “You had no trouble getting your own stuff out.”

“Liar!” the Augsburgers replied. It was almost impossible to restrain them. “We carried them out when the fire started. You guys just stood around yammering.”

“Silence, damn it!”

The voice of the court clerk was not particularly loud. Nevertheless there was something about it that compelled the others to silence. Johann Lechner’s eyes wandered over the two hostile groups. Finally he pointed to the Augsburg wagon drivers.

“Who’s the leader here?”

The huge man whom Jakob Kuisl had earlier pushed into the water stepped forward. Obviously he had succeeded in reaching the bank again. His wet hair hung down his face; his hose and doublet clung to his body. In spite of this he did not look as if he intended to be intimidated by a mere clerk from Schongau. The giant looked into Johann Lechner’s face and growled.

“I am.”

Lechner looked him up and down. “And what is your name?”

“Martin Hueber, head wagon driver for the house of Fugger.”

A few isolated whistles were heard. The Fuggers were now not nearly as powerful as they had been before the Great War, but their name still meant something. Anyone who worked for this family could count on powerful advocates.

If Johann Lechner had taken this into consideration, he didn’t let it show. He nodded briefly and said: “Martin Hueber, you will be our guest until this matter is cleared up. Until then you may not leave the town.”

Hueber’s face turned red. “You can’t do that. I’m only subject to Augsburg law!”

“I certainly can do that.” Lechner’s voice was quiet and penetrating. “You’ve beaten up people here, and there are witnesses to that. So you can sit here in our jail and drink water.”

Cheers and mocking laughter were heard from the Schongau raftsmen. The clerk turned to them.

“There’s no cause for merriment at all. Georg Riegg, as leader of this riot you’ll be held in the dungeon, and the lazy watchman at the bridge will keep you company. And then we’ll see who laughs last.”

Georg Riegg, the bridge watchman, and the Augsburger Martin Hueber, protesting loudly, were led away. On the bridge the wagon driver turned once more to the Schongau men.

“You’ll be sorry for this!” he cried. “The Fuggers will know tomorrow what’s happened here. And then God help you. You’ll compensate us for every bale. Every single one!”

Lechner sighed. Then he turned to the burgomaster who stood beside him with a face white as chalk.

“There’s a curse on this town. And all that since this witch killed the boy,” he said.

Burgomaster Karl Semer looked at him, wondering.

“Do you think that the Stechlin woman set fire—?”

Lechner shrugged. Finally he smiled.

“It’s possible. We must make sure that she confesses. That should clear the air, and everyone will be satisfied.”

The burgomaster nodded, relieved. Then the two aldermen made their way back into the town.

The little girl pressed a wooden doll to her narrow chest, from which a rattling sound emerged with every breath. Her face was pale and sunken, and deep rings had formed under her eyes. Again she had to cough, hard and painfully. Her throat hurt. In the distance she heard the others down by the Lech. Something had happened. She struggled to sit up in bed and look through the window. But she could only see the sky, some clouds, and a column of smoke between them. Her father had told her that everything was all right, she should not get excited, and she needed to stay in bed. Later the physician would come and help her if the cold compresses didn’t work. The girl smiled. She hoped the young doctor would come and not the old one. She liked the young doctor—once he had given her an apple in the market square and asked her how she was. Not many people asked her how she was, in fact nobody.

Clara was five years old when she lost her parents—first her mother, who after the birth of a little brother had not woken up again. Clara could still remember her mother’s laughter and her big friendly eyes, and that before she went to sleep her mother had often sung to her. As she walked behind the wooden coffin she imagined that her mother was just asleep and she would soon wake up and come home. Her father had held her hand. When the funeral procession had come to the new cemetery at Saint Sebastian’s Church and they were lowering the coffin down into the earth, he had grasped her hand so hard that she screamed. The women thought she was crying for her mother and patted her on the head.

After that her father steadily declined. It began with the same coughing that she herself now had, hard and dry. Soon he was spitting blood, and the neighbors looked down at her with pity and shook their heads. In the evening she often sat by her father’s bed and sang the same songs her mother had always sung. He had only her, and she had only him. His brothers and sisters had moved away because there were enough basketmakers in Schongau, or they were dead, just like the little brother, who, without his mother’s breast, had cried for three days and suddenly fell silent.

Her father died on a cold damp day in the fall, and they carried him to the same cemetery as his wife. The mother’s grave was still quite new, and digging was easy.

Clara spent the next weeks with the neighbor woman, together with a half dozen other children. At the table they fought over the only bowl of barley porridge, but she wasn’t hungry anyway. She crept under the bench near the stove and wept. She was all alone. If the neighbor sometimes gave her sweets, the others took it away from her. The only thing she had left was the wooden doll that her father had once carved for her. She never put it down, not during the day and not at night, for it was the last reminder of her parents.

A month later a friendly young man came. He stroked her head and told her that from now on she would be called Clara Schreevogl. He led her into a big two-story house directly by the market square. It had wide stairs and lots of rooms with heavy brocade curtains. The Schreevogls already had five children, and it was said that Maria Schreevogl could not have any more. They took her up like their own child. And when at first the other children gossiped behind her back and called her bad names, her foster father came and whipped them so hard with a hazel switch that they couldn’t sit down for three days.

Clara ate the same fine food, she wore the same linen clothes, but even so she noticed that she was different. She was an orphan, living off charity. When there was a family celebration, at Easter or on the Eve of Saint Nicholas, she felt there was an invisible wall between herself and the Schreevogls. She saw the affectionate looks and embraces of the others, unsaid words, gestures, and caresses, and then she ran to her room and wept again. Silently, so that nobody would notice it.

Outside she could hear shouting and bawling in front of the house. Clara couldn’t bear to stay in bed any longer. She pulled herself up, pushed the heavy eiderdown comforter to one side, and slid down onto the cold wooden floor. Immediately a feeling of dizziness came over her. She had a fever, her legs felt like wet clay, but nevertheless she dragged herself the few steps to the window and looked out.

Down by the Lech, the Stadel was on fire. Tongues of fire licked up into the sky, and all of Schongau had come down to the raft landing. Clara’s foster parents, the children, and the nurse-maid were also down there to witness the spectacle. They had left only her, the sick orphan, behind. In her wild escape three days before, she had fallen into the Lech. Before the current had carried her away she had managed, in the nick of time, to hold on to a bunch of rushes. She had crawled up the bank and run home through a swamp and thickets. She kept looking around for the men, but they had disappeared. The other children were gone too. Not until she had reached the oak tree near the Küh Gate did she meet Anton and Sophie again. Anton looked at her with eyes wide with terror and cried again and again that he had seen the devil. He didn’t stop until Sophie gave him a box on the ear. And now he was dead, and Clara knew why. Although she was only ten years old, she could imagine what had happened. Clara was afraid.

At this moment she heard the squeaking of the front door. Her foster parents must have returned. Her first impulse was to call out to them, but something held her back. The Schreevogls’ arrival home was always accompanied by noise, doors slamming, children laughing, noise on the stairs. Even when the nurse came back from the market you could hear the rattling of keys and baskets being put away. But now it was deathly quiet, as if somebody had tried to open the door carefully and had been betrayed by the squeaking. Clara heard a creak on the stairs. Instinctively she ran back to the bed and crept under it. Dust got into her nose, she had to repress a sneeze. From her hiding place she saw the door of her room slowly opening. Two mud-stained boots paused on the threshold. Clara held her breath. They were certainly not her foster father’s boots; he paid great attention to his appearance. She didn’t know whose boots they were, but she recognized the mud on them. Clara’s shoes had looked just like that three days before. It was the mud from the swamp through which she had fled.

The men had come back, or at least one of them.

The dust made her nose itch again, she felt something tickling her right hand. As Clara glanced down, she saw a spider crawl over her finger and disappear in the darkness under the bed. She stifled a cry and stared at the boots still standing on the threshold. She heard the measured breathing of a man; then the boots disappeared. Steps tapped up the stairs to the rooms above. Clara listened carefully to the sound. It was different from the sound of normal steps. A dragging and scraping at regular intervals. She remembered the night of her flight. One of her pursuers had a strange gait. He had…limped! Clara was sure that the man up there on the stairs was the limper. Perhaps now he wouldn’t be so quick?

Clara waited a moment, then crawled out from under the bed and hurried on tiptoe to the open door. She looked up the stairs but couldn’t see anyone. The stranger must have gone into one of the upper rooms. Silently she crept downstairs.

When she had reached the entrance hall, she remembered that she had left her doll upstairs.

She bit her lip. In front of her the outside door stood wide open; she could hear the noise down by the river. The first people appeared to be making their way back to town.

Clara shut her eyes for a second, then hurried upstairs again and entered her room. There on the bed lay her doll. She picked it up and was just about to run downstairs again when she heard steps from above. Hurried steps.

The man had heard her.

The steps became quicker; the man was taking several stairs in one stride. Clara rushed out of the room, her doll pressed closely against her. On the threshold she glanced up the stairs. A black shadow seemed to fall over her, a bearded man in a cloak, his right hand stretched out toward her. It was the devil, and he had a white hand of bones.

Clara slammed the door of her room shut and bolted it. From outside something hit the door, and she could hear a voice cursing quietly. Then the man threw himself with his full force against the door, so that the frame shook. Once, twice…Clara ran to the window, which was still open. She wanted to call for help, but she was choked with fear. Only a hoarse croaking came out. Beneath her the street was still empty of people. A long way away she saw the crowds pressing through the Lech Gate back into town. She wanted to wave, but she realized that it would be useless. Probably the people would just wave back cheerfully.

Behind her, wood splintered. Clara turned and saw the point of a saber making its way through an ever-widening split in the middle of the door. She looked down again at the street in front of the house. Her room was on the second floor, about ten feet from the ground. Just next to the entrance of the house a peasant had left a cart with winter straw.

Without pausing to think Clara stuffed her doll down between her breast and nightgown and climbed over the sill. Then she slid down until she was hanging by both hands from the sill. Behind her the splintering was louder, a bolt was pushed aside. With a little cry Clara let go and fell straight into the hay wagon. She felt pain in her right shoulder as she scraped against the wooden frame. Without paying any attention to it, she scrambled over the side and slid to the ground. With straw in her hair and in her nightgown she fled along the street. She turned around once and saw the devil standing at the window, gesturing with his bone hand. He seemed to be calling something to her.