The Hangman's Daughter (23 page)

“Well, you witch, can you feel the fire yet?” shouted Georg Riegg, the raftsman, from the adjoining cell. He and the guardsman from the raft landing were still imprisoned with her. Martha Stechlin’s screams were a welcome diversion.

“Why don’t you witch yourself out of here, if you can, or did the devil abandon you?” sneered Georg Riegg.

The guardsman who was locked up together with him grabbed his shoulder. “Stop, Georg,” he admonished him. “The woman is in pain. We should call the bailiff.”

But that was no longer necessary. Just as the raftsman was about to launch himself into yet another hateful tirade, Andreas the jailkeeper opened the door to the keep. The screaming had awakened him from his nap. When he saw that Martha Stechlin was rattling the bars he left in a hurry. Her sobbing and crying followed him out into the street.

Just half an hour later, the witnesses, Berchtholdt, Augustin, and Schreevogl, were informed and summoned to the jailhouse. There Johann Lechner was already waiting for them with the doctor.

Old Fronwieser was the town’s most compliant henchman, meekly assenting to anything they asked him to do. Just now he was stooping down over the midwife, winding a damp cloth around her swollen hand. The cloth was spotted and stank as if it had been used in the past to cover other bodies.

“Well?” asked the court clerk as he contemplated the sobbing midwife with as much interest as he would some rare, mutilated insect. Her cries had now become a constant wailing, like that of a child.

“A simple blood swelling, nothing more,” said Bonifaz Fronwieser, tying the cloth into a tight knot. “Of course the thumb and the middle finger are probably broken. I gave her a compress of arnica and oak bark. It’ll make the swelling go down.”

“What I want to know is whether she is ready to be interrogated,” Johann Lechner insisted.

The doctor nodded obsequiously as he packed up his bag of ointments, rusty knives, and a crucifix. “However, I’d use her other hand for continuing the torture. Otherwise there is a risk she may again lose consciousness.”

“I thank you for your pains,” said Lechner, placing a whole guilder in Bonifaz Fronwieser’s hand. “You may withdraw now. But stay within reach and we shall call you if we need you again.”

Bowing and scraping, the physician took his leave and rushed out into the street. Once outside, he shook his head. He could never understand the necessity of healing someone who had already been tortured. Once the painful interrogation had started, the poor sinners almost inevitably ended at the stake or, like shattered dolls, on the wheel. The midwife would have to die one way or the other, even if his son Simon was convinced of her innocence. At any rate, Fronwieser had at least earned some money because of her. And who knows? It was quite possible that he would be called back once more.

Contently he played with the guilder in his pocket as he headed for the market square to buy himself a hot meat pie. The treatment had whetted his appetite.

Inside the torture cellar, the witnesses and the court clerk had already taken their places on their chairs. They were waiting for the hangman to bring down the midwife and render her compliant. Johann Lechner had ordered wine, bread, and slices of cold meat prepared for all of them, because today the interrogation might last a little longer. Lechner considered Martha Stechlin to be hardheaded. Never mind, however. They had at least another two days until the Elector’s lieutenant and his entourage would make their appearance and start living at the town’s expense. By then the midwife would have confessed. Lechner was certain of that.

But the hangman had not yet arrived, and without him they couldn’t get started. Impatiently, the court clerk drummed his fingers on the tabletop.

“Kuisl has been told, hasn’t he?” he asked one of the bailiffs. The bailiff nodded in reply.

“Probably drunk again,” witness Berchtholdt piped up. But he also looked as if they had dragged him not from his bakery, but from one of the inns behind the market square. His clothing was spotted with flour and beer, his hair was ruffled up in tufts, and he smelled like an empty beer keg. He guzzled down his wine and refilled the goblet.

“Easy does it,” Jakob Schreevogl admonished him. “This isn’t a beer hall get-together but a painful interrogation.” Secretly he hoped the hangman had run away and that they therefore couldn’t proceed with the torture. Yet he knew that this was unlikely. Jakob Kuisl would lose his job, and in only a few days an executioner from Augsburg or perhaps from Steingaden would take his place here. But even a delay of a few days could be enough to find the real murderer or murderers. By now, Jakob Schreevogl was quite convinced that Martha Stechlin had been unjustly imprisoned.

The witness Georg Augustin sipped at his wine goblet and straightened out his white lace collar.

“Perhaps the hangman doesn’t realize that we don’t have unlimited time on our hands. These interrogations cost me a whole bunch of guilders each time.” He cast a bored glance at the instruments of torture as he continued to speak. “Our wagon drivers will just sit around forever in the Stern unless we keep after them. And the paperwork doesn’t get done all by itself either. So for heaven’s sake, let’s get started!”

“I am sure the witch will confess today, or tomorrow at the latest,” Lechner said, trying to calm him down. “Then everything will be back to normal again.”

Jakob Schreevogl laughed to himself. “Back to normal? You seem to forget that there is a devil on the prowl out there, a devil who has killed three children by now. And my beloved Clara is God knows where!” His voice broke and he wiped a tear from the corner of his eye.

“Don’t make such a fuss,” snapped Georg Augustin. “Once the witch is dead, the devil will come out of her and will disappear to wherever he came from. And your Clara will surely show up again.”

“Amen,” mumbled the witness Berchtholdt, belching audibly. In the meantime he had started his third goblet. His eyes were glassy as he stared into space.

“And anyway,” Georg Augustin continued, “if it had gone the way my father wanted, we would have started this interrogation much earlier. Then Martha Stechlin would already be burning at the stake, and the matter would be settled.”

Jakob Schreevogl clearly remembered last Monday’s council meeting, when blind Augustin had reminded the gentlemen of the great Schongau witch trial seventy years ago and had urged a quick resolution. Five days had gone by since then, and to Schreevogl it seemed like an eternity.

“Be quiet!” Johann Lechner shouted at the son of the blind alderman. “You know very well that we couldn’t continue any sooner. If your father were here in your place, we would not have to listen to such gibberish!”

Georg Augustin winced at this rebuke. For a moment it seemed he wanted to say something, but then he reached for the goblet and looked again at the torture instruments.

While the gentlemen were arguing among themselves downstairs, the hangman silently sneaked into the midwife’s cell. Under the watchful eyes of two bailiffs he removed the chains from the sobbing midwife and helped her sit up.

“Listen to me, Martha,” he whispered. “You must be strong now. I am very close to finding the real culprit, and then you will get out of here, as God is my witness. But today I shall have to hurt you once more. And this time I cannot give you any potion. They would notice it. Do you understand me?”

He shook her gently. The midwife stopped sobbing and nodded. Jakob Kuisl’s face was now very close to hers, so that the bailiffs could not hear him.

“Just make sure you don’t confess anything, Martha. If you confess, everything is lost.” He took her delicate, ashen face between his huge paws.

“Do you hear me?” he asked once more. “No confession…”

The midwife nodded again. He hugged her closely, then they climbed down the stairs to the torture cellar.

Hearing Martha Stechlin’s bare feet on the stairs, the witnesses immediately turned their heads in her direction. Conversation stopped; the show could begin.

Two bailiffs set the accused woman down on a chair in the center of the room and bound her with heavy rope. Her eyes darted fearfully back and forth between the aldermen and finally settled on Jakob Schreevogl. Even from his place behind the table he could see how her rib cage was frantically moving up and down, much too rapidly, just like a young bird in mortal fear.

Johann Lechner began the interrogation. “We were interrupted last time,” he said. “I would therefore like to start over from the beginning.” He unrolled a parchment scroll in front of him and dipped his quill into the inkwell.

“Point one,” he intoned. “Does the delinquent have witches’ marks to show that could serve as evidence?”

Berchtholdt the baker licked his lips as the bailiffs pulled the brown penitent’s garment over Martha’s head.

“In order to avoid any disputes like last time, I shall conduct the examination myself,” said Johann Lechner.

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.

Last night she had considered several times whether to go into town and tell the whole story. Perhaps she could tell it to the physician, providing he was still alive, or to the hangman. They both seemed to be on her side. She could tell them everything, and Clara would be rescued. Perhaps they would only clap the midwife in the stocks, or her foster parents would have to pay a fine because their ward had gotten involved with things that were none of her business. Perhaps she would get away with a good spanking and nothing more. Perhaps everything would still be all right.