The Poisoned Pilgrim: A Hangman's Daughter Tale (5 page)

Simon noticed groups of simply clad pilgrims holding walking staffs, dressed in black habits and singing and praying as they approached the monastery. It appeared they either wanted to pay an early visit to the monastery or were just hoping for a free breakfast. Other Brothers were working with dirt-stained hands in the surrounding vegetable gardens or pushing carts loaded with barrels through the narrow entrance of the monastery. Simon stopped one of them and asked for Brother Johannes.

“The apothecary?” The man grinned. “If I know the ugly bugger, he’s lying in bed snoring loudly. He didn’t show up for morning prayers. Well, he’ll hear from the abbot about that. But you can try your luck.” He pointed to a tiny, nondescript house down by the storage buildings. “But you better knock loudly, or he’ll sleep till noon prayers.”

Moments later Simon stood at the apothecary’s house below the monastery. It was a low-lying building with narrow windows and a thick oaken door. He was about to knock when he heard voices inside. Though the sound was muffled, it was clear that two men were having a heated argument. Simon waited in
front of the house, uncertain about what to do as the voices approached along with the sound of footsteps.

The next moment, the door flew open and a lanky, black-robed Benedictine stomped out. Red-faced and furious, he clutched a walking stick decorated with ivory, waving it around wildly. Simon noticed that the monk’s cape concealed a small hunchback and that he was dragging one leg. The angry, pitiful cripple hobbled off and had soon disappeared amid the apple trees.

Simon was so intrigued by what he saw that he didn’t notice in time that someone had crept up on him from behind. When he turned around, he found himself looking directly into the ugly countenance of the apothecary.

“What is it?” growled Brother Johannes, standing in the doorway with a suspicious look on his face. The monk seemed anxious and harried, and his swollen face was as white as soft moonlight. Clearly he’d also been troubled by the argument. Finally a look of recognition appeared in his face.

“For the love of Mary!” he cried in surprise. “Aren’t you one of the lost people from Schongau last night? Listen, if you wanted to express your thanks, this is a bad time. I suggest you come—”

“My wife is ill, and I urgently need some anise and silverweed,” Simon interrupted calmly. “And a few other herbs. Can you help me?”

For a moment the monk appeared about to turn away the uninvited guest, but then changed his mind. “Why not?” he grumbled. “In any case, I’ve got to inform the abbot at once. Then the gossiping can begin.”

“What gossiping?” Simon asked. “About the argument you just had with your colleague? I didn’t really hear anything, it’s just that…”

But Brother Johannes had already disappeared in the darkness of the apothecary’s house. With a shrug, Simon followed,
entering a low-ceilinged room illuminated by a half dozen tallow candles. A narrow shaft of light fell through the shutters onto a huge cupboard on the opposite wall, which contained innumerable little drawers all identified by tiny hand-painted parchment labels. There was a bewitching odor of herbs—sage, rosemary, marigold, and chamomile. But he thought he detected a sweet scent, too, that briefly made him feel sick. It smelled almost like…

“Tell me again. What did you say you needed for your wife?” Brother Johannes asked abruptly. “Silverweed?”

“Yes, and anise,” said the medicus, turning again toward the ugly monk. “She has stomach pains and feels sick all over. I hope it’s nothing serious.”

“God forbid. Now, let me see…” Brother Johannes set an eyepiece to his right eye, making his already frightening face just a bit more so. Then he walked over to the cupboard, paused a moment to think, and finally opened a drawer at eye-level. In the meantime he seemed to have forgotten his quarrel with the little monk. “Silverweed is really an excellent medicine for stomachache,” he mumbled, taking out a bundle of herbs, “though I actually prefer liver compresses and a mixture of gentian, centaury, and wormwood. Do you know the doses to use with the herbs? Always remember:
dosis facit
—”

“Venenum.
The dose makes the poison. I know.” Simon nodded and stretched out his hand in a greeting. “Excuse me if I haven’t introduced myself yet. My name is Simon Fronwieser. I am the bathhouse surgeon from the little town of Schongau on the other side of the Hoher Peißenberg. I lecture my patients almost every day with Paracelsus’s words about the correct dosage.”

“A bathhouse surgeon who speaks Latin?” Brother Johannes smiled and shook Simon’s hand cordially. The monk’s grip was firm, as if he’d been swinging a hammer on the anvil all his life.
With the ocular in his eye, he looked like a misshapen cyclops. “That’s rather unusual. Then are you familiar with the
Macer Floridus
in which the eighty-five healing plants are listed?”

“Indeed.” Simon nodded and crammed the dried herbs into his leather bag. “I studied medicine in Ingolstadt. Unfortunately, I was unable to find a position as doctor. The… circumstances were not favorable.” He hesitated. The monk didn’t have to know he’d gone broke because of his gambling debts and the money he spent on fancy clothes.

The medicus cast an approving glance around the dimly lit room. Everything here was exactly the way he wished his own office to be. The large pharmacy cupboard, heavy wooden shelves along the walls lined with pots and tinctures. A low entryway led into another room that evidently served as a laboratory. In the dim light, Simon could make out a stove with a few pieces of wood glowing inside and on the mantelpiece, some sooty flasks. In front of this, a huge marble table supported something long and misshapen, partially covered with a dirty linen cloth.

At one end of the cloth a single pale foot protruded.

“My God!” Simon gasped. “Is that—”

“My assistant, Coelestin,” the Brother sighed, rubbing the sweat from his forehead. “Some farmers brought him to me shortly before sunrise today. Last night, the unfortunate fellow went to catch a carp for me in the pond down by the woods. And what does the dolt do? He falls off the walkway and drowns like a little cat. And then this charlatan Virgilius comes by and…” He broke off, shaking his head as if trying to shake off a bad dream.

Carefully Simon stepped into the laboratory and sniffed. Now he could explain the sweet odor he’d noticed yesterday.

The body was starting to decompose.

“May I?” the medicus asked hesitantly, pointing at the corpse beneath the shroud. Simon had always had a strange fascination
with dead people. Stiff and lifeless, they were like anatomical dolls God gave the world to demonstrate the miracle of the human body.

“Go right ahead,” Johannes replied, finally removing his eyepiece and securing it in his robe. “Since you are evidently a sort of colleague, a second look certainly can’t harm. But there’s really nothing unusual about him. I can’t tell you how many drowned corpses I’ve seen in my life.” He sighed and crossed himself. “Man is not a fish, or God would have given him gills for breathing and fins to paddle.”

Curious, Simon pulled back the wet cloth and stared into the white, slightly blue face of the young Coelestin. Some compassionate villager had closed his eyes and put two rusty kreutzers on them, but his mouth was wide open like that of a carp gasping for air. Leaves and pieces of algae stuck to the thinning hair of the monk’s tonsure, and green blowflies buzzed around the putrid corpse. The dead novitiate’s robe hung on his body like a wet sack.

“I wanted to be alone with him a little longer,” Brother Johannes said hoarsely. “He was, after all, my loyal assistant for more than two years, and we lived through many things together, beautiful and some ugly…” He swallowed. “But now I shall have to go up and see the abbot, so please take your herbs and—”

“There are spots there.”

“What?” Annoyed, Brother Johannes turned to the medicus, who was pointing at a spot on the dead man’s collarbone.

“Look, black-and-blue spots here, both on the left and right shoulders.” Simon ripped open the wet robe. “And here on the breastbone as well.”

“He probably got those when he fell into the water,” the monk retorted. “What does that tell you?”

“Bruises on someone who fell into unresisting water?” Simon frowned. “I don’t know.” He began studying the body until he
finally found what he was looking for on the back of Coelestin’s head.

“It’s just as I thought,” he murmured. “A big bump. Someone clearly dealt your assistant a heavy blow, then held him under water until he drowned.”

“Murder?” the Brother gasped. “Do you really think so?”

Simon shrugged. “Murder or manslaughter I can’t say, but in any case there was a second person involved. Perhaps a tavern brawl? A robbery that turned to murder?”

“Nonsense. A monk doesn’t get involved in brawls. Besides, why would…” Johannes hesitated and shook his huge head like a stubborn ox. “Of course there are still riffraff in the area. But the good Coelestin was nothing more than a simple novitiate in a thin robe! He had no money, nothing of value on him.” The fat monk raised his finger and his voice took on a singsong character. “Saint Benedict put it so nicely in one of his rules. No one may own a thing. No book or writing table or writing implement—nothing. So who could have wanted to harm Coelestin?”

“Didn’t he have any enemies down in town or here in the monastery?” Simon inquired.

Brother Johannes laughed so loudly his round belly bounced up and down. “Enemies? Good Lord, we are monks. We watch our tongue, we don’t steal, and if heaven permits, we don’t run after women, either. So why are you asking?” Suddenly his eyes narrowed to little slits. “But let me tell you something, barber surgeon. If you’re so sure of yourself, then come along to see the abbot and tell him. Brother Maurus is an intelligent, well-read man. Let him decide how Coelestin met his end.” Grimly he stomped out the door. “If the abbot agrees, you can use my apothecary as if it was your own,” he grumbled. “You have my word on that. And now, let’s go before my novitiate is completely eaten up by these damn blowflies.”

Mumbling a curse, Simon ran after him. This is what he got
for talking too much. All he really wanted to do was to get back to Magdalena as fast as possible.

As the medicus turned around one last time, one of the blowflies, buzzing noisily, flew right into Coelestin’s mouth. It sounded like the corpse was softly mumbling to himself.

Magdalena was sitting on the bench in front of the knacker’s house, getting angrier by the minute as she waited for Simon to return from the apothecary. He had been gone over an hour now! What could be taking him so long? He probably got involved in a long conversation with that ugly monk about man-drake root or daphne and had completely forgotten her.

Impatiently she watched Michael Graetz as he struggled to hoist a stinking horse cadaver onto his cart. Despite the arduous work, the knacker hummed a soldier’s marching song and seemed completely happy with himself and the world. Beside him, a stocky young man pulled the dead nag onto the flatbed. Magdalena had learned from Graetz that this was his assistant, Matthias.

The hangman’s daughter couldn’t help but think of her father at home, whose job it also was to cart away dead animals. Looking at her cousin clothed in rags, Magdalena swore once more that her children would someday be better off. Peter and Paul wouldn’t be dishonorable executioners, knackers, or torturers but doctors or bathhouse surgeons like their father.

The dry horse manure made her sneeze suddenly, and Michael looked at her with concern. “May Saint Blasius protect you from the fever,” he mumbled.

“Nonsense!” Magdalena hissed, blowing her nose loudly on a rag she extracted from her skirt pocket. “I just had to sneeze, that’s all. So stop acting as if I had the Plague.”

The knacker’s stocky helper grinned at her and made some inarticulate noise that sounded to Magdalena like a laugh.

“What is it?” she growled. “Is there something funny about
me? Is snot running out of my nose? Answer me, you scoundrel.”

“Matthias can’t answer you,” Michael replied. “He doesn’t have a tongue anymore.”

“What?”

The knacker shrugged and looked sympathetically at the strong young man, who now was completely involved in his work. “Croatian mercenaries cut out his tongue while he was still a young lad,” Michael said in a low voice. “They were trying to force his father, the innkeeper in Frieding, to tell them where he’d hidden his savings.” The knacker sighed. “But the poor fellow really didn’t have anything. Finally they took him away and strung him up on the gallows hill in Erling, and the boy had to watch.”

Magdalena stared at the strapping assistant in horror. “Oh, Lord, I’m so sorry. I had no idea…”

“Don’t fret. He’s no doubt already forgiven you. Matthias is a good fellow, a bit shy around people, but we deal more with dead animals, in any case.”

Michael laughed, and his assistant joined in with a dry coughing fit, casting a mischievous grin at Magdalena. He had a handsome face, a full head of sandy hair, and under his black smock, strong, bulging arm muscles like those of a blacksmith’s assistant.

If they hadn’t cut your tongue out, you would certainly be the cock of the walk
, Magdalena couldn’t help thinking.
I wish men would hold their tongues more often
.

“No offense,” she said, standing up. “I think I’ll stretch my legs a bit. Simon isn’t coming back.” With a last nod to the mute assistant, she started down the path toward the village just as the bells began to ring.

“Where are you going?” Michael called after her as the bells continued to ring. “Your husband said—”

“My husband doesn’t tell me what to do,” Magdalena
shouted. “If I were really sick, he wouldn’t have taken off and be spending so much time chitchatting with the apothecary. Now attend to your dead horse and leave the living alone.”

She hurried off toward the monastery that was teeming now, in the late morning, with throngs of pilgrims and workmen. The walk in the fresh air made her feel noticeably better. The odor in the knacker’s house had reminded her too much of her own home in Schongau, the nasty looks and whispers of her fellow townspeople, and the feeling of being an outcast—your whole life.