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 balls 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 bloody 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 Jörg Abriel, and people called her the “Bloody 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.
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 entitled to for three whole days and was traditionally provided by Semer’s inn.
Elisabeth Clement had been a maid at Rösselbauer’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, Rösselbauer 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.”
