Free The Poisoned Pilgrim: A Hangman's Daughter Tale by Oliver Pötzsch Page A

met you,” Simon mumbled, smoothing his jacket with his hand. “I’ll probably have to…”
    “What?” Virgilius looked Simon up and down as if he were a stranger who’d just entered the room. “Oh, naturally. The pleasure was all mine, but now please excuse me; I have a lot to do. Damn!” Again he bent to inspect the automaton’s back, and Simon turned to leave.
    Stepping outside into the blinding bright sunlight, the medicus had to shield his eyes. He could still hear the mumbling watchmaker inside.
    Moments later the soft melody of the glockenspiel began again.
    Magdalena sipped on a cup of mulled wine and tried to come to grips with the terror of the last hour. Still trembling slightly, she leaned back on the hard corner bench and from there observed everything going on in the monastery tavern, which she’d entered on a whim.
    At the noon hour, the inn at the foot of the Holy Mountain was packed: A few richly clad merchants had ordered a boar’s leg with white bread, and its fatty juice dribbled down their beards and chins. A group of pious pilgrims sat together in one corner over a steaming bowl of stew. Smoke from tobacco and a wood fire hung heavily over the tables, and the air was full of the humming and buzzing of many conversations.
    After her fall from the tower, Magdalena had to first answer worried questions from Jakob Schreevogl, the carpenter Hemerle, and a few other workers. The unexpected ringing of the bells had upset everyone on the building site, among them Brother Johannes, who eyed the hangman’s daughter distrustfully. For that reason, she told the astonished men she had just climbed the tower out of curiosity and had slipped. She still didn’t know whether the ugly monk had anything to do with the incident in the tower. Was it possible Johannes himself was the hooded stranger who had pushed her off the belfry?
    As she came staggering down the hill from the monastery,Magdalena saw a sign over the tavern door painted invitingly with a wine glass and entered without hesitation. Just as she was about to pour herself another cup of wine, she spied Simon in the doorway. The medicus looked around until he spotted Magdalena in the crowd.
    “So this is where you’re hiding out,” he cried with relief when he reached her table. “I’ve looked for you everywhere. Weren’t you going to wait at the knacker’s house until I came back with the herbs?”
    “Aha, and when was that going to be?” she replied angrily. “When pigs fly? I waited, but you never came back.” She pointed to the pitcher of mulled wine on the table. “In any case, this medicine does more good than all the marjoram, vervain, and mint in the Priests’ Corner put together. They put so many herbs in the wine here that you get better just smelling it. Now sit down and listen to what happened to me.”
    She briefly told him of the bizarre things she saw up in the tower and the stranger who had pushed her off the platform.
    “A stretcher with metal clamps along the side and a thick wire?” Simon replied. “What in God’s name could that be?”
    “I have no idea. In any case, nothing that anyone’s supposed to find out about—or this fellow in the robe wouldn’t have tried to throw me from the belfry.”
    “How do you know he really wanted to throw you from the belfry?” Simon asked. “Maybe you just startled him up there, and he was trying to flee.”
    “Are you telling me I just imagined all that?”
    Simon raised his hands apologetically. “I just don’t want us to jump to any false conclusions, that’s all.”
    Magdalena lowered her voice and looked around furtively. “If you ask me, that ugly monk Johannes has something to do with it. Do you remember the strange look he gave us yesterday when I told him about the light up in the tower? And do you remember the large sack he was carrying?”
    Simon frowned. “Yes, why?”
    “There were iron rods inside just like the ones I saw up in the tower, only a bit