The Dark Monk (61 page)
“After Lisbeth and Jakob’s parents died, she lived here in the house with us,” Anna-Maria said. “She was so young—almost a child—but then this owner of a bathhouse came along and took her back to Regensburg with him. Your father cursed and scolded, but what could he do? She didn’t care a whit what her big brother thought—she was just as stubborn as he was. She just packed up her things and left. For Regensburg, of course…”
She stared blankly into space for a while, as if some macabre image had arisen from the past like a monster emerging from a dark abyss. She remained silent for a long while.
“Why?” Magdalena finally asked, breaking the silence.
Anna-Maria merely shrugged. “Love, perhaps? But to tell you the truth, I think she just couldn’t stand it here anymore. The constant whispering, the evil glances, how people would make the sign of the cross whenever she passed by.” She sighed. “You know yourself it takes a thick hide to be a hangman’s daughter and stay in a place like this.”
“Or maybe just stupidity,” Magdalena murmured softly.
“What did you say?”
Magdalena shook her head. “Nothing, Mama.” She sat down on a stool in the corner and looked at her mother in the moonlight that fell through the open shutters.
“You never told me how you met Papa for the first time,” she said finally. “I know so little about you. Where did you grow up? Who are my grandparents? You must have had a life before father came along.”
In fact, her mother had always kept silent about her past. Father, too, never spoke about his time as a mercenary. Magdalena could vaguely remember mother crying a lot, and in her mind’s eye, Magdalena could still see her father rocking her mother gently in his arms to console her. But this was a very distant memory, and in listening to her parents speak, it almost seemed as if their life hadn’t begun until Magdalena was born. Everything before that was darkness.
Anna-Maria turned away and glanced out the window and across the river. Suddenly she looked very old.
“Much has happened since I was a child,” she said. “Much that I don’t want to be reminded of.”
“But why?”
“Let’s leave it at that, child. We’ll save the rest for another day, perhaps when your father returns from Regensburg. I don’t have a good feeling about this trip.” She shook her head. “I dreamt of him just last night, and it wasn’t a nice dream, but a bloody one.”
Anna-Maria stopped speaking and laughed. But it sounded like a tormented laugh.
“I’m already behaving like a silly old woman,” she said finally. “It must have something to do with that accursed Regensburg. Believe me, a curse lies over this region, a bloody curse…”
“A curse?” Magdalena frowned. “What do you mean by that?”
Her mother sighed. “As a child I went to Regensburg often. I went to the market there with your grandmother, as we lived not far from the city. Whenever we passed by the city hall, Grandma said that the noblemen inside were plotting wars.” She closed her eyes briefly, then continued in a soft voice. “It made no difference whether it was against the Turks or the Swedes; it was always the little people on the anvil who had to suffer the blows. Why did father have to go to Regensburg, of all places?”
“But the war ended long ago,” Magdalena interrupted with a laugh. “You’re seeing ghosts!”
“The war may be over, but the scars remain.”
Magdalena didn’t get to ask her mother what she meant, because at that moment they heard footsteps and whispers in front of the house.
And in the next moment, chaos broke out.
Table of Contents
A TRAVEL GUIDE THROUGH THE PRIESTS’ CORNER
PREVIEW OF THE BEGGAR KING: A HANGMAN’S DAUGHTER TALE
Table of Contents