The Hangmans Daughter

The first installment in a historical mystery series set in 17th-century Bavaria, the novel opens with a prologue in 1624. Twelve-year-old Jakob Kuisl assists his father, the hangman of Schongau, at the execution of a young maid. When Jakob's sweaty fingers slip from the prisoner's shorn hair, the sword misses her neck. It takes four blows to sever her head, and Jakob vomits, faints, and vows never to become a hangman.

Thirty-five years later, in April 1659, Kuisl has broken that vow and serves as Schongau's hangman. He lives outside the town walls with his wife, Anna Maria, and his daughter, Magdalena. As a hangman, Kuisl is considered "dishonorable," a social outcast whose family cannot marry into respectable society. He supplements his income as a healer with extensive knowledge of herbal remedies.

The story begins when raftsmen pull a dying boy from the swollen Lech River. Peter Grimmer, son of a widowed wagon driver, has been stabbed seven times and beaten. Simon Fronwieser, the twenty-five-year-old son of the town physician, examines the body and discovers a purple symbol on the boy's shoulder: a circle with a cross protruding from the bottom. The crowd cries witchcraft. Peter's father accuses Martha Stechlin, the town midwife, because Peter often visited her house. A mob storms Martha's home, but Kuisl intervenes and escorts her to the town's keep.

Kuisl examines the body and determines the mark is made of elderberry juice injected under the skin, identifying it as the Venus mark, an ancient symbol associated with witchcraft. He also finds sulfur and red clay in Peter's pockets.

Johann Lechner, the powerful court clerk who governs Schongau in the absence of the Elector's secretary, orders Kuisl to extract a confession from Martha. At a council meeting, the aldermen agree to begin questioning Martha the next day. Only young alderman Jakob Schreevogl objects, but the others, led by blind octogenarian Matthias Augustin, insist on swift action.

Martha insists on her innocence and reveals that five orphan children regularly visited her house: Sophie, Clara, Anton, Johannes, and Peter. She also mentions that a mandrake root, a plant associated with witchcraft, has disappeared from her closet. Meanwhile, Simon encounters Sophie Dangler, a defiant twelve-year-old orphan who tells him Peter went to the river alone on the night of his death to meet someone.

That evening, ten-year-old Anton Kratz is found with his throat cut and the same mark on his shoulder. Sophie tells Simon that a tall, scarred man with a "hand of bones" asked about Anton. The townsfolk call this limping, disfigured soldier "the devil." A serving maid at the local inn confirms the description, reporting that the scarred man met with other soldiers upstairs.

During the first examination of Martha, Kuisl searches her body for witches' marks, but the session is interrupted when the town's warehouse is set ablaze. During the chaos, the devil breaks into the Schreevogl house to abduct Clara, Jakob Schreevogl's ten-year-old foster daughter, but the girl escapes through a window and flees over the town wall. That night, a mob marches on the keep to burn Martha, but Kuisl holds them off until Lechner arrives with soldiers.

Tormented by the prospect of torturing an innocent woman, Kuisl ventures into the forest with Magdalena to find a rare mandrake root. He gives Martha a secret potion before the next interrogation. Lechner presents herbs from Martha's house as evidence of sorcery and orders thumbscrews and the strappado, a device that suspends the victim by bound wrists. The potion numbs Martha's pain and simulates a seizure; Simon confirms she is unconscious, and the interrogation is suspended for roughly two days.

Simon and Kuisl investigate the destroyed building site for a leper house, constructed on land bequeathed by patriarch Ferdinand Schreevogl. They find boot prints from a limping man and a pouch of foreign tobacco. Simon learns that old Schreevogl gave the land to the church after quarreling with his son Jakob.

The investigation intensifies when Johannes Strasser, the last orphan boy, is found dead with his throat cut and the same mark. Kuisl notices red clay under the boy's fingernails. Martha regains consciousness, and Lechner orders another interrogation. Kuisl tends to Martha's injuries but warns Simon they have perhaps two days.

During a nighttime stakeout at the building site, Kuisl and Simon observe four soldiers and a fifth man the soldiers call "Moneybags" searching the grounds. Kuisl kills one soldier, and the devil vows revenge before the men flee.

The next day, the devil ambushes Magdalena and takes her hostage, demanding that Kuisl find the treasure or she will be killed. Simon checks the town records in the Ballenhaus, Schongau's administrative hall, and finds that the crucial second page of Ferdinand Schreevogl's deed of donation has been stolen; the remaining page mentions a dried-up well on the property. Kuisl independently concludes that the treasure lies in the well.

They descend the well and discover an ancient network of underground tunnels. Simon finds Sophie and the feverish Clara in a deep chamber, while Kuisl discovers an inscription from 1646 with Ferdinand Schreevogl's initials and, behind a bricked-up alcove, a jug of gold and silver coins. The devil follows them down, sets fires, and attacks Kuisl in near-total darkness while Simon, Sophie, and Clara dig through a collapsed corridor as smoke fills the passages.

During the ordeal, Simon notices Clara's mark and realizes it is the alchemical symbol for hematite, or bloodstone, viewed upside down, not a witches' mark. Sophie confirms the children marked themselves with elderberry juice as protective charms after seeing the symbols on jars in the midwife's house.

Kuisl kills Christian Braunschweiger, the devil, after a prolonged battle. Before dying, Braunschweiger reveals Magdalena is held on the gallows hill. There, Magdalena loosens her bonds and escapes, eventually meeting her father on the road to Schongau.

After Jakob Schreevogl rescues Simon and the children from the tunnels, Simon confronts Matthias Augustin, having recalled a painting showing Augustin and Ferdinand Schreevogl as lifelong friends. The old patriarch confesses: Schreevogl told him about the treasure on his deathbed as revenge over a decades-old rivalry. Augustin's son Georg hired the soldiers to vandalize the building site and, acting beyond his father's wishes, ordered the children killed after they witnessed the soldiers receiving payment. Georg attacks Simon, but Kuisl bursts in and subdues him.

Kuisl strikes a deal with Matthias Augustin: In exchange for the treasure, the old man must convince the council and the Landgrave that there was no witchcraft. Augustin, dying and desperate to preserve his family's name, agrees and pressures each alderman into cooperation.

At the council meeting, the aldermen present the Landgrave with a sanitized account: no witchcraft, just children's games and violence by marauding soldiers. Count Sandizell, the Elector's secretary, departs without support for further witch-hunting. The captured soldier Christoph Holzapfel, one of the devil's accomplices, confesses under duress and is broken on the wheel. Martha Stechlin, battered but alive, is escorted by Kuisl out of prison.

In an epilogue set in July, Simon reveals that Georg Augustin has contracted leprosy, an ironic fate for the man who tried to prevent the leper house's construction. Kuisl presents Simon with medical books purchased with coins skimmed from the treasure and confirms he has rejected a marriage proposal for Magdalena, leaving her relationship with Simon unresolved but hopeful.