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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 aboutme? 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,” Magdalenashouted. “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