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By Root 653 0

by half, refusing to admit that we as men of medicine could learn anything from watching a man die. I’ll be the first to acknowledge that studying dead bodies is impractical, just as studying an empty stewpot is impractical if you wish to know what was had for dinner—without life a body is just so much sulfur, salt, and mercury, but that’s no reason to think watching someone actually die is worthless and morbid. The presumption of those fools, the conceit! I rode alone, my horse old but quick, and came to the hamlet just as the sun set, a boon, for this was one of those backwaters where the gates are locked at night and they won’t open until dawn for king or countryman. I found an inn and—” Paracelsus’s schnapps was better than his storytelling, but he could not speak and drink at the same time, so the three listeners were content to let him prattle on as they passed around his bottle.

Paracelsus recounted his tale from a stool, the door to the storeroom closed to block out the hoarse screaming of the patients, and Manuel, Awa, and Monique sat on various uncomfortable cushions. It was late in the evening of the day after Manuel had been brought in, and even with the benefit of her pudding and the accompanying pleading with the spiritual residue of the dead man’s hand, Manuel’s palm still leaked blood and lymph. The good doctor could not believe the miraculous recovery, and only Monique’s arrival at the bedside had distracted Paracelsus as Manuel scrambled from the bed and threw his arms around the giantess, devastated to see the telltale lesions bulging from her face like acorns under a handkerchief.

Awa had smiled at his grief, for she alone knew the woman would not die of the Great Pox. Severing the spirit of the malady and consuming it entirely had taken far more energy than Awa had expected, and she thought that Monique had almost awoken as the necromancer doubled over beside the bed gagging. Before, ingesting the spirit of infection had given her strength and warmth, but this spirit had sickened her, and she lay awake all night racked with fever. Awa was well by morning, however, and at a glance she could see that the pox was entirely removed from Monique. The more time Awa spent in the clinic the more resolute she became in the decision she had recently made—she would stay in the clinic and help alleviate the suffering, instead of accompanying Manuel to Bern when he recovered.

“— the execution was to be held the next morning, so I was just in time, but there in the hills such a thing as an execution attracts quite an audience, and so there was no room at the inn.”

“Stay in the manger, then?” said Manuel.

“I stayed,” said Paracelsus, ignoring Monique’s guffaws and letting the sentence dangle long enough to quaff from the nearly empty bottle, “with the hangman!”

“The hangman with the sword, or some other—” Manuel began.

“The same!” Paracelsus thundered, which made Awa, who otherwise would have been able to keep it in, explode with laughter. It took the doctor’s retrieving a fresh bottle to quiet them down. When order was restored he went on: “This hangman, it seemed, had a problem that was truly diabolical, and as the priest could not relieve him I thought to pit my own mental prowess against this mystery.”

“I’m very sorry,” said Awa, “I must not have heard you, but what was the mystery again?”

“I hadn’t told you yet,” said Paracelsus, to more laughter. “But I will! Directly! The problem was this—the town had the custom that when a man was hanged, the hangman was charged with severing his head just after his neck had snapped from the noose, and this hangman, being a consummate professional, always chopped the heads free in one swipe before the body could bounce twice.”

“Why?” said Monique. “What purpose such a thing ’ave, stead of leavin’em ta swing?”

“Local customs are profoundly weird,” burped Paracelsus. “Better to come to terms with this and move on than to examine the peccadilloes of peasants. Probably why they got such a good crowd. But I digress! The hangman was haunted.”

“Haunted?” This finally interested