The Hangman’s Daughter

CHAPTER 14

MONDAY APRIL 30, A.D. 1659 TWO O’CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON

Simon ran down the Hennengasse with Anna Maria Kuisl to the Lech Gate and on through the tanners’ quarter. The news that something might have happened to Magdalena spurred him on faster than he had ever run before. Soon he had left the hangman’s wife far behind. His heart was racing, and a metallic taste filled his mouth. In spite of this he didn’t stop until he arrived at the hangman’s house. There it stood, in the most beautiful midday sunshine. Some finches were chirping in the apple trees in the garden, and from far off the calls of the raftsmen could be heard. Otherwise all was quiet. The bench in front of the house was empty, and the front door stood wide open. Under one of the apple trees an empty swing was moving slowly in the wind.

“My God, the children!” Anna Maria Kuisl had caught up with Simon in the meantime. “Not the children too-”

Without finishing her sentence she ran past Simon into the house, and he followed her inside. In the living room they encountered two five-year-old angels of innocence sitting in a pool of milk. Next to them lay a broken pitcher. They were eating honey with their fingers from an earthenware bowl and were covered from head to toe in white dust. Only then did Simon see that the flour barrel had also been toppled over.

“Georg and Barbara, just what are you…”

Anna Maria was about to begin an angry tirade, but the relief at finding the twins unharmed was too great. She couldn’t help laughing out loud. However she quickly got a hold of herself once more.

“Upstairs and into bed with you, you two! I don’t want to see either one of you down here for at least an hour. Just look at what you’ve done!”

Contritely, the twins trotted upstairs. While Anna Maria Kuisl wiped up the milk and swept up the shards and the flour, she told Simon again briefly what had happened.

“I arrived here, and there he was sitting on the bench, as if he had been turned to stone. When I asked him what had happened he only said that Magdalena was gone. That the devil had taken her. The devil, my God.”

She threw the shards carelessly into a corner and pressed one hand to her mouth. Tears ran from her eyes. She had to sit down.

“Simon, tell me, what does it all mean?”

The physician gave her a long look without answering. Thoughts raced through his mind. He wanted to jump up and do something, but he did not know what that might be. Where was Magdalena? Where was the hangman? Did he follow her? Could he perhaps know where the devil had taken his daughter? And what did the man want with the girl?

“I…I can’t tell you exactly,” he murmured finally. “But I think that the man responsible for kidnapping the children has gone off with Magdalena.”

“Oh God!” Anna Maria Kuisl buried her face in her hands. “But why? Why? What does he want from my little girl?”

“I think he wants to blackmail your husband. He wants us to stop pursuing him and leave him alone.”

The hangman’s wife looked up with hope in her eyes. “And if you do what he wants, will he let Magdalena go?”

Simon would have loved to nod, to console her and to tell her that her daughter would come back soon, but he couldn’t. Instead he stood up and walked to the door.

“Will he let her go?” Anna Kuisl’s voice was pleading. She was almost shouting. Simon did not look back.

“I don’t think so. This man is sick and evil. He will kill her unless we find her first.”

He ran through the garden and back to town. Behind him he could hear the twins beginning to cry. They had been hiding on the stairs and listening. Although they could not have understood anything, they still could sense that something very bad must have happened.

At first Simon wandered aimlessly through the streets of the tanners’ quarter and then down along the river. He had to get his thoughts together, and the Lech’s lazy current helped him do that. There were two possibilities. He needed to either find the hiding place where the devil was holding Magdalena or discover who had given the devil his instructions. Once he knew who that was, he might be able to free Magdalena from her abductor’s clutches-if she was still alive.

Simon shuddered. The possibility that his beloved could already be floating down the river with her throat cut open kept him from thinking of anything else. He could not allow this image to overwhelm him. Besides it made no sense. Magdalena was the devil’s hostage, and he would not be quick to throw away this security.

Simon had no idea where the devil could have hidden Magdalena. But he had a suspicion as to where the children might be who could tell him who the devil’s patron was. They had to be somewhere at the building site. But where exactly?

Damn it, where?

He decided to visit Jakob Schreevogl once more. After all, the property had once belonged to his father. Perhaps he knew about a possible hiding place that Simon and the hangman had not yet found.

A half an hour later he was once more up at the market square. The stalls were noticeably emptier in the early afternoon, as the burghers were done with their shopping. The market women were stowing away the leftover vegetables in baskets or looking after their whining children, who had to remain with them all day at the stand. Wilted lettuce leaves and rotting cabbage were lying on the ground amid horse droppings and oxen dung. Now people were hurrying home. Tomorrow would be the first of May, and for many this holiday was already starting. It was time to prepare for May Day. As in many other Bavarian villages and towns, Schongau would celebrate the beginning of summer tomorrow. This night belonged to lovers. Simon closed his eyes. Actually he had planned to spend May Day with Magdalena. He felt a lump in his throat. The more he thought about it, the more he felt fear creeping up on him.

Suddenly he remembered that tonight something entirely different would also be celebrated. How could he have forgotten. This was the night of April 30-Walpurgis Night! Witches danced in the forests and mated with the devil, and many people armed themselves against evil by means of magic: magic signs in their windows and salt before their doors. Did the terrible murders and strange symbols have anything to do with Walpurgis Night after all? Even though Simon doubted it, he still feared that this night could be a pretext for some burghers to kill the alleged witch in the jailhouse. His time was running short.

He walked past the castle into the Bauerngasse and was soon standing in front of the Schreevogls’ house. A servant girl was standing on the balcony, warily looking down at Simon. Word had gotten around in the meantime that he was having an affair with the hangman’s daughter. When Simon waved at her she disappeared into the house without a greeting to inform her young master.

A short time later Jakob Schreevogl opened the door and let Simon in.

“Simon, what a pleasure! I hope the suspicion against me has been dissipated. Do you have anything new about my Clara?”

Simon wondered for a moment to what extent he could confide in the patrician. As before, he was not sure of the role Jakob Schreevogl was playing in this drama. He therefore decided to be very brief.

“We believe that soldiers murdered the children because they had seen something they were not supposed to see. But we don’t know what that could have been.”

The patrician nodded.

“I suspect that as well. But the council does not want to believe you. Only this morning they met again. The bigwigs want to have everything sorted out. And so a witch and the devil fits their picture a lot better, especially now when time is running short. The Elector’s secretary is arriving tomorrow.”

Simon winced.

“Tomorrow already? Then we have less time than I hoped.”

“Besides, Semer denies that the soldiers met with someone upstairs in his rooms,” continued Jakob Schreevogl.

Simon uttered a dry laugh.

“A lie! Resl, Semer’s maid, told me that it happened, and she was able to describe the soldiers exactly. And they did go upstairs!”

“And if Resl was mistaken?”

Simon shook his head.

“She was absolutely sure of herself. It’s more likely that the burgomaster is lying.” He sighed. “In the meantime I no longer have any idea who to trust…but I came for something else. We have an idea about Clara and Sophie’s hiding place.”

Jakob Schreevogl hurried over to him and grabbed him by the shoulders.

“Where? Tell me, where? I’ll do everything I can to find them.”

“Well, we believe they could be hiding at the building site for the leper house.”

The patrician blinked in disbelief.

“At the building site?”

Simon nodded and started to walk up and down nervously in the antechamber.

“We found traces of clay under the fingernails of the dead children. Clay that could have come from the leper house building site. It is quite possible that the children saw something there from their hiding place and don’t dare to come out now. However we did search all around and didn’t find anything.”

He turned again to the patrician.

“Do you have any idea where the children could have hidden? Did your late father tell you anything? About a cavern? A hole under the foundations? Was there some other building on the property, a building whose cellar could still exist? The priest was talking about an old altar from pagan times…”

Jakob Schreevogl settled into a chair next to the chimney and thought for a long time. Finally he shook his head.

“Not that I know of. The property has belonged to our family for several generations. I believe that even in my great-grand-parents’ time, they had cows and sheep grazing there. As far as I know, there was a chapel or church there long ago and quite possibly also some kind of sacrificial altar. But that was very long ago. We never did much with the property until I decided to have the kiln built there.”

Suddenly his eyes shone.

“The town records…Something like this must be recorded there!”

“The town records?” asked Simon.

“Yes, there is a record in the town registers for every contract, every purchase, and even every donation made in town. Johann Lechner in particular takes great care as the court clerk to see that everything is in good order. When my father left the parcel to the church, an official certificate of donation was prepared. And as far as I can remember, an old map of the property still in my father’s possession was attached to that document.”

Simon felt his mouth go dry. He had the feeling of being close to a solution.

“And where are these…town records?”

The patrician shrugged.

“Well, where would they be? In the Ballenhaus, of course. In the clerk’s office next to the council chamber. Lechner keeps everything in the closet there, everything that is of any importance for the town. You could ask him if you may have a look.”

Simon nodded and turned to the door. There he turned around once more.

“You have helped me very much. Thank you.”

Jakob Schreevogl smiled.

“You need not thank me. Bring me back my Clara-that would be thanks enough.” The alderman ascended the wide stairs. “And now you’ll excuse me. My wife is still sick. I shall go look after her now.”

Suddenly he stopped once more. He seemed to remember something.

“There was something else…”

Simon looked up at him expectantly.

“Well,” Jakob Schreevogl continued, “my father saved a good deal of money in his life. Very much money. As you know we had a falling out shortly before his death. I had always assumed that after the argument he had left his entire fortune to the church. But I spoke with the priest…”

“And?”

“Well, the only thing the church has is this piece of land. I’ve looked everywhere in our house, but I have not been able to find the money anywhere.”

Simon barely heard him anymore. He was again outside, in the street.

In long strides the physician rushed to the Ballenhaus. He was quite certain that the court clerk would never let him look at the town records. At the building site that morning he had made it very clear to him and the hangman what he thought of their suspicions, which was pretty much nothing at all. Johann Lechner wanted peace in the town and not some physician snooping around in his records and possibly discovering a secret that could cost one of the patricians his head. But Simon knew that he simply had to see that contract. The only question was how.

In front of the Ballenhaus two bailiffs carrying halberds were hanging around and watched as the last of the market women cleaned up their stalls. Now, in the afternoon, the two guards were the only ones still on duty. Simon knew that there would also no longer be any aldermen in the building. The council meeting had been at noon today, the patricians had long gone home to their families, and the court clerk was over in the castle. The Ballenhaus stood empty. He only had to get past the two bailiffs.

Smiling, he approached the pair. One of them had been his patient at one time.

“Well, Georg, how is your cough?” he asked. “Did it get any better since I gave you the linden blossoms for your infusion?”

The bailiff shook his head. As proof he coughed a few times loudly.

“Unfortunately not, sir. It’s gotten worse. And now my chest also hurts. I can barely do my service. I’ve already prayed three rosaries, but that didn’t help either.”

Simon looked at him thoughtfully. Suddenly his expression lightened up.

“Well, I may have something that could help you. A powder from the West Indies…” He pulled out a small bag and looked apprehensively up at the sky.

“Actually it should be taken as long as the noonday sun is straight overhead. It’s almost too late now.”

The bailiff Georg coughed a second time and reached for the little bag.

“I’ll take it, sir. Right now. How much is it going to cost?”

Simon handed him the medicine.

“For you, only five pennies. However you must dissolve it in brandy, otherwise it has no effect. Do you have any brandy?”

Georg started to think. The physician thought that he would have to help him along, but then the bailiff’s face lit up.

“I can get some brandy. Over at the inn.”

Simon nodded and took the money.

“Good thinking, Georg. Run over there quickly. It won’t take you long to get back.”

Georg took off while the second guard stood undecidedly at his post. Simon looked at him pensively.

“Do you also have a cough?” he asked. “You look so pale. Any chest pains?”

The guard seemed to think it over, and then he looked over to where his colleague was just disappearing into the inn. Finally he nodded.

“Then go run after him, see to it that he gets more brandy,” said Simon. “Each of you must dissolve it in a goblet, better even, two goblets full.”

The bailiff’s sense of duty was wrestling with the prospect of one or two goblets of brandy, and for medicinal purposes to boot. Finally he followed his friend.

Simon grinned. He had learned a few things from the hangman by now. Amazing what can be done with a little bag filled with clay!

The physician waited another moment until the two were out of sight. Then he looked around carefully. The market square was empty. He quickly opened the big door a crack and slipped inside.

A smell of spices and musty linen greeted him. Sunlight fell in narrow strips through the large, barred windows. It was already getting dark in the hall and shadows were creeping across the room. Bags and crates were stacked one on top of the other like sleeping giants against the wall. Alarmed, a rat scurried out from behind a crate and disappeared in the darkness.

Simon crept up the wide steps to the upper level and listened at the door to the council chamber. When he could not hear any sound he opened it carefully. The room was empty. Half-full wine pitchers and crystal glasses were standing on the big oaken table in the middle of the room, and the chairs around it were pushed back. A huge oven with green tiles, some of them painted, sat in the corner. Simon held his hand against it. It was still hot. It looked as if the aldermen had left the room for only a short recess and would return at any moment.

Simon crept through the room and tried as best he could to keep the floorboards from creaking. On the eastern wall hung a yellowed oil painting showing the Schongau aldermen assembled around the oaken table. He looked at it closer. At first glance he realized that it had to be quite old. The men were wearing the ruffled collars that were fashionable a few decades ago. The jackets were stiff, black, and buttoned all the way up. The faces with their carefully trimmed goatees were severe and expressionless. Still, he thought he could recognize one of the men. The alderman in the center, the one with the piercing eyes and the bare hint of a smile must be Ferdinand Schreevogl. Simon remembered that the old Schreevogl had once been presiding burgomaster of the town. The patrician held in his hand a document covered with writing. Simon thought he also knew the man next to him. But where had he seen him before? He thought about it, but much as he tried, he could not think of a name. He was certain that he had seen him lately, but of course now as a much older man.

Then he suddenly heard voices and laughter down on the market square. The two bailiffs had apparently followed his recipe. He grinned. It was quite possible, though, that the medicine was taken in a somewhat higher dose than prescribed.

Simon softly tiptoed through the council chamber. He crouched down as he passed the windows with the lead-lined panes so as not to be seen from the outside. Finally he reached the small door to the archive. He pushed the handle down. It was locked.

Cursing softly he reproached himself for his stupidity. How could he have been so naive as to think that the door would be unlocked? Of course the court clerk had locked it! After all, it led to his holy of holies.

Simon was about to turn back, but then he thought some more. Johann Lechner was a reliable man. He had to see to it that at least the four burgomasters had access to the archive, even if he happened to be absent. Did this mean that each of the burgomasters had a key? Hardly. It was much more likely that the court clerk would be keeping the key here for the others. But where?

Simon gazed around at the Swiss pine ceiling with its carved scrolls, the table, the chairs, the wine pitchers…There was no cabinet, no chest. The only large piece of furniture was the tiled oven; a monstrosity at least two paces wide and reaching almost to the ceiling. Simon walked over to it and gave it a closer look. In one row, about halfway up, scenes of country life were depicted on the painted tiles. A farmer with a plow, another farmer sowing, pigs and cows, a girl with geese…In the center of the row was a tile that looked different from the others. It showed a man with the typical wide hat and the ruffled collar of an alderman. He was sitting on a chamber pot brimming over with paper scrolls. Simon tapped on the tile.

It sounded hollow.

The physician took out his stiletto, inserted the blade into a crack and pried the tile out. It slid easily into his hand. Behind it was a tiny niche in which something was glittering. Simon smiled. As far as he knew, old Schreevogl had this oven built during his tenure as burgomaster. In the stovemakers’ guild he had been considered a real artist. Here, one could also see something more-that he had also had a sense of humor. An alderman defecating scrolls? Would Johann Lechner’s father, the court clerk at the time, have recognized himself in the drawing?

The physician removed the copper key, fitted the tile back into its place, and returned to the door that separated him from the archives. He inserted the key into the lock and turned it. With a slight squeak the door opened inward.

The room behind it smelled of dust and old parchment. Only a small barred window opened on the market square. There was no other door. The afternoon sun fell through the window; dust particles floated in the light. The space was almost empty. Along a rear wall stood a small, unadorned oaken table and a rickety chair. All along the left side there was a huge cabinet that reached almost to the ceiling. It contained innumerable little drawers stuffed with documents. Heavy leather-bound folios stood on the larger shelves. Several books and loose pages lay on the table, and next to them a half-full glass inkwell, a goose quill, and a half-consumed candle.

Simon groaned softly. This was the court clerk’s domain. For him all of it had a certain order, but for the physician it was only a confusing collection of parchment rolls, documents, and tomes. The so-called town records were not books at all, but a huge box of loose slips of paper. How could anyone find the map of a parcel in here?

Simon approached the cabinet. Now he realized that letters were painted on the drawers. They were distributed apparently without rhyme or reason over the rows of shelves, abbreviations obviously familiar only to the court clerk and perhaps the members of the inner council. RE, MO, ST, CON, PA, DOC…

The last abbreviation gave Simon pause. The Latin word for a deed, a record, or any kind of instrument was documentum. Would deeds of donation also be kept in this drawer? He pulled the drawer out. It was filled to the top with sealed letters. Even a first glance showed him that he had been right. All the letters bore the seal of the town and were signed by high-ranking burghers. There were wills, sales agreements, and exactly what he was looking for-deeds, among them those of money, natural produce, and for parcels of land willed by burghers who had died without heirs. Further down were more recent documents, all of them indicating the parish church as the beneficiary. Simon sensed that he was reaching his goal. The Schongau church had recently received a number of gifts, especially for the construction of the new cemetery at Saint Sebastian’s. Lately, anyone who felt his end nearing and wanted to secure an eternal resting place directly at the city wall willed at least part of his fortune to the church. Then there were donations of valuable crucifixes, holy images, pigs and cattle, and land. Simon kept looking and at last came to the bottom of the drawer. There was no contract regarding the piece of land on the Hohenfurch Road…

Simon cursed. He knew that somewhere here the solution of the secret had to be found. He could practically feel it. Furiously he returned the drawer to the closet to push it in and take out a new one. As he stood up he brushed against the pages that had already been lying on the table. They floated to the floor. Hastily Simon picked them up, but then he stopped. A document in his hand was torn on one side, as if someone had quickly ripped off part of it. The seal had been broken in haste. He glanced down at it.

Donatio civis Ferdinand Schreevogl ad ecclesiam urbis Anno Domini MDCLVIII…

Simon froze. The deed of donation! However it was only the first page, the rest had been torn off very neatly. He quickly looked through the documents on the table and checked the floor. Nothing. Someone had taken the document from the closet, read it, and taken away the part that was important to him-probably a sketch of the property. He did not seem to have had much time however, in any case not enough to return the document to the drawer. The thief had quickly shoved the piece of paper under the stack of the other documents on the table…and had returned to the council meeting.

Simon shuddered. If someone stole this document, it could only be someone who knew about the key behind the tile. That meant Johann Lechner himself…or one of the four burgomasters.

Simon swallowed hard. He noticed that his hand, still holding the document, was trembling slightly. What had the patrician Jakob Schreevogl told him earlier about the meeting?

Burgomaster Semer denies that the soldiers had met someone upstairs in his rooms.

Could the first burgomaster himself be involved in this thing with the children? Simon’s heart beat faster. He remembered how Semer had questioned him a few days ago in his own inn and had finally advised him not to continue investigating the case. And wasn’t it also Semer who had always spoken against the construction of the leper house, purely in the interest of the town, as he said? Because after all, lepers before the gates of a trading town really didn’t look good? But what if Semer wanted to delay the construction work only because he suspected that a treasure was hidden on that piece of land? A treasure he had heard about from his close friend, Ferdinand Schreevogl, a member of the inner circle of aldermen, just shortly before his death?

Simon’s thoughts were racing. The devil, the dead children, the witches’ marks, the abduction of Magdalena, the missing hangman, a burgomaster as the puppet master of a monstrous murder conspiracy…All these were racing through his mind. He tried to bring some order to the chaos raging in his mind. What was most important now was to free Magdalena, and to do that he had to find the children’s hiding place. But someone had entered this room before him and had stolen the plan of that parcel! All he was left with was a first page on which the main facts of the donation had been inscribed. Desperately Simon looked down at the piece of paper with its Latin words. Quickly he translated them:

Parcel belonging to Ferdinand Schreevogl, bequeathed to the Schongau Church on September 4, 1658, parcel size: 200 by 300 paces; moreover, five acres of woods and a well (dried up).

Dried up?

Simon stared at the small words at the very bottom of the document: dried up.

The physician slapped his forehead. Then he put the piece of parchment under his shirt and ran out of the stuffy room. Hastily he locked the small door and returned the key to the niche behind the tile. A few seconds later he reached the entrance of the Ballenhaus downstairs. The two bailiffs had disappeared. Most likely they had gone back to the inn to fetch more medicine. Without paying any heed to whether anyone noticed him, Simon left the Ballenhaus and ran across the market square.

But from a window on the other side of the square, someone was indeed observing him. When the man had seen enough he pulled the curtain shut and returned to his desk. Next to a glass of wine and a piece of steaming meat pie was a torn-off piece of parchment. The man’s hands trembled as he drank, and wine dripped onto the document. The red drops spread slowly across the document, leaving spots that looked like blood seeping out across it.

The hangman lay on a bed of moss, smoked his pipe, and blinked into the last rays of the afternoon sun. From a distance he could hear the voices of the guards at the building site. The workmen had already gone home at noon because of the May Day celebrations the next day. Now the two bailiffs assigned to guard duty were loafing around, sitting on the chapel wall, and throwing dice. Occasionally Jakob Kuisl could hear the sound of their laughter. The guards had pulled worse duty in their days.

Now a new sound was added to the others, a rustling of twigs coming from the left. Kuisl extinguished his pipe, jumped to his feet, and disappeared in a matter of seconds in the underbrush. When Simon tiptoed past him he reached for his ankle and pulled him down with a quick tug. Simon hit the ground with a soft cry and felt for his knife. The hangman’s face appeared, grinning, between the branches.

“Boo!”

Simon dropped the knife.

“My God, Kuisl, did you ever frighten me! Where were you all this time? I was looking for you everywhere. Your wife is very worried, and besides…”

The hangman placed one finger to his lips and pointed toward the clearing. Between the branches, the watchmen could be vaguely made out as they sat on the wall throwing dice. Simon continued in a low voice.

“Besides I now know where the children’s hiding place is. It is…”

“The well,” Jakob Kuisl said, finishing the sentence for him and nodding.

For a moment Simon remained speechless.

“But…How did you know? I mean-”

The hangman cut him off with an impatient wave of his hand.

“Do you remember when we were at the building site that first time?” he asked. “A wagon was stuck in the ditch. And there were barrels of water loaded on the wagon. At the time I didn’t think much of it. Only much too late did I wonder why someone would take the trouble of bringing water when there was a well there!”

He pointed over at the round stone well, which looked old and dilapidated. From the topmost row of stones, several were broken off and lay stacked up at the edge, as if to serve as small, natural stairs. No chain or bucket was attached to the weathered wooden framework above the circle of stones. Simon swallowed. How could they have been so blind! The solution had been before their eyes all this time.

He quickly told the hangman of his conversation with Jakob Schreevogl and about what he had discovered in the archives of the Ballenhaus. Jakob Kuisl nodded.

“In his fear, Ferdinand Schreevogl must have buried his money somewhere shortly before the Swedes arrived,” he mused. “Perhaps he did hide it in the well. Then he had a fight with his son and bequeathed the parcel together with the treasure to the church.”

Simon interrupted him.

“Now I also remember what the priest told me back then at confession,” he cried. “Schreevogl supposedly talked about it on his deathbed, saying that the priest could still do much good with the parcel of land. At the time I thought he meant the leper house. Now I think it’s clear that he was speaking of the treasure!”

“Someone among the moneybags in the council must have gotten wind of it,” growled the hangman. “Probably old Schreevogl told someone when he was drunk or shortly before his death, and that somebody has done everything possible to stop the construction at the site and find that damn treasure.”

“Obviously burgomaster Semer,” said Simon. “He has the key to the archive, so he was able to get his hands on the map of that piece of land. It’s quite possible that he also knows about the dried-up well by now.”

“Quite possible indeed,” said Jakob Kuisl. That makes it even more urgent that we take quick action now. The solution to the mystery lies at the bottom of that well. Maybe I’ll also find some clue regarding my little Magdalena…”

The two men fell silent for a moment. Only the chirping of birds and the occasional laughter of the watchmen could be heard. Simon noticed that he had forgotten Magdalena for a brief moment over all the excitement of the past hour. He was ashamed of himself.

“Do you think they could have…” he started and noticed how his voice was breaking.

The hangman shook his head.

“The devil has abducted her, but he hasn’t killed her. He needs her as a hostage, to make me show him the children’s hiding place. Besides, that wouldn’t be his way. He first wants to have his…fun, before he kills. He likes to play.”

“It sounds as if you know the devil quite well,” said Simon.

Jakob Kuisl nodded.

“I think I know him. Could be that I’ve seen him before.”

Simon jumped up.

“Where? Around here? Do you know who he is? If so, why don’t you tell the council so that they can have the scoundrel locked up?”

Jakob Kuisl dismissed Simon’s questions with a movement of his hand, as if brushing away an annoying insect.

“Are you crazy? It wasn’t around here! It was earlier. That is to say…a long time ago. But I could also be mistaken.”

“Then tell me! Maybe it’ll help us!”

The hangman shook his head with conviction.

“That won’t do any good.” He settled down on the moss and started sucking on his cold pipe. “Better to rest a little longer, until dusk. It’s going to be a long night.”

Saying this, the hangman closed his eyes and seemed to fall asleep immediately. Simon looked at him enviously. How could this man stay so calm! As for himself, sleep was out of the question. Nervously and with a trembling heart he waited for night to fall.

Sophie leaned her head against the wet stone and tried to breathe calmly and evenly. She knew that the two of them would not be able to stay down here much longer. The air was beginning to give out, and she noticed how she was growing more and more tired with every passing hour. Every breath of air tasted stuffy and stale. For days now, she had not been able to go outside. To answer the call of nature, she had had to go in a nearby niche. The air stank of fecal matter and spoiled food.

Sophie looked over at Clara, who was sleeping. Her breathing was getting weaker and weaker. She looked like a sick animal that had crawled into a cave to await its end. She was pale, her face was drawn, and she had rings under her eyes. Her bones stood out at the shoulders and rib cage. Sophie knew that her little friend needed help. The concoction she had succeeded in making her drink almost four days ago did put her to sleep, but the fever still had not broken. Besides, Clara’s right ankle had swollen up to three times its normal size. Sophie could actually see the pumping and struggling that was going on beneath the skin. Her whole leg had become blue all the way up to the knee. The improvised compresses had not helped much.

Three times already, Sophie had crawled into the shaft to see if the coast was clear, but each time she checked, she heard men’s voices. Laughter, murmurs, cries, footsteps…something was going on up there. The men no longer left her in peace, neither by day nor at night. But thank God, they had not yet discovered the hiding place. Sophie looked into the darkness. Half a tallow candle was still left. To save light she had not lit the stump since yesterday at noon. When she could no longer stand the blackness she crawled to the shaft and looked up into the sky. But soon the sunlight blinded her and she had to crawl back.

Clara did not mind the darkness. She was only half awake, and when she woke up for a moment and asked for water, Sophie squeezed her hand and stroked it until she sank back into sleep. At times Sophie sang songs for her that she had learned on the streets. Sometimes she still remembered verses that her parents had sung for her before they died. But they were only scraps, fragments from the past, linked to the hazy memory of a friendly face or laughter.

Eia beia Wiegele, auf dem Dach sind Ziegele, auf dem Dach sind Schindelein, behuet mir Gott mein Kindelein…Lullaby, my bonny love, our roof is safe above, our roof is finely tiled, God protect my little child.

Sophie felt her cheeks becoming wet. After all, Clara was better off. She had found a loving family. On the other hand, what good did it do her now? Here she was, breathing her last in a hole in the ground with her loved ones at home so near and yet so far away.

In time Sophie’s eyes had become accustomed to the dark. Not that she could actually see anything, but she was able to distinguish lighter darkness from darker darkness. She no longer bumped her head when she stumbled through the tunnels, and she could see whether a tunnel branched off to the left or the right. Once, three days ago, she had made a wrong turn without a candle and after only a few steps had run into a wall. For an instant she was seized by an unspeakable fear that she would not be able to find her way back. Her heart beat wildly as she turned around in a circle with her hands reaching into emptiness. But then she heard Clara’s whimpers. She followed the sounds and found her way back.

After that experience she had opened the seam of her dress and laid out the woolen thread all the way from her niche to the well. She was now always able to feel the rough thread beneath her bare feet when she groped her way to the shaft.

Thus days and nights passed. Sophie fed Clara, sang her to sleep, stared into the darkness, and became absorbed in thought. From time to time she crawled to the light also to catch a breath of air. She had briefly considered dragging Clara all the way to the shaft so that she, too, could get some fresh air and light. But first of all, the girl was still too heavy to carry, in spite of her frightening weight loss, and secondly Clara’s constant whimpering could have revealed their hiding place to the men above. The loud scream yesterday had almost given them away. And so she had to stay in the niche, deep underground.

The children had found these tunnels when they were playing together in the woods, and Sophie had often wondered what they had once been used for. Hiding places? Meeting places? Or had they perhaps been built not by human beings, but by dwarves and gnomes? Sometimes she heard whispering, as if tiny, evil beings were mocking her. But then it always turned out to be the wind whistling through some distant crevice in the rock.

Now, again, there was a sound. It wasn’t whispering this time, but stones falling down the shaft from the rim of the well and hitting the bottom…

Sophie stopped breathing. She could hear soft voices. Someone cursed. The voices did not come from above, as usual; they were very close, as if coming from the bottom of the well.

Instinctively Sophie pulled in the woolen thread until she felt the end of it in her hand. Perhaps they would not be able to find their way out. But right now it was more important that the men she heard not find them. She pulled her legs close to her body and squeezed Clara’s hand. Then she waited.

When dusk came the hangman rose from his bed of moss and looked through the branches at the two watchmen.

“We shall have to tie them up. Anything else is too dangerous,” he whispered. “The moon is bright, and the well is exactly in the middle of the clearing, easily visible from every direction. Like a bare ass in a cemetery.”

“But…how are you going to take them down,” stammered Simon. “After all, there are two of them.”

The hangman grinned.

“There are two of us, aren’t there?”

Simon groaned. “Kuisl, leave me out of this. I didn’t cut such a good figure last time. I’m a physician, not a highwayman. It’s quite possible that I’d mess everything up again.”

“You could be right,” said Jakob Kuisl as he continued to look toward the watchmen, who had started a small fire next to the church wall and were passing around a bottle of brandy. Finally he turned back to Simon. “All right, stay here and don’t budge. I’ll be right back.”

He moved out of the bushes and crawled through the high meadow toward the building site.

“Kuisl!” Simon whispered as he left. “You won’t hurt them, will you?”

The hangman turned back once more and gave Simon a grim smile. From under his coat he pulled out a little club made of polished larchwood.

“They’ll have a pretty good headache. But they’ll have one in any case if they continue to guzzle like that. So it amounts to the same thing.”

He crawled on until he reached the stack of wood that Simon had hidden behind the previous night. There he picked up a fist-size rock and threw it over the church walls. The stone hit the masonry and made a clanging noise.

Simon watched as the guards stopped drinking and whispered to each other. Then one of them stood up, took his sword, and walked around the foundation. Twenty steps later he was no longer visible to his colleague.

Like a black shadow, the hangman threw himself on him. Simon heard a dull blow, a brief moan, and then all was quiet.

In the darkness Simon could only distinguish the hangman’s silhouette. Jakob Kuisl crouched down behind the little wall until the second watchman started to get nervous. After a while the bailiff began calling his missing friend-first softly, then louder and louder. When he got no reply he stood up, grabbed his pike and the lantern, and carefully walked around the church wall. As he walked past one particular bush, Simon saw the lantern flare up briefly and then go out. A short time later the hangman came out from behind the bush and beckoned to Simon.

“Quick, we have to tie them up and gag them before they come around again,” he whispered when Simon arrived at his side. Jakob Kuisl grinned as if he were a young rascal who had just pulled off a successful prank. From a sack he had brought along he pulled out a ball of rope.

“I am sure they didn’t recognize me,” he said. “Tomorrow they will tell Lechner about whole hordes of soldiers and how heroically they fought them. Maybe I should hit them a few more times to provide them with proof?”

He threw Simon a piece of cord. Together they tied up the two unconscious bailiffs. The one whom the hangman had knocked down first was bleeding a little at the back of his head. The other one already had an impressive lump on his forehead. Simon checked their heartbeats and breathing. Both were alive. Relieved, the physician continued his task.

Finally they gagged the two watchmen with torn-off rags of linen and carried them behind the pile of wood.

“This way they can’t see us, even if they should wake up,” said Jakob Kuisl, walking right over to the well. Simon hesitated. He rushed back to the watchmen’s post, fetched two warm blankets, and spread them out over the unconscious bailiffs. Then he followed the hangman. This had been necessary violence. If ever they should have to stand trial for it, his compassion would perhaps be counted as a mitigating factor, he hoped.

The moon had risen by then, throwing a bluish light over the building site. The watchmen’s little fire still smoldered, but silence prevailed everywhere. Even the birds had stopped their chirping. Over the well stood a frail wooden framework from which a chain with a bucket must have hung at one time. A small pile of rocks served as stepping stones, making it easier to climb over the rim. Jakob Kuisl held his torch up to the beam extending across the shaft.

“Look, here! Fresh scratch marks,” he muttered and ran his finger along the beam. “In some places you can see the light wood is showing underneath the weather-beaten surface.”

He looked down into the well and nodded.

“The children threw a rope over the beam and climbed down.”

“And why isn’t any rope hanging there now, if they are down there?” Simon asked.

The hangman shrugged. “Sophie probably took the rope down so that nobody would become suspicious. To climb back out she has to throw it over the beam from below. Not exactly easy, but I believe Sophie is capable of it.”

Simon nodded.

“That’s probably the way she came out when she looked for me in the woods to tell me about Clara,” he said and looked down. The hole was as black as the night surrounding them. He threw a few pebbles into the well and listened as they hit the bottom.

“Are you nuts?” cursed the hangman. “Now they know down there for sure that we’re coming!”

Simon started to stutter: “I…I only wanted to see how deep the well is. The deeper it is, the longer it takes the stone to hit the bottom. And by seeing how long that takes…”

“You fool,” interrupted the hangman. “The well cannot be more than twenty-five feet deep, or Sophie could never have tossed up the rope in order to come out and visit you in the woods.”

Once more Simon was impressed by the hangman’s simple and yet compelling logic. In the meantime Jakob Kuisl had fetched yet another rope from his sack and started tying it around the beam.

“I’ll let myself down first,” he said. “If I see anything down there, I’ll wave the lantern and you follow me.”

Simon nodded. The hangman checked the beam’s strength by pulling hard on the rope. The beam groaned but held. Kuisl tied the lantern to his belt, grabbed the rope with both hands, and let himself down.

After a few yards, he was enveloped in darkness. Only a small point of light testified to the fact that a human being was dangling from the rope down there. The point of light descended farther and farther and suddenly stopped. Then the light swung back and forth. The hangman was waving with the lantern.

Simon took a few deep breaths. Then he too attached his lantern to his belt, grabbed the rope, and climbed down. There was a wet and musty smell down there. Just in front of him, muddy soil trickled to the ground. Like the clay they had found under the children’s fingernails…

After descending a few more yards he saw that the hangman had been right. About twelve feet below he could see the bottom. A few puddles of water shone in the light of the lantern; otherwise the shaft was dry. When Simon reached the bottom he realized why. On one side of the shaft was a semi-oval hole at knee’s height that reminded Simon of an arch at the entrance to a chapel. It looked as if it had been dug by human hands into the clay. Beyond, there was a low shaft. The hangman was standing next to the hole and grinning. With his lantern he pointed to the entrance. “A dwarf’s hole,” he whispered. “Who would have thought of that? I didn’t know that there even were any in this area.”

“A what?” asked Simon.

“A dwarf’s hole. Sometimes people also call it a mandrake cave. I’ve seen many of these in my time during the war. The peasants used to hide in them when soldiers came, and sometimes they didn’t come out for days.” The hangman pushed his torch into the dark tunnel.

“These tunnels are made by humans,” he continued in a soft voice. “They are ages old, and nobody knows what they were used for. Some people think that they were built as hiding places. But my grandfather told me that the souls of the dead found their last resting place in them. Others say that the dwarves themselves dug them out.”

Simon had a closer look at the semi-oval. It really looked like the entrance to some dwarf’s cave.

Or like the door to hell…

Simon cleared his throat. “The priest mentioned that witches and sorcerers were said to have met here in olden days. A heathen place for their unholy celebrations. Could that have anything to do with this…dwarf’s hole?”

“Whatever the case,” said Jakob Kuisl, sinking to his knees, “we must go inside. So let’s go.”

Simon closed his eyes briefly and sent a whispered prayer to the cloudy skies visible only twenty-five feet above them. Then he crawled behind the hangman into the narrow tunnel.

Up at the well’s rim, the devil pointed his nose into the wind. He was smelling revenge and retaliation. He waited a few more moments before sliding down the rope into the depths.

As soon as Simon had crawled through the entrance, he noted that this would not be an easy job. After only a few feet the tunnel narrowed. To make any headway, they almost had to crawl sideways and push themselves forward with their shoulders. Simon felt sharp rocks scraping across his face and body. Then the tunnel widened slightly. Bent over, Simon stumbled forward, yard by yard, holding the lantern in one hand, leaning with the other against the wet clay wall next to him. He tried not to think of how his pants and doublet must look by now. But anyway, in the dark it didn’t show.

His only point of orientation was the flickering hangman’s lantern in front of him. He could see how Jakob Kuisl was having difficulty squeezing his broad, muscular body through this needle’s eye. Earth kept trickling from the ceiling and fell into his collar. The roof was arched as in a miner’s tunnel. At regular intervals sooty niches the size of a hand appeared in the walls. They looked as if candles or oil lamps had stood in them in the past. The niches enabled Simon to estimate the tunnel’s length. Nevertheless he had lost all sense of time after only a few minutes.

Above their heads lay tons of rock and earth. The physician briefly thought about what would happen if the wet clay were to suddenly collapse over him. Would he even feel anything at all? Would the rock mercifully break his neck or would he slowly suffocate? When he realized that his heart was starting to race, he tried to direct his thoughts toward something beautiful. He thought of Magdalena, of her black hair, her dark, laughing eyes, her full lips…he could clearly see her face in front of him, almost close enough to touch. Now her expression was changing; it looked as if she wanted to cry out to him. Her mouth opened and closed soundlessly; her eyes shone with naked fear. When she turned around to look straight at him, the daydream burst like a soap bubble. The tunnel curved suddenly and opened into a chamber about six feet high.

In front of him, the hangman straightened up and shone his lantern all around the chamber. Simon tried without much success to knock the dirt from his trousers, then he looked around as well.

The chamber was almost square and about three paces wide and long. On the sides were small recesses and steps, almost like shelves. On the opposite side two more slightly sloping tunnels extended into the depths. They too had the oval shape Simon already had seen at the first entrance. A ladder was leaning in the chamber’s left corner, leading to a hole in the ceiling. Jakob Kuisl inspected the ladder with his lantern. In the pale light Simon could make out its greenish, moldy rungs. Two of them had split completely. Simon wondered whether the ladder could still support anybody at all.

“It’s surely been standing down here for ages,” said Jakob Kuisl, tapping against the wood. “Perhaps one hundred, two hundred years? The devil knows where it leads. I believe all this is a goddamn labyrinth. We should call out for the children. If they’re smart they’ll answer us, and the hide-and-seek game will finally come to an end.”

“And if…if someone else should hear us?” asked Simon nervously.

“Bah, who would that be? We are so deep down in the ground that I’d almost be glad if our shouts could penetrate all the way to the outside.” The hangman grinned. “Maybe we’ll be buried and need help. It doesn’t look all that stable, especially that narrow tunnel at the entrance…”

“Please, Kuisl, don’t joke about this.”

Again Simon sensed the tons of dirt over their heads. In the meantime the hangman cast some light into the entrance on the opposite side. Then he called out into the darkness.

“Children! It’s me, Jakob Kuisl! You have nothing to be afraid of! We now know who wants to harm you. With us you’re safe. So be so kind and come out of there!”

His voice sounded strangely hollow and low, as if the clay all around them were sucking up his words like water. There was no answer. Kuisl tried it again.

“Children! Can you hear me? Everything will be all right! I promise you that I’ll get you out of here all in one piece. And if anyone harms as much as one hair on your heads, I’ll break every bone in his body.”

There still came no reply. Only the soft trickle of a rivulet somewhere could be heard. Suddenly the hangman slapped his flat hand against the clay wall so that whole chunks came loose.

“Goddamn it, get a move on, you cursed bunch of creeps! Or else I’ll spank your behinds so you won’t be able to move for three days!”

“I don’t think that this tone will convince them to come out,” opined Simon. “Perhaps you should…”

“Shush.” Jakob Kuisl laid his finger over his mouth and pointed toward the opposite entrance. A soft whimpering sound could be heard. It was very weak. Simon closed his eyes in order to make out the direction it was coming from. He couldn’t. He couldn’t tell with certainty whether it was coming from above or from the side. It was as if the voice was moving ghostlike through the earth.

The hangman seemed to have the same difficulty. Several times he looked up and then to the side. Then he shrugged.

“We shall have to split up. I’m going to climb up that ladder and you continue down into one of the tunnels. Whoever finds them shouts.”

“And if we don’t find them?” asked Simon, who almost felt ill at the thought of crawling once more through a narrow tunnel.

“Count to five hundred as you search. If you haven’t found anything by then, turn back. Then we’ll meet again here and we’ll think of something else.”

Simon nodded. Jakob Kuisl was already going up the ladder, which made ominous creaking noises under his weight. One more time he looked down at Simon.

“Oh, and Fronwieser…”

Simon looked up expectantly.

“Yes?”

“Don’t get lost. Or else they’ll only find you on Judgment Day.”

Grinning, the hangman disappeared through the hole in the ceiling. For a brief moment Simon could hear him in the chamber over him, then there was silence.

The physician sighed. Then he walked over to the two holes. They were of identical size and equally dark. Which one should he enter? Should he just play eeny-meeny-miney-moe? On a pure whim he decided to pick the hole on the right side.

When he cast a light into the opening he could see that the waist-high tunnel was indeed sloping down. The clay underfoot was moist and slushy, and tiny rivulets were running down into the depths on either side. Simon fell to his knees and tapped his way forward. He quickly noticed that the ground beneath him had the consistency of slimy water plants. He tried to support himself with his hands on the sides, but since he was carrying the lantern in his right hand, he kept sliding against the left wall. Finally he could no longer steady himself. He had to decide whether to let go of the lantern and hold on or simply let himself slide down. He decided in favor of sliding.

Simon slithered down. The tunnel was getting steeper and steeper, and after a few yards he felt the ground beneath him disappear. He flew through the air, and before he could cry out, he had already landed. At the impact with the hard clay floor, the lantern flew from his hand and rolled into a corner. Briefly Simon was able to make out a rocky chamber similar to the previous one, then the lantern went out.

Darkness swallowed him.

The darkness was so deep that it seemed to him like a wall that he had been thrown against. After the first moment of terror he groped along on his hands and knees toward the place he suspected the lantern to be. His hand moved over stones and clumps of clay, dipped briefly into a cold puddle of water, then he felt the warm copper of the lantern.

Relieved, he reached for the tinderbox in the pocket of his trousers so he could light the lantern once more.

It was no longer there.

He began to search his pockets-first the left, the right. Finally he burrowed into the inside pocket of his doublet. Nothing. The tinderbox must have fallen out, either as he fell into the chamber or even earlier as he crawled through the tunnels. Desperately he held on to the useless lantern while he knelt and blindly tapped around with the other hand, trying to find the lost box. Soon he reached the opposite wall. He turned around and felt his way back again. After repeating this procedure three times he gave up. He would never find the tinderbox down there.

Simon tried to stay calm. Everything was still completely black all around him. He felt as if he had been buried alive; his breathing quickened. He leaned against the wet wall. Then he called for the hangman.

“Kuisl! I slipped! My lantern is out. You must help me!”

Silence.

“Kuisl, damn it, this isn’t funny!”

He could hear nothing other than his own rapid breathing and an occasional trickling sound. Was it possible that the clay down here would swallow every sound?

Simon stood up and felt his way along the wall. After just a few feet his hand found emptiness. He had found the opening to the top! Feeling relieved, he felt around the spot. The approximately two-foot-wide hole started at chest level. This was where he had dropped down into the chamber. If he could manage to crawl up and back into the upper chamber he should actually meet up with the hangman. Though Simon had not counted to five hundred, his stay down here already seemed like an eternity. The hangman had certainly returned by now.

Then why didn’t he give any sign of life?

Simon concentrated on what lay before him. He took the lantern in his teeth, swung his body up, and was about to push himself through the tunnel when he noticed something.

The tunnel was sloping down at a slight angle.

But how could this be? After all he had fallen down into this chamber. Therefore the tunnel must be rising! Or was it a different tunnel?

Horrified, Simon realized that he had gotten lost. He was just about to let himself slide back into the chamber to look for the right tunnel when he heard a noise.

Whimpering.

It was coming from the tunnel in front of him, the one going down, and it was very close.

The children! The children were down there!

“Sophie, Clara! Can you hear me? It’s me, Simon!” he shouted down.

The crying stopped. Instead he could hear Sophie’s voice.

“Is it really you, Simon?”

An immense feeling of relief came over him. At least he had found the children! Perhaps the hangman was already with them? Of course! He had not found anything in the upper chamber, so he had climbed down again and taken the second tunnel. And now he would be standing down there with the children, playing tricks on him.

“Is Kuisl down there with you?” he asked.

“No.”

“Really? Children, you must tell me. This is no longer a game!”

“By the Holy Virgin Mary, no!” Sophie’s voice came from below. “Oh God, I am so scared! I heard steps, but I can’t get away because of Clara…”

Her voice changed into weeping.

“Sophie, you need not be afraid,” Simon tried to calm her. “The steps you heard were certainly ours. We are coming to get you out of there. What’s the matter with Clara?”

“She…she’s sick. She has a fever and can’t walk.”

Great, thought Simon. My lantern is out, I got lost, the hangman has disappeared, and now I also have to carry a child out of here! For a brief moment he felt as if he could weep just like Sophie, but then he pulled himself together.

“We…we’re going to make out all right, Sophie. For sure. I’m coming down now.”

He took the lantern in his teeth and slid down the tunnel. This time he was prepared for the fall. He only fell a couple of feet and landed almost softly in a puddle of ice-cold muddy water.

“Simon?” Sophie’s voice came from the left. He thought he could see her outline in the dark: a spot that looked a little darker and seemed to move slowly back and forth. Simon waved. Then it occurred to him how nonsensical that was in the dark.

“I’m here, Sophie. Where is Clara?” he whispered.

“She’s lying next to me. Who are those men?”

“Which men?” While Simon spoke, he crawled toward the outline. He felt a stone step and on it moss and straw.

“Well, I mean the men I heard above. Are they still there?”

Simon tapped his way up the step. It was as long and as wide as a bed. He felt the body of a child stretched out on it. Cold skin, small toes. Rags covering her legs.

“No,” he answered. “They…they’re gone. It’s safe. You can come out.”

Now Sophie’s outline was very close, right next to him. He reached for it. He felt a dress. A hand reached for him and held him tightly.

“Oh, God, Simon! I am so scared!”

Simon hugged the little body and stroked it.

“All will be well. Now all we have to do is…”

He could hear a scraping sound behind him. Something was slowly pushing through the opening into the chamber.

“Simon!” Sophie cried out. “Something is there! I can see it. Oh, God, I can see it!”

Simon turned around. At a spot not far from them, the blackness was darker than the rest. And this darkness was coming closer.

“Do you have any light down here?” screamed Simon. “A candle? Anything?”

“I have tinder and flint. It must be here somewhere…for heaven’s sakes, Simon! What…what is it?”

“Sophie, where is the tinder? Answer me!”

Sophie started to scream. Simon slapped her face.

“Where is the tinder?” he cried once more into the blackness.

The slap helped. Sophie quieted down instantly. She felt around briefly, then handed him a fibrous piece of sponge and a cool piece of flint. Simon pulled the stiletto from his belt and struck the stone in wild blows against the cold steel. Sparks flew, the tinder started to glow, and a tiny flame flared up in his hand. But just as he was about to light the lantern with the glowing fibers, he felt a draft from behind. The shadow fell over them.

Before the lantern went out a second time, Simon saw a hand swoop down in the fading light. Then darkness overcame him.

In the meantime the hangman had gone through two more chambers without finding any trace of the children. The room he had reached with the ladder had been empty. Shards of an old pitcher and a few rotten barrel staves littered the floor. In the corner alcoves there were recessed stone seats. They were scrubbed smooth and looked as if hundreds of frightened people had squatted in them over the years. Two tunnels led from this chamber into the darkness as well.

Jakob Kuisl cursed. This dwarf’s hole was indeed a damn maze! It quite possibly extended underground all the way to the church walls. Perhaps the priest had been right after all with his ghost stories. What secret rites could have taken place down here? How many hordes of barbarians and soldiers had already passed above, while deep down in the earth, men, women, and children listened fearfully to the conquerors’ steps and voices? Nobody would ever know.

Above the entrance to the tunnel at the left were a few marks that Jakob Kuisl could not figure out. Scratches, arching lines, and crosses that could be of human or natural origin. Here, too, the passage was so narrow that one had to practically push one’s self through. Could there be some truth to the stories that an old midwife had told him almost thirty years earlier? That the passages were built so narrow on purpose so that a body would surrender all that was bad, all sickness, all bad thoughts to Mother Earth?

He forced himself through the narrow hole and found himself in the next chamber. It was the largest so far, a good four paces to the other end, and the hangman was able to stand up straight in it. From there, a narrow passage went on in a straight line. There was another hole directly above Jakob Kuisl. Pale yellow roots, finger thick, were growing out of the narrow shaft, down to him, brushing over his face. Far above, the hangman thought he could see a tiny ray of light. Was it the moon? Or was it only an optical illusion, his eyes longing for the light? He tried to figure out how far he had moved away from the well in the meantime. It was quite possible he was standing directly beneath the linden tree, in the middle of the clearing. Since olden times, the linden tree had been considered a holy tree. The mighty specimen at the building site was certainly a few hundred years old. Had at one time a shaft led down from the trunk of the linden tree to this resting place of souls?

Jakob Kuisl tested the roots by pulling on them; they seemed to be tough and capable of supporting some weight. He briefly thought of pulling himself up on them to check whether they actually belonged to the linden tree. But then he decided after all to take the horizontal tunnel. If he found nothing on the other side he would turn back. Mentally he had continued to count. Soon he reached five hundred, the number he and Simon had agreed on.

He bent down and crawled into the narrow tunnel. This was the narrowest passage so far. Clay and stones scraped his shoulders. His mouth was dry, and he tasted dust and dirt. He had the impression that the tunnel was beginning to taper down like a funnel. A dead end? He was about to crawl back when he saw in the light of the lantern that the passage widened again after a few more feet. With difficulty he pushed forward through the last part of the tunnel. Like a cork being pulled from its bottle he finally landed in yet another chamber.

The space was so low that he had to stoop. It ended just two steps further on, at a moist clay wall. There was no other passage. This was clearly the end of the maze. He would have to turn back.

As he turned again toward the narrow hole he noticed something out of the corner of his eye.

On the left side of the chamber, something had been scratched into the clay at chest level. This time they weren’t simple scratches or scribbles as before above the arch. This was an inscription, and it looked as if it had been made pretty recently.

F.S. hic erat XII. Octobris, MDCXLVI.

Jakob Kuisl caught his breath.

F.S.…that had to be the abbreviation for Ferdinand Schreevogl! He had been here on the twelfth of October, 1646, and he had obviously wished for posterity to know about it.

The hangman quickly calculated back: 1646, that was the year the Swedes had occupied Schongau. The burghers had been able to prevent the burning of their town only by paying a high ransom. In spite of this, all the outer boroughs of Schongau, that is to say Altenstadt, Niederhofen, Soyen, and even Hohenfurch, fell prey to the flames in the following two years. Kuisl tried to remember. Schongau, as far as he knew, had been surrendered to the Swedes in November of 1646. That meant that if the old Schreevogl was down here already in October of the same year, it could only have been for one reason.

He had hidden his fortune here in the maze.

Jakob Kuisl’s thoughts were racing. The old man had probably always known of the tunnels, an old family secret that he had finally taken to the grave. When the Swedes came, he buried the major portion of his money down here. Jakob Schreevogl had told Simon that hardly any money was mentioned in his father’s will. Now the hangman knew why.

The old man had left the treasure down here all that time, probably expecting hard times to come! And when he had a falling-out with his son he had decided to bequeath the land together with the treasure to the church-but without telling the church anything about it. There had been some hint, however. What was it that Schreevogl had once told the priest?

You would yet be able to do much good with that parcel of land…

Who knows-perhaps he wanted to tell the priest all about it and then died quite suddenly. Perhaps he wanted to take his secret to the grave. After all, Ferdinand Schreevogl had always been known to be an eccentric old bird. But someone must have known about the secret, and that someone had done everything to find it. The construction of a leper house had at first upset those plans. But then he had hired the soldiers to vandalize the building site so that he would have sufficient time to search without being observed.

Nor had that unknown person stopped at three murders. The murders of children…

Jakob Kuisl mulled it over. The children must have seen something, something that could have given the man away. Or did they actually know about the treasure, and had he tried to squeeze the secret out of them?

The hangman let the light from the lantern wander over the muddy ground. Rubble covered it, and a rusty shovel was leaning in a corner. Kuisl rummaged through the rubble with his hands. When he found nothing that way he took the shovel and started to dig. Briefly he thought he could hear a faint sound far away, like a voice calling softly. He stopped. When he heard nothing more, he dug deeper. The chamber was filled with the clanging of the shovel and his labored breathing. He dug and dug, and finally he hit hard rock. Nothing, no treasure. No shards, no empty box, nothing. Had the children been here earlier and taken the treasure?

Once more his gaze passed over the inscription on the wall. F.S. hic erat XII. Octobris, MDCXLVI…

He stopped and moved closer to the wall. The area around the inscription looked lighter than the remainder of the wall. A rectangle, about three feet long, had been lightly covered with clay so as to obscure the difference with the rest of the wall.

The hangman seized the shovel and struck it with all of his strength against the inscription. The clay crumbled and behind it red bricks appeared. He struck one more time and the bricks split open. Behind them a hole appeared. It was only as large as a fist, but when the hangman struck three more blows, it widened and revealed an alcove behind it that had been walled up.

On the alcove’s seat stood an earthenware jug whose opening had been sealed with wax. The hangman struck it with the shovel. The jug burst open and a stream of gold and silver coins spilled all over the alcove. The coins shone in the lantern’s light as if they had been polished only yesterday.

Ferdinand Schreevogl’s treasure…and Jakob Kuisl had found it.

As far as the hangman could see, these were silver pennies and golden guilders from the Rhineland, all in perfect condition and of impeccable weight. There were too many of them to count. Kuisl estimated that there were more than one hundred coins. With this kind of money one could build a new patrician home or buy a stable with the finest horses. Never before in his life had the hangman seen so much money at one time.

With trembling fingers he collected the coins and let them trickle into his bag. They jingled and the bag got markedly heavier. With the bag in his teeth, he finally struggled to push his way back into the adjoining chamber.

There he stood up, bathed in perspiration, knocked the clay dust from his garment, and started out for the first chamber. He grinned. Young Simon had probably long arrived there and was fearfully awaiting his return in the dark. Or he had already found the children. Didn’t he hear someone calling softly a while ago? Either way, he would have a nice surprise to offer the young fellow…

The hangman smiled a grim smile and walked past the roots dangling from the hole above him.

He stopped short.

Why were they moving?

Quite some time had gone by since he had last gone through this chamber and brushed against the roots. Yet they were still swaying softly back and forth. There was no wind down here. This meant that either someone had walked across the clearing directly above him, causing the roots to sway or else…

Someone must have touched them from below.

Had someone else come this way? But who? And to go where? The chamber had only two exits. He had come out of one of them just before and the other was a dead end.

Not counting the shaft above him, of course.

The hangman carefully approached the lower end of the hole and looked up. The pale yellow roots brushed like fingers across his face.

At that instant something huge and black, like an enormous bat, came flying down on him from the shaft. Instinctively Kuisl threw himself to one side and landed painfully on his shoulder in the wet clay. He nevertheless succeeded in holding on to the burning lantern. Frantically he fumbled at his belt for the larchwood club. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a figure deftly rolling away on the floor and getting back on his legs. He was wearing a bloodred doublet, but his hat with the rooster’s feathers had slipped off when he jumped. His right hand was holding a torch, and his bony hand was glimmering white in the light of the lantern. In his left hand he was clutching a saber.

The devil smiled.

“A good leap, hangman. But do you really believe you can escape me?”

He pointed at the club in Kuisl’s hand. In the meantime the hangman had gotten on his feet and was balancing his massive torso back and forth in expectation of the assault. The club in his right hand really looked like a toy.

“For you I don’t need more than that,” he said. “When I’m through with you, not even your mother will recognize you. If indeed you ever had one.”

He continued smiling, but inside Jakob Kuisl was cursing. What an ox he had been! He had shown the soldier the way to the children! Hadn’t it been obvious that the devil would follow him? Like perfect fools, they had fallen into his trap!

From the corner of his eye, he tried to make out the tunnel behind him. The devil was right. He wouldn’t have a chance against a man with a saber, if only because of the greater reach. Besides, the man in front of him was an experienced fighter. From his movements alone and the manner in which he swung his saber in a circle, Jakob Kuisl could see that he was facing at least an equal adversary. The soldier’s slight limp did not seem to affect him in any way. The disability probably only became a nuisance on longer marches. In any case the man in front of him was dangerous and itching for a fight.

Jakob Kuisl thought over all the possibilities left him. Retreat was out of the question. He could not flee through the narrow tunnel toward the well without being first cut to pieces by the devil. The only hope left was if Simon became aware of the fight soon enough and came to his aid. Until then he had to stall for time.

“Well, come on, or are you only brave against women and children?” Jakob Kuisl shouted, loud enough so that he could assume that Simon would hear him. Once more he glanced toward the way out.

The devil grimaced, feigning pity.

“Oh, you are hoping that help will come?” he asked. “Believe me, these passages branch out in so many directions and are so deep that your shouting only reaches as far as the nearest wall. I know burrows like these. I smoked out a number of them during the war. When the peasants came staggering out of them half choked to death, I was able to kill them off without any trouble. And as far as the physician is concerned…”

He pointed at the waist-high, narrow exit.

“It would be nice if he came. As soon as he sticks out his head I’ll chop it off like that of a chicken.”

“Devil, I swear to you, I’ll break every one of your bones if you so much as harm one hair on Simon’s or my Magdalena’s head,” whispered the hangman.

“Oh, yes, of course you can do that. After all it’s your profession, isn’t it?” said the soldier. “But don’t worry, I’m saving your daughter for later. Although…I don’t know what my friends are doing with her at this very moment. It’s been a long time since they had a woman, you know? That renders them a bit…disorderly.”

Anger was building in Jakob Kuisl’s head. Rage was rising, immense rage.

I must pull myself together. He wants me to lose control.

He took a few deep breaths. The rage ebbed back to his innermost being, but it was not completely extinguished. Carefully the hangman took a few steps back, trying to cover the exit with his body while he continued to speak. If Simon crept out of the tunnel, the devil would have to get past him first. And then? A skinny student and an old man with a club against a well-trained, armed soldier. He needed time to think.

“I…I know you,” he said. “We have met once before, that time in Magdeburg.”

Brief hesitation flared up in the devil’s eyes. His face seemed to become distorted, just as earlier in Jakob Kuisl’s garden.

“In Magdeburg? What was your business in Magdeburg?” he finally asked.

The hangman swung his club in a circle.

“I was a soldier…just like you,” he said. His voice was getting hoarse. “I’ll never forget the day. It was on May 20, 1631, that we entered the city with Tilly. The old man had declared early that morning that everyone in Magdeburg was fair game…”

The devil nodded.

“That’s right. So you were actually there too. Well, then, we indeed have something in common. How nice. Unfortunately I can’t remember you at all.”

Then recognition flashed across his face.

“You are…the man on the street! The house at the city wall…Now I remember!”

The hangman closed his eyes for the briefest instant. The memory was there again. That which had only been vague and fragmentary earlier in the garden in front of his home was taking on form now. The images rained down on him like hailstones in a summer thunderstorm.

Cannon fire…A breach in the wall. Screaming women and children running along the street. Some trip. The soldiers quickly grab them and cut everything to pieces with their sabers. Blood is running in streams down the street so that people shriek as they slip and fall. To the left is a patrician house from which crying and shrill screams are rising. The roof and the upper floor are already in flames. A man is standing in the open door, holding an infant head-down by its legs like a little lamb about to be slaughtered. The baby is screaming so loud that his cries rise above the cannon fire, the soldiers’ laughter, the crackling of the fire. On the ground, a man lies in his blood. A woman crawls on her knees before the soldier and pulls on his doublet.

“Your money, where’s your goddamn money, you heretic sow, speak up!”

The woman can only weep and shake her head. The baby screams and screams. And then the man lifts the writhing child higher and flings it against the doorjamb. Once, twice, three times. The screaming stops. A blow of the saber and the woman falls sideways. The soldier looks over to the other side of the street. Madness flickers in his eyes. A mocking light, his mouth twitching, convulsed. He raises his hand and waves. The hand is white, crooked bony fingers inviting others to share in the great blood frenzy. Then the man disappears inside the house.

From above, screams can be heard. You’re running after him, jumping over man, woman, and infant, up the burning stairs, it’s the room on the left. The soldier is standing before a young girl. She lies on a table among broken dishes and shattered wine carafes, her bloodied dress pulled up to her knees. The soldier smiles at you and makes an inviting gesture. The girl stares up with horror-widened eyes. You reach for your saber and you lunge at the man. But he ducks and runs out on the balcony. As you rush toward him he jumps down the ten feet to the street. He lands the wrong way and rolls over. Then he limps into a side street. Before disappearing he points at you with his bony hand as if he wants to nail you down with his fingers.

A hissing sound.

Jakob Kuisl’s remembrances were interrupted suddenly; the devil swung his saber straight down toward the top of his head. At the last moment the hangman was able to jump to one side, but the blow grazed his left shoulder. He felt a dull pain. Jakob Kuisl staggered back against the wall. The devil’s face, distorted by hate, glowed in the torch’s light. The long scar going from his ear to the corner of his mouth twitched nervously.

“That was you, hangman! You are the one who gave me that crooked leg. It’s because of you that I’m limping! I swear to you, your death will be painful. At least as painful as your daughter’s!”

The soldier had gone back to where he was at the beginning, standing in the center of the chamber and waiting for his adversary’s next opening. Cursing, Jakob Kuisl rubbed the wound on his shoulder. His hand was smeared with blood. He quickly wiped it on his coat and concentrated once more on the soldier. In the light of the lantern he was hard to see. Only his foe’s torch gave Kuisl an indication as to where he should strike. He feigned an attack to the right, then whirled to the left, throwing himself against the devil. The soldier took a sudden step to one side and let the hangman stumble past him, over to the wall. At the last moment Kuisl lifted his club. The hard larchwood did not hit his opponent at the back of the head as planned, but at least on the shoulder blade. Crying out in pain, the devil jumped back until he, too, was leaning against the wall. Panting, they were now facing each other, leaning against the wall, looking at each other with icy stares.

“You’re not bad, hangman,” said the devil between two breaths. “But I knew as much. Even back in Magdeburg I saw an equal opponent in you. Your agony will amuse me. I have heard that in the West Indies the savages eat the brains of their strongest enemies in order to acquire their strength. I think I’ll do that with you.”

Without any forewarning he jumped directly toward Jakob Kuisl. The saber whirled through the air, aimed directly at his throat. Instinctively the hangman lifted his club, deflecting the blade to one side. The larchwood split, but it did not break.

Jakob Kuisl rammed his elbow into the devil’s stomach, causing him to gasp with sudden alarm, then he ran over to the opposite wall. They had changed sides. Shadows were dancing across the walls, lantern and torch bathed the chamber in a reddish, flickering glow.

The soldier moved about, groaning in an almost lascivious way and holding his sword hand across his belly. Nevertheless he never for a second let the hangman out of his sight. Kuisl used the pause to look after his wound. There was a large gash in his doublet near his shoulder and blood was spurting out. Nevertheless the wound did not appear to be deep. Kuisl made a fist and moved his shoulder until he felt a stabbing pain. Pain was good; it meant that his arm was still working.

Only now did Jakob Kuisl have time to get a closer look at the bony hand of his opponent that had once caught his attention in Magdeburg. It actually seemed to consist of individual finger bones connected to one another with copper wire. On the inside was a metal ring. The devil had stuck the burning torch into this ring, where it was now swinging slowly from side to side. The hangman figured that other objects could also be attached to that ring. From the war he was familiar with different prostheses, most of them carved rather roughly out of wood. He had never seen a mechanical bone hand like this one.

The devil appeared to have noticed Kuisl’s stare.

“You like my little hand, eh?” he asked swinging the hand and torch back and forth. “I like it too. These are my own bones, you know? A musket ball shattered my left arm. When the wound became gangrenous they had to cut off my hand. I had them make me this pretty souvenir from the bones. As you can see, it perfectly serves its purpose.”

He held the hand up so that the light of the torch illuminated his pale face. The hangman remembered how the soldier had hidden earlier in the ceiling of the shaft. Only now did he realize that the man must have pulled himself up with nothing but his one healthy hand! What power lay in that body? Kuisl felt that he did not have the slightest chance. But damn it, where was Simon?

To gain time he continued his questioning.

“So you were told to mess up the building site, weren’t you? But the children saw you doing it, and that’s why they had to die.”

The devil shook his head.

“Not quite, hangman. The children had bad luck. They had been hiding down here when we received our instructions and the first portion of our money. Moneybags was afraid they might have recognized him. He gave us the order to make sure they would never talk.”

The hangman winced.

So the children had known the devil’s employer, the patron! They knew who was behind all of it!

No wonder they didn’t dare return to town. It must have been a very powerful man, someone they knew and someone they knew people would be more inclined to believe than themselves. Someone whose reputation was at stake.

Time. He needed more time.

“The fire at the Stadel, that was pure diversion wasn’t it?” he said. “Your friends set the fire while you slipped into town to steal away Clara…”

The devil shrugged.

“How could I have gotten to her otherwise? I kept my ears open. The boys were easy. After all the little rascals were hanging around outside. And sooner or later I would have caught that redheaded girl too. But little Clara was sick. She had caught a cold while snooping around, poor darling, and she had to stay inside…”

He shook his head compassionately before continuing.

“And so I had to figure out a way to make sure the dear Schreevogl family would leave their foster child alone at home. It was clear that this patrician had goods stored down in the Stadel. And when it burned, he and his servants came running immediately just as I expected. Unfortunately the little brat still got away from me, but now I’m going to get her. That is…as soon as I’m finished with you.”

He feinted a move with his saber but remained standing where he was, as if trying to seek out his opponent’s weak point.

“And the witches’ marks? What are those all about?” asked Kuisl, speaking slowly and without leaving his post in front of the exit. He had to keep the other fellow entertained. Talk, continue to talk until Simon finally came to his aid.

A shadow of confusion passed over the devil’s face.

“Witches’ marks? What damn witches’ marks? Don’t talk nonsense, hangman.”

The hangman was taken aback but did not let it show. Could it be that the soldiers had nothing to do with the marks? Had they been following the wrong track all this time? Did the Stechlin woman practice some witchcraft after all with these children?

Did the midwife lie to him?

Still, Jakob Kuisl continued to ask questions.

“The children had a mark on their shoulders. A mark just like the ones witches wear. Did you paint that on?”

There was a brief moment of silence. Then the devil burst out in shrill laughter.

“Now I understand!” he cried. “So that’s why you locked up the witch! That’s why you all thought there was witchcraft involved! What a bunch of stupid moneybags you are in the end! Ha! The witch burns, and all is well once more. Amen. Three paternosters on top of it. Why, we couldn’t have concocted anything better than that!”

The hangman thought frantically. Somewhere they had gone wrong. He had the feeling that the solution was very close. Just one more piece of the mosaic, and everything would fit together.

But which piece?

He had other problems for the moment. Where was Simon? Had something happened to him? Was he lost?

“If I am going to go to hell anyway,” he continued, “why not tell me who employed you?”

The devil laughed again.

“Wouldn’t you like to know, eh? Actually I could well tell you but…” He grinned viciously, as if he had suddenly thought of something very funny. “You know a lot about torture, don’t you? Isn’t it also a type of torture when someone is looking for a solution and cannot find it? When someone still hopes to know the truth even when dying and yet cannot find it? Well, that is my torture. And now, die.”

Still laughing, the devil feinted once, then twice, and was suddenly directly in front of the hangman. At the very last moment, Kuisl held his club against the saber. The blade still kept moving closer and closer to his throat. Standing with his back against the wall he could do no more than return pressure for pressure. The man before him had immense strength. His face came closer to Kuisl’s, and the blade with it. Inch by inch.

The hangman could smell the wine on the other man’s breath. He looked into his eyes and behind them saw an empty shell. The war had sucked this soldier dry. Perhaps he had always been insane, but the war had done the rest. Jakob Kuisl saw hatred and death, nothing else.

The blade was now only a hairbreadth away from his throat. He had to do something.

He let his lantern fall to the floor and pressed the soldier’s head backward with his left hand. Slowly the blade moved away from him.

I must…not…give…up…Magdalena…

Shouting, he gathered the last of his strength and threw the devil against the opposite wall, where he slid to the ground like a broken doll.

The soldier shook himself for a moment, then he was again up on his feet, saber and torch in hand, ready to strike again. The last of Jakob Kuisl’s courage seemed to fade. This man was invincible. He would always keep getting up. Hatred was releasing energy in him that normal mortals simply did not possess.

Kuisl’s lantern lay in a corner. Fortunately it had not gone out.

Fortunately?

An idea raced through the hangman’s brain. Why hadn’t he thought of it earlier? It was risky, but probably his only chance. Without taking his eyes off the devil, he reached for his lantern, still flickering on the floor. When he had it in his hands once more, he smiled at his opponent.

“Just a little unfair, isn’t it? You with your saber, me with my club…”

The devil shrugged.

“All of life is unfair.”

“I don’t think it has to be that way,” said Kuisl. “As long as we have to fight, then at least under the same conditions.”

And with that he blew on the lantern’s flame and extinguished it.

His face was swallowed in darkness. He was no longer visible to his opponent.

In the next instant he threw the lantern at the devil’s bone hand. The soldier cried out. He had not counted on such an attack. Desperately he still tried to pull away his hand, but it was too late. The lantern landed on the white bones and ripped the torch from its anchor. It fell to the ground where it hissed and went out.

Blackness was so total that the hangman felt as if he had sunk to the bottom of a bog. He caught his breath and then threw himself with all of his strength on the devil.