The Hangman's Daughter

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…