The Hangman's Daughter

“And what if he does find it, eh? Let’s stay till dawn. What have we to lose? If he doesn’t return, so what? And if he shows up with the money, we’ll pocket it and leave. No matter what happens, I’m not going to travel with that chiseler anymore after tomorrow morning.”

“Right you are,” the second man growled.

Then he picked up Magdalena, who was still feigning unconsciousness, and flung her over his back. The swaying continued.

Now, dangling from the man’s shoulders, Magdalena was racking her brains. What had happened before the devil knocked her out? She could recall having gone to market to buy food and drink for her father and Simon. There had been a talk with children in the street, but she couldn’t exactly remember what it had been about. After that, all that was left were shreds of memory. Sunlight. People gossiping in the streets. A ransacked room.

Whose room?

The headache returned, and it was so severe that for a brief moment Magdalena thought she’d have to vomit. She swallowed the pungent taste and tried to concentrate on where they were going. Where were the men taking her? They were walking uphill, she could tell that much. She heard how the man beneath her was panting and cursing. The wind was stronger now, so they must have left the forest. Eventually she heard ravens cawing. Something was softly whistling in the wind. She was beginning to have an idea.

The men stopped, dropping her like a bundle of sticks. The ravens were cawing quite close by. Magdalena knew now where she was. She didn’t need to see it at all.

She could smell it.

The black shadow flew toward Simon, putting his hand over his mouth. Simon struggled, trying to free himself. Where was his stiletto, damn it? Just a moment ago he’d struck it against his flint, but now it was lying somewhere out there in the dark and beyond his reach. The hand on his mouth was pressing harder, so that he could hardly breathe anymore. Alongside him, Sophie began to scream again.

Suddenly he heard a familiar voice right at his ear.

“Shut up, for Christ’s sake! He’s right nearby!”

Simon twisted and turned under the strong arm, which finally released him.

“It’s you, Kuisl,” he said. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Shh.”

In spite of the darkness, Simon could now distinguish the hangman’s massive form directly in front of him. It seemed oddly stooped over.

“I got him…the lunatic. Think he isn’t…quite dead yet. Have to be…silent…”

Jakob Kuisl spoke haltingly and with difficulty. Simon felt something warm dripping onto his left upper arm. The hangman was injured. He was bleeding, and it wasn’t just a small cut.

“You’re wounded! Can I help you?” he asked, trying to feel for the wound. But the hangman gruffly brushed the physician’s hand aside.

“There’s no…time. The devil can…be here any moment. Oohhhh…” He was holding his side.

“What happened?” Simon asked.

“The devil followed us…stupid fools that we are. I…put out his light and fled. But I also whacked him a couple of times with my cudgel. Dirty bastard, damn him. May he go back to hell, where he came from…” The hangman’s body shook. For a moment Simon thought he was trembling with pain, but then he realized that the huge man was laughing. Suddenly, the hangman fell silent again.

“Sophie?” Jakob Kuisl asked in the darkness.

The girl had been silent up to now. Now her voice came out of the darkness right next to Simon.

“Yes?”

“Tell me, girl, is there another exit?”

“There…there is a tunnel. It leads away from this chamber. But it’s fallen in.” Her voice sounded different, Simon thought. More composed. She sounded like the orphan girl he had gotten to know on the streets of Schongau—a leader who was capable of mastering her fear, at least temporarily.

“We did start clearing away the rocks, because we wanted to know where the corridor went,” she continued. “But we didn’t finish it…”

“Then dig on,” the hangman said. “And light a candle, in God’s name. If this lousy rotten dog comes down we can always blow it out again.”

Simon fumbled around on the ground till he found his stiletto, the flint, and the tinderbox. Soon, Sophie’s tallow candle was burning. It was just a tiny stump, but its dim glow seemed to Simon like broad daylight bursting into the darkness. He looked around in the chamber.

The room wasn’t much different from the others they had been in before. He could make out the hole he had fallen through. Along the walls there were niches that looked like stone chairs. There were also small recesses for holding candles and the like. Above these, all sorts of alchemistic signs had been scrawled into the rock in children’s handwriting. Clara was lying in an oblong, alcovelike niche that looked something like a bench. The girl was breathing heavily and looked pale. When Simon laid his hand on her forehead he felt that she was burning hot.