The Hangman's Daughter

When they arrived upstairs, the air was full of red dust, so that in spite of the torch they could hardly see anything. From the corner on the right they could hear someone groaning quietly. As the dust was slowly settling, Simon could see broken tiles heaped and scattered all over the floor. Along the walls more tiles were piled up to the ceiling. In one place there was a gap. Several hundredweight of burnt clay must have fallen to the floor there. Under a particularly large heap something moved.

“Magdalena!” cried Simon. “Are you all right?”

Magdalena stood up, a red ghost, covered from tip to toe with fine tile dust.

“I think…I’m all right now,” she coughed. “I wanted to push some tiles away. I thought there might be a hiding place behind here.” She had to cough again. Simon and the hangman were now covered with the fine red dust too.

Jakob Kuisl shook his head. “Something’s not right,” he grumbled. “I’ve missed something. The red dirt…it was under their fingernails all right! But the children are not here. Where are they then?”

“Where do they take the tiles to?” asked Magdalena, who meanwhile had brushed herself off as well as she could and was sitting on a pile of broken tiles. “Perhaps the children are there?”

The hangman shook his head again. “That wasn’t brick dust under their fingernails. That was red clay, damp clay. They must have dug in it. Where else is there so much clay?”

Suddenly a thought flashed through Simon’s mind.

“The building site!” he cried. “At the building site!”

The hangman looked up, startled. “What did you say?”

“The leper house, the building site!” repeated Simon. “There were big heaps of clay there. They used it to plaster the walls!”

“Simon’s right!” Magdalena cried and jumped up from the heap of tiles. “I myself have seen the workers with their carts taking clay there. The leper house is the only large building site in Schongau at the moment!”

The hangman kicked a tile against the wall, where it broke into small pieces.

“My God, you’re right! How could I be so stupid as to forget the building site? We were there ourselves and saw the clay!”

He hurried down the stairs. “To the leper house, quickly!” he called as he was running. “Pray God that it isn’t too late!”

From the kiln to the Hohenfurch Road it was a good half hour’s brisk walk. The shortest way was through the forest. Jakob Kuisl chose a narrow path, which resembled a track for animals more than anything. The moonbeams broke only occasionally through the dense pine trees, otherwise an almost impenetrable blackness reigned. It was a mystery to Simon how the hangman managed to find the way. Together with Magdalena he stumbled along, guided by the hangman’s torch. Again and again pine branches struck them in the face. Now and then Simon thought he could hear a cracking of branches in the underbrush nearby. But his own breathing was too loud for him to say definitely if it was his imagination or real footsteps. After just a short time he began to breathe heavily. It was like a few days ago, when he was fleeing from the devil, and he noticed how out of condition he was for such running through the forest. He was a physician, damn it—not a huntsman or a soldier! Magdalena ran on, light-footed, alongside him and because of her he tried not to let it show.

Suddenly they exited the forest and stood out in the open on a field of stubble. The hangman paused to get his bearings, then ran to the left along the edge of the field. “Head east, and then take a sharp right at the oaks!” he called to them. “We’re almost there!” Soon indeed they passed a grove of oak trees and finally stood at the edge of a larger clearing. They could recognize shadowy outlines of buildings. They had arrived at the building site.

Simon halted, panting. Twigs, burrs, and pine needles clung to his coat. He had lost his hat somewhere in the pine thickets. “Next time you take a run through the forest, let me know ahead of time,” he groaned, “so I put on something suitable. That hat cost half a florin, and my boots—”

“Shhh.” The hangman held his big hand over Simon’s mouth. “Stop babbling. Look over there.”

He pointed to the outlines of the building site. Small points of light were moving here and there, and they could hear bits of conversation that drifted over to them.

“We’re not the only ones,” whispered Jakob Kuisl. “I can count four or five torches. And I’ll bet my backside that our friend is here also.”

“You mean, the man you ran after last time?” whispered Magdalena.

The hangman nodded. “The same who almost slit Simon’s throat. The one they call the devil. But this time we’ll get him.” He motioned to the physician to come over. “The torches are spread out all over the site,” he said. “They seem to be looking for something.”

“But what?” Simon asked.

The hangman grinned broadly. “We’re soon going to find out.” He picked a heavy oak branch up from the ground, broke off the twigs, and cradled it in his hand. “We’ll take them singly, one by one.”

“We?”