The Hangman's Daughter

“Sure.” The hangman nodded. “I can’t do it alone. There are too many. Have you got your knife on you?”

Simon fumbled at his belt. Then, trembling, he pulled out his stiletto, which flashed in the moonlight.

“Good,” growled Kuisl. “Magdalena, you run back to the town and wake Lechner at the castle. Tell him that the building site is being destroyed again. We need help, as quickly as possible.”

“But—” The hangman’s daughter was about to protest.

“No argument, or you’ll marry the hangman from Steingaden tomorrow morning. And now, run!”

Magdalena pouted. But then she vanished into the shadows of the forest.

The hangman gave a signal to Simon and ran, bent over, along the edge of the wood. Simon hurried after him. After about two hundred paces they came across a pile of tree trunks that the workers had deposited near the forest’s edge. The pile reached some distance into the clearing. Using the cover of the trunks, the hangman and the physician crept closer to the half-finished building. Now they could see that there were in fact five men, who appeared to be searching for something with lanterns and torches. One man sat on a boulder near the linden tree in the middle of the clearing, two were leaning by the well, and the other two were in other parts of the site.

“I’m getting tired of freezing my behind off here in the dark!” shouted one of the men, who was inside a big square of walls. “We’ve been searching here almost all night now. Let’s come back again tomorrow, by daylight!”

“In the daytime the place is swarming with workers, you idiot,” hissed one of the men by the well. “Why do you think we’re doing all this at night? Why did we knock everything down after sunset? We’ll go on looking, and if Moneybags has lied to us and there’s nothing buried here, then I’ll smash his skull on this well like a raw egg!”

Simon pricked his ears. Something, then, was buried there. But what?

The hangman nudged him on the shoulder.

“We can’t wait any longer for the bailiffs,” he whispered. “We don’t know how much longer they’ll stay here. I’m going to run over to that side wall and get one of them. You stay here. If you see anyone coming toward me, whistle like a jaybird. Can you do that?”

Simon shook his head.

“Damn it, then just whistle as best you can. They won’t notice it.”

Jakob Kuisl looked round for the last time, then hurried with long strides toward the wall and took cover behind it. The men had noticed nothing.

More shouting could be heard, now farther away, so that Simon found it increasingly difficult to understand them. He saw that the hangman, stooping, ran along the side of the wall, directly toward the man inside the square, who was trying to pry up the flagstones with a wooden stick. Jakob Kuisl was only a few strides away from him. Suddenly the man turned round. Something had aroused his attention. The hangman let himself fall to the ground. Simon blinked, and when he opened his eyes again, the darkness had swallowed Jakob.

He was just about to breathe a sigh of relief when he heard a sound in front of him. The second man, who had been walking around the site, was suddenly standing right before him. He looked just as surprised as Simon was. The man had evidently been looking for a hiding place on the far side of the pile of logs. Now he had turned the corner and stumbled right into Simon.

“What the devil?”

More he could not say, for Simon had seized a stick and had struck the man’s legs from under him. The man fell over on his side. Before he could pick himself up, Simon was upon him pummeling him with his fists. The face of his adversary was bearded and scarred, and the blows seemed to bounce off him as if from a rock. With a sudden movement he grabbed the physician, held him up for a second, and flung him forward. At the same time he raised his right hand to strike a blow.

He hit Simon on the side of the head, and Simon fainted. When he came to, the man was sitting on his chest and throttling him with both hands, while his face was contorted into an ugly grin. Simon saw the rotten stumps of teeth and beard stubble, red, brown, and black like a mown field in October. Blood was dripping on him from the man’s nose. Simon saw every detail with a clarity as never before. In vain he struggled for air, he felt that he was nearing his end. Scraps of thoughts and memories whirled wildly through his head.

Must pull…the knife…from the belt.

He fumbled for his knife even as he started to lose consciousness again. At last he found the hilt. Just before he lapsed into final unconsciousness he drew out the stiletto and lunged. He felt the blade slide into something soft.