The Hangman's Daughter by Oliver Pötzsch
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
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
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.