The Hangman's Daughter by Oliver Pötzsch
Jakob Kuisl pulled himself into the vertical shaft, fighting against the smoke, keeping his eyes closed. He couldn’t see in the dark in any case, and when his eyes were closed they didn’t sting as much from the smoke. From time to time he opened them just a bit and could see a faint glow at the end of the shaft above him. The smoke left him with hardly any air to breathe. He pushed himself up the steep passageway, struggling forward inch by inch with his powerful arms. Finally he felt the edge of the tunnel opening. Panting and groaning he hoisted himself into the chamber, rolled to the side, and opened his eyes.
When Jakob Kuisl squinted he recognized a knee-high hole to his right and another chest-high passageway leading upward. This was the shaft he had tumbled down after his struggle with the devil. The fire seemed to be coming from up there. But by now dense smoke was filling the chamber as well.
Jakob Kuisl’s eyes filled with tears again. He wiped his face with sooty fingers. Just as he was about to examine the small passage to the right, he heard a sound from above.
A soft scraping.
Something was slowly sliding down the shaft. He thought he could hear hectic breathing.
The hangman positioned himself at the side of the shaft, raising his larchwood cudgel. The scraping sound came closer and closer, the sliding noise increased. By the flickering light of the fire he could see something slipping from the shaft and shooting past him. With a scream Jakob Kuisl assaulted it, swinging his cudgel.
Only too late did he realize that it was nothing more than a fragment of the decaying ladder.
At the same moment he heard a hissing sound behind him. He ducked to the side, but the blade went through his coat sleeve and sliced into his left forearm. He felt a dull, throbbing pain. He dropped to the ground, sensing something like a large bird sailing over him.
When the hangman got to his feet again and opened his eyes, he saw an enormous shadow on the wall across from him. The fire made the devil’s frame appear twice its size, and his torso was spread across the ceiling. With his long fingers he seemed to be reaching for the hangman.
Jakob Kuisl blinked until he could make out the soldier at the center of the shadow. The smoke was so heavy now that he could only see the devil as though through a haze. That was all he could see until the devil raised his torch to his head.
His enemy’s face was red with blood, which was streaming across his brow. His flashing eyes seemed to reflect the light from his torch and his white teeth glistened like those of a beast of prey.
“I’m…still here…hangman,” he whispered. “This is it! You or me…”
Kuisl crouched, ready to pounce, clasping his cudgel. His left arm was in terrible pain, but he didn’t show it.
“Where did you take my daughter?” he growled. “Out with it! Or I’ll kill you like a rabid dog.”
The devil laughed. As he raised his bony hand to a salute, Jakob Kuisl saw that two fingers were missing. Still, though, the torch was attached to the iron ring on the metacarpal bone.
“You’d…like to know…little hangman. A good place…The best place for a hangman’s wench…By now the ravens may be pecking out her eyes…”
The hangman raised the cudgel threateningly before he spoke.
“I’ll crush you like a rat…”
A smile played around the devil’s lips.
“That’s good,” he purred. “You’re like myself…Killing, that’s our business…we’re…more alike than you’d think.”
“Like hell we are,” Jakob Kuisl whispered.
With these words he leaped into the smoke, right at the devil.
Without looking back again, Magdalena raced down the slope. Branches were hitting her face. Her legs kept getting caught in brambles, which tore at her dress. Behind her she could hear the soldiers’ heavy breathing. First the men had called out her name from time to time, but now the race had turned into a wild but silent chase. Like hunting dogs they’d picked up her scent and wouldn’t stop until they had the animal at bay.
Magdalena cast a glance over her shoulder. The men were within twenty paces of her. Here, a quarter of a mile beneath the gallows hill, there wasn’t much vegetation. Instead of undergrowth, brown fields spread before her. There was no chance of hiding anywhere. Her only chance was in the trees on the steep banks of the Lech. If she could reach the firs and birches, there might be a chance of hiding in a grove of trees. But that was still a long way off, and the men seemed to be gaining on her.
As she ran, Magdalena frantically looked left and right to see if any peasants were already in the fields sowing. But at this early hour not a soul was to be seen. There were also no travelers yet on the Hohenfurch Road, which could be seen now and then between the hills on her left. No one to ask for help. And even if there were, so what? A single woman, pursued by two armed men—what peasant or merchant would risk his life for a hangman’s wench? Most likely they would keep staring straight ahead, urging their oxen to move even faster.
Magdalena was used to running. Ever since her childhood she had walked long distances, often barefoot, to call upon the midwives in neighboring villages. Many times she had run along the muddy or dusty roads, just for the joy of it, until her lungs started aching. She had endurance and stamina, and by now she had found her own rhythm. But the men chasing her didn’t seem to be willing to give up. Apparently, they had hunted down people before, and they seemed to enjoy it. Their pace was regular and determined.
Magdalena crossed the road and headed for the forest of firs on the high bank of the Lech. The forest was no more than a thin green line beyond the fields. Magdalena wasn’t sure she’d make it that far. She had a taste of iron and blood in her mouth.
As she ran, thoughts swirled in her mind like so many ghosts. Her memory had come back. Now she knew where she had previously seen the witches’ mark that was depicted on the dead children’s shoulders. When she stepped into the midwife’s house yesterday, she had noticed pottery shards on the floor. Those were the shards of clay jars that had been standing on one of Martha Stechlin’s shelves—jars of those drugs that a midwife needed for her trade: mosses for staunching hemorrhages, herbal painkillers, but also powdered minerals, which she mixed into the infusions she prepared for pregnant and sick women. Engraved on some of the shards were alchemical symbols that the great Paracelsus had used and that midwifes liked to use as well.
On one shard Magdalena had seen the witches’ mark.
At first she’d been stunned. What was this sign doing in the midwife’s house? Was she a witch, after all? But as Magdalena turned the shard back and forth in her hands, she saw the symbol upside down.
And suddenly the witches’ mark had become a harmless alchemical symbol.
Hematite. Bloodstone…
It was ground to a powder that was administered to staunch bleeding in childbirth. A harmless little drug, recognized as such also among learned doctors, although Magdalena had her doubts concerning its efficacy.
In spite of her fear she almost had to laugh. The witches’ sign had been nothing but the symbol for hematite turned upside down!
Magdalena remembered how Simon had described to her the mark on the children’s shoulders. Both the physician and her father had always looked at it in such a way that it resembled a witches’ mark. But when looked at from above it turned into a quite harmless alchemical symbol…
Was it the children themselves who had scratched the marks on their shoulders with elderberry juice? They had been at Martha Stechlin’s place a lot, so Sophie, Peter, and the others must have seen the symbol on the jar. But why would they do such a thing? Or had it been the midwife, after all? That made even less sense. Why should she draw the symbol of hematite on the children’s shoulders? So it was the children after all…
As the thoughts swirled through Magdalena’s head, she came closer and closer to the forest. What had at first been a narrow, dark green strip in the early morning light was now a broad band of birches, firs, and beeches not far ahead of her
“Hangman’s wench, I like how you run. I enjoy hunting for my deer before I eat it…”
The other one started to laugh too.
“We’ll have you in a minute. No girl has gotten away from us yet!”
Magdalena had almost reached the forest on the high bank. A swampy meadow extended between her and the protective trees. Little puddles appeared between the beeches and willows where the last snow had melted and soon her feet sank ankle-deep in the soft mud. In the distance she could hear the Lech roar.
Jumping carefully, the hangman’s daughter tried to hop from one tuft of grass to the other in the bog. She came to a place with a particularly wide gap between two of these little mounds, and she slipped and landed with both feet in the swamp. She struggled desperately to free her legs from the mud.
She was stuck!
The men were close behind. Seeing that their prey had been snared they howled with delight, circling the mudhole and leering, looking for a way to reach their prey without getting their feet wet. Magdalena pulled herself with her hands onto one of the grassy mounds. There was a sucking, slurping sound when the slush let go of her legs. One of the soldiers in front of her leaped at her head-on. At the last moment she ducked to the side and the man landed in the bog with a splash. Before he could scramble up, Magdalena slipped out between the two men and headed for the forest.
Entering the shadows of the trees, she realized at once that she had no chance. The trees were spaced much too far apart and there was almost no undergrowth to hide in. And yet she kept running, even if it was pointless, as the men had almost caught up with her. Before much more time had passed, the chase would be over. The roaring of the river grew louder. The steep embankment had to be dead ahead of her. The end of her escape…
Suddenly her left foot stepped into space. She leapt back, watching small pebbles tumbling downward. She pushed aside the branches of a willow and saw an almost vertical incline that led down to the riverbank.
Reeling on the edge of the chasm, Magdalena saw a movement out of the corner of her eye. One of the soldiers suddenly appeared behind the willow, reaching for her. Without further hesitation Magdalena plunged into the chasm. She tumbled over rocks and boulders, reached out for bare roots, and turned head over heels more than once. For a brief moment, she fainted. When she finally came to again, she was lying on her stomach in a hazel bush that had stopped her fall just a few yards above the riverbed. Directly beneath her lay a stretch of gravelly riverbank.
Doubled up with pain, she lay there a moment, then carefully turned her head and looked up. Far above, she could see the men. They were obviously looking for a way to get down to the river. One of the soldiers was already busy tying a rope to a tree trunk that jutted out over the chasm.
Magdalena clambered free from the hazel bush and crawled down the last few yards to the riverbank.
Here at this bend the Lech was rushing along at a dangerous speed. There were white eddies at the river’s center, while along the banks the water was foaming, washing over small trees on the edge. At the end of April the water was still so high in the meadows along the river that some of the birches were underwater. More than a dozen felled tree trunks had gotten entangled and were now caught between the beeches. Angrily, the Lech was pushing against this obstruction. The trunks were shifting and moving, and it wouldn’t be long before the flood of water would carry them off.
Between the trunks, a boat was bobbing.
Magdalena could hardly believe her luck. The old rowboat must have pulled loose farther upstream. Now it was trapped between the trunks, helplessly spinning between the whirling eddies. Looking closer, she could see a pair of oars lying in the hull.
She looked around. One of the soldiers was already letting himself down to the bank on his rope. It wouldn’t be much longer before he reached her. The other one was probably still looking for another way down the slope. Magdalena looked at the trunks in front of her, then said a brief prayer, kicked off her shoes, and leaped onto the nearest trunk.
The log underneath swayed and rocked, but she kept her balance. Magdalena stepped delicately along the trunk and onto another gigantic log. It was spinning around rather dangerously, all the while drifting off to one side. She was agile enough to keep her balance despite the spinning. Looking back for a moment she noticed the soldier who’d let himself down on the rope standing at the riverbank, unsure what to do. When he caught sight of the boat, he, too, started walking cautiously from one log to the next.
Magdalena’s backward glance had almost caused her to lose her balance. She slipped on the wet log and could only catch herself at the last moment before falling into the water. Now she was standing astride two logs, one foot on each of them. Beneath her, white water was foaming and gurgling. She knew if she fell in that she’d be crushed by the huge tree trunks like grain between two millstones.
She moved ahead cautiously. The soldier pursuing her had already covered some distance across the logs, and Magdalena saw the anxious, concentrated look on his face. It was Hans, the soldier who had first tried to rape her. The man was afraid, deathly afraid, there was no doubt about it, but it was too late for him to turn back now.
Deftly she leaped onto the last trunk that separated her from the boat. When she had almost reached the vessel, she heard a scream behind her. She turned around and saw the soldier hopping about on his log like a tightrope walker. For a brief moment he seemed to be suspended in midair. Then he toppled sideways and disappeared in the water. With a crunching noise, logs shifted over the spot where he had disappeared. Magdalena thought she caught a glimpse of a head bobbing up between the tree trunks. And then he was gone.
Above her, on the steep embankment, stood the second soldier, looking undecided at the raging waters down below. After a while he turned and disappeared between the trees.
With one last leap Magdalena reached the boat. She grabbed the side and pulled herself up. The inside was wet, with more than a half foot of water at the bottom, but luckily the boat didn’t seem to be leaking. With a shiver, she collapsed and started to cry quietly.
When the morning sun had warmed her up a little, she sat up, grabbed the oars, and rowed downstream toward Kinsau.
When the corridor behind them collapsed, Simon threw himself over little Clara to protect her. Then he said a prayer. He heard a grinding sound and then a crash. Rocks thudded to the ground to his right and left. Huge clumps of clay fell on his back, then there was a final trickle of rock, and then silence.
Simon was surprised that the candle he had been clutching in his right hand hadn’t gone out. Carefully, he knelt down to survey the corridor. The cloud of smoke and dust slowly settled, and he could see a few yards by the light of his candle.
Behind him Sophie lay huddled on the ground. She was covered by dirt and small lumps of clay as well as a brownish layer of dust, but beneath it Simon noticed a slight trembling. She seemed to be alive. Behind the girl was only darkness and rocks. Simon nodded grimly. There was no way back. But at least no more smoke could reach them now.
“Sophie? Good heavens, are you hurt?” he whispered to her.
The girl shook her head and sat up. Her face was deathly pale, but other than that she seemed to be all right.
“The corridor…it…collapsed,” she mumbled.
The physician looked up cautiously. The roof directly above him seemed solid. There were no beams or joists, but smooth, stable clay. Its round shape that came to a point at the top lent further stability to the tunnel. Simon had seen things like that in a book on mining. The men who had built these corridors had been masters of their craft. How long did it take them to create this maze? Years? Decades? The collapse just now must have been due to the humidity that made the hard clay crumble. Water must have seeped in somewher
Simon was still amazed at the construction. Why on earth did these people spend so much energy creating a maze that had no obvious purpose? That it made no sense as an underground hiding place had just been convincingly demonstrated by the fire. Whoever built a fire in one of the upper chambers could be sure that people would come scampering like rats from the smoke-filled corridors to the surface. Or that they’d choke down there.
Unless this tunnel led to the outside somewhere…
Simon took Sophie by the hands.
“We’ve got to go on before the entire corridor comes down. It has to lead to the outside somewhere.”
Sophie looked at him, her eyes wide with fear. She seemed to be frozen, rigid with shock.
“Sophie, can you hear me?”
No response.
“Sophie!”
He gave her a ringing slap in the face. The girl came to.
“What…what?”
“We’ve got to get out of here. Pull yourself together. You go ahead with the candle, and be careful it doesn’t go out.” He gave her an intense look before continuing. “I’ll take Clara and stay right behind you. Understand?”
Sophie nodded, and they set out.
The corridor took a slight turn before it straightened out again. Then it began to rise, almost unnoticeably at first, then steeper and steeper. First they could only crawl on all fours, but then the corridor became wider and higher. Finally they could walk, stooped over. Simon carried Clara on his back, her arms dangling on both sides of his shoulders. She was so light that he barely noticed her weight.
Suddenly Simon felt a draft coming from up ahead. He took a deep breath. It smelled of fresh air, of forest, tree sap, and springtime. Never before had air seemed so precious to him.
A few moments later the tunnel ended.
Simon couldn’t believe it. He took the candle from Sophie and looked around in a panic. No passageway. Not even a hole.