The Hangman's Daughter (26 page)

Jakob Kuisl grinned as he heard the young physician cursing.

“Don’t make such a fuss. You know very well that time is short. Let’s have a look in the tile kiln.”

He held the ladder steady while Simon clambered up over the slippery rungs. When he reached the top, Magdalena’s face appeared in front of him. She held the torch so that it shone right in his eyes.

“You do look rather…beaten up,” she giggled. “Why did you keep falling over on your nose?”

With the corner of her apron she wiped the clay from Simon’s forehead. It was useless. The colored soil stuck to his face like paint. Magdalena smiled.

“Perhaps I’ll let you keep a bit of the dirt on your face. You’re a bit too pale around the nose anyway.”

“You be quiet. Otherwise I’ll start asking myself why it was me who had to climb down into this damned pit.”

“Because you are young, and a few tumbles in the mud won’t hurt you,” came the hangman’s voice. “Anyway, you would hardly expect a young, delicate girl to climb down into such a filthy hole.”

Jakob Kuisl had already strolled over to the kiln. The building stood at the edge of a clearing with the forest directly behind it. Kindling wood was piled up in six-foot stacks all over the clearing. The building itself was constructed of solid stone, and a tall chimney came out of the center of the roof. The kiln was situated between the forest and the river and was a good two furlongs from the tanners’ quarter. To the west Simon could now and then see lights from lanterns or torches in the town. Otherwise the darkness around them was complete.

The tile kiln was one of Schongau’s most important buildings. After a few devastating fires in the past, the burghers were now required by law to build their houses with stone and roof them with tile rather than straw. Also, the craftsmen of the stovemakers’ guild fetched their raw materials from here for the manufacture of earthenware products and stoves. During the day, thick smoke almost continually covered the clearing. There was a constant coming and going, with oxcarts transporting the tiles to Altenstadt, Peiting, or Rottenbuch. But now, at night, there was not a soul about. The heavy door leading to the interior of the kiln was shut. Jakob Kuisl walked along the front of the building until he found a window whose shutters hung crooked on their hinges. With a determined tug he ripped off the right-hand shutter and held the torch in to illuminate the interior.

“Children, don’t be afraid!” he called into the dark room. “It’s me, Kuisl from the tanners’ quarter. I know you had nothing to do with the murders.”

“You really think they’ll come out when the hangman calls them?” hissed Magdalena. “Let me in. They’ll not be afraid of me.”

She tucked up her skirt and climbed into the building over the low windowsill.

“A torch,” she whispered.

Without a word Simon passed her his torch. Then she disappeared into the darkness. From listening to her steps the two men could hear how she tiptoed from room to room. At last they could hear the creaking of boards. Magdalena was walking up the stairs.

“The devil’s in that girl,” growled the hangman, sucking his cold pipe. “She’s like her mother, just as stubborn and cheeky. Time she got married and had somebody to keep her mouth shut.”

The physician wanted to reply, but at that moment a crash and a scream were heard above.

“Magdalena!” cried Simon and clambered into the interior, where he landed painfully on the stone floor.

He arose at once, took the torch in his hand, and ran in the direction of the stairs. The hangman followed him. They crossed the room with the kiln and rushed up the stairs to the attic. It smelled of smoke and ashes.

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?”

“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.

A scream brought Simon back to the present. He rolled quickly to one side, gasping for air. The bearded man lay near him, rubbing his thigh. Blood was spreading over his hose. Simon had wounded him in the leg, but it was obvious the injury was not severe. The man was looking at him already and grinning. He drew himself up, ready to attack again. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a stone lying on the ground and bent over to pick it up. For one moment his face was turned away, and in this moment Simon threw himself on him with the knife. The man cried out in astonishment. He had expected the weedy-looking youth to just run away, and this sudden attack surprised him. Now Simon sat astride his opponent’s broad chest, holding his knife in his raised right hand, poised to attack. Beneath him the man’s eyes filled with terror. When he opened his mouth to scream again, Simon knew that he had to strike immediately. He could not risk the man being heard by the others. He felt the hilt in his hand, the hard wood, the sweat on his fingers. He felt the man writhing under him, looking certain death in the eyes.