The Poisoned Pilgrim: A Hangman's Daughter Tale (47 page)

“Unfortunately we lost sight of each other,” the hangman grumbled, looking a bit embarrassed. “Those damned Semers recognized me in the church square.”

He told her about the presentation of the hosts, their flight afterward, and the fight at the edge of the gorge.

“But Simon is alive,” he concluded, trying to calm her fears. “I heard him calling from down in the gorge.” But then he frowned. “Strange that he didn’t show up again later.”

“Perhaps the bailiffs picked him up,” Magdalena said, shaking her head. “In any case, we’ve got to think of something. The sorcerer made us an offer if we stop looking for him…”

“And do you trust him?” Kuisl spat contemptuously on the ground. “After everything this madman has done? He won’t help us at all. He’ll never let the children go. Not even if we promise to return to Schongau at once. He’s taken his hostages, and when he has what we wants, he’ll wring their necks like two young rabbits and laugh.”

“You… you mustn’t say that,” Magdalena was close to tears again. “If it’s true, then my boys are lost.”

The hangman stared into space, cracking his knuckles. Magdalena knew this habit all too well, one of his usual rituals before an execution.

Or when he was thinking hard.

“If the children are still alive, they’ll be crying and whining,” he finally said softly. “He’ll have to take them someplace where no one will hear them. I’m sure that scoundrel is somewhere in those passageways beneath the monastery—a perfect hiding place if you have two screaming youngsters. And if he doesn’t come to us on his own and hand them over, then we’ll have to go to him.” Once again he cracked his knuckles. “We’ve got to smoke him out like a badger in its hole, or send the dogs in after him. I’ll chase this sorcerer until his guts hang out his mouth.”

“Even if the children are somewhere down there,” Magdalena replied, running her hand through her black hair despairingly, “you forget we still don’t know where the entrance to these passageways is. It seems it was shown on Count Wartenberg’s map, and it’s a shame my husband didn’t bring it with him; all he can remember are those strange Latin words.
‘Hic est porta ad loca inferna’
… whatever that means. It’s enough to drive you crazy.”

“What did you just say?” The hangman stared at Magdalena now as if she’d turned into some strange creature of the forest.

“What do you mean?” she asked, puzzled. “It’s enough to drive you crazy, because—”

“No, no. The Latin phrase before that.”

“
‘Hic est porta ad loca inferna.’
Why? That’s the sentence Simon told us about.”

“No, that’s not right.” The hangman broke out in a smile like that of a young boy who’d pulled off a prank. “You misquoted. Simon told us the words on the map were
‘Hic est porta ad loca infera.’
That would mean, ‘
This is the entrance to the subterranean places.
’ But you just spoke of the
‘loca inferna.’
It’s possible your scatterbrained husband misread it—after all, the writing was a bit hard to decipher. Why couldn’t your sentence be correct?”

A slight premonition came over her. “And… what would my sentence mean?” she asked softly.

The hangman picked at his teeth for a while. He loved to torture people by drawing out his answers. He’d been doing it to Magdalena since she was a child.

“Magdalena, Magdalena,” he grumbled finally. “I thought I had taught you a little Latin.
‘Hic est porta ad loca inferna’
means
Here is the gateway to hell.
” Once more he passed his hand through his scraggly beard, before continuing smugly. “And as the good Lord will have it, I think I know where this gate to hell is.” He smiled. “What do you say, hangman’s daughter? Are you ready to descend into the underworld with me?”

For what felt like the tenth time, Simon slipped on wet leaves, skidding down one of the innumerable slopes in the Kien Valley.

He felt like a bug in a sandpit. Wherever he looked, huge boulders towered up behind the beeches and firs, and between them thickets of thorny shrubs barred the way. Slopes that at first appeared gentle suddenly turned into deep morasses. Simon’s jacket as well as his expensive petticoat breeches from Augsburg were torn in several places, and his boots oozed with mud. No
doubt they were ruined, just like the rest of his expensive clothing. But that was the least of his problems.

The medicus was lost.

He’d intended to go just a bit farther down the valley and then make a wide circle back to the knacker’s house in Erling, but again and again, his way was blocked by boulders, steep slopes, and swampland, and he was forced to make detour after detour. Now he had completely lost his bearings in the dark forest.

Simon looked around in despair. Somewhere high above, he could hear the faint sound of bells ringing; that had to be the monastery, but the direct path up the slope was too steep. Moreover, Simon was trying to avoid running into the guards again. On his left, Kien Brook plunged into a natural basin and, from there, farther down into the valley. On the right, cliffs rose up, and the longer Simon looked at them, the more they seemed to be man-made. The walls were too smooth; some of the rocks near the top resembled battlements, staircases, and walkways. The whole formation reminded him of a huge, ancient castle, or perhaps the remains of a castle that had long fallen to ruin.

The castle of the Andechs-Meranier?

Simon shook his head. In the gloomy light of the forest, his imagination was already playing tricks on him. Some of the boulders had seemed like petrified gnomes, towers, or dragons. Exhausted, he passed his hand over his dirty brow, cursed, then moved on.

Why did he have to get lost? By now the bailiffs had surely reached the knacker’s house and found Magdalena. What would they do with the daughter of a man wanted for burglary and possibly murder? Surely the men had more in mind than to politely ask questions and let her go. The two Semers, in any case, were itching for revenge after the knacker and the hangman’s daughter had shown them the door during their recent visit.

Simon hurried along, turning southward where he suspected Erling had to be. Unfortunately progress along the path in this direction was especially difficult, and he often had to fight his way through knee-deep piles of leaves, bushes, and dead wood. It almost seemed the thorny branches of the thistles and blackberry bushes were reaching out to grab him and hold him back.

Simon cursed and was trying to tear himself once more from thorns when he looked up and suddenly saw an especially impressive boulder towering above him. The huge stone was at least forty feet high with a gnarled linden tree growing on top. Not far from it was a circle of stones looking almost like the remains of a huge castle stronghold. There was a faint odor of smoke in the air.

The medicus held his breath. Fire meant that people were nearby—perhaps the Andechs hunters or highwaymen looking for an easy target to rob here near the monastery. In any case, Simon hoped to avoid them.

He listened intently but couldn’t hear anything suspicious, just the twittering of the birds and the constant rustling of the treetops.

He was about to move on when he suddenly heard a strange noise that sounded neither human nor animal in origin.

It was a sad melody coming from a music box, a long-forgotten love song echoing strangely from the cliffs in the middle of the forest.

Astonished, the medicus stopped in place. This was the same sound he’d first heard a week ago in the watchmaker’s house, the same song Magdalena had told him about. She’d heard it while walking along the path in the forest below the monastery just before she’d been shot at. It was the sound of the automaton.

Simon stood still for a while before daring to move. The soft sound seemed to coming from behind the column of rock. With bated breath, he crept along the wall until he finally came to an
entrance to a cave. In front of the cave were the smoking remains of a fire, a dirty wooden bowl, and a clay cup, but nothing more. Simon listened.

The sound clearly came from inside the cave.

His heart began to race. Was it possible? Had he in fact found the entrance to the subterranean passageways beneath the castle? And what should he do now? He was on the way to warn Magdalena, but this was presumably the hiding place they’d been seeking for so long: the sorcerer’s hiding place.

The hiding place where Brother Laurentius was turned into a piece of charred flesh.

Simon hesitated. He was alone; if anything happened to him, there would be no one to help. Certainly it would be better to go to Erling first and look for his father-in-law. They could come back here together and…

And if I can’t find the hiding place again?

Simon stared ahead, weighing the options. The fire had burned down and seemed not to have been stoked for several hours. The person guarding the cave must have left some time ago. This would probably be a good time to at least have a quick look.

Carefully Simon pulled a half-burned branch from the fire to light his way into the cave. The entrance wasn’t large, just a yard or so wide, and empty except for a few piles of dirty, smelly straw. He stooped down and stepped inside for a closer look.

He groped his way through a corridor, damp and blackened by smoke, looking for anything suspicious. In one corner lay a crumpled and tattered woolen blanket, and on his right, at eye level, there was a small, faded picture of the Virgin Mary. Finally, on one of the piles of straw, Simon found a crucifix made of two twigs tied together and a chain with shimmering pearls, which seemed strangely out of place in this squalid setting. Was this cave a sort of chapel? Who lived here? In the darkness before
him, he heard the sad melody of the music box again, much closer now than just a few minutes ago.

As he held his makeshift torch out in front of him, he could make out the entrance to a tunnel through the rock in the back wall.

That’s where the melody was coming from.

With a pounding heart, he entered the narrow passageway. There was no straw underfoot now, just hard-packed soil, and the ceiling was so low he had to stoop. Soon he came to a place where worn steps led downward. Simon decided to go only a few more yards and then turn around and look for Kuisl. His assumption had been correct—this was in fact the entrance to the ancient castle catacombs.

He couldn’t resist a smile. The hangman had cursed him for falling asleep at the bedside of the dying Laurentius, but now he could show his father-in-law that he was useful after all. He would guide him down here, and together they would—

It took Simon a moment to realize what had interrupted his stream of thought.

The music had stopped.

Now, he heard shuffling footsteps approaching from down below.

“Is… someone there?” he called hesitantly into the dark passageway.

For a while there was only silence, then a hoarse laugh. Simon squinted, trying to make out something. He realized too late that, even though he was blinded by the light of his torch and couldn’t see more than about fifteen feet in front of him, he himself was quite visible.

At that moment, there was a whirring sound and something bored into his neck. Horrified, the medicus dropped the torch, but before he could pick it up again, he felt the ground give way beneath him like quicksand. The corridor expanded into some
enormous space, and his legs collapsed beneath him like thin, rotted twigs.

He didn’t even feel the back of his head hit the hard ground, though from the corner of his eye, he could see two mud-spattered leather boots walking toward him. The stranger kicked him hard in the head, opening a large wound over his eyebrow. The world slowly closed in around him as blood ran down over his eyes like a red curtain.

Behind that curtain was nothing but darkness.

The sorcerer bent over his victim and tested the artery in his neck. Hearing the calm heartbeat, he stood up, astonished at how differently people reacted to poison. Judging from the medicus’s small stature, he’d expected the man to die at once, but this sliver of a man from Schongau had an astonishing constitution. The stranger knew now he’d need at least twice this dose for the hangman.

But perhaps that wouldn’t even be necessary.

The sorcerer smiled. The medicus falling into his trap hadn’t been part of his plan, but he was glad that from now on he would have to deal only with the executioner and his daughter. And he’d already made sure those two wouldn’t get in his way any longer. His helper had set the plan in motion.

Stepping out in front of the cave, he looked up at the heavens. On the western horizon, clouds towered up, forming gigantic castles in the sky. Then there was a vibrant whirring sound in the air that he knew only too well.

The right moment was at hand; now his waiting would finally be over.

Humming softly, he returned to the cave and cast a curious glance at the motionless figure of the medicus staring up at him with glassy eyes.

Did he recognize him?

Learned men had told him long ago that the poison he used made the body rigid, hardened it without interrupting the thought processes. Though the medicus’s face was just a frozen grimace, the victim was screaming and raging inside.

Still humming to himself, the sorcerer tied a rope around the medicus’s feet and pulled him behind him down the dark corridor like a piece of dead meat.

Surely the children would be happy to see their father, even though in his present condition he was nothing but a stuffed doll.

An automaton, just like the other.

The sorcerer chuckled. Perhaps he would try out a little experiment on the bathhouse doctor.

L
ATE AFTERNOON ON
S
UNDAY
, J
UNE
20, 1666 AD

D
ON’T YOU THINK
it’s high time to tell me where we’re going?” Magdalena gasped as she ran behind her father through the forested Kien Valley. They had been underway now for more than an hour, but Jakob Kuisl still hadn’t told her where they were headed. They had first made a wide circle around the monastery, slid down a slope covered with wet leaves, then continued running through the forest. Fear for her children had released a strength in Magdalena that allowed her to run like a young deer through the underbrush, without stopping. Her skirt was tattered, branches had scratched her face, and for these reasons, she was all the angrier about not knowing where they were headed.