The Hangman’s Daughter

“I got him…the lunatic. Think he isn’t…quite dead yet. Have to be…silent…”

Jakob Kuisl spoke haltingly and with difficulty. Simon felt something warm dripping onto his left upper arm. The hangman was injured. He was bleeding, and it wasn’t just a small cut.

“You’re wounded! Can I help you?” he asked, trying to feel for the wound. But the hangman gruffly brushed the physician’s hand aside.

“There’s no…time. The devil can…be here any moment. Oohhhh…” He was holding his side.

“What happened?” Simon asked.

“The devil followed us…stupid fools that we are. I…put out his light and fled. But I also whacked him a couple of times with my cudgel. Dirty bastard, damn him. May he go back to hell, where he came from…” The hangman’s body shook. For a moment Simon thought he was trembling with pain, but then he realized that the huge man was laughing. Suddenly, the hangman fell silent again.

“Sophie?” Jakob Kuisl asked in the darkness.

The girl had been silent up to now. Now her voice came out of the darkness right next to Simon.

“Yes?”

“Tell me, girl, is there another exit?”

“There…there is a tunnel. It leads away from this chamber. But it’s fallen in.” Her voice sounded different, Simon thought. More composed. She sounded like the orphan girl he had gotten to know on the streets of Schongau-a leader who was capable of mastering her fear, at least temporarily.

“We did start clearing away the rocks, because we wanted to know where the corridor went,” she continued. “But we didn’t finish it…”

“Then dig on,” the hangman said. “And light a candle, in God’s name. If this lousy rotten dog comes down we can always blow it out again.”

Simon fumbled around on the ground till he found his stiletto, the flint, and the tinderbox. Soon, Sophie’s tallow candle was burning. It was just a tiny stump, but its dim glow seemed to Simon like broad daylight bursting into the darkness. He looked around in the chamber.

The room wasn’t much different from the others they had been in before. He could make out the hole he had fallen through. Along the walls there were niches that looked like stone chairs. There were also small recesses for holding candles and the like. Above these, all sorts of alchemistic signs had been scrawled into the rock in children’s handwriting. Clara was lying in an oblong, alcovelike niche that looked something like a bench. The girl was breathing heavily and looked pale. When Simon laid his hand on her forehead he felt that she was burning hot.

Only now did he notice the hangman leaning against the stone bench next to the sleeping Clara and ripping strips out of a piece of his coat with his teeth to bandage his broad chest. There was a red, wet stain on his shoulder too. When he saw Simon’s worried look, he only grinned.

“Save your tears, quack. Kuisl’s not dead yet. Others have tried to do that before.” He pointed behind himself. “Better help Sophie clear the corridor.”

Simon looked behind him. Sophie was gone. He looked again and saw that a second corridor led away from one of the niches in the rear. After a few steps it ended in a heap of rubble. Sophie was struggling to drag the rocks out. At one point, there was already a hole in the pile the size of a fist, and he thought he could feel a current of air coming through it. Where did this corridor lead?

As he helped Sophie carry away the rocks, he asked, “The man who’s lying in wait for us down here. He’s the same as the man who chased you as well, right?”

Sophie nodded.

“He killed the others because we saw the men up there at the building site,” she whispered. “And now he wants to kill us as well.”

“What did you see?”

Sophie stopped in the middle of the corridor, facing him. The light of the candle was so dim that he couldn’t see whether she was crying.

“This used to be our secret place,” she began. “Nobody knew it. Here we used to meet every time the other children attacked us. Here we were safe. That night we climbed over the town wall to meet in the well.”

“Why?” Simon asked.

Sophie paid no attention to the question.

“We agreed to meet down here. Suddenly we heard voices. When we climbed out, we saw a man handing money to four other men. It was a small bag. And we heard what he said.”

“What did he say?”

“That the men were to destroy the building site. And if the Schongau workmen built it up again, they should destroy it again and again, until he told them it was enough. But then…”

Her voice faltered.

“What happened then?” Simon asked.

“Then Anton knocked over a pile of rocks, and they noticed us. And then we ran away, and I heard Peter screaming behind me. But I ran on and on until I reached the city wall. Oh, God, we should’ve helped him. We left him alone…” She began to cry again. Simon stroked her bedraggled hair until she calmed down.

His mouth was dry when he finally said, “Sophie, this is important now. Who was the man who handed the others money?”

Sophie was still crying silently. Simon felt the wet tears on her face. He asked again. “Who was the man?”

“I don’t know.”

At first Simon thought he hadn’t heard correctly. Only gradually did he begin to understand what she was saying.

“You…you don’t know?”

Sophie shrugged.

“It was dark. We heard voices. And I did recognize the devil with the men, as he was wearing a red doublet and we saw his bony hand. But the other one, the one who handed them the money-we didn’t recognize him.”

Simon almost had to laugh.

“But…but then it was all for nothing! All the murders, and your game of hide-and-seek…You didn’t recognize the man! He only thought you did! All this didn’t have to happen-all this blood, and all for nothing…”

Sophie nodded.

“I thought it was all a bad dream that would pass. But when I saw the devil in town, and then when Anton was dead, I knew he’d chase us, no matter what we’d seen. So I came here to hide. When I arrived Clara was here already. The devil had nearly gotten her.”

She started to cry again. Simon tried to imagine what the twelve-year-old had gone through in the past few days. He couldn’t. Helplessly he patted her cheek.

“It’ll be over soon, Sophie. We’ll get you out of here. And then everything will be straightened out. All we have to do is…”

He was about to continue when his nose caught a thin but pungent smell that made him stop.

It was the smell of smoke. And it was growing stronger.

Now they heard a voice somewhere above them. It was hoarse and shrill.

“Hey, hangman, can you hear me? I’m not dead yet! How about yourself? I’ve made a nice little fire up here. The oil from your lamp and a few damp beams make great smoke, don’t you think?” The man above them faked a coughing fit. “All I have to do now is wait until you come crawling out of your hole like rats. Of course you can just choke down there as well. What’s it going to be?”

Meanwhile Jakob Kuisl had followed them to the corridor. Dirty strips torn from his coat were wrapped around his torso. Simon couldn’t see blood anymore. The hangman put his finger to his lips.

“You know what, little hangman?” the voice said again, somewhat closer. “I’ve changed my mind. I’m coming down. Smoke or no smoke, I’m not going to miss this chance…”

“Hurry up,” Kuisl hissed. “I’ll go to meet him. Simon, you’ve got to carry Clara. If you can’t clear the corridor quickly enough, or if it’s a dead end, come after me.”

“But the devil?” Simon began.

The hangman was already hoisting himself into the hole that led out of the chamber.