Outside she could hear shouting and bawling in front of the house. Clara couldn’t bear to stay in bed any longer. She pulled herself up, pushed the heavy eiderdown comforter to one side, and slid down onto the cold wooden floor. Immediately a feeling of dizziness came over her. She had a fever, her legs felt like wet clay, but nevertheless she dragged herself the few steps to the window and looked out.
Down by the Lech, the Stadel was on fire. Tongues of fire licked up into the sky, and all of Schongau had come down to the raft landing. Clara’s foster parents, the children, and the nurse-maid were also down there to witness the spectacle. They had left only her, the sick orphan, behind. In her wild escape three days before, she had fallen into the Lech. Before the current had carried her away she had managed, in the nick of time, to hold on to a bunch of rushes. She had crawled up the bank and run home through a swamp and thickets. She kept looking around for the men, but they had disappeared. The other children were gone too. Not until she had reached the oak tree near the Kuh Gate did she meet Anton and Sophie again. Anton looked at her with eyes wide with terror and cried again and again that he had seen the devil. He didn’t stop until Sophie gave him a box on the ear. And now he was dead, and Clara knew why. Although she was only ten years old, she could imagine what had happened. Clara was afraid.
At this moment she heard the squeaking of the front door. Her foster parents must have returned. Her first impulse was to call out to them, but something held her back. The Schreevogls’ arrival home was always accompanied by noise, doors slamming, children laughing, noise on the stairs. Even when the nurse came back from the market you could hear the rattling of keys and baskets being put away. But now it was deathly quiet, as if somebody had tried to open the door carefully and had been betrayed by the squeaking. Clara heard a creak on the stairs. Instinctively she ran back to the bed and crept under it. Dust got into her nose, she had to repress a sneeze. From her hiding place she saw the door of her room slowly opening. Two mud-stained boots paused on the threshold. Clara held her breath. They were certainly not her foster father’s boots; he paid great attention to his appearance. She didn’t know whose boots they were, but she recognized the mud on them. Clara’s shoes had looked just like that three days before. It was the mud from the swamp through which she had fled.
The men had come back, or at least one of them.
The dust made her nose itch again, she felt something tickling her right hand. As Clara glanced down, she saw a spider crawl over her finger and disappear in the darkness under the bed. She stifled a cry and stared at the boots still standing on the threshold. She heard the measured breathing of a man; then the boots disappeared. Steps tapped up the stairs to the rooms above. Clara listened carefully to the sound. It was different from the sound of normal steps. A dragging and scraping at regular intervals. She remembered the night of her flight. One of her pursuers had a strange gait. He had…limped! Clara was sure that the man up there on the stairs was the limper. Perhaps now he wouldn’t be so quick?
Clara waited a moment, then crawled out from under the bed and hurried on tiptoe to the open door. She looked up the stairs but couldn’t see anyone. The stranger must have gone into one of the upper rooms. Silently she crept downstairs.
When she had reached the entrance hall, she remembered that she had left her doll upstairs.
She bit her lip. In front of her the outside door stood wide open; she could hear the noise down by the river. The first people appeared to be making their way back to town.
Clara shut her eyes for a second, then hurried upstairs again and entered her room. There on the bed lay her doll. She picked it up and was just about to run downstairs again when she heard steps from above. Hurried steps.
The man had heard her.
The steps became quicker; the man was taking several stairs in one stride. Clara rushed out of the room, her doll pressed closely against her. On the threshold she glanced up the stairs. A black shadow seemed to fall over her, a bearded man in a cloak, his right hand stretched out toward her. It was the devil, and he had a white hand of bones.
Clara slammed the door of her room shut and bolted it. From outside something hit the door, and she could hear a voice cursing quietly. Then the man threw himself with his full force against the door, so that the frame shook. Once, twice…Clara ran to the window, which was still open. She wanted to call for help, but she was choked with fear. Only a hoarse croaking came out. Beneath her the street was still empty of people. A long way away she saw the crowds pressing through the Lech Gate back into town. She wanted to wave, but she realized that it would be useless. Probably the people would just wave back cheerfully.
Behind her, wood splintered. Clara turned and saw the point of a saber making its way through an ever- widening split in the middle of the door. She looked down again at the street in front of the house. Her room was on the second floor, about ten feet from the ground. Just next to the entrance of the house a peasant had left a cart with winter straw.
Without pausing to think Clara stuffed her doll down between her breast and nightgown and climbed over the sill. Then she slid down until she was hanging by both hands from the sill. Behind her the splintering was louder, a bolt was pushed aside. With a little cry Clara let go and fell straight into the hay wagon. She felt pain in her right shoulder as she scraped against the wooden frame. Without paying any attention to it, she scrambled over the side and slid to the ground. With straw in her hair and in her nightgown she fled along the street. She turned around once and saw the devil standing at the window, gesturing with his bone hand. He seemed to be calling something to her.
Clara heard voices in her feverish head. Everything swam before her eyes; her legs kept running as if by themselves. The rattling in her chest continued to throb while she staggered through the empty alleys. The devil was at her heels, and there was nobody who could help her.
When Simon and Magdalena finally reached the raft landing, most of the Schongauers had already returned to town. Fire-fighters were busy pushing down the smoking beams and pouring water on the remaining embers. Otherwise only a few onlookers were watching. At least the danger of the fire reaching the watchmen’s houses and the wooden pier had been averted.
Simon asked some of the men what had happened. Finally he noticed the hangman sitting on one of the wooden piles in the background smoking his pipe and thoughtfully contemplating the remains of the Stadel. As Simon and Magdalena approached him, he looked up.
“Well? Have you had a pleasant day?”
Simon felt the blood mounting to his face. Magdalena very sensibly looked in the other direction.
“I…we…I was helping Magdalena to gather wild garlic, and then we saw the smoke,” the physician stammered. He looked at the ruins and shook his head. “This is terrible. It will cost the town a fortune!”
The hangman shrugged.
“If it was anyone from the town…Our raftsmen say the Augsburgers set fire to the Stadel after taking their own goods out.”
Simon looked over his shoulder. There were indeed cases, bales, and sacks piled up at a safe distance from the smoking ruin. A few Augsburg raftsmen, casting black glances all around, stood near them and were obviously on guard.
“Well?” he asked the hangman. “What do you think?”
Jakob Kuisl took another drag on his pipe.
“Anyway, they put their goods in a safe place while we were fighting with them.” He stood up and stretched his legs.
Finally he muttered: “One thing is clear. The fire was set deliberately by someone. I’ve lit a few fires myself, for executions. It takes a bit of work to get it to burn well. You can’t just throw a torch on it.”
“Arson?” inquired Simon.
“You can bet your life on that.”
“But why?”
“Don’t know. But we’ll find out sooner or later.”
The hangman started walking toward the bridge. As he passed them he shook his head.
“In any case, there’s one good thing about the fire,” he said.
Simon walked after him.
“What is it?”
“If they question the Augsburgers and Schongauers about it, then we get a reprieve for the Stechlin woman.
