daughter was well. She had considered that a pretty good idea at first. But when that physician showed up in the forest, she cursed herself for it. And all the more when the devil himself appeared, coming as if from nowhere. She dropped quickly into a ditch covered with shrubs, and the man with the bony hand ran past her, toward the physician. Since then she did not know whether the young physician had been killed or had gotten away. She only knew that her pursuers were very close.
Last night she had considered several times whether to go into town and tell the whole story. Perhaps she could tell it to the physician, providing he was still alive, or to the hangman. They both seemed to be on her side. She could tell them everything, and Clara would be rescued. Perhaps they would only clap the midwife in the stocks, or her foster parents would have to pay a fine because their ward had gotten involved with things that were none of her business. Perhaps she would get away with a good spanking and nothing more. Perhaps everything would still be all right.
But that certain premonition of things that she’d always had, and which had made her the leader of the other children, told her that she wouldn’t be believed, that things had gone too far already, and there was no way back now.
Next to her, Clara cried out again in her sleep. Sophie bit her lip and tears ran down her face, which was smeared with dirt. She no longer knew where to turn.
Suddenly, she heard shouts from far away, laughter and shouting that could be heard way down here in her hiding place. Sophie kissed Clara on her forehead and moved to a spot with a good view over the forest.
Shadows were flitting among the trees. Dusk had fallen, and at first she could not distinguish the individual figures. Soon, however, she heard dogs barking. Carefully Sophie pushed herself up a few inches higher. Now she recognized the men. They were peasants from Altenstadt, Franz Strasser, Johannes’s foster father, among them. The big dog he was holding on a leash was pulling him toward the hiding place. Quickly Sophie crouched down and crawled to where she could no longer be seen. The voices of the men had a strange echo, as if coming from the far end of a long tunnel.
“Let’s stop now, Franz!” one of the men called out. “We have been looking all day, and it will be dark soon. The men are tired and hungry and want to go home. Let’s continue looking for this hiding place tomorrow.”
“Just wait a moment! Just look here!” shouted Franz Strasser in reply. “The dog smells something!”
“What do you think he smells?” the other one said, laughing. “The witch? He’s smelling Sepp Spanner’s bitch. She’s in heat. Can’t you see how it pulls him off?”
“You dumb ass! This is something else. Look, he’s going completely crazy…”
The voices had come closer. Sophie held her breath. Now they were directly above her. The dog started to bark.
“There must be something around here,” murmured Strasser. “Let’s search the area around here, and then we’ll let it be.”
“All right then, just around here. The dog is really acting crazy…”
Sophie heard shouting and hooting. The other peasants were becoming impatient. She heard steps above her, pacing back and forth on the gravel. The dog’s panting sounded as if he were about to choke as he obviously was straining on the leash so hard that he was almost strangling himself.
At this moment Clara began to scream again. It was a long scream of fear, as once again she was overcome by the shadows of darkness that were scratching her soft young skin with long fingernails. As soon as Sophie heard the scream she threw herself down quickly next to Clara and closed her mouth with her hand. But it was too late.
“Did you hear that?” asked Strasser excitedly.
“Hear what? Your dog is panting and barking. I can’t hear anything else.”
“Damn cur, be quiet, will you!”
Sophie could hear a kick and then the dog’s whimpering. The dog was finally silent.
“Somebody did scream. It was a child.”
“Nonsense, the dog was howling. The devil must have taken a shit in your ears.”
There was laughter. The shouts of the others became fainter.
“Hogwash. I am sure it was a child…”
Under Sophie’s strong hands, Clara was tossing back and forth. Sophie was still holding her mouth closed even though she was afraid of suffocating the girl. But Clara could not be allowed to scream. Not now!
Suddenly she could hear a frightened panting above her. “Look, the dog!” called Franz Strasser. “He’s starting to dig! There is something here!”
“True, he’s digging…what in the world is he…”
The other man’s voice turned to loud laughter.
“A bone, a stupid bone, that’s what he’s dug up! Ha-ha, that’s sure a devil’s bone!”
Franz Strasser began cursing. “You stupid cur, what are you doing? Leave it alone or I’ll beat you to death!”
More kicks and whimpering. Then the steps retreated. After a while, nothing could be heard anymore. Nevertheless Sophie’s hand remained clamped over Clara’s mouth. She held her delicate head as in a vise. The sick girl’s face had turned blue by now. Finally Sophie released her, and Clara sucked air into her lungs, gasping, as if she were about to drown. Then her breathing became more regular. The shadows had withdrawn. She drifted into a quiet sleep.
Sophie sat next to her and wept without making a sound. She had almost killed her friend. She was a witch; people were right. God would punish her for what she had done.
While Martha Stechlin was being tortured, Simon Fronwieser was sitting in the hangman’s house making coffee. He was still carrying a handful of the foreign beans in a small pouch on his belt. Now he had ground them up in the executioner’s mortar and had set a pot with water on the fire. When the water was at a boil he used a pewter spoon to put a little of the black powder in the pot and stirred. Immediately, a sharp aromatic fragrance spread through the house. Simon held his nose directly over the pot and breathed it in. The scent cleared his head. Finally he poured some of the brew into a mug. As he waited for the grounds to settle he thought about everything that had happened in the past few hours.
After their brief detour to Altenstadt he had walked Jakob Kuisl home, but the hangman did not want to disclose the meaning of his enigmatic words at the end of their visit to Strasser’s. Even when Simon had insisted, he only told him to be available during the night, and that they had come quite a bit closer to the solution. Then the otherwise grim hangman smiled quietly. For the first time in days, Simon had the feeling that Jakob Kuisl was highly pleased with himself.
This bliss was instantly disrupted when they arrived at the hangman’s house in the Lech quarter. Two bailiffs were already waiting at the door to tell Jakob Kuisl that the Stechlin woman was again ready to be interrogated.
The hangman’s face suddenly turned white.
“So soon?” he murmured, stepping inside and reappearing a short time later with the necessary tools. Then he took Simon briefly aside and whispered in his ear, “Now we can only hope that Martha remains strong. In any case, be at my house tonight at the stroke of midnight.”
Then he had trudged off behind the bailiffs, up to the town, with a sack slung over his shoulders filled with thumb-and leg screws, ropes, and sulfur sticks that could be inserted under the fingernails and lit. The hangman walked very slowly, but finally he disappeared beyond the Lech Gate.
When Anna Maria Kuisl stopped to pick up Simon in front of the house a short time later, she found him staring into space. She poured him a goblet of wine, ran her hand over his hair, and then went to market with the twins to buy bread. Life went on, even if three little boys were dead and a presumably innocent woman was suffering unspeakable torture at this very moment.
Simon went into the hangman’s spare chamber carrying the steaming brew and started to leaf aimlessly through some books. But he couldn’t really concentrate and the letters danced before his eyes. Almost gratefully he looked around when the squeaking door behind him announced a visitor. Magdalena was standing there, her face tearstained, her hair tangled and unkempt.
“Never, never will I marry the Steingaden hangman,” she sobbed. “I’d rather go and drown myself!”
Simon winced. With all the ghastly events of the last few hours he had completely forgotten Magdalena. He slammed the book shut and took her in his arms.
