In the darkness Simon could only distinguish the hangman’s silhouette. Jakob Kuisl crouched down behind the little wall until the second watchman started to get nervous. After a while the bailiff began calling his missing friend—first softly, then louder and louder. When he got no reply he stood up, grabbed his pike and the lantern, and carefully walked around the church wall. As he walked past one particular bush, Simon saw the lantern flare up briefly and then go out. A short time later the hangman came out from behind the bush and beckoned to Simon.
“Quick, we have to tie them up and gag them before they come around again,” he whispered when Simon arrived at his side. Jakob Kuisl grinned as if he were a young rascal who had just pulled off a successful prank. From a sack he had brought along he pulled out a ball of rope.
“I am sure they didn’t recognize me,” he said. “Tomorrow they will tell Lechner about whole hordes of soldiers and how heroically they fought them. Maybe I should hit them a few more times to provide them with proof?”
He threw Simon a piece of cord. Together they tied up the two unconscious bailiffs. The one whom the hangman had knocked down first was bleeding a little at the back of his head. The other one already had an impressive lump on his forehead. Simon checked their heartbeats and breathing. Both were alive. Relieved, the physician continued his task.
Finally they gagged the two watchmen with torn-off rags of linen and carried them behind the pile of wood.
“This way they can’t see us, even if they should wake up,” said Jakob Kuisl, walking right over to the well. Simon hesitated. He rushed back to the watchmen’s post, fetched two warm blankets, and spread them out over the unconscious bailiffs. Then he followed the hangman. This had been necessary violence. If ever they should have to stand trial for it, his compassion would perhaps be counted as a mitigating factor, he hoped.
The moon had risen by then, throwing a bluish light over the building site. The watchmen’s little fire still smoldered, but silence prevailed everywhere. Even the birds had stopped their chirping. Over the well stood a frail wooden framework from which a chain with a bucket must have hung at one time. A small pile of rocks served as stepping stones, making it easier to climb over the rim. Jakob Kuisl held his torch up to the beam extending across the shaft.
“Look, here! Fresh scratch marks,” he muttered and ran his finger along the beam. “In some places you can see the light wood is showing underneath the weather-beaten surface.”
He looked down into the well and nodded.
“The children threw a rope over the beam and climbed down.”
“And why isn’t any rope hanging there now, if they are down there?” Simon asked.
The hangman shrugged. “Sophie probably took the rope down so that nobody would become suspicious. To climb back out she has to throw it over the beam from below. Not exactly easy, but I believe Sophie is capable of it.”
Simon nodded.
“That’s probably the way she came out when she looked for me in the woods to tell me about Clara,” he said and looked down. The hole was as black as the night surrounding them. He threw a few pebbles into the well and listened as they hit the bottom.
“Are you nuts?” cursed the hangman. “Now they know down there for sure that we’re coming!”
Simon started to stutter: “I…I only wanted to see how deep the well is. The deeper it is, the longer it takes the stone to hit the bottom. And by seeing how long that takes…”
“You fool,” interrupted the hangman. “The well cannot be more than twenty-five feet deep, or Sophie could never have tossed up the rope in order to come out and visit you in the woods.”
Once more Simon was impressed by the hangman’s simple and yet compelling logic. In the meantime Jakob Kuisl had fetched yet another rope from his sack and started tying it around the beam.
“I’ll let myself down first,” he said. “If I see anything down there, I’ll wave the lantern and you follow me.”
Simon nodded. The hangman checked the beam’s strength by pulling hard on the rope. The beam groaned but held. Kuisl tied the lantern to his belt, grabbed the rope with both hands, and let himself down.
After a few yards, he was enveloped in darkness. Only a small point of light testified to the fact that a human being was dangling from the rope down there. The point of light descended farther and farther and suddenly stopped. Then the light swung back and forth. The hangman was waving with the lantern.
Simon took a few deep breaths. Then he too attached his lantern to his belt, grabbed the rope, and climbed down. There was a wet and musty smell down there. Just in front of him, muddy soil trickled to the ground. Like the clay they had found under the children’s fingernails…
After descending a few more yards he saw that the hangman had been right. About twelve feet below he could see the bottom. A few puddles of water shone in the light of the lantern; otherwise the shaft was dry. When Simon reached the bottom he realized why. On one side of the shaft was a semi-oval hole at knee’s height that reminded Simon of an arch at the entrance to a chapel. It looked as if it had been dug by human hands into the clay. Beyond, there was a low shaft. The hangman was standing next to the hole and grinning. With his lantern he pointed to the entrance. “A dwarf’s hole,” he whispered. “Who would have thought of that? I didn’t know that there even were any in this area.”
“A what?” asked Simon.
“A dwarf’s hole. Sometimes people also call it a mandrake cave. I’ve seen many of these in my time during the war. The peasants used to hide in them when soldiers came, and sometimes they didn’t come out for days.” The hangman pushed his torch into the dark tunnel.
“These tunnels are made by humans,” he continued in a soft voice. “They are ages old, and nobody knows what they were used for. Some people think that they were built as hiding places. But my grandfather told me that the souls of the dead found their last resting place in them. Others say that the dwarves themselves dug them out.”
Simon had a closer look at the semi-oval. It really looked like the entrance to some dwarf’s cave.
Or like the door to hell…
Simon cleared his throat. “The priest mentioned that witches and sorcerers were said to have met here in olden days. A heathen place for their unholy celebrations. Could that have anything to do with this…dwarf’s hole?”
“Whatever the case,” said Jakob Kuisl, sinking to his knees, “we must go inside. So let’s go.”
Simon closed his eyes briefly and sent a whispered prayer to the cloudy skies visible only twenty-five feet above them. Then he crawled behind the hangman into the narrow tunnel.
Up at the well’s rim, the devil pointed his nose into the wind. He was smelling revenge and retaliation. He waited a few more moments before sliding down the rope into the depths.
As soon as Simon had crawled through the entrance, he noted that this would not be an easy job. After only a few feet the tunnel narrowed. To make any headway, they almost had to crawl sideways and push themselves forward with their shoulders. Simon felt sharp rocks scraping across his face and body. Then the tunnel widened slightly. Bent over, Simon stumbled forward, yard by yard, holding the lantern in one hand, leaning with the other against the wet clay wall next to him. He tried not to think of how his pants and doublet must look by now. But anyway, in the dark it didn’t show.
His only point of orientation was the flickering hangman’s lantern in front of him. He could see how Jakob Kuisl was having difficulty squeezing his broad, muscular body through this needle’s eye. Earth kept trickling from the ceiling and fell into his collar. The roof was arched as in a miner’s tunnel. At regular intervals sooty niches the size of a hand appeared in the walls. They looked as if candles or oil lamps had stood in them in the past. The niches enabled Simon to estimate the tunnel’s length. Nevertheless he had lost all sense of time after only a few minutes.
Above their heads lay tons of rock and earth. The physician briefly thought about what would happen if the wet clay were to suddenly collapse over him. Would he even feel anything at all? Would the rock mercifully break his neck or would he slowly suffocate? When he realized that his heart was starting to race, he tried to direct his thoughts toward something beautiful. He thought of Magdalena, of her black hair, her dark, laughing eyes, her full lips…he could clearly see her face in front of him, almost close enough to touch. Now her expression was changing; it looked as if she wanted to cry out to him. Her mouth opened and closed soundlessly; her eyes shone with naked
