at from above it turned into a quite harmless alchemical symbol…
Was it the children themselves who had scratched the marks on their shoulders with elderberry juice? They had been at Martha Stechlin’s place a lot, so Sophie, Peter, and the others must have seen the symbol on the jar. But why would they do such a thing? Or had it been the midwife, after all? That made even less sense. Why should she draw the symbol of hematite on the children’s shoulders? So it was the children after all…
As the thoughts swirled through Magdalena’s head, she came closer and closer to the forest. What had at first been a narrow, dark green strip in the early morning light was now a broad band of birches, firs, and beeches not far ahead of her. Magdalena ran straight for it. The men had gained on her again. There were only ten paces between her and them now. She could hear their panting. Closer and closer. One of them burst in an insane laugh as he ran.
“Hangman’s wench, I like how you run. I enjoy hunting for my deer before I eat it…”
The other one started to laugh too.
“We’ll have you in a minute. No girl has gotten away from us yet!”
Magdalena had almost reached the forest on the high bank. A swampy meadow extended between her and the protective trees. Little puddles appeared between the beeches and willows where the last snow had melted and soon her feet sank ankle-deep in the soft mud. In the distance she could hear the Lech roar.
Jumping carefully, the hangman’s daughter tried to hop from one tuft of grass to the other in the bog. She came to a place with a particularly wide gap between two of these little mounds, and she slipped and landed with both feet in the swamp. She struggled desperately to free her legs from the mud.
She was stuck!
The men were close behind. Seeing that their prey had been snared they howled with delight, circling the mudhole and leering, looking for a way to reach their prey without getting their feet wet. Magdalena pulled herself with her hands onto one of the grassy mounds. There was a sucking, slurping sound when the slush let go of her legs. One of the soldiers in front of her leaped at her head-on. At the last moment she ducked to the side and the man landed in the bog with a splash. Before he could scramble up, Magdalena slipped out between the two men and headed for the forest.
Entering the shadows of the trees, she realized at once that she had no chance. The trees were spaced much too far apart and there was almost no undergrowth to hide in. And yet she kept running, even if it was pointless, as the men had almost caught up with her. Before much more time had passed, the chase would be over. The roaring of the river grew louder. The steep embankment had to be dead ahead of her. The end of her escape…
Suddenly her left foot stepped into space. She leapt back, watching small pebbles tumbling downward. She pushed aside the branches of a willow and saw an almost vertical incline that led down to the riverbank.
Reeling on the edge of the chasm, Magdalena saw a movement out of the corner of her eye. One of the soldiers suddenly appeared behind the willow, reaching for her. Without further hesitation Magdalena plunged into the chasm. She tumbled over rocks and boulders, reached out for bare roots, and turned head over heels more than once. For a brief moment, she fainted. When she finally came to again, she was lying on her stomach in a hazel bush that had stopped her fall just a few yards above the riverbed. Directly beneath her lay a stretch of gravelly riverbank.
Doubled up with pain, she lay there a moment, then carefully turned her head and looked up. Far above, she could see the men. They were obviously looking for a way to get down to the river. One of the soldiers was already busy tying a rope to a tree trunk that jutted out over the chasm.
Magdalena clambered free from the hazel bush and crawled down the last few yards to the riverbank.
Here at this bend the Lech was rushing along at a dangerous speed. There were white eddies at the river’s center, while along the banks the water was foaming, washing over small trees on the edge. At the end of April the water was still so high in the meadows along the river that some of the birches were underwater. More than a dozen felled tree trunks had gotten entangled and were now caught between the beeches. Angrily, the Lech was pushing against this obstruction. The trunks were shifting and moving, and it wouldn’t be long before the flood of water would carry them off.
Between the trunks, a boat was bobbing.
Magdalena could hardly believe her luck. The old rowboat must have pulled loose farther upstream. Now it was trapped between the trunks, helplessly spinning between the whirling eddies. Looking closer, she could see a pair of oars lying in the hull.
She looked around. One of the soldiers was already letting himself down to the bank on his rope. It wouldn’t be much longer before he reached her. The other one was probably still looking for another way down the slope. Magdalena looked at the trunks in front of her, then said a brief prayer, kicked off her shoes, and leaped onto the nearest trunk.
The log underneath swayed and rocked, but she kept her balance. Magdalena stepped delicately along the trunk and onto another gigantic log. It was spinning around rather dangerously, all the while drifting off to one side. She was agile enough to keep her balance despite the spinning. Looking back for a moment she noticed the soldier who’d let himself down on the rope standing at the riverbank, unsure what to do. When he caught sight of the boat, he, too, started walking cautiously from one log to the next.
Magdalena’s backward glance had almost caused her to lose her balance. She slipped on the wet log and could only catch herself at the last moment before falling into the water. Now she was standing astride two logs, one foot on each of them. Beneath her, white water was foaming and gurgling. She knew if she fell in that she’d be crushed by the huge tree trunks like grain between two millstones.
She moved ahead cautiously. The soldier pursuing her had already covered some distance across the logs, and Magdalena saw the anxious, concentrated look on his face. It was Hans, the soldier who had first tried to rape her. The man was afraid, deathly afraid, there was no doubt about it, but it was too late for him to turn back now.
Deftly she leaped onto the last trunk that separated her from the boat. When she had almost reached the vessel, she heard a scream behind her. She turned around and saw the soldier hopping about on his log like a tightrope walker. For a brief moment he seemed to be suspended in midair. Then he toppled sideways and disappeared in the water. With a crunching noise, logs shifted over the spot where he had disappeared. Magdalena thought she caught a glimpse of a head bobbing up between the tree trunks. And then he was gone.
Above her, on the steep embankment, stood the second soldier, looking undecided at the raging waters down below. After a while he turned and disappeared between the trees.
With one last leap Magdalena reached the boat. She grabbed the side and pulled herself up. The inside was wet, with more than a half foot of water at the bottom, but luckily the boat didn’t seem to be leaking. With a shiver, she collapsed and started to cry quietly.
When the morning sun had warmed her up a little, she sat up, grabbed the oars, and rowed downstream toward Kinsau.
When the corridor behind them collapsed, Simon threw himself over little Clara to protect her. Then he said a prayer. He heard a grinding sound and then a crash. Rocks thudded to the ground to his right and left. Huge clumps of clay fell on his back, then there was a final trickle of rock, and then silence.
Simon was surprised that the candle he had been clutching in his right hand hadn’t gone out. Carefully, he knelt down to survey the corridor. The cloud of smoke and dust slowly settled, and he could see a few yards by the light of his candle.
Behind him Sophie lay huddled on the ground. She was covered by dirt and small lumps of clay as well as a brownish layer of dust, but beneath it Simon noticed a slight trembling. She seemed to be alive. Behind the girl was only darkness and rocks. Simon nodded grimly. There was no way back. But at least no more smoke could reach them now.
“Sophie? Good heavens, are you hurt?” he whispered to her.
The girl shook her head and sat up. Her face was deathly pale, but other than that she seemed to be all right.
“The corridor…it…collapsed,” she mumbled.
The physician looked up cautiously. The roof directly above him seemed solid. There were no beams or joists, but smooth, stable clay. Its round shape that came to a point at the top lent further stability to the tunnel. Simon had seen things like that in a book on mining. The men who had built these corridors had been masters of their craft. How long did it take them to create this maze? Years? Decades? The collapse just now must have been due
