Kuisl thought about this for a moment before breaking out into a wide grin. The perfect place had just come to mind.
If Magdalena was really his daughter, she’d know where to find him.
Nearly blind with anxiety, Magdalena ran across the field of flowers, along the gorge that led down into the Kien Valley.
Her children had disappeared. Perhaps this lunatic had already seized them. Some madman had already tried to kill her several times, so why wouldn’t he go after her children, as well? Magdalena still hoped the two boys had just run off and were playing somewhere nearby. She worried most about the steep rock slope nearby and decided not to tell Simon and her father yet, but to first have a look along the edge of the gorge.
“Peter, Paul? Can you hear me? Are you here?” Her voice echoed across the deserted valley. Wherever she looked, she saw rocks and ragged boulders that looked like petrified trolls amid the stunted pines and spruce, like man-eating ogres whom God had punished long ago for their transgressions.
Did the trolls eat my children, as well?
She continued past some thorny bushes blocking her view into the valley. Looking down, she saw one of the Andechs hunters dressed in green several yards below, running toward the monastery along a path that skirted the edge of the gorge. She was about to call for help when the man encountered two other bailiffs. Gesturing wildly, the little man stopped to tell them something, but from where she stood above the trail, Magdalena could understand only a few words.
“The false monk… chasing… fleeing with this bathhouse doctor… need reinforcement…”
The false monk? The bathhouse doctor?
Magdalena could feel the hair on the back of her neck standing up. She knew only one false monk and one bathhouse doctor in Andechs: her father and Simon. What in God’s name had happened? Evidently her father had been found out, and these men were chasing him and Simon.
She crouched down behind one of the hawthorn bushes and waited. She couldn’t hear a word of their conversation, but all three of them went back in the direction the first bailiff had come from.
Magdalena’s head was spinning. Did she dare to keep calling for the children? It was possible the hunters would hear her and recognize her. As they knew she was the wife of the Schongau bathhouse surgeon, it seemed a better idea to steer clear of the bailiffs.
Anxiously she gazed across the valley one last time. She saw rocks, trees, bushes, dead wood…
But no children.
Practically numb with despair, Magdalena bit her fist. The pain helped her to think clearly, at least for a while. She needed help, and the only two people who came to mind other than Simon and her father were Graetz and Matthias. Taking a deep breath, she turned and ran back across the meadows and fields until she arrived at the dirt path to Erling. Her heart was pounding in her chest and every breath was painful, but still she ran on and on. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, she could see the knacker’s house between two other farmhouses at the forest edge.
Suddenly she stopped.
Suppose the hunters had already been here? The two Semers at least knew that the Kuisl family was living here. Still, the ramshackle cabin at the forest edge seemed quiet-there was no one in the little vegetable garden; only a few goats were tethered there, grazing in the meadow next to the stable. Smoke rose from the chimney, suggesting someone was home.
Magdalena struggled to make up her mind, then finally ran toward the house. She had no other choice. She would never find her children by herself. Hesitantly she knocked on the door.
“Graetz, are you there?” she asked softly.
She was about to knock a second time when the door swung open and the knacker appeared, visibly shaken.
“Thank God, Magdalena,” he cried with relief. “You’re finally back. Hurry, come in.” Graetz looked around suspiciously in every direction, then pulled the hangman’s daughter into the bedroom and barricaded the door.
Magdalena was horrified to see the chaos in the little room. The table, bench, and chairs were knocked over; the large heavy chest in the corner had been broken into; and torn clothes and broken dishes lay strewn all over the room.
“Those fat moneybags from Schongau were just here with two bailiffs,” Graetz said right off, pointing at the destruction all around. “They left no stone unturned here. No stone!”
Magdalena could see the veins in Graetz’s brow turn red and swell up, and his whole body started to tremble. “Asked me where your father and Simon were. But I didn’t tell them a thing. I told them to first prove that Kuisl had stayed here.” His face turned red with rage.
He picked a chair up from the floor and sat down, exhausted. “They can do this to us poor people,” he wailed. “They took off with all my wife’s dowry, God rest her soul. She’d turn over in her grave if she knew that.”
“Graetz,” Magdalena said, still struggling for breath from her long run. “I need your help. The… the children are gone.”
“The children?” The knacker looked at her, puzzled. “What do you mean, they’re gone?”
Magdalena had to struggle to get ahold of herself as tears ran down her sweat-stained cheeks. “I… I was over in the monastery garden with them,” she blurted out. “They were playing in the garden, and then suddenly they were gone. I think they’ve fallen in the gorge, perhaps, or… or that this madman has abducted them.”
“Do you mean that sorcerer? Why would he do anything like that?”
In short, broken words, Magdalena told the knacker about the attacks on her and about what she feared.
“I think the sorcerer doesn’t like our snooping around here,” she said excitedly. “He tried to kill me a few times already, and now he’s probably taken my children.”
Just as Graetz was about to reply, someone pounded on the door again. The knacker cringed.
“Good Lord, I hope it isn’t those scoundrels again,” he cursed. “Be careful. If they’re still looking for your father, be prepared for a few unpleasant questions. It would be best for now if the bailiffs don’t even see you.”
He motioned to Magdalena to slip into the next room, but the hangman’s daughter just shook her head.
“If it’s really them, let it be,” she said softly but with determination. “Just let them in. They won’t keep me from looking for my children.”
Shrugging, Graetz went to the door and opened it a crack. When he saw who was standing there, he breathed a big sigh of relief.
“Ah, it’s just you, Matthias. Come in. We have-”
Suddenly he stopped short. Looking down, he saw that Matthias was holding a folded note in his hand. The assistant’s face was expressionless; only his lips trembled slightly.
“What’s wrong, Matthias?” Magdalena asked, moving closer. A wave of apprehension came over her. “What’s that in your hand?”
“Mmmm … aaa … eena.”
She looked at him, confused.
“What are you saying?” she asked.
“Mmmm… aaa… eena… Mmmm… aaa… eena,” he kept saying in a monotone, then walked up to her hesitantly and handed her the note. Only now did Magdalena understand he was trying to pronounce her name.
“The… the letter is for me?” she whispered, her heart beating wildly.
The mute assistant nodded and handed her the letter with a slight bow.