Opening the letter, she found only a few scribbled words, but they were enough to knock the wind out of her. She fell back onto the chair, as white as a ghost, staring down at the note.
It was a short, evil poem.
Sleep, baby, sleep, your mother likes to peep.
She snoops and noses far and near;
that’s not so good for baby dear.
Sleep, baby, sleep.
Bye, baby, bye, your grandpa likes to pry.
If he won’t let this habit be, the sorcerer will strangle me.
Bye, baby, bye.
“What’s wrong, Magdalena?” Graetz stepped closer, looked over her shoulder, and made out the few words while the hangman’s daughter sat there, petrified.
“My God,” Graetz gasped finally. “You were right. This madman has indeed abducted the boys.” Angrily he turned to his assistant. “Where did you get this letter?” he shouted. “Tell me right now who gave it to you.”
Matthias opened his mouth, struggling to be understood. “Aaa-annn,” he said.
“A man?” Magdalena asked hopefully. “What kind of a man, Matthias?”
“Aaaarrrzzer Aaannn. Aaaaarrrrzzzer Aaaann.”
“Confound it! Speak clearly!” Graetz said, furious. “Who was it?”
“I’m afraid we’re not going to get very far like this,” said Magdalena, swallowing hard. She was so concerned about her children that she could hardly think straight. Once more she studied the black lines. The letters were smudged; a few drops of ink had run down the paper leaving spots that reminded her of blood.
Sleep, baby, sleep, your mother likes to peep.
Suddenly Magdalena remembered that, even though Matthias couldn’t speak, he could write. Frantically she looked for a quill pen and an inkpot among the clutter on the floor. When she finally found them both undamaged in a corner of the room, she turned the paper over and handed it to Matthias with the writing implements.
“Write on the back who gave you the letter,” she asked him.
Matthias nodded and smiled wanly; then he scribbled a few lines on the stained note and handed it back to Magdalena.
Quickly she scanned the words he had written in an elegant, flowing script.
A man wearing a black robe and a hood gave me the letter at the entrance to the monastery. He told me to bring it to the daughter of the hangman from Schongau, but I don’t know who the man was.
The tall, thickset man looked back at Magdalena expectantly, like a little dog looking for some praise.
“Thank you, Matthias,” Magdalena said finally as she folded the note and tucked it in her skirt pocket.
“Can it have been a monk?” she asked. “After all, he wore a black robe. Tell me, was it one of the Benedictines?”
The assistant shrugged and grinned sheepishly. “Ahnaa reallli…”
“You don’t know, you idiot?” Graetz chimed in impatiently. “But the voice-did you recognize the voice?”
Matthias seemed to be struggling inside, rocking his head of red hair back and forth. But he didn’t say another word.
“Good God,” Graetz fumed, grabbing his assistant, who was almost two heads taller than he, by the collar. “If you don’t open your mouth right away-”
“Let him be,” Magdalena interrupted. “Clearly he doesn’t know, and you can’t beat it out of him. We’ll just have to think of something else.” Her lips tightened and a renewed determination flashed in her eyes. This so-called sorcerer had abducted her children to silence her and her father. Unconsciously she clenched her hands into tight little fists. At least now the uncertainty had passed. She knew what had happened to the two children-and she could act.
“First I have to find my father and Simon,” she finally said in a near whisper. “Father will know what to do; he has always found a way out.”
“But what if the bailiffs have already picked him up?” said Graetz.
“Father?” Magdalena smiled wearily. “It would take more than a few dumb Andechs hunters. I’ll bet anything that he and Simon have escaped. The only question is where they are now.” She stopped for a moment to think. “People are searching for them all over Andechs, and they wouldn’t come here to Erling. So there has to be a place outside the village that both my father and I know…” Suddenly her face brightened. “Of course. It’s possible,” she cried out. “In any case, it’s the only place I can think of where we can all get together for a quiet chat and certainly no one will disturb us. In Schongau, I sometimes meet him there, too.”
She turned to the puzzled knacker and asked him the way.
Graetz nodded hesitantly. “If I know your father, you could be right. He was always a bit…” He grinned in embarrassment. “Well, strange.”
He quickly explained how to get there, then turned to his assistant, who was standing off to one side looking sad and depressed, and patted him on the shoulder.
“Don’t take it the wrong way, Matthias,” he said, trying to cheer him up. “I didn’t want to offend you. You’ll see, the children will show up again, and then you can play with them. Everything will turn out all right.”
A smile spread over Matthias’s face. He wiped his huge hands on his knacker’s apron, then bowing clumsily several times, backed out the door.
“A poor fellow,” Graetz sighed. “What he might have amounted to if those mercenaries hadn’t cut out his tongue.” Then he turned back to Magdalena. “I’m going now to visit a few people nearby whom we can trust,” he said in a conspiratorial tone. “The gravedigger, the shepherd, the barber down in Herrsching, the coal-burner down at Ramsee… all of them dishonorable.” He laughed briefly. “There are more of us than most people know, and together we’ll find your family.”
Magdalena squeezed his hand. “Thank you, Graetz. I’ll always be grateful to you for this.” Then a fierce look of determination came into her eyes. “And now I’m going to look for my father,” she said softly but firmly. “Believe me, that damned sorcerer will come to regret ever picking a fight with the Kuisls.”
Magdalena headed toward Machtlfing, a small village about two miles away. She avoided the main road and stayed in the shadows of the blackberry and hawthorn bushes as she hurried along, her skirt blowing in the wind. It was early afternoon, and the sun was almost uncomfortably hot. Towering thunderheads appeared in the west; a storm was brewing.
Graetz had described the hill to her exactly. It lay partially hidden in the forest behind the so-called Backerbichl, or Baker’s Hill, but even though the knacker had given her only a rough idea of where it was, she couldn’t have missed it. On the crest of the hill surrounded by low-lying bushes were the decaying remains of a wooden frame. At one time three stone pillars had stood here in a triangle connected by wooden beams. One of the beams had fallen to the ground years ago and was rotting away now, and a second leaned precariously against a weathered column. Nevertheless it was easy to see what this structure had been many years ago.
Magdalena was standing in front of the Erling gallows hill.
The path was overgrown with weeds and bushes, and she struggled to make her way to the top. Graetz had told her that this had been an execution site since time immemorial, though nowadays hangings were done in the nearest large town, Weilheim, where the district judge resided. Only during the Great War were deserting mercenaries and rebellious farmers occasionally still strung up here. Now, Magdalena couldn’t keep thinking of the father of mute Matthias, who had been hoisted into the air, writhing and twitching in view of his son. “Riding the wind” is what people called such a degrading scene. Sometimes death took up to a quarter hour.
Magdalena hoped fervently she’d find her father and Simon up here. Both of them knew about the Erling gallows hill, as Graetz had often told them about it. Only a short distance from the highway, it served as a warning to travelers. In recent times, though, bushes and small trees had started growing on the hill. Since the rotting corpses of thieves and highwaymen often dangled from the scaffolding for months, the stench, especially in the summer, was so strong that no one wanted to live there; the nearest house stood hundreds of yards away. The gallows hill, moreover, had always been thought to be cursed, so people avoided it-making it a perfect place, therefore, for a secret meeting. Magdalena prayed her father had thought the same way.