Full of anticipation, the hangman’s daughter struggled the last few yards to the crest of the hill. A few hungry crows sat on the rotted beams, looking at her distrustfully. Finally, they took flight and, cawing loudly, headed toward the Kien Valley. Thorny blackberry bushes had grown over the rotted wood, bees hummed, a rabbit hopped off into the underbrush, and suddenly Magdalena understood why her father sought out such places to meditate.
The hectic hubbub of human activity suddenly came to a halt here. The ghostly silence created space for dreaming, meditating, and deep thought.
She looked around but couldn’t see anything unusual. A wagon rumbled along the back road a few hundred paces to her left, and in the distance she could see the monastery in the milky blue sky of early afternoon. Had she been mistaken?
Suddenly she heard a rustling behind her. She turned around to see the Schongau hangman standing alongside a hawthorn bush, casually brushing thistles off his coat. He had appeared like a ghost out of nowhere.
“Father,” she cried with relief. “I knew I’d find you here.”
“Smart girl.” Kuisl grinned. “You’re my daughter, after all. We have to talk. I…” Seeing fear in her eyes, he stopped short.
“What happened?” he asked, approaching her warily.
“Peter and Paul… They’ve disappeared.” She had trouble not screaming. “The sorcerer has abducted them.”
With trembling hands, she pulled the note from her skirt pocket and handed it to her father. When Kuisl read it, his hand closed so tightly around the paper it seemed he was trying to wring blood from of it. His face was ashen, and his voice soft and flat.
“He’ll regret that,” he whispered. “By God, this scoundrel will regret it. No one abducts the grandchildren of the Schongau hangman unpunished.”
Magdalena sighed and struggled to get ahold of herself. “Wild threats don’t get us anywhere either,” she said with determination. “First we have to put our heads together and decide where the children might be. I just can’t understand how they could disappear so suddenly. One moment they were in the garden, and then in the next…” Suddenly she looked around. “And where is Simon? And what have the two of you been up to? Half of Andechs seems to be looking for you two now.”
“Unfortunately we lost sight of each other,” the hangman grumbled, looking a bit embarrassed. “Those damned Semers recognized me in the church square.”
He told her about the presentation of the hosts, their flight afterward, and the fight at the edge of the gorge.
“But Simon is alive,” he concluded, trying to calm her fears. “I heard him calling from down in the gorge.” But then he frowned. “Strange that he didn’t show up again later.”
“Perhaps the bailiffs picked him up,” Magdalena said, shaking her head. “In any case, we’ve got to think of something. The sorcerer made us an offer if we stop looking for him…”
“And do you trust him?” Kuisl spat contemptuously on the ground. “After everything this madman has done? He won’t help us at all. He’ll never let the children go. Not even if we promise to return to Schongau at once. He’s taken his hostages, and when he has what we wants, he’ll wring their necks like two young rabbits and laugh.”
“You… you mustn’t say that,” Magdalena was close to tears again. “If it’s true, then my boys are lost.”
The hangman stared into space, cracking his knuckles. Magdalena knew this habit all too well, one of his usual rituals before an execution.
Or when he was thinking hard.
“If the children are still alive, they’ll be crying and whining,” he finally said softly. “He’ll have to take them someplace where no one will hear them. I’m sure that scoundrel is somewhere in those passageways beneath the monastery-a perfect hiding place if you have two screaming youngsters. And if he doesn’t come to us on his own and hand them over, then we’ll have to go to him.” Once again he cracked his knuckles. “We’ve got to smoke him out like a badger in its hole, or send the dogs in after him. I’ll chase this sorcerer until his guts hang out his mouth.”
“Even if the children are somewhere down there,” Magdalena replied, running her hand through her black hair despairingly, “you forget we still don’t know where the entrance to these passageways is. It seems it was shown on Count Wartenberg’s map, and it’s a shame my husband didn’t bring it with him; all he can remember are those strange Latin words. ‘Hic est porta ad loca inferna’… whatever that means. It’s enough to drive you crazy.”
“What did you just say?” The hangman stared at Magdalena now as if she’d turned into some strange creature of the forest.
“What do you mean?” she asked, puzzled. “It’s enough to drive you crazy, because-”
“No, no. The Latin phrase before that.”
“‘Hic est porta ad loca inferna.’ Why? That’s the sentence Simon told us about.”
“No, that’s not right.” The hangman broke out in a smile like that of a young boy who’d pulled off a prank. “You misquoted. Simon told us the words on the map were ‘Hic est porta ad loca infera.’ That would mean, ‘This is the entrance to the subterranean places.’ But you just spoke of the ‘loca inferna.’ It’s possible your scatterbrained husband misread it-after all, the writing was a bit hard to decipher. Why couldn’t your sentence be correct?”
A slight premonition came over her. “And… what would my sentence mean?” she asked softly.
The hangman picked at his teeth for a while. He loved to torture people by drawing out his answers. He’d been doing it to Magdalena since she was a child.
“Magdalena, Magdalena,” he grumbled finally. “I thought I had taught you a little Latin. ‘Hic est porta ad loca inferna’ means Here is the gateway to hell.” Once more he passed his hand through his scraggly beard, before continuing smugly. “And as the good Lord will have it, I think I know where this gate to hell is.” He smiled. “What do you say, hangman’s daughter? Are you ready to descend into the underworld with me?”
For what felt like the tenth time, Simon slipped on wet leaves, skidding down one of the innumerable slopes in the Kien Valley.
He felt like a bug in a sandpit. Wherever he looked, huge boulders towered up behind the beeches and firs, and between them thickets of thorny shrubs barred the way. Slopes that at first appeared gentle suddenly turned into deep morasses. Simon’s jacket as well as his expensive petticoat breeches from Augsburg were torn in several places, and his boots oozed with mud. No doubt they were ruined, just like the rest of his expensive clothing. But that was the least of his problems.
The medicus was lost.
He’d intended to go just a bit farther down the valley and then make a wide circle back to the knacker’s house in Erling, but again and again, his way was blocked by boulders, steep slopes, and swampland, and he was forced to make detour after detour. Now he had completely lost his bearings in the dark forest.
Simon looked around in despair. Somewhere high above, he could hear the faint sound of bells ringing; that had to be the monastery, but the direct path up the slope was too steep. Moreover, Simon was trying to avoid running into the guards again. On his left, Kien Brook plunged into a natural basin and, from there, farther down into the valley. On the right, cliffs rose up, and the longer Simon looked at them, the more they seemed to be man-made. The walls were too smooth; some of the rocks near the top resembled battlements, staircases, and walkways. The whole formation reminded him of a huge, ancient castle, or perhaps the remains of a castle that had long fallen to ruin.