Humming softly, he returned to the cave and cast a curious glance at the motionless figure of the medicus staring up at him with glassy eyes.
Did he recognize him?
Learned men had told him long ago that the poison he used made the body rigid, hardened it without interrupting the thought processes. Though the medicus’s face was just a frozen grimace, the victim was screaming and raging inside.
Still humming to himself, the sorcerer tied a rope around the medicus’s feet and pulled him behind him down the dark corridor like a piece of dead meat.
Surely the children would be happy to see their father, even though in his present condition he was nothing but a stuffed doll.
An automaton, just like the other.
The sorcerer chuckled. Perhaps he would try out a little experiment on the bathhouse doctor.
16
LATE AFTERNOON ON SUNDAY, JUNE 20, 1666 AD
"Don’t you think it’s high time to tell me where we’re going?” Magdalena gasped as she ran behind her father through the forested Kien Valley. They had been underway now for more than an hour, but Jakob Kuisl still hadn’t told her where they were headed. They had first made a wide circle around the monastery, slid down a slope covered with wet leaves, then continued running through the forest. Fear for her children had released a strength in Magdalena that allowed her to run like a young deer through the underbrush, without stopping. Her skirt was tattered, branches had scratched her face, and for these reasons, she was all the angrier about not knowing where they were headed.
“Be patient just a bit longer,” the hangman grumbled without slowing his pace. He’d left his black coat back at the knacker’s cabin, but his shirt was bathed in sweat. “It can’t be much farther.”
With his huge hands, he shoved a dead tree trunk aside like a blade of grass, then jumped over a small brook. When Magdalena tried to follow, she sank knee-deep in the mud.
“You didn’t have to come along,” he told her impatiently, reaching out to help her. “I have no idea what a helpless woman-”
“This helpless woman just happens to be the mother of two abducted children,” she growled. “So stop this nonsense and tell me where we’re going.”
Kuisl smiled wanly, then with a single powerful movement, pulled her out of the mud and hurried on in silence.
Magdalena followed, grumbling. Her father could be so stubborn! Ever since he’d made that curious remark on gallows hill about the “underworld,” they had hardly exchanged a dozen words. First they ran to the knacker’s house, but Simon wasn’t there, and Graetz didn’t know what had become of the medicus. After a long conversation with the knacker in the next room, Kuisl finally decided to go looking for the children without Simon.
At first he wanted to go alone, but Magdalena quickly made clear she’d never forsake her children, so the father and daughter ran through the forest together looking for the madman who had kidnapped the boys. Magdalena was also worried about Simon. Was he lying injured in the forest somewhere? Had the guards picked him up and taken him to Weilheim to be tortured into telling them where the wanted hangman of Schongau was hiding out?
Several times a dreadful thought passed through her mind, as painful as a poison arrow boring slowly but inexorably into her subconscious: Suppose the children are no longer alive? Suppose the sorcerer has already killed them?
As she choked up, she ran faster and faster, trying to drive away her terrible premonition.
Suddenly her father stopped, put his finger to his lips, and pointed to a tall rock standing in the trees a stone’s throw away.
“We’re here,” he whispered. “This is the rock I’ve been looking for. I asked Graetz about it. Since ancient time, the natives have referred to it as Devil’s Rock.”
Magdalena turned and looked at him, confused. “Devil’s Rock? But…”
“Porta ad loca inferna,” he whispered. “The door to hell. Don’t you understand? This is the place where Satan enters and leaves. It wasn’t the name that made me think of it, but something else.” Kuisl lowered his voice even more and Magdalena almost thought she detected a trace of fear in him. “I was here once,” the hangman said.
“Here?” Magdalena looked around. Suddenly the area looked strangely familiar-the trees, the rocks, and farther off, a few large boulders arranged in a circle. She knew this place as well. But in her fear, she’d paid no attention to it.
The remains of a ring of boulders…
“Of course,” she exclaimed. “The ring of boulders where the children were playing a few days ago. I saw the tall boulder from there.”
Kuisl seemed not to have heard her. He looked up toward the top of the steep rock, lost in thought. “I was here with the children when we came to Andechs,” he continued softly. “I took a shortcut, and suddenly we were standing in front of this huge rock. There was a cave with an old woman sitting in front, spouting all sorts of gibberish…”
Magdalena felt her mouth go dry. “The hermit woman,” she exclaimed. “I met her, too, as did Matthias and the children. She was crazy, talking some nonsense about how my children were in danger, and saying this was…” Her voice trailed off as she remembered the old woman’s words.
I’m guarding the entrance to hell…
“My God,” she gasped. “The door to the underworld. She talked about it and even warned the children to stay away. But I didn’t take her seriously.”
The hangman paused for a moment, then nodded. “She told me about the entrance to hell, as well. Like you, I dismissed it as the babbling of an old fool and finally forgot it-until today, up on gallows hill.”
He laughed briefly, then picked up the bundle he’d brought along and pulled out a hunting knife more than a foot long. With a practiced eye, he looked around in the underbrush for a suitable branch and began to carve one into a club.
“No doubt the locals knew about this entrance long ago,” he ruminated as he shaved the wood. “Later, long after the destruction of the castle, its actual purpose was forgotten and all that remained were the names-Devil’s Rock, Door to Hell, names that can now be found only on faded maps…”
He spat angrily onto the ground, weighing the finished cudgel in his hands. “That’s the way people are: what they don’t understand is the work of the devil.”
Once more his gaze wandered up to the tip of the strange rock. Suddenly he sniffed, and his huge nostrils flared. “Can you smell that?” he asked softly. “There’s a fire burning somewhere. Let’s be careful-who knows whether the old woman is making her porridge right now and will scream so loud that half the Kien Valley will know we’re here.”
Magdalena took one last deep breath, then darted toward the rock through the dry underbrush and across a small open area. Finally, she and her father moved cautiously along the cold rock face until they could see the entrance.
No one was in sight. A thin column of smoke rose over a cold fire, but not a sound came from inside the cave.
Magdalena relaxed and stepped into the clearing in front of the rock. “The coast is clear,” she said, relieved. “So now let’s-”
“Woe to you! Woe!”
The shrill voice came from the bushes on the left. Now the haggard figure of an old woman struggled to her feet in the underbrush-the same old woman Magdalena had met just a few days earlier not far from here. Her tattered dress fluttered like the wings of a moth, and her hands reached threateningly to heaven.
“Satan has risen,” the old woman screeched wildly. “He’s left the underworld, and now along with Beelzebub is searching for innocent children whose guts he can suck out. Repent, by God, repent!”
For a few moments Magdalena stood there petrified; then she rushed up to the old woman and shook her by the shoulders.
“You’re talking about children,” she shouted. “My children? Tell me, has that madman dragged my children into this cave? Say something!”