Tears gleamed in Salter’s eyes as he slowly continued turning the wheel of the rack. Each time, Hieronymus Hauser moaned loudly.
“Harsee, Schwarzkontz, Vasold, Gotzendörfer, Herrenberger, Hauser, Schramb, Braun.”
On hearing the last name, Adelheid Rinswieser let out a muted cry. “My God, Braun! That’s my father.”
“The orphan is brought to the Carmelite monastery on the Kaulberg,” Salter continued without paying any attention to the moaning and shouting. “The monks there don’t care for him. They believe he is a witch’s offspring. They torment him with words and prayers, they beat him day in and day out, they lock him in a cell deep underground. And there he recites the names of the guilty like a prayer. Harsee, Schwarzkontz, Vasold, Gotzendörfer, Herrenberger, Hauser, Schramb, Braun.” Salter started slowly turning the wheel again while the moans of the nearly unconscious scribe grew louder. “But one day the boy discovers an escape route through a mountain of sand. .”
“The crypt under the monastery!” Barbara gasped. “You already knew about it and that’s why you went there to find shelter.”
Markus Salter didn’t even seem to hear her. He just kept going on and on. “So the boy flees from the monastery, and once he’s out he learns that the last of his relatives has been killed, to wipe out any trace of the crime. There is, however, a distant relative, an uncle in Cologne, who takes him in. He begins his studies at the university there, and he takes on the name of his uncle in order to forget, but he can’t get these names out of his mind. Harsee, Schwarzkontz, Vasold, Gotzendörfer, Herrenberger, Hauser, Schramb, Braun.”
The next time Salter turned the wheel, Hieronymus Hauser let out a shriek, a high-pitched, anguished cry, almost like that of an animal.
Barbara closed her eyes, but she couldn’t escape the screams.
“Why me?” she shouted. “What do I have to do with it?”
Markus Salter just smiled.
“Can’t you see, Barbara? You’re a hangman’s daughter. Your family, too, assumed part of the guilt back then, which you must atone for now. The needle on the scale is swinging back to the middle. We are approaching the last act.”
When he turned the wheel the next time, the victim’s joints cracked sharply, and Hauser’s scream no longer sounded human.
Magdalena rushed toward the building, where her father had already arrived and was pounding on the door. She could still hear the horrible screams coming from inside. Behind her, above the sound of the storm and wind, her uncle was shouting.
“No, Jakob! Don’t do this!”
But the Schongau hangman paid no attention to him and kept slamming his body against the massive door, which did not yield an inch. “Damn it! It’s locked,” he cursed as Magdalena ran up to him. He kicked the door several times, but it didn’t move.
“Stop, Father,” Magdalena pleaded. “You won’t get anywhere that way. We must pull ourselves together-”
“Barbara!” Jakob shouted, as if he hadn’t heard his elder daughter, and kept hammering on the door. “Can you hear me? Are you inside?”
Hearing no answer, the hangman raced along the front of the house without another word, until he reached a boarded-up window. With his huge hands he seized the boards, ripped them off the house, and soon had an opening large enough to enter.
“You. . you stubborn damned ox,” Magdalena shouted. “At least wait until the others get here.”
But Jakob paid no attention to her. He heaved himself up onto the sill and disappeared inside the building, from which a muffled, drawn-out moaning could be heard. Magdalena by now was certain that the cries were not coming from her sister. But who, then? Perhaps Hieronymus Hauser? She briefly thought she heard another female voice, but she could have been mistaken.
Desperately she looked around for her comrades-in-arms. Georg, Simon, and Bartholomäus were approaching, but Bartholomäus was having a lot of trouble running across the slippery ground with his stiff leg. Only Jeremias was still hiding behind the thornbush, staring out anxiously at them.
“Isn’t that just wonderful,” Bartholomäus snorted when he finally arrived. “In all these years your father hasn’t changed at all. He just plunges ahead, hell-bent, come what may.”
“Well, at least he ripped out a hole in the wall first,” Simon said, pointing at the opening. “You might call that progress.”
“But what the hell shall we do now?” Magdalena scolded. “Nobody knows what to expect inside.”
“I’m afraid your father has made that decision for us. Now all we can do is act fast and pray.” Bartholomäus was already hoisting himself onto the sill, and despite his handicap, he was astonishingly nimble. He pointed at Simon, who was standing next to the window holding his wheel-lock pistol, uncertain what to do. “You’ll stay out here with Jeremias in case the fellow somehow gets away from us. Do you at least know how to use that weapon?”
Simon looked at it doubtfully. “Uh, my father-in-law gave me a quick explanation earlier. I think it’s loaded, but-”
“Fine, then everything is all right.” Bartholomäus slipped into the house.
Once again there was loud moaning from the depths of the house, and by now it no longer sounded like a human wail. Magdalena looked at Simon, who was staring at the pistol as if it were a poisonous snake.
“You probably won’t even need it,” she reassured him, “and if you do, just hit the fellow over the head with it.”
“Magdalena,” Simon pleaded, “don’t go in there. It’s enough that your father and your uncle and Georg are risking their lives.”
Magdalena hesitated, but then she stood up straight. “Simon, you don’t understand. My little sister is somewhere inside there, in the hands of a madman. I can’t stay outside. If anything happens to her, I’d never forgive myself.” She attempted to smile, but it looked strained. “Everything will work out-you’ll see.”
Then she climbed in after Georg and her uncle.
Inside it was as dark as in a rotting coffin. Magdalena thought she saw some dust-covered furniture wrapped in blankets, and some places on the walls were a bit lighter than their surroundings-presumably doorways leading to other rooms. A few steps in front of her, she could see the outlines of her uncle and her brother.
“If your father hadn’t been so stupid as to come crashing in here, we could have lit a torch or a lantern,” Bartholomäus hissed. “Now we’re standing here blind as bats. Why couldn’t he wait for us?”
“His daughter is being held captive in there, and perhaps being tortured. Don’t forget that,” Magdalena chided him. But silently she had to admit that her uncle was right.
Sometimes Father is like a little boy, just a lot stronger and with a lot less common sense.
She had just reached one of those lighter sections along the wall, which did, in fact, turn out to be an open doorway, when she heard a rumbling and crashing somewhere in the building. There were more screams, but this time she couldn’t have said whose voice it was. Near the back of the building, someone shouted Barbara’s name, followed by silence.
“That was Father, I’m sure,” Georg said excitedly. “Then he’s already found Barbara!”
“It sounded more like something happened to him,” Bartholomäus said as he rushed into the next room. “That’s what he gets for being so impatient.”
Magdalena followed him, squinting as she groped her way forward. They were standing now in a sort of reception room or parlor; the main entrance was visible on the left. A faint ray of moonlight fell through a crack in the entrance, and the wind rattled the boarded shutters. In front of them, emerging from the shadows, a rickety stairway led up to a balcony, underneath which there were two other doors, both open.