The Hangman's Daughter

by Oliver Pötzsch

  Clara ate the same fine food, she wore the same linen clothes, but even so she noticed that she was different. She was an orphan, living off charity. When there was a family celebration, at Easter or on the Eve of Saint Nicholas, she felt there was an invisible wall between herself and the Schreevogls. She saw the affectionate looks and embraces of the others, unsaid words, gestures, and caresses, and then she ran to her room and wept again. Silently, so that nobody would notice it.

  Outside she could hear shouting and bawling in front of the house. Clara couldn’t bear to stay in bed any longer. She pulled herself up, pushed the heavy eiderdown comforter to one side, and slid down onto the cold wooden floor. Immediately a feeling of dizziness came over her. She had a fever, her legs felt like wet clay, but nevertheless she dragged herself the few steps to the window and looked out.

  Down by the Lech, the Stadel was on fire. Tongues of fire licked up into the sky, and all of Schongau had come down to the raft landing. Clara’s foster parents, the children, and the nurse-maid were also down there to witness the spectacle. They had left only her, the sick orphan, behind. In her wild escape three days before, she had fallen into the Lech. Before the current had carried her away she had managed, in the nick of time, to hold on to a bunch of rushes. She had crawled up the bank and run home through a swamp and thickets. She kept looking around for the men, but they had disappeared. The other children were gone too. Not until she had reached the oak tree near the Küh Gate did she meet Anton and Sophie again. Anton looked at her with eyes wide with terror and cried again and again that he had seen the devil. He didn’t stop until Sophie gave him a box on the ear. And now he was dead, and Clara knew why. Although she was only ten years old, she could imagine what had happened. Clara was afraid.

  At this moment she heard the squeaking of the front door. Her foster parents must have returned. Her first impulse was to call out to them, but something held her back. The Schreevogls’ arrival home was always accompanied by noise, doors slamming, children laughing, noise on the stairs. Even when the nurse came back from the market you could hear the rattling of keys and baskets being put away. But now it was deathly quiet, as if somebody had tried to open the door carefully and had been betrayed by the squeaking. Clara heard a creak on the stairs. Instinctively she ran back to the bed and crept under it. Dust got into her nose, she had to repress a sneeze. From her hiding place she saw the door of her room slowly opening. Two mud-stained boots paused on the threshold. Clara held her breath. They were certainly not her foster father’s boots; he paid great attention to his appearance. She didn’t know whose boots they were, but she recognized the mud on them. Clara’s shoes had looked just like that three days before. It was the mud from the swamp through which she had fled.

  The men had come back, or at least one of them.

  The dust made her nose itch again, she felt something tickling her right hand. As Clara glanced down, she saw a spider crawl over her finger and disappear in the darkness under the bed. She stifled a cry and stared at the boots still standing on the threshold. She heard the measured breathing of a man; then the boots disappeared. Steps tapped up the stairs to the rooms above. Clara listened carefully to the sound. It was different from the sound of normal steps. A dragging and scraping at regular intervals. She remembered the night of her flight. One of her pursuers had a strange gait. He had…limped! Clara was sure that the man up there on the stairs was the limper. Perhaps now he wouldn’t be so quick?

  Clara waited a moment, then crawled out from under the bed and hurried on tiptoe to the open door. She looked up the stairs but couldn’t see anyone. The stranger must have gone into one of the upper rooms. Silently she crept downstairs.

  When she had reached the entrance hall, she remembered that she had left her doll upstairs.

  She bit her lip. In front of her the outside door stood wide open; she could hear the noise down by the river. The first people appeared to be making their way back to town.

  Clara shut her eyes for a second, then hurried upstairs again and entered her room. There on the bed lay her doll. She picked it up and was just about to run downstairs again when she heard steps from above. Hurried steps.

  The man had heard her.

  The steps became quicker; the man was taking several stairs in one stride. Clara rushed out of the room, her doll pressed closely against her. On the threshold she glanced up the stairs. A black shadow seemed to fall over her, a bearded man in a cloak, his right hand stretched out toward her. It was the devil, and he had a white hand of bones.

  Clara slammed the door of her room shut and bolted it. From outside something hit the door, and she could hear a voice cursing quietly. Then the man threw himself with his full force against the door, so that the frame shook. Once, twice…Clara ran to the window, which was still open. She wanted to call for help, but she was choked with fear. Only a hoarse croaking came out. Beneath her the street was still empty of people. A long way away she saw the crowds pressing through the Lech Gate back into town. She wanted to wave, but she realized that it would be useless. Probably the people would just wave back cheerfully.

  Behind her, wood splintered. Clara turned and saw the point of a saber making its way through an ever-widening split in the middle of the door. She looked down again at the street in front of the house. Her room was on the second floor, about ten feet from the ground. Just next to the entrance of the house a peasant had left a cart with winter straw.

  Without pausing to think Clara stuffed her doll down between her breast and nightgown and climbed over the sill. Then she slid down until she was hanging by both hands from the sill. Behind her the splintering was louder, a bolt was pushed aside. With a little cry Clara let go and fell straight into the hay wagon. She felt pain in her right shoulder as she scraped against the wooden frame. Without paying any attention to it, she scrambled over the side and slid to the ground. With straw in her hair and in her nightgown she fled along the street. She turned around once and saw the devil standing at the window, gesturing with his bone hand. He seemed to be calling something to her.

  Farewell! We’ll meet again soon…

  Clara heard voices in her feverish head. Everything swam before her eyes; her legs kept running as if by themselves. The rattling in her chest continued to throb while she staggered through the empty alleys. The devil was at her heels, and there was nobody who could help her.

  When Simon and Magdalena finally reached the raft landing, most of the Schongauers had already returned to town. Fire-fighters were busy pushing down the smoking beams and pouring water on the remaining embers. Otherwise only a few onlookers were watching. At least the danger of the fire reaching the watchmen’s houses and the wooden pier had been averted.

  Simon asked some of the men what had happened. Finally he noticed the hangman sitting on one of the wooden piles in the background smoking his pipe and thoughtfully contemplating the remains of the Stadel. As Simon and Magdalena approached him, he looked up.

  “Well? Have you had a pleasant day?”

  Simon felt the blood mounting to his face. Magdalena very sensibly looked in the other direction.

  “I…we…I was helping Magdalena to gather wild garlic, and then we saw the smoke,” the physician stammered. He looked at the ruins and shook his head. “This is terrible. It will cost the town a fortune!”

  The hangman shrugged.

  “If it was anyone from the town…Our raftsmen say the Augsburgers set fire to the Stadel after taking their own goods out.”

  Simon looked over his shoulder. There were indeed cases, bales, and sacks piled up at a safe distance from the smoking ruin. A few Augsburg raftsmen, casting black glances all around, stood near them and were obviously on guard.

  “Well?” he asked the hangman. “What do you think?”

  Jakob Kuisl took another drag on his pipe.

  “Anyway, they put their goods in a safe place while we were fighting with them.” He stood up and stretched his legs.

  Finally he
muttered: “One thing is clear. The fire was set deliberately by someone. I’ve lit a few fires myself, for executions. It takes a bit of work to get it to burn well. You can’t just throw a torch on it.”

  “Arson?” inquired Simon.

  “You can bet your life on that.”

  “But why?”

  “Don’t know. But we’ll find out sooner or later.”

  The hangman started walking toward the bridge. As he passed them he shook his head.

  “In any case, there’s one good thing about the fire,” he said.

  Simon walked after him.

  “What is it?”

  “If they question the Augsburgers and Schongauers about it, then we get a reprieve for the Stechlin woman. At any rate, she’s safe for today.”

  Jakob Kuisl trudged over the wooden bridge. Suddenly he turned around again.

  “Oh, I almost forgot. You should just stop by at young Schreevogl’s house. He asked me to tell you that his Clara is ill. And you send Magdalena home, understand?”

  Simon turned to the hangman’s daughter. She smiled.

  “Father likes you.”

  Simon frowned. “You really think so?”

  “Sure. Otherwise he’d have cut off your family jewels long ago and thrown you in the Lech. You can’t imagine how fast.”

  The physician grinned. Then he considered what it must be like to have the hangman for an enemy. He hoped that Magdalena was right.

  Jakob Kuisl headed back to the prison. In the meantime it was getting dark in the streets. A single bailiff was standing in front of the keep. They had left him there and ordered him to keep watch while all the others ran down to the raft landing. Since then a few of them had reappeared with Georg Riegg and the watchman at the bridge, had locked up the two of them without further comment, and had returned to the river again.

  The young man looked worried. He seemed to be the only person in the town who didn’t know what had happened. And now the hangman had come back alone. Where were the others? The court clerk? The witnesses?

  “That’s enough for today,” growled Kuisl and pushed the bailiff aside. “Time to leave. Just have to put the things away. Did you lock up the Stechlin woman again?”

  The bailiff nodded. He was barely eighteen years old, his face deeply marked with smallpox. Finally he could no longer restrain his curiosity. “What’s been happening down there?” he asked.

  “The Stadel burned down,” said Kuisl. “Want to go and look?”

  The bailiff looked uncertainly behind him into the entrance of the keep. The hangman clapped him on the shoulder.

  “The witch won’t run away, I’ll take care of that. And now off you go.”

  The youth nodded thankfully, then handed the keys over to Kuisl. A few seconds later he disappeared behind the corner of the house next door.

  Jakob Kuisl entered the interior of the keep. Immediately the chill of the stone walls enveloped him. A musty smell of urine and damp straw lay in the air. In the left-hand cell sat Georg Riegg and the bridge watchman. They had locked up the Augsburg wagon driver in the small but more comfortable room in the Ballenhaus, so as not to further provoke the powerful neighboring city.

  The Schongauers seemed to have temporarily accepted their situation. Each had withdrawn into a corner of the cell and was dozing. When the raftsman saw the hangman, he jumped up and shook the bars of the grill.

  “Kuisl, look here! They’ve locked us up with the witch. Do something, before she casts a spell on us,” he shouted.

  “Shut your mouth.”

  The hangman did not look at him and went on to the neighboring cell.

  The bailiff had locked up Martha Stechlin again, but mercifully he returned her clothing to her. She had crept into a corner and covered her shorn head with both hands. As Kuisl approached the bars of the grille, a rat whisked between his feet.

  “Martha, this is important,” he said. “Look at me.”

  The midwife blinked at him.

  “I need the names of the children,” he whispered.

  “Which names?”

  The hangman put his finger to his lips and nodded toward the other cell. Then he continued whispering.

  “The names of the children who were with you the night before the murder. Every single one. If we are going to get you out of here, I must know what happened.”

  Martha Stechlin told him the names. There were five. All except Peter Grimmer were orphans. Two of them were no longer alive.

  Lost in thought, Jakob Kuisl drummed his fingers against the iron bars. These children must have some secret. He kicked out at another rat, slamming it into a corner, where it squealed and died.

  “See you tomorrow, Martha,” he said, this time aloud. “Tomorrow it may hurt a bit, but you must be strong.”

  “Ha, she’ll scream, the witch! And we’ll be right near, all right,” Georg Riegg shouted at them. The wagon driver shook the iron bars again. At the same time he kicked the dozing watchman, who sat up suddenly and looked at him, shocked.

  “You be quiet, Riegg,” the watchman whispered. “Just be happy that they’re not going to torture us.”

  The hangman went out into the night. But at the next corner he stopped and stood as if rooted to the ground.

  From the market square a crowd with torches was coming toward him.

  When Simon Fronwieser reached the Schreevogls’ house to look at the sick child, he saw at once that something was not right. In front of the door a dozen people had assembled. A few had lit lanterns in the gathering darkness. The flickering light threw unnaturally big shadows on the walls of the houses, and the faces of the curious were bathed in a dull red light. People whispered, again and again fingers were pointed up at the second floor. Simon heard someone say: “He flew out of the window and took her with him. The devil incarnate, as true as I stand here!” Another uttered curses against Martha Stechlin and wanted to see her burn that very day.

  Directly above the physician the shutters of a window stood wide open. The right shutter swung crookedly on its lower hinge, as if a heavy man had held fast to it. Splinters of glass were scattered on the street. From the upper rooms a woman could be heard sobbing. At that moment she uttered such a shrill cry of grief that Simon thought the other glass panes would be shattered as well.

  The physician made his way through the crowd and began to climb the broad, thickly carpeted stairs up to the second floor. The crying came out of the room on the left. A maid and another servant, pale as death, were standing in front of the door. The maid was mumbling prayers and fingering a rosary. Simon examined the damaged door. The thin wood in the middle had been broken out and the splinters lay on the carpet. Through the chest-high hole Simon could see Maria Schreevogl lying on her stomach in the bed, her fingers clutching the comforter, her head buried in the pillows. Jakob Schreevogl sat alongside her on the edge of the bed and stroked his wife’s hair, talking softly to her and trying to calm her. Two chairs in the room had been upset; a picture of the Holy Virgin lay on the floor, the frame shattered. Right across her peacefully smiling face was the impression of a boot.

  When Jakob Schreevogl saw the physician standing at the splintered door, he nodded to him and asked him to come in.

  “If you’ve come to see our sick Clara, you’ve come too late,” whispered Schreevogl. Simon saw that he, too, had been weeping. The face of the young alderman was even paler than usual. The arched, rather oversize nose stuck out under eyes red with tears, his otherwise carefully arranged hair looked unkempt and fell over his forehead.

  “What’s happened?” Simon asked.

  Maria Schreevogl began to scream again: “The devil has taken her! He flew into the room and took our little Clara…” The rest was drowned in sobs.

  Jakob Schreevogl shook his head.

  “We don’t know exactly what happened,” he said. “Someone must have…kidnapped her. He opened the street door, although it was locked, then he kicked down the upper door, seized our little Clara, a
nd obviously jumped out of the window with her.”

  “Out of the window?” Simon frowned. He went over to the window and looked down. Directly beneath him stood a hay wagon.

  The physician nodded. With a bold jump it would be possible to get down without breaking all one’s bones.

  “Someone down on the street said that he or it flew away with little Clara,” Simon said, looking down at the crowd below. He could hear angry sounds like the buzzing of bees coming from the crowd down below. “Are there any eyewitnesses?”

  “Anton Stecher says he saw it with his own eyes,” said Schreevogl and again took the hand of his wife, who was sobbing quietly to herself. He shook his head. “Until now I always believed that all this with the children and the murders had a natural explanation, but now…” Schreevogl’s voice faltered. He turned to Simon. “What do you think, then?” he asked the physician.

  Simon shrugged. “I don’t believe anything that I haven’t seen for myself. And I see that the house was broken into and that the child has disappeared.”

  “But the street door was locked.”

  “An experienced man with a skeleton key, nothing easier than that.”

  Schreevogl nodded. “I see,” he said. “Then Anton Stecher was lying.”

  “Not necessarily,” answered Simon. He pointed to the hay cart under the window. “I think it happened this way. A man got through the front door with a skeleton key. Clara heard him and bolted the door of her room. He broke down this door and there was a struggle. Finally he jumped out of the window with Clara right into the hay wagon. Then he made off with her.”

  Schreevogl frowned. “But why did he jump out of the window with the child? Couldn’t he have just gone out again through the front door?”

  Simon could think of no quick answer. Instead he asked: “Clara was an orphan, wasn’t she?”

  Schreevogl nodded. “Her parents died five years ago. The town assigned her to us as a ward. But we treated her exactly like one of our own children. My wife was particularly fond of her.”