Barbara, my little Barbara . . .
He groped through the darkness randomly, running through rooms, falling over rotted pieces of furniture, getting to his feet again, and kept looking. Strange beasts lurked in the corners—or were they just wardrobe closets and chests? He felt as if he was in a dream. He continued onward, through doors and corridors. Once, next to his feet, he heard a metallic snap, which he ignored, and another time a voice calling. It sounded like his brother’s voice, but perhaps it was someone else. Perhaps the madman?
Barbara . . . Where is Barbara?
By now he’d gone almost all the way through the first floor of the house; he had to be somewhere in the back of the building. He bumped into a table, hard, and there was a tinkle and clatter of broken dishes. As he was about to turn back to the rooms in front, he saw what looked like a black, square-shaped opening behind the table. He approached it cautiously and saw it was the entrance to a stairway leading to the cellar. The wooden hatch was open, as if someone had just entered the staircase.
The cellar. I’m on the right track.
His suspicions were confirmed when he heard shouts again from down below. He had already entered the stairwell when his sensitive nose detected an odor he knew only too well. Something was burning down there, and he was sure it was no cozy fire in the hearth.
Grimly he reached for the oak cudgel he’d been carrying on his belt and hurried down the steps. Now that there was not even a ray of moonlight coming through the cracks in the walls, it was as dark as the inside of a coffin. The stinging odor became stronger now and his eyes began to tear up, but still he continued running down the dark, steep stairs.
Suddenly he felt pressure on his right shin, then something thin and very hard cut through his trousers. A searing pain passed through his leg, as if someone had struck it with a whip. Thrashing about, he staggered like a shot and wounded bear, trying to grab onto the wall to keep his balance, but it was like trying to stop a mighty oak from falling after it had been severed at the root. He plunged down the dark staircase, turning head over heels several times on the way down.
A wire was the thought that flashed through his mind. It must have been a wire. This devious bastard, this—
Then he landed hard at the bottom and darkness flooded over him like a warm bath.
Hieronymus Hauser writhed in pain on the rack and screamed like a lunatic while his torturer watched him with interest. Barbara and Adelheid lay shackled in a corner, paralyzed by the horror taking place before their eyes.
“Is that the way my grandfather screamed, back then?” Salter asked, turning the wheel a bit tighter. “Tell me. You were there. You were the scribe and wrote everything down so carefully. Did you make a note of how long he screamed, how loud, how shrill? Did you? Tell me!”
“Oh, God, please stop,” Hauser whimpered. “I was just the scribe. I . . . I had no choice.”
“Yet you took the blood money, didn’t you?” Salter persisted. “A part of our family fortune went to you, as well. I’ve seen your house at the Sand Gate, Master Hauser. A simple scribe can’t afford anything like that. Tell me, you bought your house with the blood of my family, didn’t you? Well?” Once again he turned the wheel a bit, and Hauser’s joints made a crunching sound like a dry hemp rope.
“Yes! Yes! I did!” the scribe screamed. “And if I could, I swear I’d pay it all back to you. Believe me, I have suffered, too. Every night I’ve dreamt of those tortures. They’ve never let me go.”
“And they’ve finally caught up with you,” Salter replied in a whisper. “You knew they would, didn’t you? I could see it in your face in the palace hall. I enjoyed your fear as I looked down at you from the stage. You thought you could get away from me, but in the general confusion it was easy for me to strike you down and bring you to the boat.” Salter’s face darkened. “When I came back to plant the magic props on Malcolm, the crowd seized me. That was not part of my plan, but then, that’s how I found the little hangman’s daughter. God sent her to me.”
“It’s not yet too late to return to God’s just way,” Hauser gasped. “If you release me now, I promise you—”
“You disgust me with your begging,” Salter interrupted. “I’m certain that my grandfather, my father, my mother, and all the other Haans died with far more dignity than you will. Let’s end this pathetic farce.”
He was just turning to the brazier in the corner, where a tong was already glowing red-hot, when they heard a loud hammering overhead. Then Barbara heard a deep, muffled voice, coming most likely from up on the first floor, though all she could understand were random words. But she did recognize her father’s voice.
Barbara!
Her heart leaped for joy. It was her father calling. He’d found her!
When Markus Salter heard the noise from the floor above, he flinched. Then he suddenly stopped and stood still, like a fox in an open field, and shook his head in disbelief.
“This . . . this is impossible,” he stammered. “This can’t happen now. The play isn’t over yet, or . . .” Suddenly a smirk passed over his face. He reached for the tongs and walked toward Barbara.
“It’s your uncle, isn’t it?” he said. “Or your father. In any case, someone from your accursed clan of hangmen. Well, whoever it is, he will soon get a big surprise. The audience likes that, doesn’t it? Surprises.” He listened intently as if waiting for what would come next, but when he didn’t hear anything else, he turned back to Barbara and Adelheid with a shrug. “Your family has destroyed mine, and now they’ll have to watch how I deal with their relatives. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a—”
There was a metallic crash, and from the corner of her eye Barbara could see that the heavy brazier had tipped over and the glowing pieces of coal were rolling like stones across the floor. Adelheid, who had been crouching along the wall directly next to the brazier and until then had remained silent, had given it a violent kick with her shackled feet. The room immediately filled with an acrid odor, and some of the pieces of coal rolled into the bales of straw, which immediately began to smoke. Flames rose up along the hanging paintings to the wooden ceiling. Stunned, Salter stumbled back a few steps.
“What . . . what are you doing?” he stammered. “Why—”
“Here we are!” Adelheid yelled. “Down here in the cellar! Help us, whoever you are!”
Again there was a crash outside. Evidently something heavy had fallen down the stairs. Barbara was still paralyzed with fear.
What’s going on outside, for heaven’s sake? Where is Father? He should have gotten down here already. Is it possible he didn’t hear us?
She looked back at her torturer. The overturned brazier had given them no more than a brief respite. Salter seemed to have already gained control of himself.
“If that’s what you want, then burn!” he bellowed. “Burn just like my parents and grandparents. Burn, all of you!”
Red and blue flames rose from the bales of straw. One bale stood close to the rack, and flames reached out eagerly to devour the dry wood. Hauser gasped and writhed on the rack, whimpering softly, then turned his eyes away and lost consciousness again.
Markus was about to run to the door when he stopped and turned back to Adelheid with a look of determination.
“You’re coming with me,” he said. He rushed over to her, pulling her up by the hair so hard that she screamed. “The hangman’s girl and the scribe can burn, but I still need you. Who knows what’s waiting for me outside? You’re my hostage.” He stared into her emaciated, ashen face. “You were always my favorite, Adelheid—so strong, so full of the will to live. I almost let you go, but it can’t end like this. Not yet.”
As he spoke, he removed the leather strap around Adelheid’s neck, loosened the shackles on her feet, and dragged her to the doorway. The apothecary’s young wife cast a last, desperate glance at Barbara, then disappeared with him in the corridor, and the door closed with a loud bang.
Smoke crept like a bitter potion do
wn into Barbara’s throat.
“Father,” she gasped, trying to crawl across the floor toward the door with her shackled feet, but the leather strap around her neck held her back, and every time she moved, the noose closed tighter. “Father. Here . . . I . . . am . . .”
Then the clouds of smoke finally blocked her sight.
Jakob Kuisl didn’t know how long he’d been unconscious. For a moment? For hours? When he raised his pounding head, there was nothing around him but heavy smoke and darkness. He coughed and tried to sit up. From his experience with execution fires, he knew the smoke was always the densest and the most deadly at the bottom. “If you want to die fast, keep your head down,” he’d sometimes advised condemned men. “Then it’s almost as if you’re going to sleep.”
But I don’t want to die—not yet. I’m looking for my Barbara.
He staggered to his feet. Every bone in his body hurt, and his head felt like a soaked sponge, but evidently he hadn’t broken anything in falling over the trip wire. Now that he was standing, the smoke was no longer as thick and he could breathe more freely, but he still couldn’t see anything in the darkness. He assumed he was somewhere at the bottom of the cellar steps.
As he was trying to get his bearings in the swirling clouds of smoke, he heard muffled screams off to one side, and shortly thereafter a door swung open with a crash, suddenly revealing a corridor illuminated by the blazing light of a fire. A man came out, dragging a shackled woman behind him. Jakob squinted, but then the door closed again, and once more the corridor lay in darkness. He blinked several times and shook himself, trying to pull himself together. The fall had shaken him more than he’d realized.
“Barbara!” he rasped. “Is that you?”
A woman’s voice cried out but was cut off so suddenly it seemed as if someone had put his hand over her mouth. Still, Jakob was sure it was Barbara. He’d finally found her, and she was still alive.
“Barbara! Here I am!”
The hangman groped blindly toward the place he’d just seen the two people, reaching out into the darkness like a drowning man, when suddenly something bumped into his side, and footsteps scurried past. Then he heard a sound, someone gasping nearby, like a disembodied ghost. He reached out frantically in all directions, but there was nothing there, and a moment later he heard another door squeaking somewhere behind him.
This time Jakob resolved to be absolutely quiet. He wanted to be sure this madman wasn’t lurking for him in some dark corner and wouldn’t find him an easy target. Intuitively he reached for the oaken cudgel on his belt, but it appeared he’d lost it in his fall.
Then I’ve got to go with what I have.
Slowly and ponderously, like a golem that had sprung to life, he moved toward where he’d heard the squeaking door.
His hands stretched out in front of him, he groped his way down the smoke-filled corridor. For a moment, he thought he heard a hoarse voice behind him, but it was probably just his imagination. On his right there was a rough wall, then an opening.
The door. That bastard left the door open. Now I’ll get you.
Blindly, Jakob entered the room and felt a fresh breeze blowing toward him, driving away the clouds of smoke. There had to be a window somewhere. But how was that possible? He was deep down in the cellar. He desperately tried to remember how the house looked from outside. Was there perhaps an escape tunnel? A trapdoor he had overlooked in his haste?
Something hard and cold brushed against his face. He reached for it and could feel a chain with an iron hook on it. There was a second hook within easy reach. He shook the chain, and the links jingled as they swung back and forth. His eyes were full of tears from the smoke, and he still wasn’t able to see anything but dark outlines.
Where am I, for God’s sake?
He strained to concentrate on his other senses: sound, touch, smell. His fine nose detected, amid the clouds of smoke, something else—a fragrance of something that had been there long ago and had eaten its way into the walls. It smelled of blood and salty, smoked meat, haunch and saddle of venison, wild boar’s leg . . . Jakob flinched.
The meat cellar. I’m in the storage area for meat from the hunter’s kill, and there’s a shaft here they used to lower the disemboweled animals. Where—
Suddenly a shadow jumped at him from out of the darkness. The hangman felt a sharp sting as one of the hanging chains hit him on the cheek. He fell to the ground and rolled to one side to escape a possible second blow, but it didn’t come. Instead, he heard fast, shuffling steps disappearing into the darkness.
A moment later he heard the muffled voice of a woman, a bolt was pushed aside at the top of the shaft, and a trapdoor opened up.
Jakob shook off the pain, looked up, and saw moonlight streaming into the room through an opening. After all this time in darkness, the faint light seemed almost as bright as the light of day. The wide shaft ended up above at the trapdoor, which now stood open. A narrow stairway no more than a foot wide led up the side of the shaft, and two figures were standing just below the trapdoor. One wore a dress that fluttered in the wind. Before Jakob could see anything else, the trapdoor slammed shut and the two figures had disappeared.
“Barbara!” the hangman shouted up the shaft. “Barbara!”
He raised his fist threateningly and sent a curse up into the night sky. “I’ll get you, you bastard, even if you run to the ends of the earth, and then not even God will be able to save you! No one kidnaps my daughter—no one!”
Jakob struggled to his feet and hobbled, groaning, toward the stairway, which was now once more enveloped in darkness. He thought he heard a soft, hoarse cry coming from far down the corridor behind him, but it was too faint to tell exactly where it came from.
Once again, and not for the first time that day, the hangman felt he was far too old for such adventures.
Coughing and with tear-filled eyes, Barbara tugged on the leather strap that bound her like a dog to the ring on the wall. The smoke was now so thick she could hardly see anything in the room anymore. The rack had to be on her right where old Hieronymus Hauser was lying, not making a sound. Perhaps he’d already suffocated from the smoke.
“Help!” Barbara cried. “Help, Father! I’m here!” But there was no answer.
Flames crackled all around her, moving up the hanging tapestries to the wooden ceiling, where they licked at the beams. It got hotter by the second; the only reason Barbara’s clothing hadn’t burst into flame was that she was still wearing the rain-soaked monk’s robe. At the moment, the robe was like a protective shield. Just the same, Barbara knew it was only a matter of minutes until she would die an agonizing death down here in the fire.
If I don’t suffocate first like old Hauser.
Once again she struggled to loosen the knot in the strap with her shackled hands, but it was tied too tightly. She looked around in panic until she noticed the glowing poker lying on the floor not far from her. Could she sever the strap with it?
She stretched her leg out and was just able to reach the glowing poker with her toe. There was a soft hissing sound as the fire ate its way through her shoes. She groaned, clenched her teeth, and tried to ignore the pain. She pulled the poker close enough to reach with her shackled hands. Carefully she picked it up at the far end, which was not as hot, but still the heat was enough that she almost passed out. The poker seemed to practically stick to her skin, but she persisted, pressing the poker against the leather strap she could see only faintly in the billows of smoke, and at the same time tugging at the strap, which gave off a stinging odor.
Finally, when the pain had become almost unbearable, the strap gave way and Barbara fell backward.
She had no time to lose. Gasping, and with her hands and feet still shackled, she crawled through the clouds of smoke toward the place where she assumed the door was. She knew this was her only chance. If her sense of direction failed her, she wouldn’t have a second opportunity to look for the exit on the other side of the room.
P
lease, please, dear Lord, don’t let me be wrong.
With her shackled hands she felt her way along the stone wall, recoiled from the burning tapestries, and finally felt the hot wood.
The door. She’d actually found it.
With agonizing slowness, on the verge of passing out, she rose to her feet, groped for the door handle, and found it. Barbara was so happy she barely noticed the burn from the poker. She pressed the handle and threw herself against the door, and with a loud crash it flew open. The dark corridor on the other side was also full of smoke, but nowhere near as dense as in the room she’d just left. Nevertheless, it was enough to rob her of her sight and breath.
Father . . . Father, she wanted to cry, but her throat was so dry that only a soft wheeze came out. Nearly blind, she moved ahead a few steps into the darkness, banged into the opposite wall, and found another door slightly ajar that she pushed open. She entered.
Where . . . where am I?
She turned around, looking for another way out, but there was none. The room was tiny, a storage closet full of old odds and ends. A ray of moonlight fell through a narrow open window far above her, allowing just enough air into the room that she did not suffocate.
Smoke swirled into the room from the corridor, and the crackling flames seemed to be drawing nearer.
Tears ran down her face, where they quickly dried in the soot and ashes.
Her father had not found her.
One floor above, Magdalena, Georg, and Bartholomäus were still groping through the dark rooms as the wind whistled through the cracks in the windows and the rotted roof of the old hunting lodge.
Shadows lurked in the corners, large forms that looked like petrified monsters but which on closer examination were nothing but pieces of furniture covered with dust and cobwebs. They had just walked past a moth-eaten stuffed bear that seemed to glower at Magdalena with an evil eye. Once again they heard muffled cries coming clearly from the cellar beneath them, but they couldn’t locate the stairway going down. The entire house stank of mildew, ancient mold, mouse droppings, and—