The Play of Death
For nearly an hour the hangman had been following the light on the other side of the high meadow that he’d seen from down in the valley. The light continued moving ahead of him, up the mountain, around sharp turns, and up steep, slippery paths. Once or twice Jakob lost sight of it, but then it appeared again like a will-o’-the-wisp, luring him farther and farther into this inhospitable region.
For some time, Jakob had had his doubts that the person carrying the lantern or torch up the mountain could actually be Xaver Eyrl. Perhaps it was a poacher, a smuggler, or some other sinister individual, but that didn’t dissuade the hangman from pursuing his suspicions. He was driven by an insatiable curiosity, a longing, as if the mountain itself had summoned him. He simply had to know who that was up there.
Whenever Jakob thought he was getting close, the light would suddenly appear in another place higher up the mountain. Whoever it was seemed to know shortcuts on the narrow paths that the hangman couldn’t see in the darkness. Or was he following several men? A few times he thought he saw a number of shadowy figures walking along behind the light.
At least the snow had stopped, but it was still bitter cold. His fingers felt like wet and half-frozen twigs; rain and wind tore at his clothing. Peals of thunder rumbled over the Kofel and suddenly a flash of lightning briefly cast the slope above him in a dazzling light.
And then he saw it.
For a fraction of a second he could make out a line of men. The one at the front of the procession was holding a lantern and the ones behind carried hoes and shovels. All were wearing coats with pointed hoods. And they were very small.
Like dwarfs.
The little men from Venice.
The hangman had heard the stories of the little people not only from the Oberammergauers. His mother had often told him of them when he was perhaps four or five years old.
If you misbehave, the little men from Venice will come and get you. They’ll take you to their mines in the mountains, where you’ll hack and shovel and dig, and you’ll never see the light of the sun again . . .
In Jakob’s childhood imagination, the Venetians had worn hoods exactly like the figures he’d just seen walking along the rockface. Back then, he’d imagined their eyes gleaming with greed just like the cold gemstones they were searching for. There was even a song they’d sung as children about the Venetians, or the boogeymen, as they were also called. Jakob searched his memory, then started humming the long-forgotten melody.
The bi-ba-boogeyman, the boogeyman is back . . . He picks up little boys and girls and throws them in his sack.
Sometimes the song even mentioned a scythe. But Jakob had always known this was nonsense. In the old stories, the Venetians, the boogeymen, had always brought disaster.
They were the grim reapers, the messengers of impending death.
He brings along his scythe of death . . .
Jakob remembered seeing a little man like these just a few days earlier, over in the Laine Valley. Simon had seen him too. What did it mean? Now he suspected the Venetians were looking for him. For a long time, the hangman had felt a longing to simply lie down, to sleep, to never wake up again. How often had he looked death straight in the eye—crying eyes, eyes pleading for mercy, hateful eyes cursing him and the authorities? So much suffering, so much death . . . He had been on this earth a very long time, almost sixty years; most men died much earlier.
Was he watching the approach of his own death up there? Had the Venetians beckoned to him?
The urge to know, to find out who or what was up there pressing on toward the summit, became stronger and stronger. Jakob ran, stumbling over the wet rocks. His eyes had already become sufficiently accustomed to the dark. The path was dangerous. There were slippery patches of snow and ice, twisted roots, and dangerous crevices in the rock. A few times he started to jump only to pull back at the last second on seeing the yawning abyss below. And each time that happened, he thought he heard evil laughter.
The boogeyman is back . . .
He turned another corner and was shocked to see that the light had disappeared. Cursing softly, he looked around and then climbed up onto the trunk of a tree that had been hit by lightning ages ago and peered out into the darkness. And there it was again, only a stone’s throw away. It was no longer moving but quivering in place. When Jakob looked more closely, he could make out a slight pendular movement, almost as if the light was trying to send him a coded message.
“What in God’s name . . . ?”
Jakob climbed a steep slope just below some dark rock formations. Another lightning flash lit up the night and he perceived a strangely shaped rocky spire resembling an admonishing finger; beneath it were rocks of all sizes, like huge dice cast there by the hand of a giant. The clouds had parted, and in the light of the moon he could make out an area strewn with rubble and fallen trees. Nearby there was a rhythmic sound—clunk, clunk, clunk—as if something metallic was pounding the rock again and again.
He brings along his scythe of death . . .
Jakob was about to turn around toward the sound when he noticed a sort of shelter on the steep, rocky slope. Rudely constructed, it consisted only of four short posts hammered into the rocky soil with a piece of linen or cloth stretched over them as a provisional roof. On the side exposed to the weather, stones were piled up, perhaps to protect against the strong gusts of wind.
A lantern hung on one of the posts, swaying in the wind, its metal handle squeaking, while the flame behind its sooty glass smoked and seemed about to go out.
The will-o’-the-wisp, Jakob thought. I found it. I’ve reached my goal.
As he ran toward it he heard a dry cough come from the shelter and again he heard the rhythmic clunk, clunk, clunk from the rockface; they combined with the squeaking of the lantern to form an eerie, discordant chorus. Carefully, the hangman reached for the larchwood club dangling from his belt.
What in God’s name is going on here?
He got to the shelter and peered over the pile of rock forming a wall. Behind it he saw what looked like a dirty bundle but on closer examination turned out to be a child wrapped in soiled furs and blankets. It was a girl about eight years old. She had a bad cough and her face was bony and gaunt; she looked like a dying little bird. Her dirty skin made the whites of her eyes stand out all the more as she stared anxiously at Jakob.
“Who . . . who are you?” she murmured feverishly. “Death?”
“I’m . . .” he started to say, but then he saw that the girl’s eyes had closed again.
“He mustn’t see you,” she murmured.
The hangman frowned. “Who? Who mustn’t see me?”
“No one must see us.”
Jakob put his hand over the wall and brushed the girl’s stringy blonde hair out of her face. Now he noticed that she also had a bandage on her forehead that was blackened by dried blood. She was evidently badly injured. “Child, what are you saying?” he asked in a soft voice, trying not to frighten her. “What’s going on here?”
Instead of an answer, the girl pointed a trembling finger toward the place the metallic ringing was coming from—another high boulder, rising up dark and massive before them like a clenched fist.
Clunk, clunk, clunk . . .
Gently he pulled the blanket back over the injured child.
“I’ll be right back,” he grumbled. “Whoever did this to you is going to pay for it.”
Then he stood up to his full height and took the lantern. Clenching his cudgel tightly, he proceeded toward the large rock; in the flickering light of the lantern he could see a dark hole in it.
The girl had taken him for the bringer of death. Now he really would be.
With a pounding heart, Barbara stared at Melchior Ransmayer as he ran his skinny fingers from her nose, down to her lips, and finally to her breasts. She was lying, bound hand and foot, on a sofa with pale red velvet upholstery. The doctor’s face was less than a foot above hers, so she could smell his heavy perfume, but also his sweat, the odo
r of cooked onions, and the cheap brandy Ransmayer had been drinking. She was terrified and wanted to scream, but a dirty rag was stuffed into her mouth, choking her. From a corner of the room she could hear Paul, who was also bound and gagged.
“You’re afraid, aren’t you?” Ransmayer whispered in her ear. “But don’t worry, if you do exactly what I say, you won’t be hurt. But first you have to show the old doctor that you like him.”
He giggled, and the Tyrolean seated alongside him snorted. “Stop this nonsense and just get to the point,” he ordered. “The girl must tell us what she knows, and after that you can do whatever you want with her.”
About half an hour before, Ransmayer and the Tyrolean dragged their two prisoners through the dark streets of Schongau. From far off they heard the calls of the night watchman, but the knife held at Barbara’s throat had prevented her from crying out for help. Once inside Ransmayer’s house, the men dragged them down a cellar stairway into a moldy, smelly room lit only by torches, which evidently served as a sort of laboratory.
Out of the corner of her eye, Barbara saw dozens of shelves full of vials and jars with nauseating contents. In one jar was a tiny human fetus with a monstrous head as large as the rest of its body, and in another a severed hand with nerves and blood vessels still trailing from it floated in a clear liquid. From another, an eye stared blindly at Barbara as she writhed back and forth helplessly on the cot. The doctor, dried blood on his cheek, looked down on her as he moved his fingers toward the buttons of her dress.
“You like this, don’t you?” he said, salivating as he undid the first button.
“Damn it! Stop that now. It won’t get us anywhere.” The Tyrolean seized the shackled boy and held him up like a piece of meat, then he turned to Barbara. “If you don’t want me to hurt the kid, you’re going to talk now, do you understand?”
When Barbara nodded her agreement, the Tyrolean set Paul down on the ground roughly. Then he came over and untied her gag. “Now don’t do anything foolish,” he said menacingly. “Nobody will hear you down here, anyway, so screaming would just be a waste of time.” He leaned over and whispered in her ear. “But I’ll see to it that this old lecher keeps his hands off you, so behave.”
Barbara coughed and struggled to breathe as the gag was finally removed. “I . . . I swear that only Paul and I know about the meeting at the cemetery,” she gasped. “Paul stole a ring of keys from one of the guards yesterday and tossed them to me through the window of the dungeon. I ran away, and since then we’ve been hiding out at the construction site next to the church. And we saw you before, too.” That was such a bald-faced lie that Barbara even amazed herself. The two men appeared uncertain, but presumably they couldn’t imagine any other way she might have escaped from the dungeon.
The Tyrolean tilted his head to one side and chewed on his lip, then he bent way down until they were almost face to face. “I don’t know whether to believe you, girl. You say the little devil here stole the key ring from the guard? Hmm. I wouldn’t put anything past him, but this . . .”
“It’s the truth,” Barbara insisted.
“Let me have my way with her for a while, and then we’ll learn the truth,” Ransmayer hissed. “Believe me, you can’t trust the Kuisl family even as far as I can spit. They’re all liars,” he said, undoing the next button on Barbara’s dress. But the Tyrolean held him back.
“And what do you think you’ve learned?” he asked her in an almost friendly tone.
“Just . . . just that you’re smuggling salt,” she quickly replied. “Probably over the mountains from Tyrol, and in large amounts. Apparently Burgomaster Buchner also had a hand in it. He’s the construction supervisor for the church where you deliver salt in bags labeled as mortar. The shed on the building site is where you store the salt for shipment, and the wagon drivers take it from there down to the raft landing on the river for shipment.”
The Tyrolean smiled. “Smart girl, and pretty, too. I’d like to have somebody like you at home in my bed.” He raised his hands apologetically. “But I’m afraid that’s not possible, since there’s something else about you that doesn’t please me at all. You can’t keep your mouth shut.” He turned to Melchior Ransmayer and nodded. “I think she’s said everything now.”
Barbara wanted to scream, but the Tyrolean stuffed the gag down her throat again so all that came out was a muffled rattle. “She’s all yours, Doctor, but when you’re done we’ll have to do away with your pretty toy. After all, you can’t leave her locked up down here forever.” He bent down to Barbara and stroked her hair.
“Hey, but there’s also good news. I like the little rascal.” The Tyrolean pointed back at Paul, who was still struggling with his fetters. “What’s his name? Paul? Nice name. I’ll take him back to Tyrol with me, and someday he’ll be a good soldier.” The Tyrolean laughed. “Or a murderer and cutthroat—it amounts to the same thing. Just look at me.”
He grabbed the whimpering boy, took him under his arm, and carried him up the stairs like a bundle of rags.
The cellar door slammed shut, and now Melchior Ransmayer started unbuttoning Barbara’s dress slowly, one button after the other.
“Now we’ll make up for everything we missed in the last few days,” the doctor whispered. “Believe me, Barbara, you will enjoy it, if only because it’s the last time.”
Clunk, clunk, clunk . . .
Jakob could still hear the rhythmic pounding that seemed to come directly out of the heart of the mountain. He stooped down and peered into the dark, waist-high hole in the rockface. With his broad shoulders he rubbed against the sides, so that a few small stones came loose and fell to the ground. He stopped short in the expectation that someone had heard him, but the pounding continued.
Clunk, clunk, clunk . . .
After turning around one last time to look at the shelter with the injured girl inside, now shrouded in darkness, he knelt down and crawled into the hole. He held the lamp up in front of him in order to see at least a few steps ahead. The passageway was supported at irregular intervals with beams that appeared rotted and cracked. Ice-cold water trickled down from the ceiling and under Jakob’s collar. After a few yards he came upon a broken wooden tub and a rusty pickax, both of which looked like they’d been there for centuries. Shortly after that there was a fork in the passageway, and the rhythmic pounding clearly came from the right side, so he crept on toward the sound.
Fortunately, the ceiling here was a bit higher, so Jakob could stand for a few moments before leaning over and continuing. The supporting beams were now older and in poorer shape, however. They projected crookedly out of the rock and in some places were splintered and appeared to be held together by just a few remaining fibers. Once again Jakob bumped his shoulder on the wall and pebbles trickled down, but the sound didn’t stop this time either.
Clunk, clunk, clunk . . .
And again the hangman came to a fork. The narrower passage on the right had collapsed and a large pile of rubble blocked the entrance. In the light of his lantern the hangman saw something white in the pile. He reached for it and dropped it immediately in disgust. It was an arm bone with shreds of moldy clothing still adhering to it. Alongside it was an ancient leather shoe and the remains of a leather hat so fragile it disintegrated the moment he touched it. After further rummaging in the pile he came upon a rusty pick with a broken handle.
An old mine, he thought, but it appears it’s been abandoned for ages. Then where is the knocking coming from? Perhaps a ghost?
He turned to the left and the sound got louder. Now he thought he could hear banging elsewhere deep within the mountain. Was it perhaps just an echo of the first sound? The entire mountain seemed full of noise, the beating of a great stone heart.
Clunk, clunk, clunk . . . Clunk, clunk, clunk . . . Clunk, clunk, clunk . . .
There was a bend in the passageway again, and Jakob stopped abruptly. Just in front of him, a few steps away, something was crouched on the rock floor, illuminated by the
light of a lantern hanging on the wall. For a moment he was so astonished he didn’t know what to do.
It was a little creature, not much larger than a child, wearing a leather hood pointed at the top and a leather smock. Its back was turned to Jakob and it was pounding the wall of the passage with a pick. Next to it stood a wooden tub filled with stones that glistened and sparkled eerily in the light of the lantern.
One of the little Venetian men, Jakob realized. Is this possible, or am I dreaming?
Cautiously he approached and stretched his hand out toward the creature, as if fearing it might vanish into thin air at the slightest touch. The creature had evidently not heard him and continued pounding the rock. When his hand had almost touched it, it seemed to suddenly sense his presence, stopped working, and turned around.
And Jakob looked into the face of a child.
A weary, pale child that stared at him in horror, as if he were a ghost. The child dropped the pick and let out a loud scream.
“Sh!” Jakob said, putting his finger to his lips. He had recovered from his initial shock. The child in front of him was no little Venetian man, but a human made of flesh and blood, a boy around ten years old with strands of red hair protruding from the front of his leather cap.
Children are working here, not dwarfs. Who does something like this to children?
“Calm down, I’m here to—” Jakob started to say, but the boy screamed again and stepped back, pressing his back against the wall and holding his hands in front of him for protection. The hangman suddenly realized how he must look to the children—a huge fellow dressed in a black, wet overcoat with a lantern in one hand and a club in the other, a strange giant the likes of which the boy had never seen before.
“Don’t be afraid,” said Jakob, trying to calm him down. Slowly he put the club down on the ground and approached the boy with his hands raised. “I’m not going to hurt you—”
Suddenly a voice rang out from farther inside the mountain. “What’s going on here?” Moments later a large, muscular man appeared, holding a switch in his hand. His face was covered by as many pockmarks as blowflies on a slice of cake. Poxhannes.