The physician waited another moment until the two were out of sight. Then he looked around carefully. The market square was empty. He quickly opened the big door a crack and slipped inside.

A smell of spices and musty linen greeted him. Sunlight fell in narrow strips through the large, barred windows. It was already getting dark in the hall and shadows were creeping across the room. Bags and crates were stacked one on top of the other like sleeping giants against the wall. Alarmed, a rat scurried out from behind a crate and disappeared in the darkness.

Simon crept up the wide steps to the upper level and listened at the door to the council chamber. When he could not hear any sound he opened it carefully. The room was empty. Half-full wine pitchers and crystal gla.s.ses were standing on the big oaken table in the middle of the room, and the chairs around it were pushed back. A huge oven with green tiles, some of them painted, sat in the corner. Simon held his hand against it. It was still hot. It looked as if the aldermen had left the room for only a short recess and would return at any moment.

Simon crept through the room and tried as best he could to keep the floorboards from creaking. On the eastern wall hung a yellowed oil painting showing the Schongau aldermen a.s.sembled around the oaken table. He looked at it closer. At first glance he realized that it had to be quite old. The men were wearing the ruffled collars that were fashionable a few decades ago. The jackets were stiff, black, and b.u.t.toned all the way up. The faces with their carefully trimmed goatees were severe and expressionless. Still, he thought he could recognize one of the men. The alderman in the center, the one with the piercing eyes and the bare hint of a smile must be Ferdinand Schreevogl. Simon remembered that the old Schreevogl had once been presiding burgomaster of the town. The patrician held in his hand a doc.u.ment covered with writing. Simon thought he also knew the man next to him. But where had he seen him before? He thought about it, but much as he tried, he could not think of a name. He was certain that he had seen him lately, but of course now as a much older man.

Then he suddenly heard voices and laughter down on the market square. The two bailiffs had apparently followed his recipe. He grinned. It was quite possible, though, that the medicine was taken in a somewhat higher dose than prescribed.

Simon softly tiptoed through the council chamber. He crouched down as he pa.s.sed the windows with the lead-lined panes so as not to be seen from the outside. Finally he reached the small door to the archive. He pushed the handle down. It was locked.

Cursing softly he reproached himself for his stupidity. How could he have been so naive as to think that the door would be unlocked? Of course the court clerk had locked it! After all, it led to his holy of holies.

Simon was about to turn back, but then he thought some more. Johann Lechner was a reliable man. He had to see to it that at least the four burgomasters had access to the archive, even if he happened to be absent. Did this mean that each of the burgomasters had a key? Hardly. It was much more likely that the court clerk would be keeping the key here for the others. But where?

Simon gazed around at the Swiss pine ceiling with its carved scrolls, the table, the chairs, the wine pitchers...There was no cabinet, no chest. The only large piece of furniture was the tiled oven; a monstrosity at least two paces wide and reaching almost to the ceiling. Simon walked over to it and gave it a closer look. In one row, about halfway up, scenes of country life were depicted on the painted tiles. A farmer with a plow, another farmer sowing, pigs and cows, a girl with geese...In the center of the row was a tile that looked different from the others. It showed a man with the typical wide hat and the ruffled collar of an alderman. He was sitting on a chamber pot br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with paper scrolls. Simon tapped on the tile.

It sounded hollow.

The physician took out his stiletto, inserted the blade into a crack and pried the tile out. It slid easily into his hand. Behind it was a tiny niche in which something was glittering. Simon smiled. As far as he knew, old Schreevogl had this oven built during his tenure as burgomaster. In the stovemakers' guild he had been considered a real artist. Here, one could also see something morethat he had also had a sense of humor. An alderman defecating scrolls? Would Johann Lechner's father, the court clerk at the time, have recognized himself in the drawing?

The physician removed the copper key, fitted the tile back into its place, and returned to the door that separated him from the archives. He inserted the key into the lock and turned it. With a slight squeak the door opened inward.

The room behind it smelled of dust and old parchment. Only a small barred window opened on the market square. There was no other door. The afternoon sun fell through the window; dust particles floated in the light. The s.p.a.ce was almost empty. Along a rear wall stood a small, unadorned oaken table and a rickety chair. All along the left side there was a huge cabinet that reached almost to the ceiling. It contained innumerable little drawers stuffed with doc.u.ments. Heavy leather-bound folios stood on the larger shelves. Several books and loose pages lay on the table, and next to them a half-full gla.s.s inkwell, a goose quill, and a half-consumed candle.

Simon groaned softly. This was the court clerk's domain. For him all of it had a certain order, but for the physician it was only a confusing collection of parchment rolls, doc.u.ments, and tomes. The so-called town records were not books at all, but a huge box of loose slips of paper. How could anyone find the map of a parcel in here?

Simon approached the cabinet. Now he realized that letters were painted on the drawers. They were distributed apparently without rhyme or reason over the rows of shelves, abbreviations obviously familiar only to the court clerk and perhaps the members of the inner council. RE, MO, ST, CON, PA, DOC...

The last abbreviation gave Simon pause. The Latin word for a deed, a record, or any kind of instrument was doc.u.mentum. doc.u.mentum. Would deeds of donation also be kept in this drawer? He pulled the drawer out. It was filled to the top with sealed letters. Even a first glance showed him that he had been right. All the letters bore the seal of the town and were signed by high-ranking burghers. There were wills, sales agreements, and exactly what he was looking fordeeds, among them those of money, natural produce, and for parcels of land willed by burghers who had died without heirs. Further down were more recent doc.u.ments, all of them indicating the parish church as the beneficiary. Simon sensed that he was reaching his goal. The Schongau church had recently received a number of gifts, especially for the construction of the new cemetery at Saint Sebastian's. Lately, anyone who felt his end nearing and wanted to secure an eternal resting place directly at the city wall willed at least part of his fortune to the church. Then there were donations of valuable crucifixes, holy images, pigs and cattle, and land. Simon kept looking and at last came to the bottom of the drawer. There was no contract regarding the piece of land on the Hohenfurch Road... Would deeds of donation also be kept in this drawer? He pulled the drawer out. It was filled to the top with sealed letters. Even a first glance showed him that he had been right. All the letters bore the seal of the town and were signed by high-ranking burghers. There were wills, sales agreements, and exactly what he was looking fordeeds, among them those of money, natural produce, and for parcels of land willed by burghers who had died without heirs. Further down were more recent doc.u.ments, all of them indicating the parish church as the beneficiary. Simon sensed that he was reaching his goal. The Schongau church had recently received a number of gifts, especially for the construction of the new cemetery at Saint Sebastian's. Lately, anyone who felt his end nearing and wanted to secure an eternal resting place directly at the city wall willed at least part of his fortune to the church. Then there were donations of valuable crucifixes, holy images, pigs and cattle, and land. Simon kept looking and at last came to the bottom of the drawer. There was no contract regarding the piece of land on the Hohenfurch Road...

Simon cursed. He knew that somewhere here the solution of the secret had to be found. He could practically feel it. Furiously he returned the drawer to the closet to push it in and take out a new one. As he stood up he brushed against the pages that had already been lying on the table. They floated to the floor. Hastily Simon picked them up, but then he stopped. A doc.u.ment in his hand was torn on one side, as if someone had quickly ripped off part of it. The seal had been broken in haste. He glanced down at it.

Donatio civis Ferdinand Schreevogl ad ecclesiam urbis Anno Domini MDCLVIII...

Simon froze. The deed of donation! However it was only the first page, the rest had been torn off very neatly. He quickly looked through the doc.u.ments on the table and checked the floor. Nothing. Someone had taken the doc.u.ment from the closet, read it, and taken away the part that was important to him-probably a sketch of the property. He did not seem to have had much time however, in any case not enough to return the doc.u.ment to the drawer. The thief had quickly shoved the piece of paper under the stack of the other doc.u.ments on the table...and had returned to the council meeting.

Simon shuddered. If someone stole this doc.u.ment, it could only be someone who knew about the key behind the tile. That meant Johann Lechner himself...or one of the four burgomasters.

Simon swallowed hard. He noticed that his hand, still holding the doc.u.ment, was trembling slightly. What had the patrician Jakob Schreevogl told him earlier about the meeting?

Burgomaster Semer denies that the soldiers had met someone upstairs in his rooms.

Could the first burgomaster himself be involved in this thing with the children? Simon's heart beat faster. He remembered how Semer had questioned him a few days ago in his own inn and had finally advised him not to continue investigating the case. And wasn't it also Semer who had always spoken against the construction of the leper house, purely in the interest of the town, as he said? Because after all, lepers before the gates of a trading town really didn't look good? But what if Semer wanted to delay the construction work only because he suspected that a treasure was hidden on that piece of land? A treasure he had heard about from his close friend, Ferdinand Schreevogl, a member of the inner circle of aldermen, just shortly before his death?

Simon's thoughts were racing. The devil, the dead children, the witches' marks, the abduction of Magdalena, the missing hangman, a burgomaster as the puppet master of a monstrous murder conspiracy...All these were racing through his mind. He tried to bring some order to the chaos raging in his mind. What was most important now was to free Magdalena, and to do that he had to find the children's hiding place. But someone had entered this room before him and had stolen the plan of that parcel! All he was left with was a first page on which the main facts of the donation had been inscribed. Desperately Simon looked down at the piece of paper with its Latin words. Quickly he translated them: Parcel belonging to Ferdinand Schreevogl, bequeathed to the Schongau Church on September 4, 1658, parcel size: 200 by 300 paces; moreover, five acres of woods and a well (dried up).

Dried up?

Simon stared at the small words at the very bottom of the doc.u.ment: dried up.

The physician slapped his forehead. Then he put the piece of parchment under his shirt and ran out of the stuffy room. Hastily he locked the small door and returned the key to the niche behind the tile. A few seconds later he reached the entrance of the Ballenhaus downstairs. The two bailiffs had disappeared. Most likely they had gone back to the inn to fetch more medicine. Without paying any heed to whether anyone noticed him, Simon left the Ballenhaus and ran across the market square.

But from a window on the other side of the square, someone was indeed observing him. When the man had seen enough he pulled the curtain shut and returned to his desk. Next to a gla.s.s of wine and a piece of steaming meat pie was a torn-off piece of parchment. The man's hands trembled as he drank, and wine dripped onto the doc.u.ment. The red drops spread slowly across the doc.u.ment, leaving spots that looked like blood seeping out across it.

The hangman lay on a bed of moss, smoked his pipe, and blinked into the last rays of the afternoon sun. From a distance he could hear the voices of the guards at the building site. The workmen had already gone home at noon because of the May Day celebrations the next day. Now the two bailiffs a.s.signed to guard duty were loafing around, sitting on the chapel wall, and throwing dice. Occasionally Jakob Kuisl could hear the sound of their laughter. The guards had pulled worse duty in their days.

Now a new sound was added to the others, a rustling of twigs coming from the left. Kuisl extinguished his pipe, jumped to his feet, and disappeared in a matter of seconds in the underbrush. When Simon tiptoed past him he reached for his ankle and pulled him down with a quick tug. Simon hit the ground with a soft cry and felt for his knife. The hangman's face appeared, grinning, between the branches.

"Boo!"

Simon dropped the knife.

"My G.o.d, Kuisl, did you ever frighten me! Where were you all this time? I was looking for you everywhere. Your wife is very worried, and besides..."

The hangman placed one finger to his lips and pointed toward the clearing. Between the branches, the watchmen could be vaguely made out as they sat on the wall throwing dice. Simon continued in a low voice.

"Besides I now know where the children's hiding place is. It is..."

"The well," Jakob Kuisl said, finishing the sentence for him and nodding.

For a moment Simon remained speechless.

"But...How did you know? I mean-"

The hangman cut him off with an impatient wave of his hand.

"Do you remember when we were at the building site that first time?" he asked. "A wagon was stuck in the ditch. And there were barrels of water loaded on the wagon. At the time I didn't think much of it. Only much too late did I wonder why someone would take the trouble of bringing water when there was a well there!"

He pointed over at the round stone well, which looked old and dilapidated. From the topmost row of stones, several were broken off and lay stacked up at the edge, as if to serve as small, natural stairs. No chain or bucket was attached to the weathered wooden framework above the circle of stones. Simon swallowed. How could they have been so blind! The solution had been before their eyes all this time.

He quickly told the hangman of his conversation with Jakob Schreevogl and about what he had discovered in the archives of the Ballenhaus. Jakob Kuisl nodded.

"In his fear, Ferdinand Schreevogl must have buried his money somewhere shortly before the Swedes arrived," he mused. "Perhaps he did hide it in the well. Then he had a fight with his son and bequeathed the parcel together with the treasure to the church."

Simon interrupted him.

"Now I also remember what the priest told me back then at confession," he cried. "Schreevogl supposedly talked about it on his deathbed, saying that the priest could still do much good with the parcel of land. At the time I thought he meant the leper house. Now I think it's clear that he was speaking of the treasure!"

"Someone among the moneybags in the council must have gotten wind of it," growled the hangman. "Probably old Schreevogl told someone when he was drunk or shortly before his death, and that somebody has done everything possible to stop the construction at the site and find that d.a.m.n treasure."

"Obviously burgomaster Semer," said Simon. "He has the key to the archive, so he was able to get his hands on the map of that piece of land. It's quite possible that he also knows about the dried-up well by now."

"Quite possible indeed," said Jakob Kuisl. That makes it even more urgent that we take quick action now. The solution to the mystery lies at the bottom of that well. Maybe I'll also find some clue regarding my little Magdalena..."

The two men fell silent for a moment. Only the chirping of birds and the occasional laughter of the watchmen could be heard. Simon noticed that he had forgotten Magdalena for a brief moment over all the excitement of the past hour. He was ashamed of himself.

"Do you think they could have..." he started and noticed how his voice was breaking.

The hangman shook his head.

"The devil has abducted her, but he hasn't killed her. He needs her as a hostage, to make me show him the children's hiding place. Besides, that wouldn't be his way. He first wants to have his...fun, before he kills. He likes to play."

"It sounds as if you know the devil quite well," said Simon.

Jakob Kuisl nodded.

"I think I know him. Could be that I've seen him before."

Simon jumped up.

"Where? Around here? Do you know who he is? If so, why don't you tell the council so that they can have the scoundrel locked up?"

Jakob Kuisl dismissed Simon's questions with a movement of his hand, as if brushing away an annoying insect.

"Are you crazy? It wasn't around here! It was earlier. That is to say...a long time ago. But I could also be mistaken."

"Then tell me! Maybe it'll help us!"

The hangman shook his head with conviction.

"That won't do any good." He settled down on the moss and started sucking on his cold pipe. "Better to rest a little longer, until dusk. It's going to be a long night."

Saying this, the hangman closed his eyes and seemed to fall asleep immediately. Simon looked at him enviously. How could this man stay so calm! As for himself, sleep was out of the question. Nervously and with a trembling heart he waited for night to fall.

Sophie leaned her head against the wet stone and tried to breathe calmly and evenly. She knew that the two of them would not be able to stay down here much longer. The air was beginning to give out, and she noticed how she was growing more and more tired with every pa.s.sing hour. Every breath of air tasted stuffy and stale. For days now, she had not been able to go outside. To answer the call of nature, she had had to go in a nearby niche. The air stank of fecal matter and spoiled food.

Sophie looked over at Clara, who was sleeping. Her breathing was getting weaker and weaker. She looked like a sick animal that had crawled into a cave to await its end. She was pale, her face was drawn, and she had rings under her eyes. Her bones stood out at the shoulders and rib cage. Sophie knew that her little friend needed help. The concoction she had succeeded in making her drink almost four days ago did put her to sleep, but the fever still had not broken. Besides, Clara's right ankle had swollen up to three times its normal size. Sophie could actually see the pumping and struggling that was going on beneath the skin. Her whole leg had become blue all the way up to the knee. The improvised compresses had not helped much.

Three times already, Sophie had crawled into the shaft to see if the coast was clear, but each time she checked, she heard men's voices. Laughter, murmurs, cries, footsteps...something was going on up there. The men no longer left her in peace, neither by day nor at night. But thank G.o.d, they had not yet discovered the hiding place. Sophie looked into the darkness. Half a tallow candle was still left. To save light she had not lit the stump since yesterday at noon. When she could no longer stand the blackness she crawled to the shaft and looked up into the sky. But soon the sunlight blinded her and she had to crawl back.

Clara did not mind the darkness. She was only half awake, and when she woke up for a moment and asked for water, Sophie squeezed her hand and stroked it until she sank back into sleep. At times Sophie sang songs for her that she had learned on the streets. Sometimes she still remembered verses that her parents had sung for her before they died. But they were only sc.r.a.ps, fragments from the past, linked to the hazy memory of a friendly face or laughter.

Eia beia Wiegele, auf dem Dach sind Ziegele, auf dem Dach sind Schindelein, behuet mir Gott mein Kindelein...Lullaby, my bonny love, our roof is safe above, our roof is finely tiled, G.o.d protect my little child.

Sophie felt her cheeks becoming wet. After all, Clara was better off. She had found a loving family. On the other hand, what good did it do her now? Here she was, breathing her last in a hole in the ground with her loved ones at home so near and yet so far away.

In time Sophie's eyes had become accustomed to the dark. Not that she could actually see anything, but she was able to distinguish lighter darkness from darker darkness. She no longer b.u.mped her head when she stumbled through the tunnels, and she could see whether a tunnel branched off to the left or the right. Once, three days ago, she had made a wrong turn without a candle and after only a few steps had run into a wall. For an instant she was seized by an unspeakable fear that she would not be able to find her way back. Her heart beat wildly as she turned around in a circle with her hands reaching into emptiness. But then she heard Clara's whimpers. She followed the sounds and found her way back.

After that experience she had opened the seam of her dress and laid out the woolen thread all the way from her niche to the well. She was now always able to feel the rough thread beneath her bare feet when she groped her way to the shaft.

Thus days and nights pa.s.sed. Sophie fed Clara, sang her to sleep, stared into the darkness, and became absorbed in thought. From time to time she crawled to the light also to catch a breath of air. She had briefly considered dragging Clara all the way to the shaft so that she, too, could get some fresh air and light. But first of all, the girl was still too heavy to carry, in spite of her frightening weight loss, and secondly Clara's constant whimpering could have revealed their hiding place to the men above. The loud scream yesterday had almost given them away. And so she had to stay in the niche, deep underground.

The children had found these tunnels when they were playing together in the woods, and Sophie had often wondered what they had once been used for. Hiding places? Meeting places? Or had they perhaps been built not by human beings, but by dwarves and gnomes? Sometimes she heard whispering, as if tiny, evil beings were mocking her. But then it always turned out to be the wind whistling through some distant crevice in the rock.

Now, again, there was a sound. It wasn't whispering this time, but stones falling down the shaft from the rim of the well and hitting the bottom...

Sophie stopped breathing. She could hear soft voices. Someone cursed. The voices did not come from above, as usual; they were very close, as if coming from the bottom of the well.

Instinctively Sophie pulled in the woolen thread until she felt the end of it in her hand. Perhaps they would not be able to find their way out. But right now it was more important that the men she heard not find them. She pulled her legs close to her body and squeezed Clara's hand. Then she waited.

When dusk came the hangman rose from his bed of moss and looked through the branches at the two watchmen.

"We shall have to tie them up. Anything else is too dangerous," he whispered. "The moon is bright, and the well is exactly in the middle of the clearing, easily visible from every direction. Like a bare a.s.s in a cemetery."

"But...how are you going to take them down," stammered Simon. "After all, there are two of them."

The hangman grinned.

"There are two of us, aren't there?"

Simon groaned. "Kuisl, leave me out of this. I didn't cut such a good figure last time. I'm a physician, not a highwayman. It's quite possible that I'd mess everything up again."

"You could be right," said Jakob Kuisl as he continued to look toward the watchmen, who had started a small fire next to the church wall and were pa.s.sing around a bottle of brandy. Finally he turned back to Simon. "All right, stay here and don't budge. I'll be right back."

He moved out of the bushes and crawled through the high meadow toward the building site.

"Kuisl!" Simon whispered as he left. "You won't hurt them, will you?"

The hangman turned back once more and gave Simon a grim smile. From under his coat he pulled out a little club made of polished larchwood.

"They'll have a pretty good headache. But they'll have one in any case if they continue to guzzle like that. So it amounts to the same thing."

He crawled on until he reached the stack of wood that Simon had hidden behind the previous night. There he picked up a fist-size rock and threw it over the church walls. The stone hit the masonry and made a clanging noise.

Simon watched as the guards stopped drinking and whispered to each other. Then one of them stood up, took his sword, and walked around the foundation. Twenty steps later he was no longer visible to his colleague.

Like a black shadow, the hangman threw himself on him. Simon heard a dull blow, a brief moan, and then all was quiet.

In the darkness Simon could only distinguish the hangman's silhouette. Jakob Kuisl crouched down behind the little wall until the second watchman started to get nervous. After a while the bailiff began calling his missing friend-first softly, then louder and louder. When he got no reply he stood up, grabbed his pike and the lantern, and carefully walked around the church wall. As he walked past one particular bush, Simon saw the lantern flare up briefly and then go out. A short time later the hangman came out from behind the bush and beckoned to Simon.

"Quick, we have to tie them up and gag them before they come around again," he whispered when Simon arrived at his side. Jakob Kuisl grinned as if he were a young rascal who had just pulled off a successful prank. From a sack he had brought along he pulled out a ball of rope.

"I am sure they didn't recognize me," he said. "Tomorrow they will tell Lechner about whole hordes of soldiers and how heroically they fought them. Maybe I should hit them a few more times to provide them with proof?"

He threw Simon a piece of cord. Together they tied up the two unconscious bailiffs. The one whom the hangman had knocked down first was bleeding a little at the back of his head. The other one already had an impressive lump on his forehead. Simon checked their heartbeats and breathing. Both were alive. Relieved, the physician continued his task.

Finally they gagged the two watchmen with torn-off rags of linen and carried them behind the pile of wood.