It was ground to a powder that was administered to staunch bleeding in childbirth. A harmless little drug, recognized as such also among learned doctors, although Magdalena had her doubts concerning its efficacy.
In spite of her fear she almost had to laugh. The witches’ sign had been nothing but the symbol for hematite turned upside down!
Magdalena remembered how Simon had described to her the mark on the children’s shoulders. Both the physician and her father had always looked at it in such a way that it resembled a witches’ mark. But when looked at from above it turned into a quite harmless alchemical symbol…
Was it the children themselves who had scratched the marks on their shoulders with elderberry juice? They had been at Martha Stechlin’s place a lot, so Sophie, Peter, and the others must have seen the symbol on the jar. But why would they do such a thing? Or had it been the midwife, after all? That made even less sense. Why should she draw the symbol of hematite on the children’s shoulders? So it was the children after all…
As the thoughts swirled through Magdalena’s head, she came closer and closer to the forest. What had at first been a narrow, dark green strip in the early morning light was now a broad band of birches, firs, and beeches not far ahead of her. Magdalena ran straight for it. The men had gained on her again. There were only ten paces between her and them now. She could hear their panting. Closer and closer. One of them burst in an insane laugh as he ran.
“Hangman’s wench, I like how you run. I enjoy hunting for my deer before I eat it…”
The other one started to laugh too.
“We’ll have you in a minute. No girl has gotten away from us yet!”
Magdalena had almost reached the forest on the high bank. A swampy meadow extended between her and the protective trees. Little puddles appeared between the beeches and willows where the last snow had melted and soon her feet sank ankle-deep in the soft mud. In the distance she could hear the Lech roar.
Jumping carefully, the hangman’s daughter tried to hop from one tuft of grass to the other in the bog. She came to a place with a particularly wide gap between two of these little mounds, and she slipped and landed with both feet in the swamp. She struggled desperately to free her legs from the mud.
She was stuck!
The men were close behind. Seeing that their prey had been snared they howled with delight, circling the mudhole and leering, looking for a way to reach their prey without getting their feet wet. Magdalena pulled herself with her hands onto one of the grassy mounds. There was a sucking, slurping sound when the slush let go of her legs. One of the soldiers in front of her leaped at her head-on. At the last moment she ducked to the side and the man landed in the bog with a splash. Before he could scramble up, Magdalena slipped out between the two men and headed for the forest.
Entering the shadows of the trees, she realized at once that she had no chance. The trees were spaced much too far apart and there was almost no undergrowth to hide in. And yet she kept running, even if it was pointless, as the men had almost caught up with her. Before much more time had passed, the chase would be over. The roaring of the river grew louder. The steep embankment had to be dead ahead of her. The end of her escape…
Suddenly her left foot stepped into space. She leapt back, watching small pebbles tumbling downward. She pushed aside the branches of a willow and saw an almost vertical incline that led down to the riverbank.
Reeling on the edge of the chasm, Magdalena saw a movement out of the corner of her eye. One of the soldiers suddenly appeared behind the willow, reaching for her. Without further hesitation Magdalena plunged into the chasm. She tumbled over rocks and boulders, reached out for bare roots, and turned head over heels more than once. For a brief moment, she fainted. When she finally came to again, she was lying on her stomach in a hazel bush that had stopped her fall just a few yards above the riverbed. Directly beneath her lay a stretch of gravelly riverbank.
Doubled up with pain, she lay there a moment, then carefully turned her head and looked up. Far above, she could see the men. They were obviously looking for a way to get down to the river. One of the soldiers was already busy tying a rope to a tree trunk that jutted out over the chasm.
Magdalena clambered free from the hazel bush and crawled down the last few yards to the riverbank.
