Magnus, aka Madz,
A very Special Student 

By: Ruwen Rouhs
(© 2022 by the author)

The author retains all rights. No reproductions are allowed without the author's consent. Comments are appreciated at...

RRouhs@tickiestories.us

Chapter 10
The entrance to the Secret Passage

The first problem was the long ladder that had to be maneuvered through the narrow tower entrance to the trapdoor on the opposite side of the museum of tortures. Anders and I helped, but the main work performed was by Paul and Alies. The next difficulty was the vaulted ceiling of the museum which was only about fifteen feet high. The ladder however had to be at least 20 feet long because the dungeon was almost 18 feet deep. Furthermore, the trap door was very narrow and located under the stairs to the upper floors. We tried various ways to push the ladder through the narrow opening until finally, after fifteen minutes, we got the right angle in the dungeon. To me, this time dragged on and seemed to be like the eternity.

While Paul was still tying the top of the ladder to a beam of the stairs to the next floor, Anders climbed down into the darkness of the dungeon.  "Wait until I put the spotlight on," Alies called after him. But Anders was in a hurry. "Madz, take the flashlight out of the backpack and come with me!" "Do you want me to bring the backpack, too?" "Of course!" I put it on my back and also made my way into the dark dungeon. At the bottom, I flicked on the flashlight and shone it in Anders' face first and tried to frighten him, calling Huh!  "Don't do that, you'd better give me the other flashlight!" scolded Anders. Meanwhile, the spotlight that Alies and Paul had mounted to a beam of the staircase came on. Actually, I didn't need the flashlight anymore. But better safe than sorry, I told myself, and put it in my pants pocket.

The lower half of the dungeon and its walls were now well lit, the upper half of the walls and the ceiling were in twilight. The outline of the dungeon was circular like the keep itself, its walls were made of smooth, hunched fieldstone. The floor was tamped clay and level.

We had agreed that either the tower would have to be locked from the inside or an adult, either Paul or Alies, would have to watch upstairs in the museum to make sure no one entered the tower. On the one hand, of course, no one should find out what we were up to, and on the other hand, no one should close the trap door or pull the cable of the spotlight out of the plug.

At first Paul stayed upstairs and Alies came down to us. Below, the three of us first took a good look around. In the wall of irregular field stones there was no place that could have been a bricked-up entrance to a secret passage. I shone the flashlight on the dark part of the wall again and sighed, "Too bad Anders, we'll only find the entrance to the secret passage if we sound out the whole wall, including the part that is out of our reach." Anders shook his head, "Nah, the secret passage should actually start at the bottom or do you think the guards provided the robber chief with a ladder?" My counter question was, "Right, but where to is the secret passage supposed to go anyway? You don't know where it ends either." Alies, who by now had also taken a good look at the walls of the dungeon, shook his head. "No one knows for sure. But the old ones tell something about an exit at a spring. The spring I know rises down at the foot of the castle hill in a small cave. I have already searched there myself. I crawled all the way to the end of the cave, to the place where the water trickles out of a narrow crevice. But nowhere was a passage leading into the hill. I tapped out the whole rock. Nowhere it sounded hollow. In any case, the secret passage does not end by the spring. The exit, if there is one, must be somewhere else. It's probably buried."

"Maybe it ends up in the basement of a house, Alies." I thought for a moment, "What houses in the village are as old as the castle or older? The town hall?" Alies shrugged, "Not that and none of the other houses except the parish house and the town church." "Does these have crypts? Maybe the secret passageway ends up under the church." "Not that I know of. It doesn't even have a basement. But the castle chapel has a crypt. However, as far as I remember there are only empty stone coffins there and old grave slabs lean against the wall!" "Maybe it ends up under a coffin or behind a ledger. Has anyone investigated if there is a secret exit under a coffin or behind a ledger?" "I'm sure they haven't. Do you want to wake up the ghosts? After all, they have covered the bones of dead peers and clergymen!"

Now Anders interfered, "Madz, a secret passage to the crypt wouldn't help us at all. Everyone always talks about two passages, one that should end in the crypt and another one to the outside. We have to find the one to the outside.” Little by little I was getting cold and impatient. To get warm, I started tapping out the dungeon wall on one side with a hammer. "Come Alies, leave us alone now, you have to open the store soon. Anders, take the second hammer and tap out the wall on the other side. If it sounds hollow anywhere or you discover a loose stone, tell me."

For the first quarter of an hour neither of us discovered a loose stone and nowhere did it sound hollow. Suddenly I got all excited, "Come quickly! There's a loose rock down here. Get the crowbar and chisels out of your backpack!"  With the tip of the masonry hammer and the chisels, we scraped out the rock-hard mortar around the large block of stone. Finally, the stone could be moved. We levered it out piece by piece with the crowbar. What a disappointment. Behind it was only rock. No passage led further into the mountain.

Paul, who in the meantime had climbed up the top of the tower and afterwards inspected the various instruments of torture in the museum came climbing down and regretted our failure, "Let's climb up, it's about to be 11 o'clock and Carlo should soon be back. He promised to bring food." Anders protested, "No, not yet. We haven't even knocked off half the dungeon wall yet, Paul. Maybe Madz and I can find the entrance to the secret passage in another place." At that moment there was a rattle on the locked tower door, "Carlo? Is that you?" called Paul upstairs, "I locked it. I'm coming!" As he quickly climbed the swaying ladder, he laughed. "When you call the devil, he comes running!"

Of course, Carlo was curious. He immediately began to climb down the ladder. "Be careful Carlo, the ladder is swaying. You are too heavy!" Paul called after him. He himself, however, was not careful at all. He began to climb down the ladder also, before Carlo had even reached the last rung. Suddenly there was a strange noise and the ladder sank down a bit. Carlo was startled, jumped off the ladder and called upstairs, "What happened Paul? Is the ladder broken?" He squinted against the light coming through the opening into the dungeon, "Did something happen to you Paul?" But Paul was already on his way back up to the torture museum and called out from above, "Everybody all right? Madz and Anders are you both all right?" "Ok, ok, everything's fine!" shouted Carlo and began to examine the floor on which the ladder was standing more closely.

The legs of the ladder had penetrated a hand's width into the clay soil and the ground had sagged in a circular pattern around this spot. Anders and I stared at the sunken ground, startled. At first, we didn't dare come closer. But when Carlo didn't sink in, we approached cautiously and I shone a light on the floor to get a better picture. "What happened here? Look Anders, the ground gave way!" He beamed. "I was right! There's a cavity down there! A secret passage or a treasure stash!"

Carlo knelt down and felt the floor, "You're probably right Anders. It looks like the ceiling of a cavity has collapsed. I didn't believe you, and the parish priest I asked about the secret passage didn't know of any passage either!"  To Paul, who was lying on his stomach peering into the depths, I called up, "Anders was right, there is something there. Can you come down? We've got the ladder tied up at the top, haven't we?"  "Yes, it's still tied down, Madz, but first I'll find a board for you to put the ladder on so it won't sink in any further. First I'll lower the board on a rope and then I'll come!"

When Paul finally arrived in the dungeon, Anders had already chipped away some of the ground around the ladder with the hammer. He hadn't gotten far enough, however, to see what had broken away or caved in, a board or a slab of stone.

Carlo, who had brought food, now suggested, "Let's all climb up first and take a break. I brought warm food for us all, otherwise it will be cold. Anyway, we'll have to get picks and spades, because we can't dig up the ground with our hands."  Anders became grumpy but agreed finally, "But do you even have a hoe or a pick?" as the chaplain shook his head, "Then me and Madz run to Alies. He's got all that stuff. He'll lend it to us. Maybe he can bring us the stuff in the car, then no one in the village will notice." "Let me make a phone call, it'll be faster!" said Carlo climbing up.

Alies arrived after lunch and brought everything there that was needed for digging. He was in a hurry, though. "First I have to play. The soccer game lasts until about four and then I'll be right back. I'm all curious." As he got into the car, he cautioned us, "Just make sure you don't get buried. Don't climb into the tunnel. Those ancient tunnels are certainly not stable; they can collapse at the slightest strain."

*******

Digging up the trampled floor was hard work. Despite the cool air in the dungeon, all four of us were soon sweating. By early afternoon, we had uncovered enough of the wooden plank tunnel ceiling to determine the direction in which the secret passage pointed. Roughly, it ran from the castle building to the chapel.

"Maybe this is not the secret passage that Veit Scharpf dug. Maybe it is the secret passage leading from the castle building to the crypt. Or maybe it leads further into the valley, Anders." "Do you always have to play the spoilsport Madz? I am firmly convinced that Veit dug the passage and escaped through it!" "Maybe you're right Anders, if the knights had built an escape passage, then it would certainly be more comfortable. In this tunnel you have to crawl on your belly." Carlo agreed with him, "I would get stuck in it, I'm just too fat. Right Paul?" "Your belly is thicker than mine, Carlo, but you're as limber as a caterpillar. You'd get through, but you might scrape your butt cheek!" Carlo laughed and just shook his head, "You shouldn't tempt heaven. There's no way I'm crawling in! Paul!"

Meanwhile, Anders was shining with his flashlight into the secret passage. When he saw that it was heading towards the castle building, his enthusiasm turned to disappointment, "Anyway, the passage doesn't go all the way to the castle. It stops after about a meter. It's bricked up." Turning the beam in the other direction, that is, to the chapel, he whistled softly through his teeth, "But the tunnel continues in direction of the chapel!" and immediately began to crawl inside. But Carlo protested on the spot, "Stop, you're not crawling in there! Don't you dare Anders! Get out of it!” Since Anders did not immediately follow the request, he grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, "Get out first and let Paul take a look, he can better assess the danger."

The part of the tunnel they had opened was so narrow that Paul could not have turned around in it. "Anders is right, the end of the tunnel toward the castle is barred. The stones are properly wedged together. Whoever did this wanted to close off the passage to the castle tightly." Then Paul got back out of the hole turned and climbed into back into the tunnel so that he could look toward the chapel. The beam of the flashlight reached only 8 or 9 meters into the dark passage. It didn't seem to end there, however the flashlight's beam was just too weak to shine any further. "We need a stronger spotlight that can illuminate the passage further." "Take mine!" and Anders handed his flashlight down to him. But its light wasn't much stronger. "I can't see much farther, but the end seems to be bricked up also. I can't feel a breeze coming out." Wanting to know if it was safe to crawl a bit into the passage, he began to scan the tunnel ceiling but immediately said, disappointed, "No, no one should crawl in there. The ceiling planks are broken in at least two places and protrude into the tunnel interior. If somebody crawls in here, the ceiling could collapse and be buried. You can't!" Then he climbed out of the tunnel in disappointed.

Madz immediately came up with an idea on how they could get out more. "We'll tie the flashlight to a long stick and push that into the tunnel, maybe we can see if it's really bricked up at this end." No sooner said than done. In the garden, they found a bendable long pole. They tied the strongest flashlight to its tip and with some difficulty pushed it into the narrow tunnel. Paul climbed back in and disappointedly informed the others, "It's bricked up toward the castle chapel, too." Anders wanted to see for himself and climbed into the opening when Paul was back up, "Paul is right! The passage is bricked up!"

I was the smallest, therefore I tried my luck too. I climbed down to the tunnel entrance and looked around thoroughly. "The secret passage seems to be bricked up on both sides." Back outside, I said to the others, "Maybe Veit did that himself to protect the escape route. Or the secret passage was walled up later, by others! If we're lucky, there's also an entrance in the castle or in the crypt, and we'll find it!"

Suddenly I remembered I had already noticed a conspicuous pattern in the morning while I was tapping the wall of the dungeon. I just didn't immediately remember what it had been. I went to the wall facing the chapel and studied it stone by stone. After some searching I recognized the pattern of three stones again, the tall triangular stone and the two fist-sized round stones. The slender block stood on end. At its lower end while each one of the round stones was bricked up on either side of it. It looked something like an upside down cross. I went to the opposite wall of the dungeon, the one facing the castle. Here, three stones were bricked up exactly like the ones on the opposite wall. From this position, I immediately saw that the upside-down cross here, the opening that led into the walled-up secret passage and the cross on the other side were exactly in line. This could have been a coincidence, but I didn't believe it, because at no other place on the dungeon wall had I seen stones arranged in this way. Were the three stones a symbol or an indicator? But for what?

"Come over here! Compare the arrangement of the stones here, with those over there I think it is the same pattern. Possibly they represent signposts. Look, they are clearly on a line that follows the course of the bricked-up secret passage!"

Anders, Paul and Carlo carefully reviewed the observation. "You're right Madz, I certainly wouldn't have noticed that!" Paul acknowledged, "You have good powers of observation!" "I know, but you didn't tap the walls either, Paul." "Clever! But what do we do with the information. If I imagine an extension of the line through the signs, it ends in the crypt on one side and on the other in the basement of the castle." Carlo looked from one to the other, "If we find a similar sign in the crypt, we can check the cellar later." "Let's check the crypt now!" I demanded impatiently.

"Don't you know what time it is already, Anders?” Carlo asked, “It's almost half past four, and we still have to cover the entrance to the secret passage, level the ground a bit, and then pull out the ladder. No one must know what we have detected in the dungeon."

"Agreed, but can we also search in the castle cellar?" I asked, while I helped Paul cover the breakage of the tunnel ceiling with the board he had lowered into the dungeon. Quickly, the depression in the dungeon floor revealing the entrance was also filled with sand and loam and the dungeon’s floor leveled. While Paul, Anders and I were working, Carlo explained to us that unfortunately they could not investigate the cellar of the castle today because it was locked. "The cellar is used by the winegrowers. There are a lot of wine barrels full to the brim, and the winegrowers don't let strangers enter to get steal wine."

"Not even you? Are they afraid you'll drink the barrels dry?" Paul mocked. "Chaplains must have a bad reputation in Hallberg." "They shouldn't have a worse one than teachers in Gondersdorf, Mr. Teacher!" returned Carlo.

*******

To be continued...

Posted 09/23/2022