The Werewolf of Bamberg (51 page)

“But why should we do that?” Georg asked, confused.

“How stupid are you, you numbskull?” Jakob snapped, pounding the table so hard that the chess pieces flew off in all directions. “If we can find the one trial where all of these inquisitors were present, we can perhaps prevent another calamity.”

“And you say that because—” Magdalena started to say.

“Because I sense there are a few more people on this list,” Jakob interrupted. He pointed at his nose. “And my nose here tells me our unknown suspect won’t stop killing until he’s gotten to the end of the list.”

“You can just forget about that,” replied Jeremias, shaking his head. “Those lists are ancient. They’re probably rotting away somewhere in the bishop’s archive. You can’t just walk in there and start looking around. The place is crawling with guards. Besides, you don’t know your way around there. You might just as well go looking for a needle in a haystack.”

“We got into the dungeon in the Old Residence, and we’ll make it into the bishop’s archive, as well,” Jakob replied firmly. “There’s always a way.” He pointed to Jeremias. “And you will help us in the search for the right document. I know that hangmen, too, often search the documentation about the questioning of condemned men. That’s what we do in Schongau.”

“And if I refuse?” Jeremias asked.

“If you refuse, we’ll turn you over to Captain Martin Lebrecht first thing tomorrow as a confessed murderer who is probably also the werewolf they’re looking for.”

Jeremias groaned and raised his hands in defeat. “Very well, it’s possible I could find the list in the archives—but as I said, we’ll never get in there. Never. You can forget about it.” Then he hesitated. “Unless . . .” A grin spread across his face.

“Unless what?” Magdalena and Georg asked at the same time.

“Well, perhaps there is a chance,” Jeremias replied, enjoying the moment as the others looked at him expectantly. “It’s really a dreadful thing, and if we decide to do it, we’ll need nerves of steel.”

The hangman nodded. “Don’t think twice about that. My nerves are as strong as a seaman’s rope.”

For a long time, Barbara and Markus Salter remained silent, cowering on the floor of the little room that smelled of mold and decay. The crates and chests all around them were covered in dust and had evidently been standing there for years. On the opposite side of the room, next to the archway that led down into the sandy tunnel, there was another door, which appeared much newer.

“Where are we?” Barbara asked as she felt her strength coming back and the trembling gradually subsiding.

“Probably in the Carmelite monastery on Kaulberg Hill,” Markus replied. He indicated the brown monk’s robe he was wearing. “I found this here in one of the trunks, along with a few old crucifixes and altar cloths. Most of the things have seen better days.”

Now Barbara noticed that there was a dark spot on the side of Salter’s robe, and she assumed it was blood. Evidently his injuries were worse than she’d thought.

“What happened?” she whispered. “The last time I saw you, you were outside in the courtyard just after everyone had fled the room.”

“They chased us like animals,” Salter responded in a monotone. “They caught fat Matthäus first, out in the courtyard. Karl and skinny Josef made it out to the street. I tried to help them, but it was hopeless.” Salter sniffled as he wiped the blood from his nose. “Finally, I ran up Kaulberg Hill and crawled into this wretched hole.” He pointed to the low archway and the rubble-strewn staircase. “I looked around a bit. The entire hill is like a piece of cheese—the Bambergers are digging up the sand here for all their new building sites. You can be glad that none of the tunnels have collapsed, or the monastery overhead.”

Apprehensively, Barbara looked up at the damp ceiling and the water dripping down from it.

“Did you say,” she asked, “we’re probably the only actors to have escaped this madness? What happened to Sir Malcolm? Did he perhaps also—”

Markus Salter sneered. “Don’t worry about him. He always saves his own skin. Malcolm has played so many roles in his life that he can easily play the part of the curious onlooker, a member of the angry mob, or God knows what—anything that crosses his mind. You don’t have to worry about him.”

“I’m much more worried about you,” Barbara said, pointing hesitantly at the dark spot on his robe. “It seems you had a hard time saving yourself.”

Salter waved dismissively. “Oh . . . that will get better. I’m glad I was able to at least save my skin. You should put on a monk’s robe like this, too. It scratches like hell, but it’s warm. It looks like we’ll be spending a while in here. No doubt the devil is at work down in the city.”

“Or, rather, the werewolf,” Barbara replied bitterly. Anxiously, she glanced at Salter. “Did the suffragan bishop really turn into a werewolf during our performance? He looked so horrible.” She shuddered. “How can something like that happen? Perhaps these incidents do have something to do with the actors. First the pelts in Matheo’s room, and now this.”

“Well, I’m reluctant to say so, but I’ve had my suspicions for a long time,” Salter replied. “I had to wonder when I first saw the wolf pelts in Matheo’s luggage, but now . . .”

“What are you saying?” Barbara asked.

He hesitated but finally replied. “I’ve got to say, it’s not the first time we’ve encountered a werewolf.” He wrapped his arms tightly around his chest. He clearly was freezing, despite the heavy robe he was wearing.

“There were a few strange incidents after our performances in Cologne and Frankfurt as well,” he continued gloomily. “Peaceful citizens suddenly attacked others in the street for no apparent reason, a vagrant is said to have stolen an infant from its cradle and eaten it, a few young girls disappeared without a trace . . . I’ve had my suspicions for a long time, and then three days ago in the wagon I caught him red-handed.”

“By all the saints, who?” Barbara whispered.

“Sir Malcolm.” Markus took a deep breath. “I just wanted to ask him which costumes still needed mending. There was a strange, sulfurous odor in the wagon, and when I addressed him, he quickly stashed something away in a chest. He seemed very annoyed. Later, I went back to the wagon and looked inside the chest . . .” Salter hesitated and then, after a while, continued in a strained voice. “Inside there was a silver pentagram, a candelabra with black candles, and a skull so small, it could only have been that of a child.”

“My God,” Barbara gasped. “Is Sir Malcolm a warlock?”

Markus Salter shrugged. “Later, he even showed us the candelabra and the pentagram, saying he needed them for our performance of
Faustus.
The whole time he was looking at me so strangely, and he didn’t say anything about the child’s skull. Naturally, I can’t prove anything—all I can say is that whenever Sir Malcolm and our troupe stayed very long in a city, strange things started happening.”

“How long have you known him?” Barbara asked anxiously.

“About ten years. Back then I was a student in Cologne, and I was broke. I was as fascinated by the theater as you are now.” Markus smiled, then he winced and pressed his hand against the wound in his side.

Barbara pointed to the bloodstained robe. “Can I have a look? I know a bit about treating wounds.”

Salter looked at her suspiciously. “Barbara, you are no doubt an excellent actress, but at your age, I can’t see you in the role of a doctor.”

“Believe me, I know a thing or two about it,” she answered a bit snippily. “My father, as you know, is an executioner, and we Kuisls know a lot about healing.”

Salter winced again, and this time she wasn’t sure it was because of the pain. “I’d completely forgotten that,” he said. “Your uncle is the Bamberg hangman, isn’t he?”

Barbara nodded sadly. “Almost our whole family is engaged in this horrible profession, and has been for ages—Father, my uncle, my brother-in-law, my grandfather. We’re scattered all over the Reich and all related to each other in some way. That’s why executioners all greet each other as cousins.” She sighed. “My great-grandfather was the famous—or infamous—Jörg Abriel, who tortured and killed hundreds of people. Perhaps you’ve heard of him.”

Salter shook his head, looking a little paler now. “No, my dear, I . . .” He seemed to be struggling to say something, but once again he was overcome with pain.

“Don’t be that way. Show me your wound,” Barbara said.

With a determined face, she ripped the robe off. There was blood on the side of Salter’s chest, and in one place it was still seeping out. Carefully, she examined the area.

“Someone obviously stabbed you there with a dagger,” she said in a professional tone of voice. “Thank God the wound isn’t very deep, but it must be cleaned at once, or it will become infected.”

She ripped off a piece of her wet dress, then looked around the room. In one corner she found a small keg of communion wine.

“I don’t know if the wine here still tastes very good,” she said, opening the stopper and soaking the cloth in it, “but for cleaning out a wound it’s a lot better than the filthy water.”

Carefully she wiped away the blood, and after the wound was clean, she made a temporary bandage from a long piece of cloth ripped from one of the robes. Markus Salter remained quiet except for a few soft moans.

“I can’t do anything more for you now,” Barbara said finally, “but perhaps tomorrow we can go together to my uncle’s house.”

Salter laughed bitterly, but his laughter soon gave way to a fit of coughing. “Are you out of your mind?” he gasped. “If those idiots out there just stop to think for a moment, they’ll figure out you’re the niece of the Bamberg executioner. They’ve been looking for you for a long time. Does anyone here in town know you? Did anyone see you before you appeared on the stage with us?”

“I don’t know,” she replied hesitantly, all of a sudden feeling exposed and helpless. “I visited the marketplace a few times with my sister, and then there’s Katharina, Uncle Bartholomäus’s fiancée, of course, and old Jeremias, the custodian of the Wild Man—”

“No doubt the tavern was ransacked a long time ago,” Salter interrupted. “After all, that’s where the actors were lodged. And they surely asked Jeremias about us.” He looked at her attentively. “Do you really think this Jeremias wouldn’t betray you to the guards to save his life?”

“Oh, God, I don’t know,” Barbara wailed. “Probably not, but that means that I can never return to my family.”

“At least as long as they live in the house of the Bamberg executioner.” Salter nodded with determination. “After everything that happened tonight, neither of us can show our faces in Bamberg again. It’s likely that all the guards in the city are out looking for us actors.”

“But where can we go, then?” Barbara wailed. “I want to go back to my family!”

Markus patted her on the head. “I’ll think of something, Barbara, I promise. But first, we should get some sleep. You’ll see, tomorrow things will look much better.”

Barbara didn’t believe him, but nevertheless she put on one of the warm robes and laid her head in his lap as Markus hummed a little tune for her. It sounded sad and dreary, but it calmed her down, and soon thereafter she fell asleep from exhaustion and grief.

14

T
HE HOUSE OF THE
B
AMBERG EXECUTIONER
, MORNING
, N
OVEMBER
2, 1668 AD

T
HAT MORNING, AMONG THE KUISLS
assembled in Bartholomäus’s home, there was a strange mood of despondency mixed with anticipation. Until then, they had scarcely had a chance to talk with one another. The injured Matheo was still upstairs in the bedroom, catching up on his sleep as he recovered. The wine mixed with herbs that Jakob had given him the night before finally provided him relief from his bad dreams—a good fortune not shared by most of the others present. All of them were pale, and the dark rings under their eyes bore witness to the strenuous day and night preceding.

Now they were all seated around the scratched table in the warm main room, while the boys were outside playing hide-and-seek along the city moat with the neighborhood children. The boys’ new friends came from a family of dishonorable gravediggers, so the parents had no objection to them playing with the Kuisl boys.

Magdalena rubbed her tired eyes. She had fervently hoped her sister would come back to them after that chaotic night, but Barbara hadn’t returned—neither to Jeremias nor to the executioner’s house.

Simon and his friend Samuel had taken the deranged suffragan bishop back to his room for observation. By now he had quieted down and lay there motionlessly. Bartholomäus later found an exhausted Simon in the area near St. Martin’s Church, and they’d both finally returned long after midnight. Magdalena had been relieved to learn that Simon hadn’t been bitten by a werewolf, but what he told her about the horrible transformation of Sebastian Harsee had deeply shocked her. Was it possible a person could change into a beast in the presence of all those witnesses?

“Last night, the whole city went mad,” said Bartholomäus, who until then had been quietly eating his porridge out of the communal bowl. He had just returned from a brief check of the city dungeon. “But at least the city guard has gotten everything under control,” he continued. “They gave those young thugs a good spanking and sent them all back to their mothers. But people are also saying that at least two of the actors were killed last night and then strung up like dead cats for the general amusement of the crowd. Now, no one will admit to doing it, and Captain Lebrecht evidently has better things to do than look for the perpetrators.” He sighed deeply. “The rest of the actors have been thrown in the dungeon, and no doubt I’ll have to deal with them soon.”

“Is Barbara among them?” Magdalena asked, her heart pounding. Simon had already told her and the others that Barbara had been in the performance the previous day. Jakob had groaned and cracked the knuckles of his huge fists, but otherwise he seemed astonishingly calm.

Bartholomäus shook his head. “Barbara has disappeared without a trace, as has a certain Markus Salter, by the way, the hack who writes the plays—or copies them, for all I know.” Then he turned serious. “Things look really bad for the director himself, this Malcolm. They found a few magic items in a secret compartment of his chest—a pentagram, black candles, and a human skull. Now they’re saying he used them to conjure up the werewolf.”

“Sir Malcolm probably used the objects in one of his plays,” Magdalena speculated, “perhaps for
Doctor Faustus
, which involves sorcery, after all.”

“And then he locks them in a secret compartment?” Bartholomäus frowned. “I’m not so sure about that. The council, in any case, doesn’t buy a word of it,” he said, then turned to Simon. “You attended the performance yesterday, didn’t you? Was Malcolm behaving strangely?”

“Uh . . . not that I was aware of.” Simon looked up from a book he’d been paging through. It came from Bartholomäus’s little collection of books in the main room. “I don’t think Harsee’s madness has anything to do with the actors,” he added. “It’s probably some strange illness. The poor fellow is almost completely paralyzed, and only his eyes keep flitting nervously back and forth. If that’s a werewolf, then it’s a pretty pathetic one.” He rubbed his temples with exhaustion. “But it’s still strange that such an illness, if that’s what it is, breaks out at the very moment everyone is talking about werewolves here.”

Simon sighed and set the tattered book aside. “I’ve spent half the night racking my brain over this, but unfortunately all the books here are about veterinary medicine, and that doesn’t help.”

“Don’t disparage Zechendörfer’s
Hippiatrica
,” Bartholomäus interrupted. “That’s one of the best books on medicine ever written.”

“Yes, when you’re treating horses with stomach gas from eating too much hay, or shoeing them because of a broken hoof,” Simon replied. He nodded toward the other room. “That applies also to the certainly excellent works about rearing, training, and treating dogs, but here we’re dealing with something more complicated, with a human element.”

“You can learn all sorts of things from animals, Master Medicus,” Bartholomäus shot back. “For example, humility and modesty.”

Jakob was about to give him a harsh rebuke, as well, but Georg, who was sitting next to his father, put his hand on his arm to calm him down.

“I know that we Kuisls like to fight,” he said in a firm voice, “but now isn’t the time for that. Let’s think instead about whether to pursue the course that old Jeremias suggested yesterday. Since Barbara has disappeared, we should probably be using all our resources to find her as quickly as possible. Everything else is secondary.”

Jakob Kuisl looked at his son in astonishment, not knowing what to make of Georg’s newly acquired confidence.

“Well, I’ll be damned, you’re right,” he said, a bit less gruffly. Then he pointed toward the ceiling. “On the other hand, the young lad that Barbara is so crazy about is lying up there in bed, while his friends are sitting in the dungeon awaiting their execution as alleged werewolves. What do you think Barbara will say if her own uncle whips their battered bodies to death, perhaps as early as tomorrow? Well?” He looked across the table at Bartholomäus, who grimly returned his gaze. “Have you thought about that?”

Despite the grave situation, Magdalena couldn’t suppress a slight smile. She knew that her father had always been driven by a boundless curiosity. Without a doubt, he wanted to find out what was really going on here in Bamberg—and until he did, he wouldn’t sleep soundly.

“Perhaps you could go over again everything you learned from Jeremias last night,” Simon said, turning to his father-in-law. “I must confess I haven’t been able to make sense of it all yet.”

Jakob cleared his throat, then briefly retold the story of Jeremias’s fate and what happened during the witch trials when he was known as Michael Binder, the executioner of Bamberg. He also mentioned Jeremias’s murder of the young prostitute. Meanwhile, Bartholomäus sat there thinking and sucking on a stick of kindling he’d broken off a piece of firewood.

“I’ve heard a bit about this Michael Binder,” he interrupted his brother while still chewing on the kindling. “He must have been a good hangman. Sometimes young people think I’m his son, because the job is usually passed down through the family. Well, whatever . . .” He shrugged. “If law and order still prevail in this city, Jeremias will have to be hanged. I can’t say I’ll be glad to do it, but I probably won’t have any choice.”

“I’ve given him my word we won’t report him if he helps us,” Jakob replied. “Look at him—the man is a wreck. Scarred forever for his deeds—which he now wants to atone for, including the one that happened so long ago,” he added grimly.

“You mean torturing his fiancée?” Simon shuddered. “That is unpardonable. Even God cannot forgive that.”

“Just cut out this nonsense.” Jakob suddenly sprang up and glared angrily at Simon. He looked like a dark thunderhead towering above his son-in-law. “How can a no-account little medicus understand what’s going on in the minds of us hangmen? Have you ever hurt someone just because you had to? Because your hungry family was waiting for you out there and you would be stoned to death if you didn’t? Did you ever put a noose around a condemned man’s neck as he pleaded and cried, while your bloodlusting fellow citizens stared at you from behind? Have you?”

“No, you’re right, I haven’t,” Simon replied meekly. “I’m only a medicus who wants to heal.”

“Who is
permitted
to do that,” Jakob growled, then he sat down. “And now let us continue. Georg is right, there are in fact more important things to discuss.”

He told them about his hunch that all the victims were somehow connected, that they—or their husbands or older relatives—had many years ago been members of a Witches Commission that determined whether others would live or die and whether they would be tortured and burned.

“If we succeed in finding a document listing the members of this commission, we may be able to prevent further disaster. There are no doubt other people on the list, and, most importantly, the name of the accused.”

“But all that happened decades ago,” Bartholomäus interrupted, throwing a singed piece of kindling straight into the open fire. “Do you really believe there’s someone lurking around out there interested in such an old case?”

“I don’t know, but I’d like to find out, and Jeremias will help us.” Jakob lowered his voice and turned to Simon and Bartholomäus. “The old man told us about a half-buried passageway leading from the cathedral to the bishop’s archive in the next building. Apparently, in ancient times the cathedral faced northward, and it was then that the passageway between the two was built. It’s said to be a pretty weird place. The corridor is an ancient crypt with piles of bones and skulls.” He grinned. “I love skulls. At least they can tell you no lies.”

“Since our visit to the residence yesterday, the area around the cathedral square is crawling with guards,” Magdalena said in a worried voice. “Do you really think we can simply walk into the cathedral and enter the passageway without anyone asking what we’re up to?”

Jakob nodded. “I was worried about that, myself, but then it occurred to me that today is All Souls’ Day, and in Bamberg, just as in Schongau, there is always a high mass in the morning in memory of the dead. The cathedral will be more crowded than at any time except Easter.” Confidently, he looked around the table. “If we act during the mass, no one will notice us amid all the activity. We just have to get back on time.”

“And you intend to climb down into a crypt full of bones on the Day of the Dead?” Simon groaned. “I’m not sure if I—”

“Who said I wanted to take a little coward like you along with us?” Jakob growled. “You can just go back to your suffragan bishop possessed by the devil. Maybe you’ll learn something there pertaining to our case.” He shook his head. “No, Jeremias and I will do it alone, and in the meantime the rest of you can look for Barbara. After all the uproar, I hope she’s found someplace to hide in a barn or empty shed. Later, I’ll come to you, if you—”

There was a loud hammering on the front door, and Jakob stopped suddenly. A moment later the door flew open and an agitated Katharina rushed into the room. She was as pale as a corpse, her full head of hair was disheveled, and she was still wearing the splendid gown she’d had on the evening before, though it was now soiled from running through the street.

“Bartl,” she began breathlessly, “you . . . you must help me . . . my father . . . has disappeared. Oh, God . . .” She leaned against the wall, crying. Magdalena ran to help her, leading her to sit at the table near the warm stove and taking hold of her shaking hands.

“What happened?” she asked gently.

“This whole wedding is cursed,” Katharina blurted out. “Ever since Bartholomäus and I decided to get married, all these dreadful things have been happening. Perhaps the suffragan bishop was right after all when he disapproved of the ceremony. And now, he is a werewolf himself. Oh, I should never have gotten engaged to an executioner, and this is my punishment.”

“What nonsense you are talking, woman!” Bartholomäus shouted angrily. “The devil has robbed you of your senses.” He tried to modulate his voice. “But I’ll excuse you, because I see this is all too much for you. Tell us, now, what’s this about your father?”

“I lost sight of him last night after the terrible events,” she began, calmer now. “We were standing outside in the courtyard, and all around us people were screaming as more and more came rushing out of the hall, pushing their way past us. And suddenly he was gone. I waited for him, but it seemed like the earth had simply swallowed him up. Finally I went home, hoping to meet him there. But he wasn’t there, either—he was simply gone.” Again she broke out in tears. “I waited for him until this morning, but he never came. No one knows what happened to him. Perhaps . . .”

Her words turned into a long wail. Magdalena looked anxiously at Simon, and he returned her gaze. He’d told the whole family about Hieronymus Hauser’s peculiar behavior, and Katharina had also told Magdalena that her father had been acting strangely in recent days.

“Did you notice anything unusual about your father yesterday?” she asked the tearful Katharina.

She looked up, troubled. “Well, he . . . he was very anxious,” she mumbled. “During the play he kept looking around as if he expected to see someone he was very afraid of, but when I asked him about it, he wouldn’t answer.” Fearfully, she looked around the table. “Do you believe this werewolf took him away?”

“Believing is something you can do in church,” Jakob answered grimly. “What I want are facts. You should all get moving now, as fast as possible, to look for my Barbara and also Katharina’s father. What’s clear is that too many people are disappearing in this city.” He stood up and cracked his knuckles one last time. “And today, as a good Christian, I intend to go to mass. I’ll say three hallelujahs if I can finally get a bit closer to the truth.”