The Werewolf of Bamberg (26 page)

“You can forget about that. The council will never get involved in a controversy with the suffragan bishop on such a trivial matter.”

“Trivial?” Katharina glared at him. “This is no trivial matter. My God, it’s our wedding,” she shouted, her face darkening. Magdalena had never before seen her so angry and determined. “In any case, I’m not going to celebrate my wedding in this stinking room—at least not until we’ve tried everything else,” she said, ready for a fight. “I’ll ask my father to bring up the matter again. Maybe . . . maybe we’ll have to take the small room in the Wild Man. That would be a compromise, but we’ll just have to postpone the wedding until that’s all straightened out. Perhaps the suffragan bishop is just upset now about this werewolf, and soon—”

“Postpone?” Jakob took the pipe out of his mouth. He looked a little pale. “You mean to postpone the wedding? We can’t just stay in Bamberg forever.”

“If what I’m hearing is correct, you’ll have to stay around here longer anyway, on account of your stubborn daughter,” she replied stiffly. She had apparently regained her former self-confidence. “It’s no longer a question of a few days, more or less.”

She turned to her future husband. “I’m going to spend the night here in your room—without you, as is proper—and you’ll move upstairs to the attic. Tomorrow we’ll figure out what to do next. And Bartholomäus,” Katharina said, taking the hem of her skirt and wiping the remains of the stew from the beard of the astonished hangman, “you need to take a bath more often, or you’ll be going to bed alone even after our wedding, as well. Good night to you all.”

She sniffed once again, wiped the last of the tears from the corners of her eyes, then, holding her head high, walked into the bedroom and slammed the door behind her.

Jakob grinned and winked at his brother. “You know what, Bartholomäus?” he said as he lit his pipe again. “I like your fiancée. She’s just like my Anna, God bless her soul. Why should you be any better off than I was?”

About an hour later, Simon and Magdalena lay upstairs in the attic, listening to the snoring of Jakob and Bartholomäus coming from the next room. Peter and Paul were sleeping next to them on a straw mattress and pillows filled with horsehair. In the darkness, Simon could just see their outlines. The older boy clung to the younger one, as if trying to shield him from all the dangers of the world.

It was in such moments that Simon thought of little Maria, who had been taken from them so soon, and he suspected that Magdalena did, as well.

She had propped herself up on the bed and was watching the children, lost in thought. After a while, she whispered, “I hope Katharina can still have children despite her age. She’d really be a good mother.”

“Sure . . . sure . . .” Simon nodded, half dreaming. There was something he absolutely had to discuss with Magdalena. He didn’t know if this was the right time, but perhaps there really was no suitable time for it.

“This wedding . . . ,” he began hesitantly. “The fact that Katharina is now putting it off is . . . ah, so unfortunate—”

“But completely understandable,” Magdalena interrupted. “If it were me, I’d try everything before I’d celebrate here in this stinking hole. Remember our own wedding, after Secretary Lechner had given his permission as representative of the elector?”

Simon couldn’t suppress a smile. Their wedding had been possible only because he’d given up his status as a doctor in training. Only as a simple bathhouse owner was he allowed to take the hangman’s daughter as his wife. They’d had to celebrate in one of the simpler taverns in Schongau, not in the refined Star, but they did it nevertheless in good style with a lot of wine, a roast suckling pig, and a half dozen musicians. The party had cost a fortune, and because of it Simon had had to sell a few of his beloved books.

“I can really understand Katharina,” Magdalena continued. “Bartholomäus is just as uncouth as our father. No doubt both of them would rather have just two guests—a big keg of beer and a pot of onion stew. Then at least they wouldn’t have to strike up a conversation.”

Simon sighed. “But your father is right. We can’t stay here forever. We’ve already been away for more than a month. In the meantime my patients will start going to the new doctor in town, and if I don’t go home soon, they’ll never come back and I can close my bathhouse.”

Magdalena looked at him darkly. “What are you trying to say? That we shouldn’t stay for the wedding?”

“Ah, well . . . ,” Simon waffled. “If it’s going to go on much longer, then I do think, in fact, that—”

“That’s out of the question.” Magdalena lay back down on the bed. “Until Barbara is back, we can’t leave, and Barbara will hide out until Father can think of something to do for Matheo.”

“Do you realize what that means?” Simon could feel the anger welling up inside him. Didn’t anyone ever think of him? “Both your father and I have work to do in Schongau,” he grumbled. “Do you want us to lose our jobs? Have you even thought about what Secretary Lechner will say if his hangman and the local bathhouse owner stay a few more weeks here in Bamberg?”

Magdalena tried to calm him down. “It doesn’t have to be weeks more. Katharina didn’t ask for more than a few days’ postponement, and Father will never go without Barbara, that’s for sure.”

“Well, great.” He groaned as he sank back into the pillows. “Every day here costs me a fortune. Why do we always get mixed up in these crazy adventures? All I want is to be an ordinary, respectable bathhouse owner.”

“Evidently God has other plans for you.” Magdalena grinned and kissed his forehead, but then she turned serious. “I want to know what it was that came between Father and his brother back then. Whatever it was, it really hurt Bartholomäus.” She sighed. “Sometimes I think I really don’t know my father.”

“You’re not the only one. Nobody knows him.” Simon took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “He probably doesn’t even know himself.”

The old patrician’s house at the foot of the cathedral mount groaned and moaned like a huge animal. In the last few hours the rain had increased, and the wind had gotten stronger, periodically rattling the shutters as if loudly demanding entry.

The home’s owner, Agnes Gotzendörfer, sat alone in the living room, wrapped in heavy woolen blankets. It was a cold night at the end of October, and the wet logs burning on the hearth gave off only a small bluish flame. Agnes’s legs were suffering from gout, and the constant clattering of the shutters got on her nerves.

The old patrician’s widow had never liked this house—it was too large and drafty, and the stone flooring in the entryway and kitchen was cold as ice even in midsummer. In addition, it was hard to find servants, as the simple folk were still firmly convinced the old house was haunted. Agnes used to just shake her head at those superstitions, but on nights like this, she herself believed in evil spirits.

Especially since these nightmares had come to torment her.

Her late husband, the once so influential city councilman Egidius Gotzendörfer, had acquired the property at a bargain price more than thirty years ago. It was one of the houses standing empty after the great wave of persecution and the subsequent witch trials. Once it had belonged to the Haans, a venerable patrician family in the city. Dr. George Haan had advanced to the position of chancellor, and the family had owned several properties in the city, but suddenly the Haans had been suspected of witchcraft, and one by one the hangman had tortured, beheaded, and burned the family at the stake.

Quite a few people claimed to know for certain that the family’s souls still wandered restlessly through the house. And in fact, for several weeks Agnes had felt pursued by these souls. She saw them in her dreams, and was chased and tortured by them. As a child, Agnes had always feared ghouls and ghosts, the horrible bands of murdered people who, especially on raw winter nights, swooshed through the air with their dogs, horses, and other beasts.

In her nightmares, these creatures reached out for Agnes and dragged her down through a whirling vortex into the deep.

Another strong gust of wind shook the shutters, frightening the old woman. Agnes Gotzendörfer lived alone in this huge house; her children and other family had all died or moved to other cities. Lisbeth, the only maid, had long ago gone to bed. She was a lazy, garrulous old maid, but the only person who’d agreed to work in the haunted house. Agnes couldn’t stand her, but at the moment she wished Lisbeth were here to keep her company. Normally the nearly-eighty-year-old woman felt more or less secure here in her own four walls, but now a cold fear was creeping up her spine that even all her blankets couldn’t keep out.

Just an hour ago, long after the night watchman had announced the curfew, Agnes had heard quick footsteps in front of the house, and through a slit in the shutters she recognized Katharina, the daughter of the city scribe Hieronymus Hauser. Agnes’s husband, Egidius, had often called upon the young Hieronymus to take minutes of the meetings, so Agnes also knew his chubby daughter. What was the woman doing in the street at this hour? Agnes had heard she would soon be marrying the Bamberg executioner, a gloomy fellow who, it was said, drank the blood of his victims and sold magical amulets.

Perhaps even some that could turn their owner into a werewolf?

Agnes felt a chill and huddled down even deeper into the woolen blankets on her armchair. Her maid had told her that in the marketplaces the only thing people talked about was this horrible werewolf. It was said to have killed a countless number of people, and evidently a militia had already assembled since no one trusted the city council or even the bishop anymore. Agnes knew that Lisbeth liked to exaggerate, but she herself had heard of the missing people from other patrician widows she had spoken with. Among the missing were Klaus Schwarzkontz and Thadäus Vasold, two old city councilors her husband had known before his death ten years ago. They had sat together on various commissions and had both gotten rich, powerful, and fat. It seemed that the werewolf would stop at no one, and stole and ate everything it could catch—rich and poor, young and old, men and women . . . It was quite possible that fat Katharina would be next. Why did that stupid woman have to run through the streets at this hour? It would be her own fault if—

A soft rapping interrupted Agnes Gotzendörfer’s thoughts. At first she couldn’t say where it was coming from—her hearing wasn’t what it used to be—but when she finally figured it out, the hair on the back of her neck stood up.

The knocking came from one of the shutters.

It was one of the shutters facing the street. The knocking grew louder, so that Agnes could no longer brush it off as a figment of her overworked state of mind.

Knock . . . knock . . . knock . . .

“Is someone there?” she called out in a hoarse voice that broke apart and crumbled like an old, moldy rag. But even as she spoke those few words, she had a suspicion that no one would answer. Instead, the knocking began again.

Knock . . . knock . . . knock . . .

She closed her eyes, struggling to think as her heart pounded wildly. She’d better call Lisbeth—but Agnes knew the maid was a deep sleeper and her bedroom was on the top floor, just underneath the roof. Agnes would probably have to go up and get her, but she was eighty, and going up stairs was getting harder for her by the week. The stairway was steep, the steps smooth, and just last month she had slipped and barely managed to grab the banister in time.

In her nightmares, Agnes saw the shadows of restless spirits trying to push her down the stairway, again and again.

Knock . . . knock . . . knock . . .

When the knocking resumed, Agnes made a decision. She would look through a slit in the shutters and see who or what was outside, then she could still decide whether to call for help. She really had nothing to fear, as there were thick bull’s-eye windowpanes between her and the street, and beyond them, solid iron bars to protect the property from burglars. Only then came the shutters. No one, nothing, could break in here.

Agnes pushed her blankets aside, rose from her armchair, and hobbled carefully on her swollen legs toward the window. Her heart was pounding so hard that her chest ached. As she approached the window, she thought she heard a faint sound, like long nails scratching against the shutter.