The Werewolf of Bamberg (27 page)

Or claws?

Trembling, she summoned up all her courage and opened the window just a crack, carefully reaching through the iron bars until she felt the bolt for the shutters. Pushing it aside, she looked out into the night through a narrow slit. In the pouring rain and darkness, it wasn’t possible to see anything clearly. She squinted. And only then did she see it, standing a few steps in front of the bars, as if behind a clouded lens. The thick window glass distorted it somewhat, so it looked grotesquely large, much larger than a man. In fact, there didn’t seem to be much that was human about it.

What in the world . . .

The next moment, the window with the bull’s-eye windowpane exploded into a thousand pieces. Rain poured into the room, the curtains fluttered like flags in the wind, and behind the bars and the wide-open shutters, a monstrous creature, like something from a nightmare, rose up.

Agnes’s nightmare.

The creature was a man, and yet not a man; it seemed to walk on two legs, but hair covered its entire body and it had a monstrous head atop a neck that was far too small. She peered into the dead eyes of a bear, or was it a wolf? Atop its skull was a set of horns dripping dark water—or blood—and below the head it had the black, soaked pelt of a horse or dog.

The creature looked as if the devil had cobbled together all the animals of the forest into one evil creature, in defiance of God.

And it let out a howl, high-pitched and loud.

Finally it raised its huge paws and reached through the bars toward Agnes Gotzendörfer. In its right paw it held a mangled human hand that had been chewed off.

Thoughts flashed through the widow’s mind:
The creature from my nightmare. The ghosts of those who have been murdered. They are back. The beast has come to take me away.

That was too much for the old noblewoman. Her heart, which had been beating so strongly, suddenly stopped, and blood rushed through her skull like a raging, black torrent. She felt one last, stinging pain, then collapsed on the ground, lifeless, like a puppet.

The beast growled and rattled the bars for a while, as if trying to break them in two, but finally it gave up and slunk away through the alleyways, where it soon disappeared in the raging storm.

As the storm subsided, a few drops of rain, blown into the ancient house by a final gust of wind, fell onto Agnes’s face, twisted into a frozen grimace of terror.

Then, once again, silence fell over the house.

9

T
HE
W
ILD
M
AN TAVERN
, MORNING
, O
CTOBER
31, 1668 AD

B
ARBARA SAT ON A BED
in Jeremias’s little room, leafing dreamily through the works of this highly acclaimed William Shakespeare. On the bookshelf she had found a slender volume about an old king who decides to distribute his realm among his three daughters but ends up giving it all to the two unworthy sisters. In his stubbornness, this King Lear reminded Barbara of her own father. She didn’t understand everything in the play and often skipped pages, but nevertheless it led her into another world, far from her current problems.

God knew she truly had enough of them.

When Magdalena had visited her the day before, Barbara had briefly pulled herself together and appeared strong, but after her sister left, she broke down sobbing again. Matheo, the first boy she really thought she loved, faced gruesome torture and execution—and if a miracle didn’t occur, it would be her own brother and uncle who killed him. By running away from her family, Barbara had tried to put pressure on her father. But was there anything at all he could do?

In her anger, she had first decided to seek shelter with the actors, but then it occurred to her that that was the first place Magdalena would come to look. After she’d wandered aimlessly for a while in the courtyard of the wedding house, the crippled Jeremias had offered to take her in. She knew it was only a matter of time before someone would find her here. She was almost relieved that it was Magdalena who came. She needed someone to whom she could pour out her heart. Old Jeremias was certainly a nice man, but he was no substitute for a real friend.

Barbara had already considered returning to the Bamberg executioner’s house, but there she would have felt even smaller and weaker than she did now. For a fifteen-year-old, this was all simply too much. But then she remembered Juliet from the other play by Shakespeare. The girl from the Capulet house had been only fourteen and, God knows, had gone through a lot more than Barbara had. So Barbara clenched her teeth and wiped away her tears.

Jeremias had been very kind to her. He’d let her sleep in his bed while he slept in the tavern’s pantry. From time to time he’d come over to her to try to cheer her up or bring her a soothing drink of lime-blossom tea, but she knew she couldn’t stay here forever.

Sooner or later she’d have to make a decision.

She knew she’d either have to return to her family or join the group of actors. Ever since Sir Malcolm had declared she had
talent
, she felt a constant restlessness inside her. Finally, she saw a real possibility of escaping the preordained life of a hangman’s daughter. She wouldn’t have to marry any filthy, stinking knacker or hangman’s apprentice while suffering in silence and bearing him a half dozen children. No. She’d see the world! This longing in her had grown stronger ever since she’d begun leafing through the dog-eared book of plays. Sometimes Barbara whispered some of the passages to herself, at first haltingly, then more and more fluently, until the florid language positively rolled off her tongue. Now, once again, she was reading some lines from
King Lear
that especially appealed to her.

Good my lord,

You have begot me, bred me, lov’d me; I

Return those duties back as are right fit.

Obey you, love you and most honour you.

“Ah, wonderful! That is music to my ears.”

Barbara looked up in embarrassment, expecting to see old Jeremias, but it was Sir Malcolm standing in the doorway with a wry look on his face. The haggard old director was so tall his head almost touched the ceiling. He bowed deeply.

“Didn’t I say you have talent? When I hear you read those lines, I think how right I was.” He opened his arms wide and looked up, as if the heavens had opened. “A star is born!”

Barbara frowned. She was embarrassed that Sir Malcolm had surprised her, and furthermore, it troubled her that the director had found her in Jeremias’s room. Who else knew about this place besides Jeremias and Magdalena? Perhaps her hiding place could not be kept secret much longer.

All the more important that I make up my mind soon.

“A star?” she asked finally. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

Sir Malcolm sat down beside her on the bed and patted her on the knee. “Excuse me for just bursting in here. To tell you the truth, it was Markus who told me about your hiding place. He no doubt saw your sister coming in here yesterday. Rest assured, I’ll be as quiet as the grave. But now to something else . . .” He paused briefly and smiled at her expectantly. “I have good news for you, Barbara.”

Barbara’s heart started to pound. “Matheo!” she burst out excitedly, jumping up from the bed. “Did they let him go?”

“Matheo? Ah, unfortunately not.” Malcolm at first seemed puzzled. “But you can be sure we all are praying very hard for the young man. No, no, the news actually concerns you.”

Barbara slumped over again. “What do you mean?” she asked in a soft voice.

Malcolm nodded excitedly. “I have the great pleasure of informing you that you will soon be given a very important role to play in Sir Malcolm’s theatrical group. You will be playing no less than the beautiful Violandra in the extremely popular comedy
Peter Squenz.
So what do you say about that?”

It took Barbara a moment to catch her breath. “I’ll be playing in one of your pieces here in Bamberg?” she finally managed to say. “But . . . but I’ve never done anything like that.”

Sir Malcolm demurred. “Everyone begins somewhere. Besides, you have
talent
, as you’ve just proved again.” He hesitated. “Ah, in addition, women’s roles are difficult to fill. Most men are too large or too fat. And after the regrettable loss of Matheo—”

“Stop right there,” Barbara interrupted angrily. “You want me to take Matheo’s role? Never! Who do you think I am? That would make it seem like I’m happy he’s wasting away in a dungeon.”

“Believe me, Barbara, this is what poor Matheo would want you to do. I’m absolutely sure of that.” Sir Malcolm nodded with a sad, earnest look. “Unfortunately, the bishop did not accept my suggestion to simply banish Guiscard’s miserable group of jugglers from the city. Instead, His Excellency decided to hold a contest between our two groups.” As Malcolm briefly described the bishop’s plan, Barbara turned paler and paler.

“If we lose, we’ll have to spend the winter somewhere outside the city,” the director concluded, nervously patting Barbara’s thigh with his long, sinewy fingers. “A lot depends on you now, as I have no one else in the group to assume the female part.”

“Do you mean . . . I’m to play in front of two bishops in that palace down by the river?” Barbara asked in a toneless voice. “On a real stage before all those noble ladies and gentlemen?”

“Well, at least it’s not a public performance, so you won’t have to be afraid someone from your family will recognize you and drag you off the stage.”

Barbara took a deep breath. “And when will this contest take place?”

Sir Malcolm cleared his throat, embarrassed. “Uh . . . tomorrow night.”

“
Tomorrow?
But I don’t even know the play yet, much less my part. How can I do that?”

“Oh, there’s no magic to it. Just keep thinking of Cordelia’s noble words in
King Lear.
” Sir Malcolm rose to his feet and pressed his hand dramatically to his chest as he declaimed in a loud, majestic voice.

“We are not the first who, with best meaning, have incurr’d the worst.”

Then he hobbled hastily to the door. “If you would be so kind, follow me into the hall, and we’ll begin the rehearsal at once.”

“Gentlemen, the meeting has come to order.”

Suffragan Bishop Harsee tapped his gavel on the polished oak table and looked around as the last of the murmured conversations died away.

Simon sat with Master Samuel at the far end of the large, oval table in the council room of the old courthouse. One after the other, the Schongau medicus and bathhouse owner scrutinized the faces of the honorable council members, who appeared gray and anxious. In contrast with the last meeting, the mood now was not aggressive, but gloomy. No one shouted, and all of them—the Jesuits, the scholars, the chancellor, and the dean of the cathedral—stared at the Bamberg suffragan bishop as if he alone could bring them salvation.

But Sebastian Harsee himself did not seem in the best of moods. He was pale and repeatedly wiped beads of sweat from his brow with a silk handkerchief. He also kept nervously scratching an itch on his neck.

Just like the meeting two days ago, this one had also been convened on very short notice. The reason was that the old patrician widow Agnes Gotzendörfer had been found dead early that morning in her house. This by itself was no reason for the emergency meeting—the dearly beloved Agnes was almost eighty years old—but the gruesome circumstances of her death had further stirred anxiety among the citizenry. Evidently, a window in her house had been smashed in, tracks had been found in the road right in front of the house, and the face of the deceased was frozen in horror. In addition, a severed human hand presumably belonging to Thadäus Vasold had been found on the front steps. His signet ring had still been on one of the fingers. Since then, all of Bamberg had been in an uproar.

“Dear fellow citizens,” the suffragan bishop began in a measured tone, “it appears now that we are no longer safe from the powers of Satan even inside our four walls. The case of poor Agnes Gotzendörfer makes that clear. Now’s the time to act quickly, to find the hideout of these terrible beasts, and to mercilessly eradicate them.”

“Be-beasts?” replied the dean of the cathedral, quaking. “So far, all we’ve talked about is a single werewolf.”

“But we caught him and locked him up yesterday,” said one of the council members, the apothecary Magnus Rinswieser. “Don’t tell me this fellow has escaped.”

Harsee shook his head. “No, no, he’s safely locked away in the crypt of St. Thomas’s Cathedral. We’ll begin with the torture soon in order to learn more, but as I said, it is . . .” He sighed. “This fellow is no doubt just the start; there are presumably a number of others who have sold themselves to the devil. The death of Agnes Gotzendörfer proves there are other monsters lurking around.”

“What do you mean when you say you’ll
begin with the torture soon
?” a council member with a goatee sneered. It was the wealthy young wool weaver Jakob Steinhofer, whose young wife had also disappeared. “Why haven’t you started already?”

“Well, the venerable prince-bishop wanted to hear the judgment of the doctors of law before he makes his decision,” replied Sebastian Harsee, raising his eyebrows scornfully. He pointed at the two earnest-looking scholars sitting across from him. “But that will be in the next few days, won’t it?” Harsee cleared his throat. “I’d like to stress here my difference of opinion with the prince-bishop in this regard. The Inquisition Commission—consisting of the legal scholars, the dean of the cathedral, and yours truly—have clearly expressed our recommendation regarding the torturing of this subject. The prince-bishop, however, has the last word, and he has said he doesn’t want to have anyone tortured without proof. Besides, at the moment, His Excellency is much more interested in the theater and his menagerie. In summary, he asks for a delay because of the scheduled visit of none other than His Excellency, the bishop of Würzburg, tomorrow evening. He surely seeks to avoid any religious dispute and is yielding to the wishes of his great colleague and neighbor. Well, then . . .” Harsee waited for his words to die away in the hall while regarding the angry faces with amusement.

Simon smiled grimly.
You know how to bring people over to your side,
he thought.

“Tortured without proof?” Jakob Steinhofer spoke up, angrily. “How many reasons does one need to have to make this fellow talk? My dear Johanna was mauled to death by this beast. Two city councilmen are among the victims, and now the respected widow of the aristocrat Gotzendörfer, who for so many years guided the destiny of this council—”

“To say nothing about my dear Adelheid,” the apothecary chimed in with a quavering voice. His face was ashen and his eyes full of tears.

“One could almost say this werewolf has very good taste,” Master Samuel suddenly interrupted from the far end of the table. All eyes turned to him and Simon. It was the first thing the doctor had said.

“What do you mean by that?” asked the pale, bloated chancellor Korbinian Steinkübler, staring at Samuel distrustfully with his tiny, porcine eyes. Simon had learned from his friend that Steinkübler came from one of the richest families in the city. He had obtained his position after a long struggle and was known for his absolute loyalty toward the prince-bishop.

“Well, please excuse my rude way of putting it.” Samuel raised his hands in apology. “What I meant to say was, it’s striking how many of the victims come from the patrician class.” He started counting them off on his fingers. “Two aging former councilmen, a patrician widow, and a young fiancée—”