The Werewolf of Bamberg (48 page)

“I couldn’t live with the guilt. That very night I smashed my executioner’s sword and fled from the town. I found shelter in an old shack built by a worker at a limestone quarry near Rossdorf in the Bamberg Forest, and I cried my eyes out. Then I decided to end my life and wipe all memory of me from the face of the earth. So I poured the unslaked lime in a trough, added water, and jumped in. But the pain was too great. I couldn’t bear the same pain I’d inflicted on others. I wandered through the forest, half-blind and screaming in agony, hiding in stables and barns, until finally Berthold Lamprecht found me and took me in.”

“The innkeeper of the Wild Man,” Georg added with a nod.

“And a good Christian, God knows. He’s a distant relative of mine, the only one who knows who I really am. The young people in Bamberg don’t know me, of course, and the elders just regard me as an old, scar-covered cripple. None of them ever recognized me on the street, and if anyone started giving me a closer look, I pulled my hood over my face and moved on. I’m just a monster, and monsters have no past.” Jeremias bared his teeth. With his scarred head and deformed face, he looked so horrible that even Georg could not help feeling repelled.

“Back then,” Jeremias continued, “Berthold went to the executioner’s house and fetched some of my things, among them this goddamned broken sword.” He weighed it in his hand like a feather. “Then he gave me work and this room that I’ve lived in ever since, like an ugly beast inside a mountain. I kept the sword, God knows why. Perhaps so I would never forget my evil deeds, and always remember my beloved Carlotta . . .”

Tears ran down his scarred face; he cried silently as the birds in the cage above his head, now fully awake, began to chirp cheerfully. Georg was sure he’d never met such a lonely man.

And yet, I have to ask him this one last question.

“Do you know what I still find strange?” Georg said after a while. “As I told you earlier, sometimes little details stick in my mind. That happens to me often when I’m talking to people, and it did this time as well. When I mentioned the sleep sponge before, and Father’s assumption that the werewolf uses it to stun his victims, you laughed. You said my father was an imaginative fellow if he thought a werewolf would sedate a prostitute and then rip open her rib cage. Well . . .” He paused and stared intently at Jeremias.

“What are you trying to say?” the old man asked, wiping the tears from his face. “What about it?”

“I never said anything about prostitutes nor a ripped-open rib cage, and I don’t think you could have heard about it. My father told me that Captain Lebrecht wanted to keep these matters absolutely confidential. Basically, there’s only one other person who would know about it.” He paused for a moment, then continued. “The murderer.”

Again there was a tense silence. Finally, Jeremias threw the sword into a corner, where it clattered to the floor. There was a glint in his tired eyes—something devious, like a wild animal at bay.

“Enough of this game of hide-and-seek,” he hissed. “So you know. Very well. You can be proud of yourself, I really underestimated you.” He seemed to be thinking it over, then he gave an evil smirk. “But your knowledge will do you no good.”

Georg could feel his hair bristling on the back of his neck, and at the same moment he knew he’d made a tactical error. He should have gone to his father with this knowledge and at least have kept that last question to himself—but now it was too late.

“What . . . what do you intend to do?” Georg asked cautiously.

Jeremias pointed to the cup in Georg’s hand. “I said before that alcohol can have astonishing effects, among them that it can easily cover up an odd taste.” He pointed to the back of the room. “It was no accident that the little jar of
Conium maculatum
, poison hemlock, was back there on the shelf. I thought I might have a chance to use it again.”

Georg’s heart suddenly started pounding. “You
poisoned
me?” he gasped.

Jeremias shrugged. “Well,
poison
is a strong word for it. I’d say I’ve seen to it that we’ll keep this little secret to ourselves.” The man who was once the Bamberg executioner Michael Binder watched Georg intently. “Can you feel anything yet? The effect usually begins in the feet, and from there the paralysis travels up through the whole body. When it reaches the heart, that’s the end.”

Georg tried to wiggle his toes, and in fact, he felt a slight tingling creeping up toward his lower legs.

“You are a devil!” he groaned. “And I thought . . .”

“That I’m just a kind old man?” Jeremias waved dismissively. “You still have a lot to learn, Georg. I’ve executed hundreds of men, so do you think one more matters? Yes, I killed the young prostitute. Believe me, I regret that crime every hour of every day, but that doesn’t mean I’ll let the unruly mob out there tear me to pieces as a werewolf. Because, by God, that’s just what they would do. Look at me.” He pointed at his disfigured face. “I’m a monster. They won’t find anyone else to fill the role better than I do.”

“Then you’re not actually the werewolf at all?” Georg asked, confused. The tingling had already reached his thigh.

“Am I? Or am I not?” Jeremias sighed. “My dear Georg, you thought you were so clever. But some things are simply a bit more complicated. I’m no kindly old fool, but I’m also not the devil. Like most people, I’m probably something in between, and I cling to life, just like you yourself, no doubt.”

With a smile, he took from the bookcase a fist-sized brown clump, which Georg didn’t recognize at first. It was evidently some sort of dried plant.

“The famous rose of Jericho,” Jeremias explained. “The first crusaders brought it to us from the Orient. Though it appears dead, it will turn green and begin to bloom again when you water it. Wise men call it
the hand of Mary,
and its curative powers are legendary.” He picked off a bit of the dry material and crumbled it into a cup. Then he walked over to the small stove, where a kettle of hot water was standing, and filled the cup.

“Just a bit of Mary’s Hand, and a few other ingredients that only I know, will stop the spread of the poison,” he continued. “Not for long, only about a day, and then the hemlock’s deadly poison will take effect again.” He smiled and handed the cup to Georg. “This is my suggestion. You will hold your tongue, and in return you may visit me and pick up the antidote every day until I reveal the ingredients to you, and then you will leave Bamberg forever. I’d call that a chivalrous offer, wouldn’t you?”

Georg tried to move his toes, which were almost paralyzed now. He nodded hesitantly, then reached for the steaming cup. He had made his decision.

You are a Kuisl, and don’t forget that.

“A chivalrous offer,” he repeated. “Especially since it comes from an unscrupulous murderer. But I’m afraid I cannot accept it.”

Without another word, he threw the steaming-hot contents straight into Jeremias’s face.

The old man fell to the floor, screaming and holding his hands over his scarred skin.

“Are you crazy?” he shrieked. “I have offered you your life, and you—”

Georg jumped at him and started to choke him. “No one extorts a Kuisl,” he hissed. “No one. As a former executioner you should know there are ways to make you talk. You will tell me the ingredients at once, then I’ll take this shriveled plant and—”

At that moment, someone crashed through the door and with brute force tossed Georg to one side.

In the meantime, Barbara was both in heaven and in hell.

She was crouching in a back corner of a hothouse in the castle garden, where she had fled in order to escape the growing chaos in the city. The building was at the far end of the park where two arms of the Regnitz came together on each side of the garden. Exotic trees grew there, reaching to the ceiling and bearing fist-sized orange fruit, which gave off an intoxicating fragrance. Brightly colored birds chirped as they fluttered amid the dark-green foliage. The fragrance was so intense and enticing that Barbara had bitten into one of the fruits; it was so terribly bitter, however, that she’d spat it out again.

She assumed it was one of those so-called Seville oranges. She had learned from her father that the expensive blossoms of these trees were occasionally used in herbal medicines and perfumes. They normally grew only in southern regions, but now, in the autumn, a good fire was rumbling in a stove in the middle of the pavilion and providing the necessary warmth.

Closing her eyes, Barbara tried to rest a bit. It was warm, the air was fragrant, and she was safe, at least for the moment. Still, she felt trapped in a nightmare.

She had been sitting here for over an hour, and she still couldn’t comprehend what had happened. After Suffragan Bishop Harsee changed into a werewolf, she fled out of the building in the general chaos. The citizens of Bamberg had already begun hunting down the actors, whom they now regarded, after what they had just seen, as witches and magicians. The good-natured Matthäus had been their first victim. Barbara had turned away as his cries for help became an almost inhuman scream. Despite the warmth in the pavilion, Barbara’s whole body was trembling. Where was Sir Malcolm? Where were Markus Salter and the other actors? Had the mob of people torn them to pieces, as they probably had Matthäus? Were their corpses already dangling from the trees in front of the castle?

She struggled to get her thoughts together as the birds fluttered around overhead. The aromatic smell of the orange trees helped her at least to calm down a little. Had her father and Uncle Bartholomäus managed to free Matheo, as Magdalena had promised they would?

Matheo . . .

As soon as she thought of him, tears welled up in her eyes. Ever since Matheo had been taken prisoner, her feelings were in turmoil. Yes, she thought she loved him, but how could she know what love really was if she’d never experienced anything like it before? She was sure of one thing: she had to help him. And there was something else she’d come to realize in the last few hours.

She wanted to go back to her family.

Ever since she’d been separated from Magdalena, her twin brother, Georg, her father, and the other Kuisls, she felt like a part of her was missing. Why had she run away? She’d behaved like a fool. In any case, she couldn’t go back now to old Jeremias. Surely the guards were ransacking the wedding house looking for the actors.

It was high time to go home.

After what seemed like an eternity, the noise outside gradually subsided. Barbara could hear occasional shouts, but they were probably just the night watchmen. She got up, cautiously approached the door, and peeked out through a crack into the darkness. Seeing nothing, she slipped out into the cool night air of the garden.

She crept barefoot across a gravel path that wound its way alongside a labyrinth of hedges. Everywhere on the lawn stood bushes trimmed into the shapes of animals and geometric figures that, in the nearly complete darkness, looked like huge monsters. The statues around the fountain in the middle of the park appeared to be following Barbara with their eyes.

After a while she stopped and turned around, squinting. The garden was enclosed on three sides by a high wall that rose up just a few steps in front of her in the darkness. On the fourth side was the castle, through which she had entered and which was also the way out to the city. It seemed too risky to her to go back. Most likely, the gate to the courtyard had long ago been closed.

So, over the wall,
she thought.

She was fearful about that, as she remembered that the castle grounds were surrounded on both sides by branches of the river. Even if she succeeded in getting over the wall, she’d have to swim. She didn’t even want to think about how cold the water would be in late autumn.

Looking for a way out, she continued groping along through the darkness. On the left a huge log house appeared, and inside it there was a pounding and the sound of rushing water. She’d seen a number of small canals filled with water around the pavilion and in the garden, and she assumed the building housed one of these fashionable new water pumps. The building stood right against the wall and was covered with ivy, so for a halfway-experienced climber it would be an easy matter to scramble up.

Barbara didn’t hesitate for a moment. She grabbed hold of the thin vines and pulled herself up, bit by bit, until she was atop the roof with the rumbling machines beneath her. Now the top of the wall came up only to her waist. She pulled herself up on the wall and looked down at the narrow, fast-flowing arm of the Regnitz on the other side. She was a good swimmer, but she couldn’t tell how far the current would carry her. At worst, she could land in one of the many water wheels just a short distance down the river and be ripped to shreds.

Do I have any choice?

Barbara murmured a short prayer, then jumped feetfirst into the rushing water.

It was so cold that it took her breath away. The current drove her toward one of the mills, whose wheel was squeaking and groaning as it turned in the water.

The river water stank of rot and decay, and it tugged at her as if with a hundred arms, reluctant to give up its prey. Nevertheless she fought against the current, getting closer and closer to the opposite shore.