The Werewolf of Bamberg (6 page)

Bartholomäus grunted disparagingly and kicked the clay floor with his wooden shoe. “And where does it get him? Anyone who shacks up with a hangman’s daughter has thrown his lot in with the dishonorable class, and becomes one of them himself. That’s the way the law looks at it.”

Magdalena was about to respond angrily when Simon took her by the hand and answered with a forced smile: “Well, obviously in your house, too, love won out over class snobbery. It’s not every day that the daughter of a court clerk marries a hangman. In any case, I congratulate you on your upcoming marriage. A good catch, it seems to me.”

“You’re damned right.” Bartholomäus grinned broadly, showing his still largely intact set of teeth. “Katharina comes from a good family. Her grandfather was the assistant clerk in the old city administration, and her father, too, became an administrative official. She can even read, and if God grants me children, they will be better off than their father, the hangman. You have my word on that as the sword-swinging, bloodsucking Bamberg executioner.” He burst out laughing and pounded the table so hard the pitcher of cider almost tipped over.

“You didn’t need to make the long trip for my sake,” he grumbled after a while, “but Katharina insisted. And once a woman sets her mind on something, she gets it, right? The wedding will be in a week—and by God, it will be a sinfully expensive party. Katharina is making all the arrangements. Tomorrow she’ll be coming at the crack of dawn to check everything out and buy some things. The woman is a whirlwind.”

“Apropos of buying things,” Jakob interrupted. “Do you by any chance have any tobacco in the house? I ran out of mine while I was still back in Nuremberg.”

Bartholomäus snorted. “Still the same vice, eh, Jakob?” He shook his head. “No, I don’t have anything like that. But . . .” Suddenly he winked mischievously at Jakob, and for a moment Magdalena thought she could see two twelve-year-old kids planning a prank. “You know what? I have a suggestion for you. Down at the south moat, there’s a dead horse that no doubt one of the wagon drivers just left to die. The city council won’t allow a dead animal to lie there longer than a few hours. The damned fools are afraid of poison vapors.” He looked at his brother, trying to persuade him. “So what do you think? We can drag the thing into the stable next door in the knacker’s cart, and with the money, my Katharina will buy you a pouch of the best Augsburg tobacco when she comes tomorrow. I’ll give you my word on it.”

“Now?”
Simon replied, horrified. “The two of you want to go out again in the night and the fog?”

Jakob shrugged and walked slowly to the door. “Why not? Is there any better way to celebrate the reunion of two hangman brothers than with a stinking cadaver? If it gets me my tobacco, I’ll string someone up for you.”

Bartholomäus laughed lustily, but it didn’t sound sincere. Magdalena thought she could even detect a bit of sadness in it. She was in a reflective mood as she watched the brothers leave the room. Though Bartholomäus was only a bit shorter than Jakob, he seemed to pale into insignificance alongside his older brother.

It took a long time before the clacking of his wooden shoe finally faded away into the darkness.

A half hour later Magdalena was with Simon up in their room, listening silently to the calm, even breaths of Peter, Paul, and Barbara.

Georg had offered to spend nights in the horse stable for the length of their stay. After all the nights they’d passed, since leaving Schongau, in sleazy flophouses, barns, or the forest on a bed of brushwood, their present accommodations felt like a royal abode. The mattress was filled with soft horsehair; a warm, brick-lined stove stood in the middle of the room; and the number of fleas and bugs was tolerable. Nevertheless, Magdalena was having trouble falling asleep. There were too many things going through her mind, and she was anxious to meet her uncle’s fiancée.

“What do you think this Katharina is like?” she whispered to Simon. She could tell, from the way he was breathing and occasionally shifting around in the bed, that he wasn’t sleeping, either.

He grunted disparagingly. “If she’s even a bit like Bartholomäus, she’ll be a real shrew. In which case she’ll fit right in with this family.”

Magdalena gave him a gentle poke. “Are you trying to say that all the Kuisls are ill-tempered ruffians?”

“Well, when I look at your father, his brother, and then Georg, I could almost reach that conclusion. In the last two years, your little brother has become a real clod. I can only hope that you, too—”

“Don’t you dare!” Magdalena tried to sound severe, but she couldn’t resist a giggle. “I’ll do everything I can to make sure our kids don’t turn into brutish hangmen’s journeymen.”

“You’ll have a hard time with Paul. He can’t wait to chop off someone’s head. Peter is quite different—softer, almost like a . . .” Simon paused, but Magdalena completed his sentence.

“Like a girl, is what you meant to say. Like the girl that God gave us, then took away again.” She turned over and fell silent. Simon ran his hand lovingly over her shoulder.

“She was too weak, Magdalena,” he said, trying to console her. “It . . . it was better that it happened so soon. Just imagine if she’d lived even longer—how painful it would have been then. Surely God will give us another chance—”

“Just stop!” Magdalena’s voice rose, and a soft mumbling came from the boys’ beds. It took a while before the room became quiet again. She could feel how Simon, lying next to her, was searching for the right thing to say. Suddenly her eyes welled with tears, and a quiet sob shook her body. Anna-Maria had been her third child. She had come into the world two years ago, just a few months after the death of Magdalena’s mother, and had been named after her. Though Magdalena loved her two boys, it had been wonderful to hold a little girl in her arms, wrapped in white linens, with eyes as blue as gentian flowers. Jakob Kuisl had built a crib for his granddaughter, and the old grouch had turned into a loving father in Maria’s presence. Simon, too, began spending more time with the children. He’d become a more devoted husband, less concerned with his books and his patients than with his wife, who was weakened by the difficult birth. Maria had become the focus of his life.

And then God took her away from them again.

It had been one of those fevers that plagued Schongau at regular intervals, first the elderly and the children. Desperately, Simon had tried to fight the fever with leg compresses, mugwort, and chamomile, but the child slipped through their fingers like snow in the sun. They had carried little Maria to her last resting place just a few days after her first birthday. The hurt in Magdalena’s soul was still fresh, and occasionally it would break out again.

Just as it had now.

Simon clearly felt it was better to say nothing, and he gently caressed his wife, waiting for the sobbing to pass. Finally she nuzzled up to him again and tried to forget.

“I don’t think my uncle is as coarse a fellow as he pretends to be,” she said after a while. “He may act just as surly as Father, but there is something soft and very sad in his eyes. Something must have come between the two of them long ago. Maybe it has something to do with his lame leg. Perhaps back then Jakob teased his little brother. A cripple is always an easy target.”

“Didn’t your father ever tell you anything about Bartholomäus?” Simon asked with interest, glad to change the subject.

Magdalena shook her head. “Never. It was like his brother didn’t exist. Bartholomäus must have left Schongau soon after Father went off to war as a young man. During the war, Father probably visited him here in Bamberg. Only after Georg had to leave Schongau to find an apprenticeship did the two start corresponding regularly.”

“Why does he always talk so much about how well-off the executioners are here in Bamberg?” Simon wondered. “And then this reference to all the abandoned houses in the city, and how he knew why that was so. Why must you Kuisls always make a big secret out of everything?”

“Whatever it is, this city has certainly seen better days. And then these stories about the bloodthirsty monster. You don’t believe in that, do you?”

“Of course not,” Simon snorted. “Remember all the stories about alleged witches in Schongau, and they were nothing but dumb superstition. But just the same . . .” He paused and looked out the window, worried. The shutters were open a crack, and the pale moon shone into the room through the heavy fog. “Just the same, I feel uneasy knowing that your father is out there prowling around.”

Magdalena laughed softly. “You forget he is not alone. Two fierce Kuisls—please! If I were the monster, I’d run away as fast as I could.”

She snuggled up to Simon again, and in a few minutes she’d finally fallen asleep.

Soon after the two brothers had left the hangman’s house, Jakob became confused and disoriented again in the narrow lanes. In a sullen mood, he stomped along behind his brother, who was pulling a two-wheeled cart smeared with blood and dirt. Bartholomäus kept turning one way or the other in apparently random fashion at crossings, preferring the narrow lanes between houses where the cart was just able to squeeze through. Out here in the darkness, his limp was barely noticeable.

He’s learned to deal with it,
Jakob Kuisl thought.
How much effort did that require? How much malice has he been forced to endure? But by God, he’s really become a tough bastard. I wouldn’t have thought he could do it.

“Didn’t you say the carcass was over there in the south moat?” Jakob asked finally. It was the first time since they’d left that he addressed his brother. “Why didn’t we just take the road along the moat from your house? Wouldn’t that be shorter?”

“So the guards patrolling there can ask stupid questions?” Bartholomäus snorted contemptuously. “The carcass has been there since this morning. I should have picked it up during the day, but I had other things to do, so I’m going to get it now.”

“Aha, before the guards discover the thing early tomorrow and you have to pay a stiff fine.” Jakob grinned. “Now I understand. Well, the main thing is that the tobacco is good.”

In addition to his work as a hangman, Bartholomäus had the job of disposing of garbage and dead animals, just like Jakob Kuisl did in Schongau. The authorities attached great importance to disposing of corpses as fast as possible, because of the fear of plagues. The dead animals were often butchered by knackers who lived outside of town, but sometimes the hangman was responsible for this work, as well.

“You’re not going to flay the animal at home, are you?” Jakob asked as they continued their march through the foggy back streets. “I didn’t see any scraping-knife or other tools in your house, and besides, it would stink like hell.”

“The city council wouldn’t allow it, so I have to take the carcass out to my knacker’s cottage in the Bamberg Forest. There used to be a splendid hunting lodge with a lot of servants nearby who were also responsible for disposing of corpses, but since the war that’s all gone, and I have to do this filthy job alone. Miserable work and shitty pay,” Bartholomäus grumbled as he pulled his cart through an especially narrow passage between a pile of horse excrement and other garbage. “We’ll take the horse to my stable first, then see what we can do tomorrow.”

For a while both brothers were silent, then Jakob carefully broke the ice.

“Listen, I’ve wanted to thank you for a long time,” he began softly, “for taking Georg as a journeyman who—”

“Forget it,” Bartholomäus interrupted gruffly. “I don’t need your thanks. Georg is a big help to me. He does the work of three or four men and will be a good hangman himself someday.” He turned to Jakob and sneered. “Perhaps even here in Bamberg.”

“Here in . . .” Jakob looked at his brother, astonished. “You’re going to retire and give him your job? That wasn’t our arrangement. I need Georg in Schongau. When his apprenticeship is over and he can finally return home, then—”

“Ask him yourself what he wants to do,” Bartholomäus cut in. “Maybe he’s had enough of his lying father.”

“What did you tell him about me? God, did you—”

A scream from a nearby house interrupted their conversation. Jakob stopped and looked at his brother, listening.