The Werewolf of Bamberg (68 page)

Sir Malcolm had used powder on his own face to try to cover the many bruises that he’d suffered in the dungeon, and with his wig he looked like a sad image of a decadent Parisian courtier, carrying a bouquet of dried autumn crocuses, which he handed to Katharina with a deep bow.

“Before we take our leave forever from this glorious city, we wish to pay our humble respects to the beloved bridal couple,” Malcolm said in his usual flowery language. “My lady, I am profoundly indebted to you for having taken in one of my principals and returned him to health.”

“Anyone would have done the same,” Katharina replied, embarrassed, as she accepted the flowers. “But I thought you had already left the city.”

Malcolm waved dismissively. “There’s a lot for us to do first. Our equipment was badly damaged in this whole affair. No, we’re still camped outside the city walls. It’s safer there now that this, uh, werewolf has finally been destroyed.” He grinned mischievously, and Magdalena could see that one of his incisors was missing since she’d last seen him in the Bamberg dungeon.

“When we finally have all our provisions together, we’ll head for Würzburg,” he continued with obvious pride, though with a slight lisp due to the new gap in his teeth. “The Würzburg bishop and elector himself invited us. We’ll perform in his palace and be a real sensation.” He straightened up to his full height, like a giant scarecrow, and spread his arms out theatrically. “Sir Malcolm’s troupe will be famous in the whole Empire, and soon everybody will have forgotten Guiscard. What did Shakespeare say? ‘All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.’” He winked at Katharina. “Or, as it says in another passage: ‘Many a good hanging prevents a bad marriage.’”

“I never doubted that in the least,” said Katharina, pointing to the last two remaining chairs. “But please, take a seat and eat and drink with us.”

Malcolm peered at the steaming meat cooking on the hearth and licked his lips.

“I believe we do have a bit of time. Matheo, what do you think?”

The young man winked at Barbara, then let Katharina fill his plate, along with Malcolm’s.

Magdalena leaned across the table and looked intently into the eyes of her younger sister. “So tell me, you and Matheo . . .”

But Barbara waved her off. “You don’t have to act like it’s such a secret,” she said with a shrug. “Matheo and I had a heart-to-heart talk yesterday. I was with him all night out in the actors’ camp, and—”

“You were
with him
all night?” Magdalena had trouble controlling herself. “Good heavens! What does that mean, and why am I just learning about this?”

Barbara looked at her peevishly. “Now you’re sounding like Mother.”

“Strange,” Magdalena mumbled, “somebody else just said the same thing to me. But go on. What were you doing with Matheo out at the actors’ camp?”

“Well, we said good-bye, that’s all, and nothing more.” Barbara hesitated. “I think our relationship is . . . platonic. Matheo told me what that means—that we love each other in one way, but in another way we don’t. Anyway, I can’t imagine spending my life wandering around, even though Sir Malcolm told me again yesterday that I really have
talent.
” She looked severely at Magdalena, but then her face softened. “When I ran away and hid in the castle garden after that horrible event in the theater, I felt more alone than ever before in my life,” she said softly. “I realized I need my family more than I thought.”

Magdalena smiled. “Well, someday you will probably get married and have a family.”

“Yes, but there’s plenty of time for that still, and until then I’d like to spend time with all of you.” Barbara leaned back and looked at the chattering, quarreling, laughing crowd, then winked at her older sister.

“We’re basically a great family. God knows, life with us will never be boring.”

AFTERWORD

W
ARNING TO CURIOUS READERS WHO ALWAYS CHECK THE END OF THE BOOK FIRST
! A
S
J
AKOB
K
UISL WOULD SAY
: KEEP YOUR HANDS OFF
!

W
HEN PEOPLE ASK ME WHY
I like writing historical novels, I usually have the same answer: “History always writes the best stories!”

And in fact, in the course of doing research for my books, I keep coming upon hair-raising, bizarre, fantastic, or simply comical facts that I could hardly have invented on my own. Often, my wife just shakes her head while checking my manuscript and tells me I’ve exaggerated a bit too much. And I’m happy as a lark whenever I can tell her it’s something that actually happened.

In gathering materials for this novel, there were two tales that awakened my love of storytelling (and if you don’t want to spoil the fun of figuring out who the culprit is, you shouldn’t be reading this until you’ve read the story).

The first discovery was a short reference in an old article to the so-called werewolf of Ansbach. In the year 1685, a man-eating wolf terrorized the Bavarian city of Ansbach, killing two children and a young woman. The citizens were convinced the huge animal was the reincarnation of the deceased mayor Michael Leicht, a swindler who allegedly roamed about dressed as a werewolf. People even claimed to have seen him at his own burial service!

Shortly thereafter, the real wolf was found in a pit and stoned to death, but people still believed in a devilish monster. They flayed the beast, set a human face made of paper on its shoulders as well as a wig and a cape, and, to the accompaniment of loud cheers, the citizens of Ansbach hung the beast, now convicted of being the werewolf, from the gallows.

A werewolf in Bavaria? I started doing some research and soon found other cases. In 1641, for example, a whole pack of these beasts was said to be lurking in the Bavarian Forest near Straubing. In Bedburg, near Cologne, a certain Peter Stumpp (in German,
Peter Stubbe
; stubbe means “stump,” and Peter’s left hand had been severed, leaving only a stump) was executed in 1589 on the wheel. He was accused of the dreadful crime of dressing as a wolf and killing and eating more than a dozen children, including his own son, whose brain he was reported to have devoured.

There actually were many so-called werewolf trials all over Germany, and particularly in France, in which people were accused of having changed themselves into man-eating monsters. The numbers vary, but some experts say there were up to 30,000 presumed cases in Europe just between the years 1520 and 1630, a fact that is often pushed into the background because of the dreadful witch trials.

Of course there were never any real werewolves, and the suspects were often simple shepherds or charcoal burners living in the forest, and for that reason alone were objects of suspicion. There may have been a few mentally ill people among them, since back then any form of mental illness was viewed as proof that person had signed a pact with the devil.

One interesting theory is that “werewolves” may have simply been people infected with rabies, at that time called
Hundswut
, or “canine madness.” The symptoms of the disease, still largely incurable today, actually made the victims look like wolves. They ran around biting people and other animals, they sometimes howled, their teeth looked longer due to spastic paralysis in their face, and they were terrified of water. The disease was transmitted at that time, just as it is now, by dogs and wolves, but also by small predators like foxes and ferrets, and even by bats.

When I read about this connection between werewolves and rabies, I knew I’d come across an interesting murder weapon—for crime writers, always an exciting moment.

The second historical inspiration behind this novel were the Bamberg witch trials of 1612 through 1630, in which about a thousand people met their deaths. These trials, along with the Würzburg witch trials, are considered to have been the most cataclysmic in all of Europe. In the neighboring town of Zeil am Main, a special oven was built just to cremate all the corpses. For decades afterward, many houses in Bamberg stood empty and fell into disrepair because their owners had died at the stake. Ruins, haunted houses, the decline of a once-wealthy city—in my novel, this all provides a gruesome backdrop based on historical facts.

Many years ago, I came across an article about the so-called Bamberg Malefiz
(malefactor
or
criminal)
or Druden
(druid)
House. The building was probably the most modern prison and torture facility of its time, sort of a Guantanamo Bay of the seventeenth century. In addition to the usual means of torture, victims were immersed in caustic lime, fed a salty mash of fish, forced to sit on iron chairs over a hot fire, or placed in tiny enclosures whose bottom was covered with small, sharp wooden pyramids. Have I mentioned that historical reality is often much more cruel than any writer’s imagination?

When the Swedes invaded Bamberg in 1632, during the Thirty Years’ War, the citizens learned about the atrocities committed there. The ten remaining prisoners were quickly released and the Malefiz House torn down in an effort to erase all evidence of the cruelty perpetrated there.

An online museum (
http://www.malefiz-haus.de
) offers a gruesome picture of the interior of this horrific building, as does the graphically remarkable nonfiction work
The Factory of Death
by Ralph Kloos and Thomas Göhl (available at
http://www.hexenbrenner-museum.com
), from which I took a short passage from a Bamberg sentence for witchcraft. For anyone interested in the period of the Bamberg witch trials, I especially recommend Sabine Weigand’s well-researched novel
Die Seelen im Feuer,
from which I have excerpted a short description taken from the trial minutes.

I’ve often wondered what effect these witch trials had on the Bamberg hangmen at the time. After all, they had to torture and execute hundreds of people. How does anyone process that psychologically? Does the constant killing turn one into an unfeeling monster? Did the hangman have nightmares? Anyone who wants to learn more about torturing at that time should visit the terrifying torture museums in Siena and San Gimignano during a vacation to Italy. I’d like to emphasize, however, that these museums are definitely not suited for small children! I only mention this because in my research trips I kept bumping into families with small children licking ice-cream cones and looking very upset.

The only way one could practice that bloody vocation with a good conscience, in the long run, was to be like the Bamberg executioner Jeremias (alias Michael Binder) in the novel, who was modeled after an actual, historical person. The last German hangman, Johann Reichhart, beheaded almost three thousand people during the Nazi period alone, presumably a record for executioners. He then continued working for the American occupation forces after the end of the war. The GIs beat him up before giving him the job of hanging war criminals in Landsberg, and after that they put him in a labor camp. Reichhart always performed his dirty work professionally and, above all, quickly, no matter which side he was on. Nevertheless, he died poor and impoverished at the age of seventy-nine. He insisted he never regretted the work he did.

The trial of Chancellor Haan and his family, by the way, is something I didn’t make up, either. His name is recorded in the city archives. Most of the members of the so-called Witches Commission also appear in the official documents, so they also really existed. Whether, decades later, there was still one last living survivor plotting revenge . . . very well, I did take a little artistic license with that. Also, at that time Sebastian Harsee was not the suffragan bishop of Bamberg.

And to the best of my knowledge, there never was a werewolf commission in Bamberg, though it surely is a possibility.

Just a word about the group of actors in the novel, which I really enjoyed writing about—after all, I studied theater “with great passion” like Faust, as a minor subject, for my own enjoyment. Yes, there were such groups of traveling actors in the German Reich at the time, presenting plays by Shakespeare, though in edited form. The focus was clearly on the action; poetic form, plot development, and complex characterization were secondary—just like in Hollywood, three hundred and fifty years later. According to information from the German Shakespeare Library in Munich, it isn’t certain that these works were published under Shakespeare’s name, but it’s quite possible that my Barbara would have been able to find such a book.

Otherwise, as I said, history always writes the best stories. Do you know, by chance, the story about the collapse of the latrine in Erfurt in the year 1184, in which almost the entire German nobility in that city fell into the cesspool and almost literally drowned in its own excrement? No? Or perhaps the Fourth Crusade, which ended in folly when it got to Constantinople, where Christian knights plundered and torched the Christian city? Or the execution of the pirate Störtebecker, who . . .

Well, you see, there’s plenty of material left for books yet to come.

As always, I’d like to thank many people who contributed to the creation of this novel. First of all, the art historian and city guide Dr. Christine Freise-Wonka, who patiently and helpfully told me everything I needed to know about Bamberg. The same is true of Rita Hoidn of the Bavarian Castle and Lakes Administration, Anna-Maria Schühlein of the Bamberg Tourist Office, and the kind people at the Bamberg City Archives.

Petra Nerreter showed me her master’s thesis about Bamberg executioners, Dr. Thomas Löscher of the Institute for Tropical Medicine at Munich University told me all I needed to know about rabies, and Dr. Bettina Boecker of the Shakespeare Research Library helped me with my questions about the acceptance of Shakespeare’s work in seventeenth-century Germany.

Thanks also to Christine Hartnagel, whose guided tours of Bamberg are outstanding, and who gave me a valuable tip for my next Hangman’s Daughter novel. Likewise, sincerest thanks to my esteemed colleague and writer, the erudite Richard Dübell, who helped me a number of times with my research.

Have I forgotten anyone? Naturally I am deeply indebted, as always, to Gerd Rumler and Martina Kuscheck at my literary agency for their proofing and encouragement, Uta Rupprecht and Nina Wegscheider for edits, the always energetic Stephanie Martin at Ullstein Publishers, my brothers and my father for medical matters, Christian Wiedemann for the desk with a view of the Eiger North Wall—and my wife, Katrin, who’s always lent an ear when I reach a dead end. Thanks for all your tips, and I love you even if I sometimes grumble like a Kuisl!

And, as always, all the errors are mine. If you find some, let me know. You never stop learning.