Bartholomäus and Jakob nodded, and the captain took a deep breath.
“Then take another look at the corpse you found, and tell me exactly what happened yesterday.”
He pulled the sheet away from the table. Hieronymus gasped softly while the two hangmen looked down with interest at the naked corpse. They had seen too many corpses and too much sorrow in their lives, but just the same, anger started welling up in Jakob.
She’s just a little older than my Barbara . . .
The red-haired girl in front of them was as pale as parchment. Something had ripped open her throat, so that her neck was just a gaping wound. Even more gruesome to look at, however, was the thin cut Jakob had not noticed the night before beneath her bloody dress; it extended from her breastbone to her navel. It looked just like the incisions the Schongau hangman sometimes made himself on hanged criminals in order to study the body’s internal organs. Clotted blood had formed along the incision, where a fat blowfly, buzzing loudly, alighted and started crawling down toward her navel. The girl looked like a doll that had been torn to pieces and clumsily stitched back together again.
“Who would do something like that?” asked a horrified Hieronymus Hauser after a while. His pasty face had suddenly turned gray, and he took a deep gulp.
“Well, that’s the reason I wanted to hear more about what happened last night,” Martin Lebrecht replied. “The girl was evidently a whore. An unhappy client probably slit her throat, but what about this here?” He shook his head in disgust and turned to Bartholomäus. “When you brought me the corpse last night, I discovered the incision at once and decided not to have the girl taken to potter’s field, as I usually would. That would only have started rumors, and we have enough of those in the city already.” He stopped to think. “In addition, look what the rag collector Answin brought me early this morning. He fished it out of the Regnitz just a few hours ago.” Lebrecht pulled aside the second, smaller sheet, revealing the pale leg of a woman. It seemed to have been in the water for some time, as rats and fish had already been nibbling on it.
“This is the third body part we’ve found this month,” the captain continued.
“The fourth,” Jakob interrupted.
Martin Lebrecht looked at him, obviously confused. “What are you saying?”
“I said, the fourth. Yesterday evening, just before we arrived in Bamberg, we came upon a right arm in the river that had been washed ashore.” In a few words, Jakob Kuisl told the captain about their discovery in the Bamberg Forest. “Evidently it belonged to a man about sixty years old who did a lot of writing . . . and had gout,” he said finally. “The fingers were all gnarled.”
“Hm, that could indeed be Councilor Schwarzkontz, who has been missing for four weeks,” Lebrecht mumbled. “Did he have a ring on his finger?”
“It looked like he used to wear one. There was a pale circle on his finger, but the ring was gone.”
The captain thought for a moment and nodded. “That must have been the ring with the city seal. Schwarzkontz was known to have worn it wherever he went.”
For a moment, Jakob closed his eyes and cursed himself for being such a fool. He was so certain the man had worn a wedding ring that he’d ignored any other possibilities. Now he realized how rash his judgment had been.
You never stop learning. Not even in your old age. Well, at least Magdalena won’t hear anything about it . . .
“The arm you found brings the total to four body parts,” Lebrecht continued, “some male, some female. I assume that at least both arms belonged to Klaus Schwarzkontz. His son Walther was able to recognize a scar on one of them, and he is sure it was his father.”
“Just a moment.” Bartholomäus stared in confusion at the captain. “The left arm belonged to Councilor Schwarzkontz? But . . .”
“I know what you’re going to say,” Lebrecht interrupted. “If Klaus Schwarzkontz was slain by highwaymen somewhere in the forest, what in the world is his left arm doing here in Bamberg?”
“The entire area around the city is full of small rivers and streams,” Hieronymus interrupted. “It’s quite possible that one of the body parts was carried here by the water. Wild animals ripped up the corpse and—”
“This wasn’t any wild animal,” Jakob retorted crossly. “I saw the arm, and someone had been working on it with a knife or an ax.”
“Well, isn’t that just fine. One more riddle.” Lebrecht groaned, then began counting off on his fingers. “Including Klaus Schwarzkontz, I have three missing people and a bunch of body parts, and now the apothecary Magnus Rinswieser comes to me early this morning whining and complaining that his young wife has vanished into thin air. Guards saw her entering the forest near the city late at night.” He took a deep breath. “But as if that’s not enough, now that old drunk Matthias is running through town telling everyone that last night he saw a hairy monster that walks on its two hind legs. This . . . this idiot!” Lebrecht rubbed his bloodshot eyes, and again Jakob Kuisl had the feeling that the captain was withholding something from them.
“I immediately put Matthias in the city jail to sober him up,” Lebrecht continued, “but by then the whole city had heard about it. Until now, isolated reports could be discounted—a tragic accident, wild animals, marital discord, what have you—but when this gets out . . .” He paused for a moment, gesturing toward the girl’s mutilated body. “When this gets out I’ll have to report the matter to the prince-bishop, whether I like it or not. And we all know what that means.” His final words hovered in the air, fraught with meaning. Finally he continued. “So, for God’s sake, tell me exactly what happened yesterday. I pray to God we can find a natural explanation for all this.”
Bartholomäus cleared his throat, then started talking. Occasionally he brought Jakob into the picture, and the latter responded in a few words.
“So there was a struggle,” the captain summarized. “The girl tried to defend herself, but the murderer struck her down and for whatever reason slit her throat. It’s clear up to this point, but what caused the incision in her chest?”
“May I have another look at the corpse and the leg?” asked Jakob.
Martin Lebrecht looked at him suspiciously. “Why?”
“My brother is skilled in medicine,” Bartholomäus tried to explain. “It was always the case. It runs in the family. I’m the only black sheep in this respect.”
Jakob nodded almost imperceptibly. Like many other executioners, he knew how to torture and kill, but also how to cure. The medical expertise of the Kuisls was known far and wide, but his brother Bartholomäus had never been interested. Bartl was good at doctoring animals and knew a lot about horses and dogs, but people, Jakob assumed, appealed to him only when they were already dead.
The captain stepped aside and motioned for the Schongau hangman to step up and take a closer look at the cadaver. “Go right ahead. You certainly are welcome to try, though I don’t think you’re going to find out anything I haven’t seen already.”
First, Jakob turned to the severed leg that had been lying in the water for several days. It was already in such bad shape that it was impossible to say anything more about it, except that it probably belonged to an elderly woman. It was not even possible to tell if the leg had been severed with a knife or simply ripped off. Before turning away, Jakob took one last look at the toes. He froze suddenly, then stood up again and looked all around him.
“Two of this woman’s toenails have been ripped off,” he said.
“What?” Martin Lebrecht frowned. “Are you trying to say she has been tortured?”
“I can’t be sure of that, but what point would there be otherwise in pulling someone’s toenails out? So she wouldn’t have to cut them again?”
“Or perhaps because the rats have had a feast on the corpse?” Hieronymus Hauser suggested, without any reaction to Jakob’s sarcastic remark.
Jakob Kuisl shook his head. “Believe me, my brother and I know what it looks like when someone’s nails have bee
n pulled out. We’ve done it ourselves often enough, haven’t we, Bartholomäus?”
Bartholomäus nodded silently, and Jakob had the feeling that the two others were distancing themselves a bit from him and his brother.
After a while, he bent down over the girl’s corpse and began sniffing noisily, his huge nostrils flaring out like sails. Again he noticed the strange, musty odor that he had wondered about the previous night. Now it was far fainter, barely perceptible.
“What in the world is your brother doing?” the horrified captain whispered.
“He . . . well, he has a good nose, a sensitive one,” Bartholomäus tried to explain. “Sometimes he smells things that no one else can. Almost like a bloodhound.”
The others remained silent as Kuisl examined the wound in the neck more closely. The edges were frayed, as if the murderer had used not a sharpened knife, but a saw or a jagged sword.
Or claws?
Kuisl put the thought aside and concentrated on the cut to the chest. Pulling the edges of the wound apart, he noticed that the breastbone had been almost cut in half in one place. Evidently the murderer had been interrupted while he worked. The wound was in the upper third of the breastbone, directly above the heart.
He paused.
Was that possible?
“Why are you stopping?” asked the clerk, who had been watching him with great curiosity up to that point. “Did you find anything?”
Jakob hesitated, and then shook his head. “Just a hunch. But too vague to say—”
“Now come out with it,” his brother interrupted. “Always the mystery! That’s what I couldn’t stand about you back then—even if you were usually right,” he added, grumbling.
“Speak up,” Martin Lebrecht insisted.
“The perpetrator cut through the skin and evidently wanted to open the chest with a saw, or something like it,” Jakob said finally as he turned to the circle of onlookers. He pointed at the clean incision. “This, unmistakably, is the act of a skilled workman. My brother and I probably disturbed him, and the question is why he was doing that.”
“And what do you suspect?” Hieronymus asked.
“The deep incision is right at the level of the heart,” Jakob replied. “I myself have made incisions like this in order to examine the inner organs of a body. I think . . .” He hesitated. “Well, I think the murderer wanted to cut out the girl’s heart.”
For a while no one said a word, and the only sound was the constant rushing water of the Regnitz. Finally Martin Lebrecht cleared his throat.
“It doesn’t matter whether or not this is sheer nonsense,” he finally said. “One thing must be clear: this assumption is never—I repeat, never—to be mentioned outside the walls of this guardhouse. If the bishop gets wind of it, great misfortune will come to this city—a misfortune like the one known all too well by the older men among us.” He cast a gloomy look at Bartholomäus. “If that should happen, Master Bartholomäus, I promise you there will be much for you to do here in Bamberg.” His voice failed him. Finally, he continued in nearly a whisper. “God in heaven, will this horror never end?”
“If I’d known our new aunt was sending us on so many errands, I would have thought twice before coming along on this shopping trip.” Groaning, Barbara pushed past the many displays in the Fischgasse, where brook trout and slimy perch were thrashing about. A huge catfish glared scornfully at the two women, while mussels and river snails soaked in wooden tubs next to the displays. It was already past noon, but the hustle and bustle of the marketplace showed no sign of ending.
“We promised Katharina,” Magdalena said in a stern voice, “so stop complaining. Besides, the only thing we still need now is the crabs for this evening, and then we’ll be done.”
“Yes, after we’ve bought thyme, carrots, cabbage, onions, eggs, stockfish, a jug of muscatel, half a pig of bacon fat, and . . . oh, I’ve forgotten the stinking tobacco for Father.” With a sigh, Barbara sat down at the edge of a well and splashed some water on her face to cool off. “How many markets have we been to today? I stopped counting hours ago.”
“You insisted on seeing the marketplace.” Magdalena grinned. “Aunt Katharina likes to cook, and surely we can get a few recipes from her.”
“Well! I didn’t come to Bamberg just to sit by the stove and exchange recipes. Besides, I don’t want to get as fat as Aunt Katharina, and . . . Hey, wait a minute!”
Magdalena had turned away with a shrug and continued down past the many stalls on Fischstrasse toward the harbor. Their shopping trip had indeed taken the two hangman’s daughters through half the city. They’d gone from the Green Market in front of St. Martin’s Church to the fruit market, the milk market, and finally down Butcher’s Lane. The city seemed much friendlier to Magdalena now than it had on their arrival the night before. The streets were wider and cleaner than in Schongau, and some were even paved. Gaily colored, half-timbered houses, breweries redolent of malt, and a huge number of small churches and chapels bore witness to the rich heritage of this seat of the Archdiocese of Bamberg, formerly one of the mightiest cities in the Reich. It was clear, however, that Bamberg’s best years lay behind it. Again and again the two women had come across abandoned houses and ruins that looked like festering wounds between the other buildings. Not for the fist time, Magdalena asked herself why people had simply abandoned their magnificent homes.
Up to that point, they had been strolling only through the new part of the city, a large area standing like an island surrounded by two branches of the Regnitz. The old part of the city, where the canons and the bishop resided, lay on the other side of the canal, where a cathedral was built atop a hill, the highest point in the city. The two sections of town met at the harbor, not far from city hall. Huge river rafts, flat-bottomed boats, and small barques traveled serenely past the houses there. More ships lay at anchor at the piers to pay their tolls before proceeding to Schweinfurt or Forchheim. A wooden crane was unloading crates from one of the rafts, and the air smelled of algae, fish, and stagnant river water. Men shouted, laughed, and cursed as fishwives offered their slippery catch to passersby.
Magdalena went to a booth off to one side and bought the river crabs that Katharina had asked for. Her basket was now filled to the top, and Barbara also had a heavy bundle to carry, with carrots and bunches of leeks sticking out of their wrappings.
“So that’s it,” Magdalena said with relief. “Let’s take these things as quickly as we can to the hangman’s house before Aunt Katharina gets impatient, and then—”
She was interrupted by a drumroll and a squawking fanfare of rusty trumpets, and when she turned around, she saw a group of men down at the harbor with drums and wind instruments. They wore colorful, threadbare costumes and powdered wigs on their heads like those currently in fashion at German and French courts. In the middle was a beanpole of a man who, with great ceremony, unrolled a parchment.
“Are these actors?” asked Barbara with surprise. “I’ve never—”
“Shhh!” Magdalena whispered while the gaunt man began a speech in which he enunciated each word like a traveling priest, with a strange accent Magdalena had never heard before.
“Citizens of Bamberg, hear and be amazed,” he proclaimed. “The venerable troupe of Sir Malcolm that has traveled widely and performed to great acclaim in London, Paris, and Constantinople has the honor of performing in this city tragedies and comedies, unlike anything the world has ever seen before. Beginning tomorrow, come to experience love and murder, nobility and villainy, and the glory and fall of royal dynasties. We offer for your enjoyment music, dance, burlesque—in short, a true feast for the eye and ear, in the large ballroom of the wedding house.” The man pointed dramatically to a multistory building beyond the harbor square. “Our first play will be given there tomorrow afternoon, at a cost of just three kreuzers per visitor. Anyone missing it will regret it for a long time.”
“The wedding house,” Barbara whispered. “Isn’t that where the celebration for Un
cle Bartholomäus and Katharina will be? Can we go there right now, Magdalena? Let’s see what’s going on there.”
Magdalena chuckled as she watched her younger sister stare longingly at the actors. A large crowd of people had gathered around the group and began to cheer. The sound grew louder when the men began doing cartwheels and juggling balls. One of them, a handsome young fellow, glanced at the two young women and smiled. He had matted, jet-black hair and was tanned, almost dark-skinned, with sinewy muscles standing out from beneath his tight-fitting linen shirt. Magdalena grinned when her little sister ran her fingers through her curls in embarrassment as they watched the antics of the actors.
Once again, Magdalena realized how little she herself had seen of the world, despite her thirty years. Occasionally, troupes of jugglers came to the provincial town of Schongau and performed their little tricks and dances and made crude jokes. Many of them came from lands beyond the Alps, and they played short, comical scenes wearing masks on their faces. But a troupe that performed longer stories on stage was new to Magdalena.
There was a long roll of drums, then the trumpets sounded again, off-key, and the troupe moved slowly back into the wedding house.
“Come, let us see where they’ve set up their theater,” Barbara pleaded again. “Just for a few minutes.”
“But what about all these things we’ve bought?” Magdalena asked.
“We’ll take them along.” Barbara was already making her way through the crowd toward the entrance to the wedding house. “Half an hour one way or the other won’t matter.”
With a sigh, Magdalena followed. She was going to object, but she couldn’t deny that the theater had an almost-magical attraction for her, as well.
As soon as the two young women entered the wide door of the wedding house they could feel the coolness of its huge walls. It was almost as if winter had already arrived. Shivering, Magdalena looked around the spacious area where kegs of wine, bales of cloth, and crates were standing. Some servants were unloading a cart that had made its way from the harbor to the building entrance. Farther back, the room opened into an interior courtyard that evidently belonged to a large tavern. The two girls could hear the shouting and quarreling of some revelers, and somewhere a fiddle was being played very badly. Under the dome itself, a wide, winding stairway led to the upper floors, where people could be heard hammering and sawing busily and a roll of drums could be heard now and then.
The Werewolf of Bamberg Page 8
