The Werewolf of Bamberg (US Edition) (A Hangman's Daughter Tale Book 5)

by Oliver Pötzsch

  In about another fifty or sixty feet she reached the end of the tunnel, where, on the right, several slippery, worn steps led into a larger tunnel. The first steps were covered by fallen rocks, but after a few yards there was an area of solid, smooth stone. The dim light came from a low doorway apparently leading to a room above.

  Holding her breath, Barbara slowly moved toward the light. Upon entering the room, she found a single, smoking torch revealing the outlines of several dust-covered crates and trunks; a figure in a threadbare brown monk’s habit cowered among them. The man’s face was scratched and full of bloody welts, and he was so pale he appeared almost transparent. Still, Barbara recognized him at once.

  It was the playwright, Markus Salter.

  When he caught sight of her, the haggard man winced, then a tired smile spread across his face.

  “Greetings, Barbara,” Salter said, raising a shaking hand. “I thought they’d finally caught up with me, but evidently Providence has allowed the two of us, at least, to escape this madness.” Tears ran down his bloodied face. “I don’t know where God is, but tonight he has clearly abandoned Bamberg.”

  The blow that struck Georg on the side was powerful, yet not especially painful. Nevertheless, it was hard enough to hurl him back into the corner of the little room, where he came to rest with his head against the wall. A strange odor was in the air; at first Georg couldn’t place it. Then he recognized the stench of a beast of prey, and of decay.

  A werewolf. Jeremias has conjured up a werewolf.

  Trembling, he turned around, only to look straight into the angry face of his father.

  “What the hell are you doing, beating up a crippled old man, eh?” he shouted. “I don’t know what happened here, but my son doesn’t beat cripples, do you understand?”

  His heart pounding wildly, Georg stood up and wiped his mouth where his father had slapped him.

  Next to Jakob stood Magdalena, her arms crossed, staring angrily at Georg. “Good God, Georg, what are you doing here at Jeremias’s house at this hour of the night?” she scolded. “Do you have any idea how worried we’ve been? And where are the children? They should have been home and in bed hours ago.”

  “The children are next door in the tavern,” he croaked. “They’re all right. In contrast to me.”

  “What is that supposed to mean? Speak up.” His father pulled him to his feet. “Say something.”

  Georg pointed at Jeremias, still lying on the floor, panting for breath. His scarred face was bright red from the hot water Georg had flung in his face.

  “He’s no defenseless cripple,” Georg said angrily. “He’s Michael Binder, the man who used to be the Bamberg executioner. He’s a murderer and probably the werewolf we’ve been looking for. He . . . he poisoned me with hemlock.”

  Sheer terror seized him as he felt the strange tickling that had already traveled up to his thighs.

  “He has an antidote.” He turned urgently to Jakob and Magdalena, who stood there gaping at him. “Rose of Jericho and other things. He’s the only one who knows the exact formula. We must force him to give it to us, or I’m done for.”

  Jakob dropped down onto a stool, which creaked perilously with the sudden weight. The hangman shook his head, at a loss.

  “Murderer . . . antidote . . . rose of Jericho . . . ,” he mumbled. “Damn it, Georg, how much have you had to drink? I can smell your breath from here.”

  “But it’s the truth,” Georg insisted. “Jeremias is a murderer, he admitted it himself. And he poisoned me. Here.” He pointed to the cup of hemlock still standing on the table. “He gave me the hemlock in this cup.”

  Jakob picked up the cup, and his huge hooked nose disappeared for a moment inside, as if it were an autonomous creature acting on its own. He sniffed a number of times, then shook his head.

  “I’ll eat a witch’s broom if there’s hemlock in this,” he said calmly. “Hemlock smells like mouse droppings. This here is actually . . .” He stopped to smell again. “Cinnamon, honey . . . hmm, probably cardamom, a pinch of pepper—”

  “And a few cloves from far-off India,” Jeremias interrupted. He’d gotten to his feet again and sat down unsteadily on the bed. “And don’t forget the sinfully expensive muscat. The brew is a so-called hippocras, brewed according to the original recipe of the Greek physician Hippocrates—a strong and, by the way, very delicious spiced wine that is not at all poisonous.”

  “But . . . but you told me yourself it contained hemlock. Now I’m completely confused.” Georg’s gaze wandered back and forth between Jakob and Jeremias. “And I can feel this tingling . . .”

  “Do you really, Georg?” Jeremias asked with a mischievous smile. “Or is it possible it’s just your imagination?”

  Baffled, Georg wiggled his toes, and indeed the tingling seemed to have almost completely disappeared. How was that possible?

  “The fascinating power of suggestion,” Jeremias said. “With a little showmanship you can make people believe anything. Healing powers as well as deadly ones. Your father surely knows as much about this as I do.”

  “And the rose of Jericho?” Georg asked hesitantly, though he already suspected what the answer would be.

  “The rose of Jericho is a pretty, though expensive, ornament,” Magdalena said with a shrug. “When you water it, it turns green, but I’ve never heard that it was a strong antidote for anything. If you’d paid a little more attention to Father back home, you’d know that.”

  Georg tore his hair in anger. He’d thought he was so smart, and now it appeared he’d made an ass of himself again in front of his father and big sister. Furious, he turned around to Jeremias. “You . . . you did that just so I’d keep my mouth shut, didn’t you?”

  Jeremias raised his hands apologetically. “And it worked. Believe me, Georg, that one murder was enough for me.” His face turned dark. “I’ll roast in hell for that alone.”

  “I think you owe us an explanation,” said Magdalena, looking at Jeremias suspiciously, “but first I want to see my children. And perhaps someone else,” she added vaguely.

  Jeremias pointed toward the little door next to the bookshelves. “Georg was right, the two boys are sleeping peacefully in the next room. But please assure yourself.”

  Magdalena opened the door and disappeared. When she returned, she was visibly relieved. “The boys are fine,” she declared. “Judging from the smears around their mouths, at worst they have had too much plum jam to eat. The one I’m really missing, however, is Barbara.”

  “Barbara?” Jakob looked at her in surprise. “This is getting even more confusing. Are you saying that Barbara was here the whole time? Damn it, damn it!” He was getting ready to explode, but Magdalena cut him off.

  “None of that matters anymore,” she said. “Now that we’ve brought Matheo to safety, I would have come here tomorrow and brought her home.” Magdalena turned to Jeremias and asked sternly, “So where is she?”

  Jeremias sighed. “Actually, Barbara was with the actors most of the time, and I haven’t really seen her. She left this morning to go to the castle with them. Perhaps she was helping with their costumes.”

  “Just wait till I get my hands on her,” Jakob growled. “But we’ll take care of that later.” He turned back to Georg. “And now it’s high time you told me what happened here.”

  Georg took a deep breath, then lowered his head and told his father about getting drunk at the Blue Lion, but also all the things he’d seen and how he’d been able to make sense of it in the end. He told him about the ingredients for the sleep sponge he’d discovered in Jeremias’s room, Jeremias’s extensive knowledge of Latin, and the broken executioner’s sword—but most importantly, he told about Jeremias’s confession that he was Michael Binder, the former executioner, and that he had just recently committed a murder.

  “He confessed to having killed the young prostitute,” Georg said finally. “Only the murderer could know about the ripped-open rib cage. Jeremias is the werewolf you’ve
been looking for.”

  Jakob had listened silently the whole time, and now he turned to Jeremias, still sitting on the bed, rubbing a cool ointment on his red, scarred face.

  “Is it true what the boy says?” the hangman asked.

  Jeremias sighed. “Only part of it. Yes, I killed Clara, but I’m not the werewolf. You must believe that.”

  “Then we’ll have to hear more,” Kuisl replied. He took out his pipe and lit it on a flaming wood chip he’d fetched from the stove. Soon, fragrant clouds of smoke were ascending toward the ceiling, dispelling the rotten stench of the beast of prey that had been clinging to his clothes.

  “So speak up,” Jakob demanded. “Or must I first ask my brother to throw you on the rack and torture you with thumbscrews?”

  Jeremias winked mischievously. “Believe me, when it comes to the rack and thumbscrews, you youngsters could still learn a lot from me.” But then he turned serious.

  “It’s just as Georg told you. Indeed, I was once the Bamberg executioner Michael Binder—but Michael Binder is long dead and gone. He died almost forty years ago in a trough full of unslaked lime. Since then, I’ve been Jeremias. But I was never able to wash away the guilt weighing on me . . . only my old name.” The old man sighed deeply, and there was a strange rattle in his throat. “I could never forget the sight of my beloved Carlotta—the vision of her follows me in all my dreams. And then, about a year ago, this young girl appeared, the very image of Carlotta.”

  “Do you mean the young prostitute?” Magdalena interrupted.

  Jeremias nodded. “The first time I saw the girl, she came to me to abort a child. Prostitutes know about my knowledge of healing and visit me in secret. Ever since then, I couldn’t forget the girl. Her . . . her name was Clara. I went to her and told her I only wanted to touch her, nothing more. At first, she was disgusted, but I gave her money, lots of money, and she gave herself to me. I often visited her in the brothel in the Rosengasse, and once I persuaded her to sleep here with me.” A blissful smile spread across his face. “It was the most wonderful night in almost half a century. We talked a lot, just as I had talked back then with Carlotta—mostly inconsequential things, the way new lovers do. I was a fool. A stupid old fool.” He pounded his forehead with his fist before continuing.

  “In a moment of weakness, I told Clara my secret. I told her that in my former life I’d been Michael Binder, the hangman of Bamberg.” His face darkened. “The next day she demanded money, and later, even more. She threatened to turn me over to the officials.”

  “Why would that have been so bad?” Georg asked. “After all, you didn’t do anything illegal back then, you were just the hangman.”

  Jeremias smiled. “That’s just it, I was the hangman. Remember, at that time, not only ordinary people, but more importantly many nobles and councilors were being burned at the stake. Their families swore bloody revenge. I can still see them standing there by the flaming stake and pointing at me.” He shuddered. “They could never call the ones responsible to account, as they were too powerful. But believe me, they would have taken out their anger on me—and they still would today, because I’m just a simple hangman.”

  Jakob grumbled his agreement and took another drag on his pipe. “You’re probably right. It’s so easy for them to vent their anger and guilt on us, and that’s why they need us—to kill, and to heal sometimes, too, and so we can relieve them of their undesired offspring. And afterward, in the street, they look away, and behind our backs they make the sign of the cross.”

  “What happened with this young Clara?” Magdalena asked.

  Jeremias took a deep breath. “Once, when I had no money to pay her, I went to her and asked her to stop it. But she just laughed at me and said she’d go to Captain Lebrecht the next day to report me. She called me a stupid cripple and told me all the things the patricians would do to make my life hell. At that moment, I knew I had to act.” He paused. “I thought about all the ways I could hurt her, and I got the idea of using the sleep sponge, which I had used on criminals in the past. The very next night, I lay in wait for her and pressed the sleep sponge over her face. She cried out once, then fell to the ground. She didn’t even feel the blow that smashed her skull.”

  “But the rib cage,” Georg whispered. He was both fascinated and repelled by Jeremias’s cold-blooded description of the young girl’s murder. “You cut open her rib cage. Why?”

  Jeremias shrugged. “There were people who’d seen me with Clara, and I was afraid someone might get the wrong idea. An old man, an unrequited love . . . So I made it look like this werewolf had sunk its fangs into her.” He winked at Jakob. “And all of you were fooled by it.”

  Georg now looked at the old man in disgust.

  Is this what happens when you kill hundreds of people? How sick and unfeeling can you get?

  For the first time he felt nothing but revulsion for the vocation of the executioner.

  But this is probably what I’ll have to do someday.

  The little room was now almost completely filled with smoke from Jakob’s pipe, and through the gray clouds, Jeremias’s scarred face looked almost like a ghost, a spirit from a long-forgotten past.

  The silence in the room was broken by his question, uttered in a soft voice. “Are you going to hand me over now to the guards?”

  “I’m not a judge, I’m just a hangman like you used to be,” Jakob replied hesitantly. “God knows there was a lot of pain in your life, but I’m sure that at least the great judge of us all will see to it that you pay for this deed in eternity. And you will pay more than for any of the others you have killed, because at least this one time you were able to make your decision freely. And you chose the path of darkness.”

  “I know that,” Jeremias replied gloomily, and he looked to see what his visitors would do next. “So you’ll let me go?”

  “I’m not sure yet,” Jakob said. He puffed on his pipe and seemed completely lost in his own thoughts. “It depends on what else we learn. Perhaps even with your help.” He stared at Jeremias sharply. “Do you swear you have nothing to do with the other murders?”

  The old man held his hand to his skinny chest. “I swear by all the saints and the Holy Mother of Jesus.”

  Jakob waved dismissively. “You can forget all that rot. I always thought there was something fishy about the murder of the young prostitute. The odor of henbane, her ripped-open chest—it didn’t seem to fit with the others.”

  “But the other victims were also badly mangled,” Magdalena interrupted. “They’d been tortured, dismembered . . .”

  “The werewolf,” Georg whispered, making the sign of the cross.

  “Good God, just stop talking about this damn werewolf!” Jakob scolded. “Can’t you see that someone is playing us for fools? Jeremias exploited that horror story, as did someone before him. But who? And why?” The hangman frowned. “Well, at least we know this prostitute doesn’t belong with the others. She was the stone that didn’t fit in the mosaic. If we put this aside, who’s left? Who . . .”

  Jakob, mulling it all over, reached out for the chess pieces lying on the table beside the chessboard.

  “The first victim was probably this Klaus Schwarzkontz,” he mumbled without taking the pipe from his mouth. “An old Bamberg city councilor.” He placed a white castle on the board. “Thadäus Vasold was also an old councilor, and the old lady Agnes Gotzendörfer was the widow of an influential patrician, as well.” Another castle and a black queen followed. “So here we have three people connected by the power they had in the past.”

  “But there were also some rather young women,” Magdalena chimed in. “The apothecary’s wife, Adelheid Rinswieser, for example, whose husband is also on the council. And Simon said that the fiancée of another young councilor also disappeared, a certain Johanna Steinhofer.”

  Jakob placed two white knights alongside the black queen and the two rooks. “Look,” he said. “It’s just a thought. If you leave the prostitute out of the picture,
it’s a struggle between the patricians and the other families. The only conclusion, then—”

  Georg cleared his throat. “Father?” he asked softly.

  Impatiently, Jakob turned to face him. “For God’s sake, what is it?”

  “Uh, you forget there was one more woman who has disappeared,” Georg replied timidly. “A simple miller’s wife by the name of Barbara Leupnitz, who lived in the Bamberg Forest. Her husband is certain one of the dismembered arms belonged to her. After Councilor Schwarzkontz, she was the second victim.”

  Jakob set down another white pawn among the other figures. “So, not one of the patricians. I thought the veil was lifting.”

  “Well, perhaps it is, after all.”

  It was Jeremias, lying on the bed. Apparently the pain in his face had subsided. Now he stood up, shuffled over to the table, and stood there thinking about the six figures on the chessboard. He reached out with his gout-plagued fingers for the lone white pawn, then turned to Georg with a questioning look.

  “Did you say the miller’s wife is Barbara Leupnitz?”

  When Georg nodded, Jeremias continued, lost deep in thought: “I knew her father well. Johannes Schramb. He was just a simple scribe in the city hall, like a number of others. But there was a time when I saw Schramb almost every day.”

  “And when was that?” Magdalena asked.

  Jeremias took a deep breath before answering.

  “That was at the time of the witch trials. Johannes Schramb was at that time a scribe for the so-called Witches Commission.”

  “The Witches Commission?” asked Magdalena, frowning. “Like the one they’ve set up because of this werewolf?”

  “Something like that,” Jeremias nodded. “Back then, the members of the Witches Commission were the so-called Fragherren—the inquisitors—and they alone decided who looked suspicious and whom to question. They were also present every time a suspect was tortured. The Bamberg Witches Commission ruled in cases involving life and death. They were appointed by the bishop, and there was no one in the city who could question their decisions.”