The Council of Twelve

by Oliver Pötzsch

  The electress cut him off with a gesture. “I’m afraid we’ll have to continue our conversation some other time,” she said with a shrug. “The roundup of the rams is about to begin in the park, and my husband and I have to be there as the first shepherd and the goddess of the hunt. I’m sure you understand. Au revoir.” She held out her hand to Simon, a diamond ring on each finger. Simon kissed one of the rings and kept his head down, still puzzled about Max’s last statement about Peter.

  He’s on the right track . . .

  Was that why Peter and Paul hadn’t come home? Were they looking for that godforsaken mutt? Well, he didn’t really have time to worry about that now. He needed to find Pfundner. And where had his father-in-law and Georg gone?

  While the musicians struck up a folk tune and Moors, shepherds, Turks, and giggling peasants with powdered wigs assumed their positions for the dance, Simon hurried through the corridors and chambers of Nymphenburg Palace.

  But no matter how hard he looked, he couldn’t find Jakob Kuisl or Georg anywhere.

  And no trace of Magdalena, either.

  “Sheesh, that howling really gives me the creeps,” Seppi whispered as he and the other boys stood in the stinking corridor below the silk manufactory.

  Together, they listened to the rising and falling of the mournful wailing. It seemed to come from far away and yet nearby at the same time. They knew only that it was from somewhere above them. The boys exchanged anxious looks.

  Peter wondered whether it wouldn’t have been better to tell their mother, after all. But she would likely have forbidden him from going to search for the prince’s pet dog with his friends, and he needed this success so badly. For Max, and for his chance at a place at school in Munich, but also to impress the other boys and show them that he was more than a pale bookworm.

  The howling started again. Peter felt fear creep up inside him.

  Fear, but also doubt.

  “If we want to know what it is, we’ll have to go see, won’t we,” Schorsch said into the silence and pulled himself up on the edges of the trapdoor.

  “Hey, wait a minute! You’re not going in there, are you?” Luki gasped, white as a sheet. “What . . . what if the basement is haunted? You know I never shy away from a fight, but a ghost . . .”

  “Then just stay here with your boys,” Schorsch said from above them, his torch illuminating his face. “The Anger Wolves won’t be intimidated by anything. We’re afraid of nothing.”

  The Au Dogs looked expectantly at their leader, who was clearly wrestling with himself.

  “To hell with it,” Luki said eventually. “No one can say the Au Dogs chickened out.” He jumped up and pulled himself through the hole in one swift movement. The other boys followed more hesitantly, helping both Peter and Paul climb up.

  Once he was up, Peter saw that they were standing in a dark basement corridor with doors on either side. It smelled musty, but far better than downstairs. The howling had stopped for a while, but suddenly they heard it again. It seemed to come from farther back, where the hallway disappeared into the darkness.

  “By God, that’s not human,” one of the Au Dogs groaned. “No person could make such sounds.”

  “Don’t say that,” said Paul, who seemed to be the only one not afraid at all. Or at least he didn’t show it. “When Grandpa puts someone on the rack, they sometimes sound like that,” he continued cheerfully. “Sometimes you can hear the screams on the street outside, even all the way to the Tanners’ Quarter, where—”

  “Shh!” Peter said. “Listen!”

  The boys all listened to the howling down the corridor. It sounded like a ghostly whimper, followed by a scratching and knocking as if someone was trying to dig their way through the wall.

  Howling, scratching, knocking . . .

  Peter’s heart beat faster. Earlier, down in the sewer, a suspicion had sprouted in his mind. Fear and exhaustion had prevented him from thinking straight before, but now he was almost certain. He knew he was right.

  No human could howl like that.

  He took the torch from Moser, who was too surprised to object, and ran down the corridor without waiting for the others. The howling and scratching grew louder.

  “Hey, where are you going?” Schorsch called after him. “Watch out! We don’t know what’s down there. Wait for us!”

  But Peter didn’t reply. He kept going past several doors until he reached the end of the hallway. The last heavy door was merely secured by a bolt. Behind it, the scratching, whimpering, moaning, and howling sounded like a thousand furies. Without hesitation, Peter braced himself against the bolt, and it screeched sideways. The door opened.

  And a black shadow leapt at him.

  In the light of the torches in the park of Nymphenburg Palace, a hangman and a harlequin pursued a bald Roman and a man in a mask.

  Jakob Kuisl squinted and tried to see more in the dim light. After Prince Max Emanuel had recognized Simon, he and Georg had disappeared as fast as they could. Kuisl realized that they only had a chance of finding Magdalena if they remained unrecognized. So he and his son had mingled with the other ball guests on the dance floor, and when they saw Daniel Pfundner and the bald-headed man leave the room, they followed. Now they were back in the park behind the palace, where a flock of rams was being herded in the snow. The animals bleated anxiously and tried to break out, but the guards kept chasing them back. Each ram wore different colorful ribbons, and some had wreaths of flowers tied around their horns. A crowd of masked guests surrounded them, laughing expectantly.

  Jakob Kuisl had given up wondering about the strange customs of Munich courtiers. The curiosities were just about to reach a new climax.

  To hell with these Munich fops, he thought.

  All he wanted was to find his daughter—or at least to find out what had happened to her. And that shifty Pfundner was their only lead right now.

  Kuisl spotted Daniel Pfundner and the bald man dressed as a Roman on the other side of the heaving herd. The two men were about to sneak off into the adjacent woods. Kuisl frowned. Whatever those fellows were up to, it wasn’t anything good. Why else would they leave the feast so stealthily? And not in the direction of Munich, but through the park to the west? Simon must have been right. The two of them were up to something.

  Kuisl tried to make his way around the flock of sheep, but the stupid rams ran from side to side, blocking his way every time. After several futile attempts to go around the herd, the hangman muttered a curse and stormed right through the middle of the flock. Georg followed him, sending the animals into an even greater panic. Shouts of surprise rose from the crowd as the rams broke free, several of them running up the back stairs right into the dance hall, where they appeared to cause great turmoil. The music stopped, women screamed. Outside, one ram with lowered horns chased a shrieking elderly lady past Kuisl.

  The hangman was unperturbed. Like a reaper in a meadow, he plowed through the bleating herd, kicking out of the way any ram that didn’t jump aside quick enough. Once he reached the other side, he pulled a torch out of the ground and rushed toward the forest with Georg.

  As soon as Jakob and Georg were among the trees, the shouting, bleating, and turmoil behind them subsided. The glow of the fires in the park lit their way for a little while, but Kuisl still felt like they were entering another world—one in which, unlike at the palace, nymphs, fairies, and forest sprites actually existed. Snow covered the trees and bushes like powdered sugar. A deer flitted underneath a low-hanging branch, raising a white cloud. All sounds were strangely muffled, as if by thick fabric.

  Father and son walked past a well, the moon reflecting on its frozen surface. Three statues on the edge of the well seemed to watch their every movement, icicles hanging from their stone limbs. They appeared to be some sort of ancient gods whose powers had long gone.

  Or had they? Kuisl thought. He looked around cautiously, half expecting an angry god to jump out of the bushes at any moment. Then he called himself a fool. T
hat stupid carnival was messing with his head.

  “Now what?” Georg whispered, looking around helplessly. “Where have they gone?”

  Jakob Kuisl held the torch to the ground and pointed to prints in the snow. The two men in front of them hadn’t tried to cover their tracks. Maybe they were in a hurry, but they probably didn’t expect to be watched or followed. The hangman signaled to his son, and together they followed the tracks.

  The footprints led past the well back into the forest, and soon ended in a clearing with an unfinished temple. Only the columns were standing so far, reaching into the night sky like black fingers. A large hole had been dug out beside it, probably intended as a pond. On the other side of the hole, massive rocks formed a mound more than seven feet high.

  The footsteps led directly toward it.

  Kuisl followed the prints until he stood in front of the mound, where they ended abruptly. As though a meteorite had fallen from the sky and buried the men.

  “What the devil . . . ,” the hangman cursed.

  Georg stopped beside him, just as astonished.

  “They can’t have vanished into thin air,” he mumbled and leaned down to search the ground. He walked a few steps to the left and then to the right, but couldn’t find anything.

  Kuisl knelt down in the snow and held the torch close to the ground. The footprints definitely belonged to two men. On closer look, Kuisl noticed the last print was only half-visible, disappearing underneath a boulder about the size of a door at the front of the hill. Kuisl frowned.

  A door . . .

  He pushed against the rock and it gave way almost instantly, swinging open without a sound.

  “What in God’s name is that?” Georg asked, surprised.

  “A real nymph grotto.” Kuisl grinned. “Let’s go and see where our two pretty elves are hiding.”

  Now the hangman noticed that the hidden entrance wasn’t made of rock but of plaster that had been painted gray, just like the narrow corridor beyond the door. Stalactites hung from the ceiling like drooping tears. Kuisl broke a piece off one and crumbled it between his fingers.

  “An artificial grotto,” he muttered. “Probably for future masquerades. You’d almost think the nobility had nothing better to do than prancing through the woods in costume, jumping each other’s bones.”

  Now they could hear groaning and the sound of something dragging on the ground from inside the mountain, along with the echoing voices of two men. There was a pungent stench in the air.

  “I told you we should have gotten rid of the stuff yesterday, damn it,” one of the voices hissed from below. “Now half of Munich’s out there.”

  “No one saw us,” the other one said reassuringly. “The carriage will be here soon, and then we’re out of here. If we’d carted everything away last night, we would have ended up empty handed. Now you’re going to lead a very pleasant life with your share. Isn’t that right?”

  “Not if this life ends in a barrel of boiling oil. If I’m lucky, the hangman will gut me first. If not, I’ll be cooked alive. I should never have agreed to this. What we’re doing is worse than high treason.”

  The first man continued to curse under his breath, and Kuisl and Georg could hear a metallic clattering. Then something crashed to the ground noisily.

  “Watch out,” the second man snapped. “If anyone hears us . . .”

  Meanwhile, Jakob Kuisl and Georg had crept down the corridor. The ground was slippery with ice, and a handful of stairs led farther down. Now they saw the flickering of torches or lanterns ahead; the noise grew louder and the stench stronger. Kuisl struggled to suppress the urge to cough. The hangman stopped his son before a bend in the passageway.

  “Let me go first,” he whispered. “I’m the older one.”

  “That’s exactly why I should—” Georg started, but his father’s angry glare silenced him. Jakob Kuisl cautiously peered out from behind a plaster rock . . .

  And froze.

  “By all the saints!” he exclaimed quietly.

  What the hangman saw was so strange that he forgot to breathe for a moment.

  The shadow jumped at Peter and licked his face.

  Then the barking, yelping, and howling around him grew as loud as if he were surrounded by a pack of wolves. Hairy creatures shot past Peter, and a foul-smelling cloud enveloped him, almost as bad as down in the sewage canal. He could hear the other boys call out behind him.

  “Damn it, where are all these dogs coming from all of a sudden?” Luki cursed. “Hey, Peter, what’s happening down there?”

  Peter didn’t reply, although he knew by now what was going on. The terrible whimpering they had heard—that his mother had heard, too—hadn’t come from a person but from a whole pack of locked-up dogs, who were now looking for a way out. Peter had already had a hunch when he first heard the sound down in the underground corridor, but Luki’s babble about ghosts had distracted him.

  Peter estimated that at least a dozen dogs had just run past him. Their whining had sounded like the eerie howling of ghosts through the thick door and the maze of underground corridors. They had probably been locked up for many days or even weeks, in terrible conditions—hence the awful smell.

  Peter finally managed to pull the slobbering dog off his face. The animal yelped happily and started to bark at a pitch and volume that made Peter jump. He remembered what Max had said about his pet.

  He’d bark and howl during class until Kerll went crazy.

  Peter couldn’t blame the music teacher.

  Even though it was too dark to see much, he felt reasonably certain he was holding the right dog.

  “Arthur!” he said while the dog continued to howl, whine, and lick him. “Stop it! You’re not acting like a dog of noble birth at all.”

  Meanwhile, the other boys had arrived at the open door. Peter’s last remaining doubts disappeared in the light of the torches. The dog in his arms was a small spaniel with brown fur and white spots—just like Max had described him.

  They had found Arthur.

  “That is the dog of the prince?” Luki asked with disbelief. “It looks totally normal. Could be any stray dog from the street.”

  “And yet this one’s worth a pile of money,” Moser replied with a grin. “We’re lucky Lorentz the dogcatcher hasn’t turned him into soap. What a waste that would have been.”

  “At least he’d have smelled better,” Seppi remarked, wrinkling his nose.

  “I’m guessing the other dogs also belong to wealthy people,” Peter said. “Uffele stole them in order to sell them back to their owners. But he must have been busy with other things lately.”

  Peter’s face darkened when he thought about what those other things might be. Murdering innocent girls, like his mother suspected? A chill crept up his neck. Kidnapping dogs was one thing, but brutally killing people . . . Peter shuddered. They ought to get out of here as fast as they could, now that they’d found Arthur. No one knew what else lurked in this manufactory.

  “The poor mutts that ran past us didn’t look too good,” Seppi said and gave the spaniel a look of pity. “They would have starved soon or started to eat each other.” He nodded at Arthur. “That one still looks somewhat all right, and he’s the friendliest. Probably because the prince fed him treats all his life. Now he thinks you’re going to give him one.”

  Arthur, too, was so skinny that his bones were clearly visible under the fur. He appeared to have accepted Peter not only as his liberator, but also as his new owner. The boy struggled to hold the squirming, barking dog in his arms. On top of the barking, Arthur made high-pitched, shrill noises that sounded vaguely like human screams. The boys’ ears started to ache.

  “If the mutt doesn’t shut up soon, Uffele and the Venetians are bound to show up, damn it,” Schorsch said. He looked at Peter. “Make him stop.”

  “Me?” Peter asked. “Why me?”

  “He likes you,” Paul now said from beside his brother. “It’s obvious. He’ll listen to you. Animals al
ways like you—in Schongau, too.”

  “Because I don’t torture them like you,” Peter replied. “But that doesn’t mean—”

  “Enough of this!” a nasal voice suddenly commanded from the darkness of the corridor. “You’re no better than those lousy mutts, and at least as irritating. And that’s why you’re going to get locked up like them until your parents pay a decent price for you.”

  Peter spun around with fright and saw four figures slowly approaching from the darkness. Two of them were holding pistols aimed at the children. Between them stood an older woman and a haggard man in a patchy silk coat, a malicious grin on his face.

  Peter groaned quietly. His worst fear had come true. Uffele and his henchmen had heard the barking.

  “Shoo, shoo, back into the hole, you smelly little rats,” the manufactory director said and gestured toward the open prison door. “Now you’re going to be my precious mutts.” He pointed at the two gloomy-looking fellows at his side. “And no wrong movements or my two Venetians will blow a few holes in your heads. Understood?”

  Peter was about to retreat into the cell with his head hung low when he saw Schorsch and Luki exchange a brief glance, like generals before a battle. Fear gleamed in their eyes, but only for an instant.

  “No one locks up the Au Dogs,” Luki whispered.

  “Nor the Anger Wolves,” Schorsch replied quietly. “Even if it means blood is going to be shed. On three. One, two . . . three!”

  The two gangs of boys hurled themselves against their enemy. Screams and the barking of dogs mingled in the narrow corridor, together with Joseffa’s screeching and Uffele’s cursing.

  And then Peter heard the earsplitting bang of a pistol.

  Magdalena was in hell.

  Screaming devils buzzed around her, howling demonically and pricking her with their forks. Their points pierced her skull like needles and hurt hellishly. The howling became louder, and now they were also yelping and barking. Then screaming. Magdalena started up.

  Yelping and barking? Since when did devils bark?

  Where am I?

  She opened her eyes with great difficulty. All she saw was black. Then, gradually, outlines became visible, and she could make out several objects. Her memory returned, too. She had looked for Eva in the basement of the manufactory, and Uffele and Mother Joseffa had caught her. The two Venetians had poured brandy down her throat, lots of it, perhaps even spiked with something else. The last thing she remembered was the sound of a bolt sliding shut.