“I want to stress again that nothing—I repeat, absolutely nothing—about this incident is to be made public,” the captain said, gazing sternly at Magdalena. “This order, by the way, comes not from me but from the prince-bishop himself, and I’m telling you this only to stress its urgency. His Excellency fears that the citizens of Bamberg might blame this entire werewolf story on him.”
“But it’s clear that Luther can’t kill or kidnap anyone,” Magdalena added, shaking her head. “He’s much too small for that, and then the traces of all that torture—”
“Perhaps that’s clear to you, but for many people such a strange animal would be taken for an emissary of the devil,” Lebrecht interrupted, sounding exhausted and rubbing his temples. “If you don’t want to obey the order of the bishop, then do it for me. I’ve been looking for this beast for days and am elated that the problem has been solved. It doesn’t do anyone any good if an outraged mob storms the bishop’s menagerie and opens the cages.”
Bartholomäus grinned. “But Solomon, the old bear, would be thrilled. The succulent bodies of people would be much more to his taste than the old, stinking meat scraps that I bring him when I stop by.”
“You’ll have plenty of work to do, Master Bartholomäus,” Lebrecht answered, pointing back to the entrance to the dungeon. “We have almost a dozen sinners here to be tortured soon, most of them actors from that troupe that performed yesterday evening. I hope they’ll confess quickly, so we can finally put an end to this madness.” He sighed. “But I’ve just heard that the torturing will be postponed once again, until after His Excellency the elector and bishop of Würzburg has left the city. These high and mighty gentlemen don’t know what to do, either, and we commoners have to pay for it with this chaos.”
Suddenly the captain stopped short and turned to Magdalena. “It just occurred to me that the leader of this group, a certain Malcolm, asked about you this morning. He urgently wanted to talk to you. I just put him off, but since you’re here . . .” He shrugged. “If you wish, I’ll let you in to see him for a few moments. But be careful. We discovered some magical devices in his possession, and he seems to be a warlock.”
Magdalena hesitated. She and Bartholomäus should have returned home hours ago. On the other hand, she couldn’t turn down this request from Sir Malcolm. She was still convinced that he was innocent and the allegedly magical objects were only props. She could certainly find a little time for him. Besides, she was curious what Sir Malcolm might have to say to her.
“I’ll go and visit him,” she said finally. “Where can I find him?”
Lebrecht pointed down the hall. “In the last room. The guards will show you the way. But take the hangman along. Maybe the fellow will soften up a bit when he sees the executioner and we can spare ourselves a long and expensive interrogation.”
Bartholomäus mumbled his agreement, and they had the guards lead them to Malcolm’s cell.
It took a while for Magdalena to spy Malcolm’s crumpled figure in the darkened cell. He lay in a corner like a bundle of carelessly discarded rags. Cautiously, Magdalena walked toward him and bent down to speak. His face was turned toward the wall, and he seemed to be sleeping.
Or is he dead already? The thought flashed through Magdalena’s mind. She noticed the bloodstains spattered on Malcolm’s cloak. Evidently some of the citizens had already taken out their anger on him.
“Sir Malcolm,” she whispered. “Can you hear me?”
Malcolm flinched and slowly turned around, and Magdalena stared into his battered face. She put her hand over her mouth in order not to scream in horror. He’d been so badly beaten that his eyes were nothing more than two slits in a pasty mass of black and blue. He looked more like a monster than Jeremias. Nevertheless, he tried to smile cheerfully, which was clearly hard for him to do with his several missing teeth.
“Ah, the beautiful sister of our most talented actress,” he murmured as if in a dream. “So my pleas were heard. This captain is not as bad a man as I thought.”
“Lebrecht probably saved your life,” Bartholomäus interjected. “You ought to thank him. From what I heard, he and his men stepped in to save you just as the mob was about to string you up from the tallest willow on the Regnitz.”
“Ah, yes, the fate of a great artist,” Malcolm said softly, managing, despite his injuries, to inject a note of pathos into his voice. “Beloved, celebrated, and then cast out just the same.”
“Lebrecht said you wanted to see me,” said Magdalena. “Is there anything I can do to help you?”
Malcolm placed his trembling hand on her skirt, to quiet her. “I’m afraid no one can help me now,” he whispered. “I’m dying, like Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar in the third act—slowly, but with style. But my men have not deserved such an exit from the stage.” He coughed. “They’re innocent.”
“Does that mean you are guilty?” Bartholomäus asked. “Speak up, fellow! What do you have to do with all this hocus-pocus? Are you the werewolf?”
Sir Malcolm let out a dry laugh, which quickly turned into a painful coughing fit, and he spat out another tooth. “I’d be a pretty pathetic little wolf,” he croaked, “if I let myself be whipped like that by a few thugs. You can bet on it, hangman—if I’d played the part, I would have been the greatest werewolf of all time, fearsome and powerful, with a voice rumbling like an approaching tornado, and—”
“Unfortunately, I’m afraid we don’t have much time,” Magdalena interrupted. “The guards are telling us to be quick. So is there something you wanted to tell me?”
Malcolm nodded. “You’re right, I should shorten the monologue, that’s what people keep telling me. Very well.” He took a deep breath, then continued in a whisper. “They say they found objects of mine that I used for incantations and magic, but I swear I’ve never seen those things before. After all, I know how dangerous such props can be in a Catholic bishopric. I’m asking you: a child’s skull?” He shook his head in disbelief. “Things like that are found only in tawdry farces. At first I thought Guiscard had planted these knickknacks on me—”
“Unlike your troupe, he and his men were able to get out of town in time,” Bartholomäus interrupted. “Lebrecht told me that earlier. Apparently Guiscard bribed one of the guards at the gate.”
Malcolm flashed him a toothless grin. “Hah! That rabble packed up their things while we were still on stage. I saw it with my own eyes. Guiscard knew he’d lost. What an ingenious move of mine to convince him to play that boring Papinian while we performed Peter Squenz. I upstaged them all, and Barbara played her role splendidly. We’re the clear winners.”
“Guiscard would probably see it differently,” Magdalena replied. “In any case, he’s free, and you’re lying here in the dungeon. But you were going to tell us who planted these magical things on you, I think.”
“Well, I assume it’s the same person responsible for all the murders in Bamberg,” Malcolm said, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial hush. “I had lots of time last night to think about that, and I have a suspicion who it might be. And finally, I put two and two together . . .”
Malcolm started talking, and as he did, Magdalena felt a chill running up her spine.
It looked like they’d finally found their werewolf.
A rowboat was making its way slowly downstream on the Regnitz. Two people sat inside, one pulling hard on the oars and steering the boat past the many islands of mud, gravel, and flot-sam. Here in the southeastern part of Bamberg, the forest extended down to the shore, where many brooks and tributaries carrying leaves and branches emptied into the wide river.
Exhausted, Barbara snuggled up in the woolen blanket that Markus Salter had given her before they’d left. She sat on a wooden box in the stern of the boat, looking out at the marshland with its willows, birches, and little ponds as they drifted past. A light but constant drizzle had set in, gradually soaking them to the skin.
“Is it much farther?” she asked, her arms covered with goose bumps.
<
br /> Markus Salter shook his head. He briefly stopped rowing and pointed toward a hill about half a mile away, with a few houses on top. “Up ahead of us is the little town of Wunderburg,” he said, turning more cheerful. “In the Great War, the Swedes destroyed much of the town, but the bishop’s stud farm is still there, so there are a lot of warm stables where we can hide. We can stay there for a while, and when things have calmed down a bit, I’ll go back to the city and tell your father you’re all right. I promise.”
He winked at her, and Barbara nodded gratefully. She was extremely happy to have Markus Salter by her side. For half the night, he’d consoled her when she kept waking up with a start from bad dreams. With soothing words he’d urged her to persevere, promising that this nightmare would soon end, and he’d even gotten her to laugh a few times with poems and lines from comedies. Without him, she would have no doubt left the crypt too soon and fallen into the hands of the marauding gangs still wandering through the streets of Bamberg in search of witches and werewolves.
They had stayed down there until morning while Markus told her about his adventurous life as an actor and playwright. He came from a well-to-do family, and his father had been a cloth merchant in Cologne. Markus had studied law, but then he’d seen Sir Malcolm and his actors at Neumarkt Square in Cologne and immediately fallen under their spell. On the spur of the moment he left his family, and since then was completely engrossed in the world of Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Gryphius.
Although Markus Salter had clearly led an exciting life, Barbara was slowly coming to the realization that she herself was not suited for such an existence. Just the last few days without her family had been painful enough, and the thought of always being alone on the road, without a home, without a family—even a family as querulous and stubborn as the Kuisls—was too much for her. She wanted to get back to her grumpy father, to her sister with the two boys, and to her twin brother, Georg, whom she hadn’t seen for so long.
She wanted to go home.
Markus had convinced her to wait until early the next morning, when most of the rowdy bands had finally dispersed and the good citizens were in the All Souls’ mass. Around nine o’clock, disguised as Carmelite monks, they’d snuck through the streets down toward the mills near the castle. There Markus soon found an abandoned boat, in which he planned to take her to a hiding place he’d learned about during an earlier visit to Bamberg.
At first they traveled downstream past the city. Then they floated back up the right branch of the Regnitz toward Bamberg again, looking for a place to land on the eastern shore near the little town of Wunderburg. Over the tops of the trees they could see the walls of the city and the cathedral, but except for the occasional chirping of a blackbird and the distant sound of men chopping wood in the forest, everything around them was quiet and peaceful.
In the meantime, it had started to rain harder, and despite her heavy monk’s robe and the blanket, Barbara felt chilled to the bone.
“Haven’t you ever thought of starting a family?” she asked, her teeth chattering, as Markus guided the boat toward a small, reed-choked estuary. The actor still had a slight pain on his right side, but it seemed Barbara had done a good job of cleaning the wound—when she’d changed the bandage again that morning, she hadn’t noticed any inflammation.
Markus thought for a moment before answering. “I’m afraid I have difficulty committing myself,” he said finally. “I’m too afraid I’m going to lose the person again. People die, and some far before their time—not just the old ones, but beloved wives and even children. The nagging fear of being left alone again would drive me crazy.”
Barbara frowned. “I never looked at it that way before.”
“Ask your father or your uncle. They know how fast we can be overcome by death. After all, they themselves are often the cause.” His face darkened. Dressed in his monk’s robe and with his hood pulled down over his face, the haggard actor looked like a stern, ascetic preacher. “How can anyone ever live with that—all the sorrow and screams a hangman must bear? I couldn’t, at least not for long. It would destroy me.”
“I think my father and my uncle don’t look at themselves at such times as human beings, but as”—Barbara searched for the suitable word—“as tools. They act on behalf of a higher power, the city or the church.”
“Tools of a higher power.” Salter nodded. “I like that. I’ll use it in one of my tragedies, with your permission.” He smiled sadly. “In a very special tragedy, in fact—my best one. All it lacks are a few suitable sentences for a conclusion.”
He thrust the oar down with all his strength, propelling the boat toward the shore, where it ran aground and remained stuck in the mud. A dense growth of reeds grew all around them, and the branches of a weeping willow hung far down into the water, blocking their view of the surroundings.
“We’re stopping here?” Barbara asked with surprise.
Markus jumped into the knee-deep water and waded the last few steps to the shore, where he tied the boat securely to the trunk of the willow tree.
“It’s not far now to Wunderburg,” he replied, “and the boat is well-hidden here.” With a cheerful smile, he reached out to give Barbara a hand. “Come now.”
She got up, shivering, and was about to climb over the side when she lost her balance in the rocking boat, slipped on the bottom, wet from the rain, and fell. She landed painfully on her tailbone and, to make matters worse, also hit her head on the boat box. As she pulled herself up again, cursing, she caught sight of something she hadn’t noticed before in the drizzling rain.
There was blood on the box.
She assumed at first it was fish blood, as this was clearly the boat of a fisherman who probably kept his daily catch in the box. But then she took a closer look. There was too much of it here to be just fish blood—and besides, the stain had an intense reddish-brown color all too familiar to Barbara as a hangman’s daughter.
That wasn’t fish blood, it was human blood.
Her mind racing, she looked at the partially coagulated liquid streaking down the side of the box.
“For heaven’s sake, what . . . ,” she said instinctively.
The box creaked on its hinges as she slowly opened it. She didn’t know what might be inside, but her heart was pounding wildly. She suspected that whatever it was would shake her already deeply wounded psyche.
The first thing she saw were a few wolf pelts, which appeared to have been tossed carelessly into the box. Then, underneath them, the hide of a stag with its antlers, a wild boar pelt, a badly worn bearskin . . .
Carefully, Barbara pushed the stinking pelts aside. When she finally recognized what was underneath, her heart skipped a beat. She wanted to scream, but not a word escaped her lips.
She was staring, horrified, into the blood-covered face of a man. He was gagged, and someone had tied his body up into a net so tightly that it almost looked like a bundle of slimy fish. She thought she recognized the man, even though his face was almost completely mutilated and covered with blood.
“My God,” Barbara gasped in a fading voice, as her strength ebbed from her body.
At that moment she heard a whoosh of air, and something struck her with brutal force on the back of the head. With a groan, she fell forward, and even before she hit the bottom of the boat, a merciful unconsciousness came over her. Markus Salter was standing over her, holding the bloodstained oar in his hand like a hangman with his sword.
“The tool of a higher power,” he whispered, and a grin flickered across his face. He took off his hood as the rain streamed down his face, and he let out a loud howl—the howl of a wolf.
“I like that, Barbara. I’m a tool and nothing more.”
Then he seized the unconscious girl, threw her over his shoulder, and carried her away into the nearby swamp.
Hurried footsteps came up the stairway to Hauser’s study, and then the door opened with a crash. Simon, still standing at the lectern with the open book, jumped. In the doorway s
tood Magdalena and Bartholomäus.
“Magdalena!” Simon cried out with relief. “You’re back. I was so worried about you—”
“No time for long-winded greetings,” she interrupted as she struggled for breath. “I think we finally know who our werewolf is. Sir Malcolm just told us.”
“Sir Malcolm?” Jakob said, looking at her in astonishment. “But he’s in the city dungeon. What in God’s name were you doing there?”
“We’ll tell you all about it later,” Bartholomäus replied. “Now listen to what your daughter has to say. It’s just the suspicion of a poor gallows bird who’s trying to wriggle his head out of a noose, and perhaps he’s just telling us lies, but what he says actually sounds pretty reasonable.”
By now, the two new arrivals had entered the small room. Magdalena stood in the middle and peered urgently at Simon, Jeremias, and her father.
“Markus Salter is the one we’re looking for,” she declared. “The group’s playwright. Sir Malcolm has been watching him closely for some time, because of all the strange things he’s been doing.”
“And what would those be?” Simon inquired, trying to sound matter-of-fact. He was still so relieved to see Magdalena again that he wanted nothing more than to take her in his arms and kiss her. But at the moment his wife didn’t seem to want that.
“Some time ago,” she answered breathlessly, “Markus Salter wrote a piece that he very much wanted the actors to perform, but it was too bloody and weird for Malcolm’s taste. It was about a child from a powerful family, all of whom were slaughtered in a power struggle between patricians. Later, as a young man, the hero takes out his bloody revenge. Again and again, Salter urged Malcolm to stage this tragedy. He must have been really fanatic about it, though he didn’t want to show anyone the piece in advance, and only dropped veiled hints as to what was in it.”
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