Hastily the Kuisls bade farewell to the old farmer, who was visibly relieved to finally be rid of them, then made their way toward the narrow pedestrian gate next to the vehicle entrance, arriving none too soon. Some time had passed since the bells in the clock towers had signaled the end of the day for the Bambergers, many of whom had been working their little vegetable patches outside of town. The night watchman with his key to the city was standing by the gate, beckoning the last of them to hurry. He looked concerned, almost anxious. He asked the Kuisls briefly why they were there, then quickly closed the gate behind them.
“Get moving,” he shouted at Barbara, who was at the end of the procession of wagons, giving her a shove. At the same time he pointed at the sun, which had just set behind the western part of the city wall. “Soon it will be as dark here as in hell.” He shivered and rubbed his hands together. “Damned autumn nights—the daylight fades faster than you can say amen.”
“If it makes you shiver so much you shit in your pants, perhaps you should have become a baker and not a watchman,” Kuisl replied with a grin as he passed under the archway, which was much too low for him. “Then you’d already be in bed with your wife, kneading her fat behind.”
“If I were you, I wouldn’t shoot off my mouth like that, big fellow. What do you know about this damned city?” The watchman seemed to want to say something else, but then he just shrugged and shuffled up the steep stairway to his room in the guardhouse to begin his regular nightly duties.
Magdalena peered ahead at the dark forms where the first houses began. The last time she’d been in a large city was some years ago in Regensburg. At that time, the sun had been shining, it was midsummer, and the size and splendor of the buildings had nearly taken her breath away. On the other hand, there was something depressing about their arrival in Bamberg. It might have been the time of year; with the arrival of autumn, the nights had suddenly turned cool, and mist was rising from the moors and settling like a heavy blanket over the roofs of the town, first in little wisps, then in larger and larger clouds. The wide road leading up to the gate quickly branched into a labyrinth of unpaved, winding alleys.
With dark fingers, dusk reached out toward the crooked half-timbered houses, so that Magdalena could only imagine the size of the city. It was said that Bamberg, like Rome, was built on seven hills, and in fact Magdalena could see three dark hills in the southwest of the city, with the cathedral, the landmark of the city, standing majestically on the one in the middle. Atop the hill on the right, the outline of a large monastery was visible in the fading light of day, and a bit farther away, engulfed in mist, the ruins of a castle. In front of her, Magdalena could hear the rushing of water in a canal or river. At least the stench here was not as overwhelming as by the city gate.
The many carts and wagons that had just a short while ago been backed up behind the city gate were now clattering toward their destinations, finally disappearing in the growing darkness. While Magdalena wandered through the filthy, stinking alleys with her family, she heard occasional laughter, hasty footsteps, or squeaky wagon wheels, but otherwise everything was quiet. The hangman’s daughter was familiar with such quiet nights in Schongau, but for some reason she had imagined that Bamberg would be livelier and happier. The loneliness in the dark lanes had something oppressive about it, something sinister.
Like in a cemetery, she thought, tying her scarf more tightly. I wonder if the others feel the same way?
She looked around at Simon and the other members of her family, who were following her sullenly. Peter and Paul in particular were dead tired and whined softly as they gripped their father’s hand. Jakob Kuisl stomped ahead of them silently.
“Do we still have far to go?” Magdalena asked after a while in a tired voice. “The children are hungry, and my feet hurt. Besides, I don’t like walking for hours through a strange city after nightfall. All sorts of riffraff are wandering about.”
The hangman just shrugged. “Executioners don’t live in the central market square, and since my last visit a lot has changed.” He looked around. “Damned fog. We should just head north here and follow the city wall.”
“The wall is behind us,” Simon interrupted, pointing back over his shoulder into the darkness. “I just saw it a moment ago by the little square with the fountain—”
“Aha, Herr Son-in-Law will now tell me, perhaps, where I can find my own brother?”
“Herr Son-in-Law is just trying to help you, that’s all,” Magdalena replied. “But, as always, you know better.” She sighed. “Why do you men have to be so stubborn when you’ve made a mistake?”
“I didn’t make a mistake—it’s just dark and foggy,” Kuisl grumbled as he hurried along. “You could have stayed at home. I’m just doing this so I can see Georg again, and certainly not because of my brother, the old stinker. I wonder why he’s even inviting us to his wedding.” He spat in the dirt. “When I think about how the Steingaden executioner is taking over my work in Schongau in the meantime, it makes me sick. It will be a real mess.”
As Magdalena walked along behind her father, her vague feeling of anxiety grew. In the narrow, unlit lanes it was already so dark and foggy she could hardly see to the next intersection. Occasionally she heard a whooshing, scraping sound as if someone or something was following her through the little alleys. She turned around to look at the others and could see that Simon and Barbara were also looking around anxiously. She couldn’t help but think of the ashen-faced watchman at the tower, and his final words.
What do you know about this damned city?
Did the watchman have something to hide? Something that had to do with this beast that the wagon drivers had told them about? The severed arm had belonged to a wealthy citizen. Perhaps a nobleman from Bamberg?
When Magdalena looked once more into the darkness, she suddenly understood where her strange feeling was coming from. It was so obvious, yet she’d not really noticed it until now.
The houses, she suddenly realized. Many of them are empty.
And in fact, the windows on many of the buildings they passed were boarded up. Other houses were missing a door, or there were black holes where there once had been bull’s-eye windows. Frowning, Magdalena examined the abandoned buildings more closely. They were clearly not the shabby houses of the poor but were the homes of those who’d once been patricians and wealthy citizens. Some of the houses were now nothing but ruins, though some had been rebuilt or renovated. Magdalena remembered all the cranes, pulleys, and sacks of mortar they had passed on their way through the little streets. Simon, too, now seemed to take note of the empty buildings.
“What’s going on with all these houses here?” he asked, addressing his father-in-law. “Why are so many of them unoccupied?”
“Well, the war was fought here in Bamberg, as well,” Jakob replied, stopping at the next fork, trying to get his bearings. “And it was pretty bad. The city was attacked by soldiers more than a dozen times. That may have been twenty years ago, but many Bambergers fled then and didn’t return. When I was here some years ago, things looked even worse. It takes a while for a city to recover from something like that. Some never do, and all that remains of them are a few abandoned ruins with the wind whistling through them.”
“But Schongau quickly got over it,” Magdalena replied. “Besides, it’s mostly the homes of the patricians that are empty.”
“I don’t care what happened here long ago,” wailed Barbara, who was shuffling along slowly at the end of the line. “I’m just tired. Hopefully, Uncle Bartholomäus’s house is not a ruin, too. I should have stayed home, where the town fair is going on now, with dancing and—”
“I fear the houses were abandoned for another reason,” interrupted her father, who was paying no attention to his younger daughter’s whining. “A reason even more dreadful than the war, if such a thing is possible. I heard about it even far away in Schongau. A grim story.”
Magdalena looked at him, puzzled. “And what was that?”
>
“I think Bartholomäus should tell you. I suspect he knows more about it than he wants to.” The hangman started walking faster. “Now hurry up and come along before your sister’s whining gets the guard’s attention.”
Silently, he plodded on through the fog, while somewhere beyond the city walls, the wolves continued their howling.
Adelheid Rinswieser paused for a moment and listened. The howling of the wolves grew louder, like cries of children, long and shrill. The silver disk of an almost-full moon was just rising over the pine trees.
The howls of the animals were still far off, deep in the forest. Nevertheless, Adelheid’s heart beat faster as she crept through the dense forest of pines and birches outside the walls of Bamberg. It was not at all unusual for wolves to be found in this area. Even twenty years after the Great War, many parts of the country were still devastated and villages abandoned by their residents, and only wild animals remained among the ruins. But no wolves had been seen in the Bamberg Forest. Their fear of people with clubs, swords, and muskets was just too great, and they preferred to relieve their hunger with a sheep or two grazing in the meadows south of the old castle.
Unless their hunger was greater than their fear.
Trembling, Adelheid pulled her coat tightly around her and kept walking farther into the forest. Now, at the end of October, it was already miserably cold at night. If her husband had learned of this nighttime adventure, he surely would have forbidden it. It had been hard enough for her to convince the watchman at the Tanggass Gate to open the door for her at this time of night. But what the apothecary’s wife was searching for could also help the watchman’s wife—and hence, grumbling, he had finally allowed Adelheid to pass.
Branches snapped beneath her feet as she passed gnarled pines reaching out for her like fingers. In the distance, she could see the watch fires at the city wall, but otherwise it was pitchdark among the trees. Only the moon showed her the way. Once again she heard the howling of the wolves and instinctively hastened her pace.
She was searching for the fraxinella plant—Dictamnus albus, a rare, lily-like flower considered a sure method for aborting unwanted pregnancies. Often young women came in secret to see her or her husband at the court pharmacy near the great cathedral on the hill, pleading for a medicine to save them from shame and public humiliation in the stocks at the Green Market. Her husband usually turned away the poor things or sent them to a midwife outside the city gates, as abortion—or even assistance with an abortion—in the Bamberg Bishopric, as elsewhere, was punishable by death. But Adelheid always felt pity for the poor women. Before her marriage to the honorable pharmacist Magnus Rinswieser, she, too, had had a few affairs and had gotten into trouble. The old midwife Frau Traudel, over in Theuerstadt, had helped her then with fraxinella, and she felt an obligation now to help others.
The old woman had also revealed to her that fraxinella should be picked only when the moon was full. The flower was also called witch’s flower or devil’s plant, and it was very rare in this area. But Adelheid knew a secret clearing where she’d picked some of the flowers the year before. Now she hoped to find a few despite the late-autumn season.
Again she heard the howling of the wolves and realized, with a trembling heart, that it was closer this time. Did wolves really venture so close to town? Adelheid couldn’t help but think of the people reported as missing in Bamberg over the last few weeks. Two women had disappeared without a trace, and old Schwarzkontz had not returned from a trip to Nuremberg. All that had been found so far was a severed arm and a leg gnawed on by rats that showed up in the Regnitz River. Rumors were already going around that the devil was at work in Bamberg, especially since someone recently had seen a hairy creature in the alleyways at night. Until now, Adelheid had always dismissed these reports as exaggerated horror stories, but out here in the dark forest, she began to think there might be some truth to them.
Firmly grasping the straps of her wicker backpack, where she’d already collected some other herbs, she started to run. She didn’t have much farther to go. On her left she could already see the moss-covered fallen oak that served to mark her way, and a few hawthorn bushes glimmered reassuringly in the moonlight. Brushing the thorny branches to one side, Adelheid caught sight of the clearing. She took a deep sigh of relief.
Finally. Thank God.
In the silvery moonlight she soon discovered the plants she was looking for on the opposite side of the clearing. The fruit capsules had already burst open, but they still exuded a faint odor, like exotic spices. As Adelheid approached the medicinal plants, she quickly put on the thin linen gloves that she’d brought in her backpack along with a leather pouch. The seeds of the fraxinella, she knew, were so poisonous that one must wear gloves to pick them. The oil that dripped from them in midsummer could easily catch fire, which is why fraxinella was also called burning bush. In late autumn only bits of the fruit capsule remained on the withered stalks, but Adelheid didn’t want to take any chances. Carefully she picked the few remaining seeds and put them in the little pouch, whispering a few Ave Marias, as old Frau Traudel had instructed her.
“. . . and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus . . .”
The apothecary’s wife made one last quick sign of the cross and stood up. She was about to close the pouch when she heard the howling again.
This time it was very close.
Shocked, Adelheid looked around. Something dark was lurking right behind the hawthorn bushes, which were trembling in the autumn wind. It was an indistinct form close to the ground, pulsating slightly, with a pair of red eyes shining in the darkness.
What in the world . . .
The woman wiped the sweat from her brow, and suddenly the red eyes disappeared. Was her imagination playing tricks on her?
“Is someone there?” she asked hesitantly, peering into the darkness. When there was no answer, Adelheid mumbled another prayer, then, holding tightly on to the purse, ran across the clearing, making a wide detour around the hawthorn bush. The Tanggass Gate in the east wall was more than a mile away, but long before that the trees thinned out and there were little villages. If Adelheid hurried she could quickly reach the partial safety of the road, where perhaps there might be some travelers even at this late hour. Everything would be fine.
For a moment she thought she heard panting and growling, but when she reached the deer path leading toward the road, all she could hear were the sounds of her own hurried footsteps. In the distance an owl was screeching, sounding almost as if it were laughing at her. Angrily, Adelheid shook her head.
Silly, superstitious woman! If your husband saw you like this . . .
As she ran along, she felt angry at herself for being so foolish. How could she have been scared so easily? No doubt it was only a deer hiding behind the bushes, a wild pig, or a single wolf, certainly nothing to frighten a grown person. Wolves were dangerous only in packs; when they were alone they didn’t dare—
Adelheid stopped short. Suddenly her own steps sounded strangely loud to her. The sound was delayed, almost like an echo. She stopped again and noticed that the sound stopped as well.
Tap . . . tap . . . tap . . .
Terrified, Adelheid put her hand to her mouth, realizing what that meant.
Tap . . . tap . . . tap . . . Someone was running alongside her.
Suddenly, the sounds stopped, and right after that she heard branches snapping nearby.
“Whoever you are out there . . . come forward!” Adelheid demanded in a choked voice. “If this is supposed to be a joke, it’s not funny. This—”
At that moment something came crashing through the undergrowth.
The apothecary’s wife was frozen with fear as the creature knocked her down and cast himself on top of her. She smelled animal sweat and the stench of wet fur, and she began to scream. Her shouts died on her lips, however, as something large and heavy panted and rolled over her.
Oh God! Help me! This cannot be . . . This is impossible . . . This .
. .
A merciful loss of consciousness took her. A few moments later the howling of the wolves resumed as a dark shadow pulled its lifeless prey into the forest.
Tap . . . tap . . . tap . . .
A gasping sound, a last death rattle in her throat . . . and then all that remained of the apothecary’s wife was the gentle fragrance of fraxinella.
2
BAMBERG, NIGHT, OCTOBER 26, 1668 AD
JUST AS MAGDALENA WAS BEGINNING to think they’d never find her uncle’s home, Jakob suddenly stopped and pointed triumphantly at a two-story house standing right at the northern city moat.
“Ha! Now look there,” he boasted. “My brother’s house. A little run-down compared to the last time, but still an impressive place. Bartl must have kissed a lot of asses on the city council to get permission to live in town.”
Magdalena frowned as she looked at the lopsided half-timber house whose paint had been peeling for a long time. A small shed and a stable were attached. The building, shrouded in the fog, was built so close to the moat it was in danger of slipping into the foul-smelling morass at any moment. Nevertheless, it was a stately home. The hangman’s daughter couldn’t help but think of her father’s house in Schongau, in the stinking Tanners’ Quarter out of town and not nearly as large as this one. She had a vague feeling that her father’s barely concealed dislike for his brother had something to do with jealousy.
A thin ray of flickering light came through the closed shutters on the first floor. Jakob pounded on the massive wooden door, and shortly afterward there was a muffled but still familiar voice that made Magdalena’s heart pound.
“Uncle Bartholomäus, is it you?” the voice inquired cautiously. “I didn’t expect you back so soon from the torture chamber. Why—”
“For God’s sake, Georg, it’s your own father. So open up, or do you want to keep us all standing out here in the cold?”
The Schongau hangman rattled the doorknob, and a muted voice came from inside. Then the bolt was pushed aside and the door open.