Suddenly the thought came to her that perhaps the man hadn’t spared her at all, but had chosen the worst of all tortures for her.
He’d just let her rot away down here, in this icy hole.
In her dark, cold grave.
“Help! Help!” she screamed. “Is anyone there? Anyone at all?”
But her throat was so sore and dry that her cries turned into a muffled rattle. She coughed and vomited sharp, acidic mucus.
I’ll slowly freeze here, dying of hunger and thirst. How long will it take? Two days? Three? Longer?
She struggled to sit up, but the leather straps were tied so tightly over her chest they took her breath away every time she moved.
Adelheid closed her eyes and tried to stay calm. She wasn’t dead yet, and she would fight to the end. There was still hope. If the man left her down here to die like a wounded animal, it would be the end for her, but if he came back, she would appeal for his sympathy. He had cried. She didn’t know why, but he had feelings. Since she’d seen his face, he was no longer a monster, but a person. Perhaps at that moment he’d viewed himself again as a person. Did he perhaps regret what he had done?
On the other hand, Adelheid also knew he couldn’t really allow her to live now. She had seen his face, she would recognize him.
If only for that reason, she had to die.
“Help!” she cried again but stopped when the pain in her throat became too severe. She broke out sobbing, though she knew that the tears were draining the last bit of fluid from her body.
How long would it still be? How long? How—
Suddenly, through her crying and wailing, she heard a soft sound. Adelheid froze in shock. Yes, something was there. Definitely. A scraping and scratching, and it came from somewhere above her.
“Is someone there?” she asked excitedly.
The scratching continued. Now she realized it came not from the ceiling, but from near the top of the wall. Was someone digging down to her? Had they finally found her?
“Here!” she cried out in a hoarse voice. “Here I am! Here—”
What happened then made her fall silent for a moment.
Something up there was growling loudly and deeply. There was an ugly rattling and a deep rumble, as if the mythical Cerberus, the hound of hell himself, had awakened from a long sleep.
My God, the monster! It’s outside. It’s digging down to me.
Adelheid held her breath. The scratching and scraping, which until just a moment ago had sounded so promising, suddenly had become an evil sound from the bowels of the earth.
Then she noticed a slight brightening in the room. It took some time for her to realize that a tiny ray of moonlight was coming from the same corner as the sounds, through a slit in the wall. Evidently there was a window up there that had been covered by soil, and now someone or something was digging its way down to the window.
Again she heard the terrifying growl.
She cringed. If it was an animal, it had to be very, very large, and it was trying to dig its way down to her.
The beast. God in heaven, protect me. Holy Saint Georg, protect me.
13
BAMBERG, TEN O’CLOCK AT NIGHT, NOVEMBER 1, 1668 AD
WITHOUT STOPPING TO CHECK IF anyone was following him, Georg ran through the dark streets of Bamberg. A horrible thought had seized him with such force that at first he rejected it.
You’re just imagining things. Stay calm. Try to think things through, like Barbara or Magdalena would.
But the more he thought about it, the more anxious he became. The very possibility that his assumptions might be correct made him run faster and faster. He needed certainty. Perhaps it would have been better to ask his father for advice first, but now there was no time for that. Besides, who was to say he was right? It was quite possible he was just imagining things and would make a fool of himself in front of his father and the others. It was better, then, for him to check out his conclusions by himself. At least his fear had sobered him up somewhat.
Gasping for air, Georg ran through the deserted fish market toward the wedding house; the outer gate was still open. Normally, two guards were stationed here, but evidently they had more important things to do tonight. No doubt they were off somewhere hunting werewolves. Georg wished he could learn more about it, but first he had to make sure the children were safe.
He entered the dark interior court and turned right, toward the door to Jeremias’s room. He took a deep breath and listened, but couldn’t hear a sound—no voices, no cries of children. He knocked timidly.
“Who’s there?” came a voice from inside after a while. Georg thought it sounded nervous and tense.
“It’s me, Georg,” he whispered. “I’m sorry it got so late.”
A bolt was pushed aside and Jeremias’s scarred face appeared in the opening. He was smiling broadly.
“Ah, it’s only you,” he said with relief. “I thought something had happened to you. The guards have been reporting the most horrible things about what’s going on in the city.” He winked. “But looking at you, it seems you’ve been quenching your thirst a bit too much. Your first time getting really drunk, eh? Well, that can be terrifying.” He opened the door. “Come on in, I’ll help you get yourself together again.”
Georg entered the room and looked around. There was only a single candle burning on the table beside a board with chess pieces on it. The draft coming through the open door made the cage with the sleeping birds swing back and forth gently, and a mangy cat was dozing on the bed. He didn’t see the children anywhere.
“Where are the boys?” Georg asked anxiously.
Jeremias pointed toward a small door on the left next to the bookshelves. “I took them over to the bench by the stove in the tavern. It’s nice and warm there, and since the guards came and threw everyone out, it’s quiet and empty. Biff is watching them, so you don’t have to worry.” He pointed toward the bed with the straw mattress. “It would be better for you to spend the night here with the children. No doubt you’ve heard what’s going on out there tonight.”
Georg nodded absentmindedly. He sat down on a stool by the table while Jeremias busied himself at a little tile stove in one corner. Finally, the crippled old custodian turned around and handed Georg a steaming cup.
“Here, drink this,” he said. “It’s hot small beer mixed with honey and a few strong herbs—the best cure for the aftereffects of the accursed devil’s brew.”
“Bless you.” Georg gratefully took a sip. It tasted sweet and at the same time bitter, and in fact it did clear his head a bit.
“Do you play chess?” Georg asked after a while, pointing to the chessboard on the table. “Who with?”
Jeremias laughed. “Not with Peter yet, though the little fellow has a really good head on his shoulders. No, I play against myself.” He winked at Georg. “Believe me, I’m a merciless opponent.”
Georg gave a wan smile, and his gaze wandered over the medical books on the shelves, then farther across the floor to the chest, with whose contents the boys had been playing so enthusiastically that afternoon.
I was right, he thought, his heart pounding. At least regarding the medical books, my memory wasn’t deceiving me. And for the rest . . . well, we’ll see.
“This is really an impressive library,” Georg began hesitantly. “I just realized my father has most of the same books.”
“Really?” Jeremias raised his eyebrows. “Well, there aren’t a lot of really good books about medicine. I’m sure you know that—”
“Lonitzer’s almanac of herbs and plants, for example,” Georg interrupted, pointing to a rather thin, dog-eared book whose title was easy to recognize on the book’s spine. “Uncle Bartholomäus has one of those, too. It’s a book consulted often by hangmen, because it contains many recipes on how to dispatch the condemned man quickly and, above all, painlessly into the hereafter. At least that’s what my uncle told me.” Georg hesitated for a moment. “There are also some instructions on what
to do to a condemned man to break his resistance.”
Jeremias suddenly pricked up his ears. “Ah, indeed?” he said with surprise. “What, for example?”
“Well, it just happens my father told me of one method just recently,” Georg replied, his voice trembling a bit. His head felt dull and heavy, but he kept a careful eye on Jeremias. “There’s the so-called sleep sponge. It’s often used in surgical operations, as well, to sedate patients. My father thinks the victims of this werewolf were drugged first, to make them easier to take away and kill. Are you familiar with this sleep sponge?”
“The werewolf sedates streetwalkers and then rips open their rib cages? Is that what you’re thinking? Very original. Your father must be a very imaginative hangman.” Jeremias chortled, and the scars on his face seemed to spring strangely to life. Then he shrugged. “To answer your question, perhaps I have indeed heard about this sleep sponge. But unfortunately I don’t know anything more about it.”
“Really? That surprises me. After all, its main ingredients are standing right there on your bookshelf.” Georg pointed at the crucibles and vials. “Hyoscyamus niger, Papaver somniferum, and Conium maculatum. The first time I was here, I couldn’t make any sense of the Latin names, but later, in the tavern, they occurred to me: henbane, opium, and spotted hemlock.” He smiled between clenched lips. “I may not be as smart as Barbara, but sometimes I remember the seemingly most insignificant things. It must be true that alcohol doesn’t always make you dumber. Sometimes it helps you to figure things out.”
For a long while the only sound was the soft chirping of the birds in the cage. Some had been awakened by the conversation and were flapping their wings excitedly.
The crippled custodian with the scarred face continued looking at him cordially, but Georg thought he noticed an anxious flicker in the man’s eyes.
“I’ve always recommended alcohol as a means of healing,” Jeremias said finally. “It can be amazingly effective, especially if the patient is unaccustomed to it. The same is probably true for the sleep sponge.” He folded his arms and leaned back on the bed. “I have a hunch that alcohol has provided you with additional insights. Is that so?”
Georg nodded. “Indeed.” He took another sip of the stimulating drink before continuing. His voice sounded more confident now. “I told you before that my Latin was not so good. I always hated it when Father pestered me about it. But there’s no getting around the fact that hangmen have to learn Latin. Most of the books on healing are written in it, and that’s the way we earn most of our money—with healing, much more than killing. So every day I had to translate Latin with my father, and I’ve even remembered some of it. Barbara was always better, of course.” He looked at Jeremias approvingly. “Your Latin, by the way, is excellent, as far as I can tell. Recently you’ve spoken Latin with me several times. Homo homini lupus—man is a wolf to man. Do you remember? Those were your words.”
Jeremias smiled and raised his hands disarmingly. “Very well, I’ll admit I speak a respectable Latin, and I have a few herbs that I probably shouldn’t have, but so far your reflections have led you to no conclusions, and that surprises me. What else do you have, detective?” he asked, playfully shaking his scarred head.
Georg sipped his drink and thought some more before continuing, slowly, as if he was groping forward word by word.
“My father always told me, when we were learning Latin, that when you get lost, sit back and look at the whole sentence, not just the individual parts. They only make sense when you take them all together. With you, too, I’ve been looking at the whole thing, and there was a part I just couldn’t fit in anywhere—at first.”
“And what would that be?”
“A sword.”
Jeremias looked at him, astonished. “A sword? I don’t understand. For the first time, you’re actually making me curious.”
Georg pointed at the old, battered trunk in the corner. “Well, when I brought the children to you, they went to play back there by the trunk. Paul was crazy about a short sword he found there. It was actually just the handle and the lower part of a blade that had broken off, dull and scratched. At first I didn’t pay any attention to it, but then I remembered what Paul had said to me when we were out by the river. He was very keen on going to see you. He has a sword just like Uncle Bartholomäus, only smaller. Those were his exact words, and at first I didn’t know what he meant by that. But now I do.”
Meanwhile, Jeremias had gone over and opened the old trunk. He took out the broken sword and held it reverently in his hand. It was a “great” sword, a two-hander—dull and rusted, and its handle was just as rough and gray as on the day it was forged.
“The handle is of sharkskin,” Georg whispered. “Isn’t that right? A handle only found in Bamberg executioners’ swords. I always admired Uncle Bartholomäus’s sword. Even if you’re anxious and your hand is sweaty, every drop will run off, and your hand won’t slip when you deal the deadly blow. I always wanted to have a sword like that. You have one, or at least a broken part of one. Why?”
“Why don’t you tell me,” Jeremias replied. His eyes had lost their warmth now. He looked sad and very, very tired, almost as if he’d aged years in the last few minutes.
Georg placed the cup down on the table and stared at the cripple for a long time. “I asked my uncle once how he’d become a hangman in Bamberg. After all, he was a stranger here, and the job almost always goes to the firstborn son of the previous hangman. The hangman before my father, however, had no children.”
“No, he didn’t,” Jeremias said in a soft voice.
“After the witch trials, the hangman disappeared without a trace,” Georg continued. “Nobody ever saw him again, though I think people were somewhat relieved. His name was Michael Binder. As the Bamberg executioner, he took upon himself the weight of the city’s guilt. He had tortured and executed almost a thousand people, on the orders of the bishop and a special inquisition committee, and then he simply disappeared. And with him, the guilt.”
“The guilt remains,” Jeremias replied. “It can’t be washed away, not even with caustic lime. The good citizens cannot wash it away, and the hangman certainly cannot, either. He must continue to live with this guilt, especially with the one . . .”
Georg could see tears welling up in the custodian’s face, and suddenly he felt sorry for him. “What kind of guilt do you mean?” he asked hesitantly.
Jeremias smiled sadly. “You’ll be a good hangman someday, Georg. I can tell, believe me. Good hangmen are like sharp swords. They relieve suffering, if possible. Just a whoosh of air and it’s done. Be careful not to think too much about it. With the thinking comes dreams, bad dreams.” Jeremias groaned as he returned and sat down on the bed with the sword handle. “Especially when you’re torturing someone, your mind must be as clear and clean as a freshly forged sword. The screams, the pleading, the wailing must all bounce off you, have no effect. But sometimes you can’t do it. Perhaps you will know some of the victims—not well, but you’ve met them and greeted them on the street. They are neighbors, casual acquaintances, the tavern keeper from where you’ve always ordered your beer, the midwife who helped your wife birth her child. This isn’t a large city, and to some degree everyone knows everybody else. And the day may come when you must torture and execute someone you . . .” He hesitated. “You really love. This guilt stays with you forever.”
“My God.” Georg looked at him, horrified. “You . . . you . . .”
“Carlotta was sixteen,” the old man continued, staring blankly into space while his fingers clutched and kneaded the sword handle. He seemed lost in his own world. “She was the daughter of a well-to-do linen weaver. Our love was clandestine. No one was to learn of it. But we swore we would get married someday. As a sign of my affection, I gave her a dress of pure fustian as soft as goose down. Toward the end of the third wave of persecutions, at the time of the Great Plague, the tavern keeper of the Bear’s Claw claimed he’d seen my Carlotta dancing wit
h the devil in the parish cemetery at the time of the full moon. In those days, lots of people danced with the devil,” Jeremias said with a dry laugh. “The trial didn’t even last half a day, then they handed Carlotta over to me. I can still remember her wide-open eyes. My hands trembled, but I did my job, as always. They asked her about the people she knew, and every time I applied the tongs to her, I thought she would speak my name. But she didn’t. She just looked at me the whole time with her big, brown eyes, like those of a sweet little fawn . . .”
“Did you burn her at the execution site?” Georg finally asked, breaking the silence that followed.
Jeremias shook his head. “She hanged herself in the dungeon with a rope made of the dress I’d once given her. Perhaps she wanted to spare me the sight of the execution.” He laughed bitterly again. “The sinner spares the hangman from having to kill her. What irony. The devil really had a time with us.”
“What happened then?” Georg asked.
“I couldn’t live with the guilt. That very night I smashed my executioner’s sword and fled from the town. I found shelter in an old shack built by a worker at a limestone quarry near Rossdorf in the Bamberg Forest, and I cried my eyes out. Then I decided to end my life and wipe all memory of me from the face of the earth. So I poured the unslaked lime in a trough, added water, and jumped in. But the pain was too great. I couldn’t bear the same pain I’d inflicted on others. I wandered through the forest, half-blind and screaming in agony, hiding in stables and barns, until finally Berthold Lamprecht found me and took me in.”
“The innkeeper of the Wild Man,” Georg added with a nod.
“And a good Christian, God knows. He’s a distant relative of mine, the only one who knows who I really am. The young people in Bamberg don’t know me, of course, and the elders just regard me as an old, scar-covered cripple. None of them ever recognized me on the street, and if anyone started giving me a closer look, I pulled my hood over my face and moved on. I’m just a monster, and monsters have no past.” Jeremias bared his teeth. With his scarred head and deformed face, he looked so horrible that even Georg could not help feeling repelled.