There are stories going around about this house that I don’t like.
“The front door appears to be locked,” Jeremias whispered, pointing to the massive two-winged portals leading from the terrace into the house. “But a few of the windows are open. Besides, there’s probably a back door for the servants, which they can—”
He stopped short on hearing a long, drawn-out scream that chilled Magdalena to the bone.
“Barbara!” Jakob howled, standing up from where he was crouched behind the bush.
“For God’s sake, be quiet,” Bartholomäus hissed. “We’re trying to surprise him, so—”
But the Schongau hangman had already stormed off like a mad bull toward the building.
“Stop this jackass before he ruins everything,” Bartholomäus demanded, turning to Magdalena. “You may be the only one he still listens to.”
“I’m not so sure of that,” Magdalena mumbled, closing her eyes briefly and saying a quick prayer.
Then she ran off after her father.
Barbara froze when she heard the bolt on the cell door being pushed aside. Drenched in rain and sweat, Markus Salter stood before her in the doorway with that familiar sad smile on his face—only now he didn’t appear melancholy anymore, but simply crazed, like a dark angel that had just fallen from heaven.
“It’s time,” he said in a hoarse voice. “Let’s get it over with.”
Without another word, he went over to Adelheid Rinswieser and loosened her shackles in a few places. He lifted her up, almost tenderly, until she was finally standing—unsteadily, as her feet were still bound. He held a gleaming dagger up to her throat.
“Now, very slowly, we’ll go over to the other room,” he ordered her. “Please don’t resist, or I’ll have to hurt you prematurely, and I don’t want to do that.”
Adelheid cast a final, warning glance at Barbara, then disappeared with Markus into the corridor. Barbara heard a high-pitched, anguished shout—not a woman’s voice but that of a man.
After some time, Salter returned alone. He removed Barbara’s shackles and helped her up.
“Why are you doing this?” she asked.
“I’m restoring the balance of justice,” he said. “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. That’s what it says in the Bible.”
With astonishing strength, he pulled Barbara down the dark, stone corridor to another room illuminated by torches. Instinctively she let out a little cry. Adelheid Rinswieser had not exaggerated.
Spread out before her was a veritable nightmare.
Barbara had seen the torture chamber in the Schongau dungeon and had even helped her father clean up a few times. But this was something different. The room did not look like an ordinary torture chamber, but one dreamed up by a madman.
Or a demon.
There were the usual instruments like the rack, a rope and pulleys, tongs, thumbscrews, a “Spanish rider,” and, in the far right-hand corner of the room, a brazier that gave off an almost sickening warmth. Scattered among them were strange objects that Barbara had never seen before: a bloodstained wooden device, spherical on one end and coming to a sharp point on the other; a tub filled with a whitish liquid; a cage in the shape of a head; and a few iron boots inlaid with spikes and screws. Other instruments were so bizarre that Barbara couldn’t figure them out even after studying them. Strewn around the room were bales of hay with reddish-brown spots where blood had congealed on them.
The worst, however, were the paintings on the cloth panels that hung from the ceiling like backdrops in a theater. They reminded Barbara of paintings of hell depicting tortured sinners bleeding from their many wounds, their mouths open in silent screams. They stared at Barbara from every corner of the room—hasty sketches of human cruelty, like the first building plans for a new cathedral. Everything in this room expressed a single human feeling.
Pain.
Lying on the rack, moaning and in chains, was Hieronymus Hauser. The old scribe appeared to be unconscious. His eyes were closed, and he quivered like a fish on dry land, but he was still alive. Crouching along the opposite wall on a bale of straw was Adelheid Rinswieser, shackled, and with a leather cord around her neck attached to an iron ring in the wall. She was staring straight ahead, but Barbara could see that her whole body was trembling with fear. Barbara was still so paralyzed by the horrible sight that she was completely void of all emotion. Like a lamb being led to slaughter, she let Markus Salter guide her over to the wall, where he gently pushed her down to the floor and tied her, as he had Adelheid, with a strap. With other ropes, he tied her feet and hands. Then he stood up and approached Hieronymus Hauser on the rack, while continuing to smile gently at the two women.
“We are coming to the end of the performance,” he said softly. “The scale is tipping back into equilibrium.” He passed his hands playfully over the wheel used to tighten the chains at the head of the rack. “I asked Malcolm to have my play performed, but no matter how often I asked, he wouldn’t. It’s too bad; it would have been a great success, a very great success. Do you know what is the driving force in every good play?” He looked at the two women questioningly. When they didn’t respond, he continued. “Love and revenge. Everything else is derived from those two. All of Shakespeare’s great tragedies are based on it. My play begins with love and ends in revenge—a great deal of revenge. Do you want to hear a summary?”
“I do,” Barbara whispered, hoping to put off the inevitable for a while. “Tell us.”
“Well, the play is about a young boy born into a large, happy family—father, mother, aunts, grandparents. His grandfather is none other than the Bamberg chancellor himself. The boy is safe and secure in the arms of his mother. That’s the end of the first act, the end of love.” Salter’s smile died like the light of a candle that was suddenly snuffed out. “Because now, a few powerful people want to destroy this family, an ice-cold calculation based on their sheer lust for power. They have a diabolical plot, and the little boy watches as first his grandmother, then his mother, are convicted of witchcraft and tortured, and their bodies burned. He clings desperately to his father, but he, too, is executed as a warlock, as is his grandfather, the Bamberg chancellor. The boy is four years old, and bit by bit his world crumbles. As soon as he seeks comfort in a new family member, that person, also, is cruelly tortured and killed. He goes to live with his uncle and his aunt until they, too, are taken away by the executioner. In the end, the boy is completely alone. That’s the end of the second act.” Salter paused and stared blankly into space.
“From this boundless sorrow, a much stronger feeling emerges,” he finally said in a monotone. “Hate. Even before he says his last farewell to his tortured aunt, bleeding from her many wounds—she is the last close relative he had in Bamberg—she gives him the names of those who were paid blood money for destroying his family. He will never forget these names, not a single one.”
Tears gleamed in Salter’s eyes as he slowly continued turning the wheel of the rack. Each time, Hieronymus Hauser moaned loudly.
“Harsee, Schwarzkontz, Vasold, Gotzendörfer, Herrenberger, Hauser, Schramb, Braun.”
On hearing the last name, Adelheid Rinswieser let out a muted cry. “My God, Braun! That’s my father.”
“The orphan is brought to the Carmelite monastery on the Kaulberg,” Salter continued without paying any attention to the moaning and shouting. “The monks there don’t care for him. They believe he is a witch’s offspring. They torment him with words and prayers, they beat him day in and day out, they lock him in a cell deep underground. And there he recites the names of the guilty like a prayer. Harsee, Schwarzkontz, Vasold, Gotzendörfer, Herrenberger, Hauser, Schramb, Braun.” Salter started slowly turning the wheel again while the moans of the nearly unconscious scribe grew louder. “But one day the boy discovers an escape route through a mountain of sand . . .”
“The crypt under the monastery!” Barbara gasped. “You already knew about it and that’s why you went there to find shelter
.”
Markus Salter didn’t even seem to hear her. He just kept going on and on. “So the boy flees from the monastery, and once he’s out he learns that the last of his relatives has been killed, to wipe out any trace of the crime. There is, however, a distant relative, an uncle in Cologne, who takes him in. He begins his studies at the university there, and he takes on the name of his uncle in order to forget, but he can’t get these names out of his mind. Harsee, Schwarzkontz, Vasold, Gotzendörfer, Herrenberger, Hauser, Schramb, Braun.”
The next time Salter turned the wheel, Hieronymus Hauser let out a shriek, a high-pitched, anguished cry, almost like that of an animal.
Barbara closed her eyes, but she couldn’t escape the screams.
“Why me?” she shouted. “What do I have to do with it?”
Markus Salter just smiled.
“Can’t you see, Barbara? You’re a hangman’s daughter. Your family, too, assumed part of the guilt back then, which you must atone for now. The needle on the scale is swinging back to the middle. We are approaching the last act.”
When he turned the wheel the next time, the victim’s joints cracked sharply, and Hauser’s scream no longer sounded human.
Magdalena rushed toward the building, where her father had already arrived and was pounding on the door. She could still hear the horrible screams coming from inside. Behind her, above the sound of the storm and wind, her uncle was shouting.
“No, Jakob! Don’t do this!”
But the Schongau hangman paid no attention to him and kept slamming his body against the massive door, which did not yield an inch. “Damn it! It’s locked,” he cursed as Magdalena ran up to him. He kicked the door several times, but it didn’t move.
“Stop, Father,” Magdalena pleaded. “You won’t get anywhere that way. We must pull ourselves together—”
“Barbara!” Jakob shouted, as if he hadn’t heard his elder daughter, and kept hammering on the door. “Can you hear me? Are you inside?”
Hearing no answer, the hangman raced along the front of the house without another word, until he reached a boarded-up window. With his huge hands he seized the boards, ripped them off the house, and soon had an opening large enough to enter.
“You . . . you stubborn damned ox,” Magdalena shouted. “At least wait until the others get here.”
But Jakob paid no attention to her. He heaved himself up onto the sill and disappeared inside the building, from which a muffled, drawn-out moaning could be heard. Magdalena by now was certain that the cries were not coming from her sister. But who, then? Perhaps Hieronymus Hauser? She briefly thought she heard another female voice, but she could have been mistaken.
Desperately she looked around for her comrades-in-arms. Georg, Simon, and Bartholomäus were approaching, but Bartholomäus was having a lot of trouble running across the slippery ground with his stiff leg. Only Jeremias was still hiding behind the thornbush, staring out anxiously at them.
“Isn’t that just wonderful,” Bartholomäus snorted when he finally arrived. “In all these years your father hasn’t changed at all. He just plunges ahead, hell-bent, come what may.”
“Well, at least he ripped out a hole in the wall first,” Simon said, pointing at the opening. “You might call that progress.”
“But what the hell shall we do now?” Magdalena scolded. “Nobody knows what to expect inside.”
“I’m afraid your father has made that decision for us. Now all we can do is act fast and pray.” Bartholomäus was already hoisting himself onto the sill, and despite his handicap, he was astonishingly nimble. He pointed at Simon, who was standing next to the window holding his wheel-lock pistol, uncertain what to do. “You’ll stay out here with Jeremias in case the fellow somehow gets away from us. Do you at least know how to use that weapon?”
Simon looked at it doubtfully. “Uh, my father-in-law gave me a quick explanation earlier. I think it’s loaded, but—”
“Fine, then everything is all right.” Bartholomäus slipped into the house.
Once again there was loud moaning from the depths of the house, and by now it no longer sounded like a human wail. Magdalena looked at Simon, who was staring at the pistol as if it were a poisonous snake.
“You probably won’t even need it,” she reassured him, “and if you do, just hit the fellow over the head with it.”
“Magdalena,” Simon pleaded, “don’t go in there. It’s enough that your father and your uncle and Georg are risking their lives.”
Magdalena hesitated, but then she stood up straight. “Simon, you don’t understand. My little sister is somewhere inside there, in the hands of a madman. I can’t stay outside. If anything happens to her, I’d never forgive myself.” She attempted to smile, but it looked strained. “Everything will work out—you’ll see.”
Then she climbed in after Georg and her uncle.
Inside it was as dark as in a rotting coffin. Magdalena thought she saw some dust-covered furniture wrapped in blankets, and some places on the walls were a bit lighter than their surroundings—presumably doorways leading to other rooms. A few steps in front of her, she could see the outlines of her uncle and her brother.
“If your father hadn’t been so stupid as to come crashing in here, we could have lit a torch or a lantern,” Bartholomäus hissed. “Now we’re standing here blind as bats. Why couldn’t he wait for us?”
“His daughter is being held captive in there, and perhaps being tortured. Don’t forget that,” Magdalena chided him. But silently she had to admit that her uncle was right.
Sometimes Father is like a little boy, just a lot stronger and with a lot less common sense.
She had just reached one of those lighter sections along the wall, which did, in fact, turn out to be an open doorway, when she heard a rumbling and crashing somewhere in the building. There were more screams, but this time she couldn’t have said whose voice it was. Near the back of the building, someone shouted Barbara’s name, followed by silence.
“That was Father, I’m sure,” Georg said excitedly. “Then he’s already found Barbara!”
“It sounded more like something happened to him,” Bartholomäus said as he rushed into the next room. “That’s what he gets for being so impatient.”
Magdalena followed him, squinting as she groped her way forward. They were standing now in a sort of reception room or parlor; the main entrance was visible on the left. A faint ray of moonlight fell through a crack in the entrance, and the wind rattled the boarded shutters. In front of them, emerging from the shadows, a rickety stairway led up to a balcony, underneath which there were two other doors, both open.
“And now what?” Magdalena asked. “We have no idea where Father is. Perhaps he’s already headed off in another direction.”
“I’m telling you, we need a light,” Bartholomäus grumbled. “I left my lantern outside with Jeremias. I can still get it and light it.”
“We don’t have time for that—let’s just keep going straight back.” Georg turned to the door on the right underneath the stairway; it appeared to lead to the back of the building. “One way is as good as the other. If we don’t find Father there, we can always—”
A sudden sound caused Magdalena to spin around, and, looking up, she saw something black swooping down on her and Georg. At the last moment, she threw herself to one side, dragging her brother along with her. There was a crash, and Georg let out a loud shout.
“Damn it!” he gasped. “What is that? That hurts like the devil!”
Magdalena, beside him, smelled a sharp, biting odor that made her cough. Choking, she turned and bumped into something metallic.
“Be careful, that’s lime!” Bartholomäus shouted. “It seems there was a tub of it up there that fell down. Quick, get away. The stuff is as sharp and biting as devil’s piss.”
Magdalena felt a burning spot on her hand. Quickly, she rubbed it against her skirt, and the stinging subsided. Then she moved cautiously away from the balcony and was just barely able to
make out Georg and Bartholomäus standing along the wall on the opposite side of the room.
“I nearly tripped over something,” Georg whispered as he also rubbed his hands. “I think there was a wire leading up to the balcony. That bastard set traps here to scare off intruders.” Then he turned toward his sister. “I have to thank you. If you hadn’t pushed me away, I’d probably be blind now.”
“So would I,” she mumbled.
Magdalena couldn’t help thinking of Jeremias and his scars. If she or Georg had gone just one step farther, they would have ended up looking just like him.
Did our werewolf use this caustic treatment on his victims? She shuddered. Is that how he disposed of them?
“We’ve got to be careful,” Bartholomäus said. “Perhaps my brother ran into a trap like that a few minutes ago. God knows what’s still in store for us. From now on, we’d better think about every step we take.”
They passed through the door on the right, under the stairway, into another dark room that seemed just as large as the first and led them to two more hallways. By now, Magdalena’s eyes had grown accustomed enough to the dark that she could see more than just outlines. The walls were lined with deer antlers covered with dense cobwebs, and alongside them, in wooden frames, faded paintings so horrifying that even the marauding Swedish mercenaries didn’t want to take them along. Something scurried between their feet, squeaking—a rat or mouse that they had startled.
Again there was a loud scream. The voice seemed to be both nearby and very distant, and Magdalena’s heart skipped a beat. Then she heard her father calling.
“Good Lord,” she whispered. “If we want to help Barbara and Father, we’d better hurry. I’m afraid we have to just not worry about other traps.”
They all ran to the next door.
“Barbara? Where are you? Barbara!”
Jakob’s voice rang through the dark rooms and hallways of the old hunting lodge. The hangman had stormed blindly into the building and had made it through the first room when he realized he had badly miscalculated. He should have waited for the others, as now he had to fend for himself. But he couldn’t hesitate a moment longer now that he’d alerted Barbara’s abductor of his presence. He was struggling to think it all through, clearly and precisely, as he always did, but his fear for his daughter’s welfare made it impossible to think straight. Where had this madman hidden her?