Now Simon could not wait another moment. Holding his breath, he aimed, even as Salter seemed to be jumping in all directions, and then finally pulled the trigger.
“You can go to hell yourself!” Simon cried, trembling and panting, expecting a large explosion.
There was a soft click—and nothing else. The powder had not ignited.
Salter stopped briefly, then broke out in loud laughter.
“You would make a good actor,” he giggled. “I almost thought the weapon was loaded. That’s why I seldom use a pistol, except on the stage. Sometimes just a stone is enough, and at least as deadly.”
He reached for a large rock, raised his arms, and was about to bring it crashing down on the groaning hangman, when all of a sudden there was a threatening growl.
Simon cringed. It was the same growl he’d heard earlier in the thornbush.
A deep rumble, like that of an approaching whirlwind.
“What in the world . . . ,” Salter mumbled, looking around.
Out of the darkness a vague shape came charging at the two combatants. It was bright, almost white, and was as large as a calf.
The werewolf! Simon thought. So there is such a thing.
Like a monster from hell, the beast attacked Salter, who was paralyzed with fear, and tore him away from Jakob. The flames were not very bright, so all Simon saw was the outline of an unequal fight. Salter screamed as the beast, with its powerful jaws, ripped off his jerkin and shirt and finally tore open his chest. With flaring nostrils, the beast sniffed at the blood-streaked upper torso of his victim and finally located the throat.
Markus’s screams stopped abruptly as the huge fangs clamped down on his neck. He twitched violently a few times, his legs thrashing uncontrollably, as the beast ripped apart his throat and drank his blood. Finally, he lay there motionless.
The creature raised his head and stared at Simon.
For the first time, the medicus studied the animal and realized how huge it was. It had short, pointed ears, a stubby face, and a wide mouth with jowls that hung down over a row of sharp teeth. Its red eyes glowed faintly like tiny jack-o’-lanterns, and its rib cage was much too large and wide for its head, as if the creature had been cobbled together from different races of hounds. Its fur was a grayish-white and it had massive forelegs and huge paws. It was the size of a young bear and spattered with blood. It seemed to have been created with just one purpose.
To kill.
Simon regarded it with a mixture of horror and awe. It wasn’t a werewolf but clearly some kind of dog.
But it was at least as dangerous.
Once again the animal gave that threatening growl. Jakob was still lying stunned and motionless on the forest floor, just a few steps from the monster that approached him now, sniffing loudly.
Simon felt his whole body quiver. What would the beast do to his father-in-law?
“Hurry up and shoot!” screamed the woman, who had sought refuge behind a bush. “Shoot before it kills us all!”
Simon was going to reply that his weapon was old and useless, but he took out the gun again and aimed.
I have to try, at least, before the beast eats my father-in-law alive. I have to try. Lord, help me . . .
He pulled the trigger.
This time there was a loud report, a bright flash in front of him, and a recoil that traveled up through his hand like a whiplash. He shouted and dropped the burning-hot pistol, thinking he’d gone blind—but then he heard a whimper, opened his eyes, and saw the monster in spasms on the ground. Blood flowed over the white fur of the animal’s chest. It gasped, and its legs kicked as if it were running through an imaginary meadow.
Then, suddenly, it froze.
I hit it. The realization shot through Simon. I actually hit the beast.
For a few moments, the world seemed to stand still. In the background, flames shot up even higher toward the roof of the hunting lodge, the wind howled, and the firs bent and groaned under the force of the heaving wind.
Then he heard a cry from inside the building.
“Brutus! My God, Brutus! What have they done to you?”
Simon looked toward the burning front entrance, where Magdalena and Bartholomäus were standing, holding a stunned-looking Georg between them.
They carried the boy a few more steps until he was beyond the reach of the fire, then Bartholomäus let go of him and hobbled toward the dead dog.
“Brutus, my dear little Brutus,” he wept. “Why did you have to run away from me?”
Magdalena was in the clearing with Georg, who stood there moaning as the flames slowly crept up to the roof of the lodge. The wind had subsided a bit now but was still blowing hard enough to turn the building into a fiery inferno. The events of the last few hours had shocked Magdalena. As if in a trance, she’d helped Bartholomäus carry her injured brother through rooms full of fire and smoke, past stuffed, mangy heads of stags and wild boar, smoldering furniture, and wall hangings full of holes, with flames licking up them toward the ceiling.
She shouted, cried, wailed. Barbara and her father had to be somewhere in the house, but she couldn’t help them. The only one who might still save them was a crippled old man, but he, too, had presumably already been consumed in the flames or suffocated in the smoke.
They’d finally reached the front doorway, coughing, when they heard a shot outside. Some distance away, Magdalena saw Simon and a woman she didn’t know, but the man on the ground had to be her father. Alongside him was something white that she couldn’t quite make out. A wave of relief came over her. Her father had escaped the hellish flames.
And Barbara? How about Barbara and Jeremias?
Bartholomäus let go of Georg and ran toward the group, so Magdalena dragged her brother the last few steps by herself, finally letting him down gently on the ground.
“Everything will be all right,” she mumbled, almost like a prayer she was saying just for herself. “Everything will work out.”
Then she was standing around the corpse with the others, while Bartholomäus leaned down to it as if it were a dead child, stroking the blood-spattered pelt and speaking soft words of consolation. Simon, in the meantime, had run over to care for Georg and stanch the blood from the wound on his leg with a few strips of material from his torn shirt. Markus Salter lay a short distance away, ripped apart like a wild animal slaughtered in the hunt, but no one paid attention to him.
“I can only do the most basic things for your brother,” Simon said grimly, turning to Magdalena as he tightened the bandage. “The wound is quite deep. The boy urgently needs medicine so it doesn’t become infected.” He also pointed to Magdalena’s father, sitting silently and dejectedly on an overturned tree trunk nearby. “And your father also needs bandaging. That crazy scoundrel hit him hard in the head several times. But he won’t let anyone help him.”
“Don’t you understand? He’s thinking of Barbara,” Magdalena snapped as her whole body began to tremble. “We’re all thinking about Barbara. Except you, apparently.”
“Perhaps she’s not even in the burning house,” Simon ventured, trying to console her. “Salter suggested he might’ve taken her somewhere else.”
“She’s inside,” said a soft voice beside them. It was the blond woman, who Magdalena realized must be Adelheid Rinswieser, the wife of the Bamberg apothecary, who had been missing for more than a week. “Barbara was his last victim,” she continued sadly, “along with that old scribe.” Timidly, she placed her hand on Magdalena’s shoulder. “I’m so sorry.”
Magdalena felt something wet on her cheeks—tears, running down her face in streams. She felt as if someone had kicked her hard in the stomach.
“I must go to Father,” she mumbled in a flat voice. “He needs me now.”
She stood up and walked over to Jakob, who was still sitting alone on the tree trunk, looking like a craggy boulder that had washed up ages ago in a forest clearing. She sat down next to him, and together they stared into the crackling flames no
w rising over the roof of the old lodge.
“It’s my fault,” the hangman said suddenly. “I was so . . . angry. I went charging in there all by myself, like a wild bull. Bartl is right. I am a good-for-nothing.”
“Father, what are you saying?” Magdalena replied in a soft voice. “You couldn’t have stopped it. All of us—”
She stopped, suddenly seeing another figure staggering out the front door. Burning wooden beams from the roof came crashing down and glowing shingles flew through the air, but the figure staggered on. Only now did Magdalena see it was Jeremias, holding something in his arms carefully, like a treasure.
It was a delicate human form, wrapped tightly in a blackened monk’s robe, but Magdalena knew right away who it was.
“Barbara!” she shouted, running toward them.
Magdalena’s cries tore Jakob out of his profound grief.
He thought at first that his mind was playing tricks on him, but then he looked up and saw Jeremias stumbling toward the group, holding the motionless girl in his arms. He jumped up, rushed the few steps over to the two, and took his daughter in his huge, muscular arms. He hadn’t cried since the death of his wife, but now tears ran down over his bearded, smoke-blackened face.
“Barbara, Barbara,” he sobbed. “My little girl, I’m so sorry.”
Magdalena and the others had come running over as well. Barbara’s hair had almost all been singed away, and her face and fingers were covered with soot and little red burn blisters. Her hands and feet were still in shackles, though the ropes were singed. Her chest moved rapidly up and down, like that of a sick little bird. “At least she’s still breathing,” Simon said, carefully examining her. “This heavy monk’s robe apparently saved her life. The material must have been soaked with rain, so it kept the worst of the heat out.” Carefully he helped Jakob lay the unconscious girl down on the forest floor, and together they removed the steaming robe, singed at the edges.
“Bring me some water,” the medicus cried. “Quick!”
Jakob ran to a nearby pool and scooped up some water in his hat, then they washed Barbara’s face and gave her a bit to drink. She opened her eyes, looked briefly at Jakob and the others, and a smile spread across her face.
“Father,” she murmured. “You didn’t abandon me. I’m thirsty . . .” Then she passed out again.
“You will have all the water in the world, my little girl, if you just stay with us,” Jakob whispered, moistening Barbara’s dry lips with a few drops he squeezed out of a wet handkerchief.
“I think she’ll make it through,” Simon said after carefully inspecting her burns. “But I do need a few healing herbs, both for her and for Georg, as soon as possible, and we can only get those in Schongau.” He sighed. “For the time being, I’d be happy if we could just find a bit of shepherd’s purse or a handful of elder leaves to prevent an inflammation.”
“I can get you elderberry leaves,” Magdalena said happily, pointing back at the burning building. “I think there’s a big elderberry tree by the house that still has some of its leaves.” She quickly disappeared in the darkness while Simon and Jakob continued caring for the wounded.
Which now included Jeremias. Along with his old scars he now had some burn wounds, and he wheezed with every breath.
Jakob bent down and gently took his badly burned hand. “Thank you,” he said, his voice trembling. “Thank you for saving my daughter.”
“I owed that to our Lord God,” Jeremias groaned. “One life for another. I never should have killed Clara, even if she would have betrayed me, that devious, calculating wench. I had no right to do it.”
“Only God has the right to take a life,” Jakob replied. “We hangmen are only his tools.”
Jeremias smiled. “If that’s the case, I’m an often-used tool, ragged and old, and beyond repair.” He coughed dryly.
“How did you know where Barbara was in there?” Jakob asked. “How could you find her, and I couldn’t?”
Jeremias had another coughing fit, this time spitting out blood mixed with soot. “I . . . remembered,” he finally croaked. “Long ago I was here, as a very young hangman’s servant. The master of the hunt at that time was a cruel man. If he caught poachers, he liked to string them up himself, and sometimes he tortured them beforehand, in order to learn about their accomplices. He had his own private torture chamber down in the cellar. My father and I helped him set it up.” He gave Jakob a sad look. “I’ve seen so much evil in my life, cousin, and there are many things I’ve tried to forget, but I wasn’t always successful.”
“I have nightmares myself, sometimes,” Jakob admitted, almost inaudibly. “Like my father, like Bartl, like all of us who have to do this dirty work for the nobility. We must never let our bad dreams overcome us.”
He looked down at Jeremias sympathetically. The horrible events in his earlier life as Michael Binder had robbed the old man of all feeling, and possibly made him a bit mad, but now, at the end, he appeared to be returning to what he once was: a young man in love with his Carlotta.
“I couldn’t save the old scribe,” Jeremias gasped, repeatedly interrupted by dry coughs. “The entire room was already in flames. I found Barbara in a little room across the hall. It seems she had sought shelter there, where the flames were not so . . .” He shuddered and grimaced with pain. “Damn! This hurts almost as much as before, when I threw myself into the trough of lime.”
Jakob wanted to remove Jeremias’s shirt to get a better look at the wounds, but the blackened material had eaten its way into the flesh. The hangman saw that it was too late for any help.
“Don’t worry about it,” Jeremias murmured. “Sooner or later the end will come, even for an executioner. Look after your children instead.” He smiled. “You’ve got such great children. You can’t say enough about them. I wish I had such wonderful children myself.” He clung to Jakob as another wave of pain coursed through his body. “Just one more thing,” he said. “I’ve got to know before I go. Would you have turned me in to the city guards? Tell me, would you?”
Jakob hesitated. “I think I would, yes,” he finally said. “Every crime must someday be atoned for.”
Jeremias let go of him and closed his eyes. “You’re . . . a . . . good . . . man, Kuisl,” he whispered. Then his head fell to one side.
Jakob listened to his heart, then took his own singed coat and laid it over the old man, as if he were just sleeping. There was still a smile playing over the man’s lips.
He looked as if he was at peace.
With a sigh, Jakob turned to the others. Barbara was in a deep sleep, but her breath was now more even. Simon had washed her, so her skin no longer looked as black and burned. Alongside her, Georg groaned loudly in pain, but the wolf trap at least had not severed a tendon, and he was able to hobble around. Jakob himself still felt dizzy from the smoke and the blows to his head, but he’d gotten far worse beatings before in barroom brawls.
Just the same, this monster nearly killed me, he thought. By God, I’m really getting too old . . .
Simon knelt down beside the corpse of the dead dog, examining it with Bartholomäus. The medicus looked like he was thinking it all over, trying to find some idea lurking in his mind.
“I think Brutus was rabid,” he told Bartholomäus, who appeared to be recovering from the worst of his sorrow at the loss of his pet. “All the foam around its mouth, that sudden attack, the rage, the trembling legs . . . And Salter’s prisoner, the apothecary’s wife, just told me the poor animal had been prowling around the house for a long time, rooting around and digging.”
“When I went looking for him around here with Aloysius, he must have been very close by.” Bartholomäus paused to think, then stood up and washed his bloody hands carefully in a puddle nearby. “God knows where he picked up that infection, but if Brutus had rabies, that would explain his random, savage killing of animals in the forest and why he attacked Salter in such a rage.” He winked at Jakob. “But maybe the dog mixed the two of us up
and thought his master was being attacked.”
“I always knew dogs were stupid,” Jakob answered dryly. “Who could have mixed the two of us up?”
“You’re more alike than you want to admit. When will you two squabblers finally realize that?” It was Magdalena. With a broad smile, she returned from the other side of the burning house holding her scarf, knotted together and full of leaves and herbs. “Here’s good news for a change,” she said, holding up the scarf triumphantly. “I found not just elderberry shrubs in the wild garden but also an old overgrown patch of herbs. Now, in late autumn, there wasn’t much there, but the flames from the house were so bright I was able to find some dried shepherd’s purse and buckhorn.” She gazed over at the hunting lodge, where the upper story had collapsed. Black smoke rose up into the night sky like a giant, admonishing finger. Magdalena suddenly pursed her lips.
“But even these herbs weren’t able to save Hieronymus Hauser,” she said darkly. “Katharina’s father burned to death in there. What a terrible end for the old man.” She handed the folded scarf full of herbs to Simon, helping him and her father as they crushed them in their hands and laid them on Barbara’s and Georg’s wounds. They tore Bartholomäus’s coat into long strips to serve as bandages.
“I don’t think the old scribe suffered for very long,” Adelheid Rinswieser replied after a while. She had been given Magdalena’s woolen coat and stood off to one side shivering, still looking dazed. “He was already unconscious when Salter dragged me out of the room. He must have suffocated without ever regaining consciousness.”
“A merciful death for someone who bought his fortune with the blood of others,” Bartholomäus growled, staring wistfully into the burning house. “As the scribe for the Witches Commission, Hieronymus made a lot of money during the trials. I see now how he could afford that beautiful house by the Sand Gate. I never really liked him—he was a very calculating person.”
“But he did agree to his daughter’s engagement to the executioner,” Jakob reminded him.