The man had worn a black coat and a hat drawn over his face. His voice was refined and pleasant, not like one of those crude raftsmen whose breath stank of booze as he nailed her like a board to the wall. She knew this man had money to spend. He led her to a hidden doorway and pulled out a little silver bottle. The warm liquid inside tasted sweet like wine and went down as smooth as honey. The next thing she could remember was falling onto a bed in a strange room where the man covered her body with a thousand kisses. It hadn’t been unpleasant. On the contrary, for the first time in a long while she’d felt desire welling up inside her again. When she finally came to much later, she was still lying in the same room, but with a pounding headache now. Her gums felt as if they were on fire.
There was no doubt the stranger had provided generously for her. In one corner of the room stood a bed made up with white linens, and in the other corner, a chamber pot. A table had been prepared with cheese and white bread on silver platters and wine in a fragile glass goblet. Never before in her life had she tasted white bread-it was heavenly, without husks, grit, or hard kernels. In the following days she was fed more white bread and other delicacies-sausages, sliced ham, creamy butter… As time passed, Katharina began to suspect she was being fattened up like a goose, but she kept right on eating, as it was her only diversion amid the endless, monotonous hours, the only way she could drive away the tormenting thoughts.
Where am I? What does he intend to do with me?
Once again Katharina felt a tingle creep across her back. She turned around and looked directly into the eye.
It was studying her. Something scraped along the outside of the door.
It was time for the next course.
Avoiding the main streets, Magdalena and Simon made their way through a labyrinth of narrow lanes and shadowy back courtyards piled high with rubbish and excrement. The squalid children and hapless, wounded veterans of the Great War who occupied these places stared out at them as they passed. Old soldiers leaning on crutches, some with horrible scars and burns on their faces, held out their hands as the two strangers hurried by in silence. Everywhere, mangy, scraggy dogs roamed the streets, snarling at them in packs. This was the other face of Regensburg, the dirty underside that had nothing whatsoever in common with the clean paved streets, the stately parliament building, the cathedral, and the towering houses where the patricians lived. This was a place of poverty and disease, where the daily battle for survival was waged.
More than once Simon thought he saw a figure peering at them from around a corner, someone pursuing them, lying in wait for just the right moment to plunge a dagger into their ribs or snatch their few belongings. But oddly enough the beggars and the wounded left them alone. Simon was sure this had less to do with him than it did with Magdalena, whose steady gait and fierce gaze showed possible thieves and muggers she wasn’t an easy target. They could sense that the hangman’s daughter was one of their own.
“If this tavern doesn’t materialize soon, I’m going to die of thirst right here in the middle of the street,” Simon lamented, wiping the sweat from his brow. Again he cursed himself for having eaten that salty, greasy sausage down by the river.
The heat continued to build palpably in the narrow lanes. Several times already they’d asked halfway reputable-looking passersby for directions to the Whale. Each time they’d been sent off in a different direction, and now they found themselves somewhere behind the cathedral, supposedly just a stone’s throw from the elusive tavern.
“Surely it can’t be much farther,” Magdalena said, pointing ahead to a broad boulevard spanned by tall stone arches. “Those must be the arches they told us about. We just need to turn right here, and we’ll be there.”
As they walked, the hangman’s daughter briefly recounted what had happened to her father. A few words were enough to give the medicus cause to worry. Was it really possible someone had framed the hangman? And if so, why? Simon wasn’t especially enthused about Kuisl’s idea to go looking for clues at Hofmann’s house. He dreaded the thought of breaking into the bathhouse that night. What if someone caught them? No doubt they would be deemed the hangman’s accomplices, thrown into the very next cell, then led to the gallows alongside him. But the medicus knew he wouldn’t be able talk Magdalena out of it. Once the hangman’s daughter had set her mind to something, there was no turning back.
At last they emerged from the labyrinth of narrow lanes and turned right, into a wide paved boulevard with huge stone arches overhead. Nestled discreetly between two warehouses stood a lopsided, two-story gabled house that looked as though it had been standing there since time immemorial. Above the entrance dangled a rusty metal sign depicting a whale and a man leaping from its mouth.
“Jonah and the whale,” Simon said, nodding. “This must be it.”
Magdalena tried to get a look inside, through a sooty bull’s-eye windowpane, but even though it was the middle of the day, it was as dark as the grave inside. “It doesn’t exactly look inviting,” she ventured.
“It doesn’t matter,” replied Simon, reaching for a small bronze fish that served as a door knocker. “The raftmaster seems to know his way about town, and his word clearly carries some weight. I think we ought to try it. We do need a cheap place to stay, since my savings can’t last us much longer than a few more days.” He pounded vigorously on the door.
For a long time they heard nothing. Just as Simon was about to suggest they look for somewhere else to stay, the door opened a crack and a long pointed nose appeared, attached to a haggard old woman with stringy hair and remarkably bad breath.
“What? What do you want?”
“We’re… looking for lodging for the next few weeks,” Simon replied hesitantly. “Karl Gessner sent us, the Regensburg raftmaster.”
“If Gessner sent you, you must be all right,” the old woman mumbled as she shuffled back inside, leaving the door wide open behind her.
Simon cast a cautious glance inside the taproom. Hanging from the wood-paneled ceiling was a giant stuffed catfish that stared back at him with mean eyes. Despite the summer heat, a tile stove with a bench built around it rumbled away in a far corner. The chairs and tables in the room were old and scuffed, and except for Simon and Magdalena, not another living soul seemed to be staying there. What fascinated Simon most, however, was the shelf that lined the opposite wall, holding objects he never would have expected to find in such a place: books.
Not two, or three, but dozens of them, all bound in leather and apparently in mint condition.
He entered the tavern alongside Magdalena and walked directly to the books. He knew at once he’d feel at home here.
“Where-where did you get all these?” he asked the old woman, who had disappeared behind the bar again and was polishing glasses with a dirty rag.
“My dead husband. Before he married into my family, dear old Jonas worked as a scribe down at the ferry landing, drafting documents for the rivermen. He could never get enough books.” She looked at Simon suspiciously. “I’ll bet you’re a bookworm, too. I could use someone like you at the present.”
“I-don’t understand,” Simon stuttered.
The tavern keeper’s widow gave a condescending nod toward the bench by the stove. Only now did Simon and Magdalena notice someone lying there, snoring loudly. The stranger wore wide baggy trousers, a frilled white shirt whose lace collar was spattered with red wine, and a tightly fitted purple jacket whose silver buttons gleamed brightly in the dark room. The man’s legs, stretched out on the table, were shod in freshly polished leather boots whose bucket tops reached almost down to the sole.
Damn! That outfit must have cost a fortune, Simon thought. I always wanted boots like that!