What, for heaven’s sake, was that? The werewolf? Or those ghosts the beggar was telling us about?
Magdalena shook her head, angry at herself. She’d let herself get carried away by all the horror stories.
Again she heard the growling, closely followed by the tongue clicking. Her heart pounding, she tiptoed across the creaking floorboards through the mouse droppings until she finally reached the doorway to the next room. It was so dark that at first she could see only shadows, but after a while her eyes grew accustomed to the dimness.
She was looking out at a broad landing, with what were once grand staircases leading up and down. Her uncle knelt at the foot of the stairway leading up. He had stretched out his hand and was making those strange clicking sounds she’d heard before.
A few steps above him stood the strangest animal Magdalena had ever seen.
It had a silvery gray pelt and what looked almost like a lion’s mane around its head, as well as a long snout, like a dog’s, and two glistening, evil-looking red eyes. The creature had a tail and moved on all fours, but suddenly it stood up against the banister. Magdalena cringed.
It had hands like a human. Now the beast opened its mouth and snarled, showing a row of sharp, menacing teeth. There was only one thing that kept Magdalena from letting out a scream and fleeing.
The creature was no larger than a three-year-old child.
“What is that thing?” she whispered anxiously as Bartholomäus continued clicking his tongue.
“Shhh!” he said. “You’ll scare it away. Believe me, this beast is as quick as a fox and agile as a squirrel. Once it took us half a day to catch him again.”
Magdalena looked at her uncle in astonishment. “You’ve seen this monster before?”
“More than I care to. It’s one of the apes from the bishop’s menagerie, a so-called baboon. From time to time I take meat scraps to the animals up there and clean out the cages. This fellow comes originally from Africa-a very unpleasant animal, if you ask me. Devious, underhanded, and sly in a bad way-almost human. Aloysius and I gave him the name Luther.”
“Luther?”
Bartholomäus shrugged. “Reminds me of a Lutheran heathen and itinerant priest I once drew and quartered.” Addressing the animal, he said, “All right, Luther, just come here. Be a good little fellow.” The executioner kept making the clicking sounds while slowly retrieving a piece of dry soul bread from his pocket. “Katharina gave me this earlier. Let’s see if we can tempt him with it.”
Still almost frightened to death, Magdalena watched as the baboon’s little hands twitched back and forth. It was clear he couldn’t decide whether to take the bait.
“You mentioned before you had a suspicion,” Magdalena said. “How did you know-”
“That it would be Luther? Well, Captain Lebrecht expressed his vague concerns to me a few days ago. He couldn’t say anything specific-the bishop would have forbidden that. Evidently Rieneck ordered him and a few other guards to search for the beast under orders of strict confidentiality. That’s why Lebrecht was always so tired. He’d been doing double duty for some time, looking for a werewolf as well as for Rieneck’s cuddly toy.”
“It looks like a number of people have already made Luther’s acquaintance,” Magdalena replied. “For example, this drunken night watchman you told me about.”
“Matthias?” Her uncle grinned. “Actually, that’s what I suspected when he described the animal to me. But then everyone started going on and on about a werewolf, and I myself started thinking Brutus might have something to do with it. Since then I’ve talked with a lot of people who say they’ve seen a werewolf in the city, and their descriptions were all more or less the same: silver fur, sharp teeth, suddenly stands up on its hind feet. Yesterday, when I went back to the menagerie to take some meat to the old bear, I was reminded when I saw that Luther’s cage was empty. It’s possible he’d been gone a long time.”
“And is it possible the baboon is responsible for all the terrible events recently?” Magdalena wondered.
“Luther?” Bartholomäus laughed. “Just look at him. He might frighten you to death, but he certainly can’t carry people away, torture them, and rip their bodies apart. No, our werewolf is someone else.”
While they’d been talking, the baboon had grown more confident. He ventured down a few steps and reached out for the soul bread. Despite his evil-looking red eyes and sharp teeth, Magdalena suddenly thought he looked cute.
“Too bad he’s not the monster we were looking for.” She smiled. “Even my children would like to play with this little fellow.”
She was about to reach out to the baboon, when the animal suddenly snarled at her and jumped toward her. The attack came so quickly that Magdalena fell over backward. Little demonic hands tugged at her hair, and Luther’s sharp fangs were just a few inches from her nose.
“Do something!” she shouted to her uncle. “The thing is trying to bite me.”
“Luther, behave yourself.”
Bartholomäus seized the baboon by its mane and pulled him away from his victim. The animal was furious and flailed about with his arms and legs.
“The cellar door!” Bartholomäus shouted as the animal howled and struck out. “Open the cellar door!”
At first Magdalena didn’t know what her uncle meant, but then she spotted a wooden trapdoor at the foot of the stairway leading down. She quickly descended the staircase, found a rusty ring in the middle of the door, and pulled. Nothing happened immediately, but after some shaking and tugging, it opened. Bartholomäus followed her, still holding the enraged baboon, tossed him through the opening, and quickly closed the cover. Luther’s shrieking continued from down below, like a voice from the depths of the underworld. Bartholomäus straightened up with relief. His coat was ripped, his hair disheveled, and his face covered with bloody scratches.
“That damned beast,” he ranted, wiping the blood and sweat from his brow. “Let Lebrecht try to figure out how to get this little monster back to the menagerie. For all I care, he can lock the bishop up in the cage with him, where His Excellency can delouse the beast and we’ll be relieved of the two baboons at the same time.”
Angrily, Bartholomäus hobbled toward the front door, kicked it so hard it flew open, and disappeared outside into the foggy night.
“Rabies?”
Samuel looked at his friend Simon, puzzled. The two were still standing at the bedside of the suffragan bishop, who lay like a piece of dead wood in a pile of soft pillows. The Bamberg city physician slapped his forehead. “You may be right.”
“Not only may be, I am right,” Simon replied with a trace of satisfaction in his voice. “It’s really amazing we didn’t think of this before-but we were thinking only of wizardry and human illnesses, and completely forgot animal ones. These werewolf stories can make you dizzy, like bad wine that addles your brain.” He shook his head in disbelief. “Actually, I just read about it again this morning. Uncle Bartholomäus has an astonishing collection of works on veterinary medicine, among them some about dogs, which he loves more than anything else. One of the books discusses rabies. It affects dogs, but also wolves, foxes, cats, and even some smaller animals. If one of those animals bites a person, the victim shows the same symptoms as the suffragan bishop here.” Simon paused to look down at Harsee. A long thread of saliva was dribbling from the corner of his mouth. “It occurs to me that Aloysius, the hangman’s servant, also mentioned cases of rabies in this area several times.”
Simon remembered now that his father-in-law, too, had spoken of it several times, and the furrier had also mentioned the spread of the illness.
“So you think Sebastian Harsee contracted rabies from an animal?” Samuel asked, looking at the paralyzed bishop, who was glaring at him with wide-open eyes like a dead fiansh.