“I’ll tell you the story of our family,” he said to Magdalena. “The whole story, from the beginning. What do you know about your great-grandfather?”
Magdalena hesitated. “My great-grandfather? His name was Jörg Abriel. He was an executioner, like everyone in the family.”
“He wasn’t just any executioner,” Bartholomäus corrected her. “He was the best and most famous executioner in the whole country. He would go with his family anywhere he was needed. He had a coach, horses, and servants, and his reputation preceded him wherever he went. He was the one who broke the whole notorious Pappenheim family on the wheel in Munich and impaled them, and in Schongau and Werdenfels in 1590, he beheaded and burned more than a hundred women suspected of witchcraft. It was rumored that Jörg Abriel could recognize witches from a distance; he could smell them. Well, it’s possible that was so. .” Bartholomäus grinned and paused briefly before continuing. “After all, he was a witch, a warlock, himself.”
Magdalena looked at him in disbelief. Many times, her father had told her and her siblings about the notorious Jörg Abriel. But what Bartholomäus was saying now was new to her.
“My great-grandfather was a. . a warlock?” Magdalena asked. “What do you mean?”
“We don’t know, exactly, but his wife-that is, your great-grandmother Euphrosina-dealt with magical elixirs and amulets. And Jörg Abriel kept some magic books containing, it was said, all the spells he had forced out of the witches when he tortured them. I saw those books myself when I was a child-bound in the finest calfskin and with silver fittings, a true feast for the eyes. They were considered the most valuable and truest books on magic that ever existed.”
“Don’t these books exist anymore, then?” Magdalena asked.
Bartholomäus shrugged regretfully, and his gaze darkened. “Unfortunately not. Your dear father burned them after he abandoned us, and only told me about it much later.”
“Because they were the work of the devil, that’s why!” Jakob interrupted. Until then he had remained silent, but now he could no longer restrain himself. “Written with the blood of a hundred innocent women. They disgusted me.”
“They were our family’s heritage,” Bartholomäus snapped. “Even if you were the firstborn, you had no right to do that.” He turned back to Magdalena. “Your father had a great responsibility thrust upon him at that time, but he failed. Our father was a good hangman until he started to drink.” He stared blankly into space. “That happens to many hangmen tormented by their dreams. Some even go mad. Father couldn’t stand it, either, and finally-”
“He was a failure and a drunk,” Jakob interrupted. “And you’ve never understood that, Bartholomäus. He beat our mother black and blue, and us, too. Yes, I loved him and respected him, but then I saw him as he really was. I didn’t want to become like him. Ever.”
Bartholomäus nodded grimly. “And for that reason you put your tail between your legs and just took off-but not before destroying the magic books, our family’s heritage-and you simply abandoned us, your younger brother and sister. I was only twelve, Jakob, and Lisl just three, and when you left, Mother had a bad fever. Do you remember? She never recovered, but it wasn’t her sickness that did her in, it was her grief. What were you thinking?” He lowered his voice and repeated, “What, in God’s name, Jakob, were you thinking?”
Magdalena watched her father in silence, but he turned away and just stared at the ground. She knew that as a young man he’d given up his vocation as a hangman and gone off to war, but Jakob had never told them what had happened to his brother and sister. All she knew about Aunt Elisabeth was that she’d gone to live with a midwife after the death of her parents, then was raised by her brother Jakob when he returned from the war, and later went to Regensburg to live with a bathhouse owner. Magdalena hadn’t heard about Bartholomäus until just a few years ago. Her father had put up a great wall of silence concerning his immediate family.
Now, for the first time, Magdalena understood why.
Suddenly, Bartholomäus got up from the woodpile where he’d been and raised his right trouser leg. Magdalena could see an old, whitened scar starting at his ankle and running up his calf.
“Take a look at my leg, Jakob,” he said. “Take a good look. This here is your doing. When you left me alone on the roof after father’s death, with all those bloodthirsty villagers. . I jumped. I didn’t make it to the other roof, I fell. Like a brick. My leg splintered, and the broken pieces stuck out like fish bones. The old bathhouse surgeon, that wheezing old bungler, sawed on it for a while and just made everything worse. Since then, I’ve been a cripple, Jakob. Because of you.”
“Father,” Magdalena asked hesitantly. “Is this true? Please talk to me. What happened then?”
Jakob cleared his throat and then, slowly and haltingly, began to speak.
“Your grandfather was a drunkard, Magdalena,” he began. “Toward the end, it was impossible to put up with him. He beat us, he squandered the little money we had, and he bungled the executions. People in town complained and gossiped about the only descendant of the famous Jörg Abriel, who had been such a feared executioner.” His grimace turned into a scornful smile. “Everybody hates us hangmen, but at least they respect us. No one had any respect for your grandfather, and when, for the third time, he turned the scaffold into a bloodbath, they stoned him to death, like a beast. Both Bartholomäus and I were there as helpers, and we were barely able to get away-”
“Damn it, Jakob!” Bartholomäus interrupted. “You were the older of us two. You knew how an execution was supposed to go. You should have helped Father. But no, you stood there like a pillar of salt. My big, beloved brother, the one I looked up to, you were so afraid you almost shit in your pants. And at the end you just left me behind in the dirt while the Berchtholdt brothers attacked me.”
“There was no way out. When will you finally understand?” Jakob paused, and when he continued, the words came gushing out. “Yes, I left you behind on the roof. I had to warn the others-Mother and Lisl. Old Berchtholdt and his people were already on the way to our house. Those two were just barely able to hide in time. And if the court clerk-”
Bartholomäus interrupted him. “But it was a few weeks later that you abandoned us-all of us. You just took off.” His voice was bitter.
“Because I was disgusted-with you, with Father, with the whole place. I didn’t want to turn out like my father, nor my grandfather. Yes, I took the magic books along and burned them, and then I took off and went to war. Away from you, from the family, from our reputation that stuck to us like blood on our fingers. Damn it! I wasn’t even fourteen.”
“You abandoned us,” Bartholomäus repeated in a trembling voice. “Can you imagine what it was like to live in a place as children of a dishonorable hangman who had been stoned to death? We were helpless and exposed every day to harassment and bullying. When Mother finally died of grief, little Lisl went to live with the midwife in Peiting, and later I traveled around doing odd jobs. They were hard years, Jakob, and not until I arrived here in Bamberg did I finally get a job as an executioner. I’d almost forgotten you.” He broke out in a bitter laugh. “And then one day during the war you came by here. You’d done well, you were a sergeant then, a strong, robust fellow, and just as arrogant as before. I can’t forget how you turned up your nose when you entered my stinking hangman’s room.”
“That’s not true,” Jakob mumbled.
“No doubt you thought we’d just shake hands and all would be forgotten,” Bartholomäus continued as if he hadn’t heard his brother. “But it’s not as simple as that. The whole time I hoped you had kept the magic books-I thought you’d taken them away and hidden them somewhere, but then you told me you’d burned them like so many dry leaves. I’ll never forgive you for that. Not for that, and not for this, either,” he said, pointing to his crippled leg. “Some wounds never heal, Jakob. Never.”