“What. . what time is it?” he asked, dazed. “How long have I been here?”
The woman shrugged. “No idea. Two hours, maybe.” She winked at him. “Don’t worry, we don’t have any closing time, if that’s what you’re wondering. All the taverns are open later on account of the reception for the bishops. Why do you ask?”
Georg stared into the foam on his freshly served beer, trying to think. Something came to mind, fleetingly, and then it was gone. It had something to do with Jeremias and the children, but all he could remember was Jeremias saying he could stay away longer than two hours.
Just one more beer-it’s right here in front of me. It would be too bad to let it spoil.
Not until then did he notice that the woman was still standing next to him. He pushed a few coins across the table.
“Thanks very much,” he mumbled, “but after this beer, I’ve really got to go home.”
“Of course,” she replied with a smile. “That’s what they all say.”
With a laugh she turned away, and Georg put the mug to his mouth.
As the black brew dripped from his lips, he struggled to remember what had gone through his mind before. Once again, the thought flashed through his head.
Jeremias. . the children. . the sword. .
But the beer washed the memory away, and soon his head sank down onto the table.
A short time later he was snoring peacefully to the beat of the music.
“That surely is a kindly wall that doesn’t hold me back. .,” Barbara was saying, up on the stage of the dance hall, but the rest of her lines were drowned out in a chorus of laughter and applause.
The applause was like a soothing, warm wave washing over her and, at the same time, filling her inside. Barbara rolled her eyes theatrically and stepped back a pace in order to make room for the other actors in the scene. Her initial trembling and the rumbling in her stomach that the actors called stage fright had disappeared as if by magic, making her feel like she was in seventh heaven now. She was not just acting the part, she was the princess Violandra! When she put on this splendid dress, she’d been able to leave her old life behind her. The theater gave her the chance to be anything she wanted. She was no longer a dishonorable hangman’s daughter but a princess, a queen, or a beautiful young woman waiting for her lover. There were so many roles to play. And it was clear that the people here loved her. They laughed at her few lines, and when she gracefully skipped to the front of the stage, they whistled and cheered. It was just fabulous.
After some hesitation, Sir Malcolm had given her more lines than he’d planned at first, no doubt because he’d noticed in rehearsals the effect she had on the men in the audience. In addition to the part of the princess, Barbara now also played the prince and the queen. The drama Pyramus and Thisbe takes place at the king’s court, with the simpleminded workers first to appear. One of the actors represents a wall through which Pyramus and his beloved speak. Barbara played one of the male roles with an artificial, high-pitched voice and exaggerated fluttering of her eyelids. The audience applauded wildly.
“You loose, immoral wall!” the mythical Pyramus cried. “You roguish, thieving, frivolous thing!” Then the wall and the hero came to blows, causing a wave of loud laughter in the audience.
“Well, I’d not want to be the wall in this play,” Barbara continued in her role, and the people groaned happily.
Since it was dark in the hall, she couldn’t see beyond the first few rows where the nobles were sitting. The Bamberg bishop was wiping tears of laughter from the corners of his eyes, and the man beside him, evidently the bishop of Würzburg, appeared greatly amused as well.
It’s a hit, Barbara thought. Sir Malcolm will surely win the competition, and Matheo-
The thought of Matheo made her stop short, reminding her of how she’d run away from the executioner’s house, and Magdalena’s promise that her father would certainly do something to help them. Did he already have a plan? Or would her family abandon her and Matheo?
“God forbid, what. . what. .,” she stuttered, forgetting her lines and shifting from one leg to the other. Malcolm cast a disapproving glance at her and suddenly seemed not at all happy.
“What’s the meaning of this?” he whispered so softly that no one else could hear.
“What’s the meaning of this?” she finally exclaimed. But no one else noticed her momentary lapse, since at that moment another workman appeared on the stage holding a painted shield bearing a carelessly scribbled image of the moon.
“Noble queen, this is the moon,” said Sir Malcolm, quickly falling back into his role of Peter Squenz, then turning to the cheering crowd to acknowledge their applause.
The play continued, and after the moon came another workman wearing a threadbare woolen blanket over his head, meowing like a cat, and representing a lion. The audience was abuzz now, and the room seemed to seethe and tremble like a pot of boiling water. Barbara looked down and saw an older cleric in the second row wearing a monk’s cowl. He appeared ill, swaying back and forth in his chair with his face buried in his hands and his mouth opened in a scream, though Barbara could hear nothing in the general tumult. Was the man ill, or were the noise and heat just too much for him?
There was no time for her to ponder that question, as the action on the stage required her full concentration. Assuming that his beloved Thisbe had been attacked and eaten by the lion, the foolish Pyramus had taken his own life. Just the same, he continued chatting merrily with the laughing public. Barbara shook her head in feigned annoyance.
“You can’t just have the corpses get up like that and give speeches,” she scolded.
Sir Malcolm, playing the part of both a worker and a clumsy director, shook his finger. “Pyramus, you’re dead, you should be ashamed of yourself,” he chided him with a wink of his eye. “You can’t say anything. You just have to lie there like a dead pig.”
At that moment there was a loud crash and banging sound in the audience. Barbara looked down from the stage and saw the sick cleric fall off his chair. Most in the audience hadn’t noticed and continued laughing and cheering, but the two bishops turned around to look. With concern, Archbishop Schönborn stood up and beckoned for a servant to come over, while his colleague Philipp Rieneck just shook his head in annoyance, evidently angry at the interruption.
Many in the audience were still unaware of the incident, and they stepped aside reluctantly as two men approached from the rear of the room. One wore the typical hat of the doctors’ guild; the other, who was noticeably shorter, a wide-brimmed hat with a red feather.
“Simon,” Barbara whispered. “But why. .”
“Damn it, what’s going on?” whispered Sir Malcolm, standing alongside her. “Come, come. It doesn’t matter what’s happening down there, the show must go on.”
With a loud, somewhat forced laugh, Malcolm turned to the public and regained their attention.
“Before I was a prologus, so now I am an epilogus,” he declaimed, bowing deeply.
That was as far as he got, for at that moment there was a piercing scream in the hall. It came from one of the servants who had just bent down to the sick man, who lay writhing and quivering on the floor. His monk’s cowl lay alongside him, and a thin stream of blood trickled across his bald head. Suddenly the sick man jumped up from the floor and began waving his arms and dancing around wildly. The wheezing sounds that came from his mouth sounded brutish and inhuman.
For a moment, he turned to face the stage, and in the flickering light of the candles Barbara could see his face. It was pale like that of a corpse, and his eyes bulged out of his head. The worst thing, however, was his mouth. His lips were so thin as to be almost invisible, and between them was a row of sharp, yellow teeth much larger than those of an ordinary human. Foaming spittle dripped from his teeth onto his cassock while the creature, clearly possessed by the devil, let out a long, brutish cry and rushed at Simon, who was paralyzed with fear.