Bartholomäus huddled down on the long bench, cracked his knuckles, and kept looking at the executioner’s sword hanging, as always, in the devotional corner of the room alongside the crucifix.
“How many werewolves do you think they’ll catch tonight?” he asked in a soft voice. “How many men and women will scream their confessions to me on the rack that they’re in league with the devil? How many will I have to put to the stake?”
“Perhaps now you have a better understanding of why I left Schongau back then,” Jakob said as he placed a bandage on Matheo’s ankle coated with a yellowish, pleasant-smelling ointment. “I always preferred healing to killing and torturing.” He chuckled. “But they give us people to heal only after we’ve inflicted pain on them.”
Bartholomäus shook his head. “It wasn’t right, Jakob, and you can’t make it better with the same old explanations. You had responsibilities then, as the eldest. We were helpless, and you abandoned us.” He stopped short. After a while, he continued in a soft voice, staring blankly into space.
“I always loved animals more than people. Their souls are good-without malice or hatred. My first wife, Johanna, was just like that, like a sweet little fawn-not the brightest, but sweet. When she died on me, of consumption, I thought there was nothing more to come. . but then came Katharina.”
Again there was a long pause.
“You will marry Katharina, it will all work out,” said Magdalena, trying to console him as she anxiously awaited the next ringing of the cathedral bells.
Where are the children? she wondered. Where is Simon?
Bartholomäus laughed out loud. “Do you think Katharina will still want to marry me if I turn into a killer? Up to now I’ve only had to deal with thieves and robbers. There was a woman who killed her child; I managed to arrange for her to be beheaded rather than drowned miserably like a cat. But what we’re facing now will be bad, very bad. Many innocent people will die, just like back during the witch trials. .” Once again his gaze wandered over to the executioner’s sword with the strange sharkskin handle.
“As the story goes, the Bamberg executioner at the time, a certain Michael Binder, went mad after all the torturing and burning,” he said in a flat voice. “One day he just left town and vanished, and that’s why his position was open for me. Who knows, perhaps after all this I’ll turn as mad as Binder and disappear in the forests. Then your son Georg will be the new executioner.” He gave a bitter laugh. “It will start all over again, an eternal cycle. We take the guilt upon ourselves until we can no longer stand it.”
“Unless you step out of the circle,” Jakob murmured. “I at least tried, back then. But I came back.”
In the silence that followed, the only sound was Matheo’s occasional restless moaning. Finally, Magdalena stood up and paced aimlessly back and forth in the room. The far-off sound of bells could be heard from the cathedral.
“It’s midnight, and Georg and the children still aren’t here,” she said, hugging her freezing torso. “We don’t know how Simon is, either. We should go out and look for them. But where? In the castle? It seems to have calmed down a bit there. Just where could they-”
She stopped short, and suddenly her eyes lit up. “I know!” she cried out. “With old Jeremias in the Wild Man, of course. The children so enjoyed being with him yesterday. Perhaps Georg couldn’t figure out what to do with the two rascals, so he went there with them. And then they forgot what time it was.”
And then they met Barbara there, she was thinking. That’s got to be it. Georg found his sister again, and they lost track of the time.
She still hadn’t told her father where Barbara was staying. She wanted to keep her promise until Matheo was brought to safety.
“Still in the Wild Man at midnight?” Bartholomäus shrugged. “Do you really believe the kids are there?”
“Well, it’s at least a possibility.” Magdalena hurried to the door. “I’m going to go there right now-”
“How often do I have to tell you you’re not going anywhere alone tonight?” her father interrupted gruffly. “God knows what these self-appointed guards are doing now. If you go at all, I’m coming along.”
“I thought you were going to the castle to look for Simon there,” Magdalena replied.
Bartholomäus stood up. “I can do that.” He nodded toward the sleeping Matheo. “I’ll just take the lad here up to the bedroom. With his fever and all the brandy Jakob gave him, he’s sure to sleep soundly for a few hours, then we’ll have to think about what to do with him later.”
Magdalena looked at her uncle gratefully.
“Thank you,” she said.
Bartholomäus smiled, but his eyes looked sad.
“This is perhaps the last time for a long while that I’ll be able to do something good. I hope God will remember me for this later on.” He gestured impatiently. “And now let’s get moving before I change my mind.”
Magdalena nodded to him and then disappeared into the night.
Meanwhile, Georg was dreaming of dark malt beer flowing slowly from a giant barrel and spreading across his head. All he had to do was open his mouth and the delectable fluid would completely fill his body.
But then the color of the beer suddenly changed-instead of brown, it was now red, and Georg could taste blood. He was in danger of choking to death on the huge stream of blood, and now through the deluge of red he heard cries, someone seemed to be calling to him. Then he felt someone shaking him roughly, the blood disappeared, and all he felt was a pounding in his head. “Hey!” he heard a voice saying. “Wake up, we’re closing, let’s go, you drunk.”
Georg opened one eye and stared into the pasty face of the tavern keeper, who suddenly looked as old and fat as he remembered her from earlier that night.
“Get out, boy!” she yelled. “Get out of here before people start wondering what happened to you. All hell has broken loose outside.”
“Hell. .,” he mumbled, nodding slightly. Like hell-that’s how he felt at the moment.
“They caught a couple of werewolves in the city,” the woman continued. “One of them, they say, is the suffragan bishop himself. The whole city’s gone crazy. So move along.” She gave him a shove, and he almost fell off the bench. “I want to close before one of these self-appointed guards shows up and starts wrecking my place.”
“Werewolves. . Suffragan bishop? I don’t understand. .” Georg struggled to get up from the table and staggered toward the door. The tavern was deserted, and only a few puddles of beer were there as a reminder of the earlier crowd of partiers. Georg almost fell over once, but the tavern keeper caught him and helped him get his balance.
“You’d better stay on the main streets,” she told him, “or find a few other late-night revelers to take you home. It’s a strange night. God knows who or what is lurking around out there.” She crossed herself and closed the door behind him, and Georg found himself alone on the street.
He took a few deep breaths and rubbed his tired eyes. The cool night air helped him sober up a little. There was a small fountain at the next corner, and he staggered toward it. First he just splashed a little cold water on his face, then he stuck his head all the way in, like an ox at a trough.
The stinging cold water brought him more or less back to his senses. He shook the water from his hair, then cautiously looked around the deserted streets. The only light he could see came from the second floor of the tavern. Everything else lay in darkness.
Georg frowned. The bar woman had said something about captured werewolves. Maybe one of them was the wolf’s carcass that his father, Uncle Bartholomäus, and Magdalena had left behind for the guards up in the old castle. So it seemed Matheo was able to escape. But what about the other werewolves, and what did that all have to do with the suffragan bishop?