“Just wait till I get my hands on her,” Jakob growled. “But we’ll take care of that later.” He turned back to Georg. “And now it’s high time you told me what happened here.”
Georg took a deep breath, then lowered his head and told his father about getting drunk at the Blue Lion, but also all the things he’d seen and how he’d been able to make sense of it in the end. He told him about the ingredients for the sleep sponge he’d discovered in Jeremias’s room, Jeremias’s extensive knowledge of Latin, and the broken executioner’s sword-but most importantly, he told about Jeremias’s confession that he was Michael Binder, the former executioner, and that he had just recently committed a murder.
“He confessed to having killed the young prostitute,” Georg said finally. “Only the murderer could know about the ripped-open rib cage. Jeremias is the werewolf you’ve been looking for.”
Jakob had listened silently the whole time, and now he turned to Jeremias, still sitting on the bed, rubbing a cool ointment on his red, scarred face.
“Is it true what the boy says?” the hangman asked.
Jeremias sighed. “Only part of it. Yes, I killed Clara, but I’m not the werewolf. You must believe that.”
“Then we’ll have to hear more,” Kuisl replied. He took out his pipe and lit it on a flaming wood chip he’d fetched from the stove. Soon, fragrant clouds of smoke were ascending toward the ceiling, dispelling the rotten stench of the beast of prey that had been clinging to his clothes.
“So speak up,” Jakob demanded. “Or must I first ask my brother to throw you on the rack and torture you with thumbscrews?”
Jeremias winked mischievously. “Believe me, when it comes to the rack and thumbscrews, you youngsters could still learn a lot from me.” But then he turned serious.
“It’s just as Georg told you. Indeed, I was once the Bamberg executioner Michael Binder-but Michael Binder is long dead and gone. He died almost forty years ago in a trough full of unslaked lime. Since then, I’ve been Jeremias. But I was never able to wash away the guilt weighing on me. . only my old name.” The old man sighed deeply, and there was a strange rattle in his throat. “I could never forget the sight of my beloved Carlotta-the vision of her follows me in all my dreams. And then, about a year ago, this young girl appeared, the very image of Carlotta.”
“Do you mean the young prostitute?” Magdalena interrupted.
Jeremias nodded. “The first time I saw the girl, she came to me to abort a child. Prostitutes know about my knowledge of healing and visit me in secret. Ever since then, I couldn’t forget the girl. Her. . her name was Clara. I went to her and told her I only wanted to touch her, nothing more. At first, she was disgusted, but I gave her money, lots of money, and she gave herself to me. I often visited her in the brothel in the Rosengasse, and once I persuaded her to sleep here with me.” A blissful smile spread across his face. “It was the most wonderful night in almost half a century. We talked a lot, just as I had talked back then with Carlotta-mostly inconsequential things, the way new lovers do. I was a fool. A stupid old fool.” He pounded his forehead with his fist before continuing.
“In a moment of weakness, I told Clara my secret. I told her that in my former life I’d been Michael Binder, the hangman of Bamberg.” His face darkened. “The next day she demanded money, and later, even more. She threatened to turn me over to the officials.”
“Why would that have been so bad?” Georg asked. “After all, you didn’t do anything illegal back then, you were just the hangman.”
Jeremias smiled. “That’s just it, I was the hangman. Remember, at that time, not only ordinary people, but more importantly many nobles and councilors were being burned at the stake. Their families swore bloody revenge. I can still see them standing there by the flaming stake and pointing at me.” He shuddered. “They could never call the ones responsible to account, as they were too powerful. But believe me, they would have taken out their anger on me-and they still would today, because I’m just a simple hangman.”
Jakob grumbled his agreement and took another drag on his pipe. “You’re probably right. It’s so easy for them to vent their anger and guilt on us, and that’s why they need us-to kill, and to heal sometimes, too, and so we can relieve them of their undesired offspring. And afterward, in the street, they look away, and behind our backs they make the sign of the cross.”
“What happened with this young Clara?” Magdalena asked.
Jeremias took a deep breath. “Once, when I had no money to pay her, I went to her and asked her to stop it. But she just laughed at me and said she’d go to Captain Lebrecht the next day to report me. She called me a stupid cripple and told me all the things the patricians would do to make my life hell. At that moment, I knew I had to act.” He paused. “I thought about all the ways I could hurt her, and I got the idea of using the sleep sponge, which I had used on criminals in the past. The very next night, I lay in wait for her and pressed the sleep sponge over her face. She cried out once, then fell to the ground. She didn’t even feel the blow that smashed her skull.”
“But the rib cage,” Georg whispered. He was both fascinated and repelled by Jeremias’s cold-blooded description of the young girl’s murder. “You cut open her rib cage. Why?”
Jeremias shrugged. “There were people who’d seen me with Clara, and I was afraid someone might get the wrong idea. An old man, an unrequited love. . So I made it look like this werewolf had sunk its fangs into her.” He winked at Jakob. “And all of you were fooled by it.”
Georg now looked at the old man in disgust.
Is this what happens when you kill hundreds of people? How sick and unfeeling can you get?
For the first time he felt nothing but revulsion for the vocation of the executioner.
But this is probably what I’ll have to do someday.
The little room was now almost completely filled with smoke from Jakob’s pipe, and through the gray clouds, Jeremias’s scarred face looked almost like a ghost, a spirit from a long-forgotten past.
The silence in the room was broken by his question, uttered in a soft voice. “Are you going to hand me over now to the guards?”
“I’m not a judge, I’m just a hangman like you used to be,” Jakob replied hesitantly. “God knows there was a lot of pain in your life, but I’m sure that at least the great judge of us all will see to it that you pay for this deed in eternity. And you will pay more than for any of the others you have killed, because at least this one time you were able to make your decision freely. And you chose the path of darkness.”
“I know that,” Jeremias replied gloomily, and he looked to see what his visitors would do next. “So you’ll let me go?”
“I’m not sure yet,” Jakob said. He puffed on his pipe and seemed completely lost in his own thoughts. “It depends on what else we learn. Perhaps even with your help.” He stared at Jeremias sharply. “Do you swear you have nothing to do with the other murders?”
The old man held his hand to his skinny chest. “I swear by all the saints and the Holy Mother of Jesus.”
Jakob waved dismissively. “You can forget all that rot. I always thought there was something fishy about the murder of the young prostitute. The odor of henbane, her ripped-open chest-it didn’t seem to fit with the others.”
“But the other victims were also badly mangled,” Magdalena interrupted. “They’d been tortured, dismembered. .”
“The werewolf,” Georg whispered, making the sign of the cross.
“Good God, just stop talking about this damn werewolf!” Jakob scolded. “Can’t you see that someone is playing us for fools? Jeremias exploited that horror story, as did someone before him. But who? And why?” The hangman frowned. “Well, at least we know this prostitute doesn’t belong with the others. She was the stone that didn’t fit in the mosaic. If we put this aside, who’s left? Who. .”