“God. . or someone else,” Jakob murmured. Then he pointed to a passage farther down in the notes. “See here-it’s signed by the two clerks who transcribed the proceedings.”
“Of course,” Jeremias exclaimed, slapping his scarred forehead. “There were two clerks, not one. That’s something that puzzled me last night. I knew someone was missing. One is Johannes Schramb, isn’t it? So I was right.”
Jakob nodded. “You’ll be more interested in seeing the name of the other scribe.” He pointed at the second name, signed in beautifully flowing letters. In contrast with the presiding judge, this person had not taken the slightest effort to conceal his name.
Hieronymus Hauser
“I’m afraid I’ll have to bring some very bad news to someone today,” the Schongau hangman said, closing the heavy book. “Our dear Katharina doesn’t seem to know her father as well as she thinks.”
At that moment, the bells in the cathedral started to ring.
It was time to head back.
15
SOMEWHERE UNDERGROUND, NOON, NOVEMBER 2, 1668 AD
In her dark, damp room, Adelheid Rinswieser had spent the worst night of her life-alone with a sniffling, scratching, growling beast that was attempting to dig its way down to her. For the first time the dungeon felt less like a prison than a fortress, and she hoped it would protect her.
From time to time the unknown monster vanished and the sounds stopped, but it always returned to continue digging, and now a ray of sunlight shone past a wooden panel in a corner of the room.
Outside, it appeared to be a pleasant day. A few blackbirds were singing, and occasionally a magpie squawked nearby, but Adelheid just lay there holding her breath, waiting for the monster to return and continue digging. How long would it be before it had dug down deep enough and the wooden panel gave way? How long before it reached her and attacked her? Tied up as she was, she could neither flee nor defend herself.
In these hours of terror, Adelheid could only imagine what the beast looked like. Was it the same monster that had attacked her in the forest? Was it the man who was keeping her down here? Whatever it was, considerable time had passed since she’d last heard the digging and scraping.
Had the animal given up?
Adelheid felt a flicker of hope. She tugged at the leather straps. She was dying of thirst and the cold, but as long as neither the man nor this monster broke into her dungeon, she was safe-for the time being. She used this time to ruminate frantically. Would it be possible for her to flee? Why had the man locked her up down here? Was there anything to gain from her newfound knowledge?
She was sure she knew the man.
Ever since she saw him without his hood, she’d been racking her brain but couldn’t remember where she’d seen him before. It took a long time before it finally came to her, but now she was certain-she recognized those gestures, those eyes, even the shape of the mouth. She knew who it was.
And surely he realized that she knew.
If only for that reason, he couldn’t let her go.
But why? Why are you doing this? Why did you cry? How can I convince you not to kill me?
Adelheid went over it again and again in her mind, but she couldn’t figure it out. She’d never be able to convince him by pleading and crying. The others had tried that in vain. She’d heard their screams as they became more guttural and softer, until they finally fell silent. If she could just figure out his motive, perhaps she had a tiny chance of persuading him.
Why? Why is he doing this?
She cringed on hearing a sound. It was the same tapping and sniffing that always preceded the scraping and digging.
The monster had returned.
It was prowling around out there, sniffing and panting, and once it growled briefly. Then the noise stopped.
Adelheid listened intently. Would the animal start digging again? But there was no further sound; perhaps the beast had left.
But. . for how long?
“Go away,” she whispered. “Go back to hell, where you came from. Please. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord be with you. . ”
Adelheid prayed the Ave Marias familiar to her from her childhood, one after the other, giving her strength and reassurance.
“Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. .”
But for all her prayers, the Mother of God did not intercede.
“I can’t understand why the two have been gone so long,” Simon murmured, pacing back and forth like a caged animal in Hieronymus Hauser’s study. “It’s already way past noon.”
“Just calm down,” his father-in-law responded. “Bartholomäus may be an unpleasant fellow, but nothing will happen to your wife with him at her side. In a heavy fog like this, it takes a long time to do a good search of the city.”
“I know you’re right, but still, it worries me.”
Simon gave a sigh of resignation and continued pacing, his hands folded behind his back, through the room cluttered with chests and shelves, from one corner to the other. He’d been waiting more than two hours, along with Jakob, Georg, and old Jeremias, for Magdalena and Bartholomäus to return. They’d arranged to meet here in Hauser’s house, as Simon hoped they might find some clue in Hieronymus’s documents to explain his disappearance. So far they’d found nothing. And considering the massive disorder in the room, he didn’t believe he’d have any success here, either.
Rolls of parchment, notebooks, and worn, weighty tomes lay scattered around, and a huge tower of files was piled atop a small desk in the corner. In his cursory search, Simon had almost knocked over a pot of ink carelessly left on the floor.
Katharina herself had led them into the cramped attic room. By now she’d calmed down enough to go back to the kitchen and bake cookies with the boys. In the meantime, Bartholomäus’s servant, Aloysius, was taking care of the injured Matheo in the executioner’s house. The Bamberg executioner had sworn Aloysius to absolute silence, which was not particularly difficult for the uncommunicative servant.
“At the moment I’m more worried about Hieronymus Hauser,” Jakob said, pulling out his pipe. He searched through his pockets for some tobacco but, not finding any, sucked on the stem and continued his musings. Finally, he spoke up. “After Sebastian Harsee, Hauser is the only one remaining on our supposed werewolf’s list. Everything suggests that now he, too, has fallen victim to the werewolf.”
Shortly before the end of the mass, Jakob and Jeremias had returned to the cathedral without incident, bringing the minutes of Haan’s trial along with them. Now it was lying open on the small, ink-stained lectern in the middle of Hauser’s study. Jakob pounded his gnarled fingers on the entry listing the members of the commission.
“It’s just as I told you,” he mumbled, chewing on his cold pipe stem. “All the victims were somehow involved in the trial of Chancellor George Haan. When a commission member has died, the murderer blames a surviving relative and takes his vengeance out on him-and in a rather bloody way, it appears.”
“You’re right,” said Jeremias. “When I think how brutally we treated poor Chancellor Haan then, all this torturing of the victims suddenly doesn’t look so strange.” He poured himself another steaming tankard of hot mulled wine, which made his nose look even redder. “Basically, the suspect is only treating the torture victims in the customary way.” He frowned. “Leaving aside, of course, the rabies infection. That’s so cruel, even we wouldn’t have thought about doing it back then.”