“Unlike your troupe, he and his men were able to get out of town in time,” Bartholomäus interrupted. “Lebrecht told me that earlier. Apparently Guiscard bribed one of the guards at the gate.”
Malcolm flashed him a toothless grin. “Hah! That rabble packed up their things while we were still on stage. I saw it with my own eyes. Guiscard knew he’d lost. What an ingenious move of mine to convince him to play that boring Papinian while we performed Peter Squenz. I upstaged them all, and Barbara played her role splendidly. We’re the clear winners.”
“Guiscard would probably see it differently,” Magdalena replied. “In any case, he’s free, and you’re lying here in the dungeon. But you were going to tell us who planted these magical things on you, I think.”
“Well, I assume it’s the same person responsible for all the murders in Bamberg,” Malcolm said, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial hush. “I had lots of time last night to think about that, and I have a suspicion who it might be. And finally, I put two and two together. .”
Malcolm started talking, and as he did, Magdalena felt a chill running up her spine.
It looked like they’d finally found their werewolf.
A rowboat was making its way slowly downstream on the Regnitz. Two people sat inside, one pulling hard on the oars and steering the boat past the many islands of mud, gravel, and flot-sam. Here in the southeastern part of Bamberg, the forest extended down to the shore, where many brooks and tributaries carrying leaves and branches emptied into the wide river.
Exhausted, Barbara snuggled up in the woolen blanket that Markus Salter had given her before they’d left. She sat on a wooden box in the stern of the boat, looking out at the marshland with its willows, birches, and little ponds as they drifted past. A light but constant drizzle had set in, gradually soaking them to the skin.
“Is it much farther?” she asked, her arms covered with goose bumps.
Markus Salter shook his head. He briefly stopped rowing and pointed toward a hill about half a mile away, with a few houses on top. “Up ahead of us is the little town of Wunderburg,” he said, turning more cheerful. “In the Great War, the Swedes destroyed much of the town, but the bishop’s stud farm is still there, so there are a lot of warm stables where we can hide. We can stay there for a while, and when things have calmed down a bit, I’ll go back to the city and tell your father you’re all right. I promise.”
He winked at her, and Barbara nodded gratefully. She was extremely happy to have Markus Salter by her side. For half the night, he’d consoled her when she kept waking up with a start from bad dreams. With soothing words he’d urged her to persevere, promising that this nightmare would soon end, and he’d even gotten her to laugh a few times with poems and lines from comedies. Without him, she would have no doubt left the crypt too soon and fallen into the hands of the marauding gangs still wandering through the streets of Bamberg in search of witches and werewolves.
They had stayed down there until morning while Markus told her about his adventurous life as an actor and playwright. He came from a well-to-do family, and his father had been a cloth merchant in Cologne. Markus had studied law, but then he’d seen Sir Malcolm and his actors at Neumarkt Square in Cologne and immediately fallen under their spell. On the spur of the moment he left his family, and since then was completely engrossed in the world of Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Gryphius.
Although Markus Salter had clearly led an exciting life, Barbara was slowly coming to the realization that she herself was not suited for such an existence. Just the last few days without her family had been painful enough, and the thought of always being alone on the road, without a home, without a family-even a family as querulous and stubborn as the Kuisls-was too much for her. She wanted to get back to her grumpy father, to her sister with the two boys, and to her twin brother, Georg, whom she hadn’t seen for so long.
She wanted to go home.
Markus had convinced her to wait until early the next morning, when most of the rowdy bands had finally dispersed and the good citizens were in the All Souls’ mass. Around nine o’clock, disguised as Carmelite monks, they’d snuck through the streets down toward the mills near the castle. There Markus soon found an abandoned boat, in which he planned to take her to a hiding place he’d learned about during an earlier visit to Bamberg.
At first they traveled downstream past the city. Then they floated back up the right branch of the Regnitz toward Bamberg again, looking for a place to land on the eastern shore near the little town of Wunderburg. Over the tops of the trees they could see the walls of the city and the cathedral, but except for the occasional chirping of a blackbird and the distant sound of men chopping wood in the forest, everything around them was quiet and peaceful.
In the meantime, it had started to rain harder, and despite her heavy monk’s robe and the blanket, Barbara felt chilled to the bone.
“Haven’t you ever thought of starting a family?” she asked, her teeth chattering, as Markus guided the boat toward a small, reed-choked estuary. The actor still had a slight pain on his right side, but it seemed Barbara had done a good job of cleaning the wound-when she’d changed the bandage again that morning, she hadn’t noticed any inflammation.
Markus thought for a moment before answering. “I’m afraid I have difficulty committing myself,” he said finally. “I’m too afraid I’m going to lose the person again. People die, and some far before their time-not just the old ones, but beloved wives and even children. The nagging fear of being left alone again would drive me crazy.”
Barbara frowned. “I never looked at it that way before.”
“Ask your father or your uncle. They know how fast we can be overcome by death. After all, they themselves are often the cause.” His face darkened. Dressed in his monk’s robe and with his hood pulled down over his face, the haggard actor looked like a stern, ascetic preacher. “How can anyone ever live with that-all the sorrow and screams a hangman must bear? I couldn’t, at least not for long. It would destroy me.”
“I think my father and my uncle don’t look at themselves at such times as human beings, but as”-Barbara searched for the suitable word-“as tools. They act on behalf of a higher power, the city or the church.”
“Tools of a higher power.” Salter nodded. “I like that. I’ll use it in one of my tragedies, with your permission.” He smiled sadly. “In a very special tragedy, in fact-my best one. All it lacks are a few suitable sentences for a conclusion.”
He thrust the oar down with all his strength, propelling the boat toward the shore, where it ran aground and remained stuck in the mud. A dense growth of reeds grew all around them, and the branches of a weeping willow hung far down into the water, blocking their view of the surroundings.
“We’re stopping here?” Barbara asked with surprise.
Markus jumped into the knee-deep water and waded the last few steps to the shore, where he tied the boat securely to the trunk of the willow tree.
“It’s not far now to Wunderburg,” he replied, “and the boat is well-hidden here.” With a cheerful smile, he reached out to give Barbara a hand. “Come now.”
She got up, shivering, and was about to climb over the side when she lost her balance in the rocking boat, slipped on the bottom, wet from the rain, and fell. She landed painfully on her tailbone and, to make matters worse, also hit her head on the boat box. As she pulled herself up again, cursing, she caught sight of something she hadn’t noticed before in the drizzling rain.
There was blood on the box.
She assumed at first it was fish blood, as this was clearly the boat of a fisherman who probably kept his daily catch in the box. But then she took a closer look. There was too much of it here to be just fish blood-and besides, the stain had an intense reddish-brown color all too familiar to Barbara as a hangman’s daughter.