Magdalena could see now that it must have once been a stately hunting lodge. It was two stories high and built of sturdy pine and beams of dark oak on a stone foundation. The remains of a terrace extended along one side of the building, ending in a neglected, overgrown garden of fruit trees and overturned statues. Shingles had fallen off the roof and some of the siding had broken away, but the building still looked huge and solid.
Like a gloomy old castle, Magdalena thought, with an evil witch living inside.
Some of the stories she read to her boys told of terrifying witch’s houses, mostly small and dilapidated, but for the first time Magdalena had the feeling that such a house really existed.
And it was a very, very big one.
Suddenly something strange happened. The rain stopped, and a strong wind arose, howling and whistling as if to warn the house of possible intruders. Magdalena began to shiver, and not only because of the cold. She remembered what Answin had just told them.
There are stories going around about this house that I don’t like.
“The front door appears to be locked,” Jeremias whispered, pointing to the massive two-winged portals leading from the terrace into the house. “But a few of the windows are open. Besides, there’s probably a back door for the servants, which they can-”
He stopped short on hearing a long, drawn-out scream that chilled Magdalena to the bone.
“Barbara!” Jakob howled, standing up from where he was crouched behind the bush.
“For God’s sake, be quiet,” Bartholomäus hissed. “We’re trying to surprise him, so-”
But the Schongau hangman had already stormed off like a mad bull toward the building.
“Stop this jackass before he ruins everything,” Bartholomäus demanded, turning to Magdalena. “You may be the only one he still listens to.”
“I’m not so sure of that,” Magdalena mumbled, closing her eyes briefly and saying a quick prayer.
Then she ran off after her father.
Barbara froze when she heard the bolt on the cell door being pushed aside. Drenched in rain and sweat, Markus Salter stood before her in the doorway with that familiar sad smile on his face-only now he didn’t appear melancholy anymore, but simply crazed, like a dark angel that had just fallen from heaven.
“It’s time,” he said in a hoarse voice. “Let’s get it over with.”
Without another word, he went over to Adelheid Rinswieser and loosened her shackles in a few places. He lifted her up, almost tenderly, until she was finally standing-unsteadily, as her feet were still bound. He held a gleaming dagger up to her throat.
“Now, very slowly, we’ll go over to the other room,” he ordered her. “Please don’t resist, or I’ll have to hurt you prematurely, and I don’t want to do that.”
Adelheid cast a final, warning glance at Barbara, then disappeared with Markus into the corridor. Barbara heard a high-pitched, anguished shout-not a woman’s voice but that of a man.
After some time, Salter returned alone. He removed Barbara’s shackles and helped her up.
“Why are you doing this?” she asked.
“I’m restoring the balance of justice,” he said. “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. That’s what it says in the Bible.”
With astonishing strength, he pulled Barbara down the dark, stone corridor to another room illuminated by torches. Instinctively she let out a little cry. Adelheid Rinswieser had not exaggerated.
Spread out before her was a veritable nightmare.
Barbara had seen the torture chamber in the Schongau dungeon and had even helped her father clean up a few times. But this was something different. The room did not look like an ordinary torture chamber, but one dreamed up by a madman.
Or a demon.
There were the usual instruments like the rack, a rope and pulleys, tongs, thumbscrews, a “Spanish rider,” and, in the far right-hand corner of the room, a brazier that gave off an almost sickening warmth. Scattered among them were strange objects that Barbara had never seen before: a bloodstained wooden device, spherical on one end and coming to a sharp point on the other; a tub filled with a whitish liquid; a cage in the shape of a head; and a few iron boots inlaid with spikes and screws. Other instruments were so bizarre that Barbara couldn’t figure them out even after studying them. Strewn around the room were bales of hay with reddish-brown spots where blood had congealed on them.
The worst, however, were the paintings on the cloth panels that hung from the ceiling like backdrops in a theater. They reminded Barbara of paintings of hell depicting tortured sinners bleeding from their many wounds, their mouths open in silent screams. They stared at Barbara from every corner of the room-hasty sketches of human cruelty, like the first building plans for a new cathedral. Everything in this room expressed a single human feeling.
Pain.
Lying on the rack, moaning and in chains, was Hieronymus Hauser. The old scribe appeared to be unconscious. His eyes were closed, and he quivered like a fish on dry land, but he was still alive. Crouching along the opposite wall on a bale of straw was Adelheid Rinswieser, shackled, and with a leather cord around her neck attached to an iron ring in the wall. She was staring straight ahead, but Barbara could see that her whole body was trembling with fear. Barbara was still so paralyzed by the horrible sight that she was completely void of all emotion. Like a lamb being led to slaughter, she let Markus Salter guide her over to the wall, where he gently pushed her down to the floor and tied her, as he had Adelheid, with a strap. With other ropes, he tied her feet and hands. Then he stood up and approached Hieronymus Hauser on the rack, while continuing to smile gently at the two women.
“We are coming to the end of the performance,” he said softly. “The scale is tipping back into equilibrium.” He passed his hands playfully over the wheel used to tighten the chains at the head of the rack. “I asked Malcolm to have my play performed, but no matter how often I asked, he wouldn’t. It’s too bad; it would have been a great success, a very great success. Do you know what is the driving force in every good play?” He looked at the two women questioningly. When they didn’t respond, he continued. “Love and revenge. Everything else is derived from those two. All of Shakespeare’s great tragedies are based on it. My play begins with love and ends in revenge-a great deal of revenge. Do you want to hear a summary?”
“I do,” Barbara whispered, hoping to put off the inevitable for a while. “Tell us.”
“Well, the play is about a young boy born into a large, happy family-father, mother, aunts, grandparents. His grandfather is none other than the Bamberg chancellor himself. The boy is safe and secure in the arms of his mother. That’s the end of the first act, the end of love.” Salter’s smile died like the light of a candle that was suddenly snuffed out. “Because now, a few powerful people want to destroy this family, an ice-cold calculation based on their sheer lust for power. They have a diabolical plot, and the little boy watches as first his grandmother, then his mother, are convicted of witchcraft and tortured, and their bodies burned. He clings desperately to his father, but he, too, is executed as a warlock, as is his grandfather, the Bamberg chancellor. The boy is four years old, and bit by bit his world crumbles. As soon as he seeks comfort in a new family member, that person, also, is cruelly tortured and killed. He goes to live with his uncle and his aunt until they, too, are taken away by the executioner. In the end, the boy is completely alone. That’s the end of the second act.” Salter paused and stared blankly into space.
“From this boundless sorrow, a much stronger feeling emerges,” he finally said in a monotone. “Hate. Even before he says his last farewell to his tortured aunt, bleeding from her many wounds-she is the last close relative he had in Bamberg-she gives him the names of those who were paid blood money for destroying his family. He will never forget these names, not a single one.”