Simon nodded, happy for the diversion. “You’re right, Peter. Georg is apprenticed to your great-uncle in Bamberg, and when Grandfather gets too old, he will no doubt become the new Schongau executioner.”
“And then I’m next, am I?” Paul asked excitedly. “I’ll be an executioner someday, too.”
“Uh . . . perhaps,” Simon replied hesitantly.
Suddenly, Peter clutched his father’s hand tightly and stopped. “I don’t want to be a hangman. Everybody’s afraid of Grandfather, and I don’t want that. They say he’s in league with the devil and brings misfortune.” Stubbornly, he stamped the ground with his foot. “I want to run a bathhouse, like you, Father, and be someone who helps people.”
He squeezed his father’s hand, and without realizing it, Simon returned the gesture. In fact, Peter was already observing his grandfather in executions and could recite the first words in Latin. Unlike his brother Paul, he was fond of poring through the colorful engravings in the Kuisl family library. He could sit there for hours, passing his little fingers back and forth over the drawings.
He’s like me, Simon thought. But they’ll never allow him to become a doctor, not as the son of a hangman’s daughter, not in times like these.
“I smell death, Father. Up there is death.”
Paul’s thin, bright voice interrupted his daydreams. As usual, when Paul said something horrible, it sounded strangely detached.
“Do you smell death, too?”
“What do you mean by—” Simon started to say, but Paul had already let go of his hand and raced off deeper into the forest.
“Hey, damn it, stop!” Simon called after him. But Paul had disappeared among the trees, paying no attention to him. The medicus cursed, put his older son on his shoulders, and ran with him through the damp undergrowth, stumbling and almost falling several times. Branches struck him in the face, tearing at his leggings.
After a while, Simon heard the gurgling sound of flowing water. The pine trees thinned, and he found himself in a low marshland with occasional birch trees and a dark channel of water running through it. Paul stood alongside the channel, pointing proudly at a huge, swollen carcass partially submerged in the water.
“Here, here!” he shouted excitedly. “I found it!”
When Simon got closer, he saw it was the cadaver of a large stag. Its throat had been cut so deeply that the head, with its huge, sixteen-point antlers, hung down into the water and was oscillating back and forth in the current. Its belly had been slit open, as well, and beneath the wet fur he saw deep, bloody gashes, like those that might be inflicted by a sickle or a rake.
“What in God’s name . . .”
Simon set Peter down carefully and walked slowly toward the cadaver. The sweet odor of decay lay in the air. Simon assumed the stag had been dead just a few days, but the worms, beetles, and insects had already begun their work. Paul pulled so hard on the antlers that it appeared the head might separate entirely from the body.
“Stop that,” Simon snapped at him. “We don’t know if the animal was sick. Maybe he’s giving off poisonous fumes and you could be infected.” But even as he said that, he felt foolish. Certainly the stag hadn’t died of an illness; it had been ripped apart. The only question was what animal would be able to inflict such a deadly wound.
A pack of wolves? A bear?
Simon looked around, trying to think. The silence that just a few moments earlier had seemed so pleasant had now suddenly turned ominous. Even if it had been a huge predator, it was strange that it hadn’t devoured its prey at once, or at least dragged it off to hide it.
Perhaps because the predator is still around here somewhere?
Nearby there was a sound of a snapping branch, as if something large had stepped on it, and suddenly, the trees around the clearing seemed to have moved a bit closer. Simon had an uneasy feeling that he couldn’t explain—as if the forest around them had stopped to hold its breath.
“Peter, Paul,” he said, “we’ve got to go back now. Mama is no doubt worried about us. Come.”
“But the antlers,” Paul whimpered, tugging again at the decaying carcass. “I want to take the antlers back with us.”
“Forget that.” The father seized the two boys by the hand and pulled them away from the brook. A trail of blood, slender as a thread, curled through the water. Suddenly the father was overcome by a wave of fear, like a raging storm bearing down on them with thunder and lightning.
Up there is death . . . it smells sweet, like a decaying plum.
“I said we’re leaving.” Simon forced a smile. “If you behave, I’ll tell you what kind of sweets you’ll find at the markets in Bamberg. And who knows, maybe Uncle Georg will buy you a few candied apples tomorrow. So let’s go.”
Grumbling, Paul backed off and followed his father, leaving the rotted carcass behind. The three of them stomped through the wet marshland, and soon the gurgling of the brook was barely audible in the distance.
A couple of times Simon thought he heard steps behind him like those of a large animal, but every time he turned around, there was nothing there but the dense wall of pines and the rain dripping from their branches. When they finally got back to the pass among the wagons and noisy peasants, his fear was nothing but a slightly queasy memory.
And the stench of putrefaction that clung to his clothing.
Full of curiosity, Magdalena and Barbara walked along the pass down to the ford in the river, with the wagons forming a long line on either side. Mud and feces spattered their clothing, and several times they had to dodge grunting pigs or anxiously bellowing cattle. There seemed to be no end to the long line of wagons.
“I wonder how all of this will manage to squeeze inside the walls of Bamberg,” Barbara sighed.
“Don’t forget that this is not Schongau,” Magdalena reminded her sister. “You should have been with me and Simon in Regensburg, where even the alleys are as wide as the market square at home.” She frowned. “But you’re right. If things don’t get moving soon, we’ll never reach Bamberg before dark, and the farmers will have to spend the night outside the walls. Tomorrow is butchering and market day, and everyone wants to get there first. It’s no wonder people are angry and impatient.”
The two sisters hurried past grumbling old women with huge piles of cabbages, apples, and pears; young men staring straight ahead while driving their horses forward; and noisy farm owners, bringing cartloads of grain to the town market. More than once, a little lost goat or calf scurried by.
Finally they reached the ford, where the water, roiled by the rain and the many people passing through, was brown and muddy. A large group of wagon drivers and farmers had gathered there, standing in a half circle and staring down at something lying on the ground in front of them. Curious, Magdalena and Barbara pushed their way forward until they reached the shore.
Magdalena held her breath in astonishment.
“For heaven’s sake,” she finally gasped. “What in the world happened here?”
Lying in the mud in front of them was a severed human arm with shreds of what must have once been a white shirt. A few of the fingertips showed little bite marks, presumably from fish, and some strands of torn muscles hung from the forearm, but otherwise the arm was still in relatively good condition. Magdalena surmised that it had been lying in the water for a few days, but certainly no longer than two weeks.
“And I’m telling you again, it was this beast,” one of the wagon drivers in the group was heard to say. “This arm is a warning. It eats anyone trying to cross the river.”
“A . . . a beast?” Barbara asked, wide-eyed. “What kind of beast?” She had difficulty diverting her eyes from the grisly discovery.
“You haven’t heard of it?” Another wagon driver, with a slouch hat and torn jacket, spat in the muddy water alongside the two young women. “They say a monster is loose here in the Bamberg Forest and has already killed a large number of people. We can count ourselves lucky if we manage to get to town unscat
hed.”
The first wagon driver, a tall, broad-built man of about fifty, resignedly shook his head. “In the city you’re not safe, either,” he growled. “My brother-in-law lives in Bamberg. He saw with his own eyes how the bailiffs fished an arm and a foot from the Regnitz, next to the Great Bridge. And now this. By all the saints, God protect us and our children!” He crossed himself, and an old woman next to him hastily began to pray her rosary.
“Ah, that is surely very bad,” Magdalena began cautiously, “but all the more reason we should move on before it gets dark.” She looked over at the treetops, which were already in the shadows. Her thoughts turned to Simon and their two sons, who were undoubtedly still back in the forest. “So what are we waiting for?”
The tall wagon driver looked at her and explained slowly, as if speaking to a small child. “Don’t you understand? We cannot cross the ford.” He trembled as he pointed at the severed arm. “Can’t you see the hand is pointing in our direction, as if trying to warn us? Anyone crossing the river here is marked for death.”
“Near Munich there was once a hand alongside the bridge,” the other driver said, pointing with his slouch hat and rubbing his unshaved chin pensively. “It was attached with a lead coffin-nail to the railing, and a few men made fun of it. They tore the hand off, threw it in the river, then started across the bridge. It collapsed, the river carried the men away, and they were never seen again.”
“But . . . but we can’t all just stand here simply because of an arm!” Magdalena said, shaking her head. “The wagons are backed up behind us.” Nevertheless, she, too, began to tremble when she looked down again at the severed arm, already decaying, lying in the mud. What in God’s name had happened to the man?
“We are all lost,” murmured an old woman standing next to Magdalena and Barbara. “This is the only place for miles around where you can cross the river. If we have to spend the night here, then God help us. The beast will come to fetch us all.” She crossed herself again and looked across to the forest, which in the meantime had grown somewhat darker. The pouring rain showed no sign of stopping.
“Maybe you should go and look for Simon and the children,” Barbara whispered to her older sister. “If there really is something on the prowl around here, it’s certainly better to stay near the wagon.”
Magdalena nodded. “You’re right. In just a minute, I’m going to—”
Just then they heard familiar voices behind them, and when Magdalena turned around, she saw, to her great relief, Simon and the two boys making their way through the crowd. The short medicus looked pale, and there was a slight quiver on his lips.
“Your father said you were down below at the river crossing,” he said, pointing behind him as the huge figure of Jakob Kuisl approached. “He’s cursing like the driver of a beer wagon because nothing is moving.”
“Well, at least we now know the cause for the delay,” Magdalena replied. She pointed at the arm on the ground. “People take it for a sign they are not supposed to cross the river, and . . .” She was going to tell Simon the rest, but at that moment her father arrived. Jakob Kuisl paid no heed to those standing around, but glanced down and frowned at the severed arm. Then he bent over to have a better look.
“Don’t touch it,” snarled the wagon driver with the slouch hat. “It will bring misfortune to us all.”
“Just because I touch a moldy arm?” Kuisl still had his cold pipe in his mouth, so his words were hard to understand. “If that’s the case, then bad luck would follow me like it did Job.” Carefully, he picked up the arm and examined it.
“My God, what’s he doing?” gasped the second, heavily built wagon driver. “It looks like he is going to smell it.”
“Ah, not exactly,” Magdalena replied. “It’s just that—”
Kuisl interrupted, finally taking the pipe out of his mouth. “This arm belonged to a man who was old and feeble, around sixty, I would say, or perhaps seventy. He was an aristocratic gentleman, or in any case he signed and sealed a large number of documents. Hm . . .” He held the arm right up to his face, as if about to take a bite out of it. “Yes, no doubt a nobleman whose wife died some time ago and who was looking around for a younger partner. He was probably on a trip in search of a woman. But why? He didn’t have long to live, in any case. He’d been suffering badly from gout, and he had at most one or two years to live.” Kuisl nodded, trying to think what it all meant. “By God, this arm can serve as a warning to us not to eat too much fatty meat. Nothing more and nothing less. So now, it’s served its purpose.”
The hangman threw the arm in a wide arc into the swirling, foaming river, where it quickly sank. The crowd let out a collective shout, as if Kuisl had murdered one of them.
“What . . . what did you do?” sputtered the man with the slouch hat. “The sign . . .”
“What sign? It was just an arm, nothing more. Now let’s get moving before I turn really nasty in this awful weather.”
The men along the river stared at him, dumbfounded, and Kuisl, without another word, took his place in line again behind the wagons.
“For God’s sake, who was that?” one of the wagon drivers finally asked. “A magician? A demon? How can he know exactly who the arm belonged to?”
“Let’s just say he’s seen a number of severed body parts,” Magdalena replied as she turned around. “He has . . . uh . . . some experience in this area. So you can believe him.” Then she hurried back with Barbara and the other Kuisls to join her father.
They quickly caught up with him as he walked back along the muddy path through the pass, grimly and in haste. Simon had left the two boys in the care of his sister-in-law, Barbara, and now he turned to his father-in-law with an inquisitive expression.
“My compliments, that was very impressive,” he said, as both he and Magdalena struggled to keep up with Jakob. “How did you know so much about that arm?”
“Good God, because the Lord gave me eyes to see,” Kuisl grumbled. “That’s all there is to it. You don’t need any witchcraft for that, so you can spare yourself all that hooey.”
“Come on, tell us,” Magdalena begged him. She knew how much her father loved stringing people along, and she, too, was curious. “Just tell us before Simon starts losing sleep over it.”
Kuisl grinned. “I guess I owe him that.” As the others walked ahead, he explained.
“The skin was wrinkled like that of an old man, but there were no calluses on his hands—on the contrary, they were soft as a baby’s bottom. In addition, the remaining fingertips showed spots of ink that had eaten their way deep into the body. Ah, yes, and on one of the well-manicured fingernails there was still a tiny speck of sealing wax. As I said, I have eyes. That’s all you need.”
“But all that stuff you said about looking for a bride, and gout,” Simon persisted, “what’s that all about?”
“Oh, for God’s sake, what are you? A bathhouse owner or a quack? Didn’t you notice the gnarled joints and the white spots? If you can read books, why can’t you read people?” Jakob Kuisl spat on the ground, disgusted. “The joints were so enlarged that I almost didn’t see the pale, whitish circle on the ring finger. The man had worn his wedding ring a long time, probably several decades, but had taken it off recently. That’s something a man does only when he’s out looking for someone else. He was traveling and probably looking for another woman. But . . .”
Kuisl stopped to think as the wagons in front of them slowly started moving again. Their own wagon, steered by the old peasant, approached, rattling and squeaking.
“What else did you learn?” Magdalena asked. “Is there perhaps something you’ve kept from us and the others?”
Jakob Kuisl shrugged. “Well, actually, there is something that puzzles me. You could assume the man was murdered—and that his murderers left his body in the forest where wild animals finally found him and ripped him apart. He came to rest with his arm in the water and was washed ashore today by the rain.”
“But that’s
not what happened,” Simon said softly. “Right?”
“No, that isn’t what happened. I took a close look at the joint, and there are no bite marks. The arm was severed cleanly. It was no animal; only a person makes a clean cut like that. This poor devil was slaughtered like a piece of meat—but why, and by whom? I have no explanation for that.”
The hangman shook the rain out of his hair and pulled himself back up onto the coachbox, where the farmer, who had heard the last part of what he’d said, stared at him and trembled like he was looking at a nightmare incarnate.
They arrived in Bamberg shortly before dusk, entering through the Tanggass Gate. In the last few hours they’d heard wolves howling several times, though very far away in the forests. Nevertheless, after the events at the river, the sounds had been enough to make Barbara, in particular, turn white. Was that perhaps the beast the people were talking about?
At least the rain had finally stopped, though the road was still as muddy and full of puddles as before, so the progress of the wagons was very slow. The whole area surrounding the city was swampy and full of small rivers, brooks, and canals, especially in the southern part, which was an almost impenetrable wilderness. In the east there were fields and farmland, though now, at the end of October, they were barren and fallow.
Magdalena turned up her nose in disgust; the odor with which the city greeted them was so pungent it made them gag. Along the right-hand side of the street was a wide ditch that dried up just before reaching the gate, forming a thick, foul-smelling morass. Rotten fruit and the carcasses of small animals floated in the puddles. A wide, moldering walkway led across the swamp toward the city wall, where now, shortly before it was time to close the gates, the wagons were backing up. Surely a good number of people in the wagons would have to spend the night in the fallow fields outside of town, a prospect that caused Magdalena to shudder, after hearing the wagon drivers’ gloomy accounts of their strange finding down at the river. What in God’s name was lurking in the forests around Bamberg?