Oliver Pötzsch - The Werewolf of Bamberg

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.”

Tears gleamed in Salter’s eyes as he slowly continued turning the wheel of the rack. Each time, Hieronymus Hauser moaned loudly.

“Harsee, Schwarzkontz, Vasold, Gotzendörfer, Herrenberger, Hauser, Schramb, Braun.”

On hearing the last name, Adelheid Rinswieser let out a muted cry. “My God, Braun! That’s my father.”

“The orphan is brought to the Carmelite monastery on the Kaulberg,” Salter continued without paying any attention to the moaning and shouting. “The monks there don’t care for him. They believe he is a witch’s offspring. They torment him with words and prayers, they beat him day in and day out, they lock him in a cell deep underground. And there he recites the names of the guilty like a prayer. Harsee, Schwarzkontz, Vasold, Gotzendörfer, Herrenberger, Hauser, Schramb, Braun.” Salter started slowly turning the wheel again while the moans of the nearly unconscious scribe grew louder. “But one day the boy discovers an escape route through a mountain of sand. .”

“The crypt under the monastery!” Barbara gasped. “You already knew about it and that’s why you went there to find shelter.”

Markus Salter didn’t even seem to hear her. He just kept going on and on. “So the boy flees from the monastery, and once he’s out he learns that the last of his relatives has been killed, to wipe out any trace of the crime. There is, however, a distant relative, an uncle in Cologne, who takes him in. He begins his studies at the university there, and he takes on the name of his uncle in order to forget, but he can’t get these names out of his mind. Harsee, Schwarzkontz, Vasold, Gotzendörfer, Herrenberger, Hauser, Schramb, Braun.”

The next time Salter turned the wheel, Hieronymus Hauser let out a shriek, a high-pitched, anguished cry, almost like that of an animal.

Barbara closed her eyes, but she couldn’t escape the screams.

“Why me?” she shouted. “What do I have to do with it?”

Markus Salter just smiled.

“Can’t you see, Barbara? You’re a hangman’s daughter. Your family, too, assumed part of the guilt back then, which you must atone for now. The needle on the scale is swinging back to the middle. We are approaching the last act.”

When he turned the wheel the next time, the victim’s joints cracked sharply, and Hauser’s scream no longer sounded human.

Magdalena rushed toward the building, where her father had already arrived and was pounding on the door. She could still hear the horrible screams coming from inside. Behind her, above the sound of the storm and wind, her uncle was shouting.

“No, Jakob! Don’t do this!”

But the Schongau hangman paid no attention to him and kept slamming his body against the massive door, which did not yield an inch. “Damn it! It’s locked,” he cursed as Magdalena ran up to him. He kicked the door several times, but it didn’t move.

“Stop, Father,” Magdalena pleaded. “You won’t get anywhere that way. We must pull ourselves together-”