The Werewolf of Bamberg Read Free Page A

forest than at a proper execution. Where are we, anyway? Didn’t they say we’d get to Bamberg before sundown?”
    “Well, this ford is the only place you can get across the river in such weather. And, as you see, we’re certainly not the only ones.”
    Peeved, Magdalena turned around. The traffic both in front of and behind them was the worst she’d ever seen in their region, the quiet “Priests’ Corner” in the Alps. It had been three weeks since she and her family had left Schongau to pay a visit to her uncle Bartholomäus in Bamberg. Since their stop the day before in Forchheim, in Franconia, the muddy road had been getting busier and busier. Wandering journeymen traveled from town to town; stooped peddlers struggled under the weight of backpacks full of rudely carved wooden spoons, grinding stones, and cheap knickknacks; other riders on horseback, dressed in fancy clothing, hurried by silently in the rain. Most of the vehicles making their way through the forest along the crowded road were simple, canvas-covered two-wheeled carts without springs.
    “Hey, what’s wrong there up front?” the Schongau executioner called out again, cupping his huge hands to form a mouthpiece. “Are you idiots sleeping up there?”
    Now the wagon drivers in front and behind them began to grumble, too, and here and there someone cursed loudly. Magdalena noticed the worried, anxious glances on the faces of some of the men looking into the forest, which, despite the early-afternoon hour, was beginning to look threatening—as if behind the first few rows of trees night was already falling. A shiver passed reflexively up Magdalena’s spine.
    “Probably a wagon got stuck in the mud of the river, that’s all. Or a few calves were spooked and didn’t want to go on,” she said, trying to comfort herself as she tugged on her father’s dirty linen shirt. “So you’d better sit down before you start an argument with someone.”
    “It can’t be that hard to cross such a narrow part of the river,” Jakob replied, shaking his head. “These Franks are simply too stupid, that’s all there is to it. These stupid drunks would probably get stuck even in a dry riverbed.”
    The hangman grumbled a little while longer, then finally sat down again and started puffing morosely on the long, cold stem of his pipe. Jakob had used up all his tobacco just as they were leaving Nuremberg, which didn’t do anything to improve his mood. The other members of the Kuisl clan were huddled together between the sacks of grain. Magdalena’s younger sister, fifteen-year-old Barbara, stared blankly into the steady downpour. Magdalena’s boys, Peter and Paul, were scuffling farther back in the wagon, in danger of falling backward into the swamp at any moment. As he did so often, the younger boy, Paul, had the upper hand; he was holding his five-year-old brother in a headlock, and Peter was gasping for air.
    “Damn it, can’t you just once stop fighting?” scolded Simon, who was sitting up front on the coachbox alongside the wagon’s owner, a humpbacked old farmer. The long wait had clearly gotten on Magdalena’s husband’s nerves, as well. Until then, the Schongau medicus had been trying to read a book on medicine for midwives. Though the volume was bound in leather and wrapped in an oilcloth, rain kept dripping onto the pages. Now he put aside the tattered, drenched book and cast a severe glance at his two sons.
    “You’ve been fooling around like that for hours. If you don’t stop right away, I’ll tell your grandfather and he’ll stretch your ears out on the rack. You know he can do that.”
    “I could also put you both in a shrew’s fiddle,” Jakob chimed in ominously. “Then you’ll probably scratch each other’s eyes out and we’ll finally have some peace and quiet.”
    “Stop this nonsense, you hooligans.” Magdalena pointed at the two boys, who finally now stopped fighting. “Just see the look in their eyes. I think you really