Read Online The Werewolf of Bamberg by Oliver Pötzsch - Free Book Online

leaving Schongau, in sleazy flophouses, barns, or the forest on a bed of brushwood, their present accommodations felt like a royal abode. The mattress was filled with soft horsehair; a warm, brick-lined stove stood in the middle of the room; and the number of fleas and bugs was tolerable. Nevertheless, Magdalena was having trouble falling asleep. There were too many things going through her mind, and she was anxious to meet her uncle’s fiancée.
    “What do you think this Katharina is like?” she whispered to Simon. She could tell, from the way he was breathing and occasionally shifting around in the bed, that he wasn’t sleeping, either.
    He grunted disparagingly. “If she’s even a bit like Bartholomäus, she’ll be a real shrew. In which case she’ll fit right in with this family.”
    Magdalena gave him a gentle poke. “Are you trying to say that all the Kuisls are ill-tempered ruffians?”
    “Well, when I look at your father, his brother, and then Georg, I could almost reach that conclusion. In the last two years, your little brother has become a real clod. I can only hope that you, too—”
    “Don’t you dare!” Magdalena tried to sound severe, but she couldn’t resist a giggle. “I’ll do everything I can to make sure our kids don’t turn into brutish hangmen’s journeymen.”
    “You’ll have a hard time with Paul. He can’t wait to chop off someone’s head. Peter is quite different—softer, almost like a . . .” Simon paused, but Magdalena completed his sentence.
    “Like a girl, is what you meant to say. Like the girl that God gave us, then took away again.” She turned over and fell silent. Simon ran his hand lovingly over her shoulder.
    “She was too weak, Magdalena,” he said, trying to console her. “It . . . it was better that it happened so soon. Just imagine if she’d lived even longer—how painful it would have been then. Surely God will give us another chance—”
    “Just stop!” Magdalena’s voice rose, and a soft mumbling came from the boys’ beds. It took a while before the room became quiet again. She could feel how Simon, lying next to her, was searching for the right thing to say. Suddenly her eyes welled with tears, and a quiet sob shook her body. Anna-Maria had been her third child. She had come into the world two years ago, just a few months after the death of Magdalena’s mother, and had been named after her. Though Magdalena loved her two boys, it had been wonderful to hold a little girl in her arms, wrapped in white linens, with eyes as blue as gentian flowers. Jakob Kuisl had built a crib for his granddaughter, and the old grouch had turned into a loving father in Maria’s presence. Simon, too, began spending more time with the children. He’d become a more devoted husband, less concerned with his books and his patients than with his wife, who was weakened by the difficult birth. Maria had become the focus of his life.
    And then God took her away from them again.
    It had been one of those fevers that plagued Schongau at regular intervals, first the elderly and the children. Desperately, Simon had tried to fight the fever with leg compresses, mugwort, and chamomile, but the child slipped through their fingers like snow in the sun. They had carried little Maria to her last resting place just a few days after her first birthday. The hurt in Magdalena’s soul was still fresh, and occasionally it would break out again.
    Just as it had now.
    Simon clearly felt it was better to say nothing, and he gently caressed his wife, waiting for the sobbing to pass. Finally she nuzzled up to him again and tried to forget.
    “I don’t think my uncle is as coarse a fellow as he pretends to be,” she said after a while. “He may act just as surly as Father, but there is something soft and very sad in his eyes. Something must have come between the two of them long ago. Maybe it has something to do with his lame leg. Perhaps back then Jakob teased his little brother. A