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

shitty pay,” Bartholomäus grumbled as he pulled his cart through an especially narrow passage between a pile of horse excrement and other garbage. “We’ll take the horse to my stable first, then see what we can do tomorrow.”
    For a while both brothers were silent, then Jakob carefully broke the ice.
    “Listen, I’ve wanted to thank you for a long time,” he began softly, “for taking Georg as a journeyman who—”
    “Forget it,” Bartholomäus interrupted gruffly. “I don’t need your thanks. Georg is a big help to me. He does the work of three or four men and will be a good hangman himself someday.” He turned to Jakob and sneered. “Perhaps even here in Bamberg.”
    “Here in . . .” Jakob looked at his brother, astonished. “You’re going to retire and give him your job? That wasn’t our arrangement. I need Georg in Schongau. When his apprenticeship is over and he can finally return home, then—”
    “Ask him yourself what he wants to do,” Bartholomäus cut in. “Maybe he’s had enough of his lying father.”
    “What did you tell him about me? God, did you—”
    A scream from a nearby house interrupted their conversation. Jakob stopped and looked at his brother, listening.
    “Who could that be?” he asked. “It’s hardly your dead horse.”
    After some hesitation, Bartholomäus dropped the shaft of his cart and ran toward the place the shouting was coming from, but turned around once to Jakob as he ran. “Before I fight with my brother, I’m going to beat up a few gallows birds. Come on!”
    Jakob followed quickly. After a few hurried steps, the brothers arrived in a little square surrounded by small cottages, with a weathered fountain in the middle. A guard was crouched at the base of the fountain with a halberd alongside him on the ground; a lantern at the fountain’s edge cast a dim light. The guard was holding his hand to his mouth and looking around in all directions, horrified. Finally he pulled a clay jug out from under his ragged overcoat and took a long slug.
    “Ah, it’s just Matthias, the drunken old night watchman,” Bartholomäus panted with disappointment, and stopped running. “We could have spared ourselves the trip. He’s probably had one too many and is about to throw up into the fountain. He used to be a common foot soldier, but now he drinks so much he can hardly stand up anymore.” Bartholomäus shook his head. “It’s really a shame, the people they have to hire as city watchmen. But the job of a night watchman now is dishonorable, like that of an executioner, and there aren’t many people willing to do it.”
    When Matthias discovered the two men entering the square, he sighed with relief. His face was flushed, full of thick veins, and Jakob thought he could smell brandy on his breath.
    The watchman staggered to his feet and stood beside the fountain. “I never thought I’d be so happy to see the Bamberg hangman!”
    “You scared the hell out of us, Matthias,” Bartholomäus replied. “We could hear you shouting clear down at the hangman’s house. My brother and I took off right away to see what was going on. And now it’s just you and your damned cheap booze. So get moving before I have to put you in the stocks tomorrow morning at the Green Market.”
    It didn’t seem to bother Matthias that the hangman’s house was much too far away and what Bartholomäus was telling him had to be wrong. He tried to keep his composure, which was clearly difficult to do in his condition.
    “By all the saints, I swear . . . I’m not drunk,” he declared, holding up his hand. “At least not so drunk that I don’t know what I saw. And I swear I . . . I saw the monster.”
    “What monster?” Bartholomäus asked.
    “Well . . . the man-eating monster. It was standing here, right before me!”
    The Bamberg hangman rolled his eyes. “Now you’re starting in with that, too. Isn’t it enough that the superstitious women are spreading such foolish