XXV
Now, in those days a damsel some fifteen years of age was going from Heyst to Knokke, alone in the middle of the day, by the sand-dunes. No one had any fear for her for they knew that the wolves and wicked spirits of the damned go biting their victims only in the night. The damsel carried a satchel wherein were forty-eight gold coins of the value of four florins carolus, being the sum owed by the girl’s mother, Toria Pieterson, who lived at Heyst, to her uncle, Jan Rapen of Knokke, on account of a sale. The girl’s name was Betkin, and she was wearing her best clothes, and she went on her way most happily.
The same evening, seeing that she did not return, her mother became anxious, but reassured herself with the thought that the girl must have stayed the night with her uncle.
On the morrow, certain fishermen on their way back from the sea with a boat-load of fish, drew their boat on to the beach and unloaded their catch, which they would sell at auction by the cart-load at the Minque of Heyst. They went up the road along the dunes, all strewn with shells, and presently came upon a young girl, stripped naked even to her chemise, with traces of blood all about her. Coming nearer they found upon her neck the horrid marks of long sharp teeth. She was lying on her back with her eyes wide open gazing up into the sky, and her mouth was open also as if with the cry of death itself!
Covering the girl’s body with an opperst-kleed they brought it to Heyst, to the Town Hall, and there quickly assembled the aldermen and the leech, who declared that the long teeth that had made those marks were no teeth of a wolf as known in nature, but rather of some wicked and devilish werwolf, and that it behoved them now to pray God one and all that he would deliver the land of Flanders.
The Death of Betkin
And in all that country, and notably at Damme, at Heyst, and at Knokke, prayers and orisons were ordered to be made.
But Ulenspiegel went to the town bailiff and said to him: “I will go and kill the werwolf.”