The Witch of Cologne (27 page)

He drops to his knees and traces a path down to one nipple while teasing the other. Her body astounds him. It is not thin as he imagined, but slender with full breasts ripe with large dark areolae. Impatient for the rest of her, he unlaces her skirt and lets it fall to her feet. He is shocked at the smoothness of her skin. Ivory white, the fine down on it jet black. She tastes like cinnamon, the faint scent of lemon across her belly. She is so small that even kneeling his face is breast height. He runs his fingers down, caressing her high buttocks, feeling her quiver beneath his hands, then buries his face into the soft fur between her legs. She smells impossibly sweet. Parting her with his fingers he finds her centre between the folds of flesh, a tiny bead between his lips. Above he can hear her moan as her fingers weave through his hair trying to pull him up to his feet.

‘Please,’ she murmurs, ‘please, I am ashamed.’

But he persists, his own excitement growing with hers until he is so hard beneath his breeches that he is frightened his seed will spill. Finally she manages to pull him to his feet. He stands there, breathing hard, rigid against the rough cloth as she reaches down to release him.

‘But you are virgin.’

He grabs her wrists and holds them for a minute, trying wildly to collect his thoughts. In lieu of a reply she leans forward and buries her face in his chest.

Moaning softly he drops her wrist and allows her to reach down into his breeches and pull him free. For a second she looks at his sex in wonderment. Forgetting who she is or even what she is, she drops to her knees, caressing the velvet head caught so neatly like a pearl in its own case. She touches him, caressing him backwards and forwards, her touch deceptively deft. Detlef cannot believe that these are her hands encircling him, that these are her eyes staring up at him, watching him lose himself. Now, as his orgasm begins to mount, climbing up gloriously behind his balls, in the pit of his stomach, behind his eyes, he pushes her to the ground, throwing his hand between her legs. Finding her wet he pulls her beneath him and enters her with one hard thrust. She screams, pushing her face deep in the abandoned clothes as, forgetting everything in her tightness, he enters her over and over until they cry out in ecstasy.

She is in his arms, her head cradled between his shoulder and chest. They have been lying like this for hours. She will not sleep for fear that she will wake and find she has been dreaming. She could not believe, while he gently sponged the blood from her thighs, kissed her over and over between her legs until again the pleasure rippled up from her belly, that physical love could be so naturally married with the emotional; how such an act could rid her of all sensible
thought and render her future suddenly meaningless without him; how she could ever have considered a life without this utterly human deed which has imbued her suddenly with renewed faith.

‘Shall I be there too, fresh-wounded, your latest Prisoner—displaying your captive mind—/With Conscience, hands bound behind her, and Modesty, all Love’s other enemies, whipped into line
,’ she whispers softly in Latin.

‘Ovid, from the
Amores
?’

She nods, smiling slightly.

‘Where did a woman like you learn Ovid? He is not a poet for chaste women, even philosophising women like yourself.’

‘Spinoza always said a woman like me should not marry or bear children for I have a man’s mind trapped in the body of a female.’

‘Is sex so separate, Ruth? I for one do not consider your ambitious spirit to be unfeminine.’

Ruth, her fingers curled into his hair, her body singing in a way it has never sung before, smiles.

‘This shall be the ruin of us,’ she whispers, hoping that he might not hear her.

But Detlef, savouring her pleasing weight upon him, his loins deliciously emptied, hears everything. He reaches down and tilts her face up to his.

‘We are already ruined, for I have ruined you and you I.’

‘Am I your first woman?’ she asks, a sardonic smile playing across her mouth.

‘In an unfathomable way.’

‘To be condemned by our communities, all that we are governed by…’

He watches her, trying to read what lies behind her eyes.

‘Ruth, if you desire, you can close your eyes and I will depart. It will be as if nothing happened. As if I were a ghost, a spectre who has merely slipped through the looking glass.’

She leans over him, her breasts soft against his chest.

‘No, that shall not be.’

‘Then let me protect you. For I fear the inquisitor will find a way of avenging himself.’

‘I cannot leave my father.’

‘I beg you—’

‘Then beg no more. We have the moment, let us not waste it in idle fantasy.’

And she pulls him into her arms, as if trying with her slender body to shelter them both from the outside world.

Later, as he watches her sleep, he finds the parameters of his universe have been flung open in a way he could never have imagined, as if a great furnace has finally melted the gaol he built so carefully to protect his heart, mind and faith. The mystery of her transfixes him; banal simple things: her bosom as it rises with every breath, the exotic thickness of her pubic bush curling up the curved belly which, to his surprise, he longs to fill, the taste of her and the taste of her and the taste of her.

A finger of pale blue light begins to creep across the scrubbed stone floor. The first smoke of the early morning fires lies on the air and he knows that he must leave.

With his hat pulled low Detlef makes his way back across the bridge towards the town. This time he has made sure that his boots are well soiled and that he walks with the limp of the homeless.

The sky is streaked with a red sunrise struggling to shine through the clouds. In the distance a young goatherd prods his reluctant animals with a stick as they bleat their way to the new day’s pasture, bells ringing. Detlef walks on into the sleepy town, not daring to lift his eyes to the young wives dressed in the twin-horned cap of the Jewess who shout to each other as they throw their laundry over balconies, the
guttural sound of Yiddish floating down. A fetid-smelling cart winds its way slowly along the road as the night-soil man—a dwarf in a makeshift uniform of dark purple breeches and a top coat of black—runs to each household to collect the stinking pails. He hurries past Detlef without noticing him.

Detlef takes comfort in the normalcy of the panorama. This is where Ruth began her life, where she was conceived and nurtured. He finds it impossible to believe that he, a Catholic who has had sexual congress with a Jew, could be at great risk of arrest. Just as he finds it impossible to believe that he is trespassing as he walks along these very streets. The naturalness of his happiness seems to preclude the possibility of danger. And so distracted, he barely notices the intense young rabbi leaving the house by the temple, a bag strung across his back.

But Tuvia, as he climbs into the morning coach bound for Maastricht, spies the tall stranger. Something about his elegance of gait, the nobility of his features, seems odd to the young rabbi, by nature suspicious. The man is obviously not a Jew. In which case, what is he doing in the centre of Deutz’s Jewish quarter at five a.m.?

Disturbed, Tuvia watches through the window of the coach as the intruder strides towards the Rhine.

My dearest Ruth,

What has happened between us is irreversible as the Dawn which, as I write, threatens to expose us as turncoats of Love. If you will not come under my protection then I shall do my utmost to protect you from Cologne itself. But, my dearest heart, I fear there is only so much I can do. The inquisitor will eventually find a way to prosecute and Maximilian Heinrich will be forced to sacrifice your life. This I believe to be only a matter of time. I beg you to reconsider your decision.

Trust that as I watch you sleep, I leave half my soul here in this cottage. Ours is a union that will suffer no restrictions, no ignorance, no borders. I have no idea how I shall be able to walk back towards the Rhine without you, and I vow that nothing—no law, no army or faith—will keep me from your side.

In love and admiration,

Detlef von Tennen

Ruth lies there, his letter pressed against her face, the urgency of the day filtering in through the thin parchment. She should get up. Open the heavy wooden door. Let the early morning sun warm the cold stone floor. Feed the geese, pump water. Instead she stays sprawled across the bed, revelling in the lingering weight of his body echoing across her skin, in her loins. The taste of him, his sweat, which remains faintly palpable. She rolls over and, curling up, reaches across to the slight indentation in the pallet, still warm. She buries her face into the space where he lay, breathing his scent as deeply as she can.

She cannot believe his visit was real. That, despite geography, social mores, tyranny and huge danger, he came to her. She finds it difficult to fathom how an emotion which she was previously unable to define has become so clear, so overwhelming that it has pushed away all other concerns.

Outside she hears Miriam knocking at the door. She slips Detlef’s letter between the bed base and the pallet then, frightened that her young assistant might guess the real reason behind the strewn clothes, she leaps up—only to catch sight of her naked body in the looking glass. To her amazement she appears exactly as the day before. It is as if she had expected the loss of her virginity to transform her, to leave a mark. The absurdity of the thought makes her break into delighted laughter before she covers herself.

C
arlos bravely places the morsel of stuffed pig’s intestine
into his mouth and tries not to gag. Grimacing, he washes it down with a mouthful of wine, thankfully imported from the Mediterranean.

‘I see the good priest is having difficulty with our German peculiarities?’

Wilhelm Egon von Fürstenberg smiles. Upon seeing the inquisitor splutter he pours him another glass.

‘It is true that we lack the spice and flavour of the south, and we can be a little inflexible in our choice of vegetable. However there are many ways to prepare a cabbage, don’t you agree, Monsignor?’

Carlos glances at the portly minister. His obsequious verbosity is irritating. He trusts him even less than the canon, whose views are at least always transparent, but this man, Wilhelm Egon von Fürstenberg, has to be the real manipulator in the shadows. Suspecting him of having great influence over the archbishop, and possibly the prime
architect of Heinrich’s dealings with the French, the inquisitor wonders why von Fürstenberg has invited him to eat at this palatial dwelling, a luxurious mansion on the outskirts of the city by the river’s edge belonging to his mistress, the wealthy widow, Countess von Marck.

Von Fürstenberg must want to strike a deal. But what kind of deal? The internal machinations and politics of this provincial city are beginning to irk him greatly, the Dominican thinks, suppressing a burp. He has been doubly thwarted in his persecution of Ruth bas Elazar Saul by that idiot Emperor Leopold and Maximilian Heinrich. It was a mistake to go to the vineyard, he was seduced by the archbishop’s cheap trick when he should have remained in the city to witness that sham of a trial. But he is determined to find the Jewess guilty, even if that means suffering the further indignity of German hospitality. A greater calling is at stake: the annihilation of the unholy, the purging of an evil seed which, unchecked, could infect an entire population.

‘A cabbage is a benign plant whereas a swine…’ Carlos continues von Fürstenberg’s allegory, hoping for more clues to the diplomat’s opaque proposal.

‘A swine can be slaughtered by various means.’ Von Fürstenberg’s tone suddenly becomes very serious. ‘Wild boar is particularly tasty because it has to be hunted and, being an intelligent animal, is able to conceal itself in many ways. You are naturally discouraged by the turn of events.’

Still unsure whether the conversation might turn into an ambush, Carlos hesitates over another glass of wine. The best way for enemies to unite is over another foe, he reflects before replying.

‘Naturally.’

‘I think perhaps we could be of service to one another. The archbishop’s cousin has undergone a rather unpleasant
transformation, becoming a fanatic since his encounter with the Jewish witch. His newly found enthusiasm for the bürgers and even the serfs is a cause of concern to both the archbishop and myself.’

‘How much of a concern?’

‘The canon and the midwife would not be missed if they should mysteriously disappear. As you may appreciate, the Jews of the Rhineland have some economic value and our communities maintain a delicate relationship which is easily unbalanced. They have no wish to create difficulties any more than we do…’

‘But what of the royal pardon?’

‘Now that the prince is cured and safely back in Vienna I doubt whether the emperor will remember how to pronounce the name Ruth bas Elazar Saul, if he ever did know how to prononounce it. The pardon has all the hallmarks of Samuel Oppenheimer’s intervention.’

‘It is true that the Court Jew is powerful.’

‘Not powerful enough. And far too fond of his own status to rock the boat for such a small fish.’

‘The Grand Inquisitional Council would be most grateful to the Holy Keepers of the Magi for such a favour.’

‘And what pleases Aragon pleases Cologne. But tell me, does the Inquisitional Council really care that much, or is this more of a personal quest, Monsignor?’

Carlos’s silence confirms von Fürstenberg’s suspicions.

‘In that case, Monsignor, you have my sympathy. I understand what it is to be thwarted over generations.’

‘Of course, we all experience the blindness of familial ties. Even the archbishop in all his wisdom seems to favour blood over talent,’ Carlos, his face rigid, fires back.

‘Heinrich, despite his appearance, is a sentimental man but his affection for his cousin is being tried by the canon’s behaviour.’

‘Which in the long term augurs well for other potential heirs—like yourself, perhaps?’

‘Indeed.’

‘I am curious: who really courts King Louis—the archbishop or yourself?’

The stuffed pig’s intestines are replaced by a dish of fowl: a goose baked whole with a glaze of black cherries. Von Fürstenberg pushes the dish towards Carlos. ‘You must try the fowl, it is a French recipe sent direct from Versailles.’

Having received an oblique answer to his question, the friar, always frugal in his consumption, leans back, overwhelmed by the extravagance of the meal. He still finds himself questioning the German’s motives.

‘I believe the midwife has returned to Deutz.’ Von Fürstenberg bites into a wing, juice dripping down his chin.

‘Is she still practising her devilry?’

‘You mean midwifery.’

‘She is no mere midwife; she is witch, trust me on this.’

The steely conviction in the inquisitor’s voice sends an involuntary tremble through von Fürstenberg’s body, despite his cynicism.

The worst enemy is one whose doctrines are founded in hate and are thus beyond debate, the minister wryly observes to himself. The friar has no heart and a heartless man is the most vicious of all.

Carlos meticulously prises off a portion of the flesh with the travelling fork he carries with him; the practice of sharing food using one’s fingers is abhorrent to his fastidious nature.

‘She has not been seen since her release, except at her father’s house.’ Von Fürstenberg offers the information cautiously.

‘To secure her we shall have to defame her liberator.’

‘That might be possible. The Countess von Marck is a close friend of Meisterin Birgit Ter Lahn von Lennep, a woman once much enamoured of our colleague von Tennen.’

‘And now?’

‘In his newly found zeal he is refusing to take her confession. Naturally I am happy to console her.’

‘In the meantime?’

‘In the meantime we wait and watch. The patient cat catches the mouse.’

‘Indeed,’ Carlos replies carefully, ‘but be warned, sire, my patience can wear thin.’

‘Do have the breast, it is the choicest part of the bird, Monsignor.’

Von Fürstenberg pulls at the huge glistening carcass with his fingers then thrusts the fatty piece of flesh towards the Spaniard. Carlos, in a heroic gesture of fraternity, takes it between his own fingers and nibbles at it delicately.

Elazar sits before the fire with his breeches rolled up to his knees. The nursemaid stands behind him, her hands covered in a pungent-smelling ointment of chicken fat, almond oil and crushed cloves, massaging the old man’s shoulders. Ruth is at the table, grinding a poultice with a pestle and mortar, smiling at her father’s groans.

‘Woman, I am not a piece of old leather.’

‘No, you are a gout-ridden piece of old leather with religious ambitions,’ Rosa retorts as her thick fingers manipulate the swollen tissue.

‘Abba, you must stop the rich food.’

‘It has nothing to do with food. Your grandfather had the gout as did his father. It is in the blood!’

‘But the poultice helps?’

‘It soothes. You make miracles, daughter, with your magic.’

They are interrupted by a pounding at the door. Fearing the worst, they stop still.

‘I will go,’ the old man announces as he struggles to stand.

‘No, you won’t.’

Ruth wipes her hands and walks to the door. Outside a small boy, his reddish prayer locks tumbling down past his ears, waits impatiently.

‘Please, Fräulein! My mother needs a midwife. Please, she is in trouble! Please come!’

‘No, Ruth.’ The rabbi, leaning heavily against the doorway, his brow stern, is the figure of immutable authority. ‘I forbid it.’

He turns to the child. ‘Tell your mother the midwife is not available.’

The child, intimidated by the rabbi, is near tears but still he will not budge. ‘But Rabbi, she will die! She is screaming already…’

Without answering Elazar begins to close the door.

Ruth pushes past. ‘Come’ she says to the child and grabbing his hand runs with him down the street.

Elazar, immobile with anger, dares not call out his daughter’s name.

My true heart, my beloved,

I sit by the stream that runs past my orchard. It is late, I know not how late. I have broken my father’s promise and attended a birthing this very day. The woman was narrow in the hips from rickets and would have died without my attention. The babe was a boy, second child to Herr and Frau Rechtschild. The father is a tailor for my people and I had to make him swear not to tell of my service nor to pay me for it. It is of necessity of the heart that I attend these women. Many have died before their time—my mother among them—through ignorance and unnecessary pain inflicted upon them by clumsy midwifery. And if I risk persecution, Detlef, then I risk it joyously.

Venus, the first star, has appeared, another child is born and the stream runs on. Water must be a celestial element for it has neither time nor history stamped upon it and is as constant as the tides of the sea or the rising of the moon. I long for such constancy, be it in life or in comradeship. Memory is a great deceiver: it embroiders until naught is left but the glory and the pleasure. Did we really lie together? Was it really your voice that spoke of great affection? Was it you who dreamt a future that cannot be?

I have a noble spirit, but I want to live. Tell me how to live and who to live for. I fear I shall surrender too much in love and then survive to regret it…

She sits with her naked feet tucked under her long stained skirt. It is barely an hour since she left the birthing, smuggled out of the tailor’s meagre dwelling, hidden under an old cloak long abandoned by one of his customers. Herr Rechtschild, profusely grateful, led her down a narrow alley stinking with sewage that only the goats and chickens care to frequent. In lieu of payment he insisted she allow him the pleasure of mending all her shawls for a month, claiming that if anyone asks why he shall say that he is preparing her for her engagement to Tuvia. Ruth, too exhausted to argue, was sickened by his obvious joy at the imagined union. The encroaching expectations of the small community are already fastening around her like tentacles. An old but familiar sense of panic begins to ferment within her: the desire to leave, to break free.

The gutter ended at a sluice-gate, beyond it a field adjacent to her own property. As the tailor unfastened the gate she had made him swear not to tell anyone of her service. As soon as she was out of view, she had run through the long grass towards the cottage, hoping against all reason that Detlef would be there waiting for her, like some glorious apparition from a forgotten daydream.

By the time she reached the dwelling the consequences of her actions had sobered her completely. But the yearning to talk with her lover, to touch him, to share the day, was overwhelming.

Night creeps across the orchard now as the first swarm of gnats begins to dance over the water. Ruth looks down at the sheet of parchment, her handwriting an erratic scrawl, illegible in its jagged eagerness. How is she to send it? A courier would be too dangerous. She could bribe a journeyman, but discovery would mean death and disgrace for at least one of them. Can she trust Detlef? Is she able to discern between the pleasure of the body and the loyalty of the heart?

Uncertain of anything, she tears the parchment into pieces then scatters them across the rushing water.

Detlef stands over the font. Behind him he can hear the last of the sext prayers fading. Looking down he sees his fingertips reflected in the water’s surface as he prepares to dip them to mark himself with the holy cross. He does not think, he dares not.

It is four nights since he lay with the midwife and the potency of their encounter has rendered his ecclesiastical life with its rigid rituals and antiquated traditions meaningless. The prospect of loving her, the sheer audacity of it, has jarred him into a multitude of different futures, as if the road he had carefully mapped out has branched uncontrollably into endless possibilities. Suddenly all his work within the cathedral feels futile, worse than that: hollow.

He wonders how he is to deal with the day-to-day routines of his clerical life: the singing of vespers, the taking of confession, ministering to the poor. How is he to go on as before, an
ambitious young canon manipulating his way to a bishopric? Will it be possible for his life to continue without her?

He kneels at the ornate altar. The statue of Saint Ursula is a baroque carving which vividly depicts the young maiden with scarlet cheeks and huge sad eyes, her gown torn, her body shot through with arrows, while at her bleeding feet writhe several of her ravished followers. Here a damsel of Aryan perfection straddled by a huge dark-haired Briton, his face a puffy parody of arousal; there a pale creature cowers as her gown is torn from her body by a rusty-haired sailor. The saint herself seems to gaze down at Detlef. The more he stares at her the more he is convinced there is a chastising look on her painted face.

Closing his eyes he begins to pray but finds that Ruth’s naked form plays before him: tantalisingly, fragments of memory—the tilt of her chin below a shy smile, cheeks flushed with excitement, an erect nipple—wash over him, weakening his resolve. Each supplication as it forms in his mind concludes with one word: Ruth.

A sharp tap on the shoulder rescues him, jolting him back to within the stone walls of the chapel. Groot pulls at his robe, gesturing that Detlef should follow him outside to a place where they cannot be heard. Together they step through a stone archway into a courtyard where the archbishop’s servants grow vegetables for the kitchen. The midday sun hits the back of their shaved necks, reddening the skin above the rough linen. A page squats on some stone steps, busy mending his boots with a hammer. Groot, edging closer, takes advantage of the loud banging.