The Witch of Cologne (9 page)

T
he beautiful young actor, a Grecian robe buckled around his slim waist, rouge circles painted high on his whitened face, dark eyes lined with kohl, stands in front of the seated guests holding a terrified lamb against his fake cleavage and clutching a golden staff. From behind the varnished backdrop painted with an idealised landscape of Mount Olympus but looking suspiciously like the Tuscan hills, the other members of the troupe make bleating sounds. Suddenly a man wearing the massive head of a bull, his muscular torso gleaming with oil, his loins covered only by the briefest of kilts, the added absurdity of a small Ottoman cap pinned precariously between the ears of his bull-mask, jumps out from behind the screen. The young shepherdess swoons as the bull advances.

‘The rape of Europa!’ Count Gerhard von Tennen yells from the front row of the audience. He stands and bows to polite applause. Dressed in scarlet silk hose and pantaloons, his narrow chest squeezed into the tightest of embroidered
waistcoats, the count holds the mask of Pan up to his face and addresses the revellers.

‘There is of course an added subtlety. Behold the loathsome insignia of the hated Ottoman!’

The actor playing Zeus lowers his head so all can see the Turkish cap pinned between his furry ears.

‘And the colours of our poor ravaged Bohemia!’

At this, Europa cheekily throws up his skirts and bending over reveals bloomers adorned with the emperor’s double-headed eagle, each head strategically placed over a buttock. Delighted, the onlookers howl with laughter.

Detlef, his face covered with a sinister wolf-mask, leans towards his mistress. Birgit, wearing a satin headdress and mask resembling the head of a white peacock, and clothed in a creamy-white ball gown of ducape, its stomacher of matching silk bows embroidered with seed pearls, is the pinnacle of opulent splendour and utterly conscious of it.

‘Do we assume that the young royal is amused?’ Detlef asks wryly.

Birgit glances across to where Prince Ferdinand, the nephew of Emperor Leopold himself, sits sandwiched between Count Gerhard von Tennen and his gamekeeper, Hermann Wolf, a colossal Prussian who is rumoured to inhabit the count’s bed as well as his hunting lodge.

The prince is an ailing pimply youth who has been sent to the Rhineland to recover his health and, more importantly, to remove him from the corrupting influence of the Viennese court where, at the onset of adolescence, the only precociousness he displayed was a healthy appetite for both sexes.

The seventeen year old is an unlikely guest for the older count, but welcomed as a chance to win favour with Leopold. The count’s controlled façade is betrayed only slightly by a twitch as he recalls the humiliation he experienced at the
hands of the young emperor on his last visit to the Viennese court. Leopold had promised an audience but postponed the meeting four times, then finally failed to show at all, leaving the count mortified before the arrogant Viennese courtiers. So when, months later, the royal messenger arrived at Das Grüntal with the request that Prince Ferdinand be invited to attend the count’s winter hunt in an attempt to improve his health—the prince suffered constantly from an old jousting injury—Gerhard was understandably relieved. Here was the golden opportunity to redeem himself in the emperor’s eyes and to make it perfectly clear that his alliance lay with the Hapsburgs; unlike Maximilian Heinrich whose attention wavers to the south-west, towards France.

Yawning, the young Austrian nobleman appears bored, but after a tap from his courtier smiles politely and raises both hands to clap. ‘Droll, very droll, Count von Tennen. What is the name of the delightful Europa?’

‘Alphonso, your highness.’ The count lowers his voice: ‘And he is most amenable.’ He taps his fan and on cue the young actor curtsies and smiles brazenly at the prince before skipping off behind the screen.

Birgit returns her attention to Detlef.

‘Your brother has mastered the niceties of the Viennese court well. But pray where is the countess?’

‘My brother’s long-suffering wife resides permanently in Bonn now. She draws comfort from the companionship of her ward, Fräulein Drecker. As you know, the marriage was a convenience, a bloodless and heartless affair.’

Detlef wonders whether Merchant Ter Lahn von Lennep realises that his own marriage could be defined as such.

Birgit nudges her husband who is busy devouring a leg of glazed duck with obscene relish. An obese man in his sixties, afflicted by an acute awareness of his own lack of sophistication, he guiltily wipes the poultry gravy from his
chin then pulls down his mask. It is in the unfortunate shape of a rooster—his wife’s choice.

‘Prince Ferdinand sets an example to the rest of us provincials,’ Birgit continues, running her hand up Detlef’s thigh under the table. ‘Of course, such manners are in the blood. Such breeding cannot be purchased.’

Meister Ter Lahn von Lennep, now scarlet with embarrassment, belches into his napkin. Detlef, feeling sorry for the ridiculous costume the long-suffering merchant has been made to wear, comes to his rescue.

‘There are many who would disagree. If absolution is to be bought, why not nobility?’

‘The canon is right. It is even rumoured that Leopold himself had a chambermaid for a great-grandmother.’

‘Hush, husband, even tables have ears.’

‘And legs, I believe,’ Detlef interjects. Under the table he shifts his swelling erection away from Birgit’s deft fingers.

‘What is the occasion for the young prince’s visit?’ the merchant asks, uncomfortably full under his tight waistcoat and velvet breeches. ‘I have heard whisperings that Leopold has sent him to spy on his henchman, the ambitious inquisitor. Canon, I believe you were witness to the arrests of poor Voss and Müller?’

‘Indeed.’

‘The Gaffeln are most unhappy. Maximilian Heinrich will answer for this latest outrage, that I can assure you.’

‘The papal powers still have jurisdiction over Cologne. Voss and Müller are accused of wizardry; the archbishop has to bow to the Inquisition.’

‘And you to the archbishop,’ the merchant retorts, wondering why the canon has suddenly shifted from his wife’s side.

‘The prince is here to hunt the wild boar.’ Birgit, fanning herself to cover her chagrin at Detlef’s rejection, deliberately
changes the subject. They all glance again at the prince, now fondling Europa who, giggling and preening, is perched on his knee.

‘He is a great lover of the hunt,’ Detlef remarks wryly.

‘Evidently, but will he prove to be a great lover of the aspiring bürger?’ the merchant continues.

‘He has a keen admiration for fine Persian silk, I believe.’

Detlef knows full well that the merchant has received a shipment of the cloth only that month.

‘In that case we must present him with a length of the best and seek an audience. Are we sure he has influence with his good uncle, the emperor?’

‘Influence enough.’

The furry ears of the wolf-mask sway elegantly as Detlef reaches for another glass of wine. Just then the count gestures to the musicians and they begin to play. Detlef and Birgit stand and, after a tolerant smile from her husband, take their positions on the dance floor for a formal quadrille. The klaviermaster commences his playing and the dancers begin to step backwards and forwards, their bodies arching stiffly.

Swinging from partner to partner Detlef can’t help but notice the recent renovations the count has undertaken.

‘I can’t believe my brother would allow such sacrilege. This was once a hall radiant in its simplicity,’ he whispers to Birgit as they dance past an ornate statue of Pan playing his pipes.

‘It was old-fashioned, Gothic. It was time the count invested in the current fashion.’

‘That Italian artisan…what is his name?’

‘Philibert Lucchese. He redesigned the Hofburg in the stucco style for Leopold himself and comes at great expense.’

‘Whatever his reputation, he has ruined Das Grüntal. My dear father would have been scandalised.’

As he looks around, discovering one baroque monstrosity after another, Detlef cannot believe how a simple medieval
dining hall has been transformed into a ballroom of bacchanalian exaggeration. The hunting lodge was designed in the 1500s, the clumsy marriage of a Renaissance Italian villa and the local Rhenish architecture. Built around a pebbled courtyard, the exterior walls were decorated with a mural depicting a variety of hunts with every kind of prey: the traditional English fox hunt, a stag hunt, a wild boar chase, a falconer sending his hawk after a rabbit, and even Hannibal and his elephants inexplicably chasing tigers. It was a tribute to the idiosyncrasies of the old viscount, who liked to imagine himself as a cosmopolitan huntsman of sophisticated tastes.

Glancing up now, Detlef is confronted by a moulded ceiling displaying a painted panorama of the Wittelsbachs’ victory in the Crusades. Detlef’s great-great-great-grandfather, a famously short, stocky individual, has miraculously become a patriarch of impressive stature; and where there once were crude oak and iron candelabra now hang chandeliers of Venetian crystal and gilt.

As a young boy Detlef spent hours at Das Grüntal, sitting in the courtyard with his tutor who made him count the pebbles in Latin. His brother and his father formed an island of severe masculinity which excluded Detlef completely. As they were often out surveying the local land, it was a lonely childhood and on many occasions Detlef’s only companions were the servants and the local peasant children. But this was to prove the seeding of the canon’s love for the ordinary man.

The child’s favourite refuge was the family chapel. Dedicated to Saint Hubert, the patron saint of all hunters, the small room in the west wing was a place of magical mystery for a young boy. The altar held a beautiful crucifix—melted from gold plate, booty of the Crusades—with a Christ whose crown of thorns contained real rubies and sapphires. Alongside stood an unusually buxom Madonna, a blonde
Flemish beauty whose obscenely bountiful breasts had crept more than once into Detlef’s adolescent fantasies.

His mother, Viscountess Katrina von Tennen, a pious woman driven into religious fervour by marital neglect, was encouraged by her son’s fascination with the chapel and convinced of his vocation for the priesthood. After all, the church was the natural destiny for a second son, and knowing that the viscount cared little for the boy, she feared for his welfare after her death.

When Detlef was ten the unhappy woman was taken by the plague and it was at her graveside that the small boy secretly pledged to carry out her wishes. Four years later the Wittelsbach men were called on by the Bavarian court to fight with the Hapsburgs against the Lutherans, and Detlef had no choice but to ride out in the chainmail his father had had fashioned for both his sons.

The first dance draws to an end and Birgit, her hips swaying seductively under the full skirt, bows coquettishly before him, her breasts pushed high above the embroidered stomacher. It excites her to be in the family house of her lover. Looking at him, she imagines she can see the whole lineage of the Wittelbachs in his grey-blue eyes, his patrician nose and high cheekbones, and fantasises that one day it shall be Detlef and her on the podium, graciously welcoming the costumed guests.

The black ermine against Detlef’s blond hair, the short black cape slung rakishly over one shoulder, renders him mysterious and wondrous to her. It arouses her. Gripped by a desire to commit some profanity here on her lover’s family estate, under the eyes of her inept husband, Birgit pulls Detlef towards the stone arches that lead out into the courtyard.

The winter moon hangs low in the sky like a huge yellow portal into a better world. The soft light radiates down,
lengthening the still shadows. The air is filled with the heavy scent of musk and great swathes of rosemary and lavender are scattered across the cobblestones. Birgit looks like a magical bird of paradise, the feathers of her mask shimmering in the moonlight, her cleavage transformed into the breasts of a ghost. It makes her lover want her; the clandestine nature of their actions excites him too. But it is not only the danger of discovery that intoxicates Detlef, it is also the pagan revelry: the beating music, the clouds of smouldering incense, the rush of the heavy red wine. It makes him want to surrender to the primal, to give himself over to his loins and cock, driven by a violent urge to pound out all the artifice, the machinations, the suffocating stratagems that constantly surround him.

He pushes her behind one of the pillars and takes her mouth into his own. He knows that two steps away on the other side, Peter Ter Lahn von Lennep is discussing the effect of the North Sea war on trading. The thought of discovery makes Detlef harden. Removing his mask, he bites down on one nipple and pushes up her petticoats. Now there is little between them, no history, no familiarity, just the instinctive desire to plunder each other’s body. He pulls both breasts over the top of her dress, playing with her as his mouth travels across her flesh. Then kneeling he pulls her gown over his head.

Underneath her scent is mingled with the rosemary and lavender and her own perfume, a musk of civet and myrrh known as Aphrodite’s tears. Birgit’s silk stockings are rolled up to the top of her thighs. Detlef runs his hands up to her golden bush and, parting her, strums her until she is erect. Pushing his full lips against her, he finds the small hardened organ with his tongue then takes her into his mouth, teasing and sucking gently.

Birgit moans and steadies herself against the pillar. On the
other side her husband thinks he has heard a cat. Pushing her breasts back into her bodice, she allows Detlef to propel her towards the open balcony. There she stands, her lower half concealed, fanning herself and smiling mysteriously at her husband through the open portico. Under her skirt her legs are spread wide as Detlef, concealed, pleasures her in the way she has taught him, orchestrating the contractions of pure bliss until they burst into uncontrollable spasms. Birgit concentrates fiercely on the form of her husband, his portly figure absurd in the tight fashionable clothes, his hands waving around with absolutely no grace. At this moment she hates him. She recalls how as a young woman she was forced into the arranged marriage as a means to save her father’s estate from ruin. It was easy barter: her nobility for Peter Ter Lahn von Lennep’s money. No matter that he was thirty years older, or that Birgit found his openly mercenary manner an affront to the refined discourse into which she had been indoctrinated; no matter that on the wedding night she lay weeping as the old man pounded into her. It is these memories she holds on to, her flesh trembling under her lover’s mouth and fingers, until all the unhappiness, futility and tedium is released in a rush of pure pleasure. Overwhelmed, she lifts her mask and rests her hot face a moment against the cool moon-drenched wall.