The Witch of Cologne (17 page)

D
etlef lies sprawled on a small divan pushed up against the white wall of the simple parlour. There is little furniture in the large high-ceilinged room, a chamber which has faint echoes of a previous grandeur but now, denuded, is humbled in its asceticism. A large fireplace is set into the far wall, an ornate marble mantelpiece arching over it. A portrait of Detlef‘s aunt depicted as a buxom huntress hangs above, but the painting is dusty and badly in need of restoration.

A virginal, its once glorious gilded frescoes of nymphs and satyrs faded like a beautiful ageing spinster, sits mournfully beside the window. Next to the virginal stands a cabinet. Bavarian, the ornate cupboard boasts a kitsch panorama of the bizarre seduction of Hephaestus by Aphrodite; its spindly legs look strangely defenceless in the bleakness of the room. A worn medieval tapestry, threads hanging out, is stretched across the opposite wall giving that end of the chamber a curiously Oriental mood. A leather ball, a childhood toy, lies abandoned at the skirting board, beside it a chequered spinning top.

While Detlef sleeps, his cloak draped over his eyes, a large pink and black sow enters the room followed by several piglets. She trots territorially around the sleeping man, sniffs at the dried manure packed around his riding boots, then wanders towards the leather ball. The piglets follow, squealing.

‘Brunhilde!’ A matronly woman in a stained smock and sturdy wooden clogs runs into the room waving a straw broom at the pig. ‘This is a place for people, not for a glorified meat platter on legs!’

The sow, backed into a corner, grins crookedly at her mistress then farts defiantly. The noise and the odour drift across the room to penetrate Detlef’s slumber. He stirs and one of his legs slips from the divan.

‘Oh!’ The housekeeper whirls around and raises the broom ready to defend herself from the intruder. Convinced it must be an impoverished journeyman who has crept in to shelter from the cold, she tiptoes over and sees the royal crest embroidered on the cloak. Confused, she carefully raises the damp wool from the intruder’s face. At the same time Detlef opens one eye.

‘Master Detlef!’

The cleric, blinking in the bright light, rubs the sleep from his eyes and peers dubiously at the raised broomstick. ‘Are you going to beat me with that or is it just your latest means of transport?’

‘Beg your pardon, Master Detlef, your Hanna’s no witch,’ she says, lowering the broom. ‘I just thought you was one of those tramps that are for ever taking advantage.’

To cover her embarrassment she begins to sweep the floor. ‘If I had known you were coming, I would have made a fire, maybe cooked some broth.’

‘Well, I’m here now.’

‘And so you are. There’s precious little left of the winter stock in the larder, but I can go borrow some turnips and
salted beef from my brother and have you all warm and toasty within the hour.’

‘How about some bacon?’ Detlef glances at the old sow, who glares back with open hostility.

‘You might have to wait a couple of months for one of the young ones. It’s been a mean winter, most folk are reduced to eating their grain. Brunhilde’s fended off several kidnapping attempts, haven’t you, darling?’ the housekeeper says to the pig with rough affection.

‘In that case, reassure Brunhilde. I’ll settle for broth.’

Yawning, Detlef gets up and shakes his stiff limbs, his body reeking of the damp night. Hanna shoos the sow and her offspring back out to the entrance hall and the serving quarters.

Looking around, Detlef feels a wave of affection for Das Wolkenhaus, the small country retreat where his mother’s sister once held her exclusive literary salons far from Cologne. His aunt, an unmarried spinster who had rejected family pressure to enter a convent, had turned the place into an unorthodox sanctuary for the bored wives of wealthy bürgers, and even some of the women merchants. Accompanied only by a few servants they often made the journey by coach or on horseback and stayed several days, gathering in the evening to recite poetry and play music and, more importantly, to exchange valuable information about their men and the webs of power that tenaciously held together the hierarchies of the city.

When his aunt died she left the property to her favourite nephew. The manor has become Detlef’s private home, a refuge from the demands of Cologne and from the affairs of his brother, whose own hunting lodge, Das Grüntal, lies several miles up the road. Never close, the gulf between the two brothers has widened over the years. Gerhard regards Detlef’s tolerance of Heinrich’s vacillating loyalties as weak, while Detlef has long given up hope of discovering anything human
beneath his brother’s glittering political veneer. While they maintain the semblance of fraternal affection, in reality each lacks respect for the other. It is hard for Detlef to believe now how desperately he craved Gerhard’s approval when younger.

The slightly decayed atmosphere of Das Wolkenhaus suits its antiquity. The fields beyond the garden are still fallow after being devastated by the Great War. Detlef, relishing the bleak landscape, has let the ambience spread to the orchard and the garden, deliberately allowing the thick overgrowth to creep across the stone walls and raked gravel paths. Such is the success of his plan that from the outside the manor looks so neglected that no one is ever able to tell whether the canon is in residence or not.

Bathed and dressed in a plain damask shirt and jerkin of paduasoy, Detlef takes a seat at the round wooden table in the long kitchen.

‘This should keep the damp from the bones,’ Hanna says, setting the bowl of watery stew in front of him. She watches anxiously as the canon tentatively picks his way through the pieces of gristle until finally hunger triumphs over his palate and he is compelled to eat.

‘Excellent, Hanna,’ he lies. Relieved, the housekeeper turns back to her salting.

As Detlef spoons the greasy liquid into his mouth he muses on her sturdy figure in its stained skirt and grubby bodice. She seems so content, so unquestioning in her servitude. Is it possible that she might harbour the same ambitions, the same spiritual yearnings as himself? His thoughts are drawn back to Ruth bas Elazar Saul: although no peasant, she is still a woman and of far lower status than a Wittelsbach prince. So where does her intelligence, her constant questioning, stem from? The aether? God? From her lineage?

‘Hanna, do you think yourself to be equal to me?’ he asks suddenly.

Hanna looks up from her stewing pan, shocked, and spills some of the beef onto the stone floor.

‘It isn’t a trick question, I’m just curious. Do you think your soul is equal to mine, for example, or to that of my brother the count? Or even to that of the emperor?’

‘Sir, are you drunk?’

‘No, entirely sober, in fact I’ve never been more so. But I need to know: under that guise of servility do you, or any of the other peasants you know, believe yourselves to be equal to your masters?’

‘Well, we’ve all got two arms, two legs and a pot, but that’s where it stops, if you ask me. I mean, some of them ladies your aunt used to have staying here, it wasn’t just that their lives were different, their heads was different too. I’m happy with my lot. I was born to serve, as was my mother and her mother before her. Does that makes us less or more? I don’t know. But it doesn’t make us equal. Why, that’s like comparing Brunhilde with Matti the hunting hound! What next, Master Detlef? Not that man Luther, I hope! You are to the manor born as I am to the pantry. That’s how it’s always been and that’s how it’ll end.’

‘The Dutch Republicans would have it otherwise.’

‘A pox on the Republic and on the Lutherans. Who’s been poisoning your ear, Master Detlef?’ she asks impertinently, forgetting that the nobleman before her is no longer the seven-year-old boy who used to chase geese around the orchard.

‘Who indeed?’

Detlef swings around. Birgit stands in the doorway framed by the sunlight behind her, dressed in riding clothes, hat and veil. She steps into the pantry with an air of confidence that belies her apprehension.

Hanna drops into a deep curtsy. ‘Meisterin.’

Birgit slaps her riding gloves onto the wooden counter. ‘No need to stand on ceremony, Hanna, you’ve known me since I was a child.’

‘Nevertheless, you are a married woman now and a wealthy one at that, so if you don’t mind I will stay with the formal.’

An undertone of disapproval taints Hanna’s voice; with another genuflection she leaves the room, the hock of salted beef still in her hand.

Detlef studies his mistress. Feigning a casualness, Birgit toys with the plume of her riding bonnet. ‘I knew you would be here.’

‘Why was that?’

‘It’s where you escape to when something has disturbed you profoundly. You came here after we made love for the first time.’

She sits, arranging her deep burgundy ferrandine skirt over the hard bench as a means of distracting herself from her growing anxiety.

‘You have ridden from Cologne, Birgit?’

Still he does not make one movement towards her. Birgit, distressed by the distant tone in his voice, decides to ignore his coolness. Smiling coquettishly she fills a pewter mug with wine and drinks it thirstily.

‘Not from Cologne but from Das Grüntal. I have some bad news. Prince Ferdinand collapsed during the hunt this morning.’

‘Is his injury serious?’

‘It is not an injury but some mysterious ailment. Gerhard’s physic attends him now.’

‘Hah, that humbug. Gerhard must be anxious. If the prince’s condition worsens it could become a major political embarrassment and we all know how my brother hates to be embarrassed.’

‘The prince won’t die.’

‘Is that what you came here to tell me?’

‘That and other matters. In town there is talk that the merchant Voss will burn. The bürgermeisters and the Gaffeln
are up in arms about it. Is it true? Are the bürgers to be a sacrifice for Maximilian?’

‘I fear so.’

‘But the men are innocent!’

‘Don’t be naive, Birgit, it doesn’t suit you. Now, how
did
you know I was here?’

‘A wager with my heart; the instinct of a woman that links her to her lover. Some might call it habit.’

Ignoring his detachment she places her hand on his thigh. Surprised by his lack of response and curious to test the depth of his indifference, Detlef does not move.

‘I came here to be alone. There is much I have to ponder without the distraction of man or service.’

‘I will not be a distraction, I promise,’ she answers lightly and slips her hand further up his leg. He pushes it away gently. Quickly she covers the moment by pulling a handkerchief from her sleeve.

‘What of the other three arrests? The Dutchman no one cares about, Müller is not powerful enough for his guild to protest, and as for the witch—’

‘Her guilt is yet unproven,’ Detlef replies, a little too swiftly.

‘So it is true? You have secured the role of her inquisitor?’

‘It was necessary. The Spaniard is not impartial.’

‘Of course he isn’t. There is no such thing as impartiality; one would be a fool to assume otherwise. But people’s tongues have begun to wag, Detlef. It is unnatural for a canon to become the protector of a Jewish woman. You realise that if you continue with this behaviour you will endanger my quest for a knighthood for my husband?’

‘I have the grace of one month to prove her guilt or her innocence. I intend to carry out my pledge.’

Intrigued by his stubbornness, Birgit speculates what the midwife looks like. She cannot believe that an ill-bred heathen
from the right bank of the Rhine could hold any fascination for Detlef, so she imagines there must be another dimension to the scenario, something more insidious which will be infinitely harder to battle. Is he suffering a crisis of faith? Has he finally begun to weary of the role of cleric, or even that of politician? Wondering, she caresses his long blond hair. ‘Are you not pleased to see me, my love?’

‘Always.’

Kissing her hand, he stands and moves off. Outside it is early afternoon but already he can smell the scent of evening fires on the chilly breeze.

‘It is getting late, shouldn’t you begin your ride back? Your manservant will be waiting.’

She wraps her arms around his waist. ‘I have an hour.’

As he stands passively with the sunlight crossing his face, she reaches into his breeches and finds him soft and pliant. Staring him in the eye she starts to stroke him with hidden fingers. Her long languid caresses cause him to grow hard, but he makes no move. She is careful to keep herself distant except for the delicious strokes of her cool hands which set his thigh muscles quivering. Now her lover is erect, saluting her touch; still he does not reach for her.

‘Embrace me,’ she whispers, but he pushes her away.

‘Birgit, I have told you, I am here for solitude. At this time it is a great luxury.’

Hurt, she smooths down her skirts.

‘I hope it is a profound distraction you suffer, Detlef, one that precludes matters of the heart, for I have ridden far this morning.’

‘I am not of the disposition for love.’

‘But your flesh is.’

‘The flesh is of the man not of the spirit.’

‘I can make you forget both.’ Her eyes tease him with her wit.

This time he walks out of the room. Picking up her riding crop she follows.

Detlef strides through the entrance hall out into the wild front garden. An ancient stone border encircles the large lawn at the centre of which is an ornamental pond choking with weeds. A lone goose floats sadly upon it. Beyond the wall is the overgrown orchard which even in winter is thick with vines. A northern wind rustles the tall oak and beech trees. Like a row of towers they are guarded by a platoon of ravens. Balancing on the naked slender branches, hunched up against the cold, the birds look like flung splotches of sooty ink.

Detlef takes a deep breath and allows the wind to roar through him like a scythe. ‘I don’t want to forget, not today,’ he answers finally, eyes shut tight, arms outstretched.

Birgit, steadying herself against a tree trunk, wonders whether his depressed spirit might be a precursor to illness. Comforted by the thought that this might be her only foe she glances to where her page waits patiently.