The Witch of Cologne (44 page)

‘He was fair, like you, with the same shaped eyes and the same mouth, but his eyes were blue. And he had the same temper as you, Jacob.’

‘Did he kick things too?’ the child squeals, delighted.

‘In a manner. He kicked at authority and questioned all that others took for granted.’

‘Sometimes I get frightened because his face has begun to disappear from my dreams. Does this mean he is leaving us?’

‘No, Jacob, and I would forgive you if you did forget, for Papa will always be here, inside you, in your nature and in your flesh.’

‘Is that how we live for ever?’

‘That is what I believe.’

She smiles down at him, marvelling at the child’s gift for reasoning, which she recognises as a heritage from both Detlef and herself.

Thank the good Lord for the philosopher, she thinks, pleased that Spinoza has secured the promise of an apprenticeship from the publisher Rieuwertsz for the child should anything happen to her before Jacob reaches his adulthood. She gazes at the long black eyelashes fluttering against the fair skin. She is a fortunate woman to have this bond of flesh, this profound love, which in times of great loneliness jolts her back to a state of grace.

Sleepy, Jacob rests his head on Ruth’s bosom, nestling against her like he used to do when he was a small babe, until a tremor of fever forces her to carry him to the bed.

M
y love,
I am writing to tell you a wonderful thing. My first paper will be published at the end of this month under the name Frau Ruth Tennen. Is this not an occasion to be joyous? How long have we waited for this moment? Are you not thankful now that you tolerated, nay, cajoled me into all those hours of study?

My husband, when are you to return? It has been two days since I last saw you and my body grows weary of waiting…’

‘Your body has grown weary because you have been waiting for two years. But now I have come back.’

Detlef stands before her, dressed in his old vestments of the canon, his features as young and handsome as they were when Ruth first made love with him in the cottage at Deutz.

‘Two years? But that is not possible. And why do you wear the cloth of the church?’

‘I wear the cloth for I am here to give you the last rites.’

He moves towards her and takes the golden feathered quill from her hand. She looks at the scroll she has been writing on and sees that the calligraphy has begun to fade.

‘You are dreaming, my love. You are imagining that you are writing a letter to me and that I am still in the living world.’

Startled, she jumps to her feet and for the first time notices that she is wearing her wedding gown. But the plain velveteen dress which she wore when they stood in the small Calvinist forest chapel near Nijmegen, before a minister they knew would not ask questions, is now miraculously embroidered with silver thread and beaded with pearls.

‘Am I still in the living world?’ she whispers, terrified of the answer.

‘Your spirit is at the gateway, but it is time to join with me.’

She looks over to the window set high in the wall of her small study. Outside it is brilliant sunlight, yet inside all is shadow.

‘Which last rite would you administer, my love? And which afterlife do you promise, as I have faith in neither?’

‘But you have faith in me?’

‘Always. I always did, Detlef, and forgive me if I ever faltered or questioned your love, for I know now that it was merely fear.’

‘I loved you anyway,’ he replies with that characteristic shyness she recognises from the first time he ever uttered those words.

Then she takes his mouth to hers and tastes him. Remembering their lovemaking, desire bolts through both of them, weaving their spirits together again.

‘Then this shall be our eternity,’ he whispers, his voice rippling like heat.

Ruth, her body drenched in sweat, tosses in the filthy bed. The air is rank, the curtains drawn, the window bolted. A
bloodstained towel lies tossed on the floor beside a pail filled with soiled bedclothes. In the corner is a bucket of vomit.

Jacob lies sprawled across the foot of the bed, his arms wrapped around Aaron’s sword. He has been asleep for hours after keeping vigil for three days, sword in hand, beside his dying mother.

Outside in the streets of the Hague a distant roar rises up from the direction of the castle. It grows louder as the cacophony rolls towards their lodging. Jacob wakes and immediately swings the heavy sword in the air, ready to defend his mother. He glances over at her and reaches out to touch her face. She feels cooler, as if the fever has broken. Momentarily frightened, he places a hand on her chest…a heartbeat is faintly perceptible.

Don’t die, you can’t, not yet. Not before I am grown and can look after us both, Jacob thinks, staring down at her grey face. I shall build a house with a garden, and there shall be an orchard with a river running by it, and a bridge. And we shall live there together, warm and well fed. There shall be geese in the yard and a forest for me to hunt in. You shall never have to work again and shall wear a new dress every week.

The boy’s ramblings are broken by the noise of a crowd approaching, running, shouting, the banging of drums, all building until the roar beats against the windows and walls.

Jacob pulls open the shutters. A torn flag of the Republic covered with human excrement bobs madly up and down below him.

‘Down with the Republic! The de Witts are dead!’

The shout rises up from the street.

The boy leans out to see a mass of people, flushed with excitement, many with blood spattering their clothes, singing and dancing, drunk with power and excitement. Women with their breasts hanging out, dishevelled drunken soldiers
waving the Orangists’ colours, red-faced youths pushing violently through the throng, blowing loudly on horns.

The horde winds into the narrow lane like a demented snake, filling it until there is little room to move. Packed shoulder to shoulder, the crowd becomes as one, waving bloodstained strips of cloth, flowers torn from passing stalls, ripped flags, rocking from side to side, drinking from casks handed from man to man.

An object is lifted high above the crowd, impaled on the end of a pike. Jacob realises with dismay that it is a body, the stomach split open, its entrails spiralling out like macabre ribbons, the eyes white, the mouth screaming. Just as suddenly a second body appears beside the first. It is a puppet show of dancing horror as the corpses, blood flying from them, bounce absurdly past the window. Despite the blackened cheeks and missing chunks of hair, Jacob recognises the two men instantly.

‘The pensionary and his brother are dead! The de Witts are finished!’ someone shouts, only to be drowned out by a huge cheer.

A loud scratching sound causes Jacob to swing back to the room. Crouched in the corner is a gigantic raven, its shimmering purple head crammed up against the ceiling. It turns one glistening black eye to the boy then arches a huge claw towards the feverish woman on the bed.

Jacob slams the window shut and, lifting his sword, moves slowly towards the immense bird of death. A grating rustling fills the bedroom as the raven ruffles its wings, indifferent to the child. Ruth moans very softly. The massive spectre cocks its shiny head and slowly a huge grey scaly foot emerges from the blue-black feathers. The claw descends cautiously to the floor, the long yellow nails scratching against the polished wood. With a loud thump the colossal bird hops once towards the bed.

‘No!’

Jacob rushes the raven, sword aimed directly at its breast.
To his amazement, the blade runs right through as the apparition breaks up with a deafening caw, only to manifest again, this time perched on the end of the bed itself.

‘You can’t take her! You can’t!’

Moaning, Ruth opens her eyes and lifts a feeble arm towards Jacob. As he leans down she pulls him to her.

‘My child, promise me you will always remember who your parents were…You must fight tyranny always, live for the freedom of belief…the freedom of thought. This is our gift to you…’

Exhausted, she falls back to the pillow, closing her eyes. Her grip loosens and her hand falls away.

‘Mama? Mama!’ he cries, shaking her.

The raven squawks, breaking into Jacob’s weeping. He looks up. The bird’s massive beak opens to reveal a startling pink cavern then it looks back down at him with an almost kindly eye. Lifting a claw, the raven extends it towards Ruth’s prostrate figure. Again the boy swipes at the bird, his sword passing uselessly through the phantom as the bird slowly begins to unfurl its long satin wings. A roaring fills Jacob’s ears. Sobbing, he throws himself over Ruth to defend her, his arms stretched across her shrunken form.

Ruth can hear Detlef murmuring as he finishes the last rites. She looks up and there he is beside her.

‘Come, the others are waiting.’

He pulls her into his arms, and as she stares deeper and deeper into his eyes she sees the ghosts of her past, all waiting for her: Sara, Rosa, Hanna, even Aaron with his serious face, and then at last Elazar steps forward to take her hand.

Clutching at her withered arms, his head upon her bosom, Jacob feels the last shuddering breath leave his mother’s body, and then the yawning silence as her soul departs the flesh.

T
he scent of poppies fills the chamber. Jacob fingers the silk blindfold. He thinks about cheating by opening his eyes but decides against it. Something luxurious and scented brushes past him. Fabric? Lace? Fur? A perfumed veil of long soft hair falls across his face followed by the touch of a finger against his lips, confusing him further.

‘Are you ready for your birthday offering?’

‘If it is to be a gift, I am not fully seventeen until after midnight.’

‘Can you wait until then?’

‘Madame, I believe I have waited long enough.’

Impatient, Jacob lifts his hands to the knot that has become entangled in his long fair hair, excitement bursting at his loins. As the blindfold falls away she says, ‘And so begins the corruption of a poet.’

She sits before him on a low ottoman. She is naked except for a diaphanous gown, which seems to float above her nudity rather than lie upon it. Her flesh, which he has
touched only through clothing, is curvaceous. Her breasts a jutting whiteness crowned by large dark areolae, her stomach a rounded glory with golden curls climbing up her belly. Thus undone she smiles, not with the guarded arrogance he is accustomed to, but with a timorous almost child-like questioning that plays humorously in her huge brown eyes. Jacob’s mouth dries, his heart races with anticipation. Fifteen years older, she is the first woman he has seen naked. To him she is beauty itself spread before him.

‘Poets are not corruptible for their minds have already been caught and catapulted to the moon by intellect itself,’ he answers, unable to keep a throaty awe from his voice.

She laughs, surprising herself with her own nervousness.

‘But what about their bodies?’

‘Their bodies?’

He reaches for her hand and places it on his erection which pushes up against his breeches. ‘That, Madame, you may judge for yourself.’

Kneeling, she begins to unlace him.

‘Tomorrow you will no longer be able to call yourself virgin.’

In lieu of an answer he runs his hands beneath her gown and clasps the full breasts with their hot, heavy weight. The nipples hardening sends a tremor of excitement through him that is almost impossible to contain. Frightened he might spill before time, he lies back and allows her to undress him slowly. Smiling, she runs her hands down the long-waisted satin coat. Then with excruciating deliberateness begins to unfasten the many pearl buttons, from the bottom to the top one by one. Jacob, trembling, tries to stay completely still. She unties the crimson cravat of lustring then hauls up the silk undershirt to reveal Jacob’s smooth muscular chest, a line of fine blond hairs travelling down towards his cock which rests large and hard against his taut stomach.

Surprised by his circumcision she looks up at him. Reading the question in her eyes, he blushes but says nothing. Without a word she takes his organ, holding its thickness firmly between cool fingers. ‘You are beautiful,’ she says simply, and in that moment he truly feels it.

Cheeks flushed, his locks of hair snaking across the pillow, he watches her through narrowed eyes, trying to hide his wonder. The maturity of her body touches him, it has a kind of collapsed vulnerability, a ripeness which makes him want to bury his face in the soft folds and bite. The scent of her, a musky aroma of French perfume undercut with the ripeness of her sex, both intoxicates and overwhelms. It is an extension of the complexity of the woman herself and of their relationship, for she is the widowed sister of his employer and guardian, the publisher Rieuwertsz. It is this intricacy, the verbal labyrinths, the subtle flirtations, her open enthusiasm for his ambitions and finally her hard-won respect, that has seduced him. He, who could have had any serving girl or dockland whore before now.

Jacob lifts a languid hand and traces a finger from her chin to her mouth. She wets it between her lips, he pulls it out slowly and after running it across her hip touches her sex, caressing the hardening bud then burying it deep. With a moan she removes his finger and mounts him, slowly and deliciously sliding down. Engulfed by her tightness, he is fascinated by the beauty of her abandon as she rides him faster and faster, a mounting ball of intense pleasure gathering at the base of his spine.

If this be the way man obtains immortality, then I for one shall seek it over and over, Jacob thinks, his hands gripping the luscious buttocks of his lover. Suddenly he finds himself exploding in a fountain of pure blind pleasure.

‘Master Jacob! Master Jacob!’

Jacob wakes, his body still curled around his mistress. For a moment, unused to the luxurious softness of the foreign bed, he lies still, confused.

‘Master Jacob! I know you’re in there!’

The poet, now fully awake, throws a sheet across the sleeping widow and tiptoes to the door.

Janus, his assistant, a cheeky smile plastered across his face, stands on the other side.

‘You rascal! You’ll wake the whole household.’

‘The whole household is awake. ‘Tis morning, master, in case you hadn’t noticed. But there is a more pressing matter. There’s a gentleman at your lodgings, been asking for you. He’s a German, ancient as Egypt itself and dripping with money.’

Jacob makes the boy wait outside while he pulls on his clothes.

The arrival of this mysterious visitor makes him nervous. He prefers to keep his distant past buried, a prism of fleeting memories he has attempted to erase entirely—and has almost succeeded. Since Ruth’s death Jacob has fought to carve out a new identity for himself. But there is no escaping the possible link between his German father, aristocraticborn, and the stranger awaiting him.

He glances down at the sleeping widow. If he were to fall in love, he would make sure never to abandon his reason, for he has vowed never to weep at being left alone again. He is his own companion, his own family, he lacks nothing for he carries his world with him, like a shelled creature who fears nothing for he feels nothing. His reverie is broken by his lover, who yawning, stretches her voluptuous body.

‘How is the intellect?’ she whispers drowsily.

‘Hijacked by the heart and cock, as it should be,’ he answers with a kiss.

‘For a seventeen year old you know far too much.’

‘Knowledge is a better weapon than the sword.’

‘But the pen cuts twice as deep,’ his lover answers, already grieving the youth’s inevitable departure.

With an aching groin he leaves her. Once outside he clouts his grinning assistant.

Out on the street Jacob weaves his way through the traders and merchants hurrying to their places of business. Janus, running alongside to keep up, cannot help but notice a new cockiness to his master’s step, a certain glow playing across his high cheekbones, a softening of the arrogance the handsome youth usually wears like armour, particularly when faced with strangers.

‘So, is it as good as they say?’ The diminutive eleven year old tugs on Jacob’s lace sleeve.

Jacob stares down at the lad, whose carrot hair is dishevelled and ruffled like a parrot’s crest, his smock smeared with printing ink, the breeches beneath patched at both knees. For a moment he flushes with anger. The child’s query has broken the spell of the lovemaking, he fears that an account of their intimacy will cheapen his experience. But Janus’s round face filled with a mischievous but genuine curiosity weakens his resolve. For all his aloofness, Jacob can rarely resist the boy. It was he who found the orphan two years before, sleeping up against the back door of the publishing house one night, and after a solemn declaration from the nine year old that he was ‘good with the written letter’ persuaded his employer to take him on for board and lodgings only. Swiftly the two became inseparable, Jacob secretly relishing the role of mentor and protector and—although he would be loathe to admit it—older brother.

‘Better,’ Jacob replies, tugging the boy’s hair playfully before marching on.

‘Better how? ’Cause I’ve heard it’s better than entering the gates of Heaven itself and that I can’t imagine, though I suppose you could,’ Janus persists, running after the poet eagerly.

‘I think perhaps the allegory of the phoenix would suffice—in that one is consumed in the fires of passion only to rise again,’ Jacob retorts with a wink.

‘So how many times did she consume you?’

The youth turns, smiling. He looks like a god, the small assistant notes wistfully, wondering if there is some magic he could use to turn his own lopsided and freckled demeanour into such chiselled beauty.

‘Four times.’

‘Four times to Heaven! ‘Tis a wonder your feet still touch the pavement.’ At which Janus executes a couple of dance steps to illustrate his point.

Laughing, Jacob cuffs him again then, as he remembers the mysterious visitor, falters, his brow darkening.

‘Tell me more of the German.’

‘He’s a proper aristocrat, smells like a flower shop and sits like he has a stiff rod up his arse.’

Jacob doubles his stride. Could it be who he suspects…after all these years? A shadow from the past who will try to draw him back? Having heard about his parents’ achievements from his protector Rieuwertsz, how both of them turned their backs on convention and society in pursuit of their beliefs, Jacob is fiercely proud of them, but at the same time furious with resentment at what he regards as their desertion of him. Orphaned at the age of six, he has never forgiven Ruth for dying, blaming her for neglecting her health. Remembering only vague details about the kidnapping, he is convinced that his father’s family was ashamed of him, and that somehow he
was partly responsible for Detlef’s death. Although the publisher took great pains to protect the child, he was unable to fully shield Jacob from bitter remarks by Ruth’s less generous associates about the romantic futility of her martyrdom or comments by individuals who had resented both Detlef’s politics and position.

Suffering from the innuendo and the overt attacks, but not remembering enough to be able to retaliate articulately, Jacob has become fiercely committed to reinventing himself. He has even changed his name to the plain Dutch Scheems. Jacob Scheems. A talented young poet on the rise, a simple Hollander with no specific race or religion. Damn my mother and my father, what right do they have over my life, he thinks, irritated by the memories and emotions the arrival of the stranger has stirred up in him. He has not shed any tears since Ruth’s death, not since he vowed on her death bed that he would never again feel self-pity or be afraid. He is successful, he reminds himself as he strides past the flower market, breathing in the rolling mist of scent and colour. His first volume of poetry is recently published, he has his own lodgings, and now his first mistress. He is complete—what harm can this stranger do to him?

Despite these reassurances he is filled with dread as he hurries up the stairs of his lodgings.

The Gryphon waited, his handsome eagle head laid

Upon a twisted thorny staff cut from Pain,

He shook his lion’s mantle wet from morning’s dew,

Then roaring, spoke to the Keeper at the Gate:

I am neither Man nor Beast but a noble creature who

In Joy and Terror hath been born from Two

Whose Love cast out a Prince and usurped Nature,

The Empire’s Golden Eagle and the Lion of Fair Judah.

And although my changeling form Man doth hate,

Know this: I am a being of my own making, of Living Truth not Doctrine,

As such I shelter the orphaned and courageous beneath my wing,

Stoic and resigned, the lonely path of the Hermit is my Fate,

The prickly quill of Knowledge clasped in my paw,

With Mathematics and Astronomy as my only Law…

The sound of the heavy oak door startles the elderly aristocrat. He looks up from the poem he is reading, the pages of which are scattered across the plain wooden table, to see its author enter the room.

The boy is a man now, the count thinks, marvelling at the graceful and as yet unscarred beauty of the youth. He stands taller than his father, with the same shaped eyes and brow, yet the full mouth, almost sullen in its pout, is that of the mother, as is the colour of the eyes, while the hair is the same gold as Detlef’s. The lad is dressed far more expensively than his income allows, the count observes, he has obviously inherited the inclination towards dandyism from somewhere other than his parents. Myself perhaps, Gerhard wonders, amused. In short, the boy is a creature hovering at the apex of his physical beauty, but as yet unconscious of his powers.

‘You do not know me, sir, although I now have the distinct advantage of knowing you as a bard.’ Gerhard speaks formally, a cynical smile playing over his thin lips.

Jacob notes that although his visitor wears the austere uniform of the Lutheran, the dark wool of his tunic is of the highest quality and the white lace at his sleeves and collar appears to be from Bruges.

‘Indeed, and how do I rate?’

‘You have promise, but the pretence of inexperience taints the verse. However, that is your prerogative.’

Jacob steps nearer, then falters as the silver pendant the old man wears around his creased neck comes into view. It is embossed with a family crest, an emblem the young poet recognises immediately. In an instant he has snatched the pages out of the aristocrat’s hand. Gerhard reacts with barely a raised eyebrow, not entirely surprised by the boy’s impetuousness.

‘I shall not take your criticism to heart for I suspect it lacks objectivity.’ Jacob stands with the poem clasped to his chest.

‘From your actions I assume you know who I am?’

‘I do, and now having made your acquaintance, I must ask you to take your leave.’

Count von Tennen looks sharply at the seventeen year old before him. He guesses the clothes must have been a gift. From the observations of the Dutch spy he hired to find his nephew, he knows the boy has little to no money and is entirely dependent on the patronage of his employer, a publisher of dubious political reputation. It is evident that whatever money the youth makes he spends on books, for the room is lined with them. Volumes on philosophy, poetry, history,
scientia nova:
Descartes, Aristotle, Plato, Grotius, Christiaan Huygens, Leibniz, Sir Josiah Child, Milton’s
Paradise Lost
, and many more.