The Witch of Cologne (16 page)

He laughs, delighted. She smiles with him. Again the flare of desire licks at his groin. Imbued with new confidence he moves closer.

‘Tell me of Spinoza, what kind of man is he?’

She breathes in sharply: he has stepped over a boundary. Sensing that his interest is personal, she wonders what he wants from her—a confession that will condemn her or a genuine insight into the reclusive philosopher? Why should a canon of the cathedral take an interest in a Jewish heretic who has been excommunicated from his own people? Unless to entrap her.

‘Why do you wish to know, pray? For your own interest or for that of the emperor?’

‘I may appear a puppet but from this moment the strings are cut. You may trust me.’

‘Trust is won not given.’

‘I saved your life.’

‘You merely delayed my execution.’

‘I sincerely hope not. Fräulein, I assure you, you may confide in me. I swear on the Holy Bible itself: I will not betray you.’

‘A grave pledge indeed. Does this man interest you so much?’

‘He fascinates me. I believe he may hold the key to a bridge between two worlds: the old order I belong to and a new one that could be the future.’

She shifts her weight and rests her head briefly on her hand.

‘
Deus sive natura
: the natural world is God; God is the natural world. All that lies within it makes up an infinite divine substance that possesses infinite forms of phenomena—this is Spinoza’s belief.
Amor intellectualis Dei
: the intellectual love of God. If we can achieve this, we will always feel part of the divine substance.’

‘Your mentor is a hard taskmaster. Are you able to rein in your own passion and drive to surrender to such an arid system of belief? Would it not be easier to draw comfort from the old ways of your own religion?’

‘Canon, I am foremost a thinker. I know too much to retreat down the path of ignorance and mysticism. Spinoza’s God sits comfortably with what I have experienced through my own observations.’

‘You are a most unusual woman. I have not met a creature like you.’

‘Forgive me my eccentricities; do not condemn me to death for them.’

Outside, the town crier sounds ten o’clock and the hailstorm stops as quickly as it started. Somewhere a door slams. Detlef has the feeling that he will remember this moment always: the shape of her hands; the way the light from the fire curls around one side of her face; the lilt of her voice, gentle but deep and so musical it is hard for him to focus on her words; the clarity of her very presence which cuts straight to the protector within him. All these impressions culminate to make everything appear infinitely more brilliant.

Secretly overwhelmed, Detlef is at a loss for words. He is content just to be there with her, to drink in her nearness, the light shining off her black hair, as time melts away.

‘I saw nothing.’ Ruth breaks the silence.

Detlef looks up, perplexed by the reference.

‘When I was drowning I saw nothing—no angel of death, no Holy Spirit. For a moment I thought I saw my mother, but it was trickery, merely the mind abandoning conscious thought.’ But her voice sounds uncertain.

‘How can you live without faith?’

‘You are wrong, Canon, I have faith. I fight to have faith in nature, in knowledge and, despite all, in the goodwill of mankind.’

‘In that case, Fräulein, you have more than I.’

After he has gone, Ruth lies on the narrow bed and stares up at the ceiling. She watches the shadows thrown by the fire dance across the smoke-stained expanse. The events of the last few days have been so momentous she feels as if she has lived several lifetimes longer and not a mere week.

An ember flares up and reminds her of the swaying figures of the men praying at temple and her father. Will Elazar be sleeping now? Will he survive her imprisonment? Will she ever see him again?

A sudden nip on the leg makes her flinch. She examines the cover, it is crawling with lice. She tries to pluck one tiny insect off the grey cotton but her fingers, still stiff from the torture, are not nimble enough to crush the minute slippery body. Shrugging, she tugs the thin blanket over her. A faint remnant of her visitor’s musk drifts across her face. Maddening. Seductive. Perplexing. Lulled by Detlef’s aroma she finally allows exhaustion to consume her and collapses mercifully into a dreamless sleep.

The wind lashes across Detlef’s face, whipping up his blood and cleansing his spirit. With a yell he digs his spurs into the mare, goading her on. Behind him the walled city recedes into a thick mist, just the crane of the half-constructed spire, bent like the wooden arm of a huge scarecrow, is visible above the low cloud. Already the fields are giving way to thick dark forest. The broken road is dangerous, notorious for bandits and highway robbers, but exhilarated by the glorious risk of it all Detlef gallops on, the barely discernible low stone walls which run on either side of the narrow lane his only means of navigation. It has been many years since he did anything so rash and the thud of the horse’s hooves and the pounding of his own heart and blood roar in his ears like the crash of an angry sea. He is running from the past into a violent future. He is running from caution headlong into uncertainty. But for the first time he feels as if he is truly living in his own skin.

F
ifteen miles away,
on the other side of the sleeping river, a candle burns at an upstairs window. The glass, misted from the heat inside, frames an ancient face bent over a desk. Rabbi Elazar ben Saul cannot sleep. He has not slept since his audience with the archbishop, his mind and spirit will not allow it. He feels that if he surrenders to rest, his conscious will might relax and stop defending his daughter, as if the ring of protection he has projected around her requires constant vigilance. He is suffering, still caught in the anger of Sara’s betrayal. To have baptised their daughter without his knowledge—there could hardly be a greater sin.

A painted miniature lies before him on the small walnut desk. Italian Renaissance in style, the subject seems to stare past the viewer as if her object is far distant—perhaps she is even in a trance. She is beautiful but it is hard to define what makes her beauty. It is not the symmetry of her face, for it proves on close observation asymmetrical: one eye lies slightly lower than the other while the mouth has a subtle but
visible downward slant and the nose is strong. It is not the shape of her face, which could be defined as Spanish or even of the Orient, so high are the cheekbones. Nor the eyebrows which are plucked thin in the fashion of twenty years before, nor the groomed hairline set back from the high forehead. Perhaps it is the attentiveness of her gaze which radiates out from deep ebony irises and seems to speak of tragedy yet unrealised, or the air of solemn dignity tinged with pride which makes her appear older than her years, or could it be the intelligence which plays around the mouth in a teasing half-smile? Whatever it is, the woman is undeniably radiant.

The fine varnish of the portrait has begun to crack and the gold leaf that picks out the details of her crimson robe is flaking off. The rosy hue of her cheeks and lips—painted with minuscule brush strokes—has faded. But to the old man it is as if the young woman is sitting there before him, her head tilted, the pensive expression he recalls as the prelude to her mischievous questioning of his gravity playing across her features.

‘Elazar, all the prophets had humour so why am I married to such a Jeremiah?’

‘Because life is very serious.’

‘Life is very short, my dear heart, but, like a thing of both beauty and terror, does not bear examination. Laughter allows us for a brief moment to enjoy, but more importantly to forget.’

‘So is it not enough that I smile occasionally?’

‘No. No, it is not.’

And then he hears her laugh, a cascade of descant notes shimmering on the air. It is so vivid that the old man actually looks over his shoulder to see whether the ghost might have woken the household. But the rest of the room lies static, untouched by the presence of her iridescent spirit.

He is frightened to look up in case his gaze should drive
away the manifestation of his dead wife, for the spectre is definitely there, sitting just beyond the desk. The chamber has filled with the scent of lily, the perfume Sara adopted in her new land, determined to exorcise any odour that might sweep her back to the horrors of the past. She wore the musky fragrance especially to please her young scholarly husband, who was so shy they made love under the bedcovers in pitch darkness, until she complained that she might as well be making love to the angel Gabriel or the prophet Elijah so little did she see of her man. The memory makes Elazar smile but still he is afraid to look up. Instead the old man keeps his gaze on the miniature and the string of pearls and coral wound around his fingers, the same necklace highlighted with beads of silvery-white enamel in the tiny portrait.

While he waits an elegant hand—he recognises the delicacy and length of its fingers with such intensity that he fears that his heart might dam up with tears—reaches forward and gently takes the string of jewels from him.

It is only then that Elazar dares to look at his wife, Sara. He sees that his memory has not imbued her with perfection nor marred her through forgetfulness, but that every detail of her face, from the small scar on the chin to the row of fine black hairs that make up the arch of each brow, is made manifest through love. And as he looks he immediately forgets that the woman before him has been dead for over fifteen years.

‘I am here to ask your forgiveness, Elazar.’ The ghost’s voice, instantly recognisable, binds the old man’s heart with grief.

‘Why, Sara?’

‘Fear, my love, the fear of a survivor.’

‘You committed a sin, a grave sin. She belongs to both of us.’

‘I wished only to protect her. I wanted her to live, whatever the circumstances. I acted out of love—this you must believe. Forgive me.’

Elazar looks into her face, losing himself in the eternity of their history which stretches like a dream beyond her coal-black eyes.

‘Have I ever been able to deny you?’

‘No.’ And she smiles, a smile which is both wry and gentle and pulls Elazar like a glistening thread straight back into his youth.

‘What now, Sara?’

‘Now we wait; our daughter is strong.’

‘But the inquisitor has her.’

‘No longer. What will be is already written. Isn’t that what you used to tell me?’

The ghost carefully lays the pearl and coral necklace on the polished wooden desktop and stands. She is wearing the same crimson robe he remembers her choosing for the Italian portrait painter, a garment she knew would conceal the swelling of her second pregnancy. Now that the spectre is upright he can see the curve of her womb and for a moment he has to shut his eyes to block out the memory of Sara’s bloodied thighs and the stillborn baby boy, her pale arms winding around him as he kissed her frightened, dying face.

‘Elazar, Elazar.’ The phantom calls him back as she moves towards the hunched figure still sitting in the carved chair. ‘Elazar, my love.’ Her whisper…scented chimes. ‘You must not wander from this life, you are needed yet.’

‘But I am so weary.’

Indeed every cell of his thin body seems to be calling out for the mindless reprieve of oblivion.

‘You must be strong just a little longer. Ruth needs you.’

Sara laces her fragrant fingers into his mane of silvery hair, sending tremors of forgotten desire through his ancient frame. Forgetting his age the old man grasps the slim wrist and covers it with kisses.

‘My love, how I yearn for you. You were my heart’s blood, my soul’s shadow.’

‘And you were mine.’ Her voice now a faint swirl of music.

She allows him to rest his head against her breasts, his hands pressing the taut round womb beneath the velvet. The old man thinks he must have been transported to Heaven, so wonderfully familiar is her perfume, the scent of her skin, her touch. Burying his head deeper into her cool bosom he finds himself missing something undefinable, then with a shock realises it is the sound of a living heartbeat.

Outside in the corridor, Tuvia, his bladder bursting, rummages around for a chamber pot. Stumbling past Elazar’s study he notices the light under the door. Curious, he presses his ear against the wood panelling only to hear the old man burst into loud dry sobs.

L
rince Ferdinand lies on the four-poster bed, a quilt embroidered with the royal crest of the Wittelsbachs—an eagle clutching a snake in its talons—slung across him; it is stained with semen and wine. A heavy velvet curtain hangs across the stone alcove to keep out the morning which is already making a furtive attempt to creep beneath the thick fabric. A taper burns in the corner, nearing the end of its life, the flame flickering in a black pond of soft wax. The only sound is the prince‘s low snore; buried in the back of his throat, it is the snore of a boy. Alphonso, rouge still smeared across both cheeks, lies curled around the sleeping man, his long elegant feet entangled with his, his hands folded up against Ferdinand‘s blemished back.

The actor is wide awake. He stares up at the painted ceiling where the last of the candlelight illuminates Zeus seducing Adonis. The shadows have transformed Adonis into a beautiful dusky youth with soulful eyes; Zeus, however, still shines with Teutonic robustness. Alphonso imagines that he and the prince could be these two mythical figures,
immortalised and, most importantly, sanctified. He is thankful for the count’s order the night before for his servants to stay away from the prince’s chambers. Understandably the count is for ever vigilant with his staff: homosexuality, although tolerated, cannot be flaunted and the count has many enemies who would use information of any indiscretion to their advantage.

The actor turns his attention back to his sleeping lover. He traces with his fingers two recent scars that run across the prince’s shoulders. He knows exactly what they are: marks of a whipping. In their lovemaking he has seen the veiled fear in the young man’s eyes. Alphonso has not asked, he does not have to: he knows Ferdinand was whipped on the orders of Emperor Leopold, his uncle, for trespasses far slighter than sleeping with another man, worse still an actor.

At eighteen Alphonso is only a year older than the prince, yet he too has tasted the lash and once narrowly escaped the gallows. He recognises the youth’s lassitude as a thin mask worn as desperate protection from further pain, both physical and emotional. An orphan who learnt from the age of six to live by his wits in the crowded Venice ghetto, Alphonso is a master of duplicity. It was a skill noticed by Samuel Oppenheimer, the emperor’s court Jew, during the acting troupe’s visit to Vienna and Alphonso has been in Oppenheimer’s employment ever since. His task is to gather snippets of information as he tours from court to court: trading tips, proposed military strategies, broken marriages and general intrigue; information that provides Oppenheimer with an advantage over his competitors and keeps him the emperor’s favourite. But it is a precarious position for the young performer. If his activities should be discovered, Samuel will not be able to rescue him.

As Alphonso lies there beside this youth he knows he is falling in love with, he swears he will defend him whatever
the cost, then smiles at the irony and audacity of his sentiment. The prince could have him arrested with one command. The only protection he can offer is that of the actor, the skill of the chameleon to transform a man’s face and gender thus enabling him to infiltrate any European court he might desire.

Ferdinand stirs and rolls onto his back, mumbles a broken sentence in Austrian then continues to dream. Alphonso kisses him lightly on the lips and slips out of the bed. Wrapping himself in the great fur stole which lies abandoned on the cold marble, he steps silently across the floor and out into the dewsodden courtyard. There he steadies himself against a stone arch and after glancing around to ensure no one is watching bares his circumcised penis and begins to urinate. Looking down at the telltale organ he wonders how long he will be able to conceal his religion, as well as his heart, from the suspicious entourage that surrounds his royal lover.

A large raven watches him warily from a wooden rail. As Alphonso finishes and shakes himself dry, the bird takes off. Screeching cynically into the bleak sky, it veers to the left. Alphonso cannot dislodge the sensation that it is a bad omen.

The beast pelts into the muddy hollow, its short thick legs scrabbling desperately at the soft soil as it tries to conceal its shaggy hide with mud. Grunting it pauses, snout twitching in the spring breeze. It can smell the sweat of horses and men and, more horribly, the pungent aroma of the hounds—wet fur, shit and the blood of the last kill dripping from their jaws.

Suddenly the dogs’ baying and, below it, the low tone of the hunting horn, join to pervade the air. Squealing in fear the panicked animal wheels around, saliva spraying madly
from its hairy mouth, and careers across the open glade beyond the hollow. As it runs it thinks of nothing except how to reach the ray of sunlight just visible in the next ravine.

The hunt rolls nearer until the cacophony of sound, scent and hooves is almost upon the beast. The boar scrambles over a fallen log and leaps towards the tiny valley that has opened up a couple of feet below. Its legs buckle beneath it and it falls heavily. Instantly the mottled back is covered with ravenous dogs. One long-legged yellow and red hound sinks its heavy jaw into the bushy fur at the neck, two others hang from the boar’s head. Blood spurts in a scarlet bow across the blue-white snow. The beast, a colossal male of at least three years, shakes its head heavily, its beady reddened eyes rolling in stupefied terror. The hounds hold fast and one ear tears away in a welt of lurid pink. Grunting, the bleeding animal butts blindly against a log in a desperate attempt to free itself of its attackers.

Suddenly a steel arrow soars through the air and pierces the boar as far as its heart. The porcine sovereign stiffens then with a strange grace falls heavily onto its side, its mouth pulling back over the yellowed tusks in a curiously benevolent grimace. Robbed of the final slaughter, the hounds hover over the corpse, disappointed.

The horn is sounded and reluctantly the dogs drop back, sniffing at the oozing blood, pawing the ground impatiently as the huntsmen ride to the ledge above.

‘A superb shot, your highness.’

Count Gerhard von Tennen, wearing a skin-tight leather hunting jerkin and matching breeches, takes off his large feathered hat and salutes Prince Ferdinand who, grinning in amazement, still clutches the crossbow to his breast as if the evidence of his skill might be ripped away from him at any moment.

‘Extraordinary,’ murmurs the prince, astounded at his own marksmanship.

Directly behind him Hermann Wolf, the von Tennens’ gamekeeper, winks at the count and swiftly lowers his own crossbow, concealing it in a bag hanging from his saddle. The count watches admiringly as the gamekeeper climbs off his stallion and clambers down the hill towards the boar. Hermann pauses triumphantly for a moment over the bloodied carcass then thrusts a short spear into the quivering body. The count waves his approval and turns to Ferdinand.

‘Your highness, where did you learn such craft? Why, you have the marksmanship of Hercules himself.’

The prince’s normally petulant face splits into a shy smile.

‘I didn’t…I mean, Uncle forced me to have a few lessons, but I must admit I have never really displayed any skill for it before today.’

‘Then the Rhineland air must agree with you. And you must tell your uncle of your triumph. He will be proud. Hermann! Bring us the prince’s trophy,’ the count calls to the gamekeeper.

Now hopefully the young brat will convey to Leopold how wonderfully invigorating his stay was at Das Grüntal and the von Tennens will at last be reinstated into the emperor’s favour, the count thinks smugly, wondering whether it would be possible for Hermann to repeat the feat of deception the following day during the pheasant hunt he has planned for his royal guest.

A sedan chair carried by two sweating pages appears over the small hill. Alphonso, dressed extravagantly as the Queen of the Hittites, complete with an ornate feather headdress, pushes his head out of the window.

‘Look, Alphonso, your prince has actually killed something!’ Ferdinand points triumphantly at the wild boar.

The banner of the Viennese court comes into view and three of the prince’s attendants ride up to the young royal.
Dropping their reins they clap politely, appropriately awed by the sight of the sprawling corpse.

A shapely foot encased in an outrageously unsuitable crimson kid slipper emerges from the sedan, followed by gold leather leggings and the rest of the actor. ‘Well done, my prince! Well done!’ Alphonso blows a kiss in Ferdinand’s direction.

One of the attendants purses his lips in disapproval and throws a dead hare at the actor’s feet. Immediately the throng of hounds descends on the small furry body and, in a medley of tails, long brindled limbs and bloodied snouts, tear it to shreds within seconds. Alphonso, splattered with blood and fur, falls back overwhelmed.

Several attendants laugh behind their gloves as the prince frantically wheels his horse around to see if Alphonso is injured.

‘It is nothing! Just a few drops of blood.’ The actor, headdress askew and painfully aware of the ridicule, struggles to his feet and brushes madly at his stained costume.

‘Do not concern yourself with me. Look to the gamekeeper, he is honouring you.’

The prince peers nervously into the ravine where the gamekeeper is kneeling at the side of the boar. With a manly flourish Herr Wolf swiftly slices off its remaining ear with his knife. The mounted spectators break into polite applause which echoes through the dappled forest and causes a flock of sparrows to rise up from the canopy of trees. The gamekeeper strides back through the hounds, his muscular legs clearly delineated by the fine green hose he wears above his spurred boots.

Dismounting clumsily, Ferdinand walks as regally as possible, given the ridiculous amount of padding he is wearing, towards the gamekeeper and the offered organ. With an imperious air he pulls the fleshy purse off the knife and
holds it up triumphantly. Prompted by the count the trumpeter sounds his horn.

Ferdinand turns to Alphonso and dropping to one knee presents the ear to him as a gift. The actor, genuinely touched but also revelling in his role, swoons theatrically. Delicately he takes the ear and pretends to nibble the bloody flesh. There is a smattering of appreciative laughter but the prince remains kneeling.

‘My love,’ Alphonso whispers, ‘you must get up, the ground is freezing.’

Ferdinand, face now bent towards the grass, does not move. ‘I cannot,’ he groans through clenched teeth.

Alphonso, fearing that his charade has plunged the prince into one of his famous tantrums, leans down towards him. Suddenly Ferdinand rolls over to his side and clutches at his stomach. ‘Quick! Quick! He is dying!’ the actor shrieks.

In seconds the three courtiers are by the prince, opening his clothing to see if there is a hidden injury.

‘I’m not wounded, you idiots! It’s an old injury, my stomach!’ Contorted by cramps the youth can barely gasp.

The count, terrified that he may be landed with the inconvenience of a royal mortality, wheels around on his horse. ‘A physic! A physic! Where is the damned physic?’

The count’s cry is taken up and relayed down the ranks until it reaches the rest of the hunt which is still arriving at the edge of the ravine. The mass of foot servants and mounted courtiers part to allow a gaunt man on a mangy donkey to ride through.

‘I am here, sire,’ he announces in an unhurried tone which exasperates the count further.

‘Attend to the prince! Can you not see his highness is stricken?’

The physic, whose long gangly legs drag in the mud even when he is mounted, climbs off his irritable steed and
shuffles over to the prince. In his long black cloak and tall crowned hat the doctor looks like Death himself, a fact not lost on Ferdinand as the quack leans over him, blackened teeth exposed in a sneer of concentration.

‘Ahh! I am not ready! Sire, please, I am but young,’ he cries out in his delirium.

Ignoring his pleas, the physic feels beneath the loosened padding. Ferdinand, convinced that the Angel of Death is clawing at his vital organs, struggles madly, his face feverish. But the older man, staring into the distance while his bony fingers read the diseased organs beneath the scarred abdomen, is indifferent.

The hunting party, some standing, some still mounted, form a suspended tableau of scarlet and green against the charcoal of the trees, with only the fluttering of the banners to break the stillness as all hang upon the doctor’s verdict. Finally the physic speaks, his gaunt face haggard in the bright sunlight.

‘He must be bled, we must get him back to the lodge immediately. I believe it is a case of blood poisoning.’

The pages rush the sedan chair over to the prostrate Ferdinand, who cries out as they try to squeeze him into the upright carriage.

‘Be careful! You’ll kill him, you fools!’ Alphonso yells out, forgetting his rank and letting his voice fall three octaves in his terror.

Stumbling in his long skirts, headdress clasped in one hand, he runs through the mud alongside the chair as the prince is raced back to Das Grüntal.