The Witch of Cologne

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The Witch of Cologne Page 47

by Tobsha Learner


  ‘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. Reme
mbering 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.

  ‘Do not be a fool. Judging by the poverty in which you live, you need me as much as I need you.’

  ‘I need no man, sir, and certainly no one from my past. I have rewritten myself in a stanza of my own making. And now I want nothing except to be left in peace so I may live out my invention.’

  Jacob angrily opens the door, but the old man does not budge from his chair. Gripping his cane so tightly that his knuckles show white, he remains steadfast.

  ‘A preposterous notion, young puppy. No one,’ at this he slams his cane on the table, creating a huge bang that makes Jacob jump, ‘no one is able to escape his past, not even I, and the good Lord knows there have been many occasions I have wished to.’

  He leans forward, his face taut with emotion. ‘We are a composite of our own history and that of our parents; we are all that has lived before us, married together and woven into a tapestry which has been worked and embroidered to become this moment: this room, the face you were born with, you and I staring across at each other. A man who denies his past is a man who truly denies himself a future, for he refuses to know himself, and to deny knowledge of oneself is to stumble through life as handicapped as the blind mute.’

  ‘Then let me live blind.’

  ‘I shall not! This is the least I owe your parents.’

  ‘Sir, I have no parents, none that are worth remembering or forgiving.’

  At this the old man falters. Staring hard at the youth, whose handsome features have sharpened with his defensiveness, he perceives that the arrogance conceals a deeper vulnerability.

  ‘Oh Jacob, what have we done to you?’ His voice drops to a gentle whisper.

  ‘Leave!’

  ‘Not before I hear you utter my name.’

  ‘Count Gerhard von Tennen. Are you content now, uncle?’ Jacob replies coolly, wishing the spectre of the old man would just disappear.

  But as he catches sight of the ring adorning the count’s hand, a ring he suddenly remembers, a cascade of images return: the coach pelting through the Dutch countryside, being forced to eat as a small boy in the Cologne townhouse, his uncle’s red angry face screaming at him—and an old dread begins to claw its way up from his belly.

  ‘Sir, you have great audacity to appear before me thus, you who caused my family so much injury.’

  The count stands heavily and turns to the window.

  ‘Jacob Scheems. It is not a pretty choice.’

  ‘It is plain, and very different from von Tennen. As I have told you, I wish to disassociate myself from my heritage.’

  ‘Your alias has made my search difficult. I have been looking for you for ten long years. Do you know how my spy finally found you?’

  The count swings around, searching for a sign to indicate that reconciliation may be possible. With some bitterness Jacob shrugs. Sighing, Gerhard reaches into his waistcoat pocket and pulls out a slim volume which he places carefully on the table between them. The title, The dangers of birthing hooks, a treatise on the gentler methods of midwifery, is clearly visible. Jacob immediately recognises the binding as that of his employer.

  ‘Your mother’s text, as published by Rieuwertsz. Her book led me to you. So you see, you can never escape your herita
ge.’

  Jacob picks up the volume, trying desperately to hold back a wave of feeling he considers unmanly. How many years, he thinks, and now this? Huge anger grips him as he recalls how he struggled alone after Ruth’s death, sleeping at first on a narrow shelf that hung above the printing presses, then, as his literary promise became apparent, his promotion to the publisher’s house itself where he shared the servants’ chambers, until finally, at fifteen, he was granted a stipend and his own living quarters. It was an excruciatingly lonely existence for the boy, and he learnt to survive by dividing his memories into two: the days that had seemed filled with sunlight and happiness before his father’s death, then his dark odyssey after Ruth’s demise. And now this recreant sits before him…for what purpose other than to undo him?

  ‘Why should I listen to your stories? All they do is drag me back into a history I want nothing to do with.’

  ‘You must listen, for your mother’s sake.’

  ‘Isn’t it too late for that? Where were you when I was orphaned eleven years ago and would have starved if it were not for the publisher Rieuwertsz and his kind sister?’

  ‘There were complications, first the French invasion and then the battle in Münster. I would not have been welcomed in Holland. But enough; there is much to say and little time, I fear.’

  ‘I repeat, sir, I must ask you to leave now.’

  ‘I cannot…not without your forgiveness.’

  With these words the last vestige of hauteur crumbles away from the aristocrat and to the youth’s astonishment he finds himself confronting an old man whose hands suddenly shake as he clutches at his walking stick. Jacob takes pity. He blows the layer of dust from a flagon of cheap claret and pours his elderly visitor a glass. But after placing it firmly in front of the count he finds he cannot look at him. Agitated, he strides around the room.

 

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