The Witch of Cologne

Detlef looks thoughtfully at the diminutive man before him. Abandoning all pretence at diplomacy, he switches from the florid Spanish to the plain German that he knows will make his point clearer.

‘The archbishop will not fight for the Jewess or the Dutchman, but the two merchants are both on the Gaffeln, the town council, and liked by the bürgers. Believe me, there is one thing the archbishop seeks more than anything: popularity.’

‘Surely with Vienna as well as Cologne?’

‘I will convey your orders to his highness.’

‘And Canon von Tennen, let us agree that it would be etiquette for the archbishop to act swiftly. Etiquette is a French word, is it not?’

Detlef recognises the veiled threat but retains his mask-like countenance. Again, Solitario finds himself wondering whether pain, applied correctly, would break the German’s impenetrable beauty. Falling into a short reverie he imagines how dark the canon’s blood would look against that impossibly fair skin. Then shaking himself out of his lapse of concentration, he gestures to Juan who reaches into a leather sack and pulls out a dark green wine bottle.

‘In dem

onstration of our good faith and knowing that the archbishop has a palate for such things, I have brought this wine from the Benedictine monastery in Najera, centre of the Rioja country. It is a sweet red and a vintage I can personally recommend. I hope the archbishop will appreciate the gift.’

‘The archbishop is a connoisseur of both wine and human nature and as such you can be confident of his appraisal.’

The inquisitor, bowing slightly, dismisses the canon and his cleric.

Detlef responds with the smallest of nods and sweeps angrily out of the room. Once outside he swings around to Groot. ‘Have the wine tasted, I trust that man as I would Lucifer.’

Carlos listens to the receding footsteps then sends his secretary away. Once alone his demeanour implodes: the shoulders crumple, the pretence drops from the stoically impassive face to reveal a lacework of anxiety that weighs upon the heavy eyebrows, the sagging cheeks, the globular nose. The distinctive scar that runs down his face from the corner of one eye reddens with anger.

Sighing heavily the priest walks over to the travelling chest and with a grunt swings open the lid. On top of several Bibles and bound manuscripts sits a small black wooden box with two Hebrew characters inscribed on the lid. The scent of cedar, almost overpowering, radiates out from the casket.

Carlos breathes in deeply. It is as if the bouquet is the young Spanish woman herself, the object of his obsession. His Holy Grail that has sent him careering from one corner of the continent to another these past two decades. Reaching for the casket, he lets his hands rest upon its lid for a second, his eyes closed. He is so close, he thinks. It might be too late to destroy the mother, but it is not too late to obliterate the daughter and the whole demonic bloodline of the Navarros.

The priest sits on a low stool—the only seat in the monastic cell—and opens the box with trembling hands. It is the third time in his life that he has unfastened the casket. An intense slow burning, not unlike approaching orgasm, infuses his whole body. With a high sweet note, barely audible, the carved lid falls open and the fragrance of cedar which already fills the room like an invisible cloud is joined by an underscent of something far less discernible, a lemony perfume with an overlay of orange blossom. The scents merge like a filigree of delicate lace flooding with blood. To the quivering friar the bouquet is his youth: the orange blossom still lingering at dusk in the long Aragon summer; the sweet faint sweat of a young woman’s armpit; crushed grass beneath soft leather.

Moaning, Carlos throws back his head. This is the aroma that manifests the greatest joy and the greatest tragedy of his life.

He looks back down and traces the empty interior of the box: the ribbed grain of the wood which he imagines to be her silken flesh, the heavy weight of her hair, the dry warm imprint of her hand. Slowly, with a great sense of ritual, he lifts the casket and holds it beneath his flaring nostrils.

Inhaling, the inquisitor conjures up the very odour of the girl’s skin, the luminous intelligence of her huge black eyes, the cutting wit which shattered the hopeful soul of a young music tutor, leaving nothing but fixation and bitterness. Sara Navarro of Aragon, later known as Sara bas Elazar Saul, wife of Elazar ben Saul, rabbi of Deutz.

Thirty years before, as a young friar, Carlos had taken to teaching his second great love, the viola da gamba, to supplement his dependency upon the common purse. He applied for a position as a music tutor with the Navarro family. The sumptuousness of their villa combined with their sophistication—all of them travelled regularly across Europe—had intimidated the young country boy. A shy stuttering individual, he was too deeply ashamed to admit that he came from a peasant family in the barren south.

Isaac Navarro was one of the wealthiest diamond merchants in the city of Zaragoza in the province of Aragon. The family were conversos, one of the many Jewish families forced into Catholicism by the decree of King Philip and Queen Isabella several generations before. Although they had changed their name from the Jewish de Halevi to the Spanish Navarro, the patriarch Isaac had been shrewd enough to reinforce their assimilation by establishing close relations with the local aristocracy, supplying them with gifts of gemstones and loans of money. When the second wave of persecution hit and the Spanish authorities decided to pursue the conversos for being false Christians, Isaac was convinced that his family were untouchable. After all, he had donated a fortune to the Catholic church, his children were educated alongside the sons of princes and invitations to his banquets were the most sought after in all of the city.

It was into this atmosphere that Carlos Vicente Solitario was employed as the music tutor for Sara Navarro. Isaac thought it would benefit his daughter to be seen in the company of an earnest young friar, and that to play the viola da gamba could only increase the chances of a profitable match for the stunning twelve year old. Blessed with an intimidating beauty, the young girl spoke four languages, could embroider like an angel and was notorious for dancing her suitors off the dance floor so charged was her energy. The viola da gamba was to be Sara’s third instrument as she had already mastered the lute and the clavichord. What Isaac hadn’t calculated on was the fanatical nature of the young tutor, a characteristic the diamond merchant had tragically mistaken for diligence.

Still virgin at twenty-seven, Carlos’s world was far narrower and darker than that of Sara Navarro, whose attributes were already legendary. The first time the young friar was introduced to his young pupil, she was sitting under a marble arch that led into an interior courtyard filled with bougainvillea and almond trees.

Carlos remembers the tinkling of water. The filtered sunlight across the young girl’s elegant hands as they rested on the strings of a lute. Her face lay in shade, her features a shadowy enigma, her head framed by a halo of light which transformed the curls of her thick black hair into something more threatening and animalistic. It was only when Sara Navarro stood up, stepping out into the sun, that the friar realised she was the most glorious being he had ever seen. Gazing at him with smouldering eyes she appeared to intuitively sense his hidden vulnerabilities, his awkwardness as he stuttered through the formalities in his thick rustic accent. As he stared back, it felt to the young friar as if his destiny had suddenly shifted.

Over the months that followed, using his natural intellectual curiosity and stumbling charm, he deliberately cultivated an intimacy with the family in the white marble hacienda in the hills. And as they slowly relaxed their guard he began to notice a trail of tantalising evidence, fragments of a puzzle. Tiny scrolls he discovered tucked into a music case. Strange Hebrew symbols scratched into stones. The few occasions when he arrived unannounced and interrupted the family in the middle of what looked suspiciously like a sabbat meal. Clues that led him to the conclusion that Sara Navarro was not only a false Christian but a Jew, who, along with the rest of her family, practised her religion clandestinely.

But by now the young friar was completely besotted. What did it matter that they still observed their faith secretly, he argued with himself every night, alone in his stone cell at the friary. They were still Catholics; in fact the Navarros were the most pious Catholic family he knew. Señor Navarro was the main benefactor of the friar’s order, his wife a devout member of the congregation. Besides, the daughter was a miracle, the living embodiment of sainthood, or so the friar thought. Her grace was exceptional, her beauty sublime and her musical ability extraordinary. In twenty lessons she had surpassed Carlos’s own craft and had begun to compose sonatas of her own. By the thirtieth lesson they were playing the duets she wrote. Although immature, the work displayed a rare musicality which, Carlos liked to believe, transcended gender.

As the trembling young man guided the soft hands of the girl across the instrument, he imagined that their relationship was a rare discourse, a marriage of emotion and art. A union not besmirched by the sinful fires of lust, but a sacred tie, a consummation of souls. He was positive his love would be reciprocated. Why, had not Sara pressed her thigh against his that time during the recital? More im

portantly, when he had pressed back she had not pulled away. Surely this was a sign that she loved him also? What about when with sparkling eyes she had untied her shawl during a lesson to reveal her bosom? It was as if she was daring the young friar to respond to the heady perfume that rose up from her perfect cleavage. The vision had nearly crucified Carlos, who, crossing his legs, was thankful for the long weighty cassock concealing his stiffening organ.

He had not slept for a week after that, haunted each night by impossible temptations. To cleanse himself he took to fasting and making endless supplications to Saint Dominic, Saint Anthony and, for good measure, Saint Jude, patron saint of desperate situations. Only after much prayer and several stuttering confessions did the young friar finally convince himself that the rightful action, should his pupil show her affections one more time, would be to declare his love.

The music tutor had arrived at their next lesson trembling with anticipation. Giggling wildly, the twelve year old, her lush hair fighting to be released from its demure cowl, presented the blushing friar with a love letter she had written and asked him if he could examine it for grammar. Carlos’s heart leapt when she explained that her secret love was a literary man and she wished to make no error.

‘It is an affection that dares not declare itself,’ she told him, her eyes wide and serious.