The Witch of Cologne

‘Hush, husband, even tables have ears.’

‘And legs, I believe,’ Detlef interjects. Under the table he shifts his swelling erection away from Birgit’s deft fingers.

‘What is the occasion for the young prince’s visit?’ the merchant asks, uncomfortably full under his tight waistcoat and velvet breeches. ‘I have heard whisperings that Leopold has sent him to spy on his henchman, the ambitious inquisitor. Canon, I believe you were witness to the arrests of poor Voss and Müller?’

‘Indeed.’

‘The Gaffeln are most unhappy. Maximilian Heinrich will answer for this latest outrage, that I can assure you.’

‘The papal powers still have jurisdiction over Cologne. Voss and Müller are accused of wizardry; the archbishop has to bow to the Inquisition.’

‘And you to the archbishop,’ the merchant retorts, wondering why the canon has suddenly shifted from his wife’s side.

‘The prince is here to hunt the wild boar.’ Birgit, fanning herself to cover her chagrin at Detlef’s rejection, deliberately changes the subject. They all glance again at the prince, now fondling Europa who, giggling and preening, is perched on his knee.

‘He is a great lover of the hunt,’ Detlef remarks wryly.

‘Evidently, but will he prove to be a great lover of the aspiring bürger?’ the merchant continues.

‘He has a keen admiration for fine Persian silk, I believe.’

Detlef knows full well that the merchant has received a shipment of the cloth only that month.

‘In that case we must present him with a length of the best and seek an audience. Are we sure he has influence with his good uncle, the emperor?’

‘Influence enough.’

The furry ears of the wolf-mask sway elegantly as Detlef reaches for another glass of wine. Just then the count gestures to the musicians and they begin to play. Detlef and Birgit stand and, after a tolerant smile from her husband, take their positions on the dance floor for a formal quadrille. The klaviermaster commences his playing and the dancers begin to step backwards and forwards, their bodies arching stiffly.

Swinging from partner to partner Detlef can’t help but notice the recent renovations the count has undertaken.

‘I can’t believe my brother would allow such sacrilege. This was once a hall radiant in its simplicity,’ he whispers to Birgit as they dance past an ornate statue of Pan playing his pipes.

‘It was old-fashioned, Gothic. It was time the count invested in the current fashion.’

‘That Italian artisan…what is his name?’

‘Philibert Lucchese. He redesigned the Hofburg in the stucco style for Leopold himself and comes at great expense.’

‘Whatever his reputation, he has ruined Das Grüntal. My dear father would have been scandalised.’

As he looks around, discovering one baroque monstrosity after another, Detlef cannot believe how a simple medieval dining hall has been transformed into a ballroom of bacchanalian exaggeration. The hunting lodge was designed in the 1500s, the clumsy marriage of a Renaissance Italian villa and the local Rhenish architecture. Built around a pebbled courtyard, the exterior walls were decorated with a mural depicting a variety of hunts with every kind of prey: the traditional English fox hunt, a stag hunt, a wild boar chase, a falconer sending his hawk after a rabbit, and even Hannibal and his elephants inexplicably chasing tigers. It was a tribute to the idiosyncrasies of the old viscount, who liked to imagine himself as a cosmopolitan huntsman of sophisticated tastes.

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Glancing up now, Detlef is confronted by a moulded ceiling displaying a painted panorama of the Wittelsbachs’ victory in the Crusades. Detlef’s great-great-great-grandfather, a famously short, stocky individual, has miraculously become a patriarch of impressive stature; and where there once were crude oak and iron candelabra now hang chandeliers of Venetian crystal and gilt.

As a young boy Detlef spent hours at Das Grüntal, sitting in the courtyard with his tutor who made him count the pebbles in Latin. His brother and his father formed an island of severe masculinity which excluded Detlef completely. As they were often out surveying the local land, it was a lonely childhood and on many occasions Detlef’s only companions were the servants and the local peasant children. But this was to prove the seeding of the canon’s love for the ordinary man.

The child’s favourite refuge was the family chapel. Dedicated to Saint Hubert, the patron saint of all hunters, the small room in the west wing was a place of magical mystery for a young boy. The altar held a beautiful crucifix—melted from gold plate, booty of the Crusades—with a Christ whose crown of thorns contained real rubies and sapphires. Alongside stood an unusually buxom Madonna, a blonde Flemish beauty whose obscenely bountiful breasts had crept more than once into Detlef’s adolescent fantasies.

His mother, Viscountess Katrina von Tennen, a pious woman driven into religious fervour by marital neglect, was encouraged by her son’s fascination with the chapel and convinced of his vocation for the priesthood. After all, the church was the natural destiny for a second son, and knowing that the viscount cared little for the boy, she feared for his welfare after her death.

When Detlef was ten the unhappy woman was taken by the plague and it was at her graveside that the small boy secretly pledged to carry out her wishes. Four years later the Wittelsbach men were called on by the Bavarian court to fight with the Hapsburgs against the Lutherans, and Detlef had no choice but to ride out in the chainmail his father had had fashioned for both his sons.

The first dance draws to an end and Birgit, her hips swaying seductively under the full skirt, bows coquettishly before him, her breasts pushed high above the embroidered stomacher. It excites her to be in the family house of her lover. Looking at him, she imagines she can see the whole lineage of the Wittelbachs in his grey-blue eyes, his patrician nose and high cheekbones, and fantasises that one day it shall be Detlef and her on the podium, graciously welcoming the costumed guests.

The black ermine against Detlef’s blond hair, the short black cape slung rakishly over one shoulder, renders him mysterious and wondrous to her. It arouses her. Gripped by a desire to commit some profanity here on her lover’s family estate, under the eyes of her inept husband, Birgit pulls Detlef towards the stone arches that lead out into the courtyard.