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The Witch of Cologne

Page 54

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Yesterday Alphonso cornered a Jewish pedlar who was in the servants’ quarters selling fur pelts and trinkets from Muscovy. After pulling him away from the kitchen servants, the actor almost gave the poor man a heart attack by breaking into fluent Hebrew. Swiftly, before they were discovered, Alphonso questioned him about the Jewish medics who were available in the region.

‘There are only two,’ the man told him, his face weathered leather, creased around the hooked nose and mournful mouth, his Hebrew almost incomprehensible for the heavy Slavic accent. ‘Both live on the other side of the Rhine. Salomon Moses from Mülheim, Isaac Schlam from Deutz. But the best is not even a man.’

‘I have heard of her—Ruth bas Elazar Saul, the midwife?’

‘They

say she has a magic touch, that all she needs to do is hold her hands over you. But you will never get her, the Christians plan to burn her.’

‘When?’

‘Who knows. They burnt two of their own last week. I was there, I haven’t seen such joviality since Christmas. It really cheered the people up. Man is strange—give me the sky and the open field any day.’

Alphonso slipped two Reichstaler into a hand that felt as dry as sand. ‘My name is Alphonso de Lorenzo, I am a Christian,’ he whispered.

‘For two Reichstaler you can be an Ottoman Mussulman for all I care,’ the pedlar had replied cheerfully, pocketing the money.

Now, looking at the prince’s deteriorated condition, Alphonso considers that the midwife might be Ferdinand’s only hope of survival. Leaning back with his eyes shut, the actor starts to review the plots of all the great plays he has performed. Suddenly he remembers a work by a dynamic French playwright that swept through the Viennese court the year before: Tartuffe by Molière, a master of convoluted plot and mannered high farce, a genius of exquisite social satire. Drawing a parallel between Emperor Leopold’s tolerance of Inquisitor Carlos Vicente Solitario and the disastrous obsession of Molière’s fallible nobleman Orgon with the religious hypocrite Tartuffe, Alphonso begins to form a plot of his own. He will appeal to Samuel Oppenheimer, he will ask him to intervene on behalf of the ailing royal.

Inspired he sits down at the prince’s desk. Designed in the shape of a medieval castle by Hans Stethaimer, a famous architect of two centuries ago, the desk is one of the few gifts the prince received from his father, now long dead. Treasured by Ferdinand, it travels everywhere with him. With a gesture bordering on the sensual, Alphonso runs his hand along the edge of the lacquered rosewood fringed with tiny bastions, a miniature drawbridge crowning the top shelf. Oh to be an aristocrat surrounded by such artistry, he thinks sadly.

He smooths out a new scroll with a ritualistic flourish, savouring the scent of fresh parchment that wafts up, then reaches for the quill still sitting in the prince’s gilded monogrammed inkpot.

To Samuel Oppenheimer, the Great and Honourable Court Jew of Vienna: I, your brother in blood and right hand in stealth, salute you and send you this lyrical stanza upon which the life of another—the nephew of the great Emperor himself, namely the good Prince Ferdinand Hapsburg—and his recovery from a mysterious and sudden ailment depends.

A Rebecca [he chooses the name as homage to Ferdinand’s nickname for himself] of the lower Rhinelands, a deliverer of many, is rumoured to have a golden touch—to be a Midas of the Midriff. Deliver her quick I would say, for my Prince suffers mightily, but alas our Rebecca in the armoury languishes, for her magic has Christian eyes offended and I fear she will be ashes before my Prince is mended. Can the Lion of Judah save the fledgling of the double-headed Eagle?

Signed: Alphonso de Lorenzo.

Alphonso smiles proudly then tenderly rolls up the scroll. Very carefully he seals it with a blob of red wax and presses the prince’s gold seal into the cooling liquid then his own ring upon that.

Later that day, after making sure the scroll is clearly marked ‘Samuel Oppenheimer, the Royal Court Jew of Vienna’, Alphonso secretly arranges for a loyal nobleman and childhood companion of Ferdinand’s, the only one of the prince’s chevaliers he trusts, to carry it to Vienna.

Dear Benedict,

It has been two weeks since I last wrote to you and much has come to pass. The conditions of my imprisonment are improved greatly. For this I have to thank one Detlef von Tennen, a canon of the cathedral here and a Wittelsbach aristocrat. An unusual ally indeed and I am yet to discern his motives. Suffice to say that he has expressed an interest in the ‘heretic’ philosophies west of the border and has even confessed to having read your writings. Should I trust such an enthusiast? I fear not. However, he has taken upon himself (with no small risk) the role of my inquisitor, thus preserving me, for a small time only, from the Dominican. Therefore I live longer, in greater comfort, but in greater confusion. I cannot judge the good canon except to say that he disturbs me profoundly so vast are the incongruities that churn within him.

He is a young man—that is to say, older than myself but yet neither elderly nor of middle years. A second son who has followed the custom of these parts by adopting the cloth, he nevertheless has taken the spirituality of his vows to heart, and with it, I believe, a genuine dedication to the betterment of man. It is out of this devotion that he seeks philosophical enlightenment. But Benedict, I sense that firstly he is a man and as much as I look to the sombreness of his robes, I fear there is less purity beneath the linen than I would like to believe.

Will he be my saviour? I know not. A week ago they burnt the two other poor souls who were arrested with me. The third was suspiciously murdered in his own cell. The pageant passed beneath the window of my new prison and was fearful to behold. By evensong the sky was filled with two pillars of smoke and although I prayed for the integration of their souls with the very aether itself, I am ashamed to say that I was paralysed with fear for my own fate.

Death strips all men of dignity and it is a lie to think otherwise. Execution imposed is one hundredfold a humiliation. When my time comes I would rather die by my own hand by hemlock than wait for the hangman’s knock.

‘Fräulein?’

Detlef stands at the door, his hand hesitant upon the handle. Under his arm he carries scrolls and a small leather pouch containing several quills and inkpots. Ruth is sitting with her back to him, dressed in a pale blue smock made of serge, her long black hair flowing down to her waist. Upon seeing him she is infused with a secret elation.

‘Forgive my absence, I had left for my country retreat. I have taken the time to design a strategy.’

‘A strategy?’

In lieu of a reply he rolls out the scrolls on the wooden floor.

‘I have examined the evidence. Of all the women who have testified to the inquisitor the most promising for our defence is Abigail Brassant.’

‘Meister Brassant’s young wife?’

‘She claims that the child was born dead, but then you cast a spell and revived it.’



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