‘I dismiss all the charges on one proviso: that the midwife Ruth bas Elazar Saul is refused the right ever to practise midwifery again within the walls of this fair city.’
Immediately Elazar is on his feet. Tuvia embraces him while the onlookers break into a babble. ‘Court dismissed!’ the judge shouts over the commotion.
Relieved, Detlef swings around to Ruth. Her face is dazed with disbelief as her father hobbles forward to embrace her. Behind them von Fürstenberg hurriedly leaves the chamber; at the same time Birgit slips out unnoticed.
In the sanctuary of her coach, Birgit lifts her veil. She has never seen Detlef so alight with passion, not even in the pulpit. She admires him for it: he is more of a philanthropist than she had realised. She decides to send a message and wait for him that night.
As for the Jewess, she is so plain that Birgit sincerely doubts whether Detlef even perceives her as female. All the midwife represents to him is the key to a spiritual quest, the gentlewoman concludes, the answer to the moral emptiness he has felt of late. And so, excited at the thought of how she intends to reward her lover for his legal victory, she orders the coachman to drive on.
The swaying of the carriage causes the hem of the midwife’s full skirt to rustle against the wooden edge of the leather-covered seat. It is a demure black dress made of bombazine, opened in the front with a cream lace petticoat showing. Ruth, unaccustomed to such elegant and feminine costume, wriggles uncomfortably. They are garments purchased by Detlef with the help of Groot’s landlady, at his insistence that Ruth cannot attend the prince dressed in her usual simple woollen cloak and plain hessian dress.
She has not worn anything as decorative or as womanly since Aaron’s bar mitzvah and she feels painfully conscious of both her physicality and sex. More than that, she is unbearably aware of the fact that she is not wearing the yellow circle that is the compulsory insignia for Jews. Although she lived and travelled in Holland in plainclothes, it was as Felix van Jos—a deceit so profound it was tolerable. But now, travelling through Germania in the guise of an aristocratic Christian woman, Ruth feels a fraud and a betrayer of her race.
At her feet sits her bag of medical equipment. Staring down she wonders whether she really has the training to cure the young prince. From the few facts she has been able to obtain she knows the aristocrat’s ailment is of an abdominal nature. She learnt much from Dirk Kerckrinck and has studied for herself Galen’s definitive text on anatomy, but with h
er life depending on the outcome she is suddenly besieged by doubt.
The coach jolts violently as the wheels hit a deep rut. The canon’s foot slips across the floor and touches her own. Startled, Ruth looks across. Detlef appears undisturbed, his carved profile in repose.
He has changed from his clerical attire into that of the aristocrat. It is the first time she has seen him in such a guise and initially she thought the powdered wig with its ribboned pigtail total foppery. But now as she stares at his heavy eyelids, the sweep of his patrician nose and the full mouth that betrays an innate sensuality, she feels a part of her, long buried, begin to shift. Embarrassed she looks down again, only to be distracted by the sight of Detlef’s shapely leg visible up to the thigh in hose. This time, shocked by her carnal thoughts, she closes her eyes and begins to quietly recite in Latin a particularly difficult passage of Ovid. Ovid! She has to concentrate to remember something a little less erotic, settling this time on Virgil, the most cerebral of the ancients. Thankful for the distraction, she relaxes into a stanza.
Feigning sleep, Detlef watches her through the stuttering gates of his eyelashes. Ever since Ruth reluctantly donned the clothes he purchased for her, the canon has been in a state of extraordinary confusion. The midwife has magically metamorphosed into a noblewoman of his own status, an individual he would in normal circumstances happily seduce across the crowded floor of some ballroom or even in the intimacy of a literary parlour. The fusion of these two personas—the visionary who holds the key to knowledge he has until now only dreamt of, and the female—suddenly makes her obtainable. Overwhelmed by desire, Detlef has never been so profoundly disturbed in the presence of a woman.
And this is exactly how he finds himself, having gazed surreptitiously for over an hour at her slender waist, the skirt which blossoms over surprisingly full hips, her narrow ankles, the delicate white bone of her wrist, the lattice of veins beneath the translucent skin, the pulse of her blood that beats mercilessly in the hollow of her slender neck. And most torturous of all, the swelling of her two breasts, the curved milky contours of which he has already fantasised making love to a thousand times over. Even now, in this moment as his foot bumps innocently against her own, he finds himself imagining how it would feel to intertwine his naked toes with hers, to draw her into the curve of his own body, to taste what lies between those thighs.
Another jolt sends the coach swerving. Detlef’s long waistcoat, which has been concealing the growing bulge beneath his breeches, is flung up. Swiftly he tucks it back across himself then looks over at Ruth. Thankfully she still has her eyes closed tightly. He crosses his legs and stares out at the passing landscape in an effort to distract himself.
Judging by the short shadows of the passing trees, he estimates that it is mid morning. They left Cologne at dawn, partly to arrive at Das Grüntal as soon as possible, but also to leave before the city awoke.
Maximilian Heinrich, wary of condemnation by the Gaffeln which is still outraged at Voss and Müller’s executions, insisted that the departure be made in absolute secrecy. Having dealt with the inquisitor’s fury on discovering upon their return from Kloster Eberbach that the trial of the midwife had proceeded without him, Heinrich felt overwhelmed by attacks from all fronts and wanted to avoid infuriating the Dominican further. At a secret meeting he promised Ruth that he would deliver her safely back to her father should her mission prove successful. The same day in a private audience with Detlef, Heinrich ordered the canon to watch the Jewess’s every move. If she should make a mistake and hasten the death of the Hapsburg prince it will prove disastrous for both Heinrich and his archbishopric. But if she should cure the prince, Leopold will be beholden to him and an indebted emperor is exactly what Heinrich needs in order to continue his covert relations with the French unhindered by Vienna.
Because she is a Hebrew, Ruth is banned from touching the prince directly. This is the law. With this understanding Detlef has assured Heinrich that he intends to uphold the decree and that while treating the young royal, the midwife’s instructions will be executed by the most competent of the count’s servants.
The coach rolls past a peat collector. Detlef watches the lone figure in his short smock and hose, his pointed cap pulled down over his freezing ears, slicing the sodden earth into small squares of black. In the near distance a solitary wisp of thin blue-grey smoke rises from the peasant’s ramshackle cottage, barely more than three crooked walls challenging the wind. In front a young child in rags plays on the frozen mud while a small pug chases its own tail. It is a scene that has not altered for hundreds of years and probably will not for a hundred more, Detlef thinks. His mind wanders to the peasants’ revolt of 1525, a bloody and shameful episode engraved on the German psyche, an event his grandfather used to recount as a victory of birthright over lower animal spirit. Glancing back at the pitiful man struggling against the elements, Detlef wonders whether he himself wouldn’t have picked up hoe and pick to rebel against a life of enslavement.
‘Are we on your family lands yet?’
Ruth’s voice pulls him back to the charged atmosphere of the carriage.
‘No, it will be a few more miles until we get to the von Tennen estate. Do you wish to stop and refresh yourself?’
‘No, thank you. The bones in my corset have managed to suspend all bodily functions including hunger.’
Detlef, unsure whether there is sarcasm in her voice, is at a loss. ‘Are you uncomfortable?’
‘I am not used to such attire. I am unconvinced by the sentiment that women should endure for beauty.’
‘The dress becomes you regardless of your convictions. I now see that you are first a woman, second a renegade.’
‘I would rather be a comfortable renegade than a suffering beauty.’
‘Perhaps one day you shall be both.’
‘I fear not; not in these times at least. Canon, if I should fail…’
‘You will not.’ His answer is direct, determined to curtail any burgeoning anxiety in her mind. ‘You cannot, for your sake and for mine.’
Again they lapse into silence.