‘I have more patience than you, Fräulein. And you should be careful, you still have many enemies. I’m sure it would be a relief for the archbishop to hear that you have stopped all meddling and become an honourable married woman destined for the Holy Land.’
Ruth contemplates his threat. Mindful of the warning Detlef gave her to remain invisible, she has delivered only two babies since her return and those at a great distance from Deutz and Cologne. Now she wonders whether Tuvia has heard that she is still practising.
‘I will give you an answer by Rosh Hashana.’
‘But that is three months away!’
‘It will give you an opportunity to display your famous tenacity, Reb Tuvia.’
She stands and opens the door. ‘Good afternoon.’
Reluctantly he rises to his feet, leaving Miriam still sitting shyly at the table.
‘Your father wants you back under his roof. It is not safe for you to be living alone, nor is it honourable. Now that you have been accepted back into the community it is your duty to reassure the other women that you are capable of being a good Jewish woman. At least move back into your father’s house.’
‘I cannot shed my skin that quickly, Tuvia. But I will visit for sabbat. That much I can promise.’
As the two women watch Tuvia walk sullenly back towards the town Ruth wonders how long she will be able to ward off his advances.
Suddenly a small hawk swoops down and plucks a hare from the bank of a hedgerow. As the animal kicks its legs helplessly mid-air, Ruth has a sinking sensation of foreboding.
‘London, Amsterdam, Leiden…it is a Protestant disease, there can be no doubt about it.’
‘Your grace, the plague discriminates against no man. It is happy to consume Christian, Jew, even Moor in its path.’
‘But it is not here yet and we can give thanks to the three Magi and the holy virgin Saint Ursula for that. This is a great pilgrim city and is honoured by our good Lord.’
‘Our good Lord has nothing to do with it, it is merely a question of time.’
‘I have it on good authority: Cologne will be spared.’
‘Whose good authority?’
‘My astrologer’s,’ the archbishop answers, staring Detlef straight in the eye. The canon snorts derisively, unable to hide his frustration.
Maximilian Heinrich, magnificent in his green weekday robes, sits at the head of the oval oak table in a large chamber in the town hall, surrounded by his advisers. To his left are the von Fürstenberg brothers, Wilhelm a place closer than his brother; to his right are Detlef and several sympathetic bürgers. It is the monthly meeting when representatives of the Gaffeln join with the clergy to discuss local policy and tariffs.
Detlef, a new hollowness to his face, senses the growing frustration of the merchant sitting next to him, the head of the bakers’ guild. ‘Your grace, this is a secular matter and the city must take precautions! I suggest we veto all English and Dutch cargo for the summer,’ he declares.
Heinrich glances thoughtfully at his cousin. Detlef’s growing defiance and zeal for social change is not an enthusiasm Heinrich had bargained for. Of more concern is the mounting support Detlef seems to be engendering amongst the younger tradesmen. The archbishop has even heard a rumour that Detlef is shunning the affections of Birgit Ter Lahn von Lennep, refusing to take her confession, and has given up his luxurious chambers in Cologne and taken a simple room at Saint Pantaleon monastery. It is as if a harder, leaner, more inflexible man has been prised out of the softer, corruptible, but always diplomatic canon. He even has the look of the fanatic, Heinrich thinks, with those sunken cheeks, the dark rings under his eyes. If the archbishop did not know that the canon had been fasting, he would be inclined to think that either politics or a fixation of the cock was the parasite eating at the young man’s soul. Nevertheless, the archbishop reminds himself to tread carefully around his cousin’s new-found fervour.
‘Canon von Tennen, if we were to veto such cargo we’d all starve to death before the plague had a chance to kill us. This is a trade town, we can’t afford to lose the business,’ one of the bürgers ventures.
‘I am aware of the implications, but it is better to err on the side of caution. Over ten thousand died last month in Leiden alone and there is a rumour they have started to perish again in London. At least quarantine the ships,’ Detlef counters.
The table erupts into violent debate. The archbishop has no intention of stopping the pilgrimages to the bones of the three Magi and the eleven hundred martyred virgins of Saint Ursula. Such visits are the cathedral’s main source of income. Equally the merchants are determined to keep their exports leaving the city. Finally Heinrich slams his fist down onto the table. Immediate silence ensues.
‘There is no argument. The pilgrimages will continue, as will the traders. In the meanwhile we shall be doubly vigilant for any signs of the scourge. This is the cathedral’s final word on the issue.’
Detlef, disgusted, storms out of the hall. All swing around to Heinrich, whose face remains stiffly impervious to the insult.
After a beat, Wilhelm Egon von Fürstenberg leans towards the archbishop and whispers into his ear in Latin. ‘Remember, we still have the Spanish card up our sleeve should the naughty child decide to further insult the father.’
But inwardly anxious, Heinrich is beyond amusement.
Striding furiously along the bustling Judenstrasse, Detlef heads towards a coffee house at the corner of the square. On the way he purchases a news sheet from a war cripple.
The young canon has never offended the archbishop so directly, but at this moment Detlef is concerned not about the consequences of his actions but about the shortsightedness of the city fathers. They will endanger the populace through their greed, he thinks, gazing around at those who might be first to perish: the poor, the half-starved, the orphaned and the aged. Here a beggar woman, her face a web of pain in which her toothless mouth gapes. Pitiful, she rests heavily against a gnarled tree branch, her hand a filthy claw petitioning for alms. There, squatting in the gutter, a child of no more than three years of age, his naked buttocks poking through his ragged smock, too exhausted to beg, too exhausted even to cry as he gazes up at the indifferent world bustling past him.