The Witch of Cologne

Exhausted, she falls back to the pillow, closing her eyes. Her grip loosens and her hand falls away.

‘Mama? Mama!’ he cries, shaking her.

The raven squawks, breaking into Jacob’s weeping. He looks up. The bird’s massive beak opens

to reveal a startling pink cavern then it looks back down at him with an almost kindly eye. Lifting a claw, the raven extends it towards Ruth’s prostrate figure. Again the boy swipes at the bird, his sword passing uselessly through the phantom as the bird slowly begins to unfurl its long satin wings. A roaring fills Jacob’s ears. Sobbing, he throws himself over Ruth to defend her, his arms stretched across her shrunken form.

Ruth can hear Detlef murmuring as he finishes the last rites. She looks up and there he is beside her.

‘Come, the others are waiting.’

He pulls her into his arms, and as she stares deeper and deeper into his eyes she sees the ghosts of her past, all waiting for her: Sara, Rosa, Hanna, even Aaron with his serious face, and then at last Elazar steps forward to take her hand.

Clutching at her withered arms, his head upon her bosom, Jacob feels the last shuddering breath leave his mother’s body, and then the yawning silence as her soul departs the flesh.

– MALCHUT –

Kingdom

The Hague, Spring, 1683

The scent of poppies fills the chamber. Jacob fingers the silk blindfold. He thinks about cheating by opening his eyes but decides against it. Something luxurious and scented brushes past him. Fabric? Lace? Fur? A perfumed veil of long soft hair falls across his face followed by the touch of a finger against his lips, confusing him further.

‘Are you ready for your birthday offering?’

‘If it is to be a gift, I am not fully seventeen until after midnight.’

‘Can you wait until then?’

‘Madame, I believe I have waited long enough.’

Impatient, Jacob lifts his hands to the knot that has become entangled in his long fair hair, excitement bursting at his loins. As the blindfold falls away she says, ‘And so begins the corruption of a poet.’

She sits before him on a low ottoman. She is naked except for a diaphanous gown, which seems to float above her nudity rather than lie upon it. Her flesh, which he has touched only through clothing, is curvaceous. Her breasts a jutting whiteness crowned by large dark areolae, her stomach a rounded glory with golden curls climbing up her belly. Thus undone she smiles, not with the guarded arrogance he is accustomed to, but with a timorous almost child-like questioning that plays humorously in her huge brown eyes. Jacob’s mouth dries, his heart races with anticipation. Fifteen years older, she is the first woman he has seen naked. To him she is beauty itself spread before him.

‘Poets are not corruptible for their minds have already been caught and catapulted to the moon by intellect itself,’ he answers, unable to keep a throaty awe from his voice.

She laughs, surprising herself with her own nervousness.

‘But what about their bodies?’

‘Their bodies?’

He reaches for her hand and places it on his erection which pushes up against his breeches. ‘That, Madame, you may judge for yourself.’

Kneeling, she begins to unlace him.

‘Tomorrow you will no longer be able to call yourself virgin.’

In lieu of an answer he runs his hands beneath her gown and clasps the full breasts with their hot, heavy weight. The nipples hardening sends a tremor of excitement through him that is almost impossible to contain. Frightened he might spill before time, he lies back and allows her to undress him slowly. Smiling, she runs her hands down the long-waisted satin coat. Then with excruciating deliberateness begins to unfasten the many pearl buttons, from the bottom to the top one by one. Jacob, trembling, tries to stay completely still. She unties the crimson cravat of lustring then hauls up the silk undershirt to reveal Jacob’s smooth muscular chest, a line of fine blond hairs travelling down towards his cock which rests large and hard against his taut stomach.

Surprised by his circumcision she looks up at him. Reading the question in her eyes, he blushes but says nothing. Without a word she takes his organ, holding its thickness firmly between cool fingers. ‘You are beautiful,’ she says simply, and in that moment he truly feels it.

Cheeks flushed, his locks of hair snaking across the pillow, he watches her through narrowed eyes, trying to hide his wonder. The maturity of her body touches him, it has a kind of collapsed vulnerability, a ripeness which makes him want to bury his face in the soft folds and bite. The scent of her, a musky aroma of French perfume undercut with the ripeness of her sex, both intoxicates and overwhelms. It is an extension of the complexity of the woman herself and of their relationship, for she is the widowed sister of his employer and guardian, the publisher Rieuwertsz. It is this intricacy, the verbal labyrinths, the subtle flirtations, her open enthusiasm for his ambitions and finally her hard-won respect, that has seduced him. He, who could have had any serving girl or dockland whore before now.

Jacob lifts a languid hand and traces a finger from her chin to her mouth. She wets it between her lips, he pulls it out slowly and after running it across her hip touches her sex, caressing the hardening bud then burying it deep. With a moan she removes his finger and mounts him, slowly and deliciously sliding down. Engulfed by her tightness, he is fascinated by the beauty of her abandon as she rides him faster and faster, a mounting ball of intense pleasure gathering at the base of his spine.

If this be the way man obtains immortality, then I for one shall seek it over and over, Jacob thinks, his hands gripping the luscious buttocks of his lover. Suddenly he finds himself exploding in a fountain of pure blind pleasure.