The Witch of Cologne Read Online Free PDF Page A

touch.
    This time he does not move away. Reaching over his shoulder he lifts a strand of her hair.
    ‘You wish for me to usurp Heinrich?’
    He curls the lock once around; it tightens but he does not yet pull.
    ‘They say the emperor’s nephew, Prince Ferdinand, will be visiting the count your brother this hunting season…’
    ‘And you want me to speak to the prince and secure a title for you and your impotent bürger?’
    He keeps winding the hair around as she continues to caress him.
    ‘You forget that I was once a von Dorfel, a rank equal to—nay, above—any Wittelsbach.’
    Her voice detached from her actions only excites him further. He closes his eyes for a second, standing perfectly still as tendrils of pleasure burn up his body.
    ‘Birgit, you are mistaken. Your loyalties are misplaced, they belong to the old world. The future is the new world which belongs to the bürgers and the plain men of Luther.’
    Instead of answering she frees him from his gown. With his sex between both hands, pressing herself hard against his back, she imagines that his body is an extension of her own, that the throbbing organ between her palms is part of her own flesh. Oh to be a man, to have all fortune’s paths laid out before one: what she would have done, could have done, she thinks. Allowing love to delude her, she imagines this is what they are: one being. Irrevocably bound by both ambition and destiny. For a moment she cleaves to him like this.
    ‘Why, Detlef, could you be a heretic?’
    ‘Unfortunately I lack the passion. We differ, Birgit. You are passionately ambitious, whereas I have passion only to forget what I have become.’
    ‘Grant my husband and me our title and I promise I will reinstate your faith.’
    She strokes him faster, sensing his climbing pleasure. He laughs dryly, his voice catching in his throat.
    ‘Do you think that by overthrowing Heinrich and being elected archbishop I should find my vocation?’
    ‘I think we should all be happier…and wealthier. You know how fond of you my husband is…’
    ‘And all the world loves a rich cuckold. However, for you, and only you, I shall try to speak to the prince.’
    Smiling, he pulls down sharply on her hair, bringing her to her knees. With a reverent air, she takes him into her mouth.
    While Detlef walks through the bustling lanes towards the cathedral, Birgit stands before her looking glass as her maid helps her into her lustring petticoats.
    The taste of her lover still pervades her senses. His scent lingers on her fingers, a secret reminder she will carry all day. Behind her the maid’s chatter is a relentless monotone describing the latest gossip to grip the city: how terrible it is that the archbishop of Münster has sold seven thousand of his citizens as soldiers to the emperor, and how the good merchant Brassant has finally been able to produce a healthy male heir with his child bride. To her surprise Birgit finds her heart contracting as she remembers her own pregnancy. A babe which, had it gone to term, would have been of dubious parentage. Birgit chooses to think that Detlef would have been the father. But as the old merchant forces himself upon her once a month, it was just as likely to have been his, a notion which revolts her.
    She looks at the reflected room, at her own visage, a magnificent façade whitened with lead, a flawless artifice unblemished by emotion. And for a moment wishes she was more fallible.
    Maximilian Heinrich, prince of Wittelsbach, resident of Bonn and archbishop of the Holy Free Imperial City of Cologne, is squeezed awkwardly into the high-backed throne. In the styleof Louis XIV, with baluster turnings adorning its polished walnut legs, it was an expensive gift from the Prince of Burgundy—expensive but unbearably uncomfortable. The archbishop’s hose is itching and his gout sends shooting pains across the back of one knee. He is presiding over the ceremonial receiving of the traditional rent the bürgers pay