The Witch of Cologne Read Online Free Page A

thick and coarse. It lies entwined in three long fingers that Detlef blearily recognises as his own. Slowly the crimson coverlet embroidered with the crest of the now defunct von Dorfel family comes into focus. Birgit…the night before…the heavy claret still echoing at the back of his furry tongue. Birgit. And sure enough, as his other four senses shake themselves awake, the pungent scent of his lover, the soft hot curve of her buttocks pressed into his hardening groin, the rest of her waist-length hair—some of which now etches an irritating path across his face and up his nose—and finally her light snore, which always reminds him of an indulged cat, confirms his worst fear. That again he has overslept in the illicit bed of his married mistress. The young canon sits up with a jolt and inadvertently pulls the lock of hair with him.
    ‘Detlef!’
    Birgit Ter Lahn von Lennep née von Dorfel untangles her hair from Detlef’s fingers. Her symmetrically pleasing features are just a little too heavy. Cynicism and good living havealready started to thicken the pert nose. Her round cheeks, once concave, are on the verge of burying the ice-blue eyes above them.
    ‘You would render me bald as well as an adulteress?’
    Smiling, she slips her hand under the coverlet, reaching for his penis. Detlef allows one caress then scowling pushes her hand away.
    ‘I have a mass to attend.’
    ‘Let me be your sacrament.’
    ‘You will go to Hell for that.’
    He swings his legs out of the bed and reaches for his robe, which he notes with some distress lies like an abandoned skin on the chequered tiles of the ornate bedroom.
    ‘Impossible. Are you aware of exactly how many indulgences the good merchant, my husband Meister Ter Lahn von Lennep has purchased on my behalf?’
    Birgit smiles at him in the round Italian glass which reflects the sumptuous interior of the bedroom, the rich tapestries and treasures her husband, an importer, has lavished on her in an impotent bid to win her affection. Staring at her reflection, Birgit decides that she looks like Venus herself. Her bountiful white flesh framed by the Moorish silk curtains, one stream of sunlight illuminating her rose-tipped breasts. Arching her back, she shifts slightly to throw her profile into a better light, a minute movement of the consciously beautiful. She doesn’t even have to remove her gaze from her lover, the only man who has been able to elicit any emotion from her. The one person she has ever cared for—and, with that terrible realisation, fears, for she knows she would not be able to withstand the loss of such a love.
    ‘Four hundred and six indulgences.’ Detlef’s answer is quick and betrays him.
    For an instant he looks away, and finds himself confronted by a small portrait of the illustrious couple of the household.Birgit looks so youthful one could almost imagine an innocence, he observes, drawing some satisfaction from the ageing evident in a crinkling at the corner of the eyes of the flesh and blood woman sitting before him. Is he capable of discerning between lust and love, or has lassitude stolen even that from him, he wonders. Frightened that she should guess his thoughts, Detlef keeps his gaze averted.
    ‘You should know that as the chief canon under Maximilian Heinrich I have knowledge of all the donations to the cathedral. Your husband is a very generous and a very…apprehensive man. He must think you are a compulsive sinner.’
    Birgit watches him walk across the room. The natural grace of his movements makes her ache for him. His long shapely legs dusted with light blond hair, the line of his narrow hips hearkening back to youth, the high curve of his tight buttocks and finally his heavy sex lolling against his thigh, taunting her with its perfect curved beauty. For a moment she hates him for the power he has over her. A second later she is tempted to confess all. She would like to ask this man of God: is it a sin to love? For surely the