Only Jacob, when he came to Cologne three months ago, had found the key to her heart and had kept his pride.
Now Jacob was past history. She had made up her mind to escape from poverty. Impossible, perhaps, but it meant sacrificing Jacob for the vague chance a decent man might one day come and offer her a better life than staying stuck here in Clemens’s stinking hole.
But with each man who came and went, her hope shriveled a little more to a foolish dream, and it became more and more difficult to believe the Blessed Virgin would raise a whore to a respectable burgher’s wife. When she was alone, Maria would pray to the Virgin Mary, but then Clemens would bring the men she knew so well. They were like fruit on a market stall—here apples, red or green, ripe or rotten, there quinces, peaches, cherries—each typical of his own kind, each always the same, each cowardly, each a disappointment.
Urquhart was like none of them.
There was something inside him that made her shudder. And yet she wished she could be his forever, follow him everywhere, whether to riches or damnation.
For a moment she felt an urge simply to run away. But what if he was the one she was waiting for?
Wolves are loving. Wolves are cruel.
She turned back to him with a shy smile. Urquhart watched her. “Are you going out?” he asked.
She shrugged her shoulders. “Where would I go?”
Urquhart nodded. His long hair flowed around him like a cloak. “Yes,” he said, almost inaudibly, “where would you go?”
He stretched and stood up.
“And you? Are you going?” Maria didn’t know whether to feel sorry or relieved.
“Yes.” He started to get dressed.
“And will you come again?” she asked hesitantly.
Urquhart threw the cloak over his shoulders. Something was attached to the inside, like a crossbow, only smaller. Then it vanished as he drew the material over his chest.
“Perhaps. It depends what you have to tell me.”
“To tell you?”
“There’s a man. Called Jacob. You know him.”
Maria was bewildered by the sudden change of subject. What had Urquhart to do with Jacob?
“Yes, I know him.”
“He needs help.”
“What?”
“Our friend talks too much.” Urquhart went up to Maria and lifted up her chin. “He’s in danger of losing his head, if you understand me. He’s been saying strange things about something he claims he saw this evening.”
“Oh, God!” Maria exclaimed. “The architect.”
“What did he tell you?”
Why should you betray him, she thought, but already it was pouring out. “That Jacob’s always got some cock-and-bull story to tell. Huh! He claims he saw the Devil push Gerhard off the scaffolding. He even says he spoke to him.”
“To the Devil?”
“Don’t be silly.” Maria shook her head. She was giving vent to all her annoyance with Jacob. At the same time, surprisingly, she wished he were here with her.
“To Gerhard, then?”
“Yes. At least that’s what he claimed.”
“And what is Gerhard supposed to have said?”
Careful, a voice inside her whispered, but she ignored the warning. She was trapped, like an insect, in the amber of his eyes. Strange eyes. You looked into depths, terrifying, unfathomable depths.
“I don’t know.”
“The priests won’t like stories like that.”
“Where did you get to know Jacob?”
“Later, Maria. We don’t want him to do anything stupid, do we? So he saw the Devil? What did the Devil look like?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t interested.” She sighed. Poor stupid Jacob. “But I’ll ask him the next time he comes,” she said softly, more to herself.
The next time he comes…
Urquhart said nothing.
“I shouldn’t have treated him like that. Jacob was always good to me. He’s good to people all the time, without noticing what he’s doing, you know.” She shook her head, looked at Urquhart, and didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “He’s crazy, he gives away everything he’s got. He brings this Tilman with him. I throw him out and Jacob can think of nothing better than to give him his hat and coat—and his place by the Wall as well.”
It struck Urquhart like a thunderbolt.
“What did you say?” he whispered. His features were like stone.
“You can imagine how it makes me sorry and livid at the same time. That I screamed at him, wounded his pride, humiliated him. But he has to understand, this isn’t an almshouse, I can’t just—” She bit her lip. “Sorry. I’m boring you. Sorry.”
“When did Jacob leave?” Urquhart asked in a toneless voice.
“Leave? Just before you came. You could almost have bumped into each other.”
“Where did he go?”
She lowered her eyes. “I don’t know. Perhaps to his shack by the Wall.”
“By the Wall?”
She nodded. “By the Eigelstein Gate. Have you never heard of the privilege of the Wall?”
Urquhart’s eyes glazed over. “I have to go,” he said.
Maria started. Go then, one part of her screamed, go as far away as possible. You’re not what I’m looking for; you frighten me. At the same time she felt her heartbeat quicken with the hope he would take her with him.
No, it’s better you go—
Instead, “Come back,” she blurted out. “Come, whenever you want. I’ll be here for you, here for you alone.”
Urquhart smiled. “Thank you,” he said gently. “That will not be necessary.”
JACOB
Jacob was fed up with staring at the church.
An hour must have passed since he left Maria. His anger had subsided and he was starting to find self-pity boring. The best thing to do would be to forget today, wipe it from his memory and try to make it up with Maria. At least they could stay friends.
The damp cold had chilled him to the bone. With a quick prayer to whatever gods were there in the darkness that Clemens would let him sit by the fire, he shook himself like a dog and set off slowly for Berlich. He avoided the shortest way, which would have meant going through Vilsgasse. The latest rumor said there was a butcher there who dragged people in off the street at night and made them into sausages. There was no butcher in Vilsgasse, nor any worse thieves than Jacob himself, but the power of rumor was such that he decided to take the route around by the city wall.
The clouds had gone. The moon dipped the pointed gables of the half-timbered houses on his right in silver. There was no one else out apart from a few drunks whose voices he heard coming from a side street. Somewhere in front two dogs started barking furiously. For a few steps a cat walked beside him along the top of a wall before silently slipping down into the darkness of the garden on the other side.
The hunters of the night were always on the prowl.
Then Berlich lay before him, hushed, silent. A refuge for shabby secrets. Dead souls sitting by cheerful, crackling fires. Hell in miniature. At the other end of the street the wind tugged at a slim tree.