Death and the Devil

Not kill him? thought Jacob as he took off the coat with Richmodis’s help. Don’t worry, there are others who want to take care of that. Laboriously he managed to peel off his jerkin.

Jaspar gave his shoulder and arm a close examination. “Hm,” he said. His fingers felt Jacob’s shoulder blade and explored the back of his neck and his collarbone. “Hm, hm.”

He examined his armpit, then the shoulder again. “Hm.”

“Is it serious?” asked Richmodis with concern.

“Leprosy’s serious. Come here a minute, Richmodis.”

Jacob saw him whisper something to her, but couldn’t hear anything. She nodded and went back to him. “Would you have any objection,” she asked with a coquettish smile, “if I embraced you?”

“Er—” Jacob gave Goddert a questioning look, but he just shrugged his shoulders. “No, of course not.”

Richmodis grinned. Jacob felt her soft arms around him. She held him tight and pressed him so close he could hardly breathe. She was warm. He felt the first stirrings of arousal and forgot the pain for a moment. He didn’t notice that his injured arm had been left out of the embrace, hardly noticed even when Jaspar grasped his hand.

Richmodis looked at him.

Her lips parted slightly and Jacob—

“Aaaarrrrgggghhhh!”

For a second everything went black. He felt like being sick. Without warning, Jaspar had almost torn his arm out, while Richmodis pulled with all her might in the opposite direction. Now she let go. His knees almost gave way, but he managed to stop himself and staggered over to the bench.

“What was all that about?” he panted.

“Move your arm,” said Jaspar calmly.

“I think I deserve some explan—What’s this?” Jacob rubbed his shoulder and stretched out his arm. It still hurt, but nothing like as much as before.

“What did you do?” he asked, uncertain.

“Nothing. I just put the joint back in place. It was slightly out. Not completely, the pain would have been too much to bear, but it wasn’t quite the way the good Lord intended. Do you feel better now?”

Jacob nodded. The feeling of wretchedness had vanished. With his arm, his mind was back in working order, too. “Thank you,” he said.

“Don’t mention it,” bellowed Goddert in his genial manner.

“What have you got to do with it?” cried Jaspar in annoyance. “If you’d helped, we’d have been burying him now.”

Richmodis slapped the table again. “Do you think you could stop quarreling for a moment? Jacob has something to tell us.”

Goddert raised his hand. “I do have a question.”

“What?”

“Who is this Jacob, actually?”

“Correct,” Jaspar broke in. “That’s a damned good question. Whom have I been treating?”

“He’s a—” But Richmodis got no further. Jacob had raised his hand and was astonished when all three fell silent.

He told them his story.

FROM THE LIFE OF A FOX

It was a quiet year.

The emperor issued an unpopular edict against the autonomy of cathedral cities, especially Cologne. The archbishop of Cologne confirmed the consecration of the Church of the Maccabees. A preaching order took over a building in Stolkgasse and a priest was convicted of murder. Otherwise nothing much happened.

Jacob was born.

He very quickly lost count of the number of his birthdays. There was nothing unusual in that. Very few knew exactly how old they were. His parents were peasants, taciturn folk who farmed a hide of land on the estates of the cathedral chapter in Worringen, a village outside Cologne. Their annual rent was two pfennigs. They weren’t married, since that would have required a further payment of six pfennigs, which they could ill afford.

Jacob’s earliest memory was of a hollow in the clay floor. He was put there when his parents and older brothers and sisters were out in the fields, or doing their labor on the home farm. Over the edge he could see the fire in the middle of the floor and steam rising from the large earthenware pot above it. At first he was too small to get out of the hollow on his own, but as he grew bigger, he kept on going off. When they found him in the plowed field or among the pigs, they would put him back in, until there was no point and, anyway, the hollow was occupied by his successor.

He didn’t know how many brothers and sisters he had either. His mother used to talk of a blasted army, but she smiled as she did so. She had problems counting, especially since some died soon after birth and she was constantly pregnant. His father beat her for that, but he also beat her when she refused to let him have his way with her. Jacob could never remember her rebelling against this treatment. She always tried to smile, while the look in her eyes became sadder and sadder.

That was the way things were.