Author’s note: Anna Koob was born into a middle-class German family in 1566. A bright and spirited girl, she became a favorite of her village of Kleinostheim. As an 8 year old, she is summoned to the home of a prominent baron. The baron’s daughter has asked for her as she lies dying. What happens in the baron’s home sets off a chain of events that dictates the flow of Anna’s future.

Anna grows into a learned and outspoken woman, a dangerous thing to be in the generation before the Thirty Years War. As her intellectual and spiritual light shines around her, some delight in her, some fall in love with her, and some are frightened by her and set themselves to extinguish her light from the world.

From Chapter Seven

The morning was young when Jost passed by the river. Four men were unloading merchandise from a boat. Anna was among them and they flirted with her shamelessly. Jost knew that she was much admired. It did not surprise him that other men would be drawn to her, or that she would receive the flirtations with the grace and compassion that was uniquely hers. There was nothing he desired more than to speak to her, to gauge her reaction to his letter in the subtleties of her first glance. Something in him forbade it. He remained at a distance and tormented himself by observing the flirtations.

The men poured many bold compliments onto her, which could not have been sincere, for they spoke of character traits the strangers could not have quickly learned, compliments that may have sent aflutter the hearts of other young women but were poorly placed on their current subject. They told her she was the prettiest girl on the river. She hardly raised an eye. They compared her to many pleasant things, from a sunset to fresh water. She paid little mind. The apparent leader, whose face and posture displayed finer breeding than the others, adjusted his compliments toward his target.

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“You have a good eye for quality,” he told her, “You are sharp of wit.”

The leader commandeered the flirtations and the other three backed down. He was a tall man, broad of frame and bold of masculine features.

“You like an adventure,” he presumed to declare, “You have that light in your eye. Your thoughts are beyond this village. With the cargo out of the way, there is room on our boat for you. Let us take you up the river a ways. There is much to see.”

They laughed when she blushed and turned her eyes back to the ground in front of her. There was nothing authentic about their regard for her. Jost had learned her character, and it pained him that their compliments were accurate. It pained him with regret.

“He is right,” Jost thought, “There is a light of understanding in her eyes. But they cannot see it as I do. I should have told her those things when I was the only one near her. I should have and I did not.”

Anna saw clearly the nature of the flirtations. They meant little to her beyond the slight gratification of her scant vanity. She credited the leader with no clairvoyance into her character. The words were poetically delivered but smacked heavily of seduction and Anna was well beyond his reach. She was in no danger. As Jost watched from a distance, he did not fear her weakness. He feared that his own words, his earnest compliments, would be seen as theirs — shining words over feeble sentiments. 

He wanted his letter back to amend it somehow, to add words that would bring to her eyes some undeniable distinction between his love and the frivolous flirtations of other men. He did not know if she had read it and feared both possibilities equally.

He thought scornfully to himself, “Had I only spoken when she begged me to speak.”

The flirting tradesman was a handsome man, who had undoubtedly hosted many a young villager on a romantic river tour on his boat. It is unlikely he ever encountered the likes of Anna. While Jost’s tongue was too tightly bound, this man’s threw syllables into the air with too much ease, words not at all supported by weighty thought. It was all rather pathetic to Anna, and the more he pressed his proposal, the more distasteful the notion of it grew. As she explained years later, “It is better to work at a shell I cannot open but know contains delights than to open easily a shell that is empty.”

She would have enjoyed a river tour, but not with such company. The sights would have spawned conversation that would have been out of this man’s league. There was little inside of his eyes that demanded a deeper look. Although broad and beautiful in structure, his face and its expressions were only suggestive of what is sensual and not at all of what is spiritual or cerebral. Were it within her nature to indulge in passing fancies and the most immediate and temporary desires of the flesh, she may have followed him to his boat. 

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He did not disgust Anna. To her, his flirtations were as innocent as her own dear heart, and she knew nothing would come of them, so she allowed them to continue, mildly entertained by the diversion. Jost viewed the encounter through a man’s eyes — and a man very much in love. The others rejoined the flirtations. Jost saw the nature and depth of their attraction to her. He watched her giggle as they pathetically and fruitlessly pressed their wishes. Her giggle was not one of an affected little girl, but one of a higher being looking down upon lower ones. Nevertheless, it was a giggle and Jost misinterpreted it. He knew the men to be beneath her. He also knew that one single, slight gesture of interference from him would insult her independence and implacable morality. He could only look on, while green-eyed jealousy gnawed ravenously at his heart like hyenas around living prey.

About the same time that the men realized their effort was not worth the prize, Anna, too, grew tired and unamused. The encounter broke by mutual motive. The tradesmen returned to their toils and Anna continued her museful walk, with no lingering effects of the incident. The experience remained with Jost. He had no desire to trade his character for that of the handsome tradesman. But he envied how easily he spoke and how quickly he grabbed Anna’s attention. He left the riverbank that morning with a deeper determination to attach himself to Anna with rich expressions of all that was inside of him. She had shown her curiosity in him, begging him for his opinions. He abandoned his duties and took immediately to the pen. He thought back to every conversation, every question she asked of him, and he wrote his answers with stripped, naked, vulnerable disclosure, regardless of the fears that jumped up and down from the peripheral of his focused thoughts and waved their arms to get his attention.

His fingers gave voice to his opinions on many topics, each addressing the subjects of their conversations. His pen said everything she wished his mouth to say. It proved that he had listened closely to her and contemplated her words deeply. At the end of the very long letter, he addressed in cryptic elegance the incident with the flirtatious tradesmen. He wrote.

You know (a creature remarkable for so many enviable virtues, I am sure you must know) that any application for your affection comes to you from a position of debt. I pray nightly that you do not find the imbalance unforgivable in me. Yet you are a gracious creditor, kind and humble where others would be cruel.

As Saint Augustine wrote, “Humility is the foundation of all other virtues hence, in the soul in which this virtue does not exist, there cannot be any other virtue except in mere appearance.”

You stand above me in all virtues, even in humility, the only virtue for which I should have a greater claim. One claim I make for myself above most others is the talent of vision. I see you, and I believe I know and understand you, much more than the men who might pass through our village and shower you with attention. They speak to a girl. They do not speak to Anna, for they do not know Anna. They speak to a pretty face. I write now to an opulent mind and a virtuous and open heart. I write to you, Anna, for I know you. 

Stefan Scheuermann has degrees in history and literature and has taught English composition at the university level. His writing spans multiple genres in fiction and non-fiction, from comparative language and biography to alternative history and historical fiction/fantasy. His fiction aspires to demonstrate the fantastical nature of real human lives and show how thin the line can be between history and fantasy.