The Witch of Cologne

by Tobsha Learner

  There is a desperation to his lovemaking that estranges her; with each thrust she is taken out of the moment and left pondering.

  For the first time her lover is not concerned with her pleasure but rides his own, oblivious. With renewed fury he reaches a climax and shouts out, abandoning their usual protocol of silence. Then he rolls away, turning his back to her. She waits, taking perverse pleasure in observing the emotional gulf that seems to widen between them with each breath. When she can bear it no longer she reaches out and forces him to roll back towards her. Tentatively she nestles on his damp shoulder and listens to his wildly pounding heart.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispers. ‘I am no longer worthy of your affections.’

  For a moment Birgit cannot speak for the fear of loss which grips her. Feeling as if she is falling off the edge of a precipice she hesitates, searching for the right strategy.

  ‘My love, you will always be worthy.’

  ‘But where will this lead us, Birgit? There is no longer any redemption in our affection. There is nothing but a mutual indulgence of cynicism, a shared condemnation of the pretensions of our world, and yet we ourselves are the very embodiment of such artifice.’

  At this she sits upright; never has Detlef spoken so plainly.

  ‘We have joy, wit, humour and immense pleasure,’ she replies carefully, painfully aware of the risk she takes with every spoken revelation. ‘Surely this is justification enough?’

  ‘I no longer know.’

  Birgit, staring into the dark, wonders about her new adversary. Is it a flesh and blood woman or a sudden wave of Puritanism which has possessed her lover like a demon?

  Dear Benedict,

  I am still incarcerated, although the thin gruel has been supplemented with some aged mutton. I fear this concession is merely to keep me alive long enough to torture a confession out of me. I have been officially charged and know I shall be subjected to the cruellest of interrogations. I can hear the cries of the poor men who were arrested with me, but strangely my isolation is more immediately terrifying. Here in this solitude I begin to forget who I am and what I am. The perimeters of my very existence blur into the damp and the grey light in which nothing is distinct. I keep my sanity through philosophising, by working your thesis over and over.

  If, as you suggest, God does not wilfully direct the course of nature then my imprisonment and probable martyrdom occur for no good reason in the greater fabric of destiny. I try to comfort myself with your argument that human beings have a biological need to believe that God acts with purpose, for they themselves are under the illusion that they act with free will.

  We are ignorant of the true causes of things, only aware of our own desire to pursue what is useful to us. We delude ourselves by thinking that we are free and that all our actions are guided by what is useful to us. We even have the arrogance to think that God must wilfully guide external events for our benefit, since we cannot guide Destiny ourselves…

  I know you carry this treatise further by suggesting that the Divine does not act with a purpose but that only the most perfect of God’s acts are those closest to him. By this argument I deduce that my imprisonment is too removed from God to have any meaning directly to God himself. In that case, why am I? And what meaning has my life and my death?

  Such musings keep me teetering on the right side of madness…

  Composing the letter in her mind to comfort herself, Ruth imagines Benedict Spinoza sitting in his small cottage in Rijnsburg, can almost see his narrow handsome face illuminated with passion and hear his low voice with its melodious Portuguese overtones.

  ‘Ruth…’ A familiar voice sounds softly in the dark.

  For a moment she fears that the solitude has finally caused her senses to slip into hallucination. She swings around.

  Rosa, her old nursemaid, clutching a candle over her head, squints blindly into the cell. ‘My child, are you in there? Or have you perished in such filth?’

  In her haste to respond the midwife stumbles and falls. Rosa kneels and tries to squeeze her fleshy arms through the bars to reach her.

  ‘What have they done to you?’ she whispers in Spanish.

  The guard, a massive youth with a shaven head, steps out of the shadows, keys rattling. He pushes the nursemaid away brusquely and opens the gate.

  ‘Speak German otherwise I shall have to imprison you as a spy. And we wouldn’t want that, would we?’ He guffaws and slaps Rosa good-naturedly on the backside.

  ‘Watch who you are talking to!’ she snaps, to Ruth’s amazement, then steps into the cell as casually as if she were entering a market stall. Shaking his head the guard locks the gate behind her.

  ‘You have fifteen minutes, Rosa, no more, no less. I’ll not lose my head for some old Jewish sow.’ Placing his lantern on the ground he leaves.

  Ruth stands paralysed, frightened that if she moves the nursemaid might vanish like Aaron’s spectre.

  Rosa barely recognises the bag of bones crouching before her with its mop of hair and burning eyes. Fearing that Ruth might have lost her sanity the old woman speaks first, pointing in the direction of the departed guard.

  ‘I have broken bread with his mother, she is a good woman.’

  Then, unable to contain herself, she pulls Ruth into a tight embrace. ‘Have fortitude,’ she whispers, this time in Yiddish, hiding the shock she feels at Ruth’s shrunken figure and the unbearable stench of her unwashed body.

  Ruth, held by those strong arms, the first intimate touch she has had in weeks, bursts into tears. Rosa rocks her until the sobbing has stopped.

  ‘Think of this as a dream and it too shall pass. In the meantime I have something a little more practical…’

  She pulls a loaf of challah from under her cloak and a small sealed clay bowl of harissa, a savoury wheat and meat porridge enriched with melted fat and cinnamon. Ruth falls on the food and Rosa, stroking her matted hair, watches her eat.

  ‘Your father seeks an audience with the archbishop. Hermann Hossern, the moneylender, has some outstanding debts to be paid by Heinrich himself—he has agreed to waive them for your release. It is a gamble but better than nothing.’

  Ruth wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. She is ashamed to be seen like this, so dirty and demeaned.

  ‘Why? Hermann Hossern has shown no love of me before.’ She is suspicious of the moneylender’s sudden generosity. Hossern is notorious throughout Deutz for his ruthlessness and misanthropy.

  ‘It is not for you, rather out of respect for your father. Besides, remember that Tuvia is his nephew and the only male heir.’

  ‘Is Tuvia pushing his suit?’ Ruth asks. The image of the rake-thin young man comes to her mind, his face an acrobatic mask of unfortunate twitches.

  Rosa pauses, recognising an old stubbornness. She realises that the young woman’s huge strength lies in her willpower and spirit, that Ruth is an idealist not a pragmatist. The ramifications of such passion make her fear for both Ruth’s safety and her soul. If only there was more of the mother and less of the father in the child. Sara was a survivor, a woman who would adapt and disguise her motives to secure freedom at any cost. But Rosa cannot speak of such things for fear of shattering the young woman’s illusions about her mother.

  ‘Child, your father has given his consent and blessing.’

  ‘But he cannot!’

  ‘He is an old man, your imprisonment is destroying him. He believes that once you are released you will be safe under the strong guiding hand of a husband. It will be an arranged marriage, like the one you should have made so many years ago.’

  ‘It will not!’ Ruth cannot hide her anger.

  ‘I see they have not entirely broken your spirit. Maybe there is some meat left on the bone under all that filth.’

  ‘Forgive me, I stink, I know it. I cannot bear my own stench. I would kill a man for a river to wash in.’

  ‘I would kill a man for a lot less. But my child, listen closely, you must understand that the com
munity is divided. There are many who have spoken out against you: they say you will bring a new pogrom upon us, as bad as St Bartholomew’s night, that all will be driven from their houses and slaughtered. Your father still has influence, but marriage with Tuvia will convince the people that you are no longer a heretic, that you will abide by the laws of the Torah and become a dutiful wife and queen of your own household, God bless.’

  Rosa, carried away by her own rhetoric, starts to imagine a new era of stability and fecundity in the Saul household, sees herself nursing Ruth’s children on her knee. The young woman interrupts her reverie.

  ‘My father must be confident of my release to have arrived at such an arrangement.’

  ‘Your father has nothing left but his faith. He is ailing. If you saw how attentive Tuvia is, nursing him day and night, you would not be so quick to judge.’

  ‘Perhaps I can postpone the betrothal for as long as possible.’

  ‘But not for ever.’

  ‘I will consider it.’

  Rosa kisses her. ‘Now you are using the head on your shoulders.’

  Ruth smiles to see Rosa’s hands weaving patterns in the air as she speaks. The nursemaid is so utterly familiar, it is as if she has swept Ruth’s happier past right into the prison cell with her.

  ‘And what of Miriam, is she with the living?’ Ruth suddenly asks, guilty that she has forgotten her assistant.

  ‘She lives but has not spoken since the rape. ‘Tis a pity, she will not find a husband now. She is living with us until your release. Fear not, she will be taken care of.’ Rosa lowers her voice. ‘The charge is of witchcraft, is it not?’

  ‘I am accused of lying with the devil for the promise of a good birthing. I am accused of poisoning cattle, of levitation. I am accused of bewitching two small babes, of consorting with the demon Lilith—’

  Rosa breathes in sharply. ‘Of Lilith you must say nothing,’ she whispers, as if the evil spirit herself is eavesdropping. Somewhere in the distance a gate clanks shut. The old nurse draws closer. ‘We haven’t very long, child, but listen—I know this man, the inquisitor, from Aragon. He worked as a tutor in your grandfather’s house. He was the Judas that destroyed your mother’s family, and would have destroyed her if she had not had her wits about her.’

  ‘He murdered my mother’s family?’

  Ruth feels nauseous as she remembers the glint of hatred in the Spaniard’s eyes.

  ‘Betrayed them, all of them, after they had extended their friendship to him.’

  ‘But Rosa, how is it possible that the Inquisition can ride into Deutz and arrest me? They have no power over the Jewish quarter.’

  The nursemaid stares into Ruth’s eyes, innocent in their confusion, then takes her hand.

  ‘Ruth, you were baptised.’

  Stunned, Ruth can barely absorb the information. ‘Baptised? How?’

  ‘It was many years ago when you were a small baby. There was rumour of another pogrom and Sara was petrified. You have to understand that she had seen her own father tortured, her mother burnt at the stake. She couldn’t bear the idea of you suffering too.’ Rosa’s voice falters. ‘She just wanted to protect you in case the Christian soldiers came…’

  ‘Does my father know?’

  ‘He learnt of it at your arrest—the news has devastated him. Sara made me swear on her deathbed never to tell him. I was the only witness. Child, you must find it in your heart to forgive her; it was the desperate act of a terrified woman who wished only for her baby to survive. You see now why you should marry Tuvia—he will have you regardless and it will make the community accept you again.’

  ‘If I am freed…’

  ‘Understand, you are in extreme peril. When the inquisitor looks at you, he sees your mother. You must placate him as long as you can, for he will push for the pyre. It is the only way your father will have enough time to negotiate for your life. There have already been soldiers at the house, searching for evidence.’

  ‘My mother’s Zohar?’ Ruth barely mouths the word; to be overheard would be immediate verification of the charges and an instant death sentence.

  ‘It is safe,’ Rosa assures her, ‘but promise me: whatever Solitario does to you, you must not confess to being a witch or carrying out any heretical practices. A confession will immediately condemn you and then nothing your father can do will save you.’

  ‘This I know already.’

  Footsteps sound in the passageway and the guard shouts for Rosa.

  ‘Believe, my child. Faith is the food of survival.’

  The nursemaid pulls Ruth to her in one last embrace.

  The archbishop of Cologne strides through the narrow dirty streets of his diocese and into the Streitzeuggasse where the silk banner of the armourers’ guild hangs proudly overhead and the tiny shops are packed with a huge variety of shields, swords and weaponry. The constant pounding of the blacksmiths’ hammers, the shouts of the men trading information about the latest military conflict, the wheezing of the bellows and the pealing of church bells all blend into a medley of impossible noise. Which is precisely why Maximilian Heinrich has chosen the street: the cacophony is exactly what he needs to think.

  Behind him, his two assistants struggle to keep up, mincing carefully around the pig shit and the abandoned pieces of twisted metal from the forges, anxiously wondering which latest political drama possesses their master.

  Heinrich, a large man, is famous for trebling his pace when riddled with apprehension. The clerics have cause to worry. He has just come from the Church of the Assumption, Saint Maria Himmelfahrt, the domain of the Jesuits, where he had a reluctant audience with the head of the college, a stiff old priest called Father Hummerlich. A Prussian zealot, proud veteran of the Thirty Years’ War and a vehement Luther-hater, Hummerlich has expressed deep concern about the arrests. He wants the trials and the executions to be carried out quickly. Always searching for the political advantage, the Jesuit sees the public condemnation of the three secret Lutherans as an opportunity to galvanise Cologne’s lax Catholic community.

  ‘We must show the people that the true and only way to redemption is by confession and atonement. We must pay for our sins: indulgences are a necessary evil. These traitors cannot be allowed to live amongst us, in the heart of the community, all the while secretly practising the dreadful blasphemies of that man…’ The priest, face flushed with vitriol, was unable to complete his sentence.

  Heinrich, enjoying the old man’s frustration, waited a full minute before putting him out of his misery.

  ‘That man Luther?’ The archbishop had rolled his tongue around the name with relish, Jesuit-baiting being one of his favourite pastimes.

  ‘Exactly,’ Hummerlich had fired back.

  ‘But Father, the two Cologne merchants have been accused of wizardry as well as being secret Protestants. Not forgetting the Jewess…’

  ‘The Jewess is irrelevant. You and I both know the sorcery charges are a sham. What I want to know is what you, as the highest anointed official of the Catholic Church in this city, are going to do about it?’

  Heinrich’s ears are still ringing with the Jesuit’s fury and he has come away with a splitting headache. All in all the situation is a catastrophe. On the one hand he has the Jesuits and every other Catholic fanatic bellowing for blood; on the other he has the Gaffeln demanding leniency for the arrested merchants. And that is without taking into consideration the secular politics of the situation. Damn the Dutch, and the French, and damn Leopold and his cronies—especially that oily sadist Solitario, the archbishop thinks.

  The Spaniard’s latest atrocity is to dust off the cathedral’s copy of the infamous Malleus Maleficarum, The Hammer of the Witches, a textbook for the identification, prosecution and dispatching of those suspected of sorcery, written by two German Dominicans, Henricus Institoris and Jacob Sprenger, in 1487. Solitario actually had the audacity to tell Heinrich that he was honouring Cologne by referring to the tome. Privately the archbishop is appalled. P
oor van Dorf and Voss are already half-dead from the rigorous methods of detection pulled from the book.

  As a consequence, the entire Voss family, including several bawling babies in arms, have been camped outside Heinrich’s chambers for the past week. The young Müller sons are rumoured to be in Paris, attempting to gain an audience with King Louis himself; meanwhile Heinrich and von Fürstenberg live in fear that Herr Müller will confess their involvement in his secret activities for the French and condemn them both. In short the whole situation is shaping up to be untenable.

  The archbishop kicks out at a mangy kitten which has sidled up to him. What should he do? Who can he turn to? He trusts no one, least of all von Fürstenberg, who was responsible for planting Müller into the guilds to begin with. Müller—really a Frenchman called Metain—was recruited some fifteen years before and Heinrich had become so accustomed to receiving the clandestine information he had actually forgotten the dangers surrounding his emissary. Without the spy he feels disadvantaged, as if he is missing both his ears and his eyes. After all, the archbishop needs all the information he can get, considering that he is not allowed to remain in the city longer than three days without permission from the bürgers.

  What are the guilds actually up to, he wonders. It is impossible to keep track of the machinations of all twenty-two subdivisions of the Gaffeln, damn them. And barely one of them pro-French or supportive of the aristocracy, yet all united in their hatred of the archbishop. And now Müller, a royalist, is paradoxically accused of being a secret Protestant and worse, a supporter of Jan de Witt’s Republican party. Understandably Müller is furious and has already demanded an audience with the archbishop and his Machiavellian minister; Heinrich knows it is to demand a pardon they cannot afford to give. Yes, it is a dangerous, ridiculous situation but something will have to be done, and swiftly.

  Frustrated, he looks heavenward and is further aggravated to see the town hall tower, a structure built by the triumphant bürgers with confiscated money from the banished patrician families. To Heinrich the sight is a constant and irritating reminder of his own impotence.