The Witch of Cologne

by Tobsha Learner

  Detlef nods to Groot who presents a large doll to the court, a makeshift copy of a child in roughly sewn cotton with pieces of the straw stuffing still protruding at the seams, its face crudely drawn features upon the bulge of thin cloth which serves as the head. With a dramatic flourish, Groot holds it up to the magistrate.

  ‘I have had this posy made as a crude model of the baby,’ Detlef announces.

  The magistrate peers blearily at the facsimile then glances at the chubby infant asleep in the merchant wife’s arms. ‘A wonderful likeness, Canon, well done,’ he declares pompously in a surprisingly deep voice for such a short man.

  ‘Thank you, sire.’

  Detlef swings back to his audience.

  ‘For the benefit of the jury, Meisterin Brassant, I would like you to describe what you saw Fräulein Saul do to the child after the birth.’

  ‘But she cannot. I had administered a draught to stop her pain,’ Ruth interjects, now worried that she might become victim to the woman’s fictions.

  ‘Despite the opiate I saw what happened.’

  ‘And what was that?’ Detlef gently asks, trying to coax both witnesses into a friendlier discourse.

  ‘My child was born blue and lifeless. I saw with my own eyes the witch holding the poor thing up by its feet. It was dead. It was then that I started screaming.’

  ‘The child was born with the umbilical cord wrapped around its neck, Canon. It is not an uncommon occurrence. I had to cut the cord and peg it while the babe was still emerging in order to save both mother and babe. I also knew that if I untangled the cord quickly enough and brought air into its lungs, the child would live.’

  The jurors, captivated by the sudden flourish of activity, sit up as Ruth gazes pensively at the misshapen parody of a baby lying before her.

  ‘Fräulein Saul, would it be possible to demonstrate just how you brought the child back to life?’

  Ruth tentatively picks up the stuffed doll.

  ‘As the baby’s head hung from the matrix I manipulated it to free the cord. I pegged it in two places and cut so as to save mother and child from bleeding to death. I then moved the babe so I could free the first shoulder until the rest followed easily, as is the custom in birth. After it was freed, I placed my mouth over the nose and mouth and sucked to clear the passages for breath. I then spat out the birthing fluids and again covered the babe’s mouth, this time to breathe air into the tiny creature.’

  ‘What happened then?’

  ‘The child finally breathed life into itself.’

  ‘There was no witchcraft nor magic used?’

  ‘Canon, I am a midwife. I use only the practices of my art and some medical knowledge I have learnt in the Lowlands.’

  ‘But I saw something,’ Abigail Brassant blurts out. ‘There was a circle of ashes and a talisman, a witch’s thing she had hung at the foot of the bed…’

  Meister Brassant pushes his wife back down in her seat. ‘Hush, woman, you are full of such fancies!’

  ‘I am not! I saw Lilith, I swear! Satan’s dame herself, floating before me, one long leg—the leg of a screech owl—reaching out for me with the shining bell of Hades caught in its claw!’

  ‘She’s right, but it was not a leg of Lilith that Meisterin Brassant saw, rather an instrument of scientia nova which she mistook while under the influence of the opiate I administered. It is an object I use to listen to the heart beating beneath the flesh, a wondrous device sent to me from Holland. I needed to follow the life force in mother and child.’

  Detlef watches the jury as Groot hands to the first bürger the device made from a single length of cow gut with a small cap of brass fastened to the end. The merchant, a portly tailor, sniffs the brass cap, sneezes, then places it on his wrist.

  ‘The end is placed in the ear while the small cap goes over the chest,’ Ruth explains, anxious that the object should not be misinterpreted.

  Amused, the tailor puts the end of the tube in his ear and places the cap on the chest of the bürger beside him, a scrawny undertaker. Shocked by the deafening heartbeat which suddenly fills his head, the tailor tears off the listening device.

  ‘’Tis indeed wondrous!’ He turns to the undertaker, ‘Wim, for a cadaverous slip of a man you are thunderously alive.’

  The instrument is eagerly seized by the other members of the jury who, one by one, listen to each other’s heartbeat.

  ‘Gentlemen, gentlemen!’ Detlef shouts over the clamour. ‘As you see, it is definitely scientia nova not the black arts that makes Fräulein Saul an eminent and highly successful member of her profession.’

  ‘’Tis true,’ exclaims the third member of the jury, a robust ruddy-faced sailor in his twenties from the influential guild of fishmongers. ‘She delivered my Maria of twins and both were bonny and very healthy. It would be a crime to wrongfully execute such a valuable midwife. I say we acquit her with no more ado,’ the young man finishes forcefully, repeating with naive sincerity the line Detlef rehearsed with him barely two hours before.

  The other bürgers, thankful for the prospect of liberation from the unbearably stuffy chamber, join in with eager yeas.

  Confident of a victory Detlef glances at the judge, who winks back. Lifting the hammer, a veritable mallet in his tiny hands, the magistrate slams it down onto his lectern. ‘Silence in court!’

  Immediately the merchants cease their chattering. The magistrate, immensely pleased now that he has managed to flex his authority, pulls up his shoulders and adopts a fierce visage which fools no one.

  ‘I dismiss all the charges on one proviso: that the midwife Ruth bas Elazar Saul is refused the right ever to practise midwifery again within the walls of this fair city.’

  Immediately Elazar is on his feet. Tuvia embraces him while the onlookers break into a babble. ‘Court dismissed!’ the judge shouts over the commotion.

  Relieved, Detlef swings around to Ruth. Her face is dazed with disbelief as her father hobbles forward to embrace her. Behind them von Fürstenberg hurriedly leaves the chamber; at the same time Birgit slips out unnoticed.

  In the sanctuary of her coach, Birgit lifts her veil. She has never seen Detlef so alight with passion, not even in the pulpit. She admires him for it: he is more of a philanthropist than she had realised. She decides to send a message and wait for him that night.

  As for the Jewess, she is so plain that Birgit sincerely doubts whether Detlef even perceives her as female. All the midwife represents to him is the key to a spiritual quest, the gentlewoman concludes, the answer to the moral emptiness he has felt of late. And so, excited at the thought of how she intends to reward her lover for his legal victory, she orders the coachman to drive on.

  The swaying of the carriage causes the hem of the midwife’s full skirt to rustle against the wooden edge of the leather-covered seat. It is a demure black dress made of bombazine, opened in the front with a cream lace petticoat showing. Ruth, unaccustomed to such elegant and feminine costume, wriggles uncomfortably. They are garments purchased by Detlef with the help of Groot’s landlady, at his insistence that Ruth cannot attend the prince dressed in her usual simple woollen cloak and plain hessian dress.

  She has not worn anything as decorative or as womanly since Aaron’s bar mitzvah and she feels painfully conscious of both her physicality and sex. More than that, she is unbearably aware of the fact that she is not wearing the yellow circle that is the compulsory insignia for Jews. Although she lived and travelled in Holland in plainclothes, it was as Felix van Jos—a deceit so profound it was tolerable. But now, travelling through Germania in the guise of an aristocratic Christian woman, Ruth feels a fraud and a betrayer of her race.

  At her feet sits her bag of medical equipment. Staring down she wonders whether she really has the training to cure the young prince. From the few facts she has been able to obtain she knows the aristocrat’s ailment is of an abdominal nature. She learnt much from Dirk Kerckrinck and has studied for herself Galen’s definitive text on anatomy, but with h
er life depending on the outcome she is suddenly besieged by doubt.

  The coach jolts violently as the wheels hit a deep rut. The canon’s foot slips across the floor and touches her own. Startled, Ruth looks across. Detlef appears undisturbed, his carved profile in repose.

  He has changed from his clerical attire into that of the aristocrat. It is the first time she has seen him in such a guise and initially she thought the powdered wig with its ribboned pigtail total foppery. But now as she stares at his heavy eyelids, the sweep of his patrician nose and the full mouth that betrays an innate sensuality, she feels a part of her, long buried, begin to shift. Embarrassed she looks down again, only to be distracted by the sight of Detlef’s shapely leg visible up to the thigh in hose. This time, shocked by her carnal thoughts, she closes her eyes and begins to quietly recite in Latin a particularly difficult passage of Ovid. Ovid! She has to concentrate to remember something a little less erotic, settling this time on Virgil, the most cerebral of the ancients. Thankful for the distraction, she relaxes into a stanza.

  Feigning sleep, Detlef watches her through the stuttering gates of his eyelashes. Ever since Ruth reluctantly donned the clothes he purchased for her, the canon has been in a state of extraordinary confusion. The midwife has magically metamorphosed into a noblewoman of his own status, an individual he would in normal circumstances happily seduce across the crowded floor of some ballroom or even in the intimacy of a literary parlour. The fusion of these two personas—the visionary who holds the key to knowledge he has until now only dreamt of, and the female—suddenly makes her obtainable. Overwhelmed by desire, Detlef has never been so profoundly disturbed in the presence of a woman.

  And this is exactly how he finds himself, having gazed surreptitiously for over an hour at her slender waist, the skirt which blossoms over surprisingly full hips, her narrow ankles, the delicate white bone of her wrist, the lattice of veins beneath the translucent skin, the pulse of her blood that beats mercilessly in the hollow of her slender neck. And most torturous of all, the swelling of her two breasts, the curved milky contours of which he has already fantasised making love to a thousand times over. Even now, in this moment as his foot bumps innocently against her own, he finds himself imagining how it would feel to intertwine his naked toes with hers, to draw her into the curve of his own body, to taste what lies between those thighs.

  Another jolt sends the coach swerving. Detlef’s long waistcoat, which has been concealing the growing bulge beneath his breeches, is flung up. Swiftly he tucks it back across himself then looks over at Ruth. Thankfully she still has her eyes closed tightly. He crosses his legs and stares out at the passing landscape in an effort to distract himself.

  Judging by the short shadows of the passing trees, he estimates that it is mid morning. They left Cologne at dawn, partly to arrive at Das Grüntal as soon as possible, but also to leave before the city awoke.

  Maximilian Heinrich, wary of condemnation by the Gaffeln which is still outraged at Voss and Müller’s executions, insisted that the departure be made in absolute secrecy. Having dealt with the inquisitor’s fury on discovering upon their return from Kloster Eberbach that the trial of the midwife had proceeded without him, Heinrich felt overwhelmed by attacks from all fronts and wanted to avoid infuriating the Dominican further. At a secret meeting he promised Ruth that he would deliver her safely back to her father should her mission prove successful. The same day in a private audience with Detlef, Heinrich ordered the canon to watch the Jewess’s every move. If she should make a mistake and hasten the death of the Hapsburg prince it will prove disastrous for both Heinrich and his archbishopric. But if she should cure the prince, Leopold will be beholden to him and an indebted emperor is exactly what Heinrich needs in order to continue his covert relations with the French unhindered by Vienna.

  Because she is a Hebrew, Ruth is banned from touching the prince directly. This is the law. With this understanding Detlef has assured Heinrich that he intends to uphold the decree and that while treating the young royal, the midwife’s instructions will be executed by the most competent of the count’s servants.

  The coach rolls past a peat collector. Detlef watches the lone figure in his short smock and hose, his pointed cap pulled down over his freezing ears, slicing the sodden earth into small squares of black. In the near distance a solitary wisp of thin blue-grey smoke rises from the peasant’s ramshackle cottage, barely more than three crooked walls challenging the wind. In front a young child in rags plays on the frozen mud while a small pug chases its own tail. It is a scene that has not altered for hundreds of years and probably will not for a hundred more, Detlef thinks. His mind wanders to the peasants’ revolt of 1525, a bloody and shameful episode engraved on the German psyche, an event his grandfather used to recount as a victory of birthright over lower animal spirit. Glancing back at the pitiful man struggling against the elements, Detlef wonders whether he himself wouldn’t have picked up hoe and pick to rebel against a life of enslavement.

  ‘Are we on your family lands yet?’

  Ruth’s voice pulls him back to the charged atmosphere of the carriage.

  ‘No, it will be a few more miles until we get to the von Tennen estate. Do you wish to stop and refresh yourself?’

  ‘No, thank you. The bones in my corset have managed to suspend all bodily functions including hunger.’

  Detlef, unsure whether there is sarcasm in her voice, is at a loss. ‘Are you uncomfortable?’

  ‘I am not used to such attire. I am unconvinced by the sentiment that women should endure for beauty.’

  ‘The dress becomes you regardless of your convictions. I now see that you are first a woman, second a renegade.’

  ‘I would rather be a comfortable renegade than a suffering beauty.’

  ‘Perhaps one day you shall be both.’

  ‘I fear not; not in these times at least. Canon, if I should fail…’

  ‘You will not.’ His answer is direct, determined to curtail any burgeoning anxiety in her mind. ‘You cannot, for your sake and for mine.’

  Again they lapse into silence.

  Ruth watches the breeze bending the branches of the linden trees, rustling through the budding leaves like water streaming through river weed. What if she does not succeed? What if the prince cannot be cured, what then? One moment of doubt unleashes a multitude of others. Remembering Spinoza’s philosophy of applying intellectual discipline to rein in one’s passions, she tries to become as detached as possible. She will separate her emotions from her craft. She will approach the prince like any other patient. Images of the anatomy of the midriff float across her mind’s eye: the spiralling length of the bowel, the small intestine, the stomach, the spleen. It has to be the bowel, she concludes just as Detlef interrupts.

  ‘You know, in that dress you could be mistaken for a Bavarian princess.’

  ‘But why should I wish to be?’

  ‘I just meant—’

  ‘You meant that I no longer resemble a Hebrew?’

  Detlef blushes for this is exactly what he meant. ‘I intend no offence.’

  ‘You are right, Canon, in these clothes I could pass for a dark-haired southerner or perhaps an Austrian. But as soon as I walked into a banquet hall or a court my bearing would give me away. I cannot picture what it is to travel and live freely, unencumbered by race. I cannot imagine what it is to be born a count or a lord or a countess, to believe in one’s innate superiority. My own father taught me to believe in intelligence, spiritual wisdom and the written word. But he also brought me up in a world where we are unwanted, mistrusted and must learn to become invisible to survive.’ She smiles ruefully. ‘I was a bad pupil. So you see, even in this dress I could not walk beside you without fear.’

  Silently Detlef grapples with the reality of her world. Ruth, reading his stillness as acquiescence, continues.

  ‘He also tried to teach me to be a good Jewish wife, to never ask questions, to watch hidden above the men at prayer. Pointlessly he wrestled
with me in an attempt to convince me to respect the confines of my sex and finally, when he betrothed me, I fled.’

  ‘You are an unusual creature. I have not yet met a woman like you.’

  ‘I am surprised that a man of the cloth should have many female acquaintances, unless of course they are also in service.’

  ‘Fräulein Saul, my dedication is to the piety of the soul not to the purity of the body.’

  He stares directly at her with candour, his desire obvious. Suddenly Ruth knows with absolute certainty that he wants her. Trembling, she waits.

  Leaning forward Detlef takes her hand, and turning it palm up begins to unbutton the row of seed pearls that fasten the kid glove. The tips of his fingers draw small circles of ecstasy across her skin, stroking the centre of her palm so softly it is as if he has guessed the intelligence of her pleasure, every caress sending ripples throughout her whole body while he maintains his steady gaze, a knowing smile playing across his lips.

  It is the smile of a connoisseur, of one who delights in his craft, Ruth thinks, shivering at the thought of what those hands so skilfully promise. After an eternity he reaches her naked wrist, where he pauses for permission. Bewildered, she pulls away, struggling to rebutton what he has undone.

  ‘Of the soul I know something.’ She tries to cover the rawness of her confusion with words. ‘Of the body nothing, except in the landscape of the medic. Perhaps I shall die this way. I cannot see myself as a wife.’

  ‘If there is a man who can fire your imagination, he will deserve your hand.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  Blushing, she turns away.

  The coach begins to climb. Ruth watches as the thick forest thins out to mountainous scrubland with a sparse cover of spruce trees and pine saplings. A herd of rugged-looking goats grazing amid the undergrowth comes into view as the coach continues up the broken muddy track. Finally the land opens out to a windy plain. Here icy banks lie thawing while spring growth breaks the stained snow with shoots of bright green.