The Witch of Cologne

by Tobsha Learner

Ruth, dressed in a fashionable bonnet and a satinisco blue and yellow overcoat, walks across the cobblestones, hurrying from the shade of one elm tree to another. She hails a boatman and instructs him to take her over to Harlemmerstraat.

  The boatman, a tall thickset man bearing a scar across his cheek from the Spanish wars, holds out his palm, a straw held between his fingers. He watches the shadow cast by the makeshift sundial, surmises the correct time then agrees to the journey. His son steadies the midwife’s arm as she steps into the barge carefully balancing her bag of instruments.

  Ruth glances across the shimmering water towards the sun. With luck she will be home before Detlef begins his morning toilet. She left him dozing heavily, his arm thrown beyond the curtain which separates the sleeping alcove from the rest of their humble room. He has just returned from Rotterdam where he gave sermons in the scattering of Remonstrant institutions across northern Holland.

  Once Detlef decided to become a Protestant, he chose to join the Remonstrants over the other Calvinist faiths because he was drawn to the Dutch theologian Arminius, their founder, who had challenged Calvin’s doctrine of predestination some sixty years before. The Remonstrants are the most liberal and least dogmatic of their revolutionary brethren: their variations from orthodoxy are conditional rather than absolute, they believe in universal atonement, the necessity of regeneration through the Holy Ghost, the possibility of resistance to divine grace and the possibility of relapse from grace. All this, and more, drew Detlef to them, and within their ranks he has found acceptance of both his marriage and his beliefs.

  Although Ruth is proud of him, a gnawing apprehension always grips her when he is away on his travels. Part of her wishes they had stayed anonymous: Herr and Frau Tennen, married by a Protestant preacher in a forest chapel near the German border with Mother Nature the only witness. But after two years as pastor in a small church in the Nieuwendijk, a working-class slum famous for prostitution, Detlef became swept up in the intellectual fury of the times. His sermons spoke increasingly of the importance of the Republic, of a democracy where all should be equal, of the human aspects of the Bible rather than its divinity. But it is only since he has introduced anti-slavery sentiments and disapproval of the Dutch slave traders into his orations that he has begun to attract real enemies.

  Would she have him any other way? It is impossible to imagine. She has watched Detlef transform from an individual with little belief in the notion of the inherent goodness of man to a humanist convinced that, with guidance, man is able to elevate himself above his base nature. Now, free from the machinations and politics of Cologne, Detlef has found a vocation in direct communication with his congregation and it has infused him with purpose. How could she wrest him away from that for the sake of remaining incognito? To do such a thing would be to strip him of a dignity he has finally won through his actions rather than his birthright.

  The canal narrows and the streets on either side become visibly poorer, the newer elegant mansions replaced by slender older houses sandwiched together, the upper storeys hanging over the cobbled pavements, the frontages noticeably dirtier. A stench rises up from the water, a dead cat floats by forcing Ruth to hold a handkerchief to her face.

  The barge approaches the small pier at the bottom of her street. Already at the musico on the corner—a bordello thinly disguised as a theatre—several sailors and a chevalier are sitting around an oval table smoking clay pipes. Ruth guesses they are revellers from the night before. A stout prostitute, her broad face flushed with beer, straddles the lap of one man while coquettishly snatching the meerschaum of another. The rosy-faced men, drunk, roar with laughter as she blows smoke rings into the haze of morning light.

  The barge bumps up against the straw-filled buoy and after handing the boatman his fee of two stuivers, Ruth climbs up onto the wharf and makes her way towards a humble red-brick dwelling with open wooden shutters.

  Detlef is sitting at his desk, a heavy day coat of blue serge hanging over his shoulders. There are grey flecks through his blond hair which now hangs down to his shoulders. She watches his hands as he writes, the feathered quill dancing across the page. Youthful in their energy, they are now more worn, the chafed knuckles bonier, vulnerable. She walks up behind him and buries her face in his neck and shoulder, breathing in deeply. Home. The scent of him, and with it trust, security.

  He drops his pen and reaches blindly for her behind him.

  ‘How was the birthing?’

  ‘Hard but successful. They now have their first child and she will live.’

  ‘My wife, the saviour of many.’

  ‘In this case your fame preceded my own. The young maidservant was most curious about the infamous Pastor Tennen and his radical teachings.’

  ‘You are jealous?’

  ‘I would prefer it if my husband were less of a public figure and more a creature around whom I could wind my domestic security.’

  ‘We are safe, Ruth. This I promise you.’

  Detlef swings around and faces her. The lines in his face have deepened and the last vestiges of youth have vanished. A new maturity has blunted the edges of a severity she once found arrogant. It is as if finally he is comfortable in his own skin.

  Mein Mann, my husband, she thinks, marvelling again at the intimacy, the unquestioning bond between them, which has blossomed over the past four years. Four years of extraordinary change, and also loss, for after Jacob Ruth failed to hold another pregnancy. She has suffered three miscarriages and suspects that, in the haste of the first birth, her cervix was torn thus destroying the chance of a second child. With each loss she grieved anew, despite Detlef’s reassurances that one healthy child was blessing enough.

  He pulls her face to his and kisses her, the intelligence between them quickening as their tongues explore, finding that familiar core of desire which shoots through both their bodies and leaves them trembling.

  Detlef pushes off her linen cap as Ruth’s hands pluck at the laced crotch of his hose. She wants him naked, against her. The sweat of his skin sweetening her mouth. She desires him now. But he makes her wait, his mouth travelling down her neck, biting into her as his hands throw up the back of her skirt and roughly tear down her petticoats. Cupping her buttocks he buries his face between her breasts, searching for the long hard nipples that press against the silk of her undergarment.

  Staring for a moment at the darkening areolae which glow beautifully against the pale skin of his wife’s breasts, Detlef marvels at how the familiar can remain so inherently unattainable. No matter how many times he makes love to her, how many times he sees her face quicken with ecstasy, there is an aspect of her closed to him, as if somewhere between her own arrest and the murder of her father she lost the ability to trust, and with that the ability to truly surrender herself. It is this impassable landscape which he is always trying to conquer that keeps him in a constant state of burning. And it is this restless state of exclusion that propels him across the countryside, as if he can only know he is truly loved through his impassioned sermons and the fevered eyes of his inspired audience.

  Squeezing one nipple he sucks down on the other hard, sharp, feeling her pain quicken to pleasure then back to pain, while his fingers play her, penetrating her roughly, wanting to possess her, reach her, make her moan. Then, when she is tearing at his hair, her legs quivering, he buries his face beneath her skirts and kneeling plays her with his mouth until she bursts in bliss. Only then does he gently place his thick hard organ against her swollen lips, resting for an infinitesimal exquisite moment as he stares into her eyes, the memory of their lives together spiralling back like a delicate seaplant in an ocean of deep emerald. He enters her so slowly that Ruth fears she will scream again, wanting him to fill her, to obliterate all but his pulsating flesh throbbing within her.

  He takes the tip of her tongue, sucking gently he mirrors the action of his cock, riding her faster and faster until he has her feet locked behind his neck, the bulk of him encompassing her whole body
as he fills her over and over until both of them come in a shuddering wave. The intensity of which, as it ebbs, makes them break into spontaneous laughter.

  Lifting her up on his hips, he carries her over to their sleeping cot set high in the wall, enclosed by a curtain. There he lies her down, and after peeling off his jerkin and hose falls beside her, one heavy hand curled across her narrow waist as they both tumble into deep sleep.

  ‘Papa! Papa!’

  A small pink hand creeps around the edge of the drape. Detlef opens one eye as the hand finds its way to his big toe and pulls. A shriek of delighted laughter follows as Detlef, smiling, gently shifts Ruth’s sleeping head from his shoulder and pulls the curtain across. Jacob, naked except for a smock, a spinning top trailing behind him, stares up at his father with huge eyes, blond curls tumbling to his shoulders.

  ‘Papa!’ he demands, stamping his bare foot as he reaches out to be held. Detlef swings him into the cot, tucking the restless child down beside Ruth who sleepily cradles both her husband and son.

  Jacob pulls at his father’s ears then tries to put a finger up his nose as Detlef allows his son to crawl over his chest. The boy is indulged, that Detlef realises: his colleagues are always ridiculing him for being such a lenient and attentive father, but he cannot help but adore his only child.

  He has never quite recovered from the immeasurable happiness he first felt on staring into that face which reflects so much of himself. A certain pensiveness he has seen flickering in the young boy’s eyes; Jacob’s joy at small things—ants dragging a beetle, his first snowflakes, the cat yawning. The four year old’s mouth and nose, a distinctive bent to his forefinger, are of Detlef’s family but the green eyes and the determined chin are his mother’s, as is the child’s quickening to anger.

  Through half-opened lashes Ruth watches her husband with their child. He is so calm with him, she thinks, marvelling at the way Detlef’s face softens immediately Jacob is in his arms. Instinctively the boy knows his father, recognises Detlef’s quiet but intense curiosity, his sudden flashes of impatience, his gentleness, as character traits of his own. Perhaps this is why so few words pass between them, she observes, as if father and child can read each other’s minds without the necessity of speech. She is a lucky woman indeed, to have married for love and intellect and now to have the gift of a child who will carry on both their spirits in time.

  ‘My colleagues wonder why my son is not yet baptised,’ Detlef remarks upon hearing Ruth sigh.

  “Tis none of their business.’

  ‘The Remonstrant brotherhood is most liberal, however for one of their own ministers to have an unbaptised son and a wife who will not attend church…’

  ‘By his mother’s heritage the child is a Jew, he cannot be baptised. I will not permit it, not after what happened to me.’

  ‘So not baptised but circumcised. Ruth, what are we bringing up in the world? A Jewish Protestant? The poor babe is neither fish nor fowl.’

  Ruth props herself up and stares at her husband; a cheeky smile is playing across his mouth. Just then Jacob triumphantly inserts one of his fingers into Detlef’s nostril. Detlef pulls the offending finger out then grabs Jacob and lifts him up in the air. The child squeals with delight, his limbs kicking freely.

  ‘Jacob shall be a citizen of the new world. When he is of age he shall choose for himself which faith, if any, he wishes to pursue. I will not have any doctrine thrust upon an innocent,’ Ruth replies then playfully bites Detlef’s shoulder.

  Smiling, he lowers the laughing child. ‘Until then, to whom, pray, are we to entrust our child’s soul?’

  ‘Ourselves. As parents we are guardians of both the physical and the spiritual wellbeing of our child.’

  ‘I think I could persuade the brothers to accept that argument.’

  ‘A pox on them all if they don’t.’

  ‘Wife, you are still the heretic, even in this liberal city.’

  ‘Now more a seeker of knowledge than a heretic, in as much as my sex will allow.’

  ‘I will not have you adopt male attire again. I suspect that would create a scandal even the Remonstrants might find hard to explain. We shall employ the maid at night also to allow more freedom for your studies.’

  ‘Detlef, they will burn you yet,’ she murmurs, smiling.

  ‘Indeed they may. But my deal is not struck yet. My barter has conditions,’ he says, tickling her.

  She pushes him off. ‘Which are?’

  ‘That you attend the next collegiate meeting in Rijnsburg which, it is said, a great mind and a great mentor has promised to attend.’

  ‘Benedict Spinoza?’

  ‘The renegade Hebrew himself, and with your attendance he should feel most at home.’

  ‘And who am I to be, Detlef? Felix van Jos, the earnest apprentice? Ruth bas Elazar Saul, the heretic midwife? Or the good Frau Tennen?’

  ‘It is time you wrote to him as your true self. They say that Spinoza is much troubled over Adriaan Koerbagh’s death.’

  ‘We all are—it is a warning that should be heeded, Detlef.’

  ‘Perhaps. But I refuse to live my life in fear. I will preach what I preach and suffer the consequences.’

  ‘What about us, your family?’

  ‘You have my love and protection, always, Ruth. Enough gloom. You must come with me to the meeting. I am sure it will be of great solace to Spinoza to see an old associate.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  They are interrupted by Jacob demanding that he be told, again, the story about Hanke the mouse and how he was taken by the terrible stork.

  Leopold bends over a tall pale pink orchid and sniffs at it tentatively.

  ‘Some of these blooms are entirely without scent. One wonders if they are to be pollinated by colour alone.’

  The emperor, dressed in his morning robe, stands in the baroque conservatory where he is dwarfed by a cascade of tropical plants and ferns, all gifts from allied colonies.

  ‘It is a magnificent plant, a veritable feat of creation. A present, your highness?’

  The inquisitor, his face etched more deeply with the frustrations of the past four years, sniffs at the offered flower then sneezes vigorously. Leopold, amused by the priest’s obvious lack of sensuality, smiles.

  ‘From the Grand Fez of Morocco—he courts me for he fears Sultan Mahomet. So, Inquisitor, what urgent information do you have for me that brings me from my morning repose?’

  Carlos steps closer.

  ‘I believe you have been having some trouble with the ambitious Georg Friedrich von Waldeck.’

  The emperor looks up sharply. As much as he personally dislikes the friar he cannot help but admire his political astuteness. For a second he envies the Dominican his spies.

  ‘The leader of the Wetterau Union, like many of the Wittelsbach princes of the Rhineland, is nervous about the Dutch war. He fears it will spread,’ Leopold replies cautiously.

  ‘So much so that he has opened his court to his Catholic counterparts…unusual for a Protestant.’ The friar’s smile broadens.

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘In fact I hear that our good friend Count von Tennen has started a flirtation with von Waldeck. Von Tennen has supplied you with both troops and money in the past to fight the Turk, has he not?’

  ‘Along with many of the Wittelsbachs.’ Leopold plunges a hand into a flower pot and rubs the soil between his fingertips.

  ‘A clan so loyal that even Maximilian Heinrich has been seen in the company of von Waldeck. Perhaps Cologne will join the Wetterau Union.’ Carlos’s voice is rich with sarcasm.

  Leopold looks away, trying to control a nervous tic in his eye. This is indeed news to him: after Count Gerhard von Tennen’s hospitality towards his nephew, the emperor had thought it safe to count on von Tennen’s future loyalty. But Maximilian Heinrich…he is a constant anxiety.

  ‘It is only natural that the German leagues should feel insecure. Who wouldn’t with that buffoon de Witt in the west and Louis�
� greedy French fingers spreading out from the south-east?’

  ‘Naturally. And naturally we would not want them getting any ideas about their own independence, would we? Somehow I suspect von Waldeck’s ambitions might be secular. Before we know it, the Protestants will be getting into bed with the Mohammedans as well as the Catholics. Frankly, it all seems rather obscene not to mention blasphemous.’

  Barely controlling his anger Leopold snaps the stem of a pale yellow lily then immediately regrets it.

  ‘What are you proposing, Friar? Our audience is quickly drawing to an end.’

  ‘Detlef von Tennen—Gerhard’s brother—once a Catholic canon with the Cologne chapter is now a Protestant pastor whose lectures openly question both the divinity of the Bible and the territorial rights of your own dynasty, the exalted Hapsburgs, your highness.’

  ‘So I have heard, but what of it? He is in Holland—out of our reach, my good friar. Perhaps it would wise to resign ourselves to his maledictions…all after, they are only words.’

  ‘He gathers support, and draws interest from your own territories, including some powerful allies within the Wetterau Union.’

  ‘He does?’

  Seizing his opportunity the inquisitor leans across.

  ‘Detlef von Tennen might be beyond our grasp but Gerhard von Tennen is not. I have a notion that might appeal, for it serves both of us, your majesty: namely, jolting Archbishop Heinrich into remembering who is his emperor and, at the same time, bringing the heretical canon to his knees.’

  After glancing over his shoulder for spies, the friar steps forward to whisper into the royal ear.

  ‘I know where Detlef von Tennen is, and I believe there is a way of luring him to Cologne to stand trial.’

  The emperor, brushing an attentive bee away from his face, sits down heavily on a large upturned flower pot and steels himself for the friar’s conspiratorial strategies.

  Maximilian Heinrich stares out at the pouring rain. The half-built spire juts out lonely and abandoned. The archbishop has again failed to inspire the funds to resume construction of the cathedral; he has almost given up his vision of the massive Gothic structure soaring above all else in Cologne. Heinrich has felt the power of the Catholic church ebb away during the past four years. Detlef von Tennen’s shameful flight to Holland has not helped, nor his very public conversion to the Protestant church—worse, to one of its radical mutations that the decadent Netherlander liberalism seems to encourage like field mushrooms blossoming out of a pail of horse manure.