The Witch of Cologne (14 page)

Staring at the clock Detlef tries to control his increasing agitation.

Heinrich suddenly remembers his dream in front of the crucifix at Saint Severin. Christ instructed him to have faith in blood and stop worrying about the loaves. Suddenly all becomes clear: as his cousin, Detlef is blood. Could the loaves be Vienna—the inquisitor and all the other ‘dough’ he has to answer to?

‘I shall arrange for you to take over the interrogation of Ruth bas Elazar Saul for one month only and I shall challenge the Inquisition on their jurisdiction over her as the daughter of a
conservo
and Spanish citizen, even if she is baptised. My argument shall be that of nationhood: as a denizen of Cologne, the woman has the right to be tried here by Germans. It is a thin justification and will stall the zealot only
temporarily but I have a plan to remove him entirely during the trial. Luckily for us, the roads from here to Vienna are still badly war-torn and the good Lord only knows what perils a messenger might face along the way.’

Heinrich crosses himself piously. There is a rustle of starched linen and silk as his entourage follows suit.

‘In that case, my good lord, I need your testimony immediately. Monsignor Solitario is this very moment at his handiwork and I fear the Jewess may not survive her first ordeal.’

Surprised, Heinrich glances across at his assistant who nods. The archbishop claps his hands and a page runs forward with a quill and scroll. Pressing the document against the kneeling boy’s back, Heinrich scrawls a hurried note and completes it with the flourish of his distinctive signature. After waving the ink dry and sealing it with a blob of crimson wax, he hands it to Detlef.

‘Go, and God speed. I will not have the cathedral soiled by the blood of an innocent,’ he adds theatrically, relishing the role of moral campaigner.

But Detlef, not quite believing his easy victory, has already tucked the scroll into his cassock and is hurrying to the door. Groot follows, flushed with the exhilaration of his master’s triumph.

B
urning.
White splinters of pain. Somewhere the sound of muffled music. Ruth is about to surrender. She wants to stop hurting. Her body screams for release. Blinking, she peers up through the pale green light. The tender features of her mother push through the surface of the water, smiling down at her like the carved prow of a drowned ship. Sara is beckoning her: one breath and you are with me…come…come. Memories of her scent, her soft voice, the warmth of home, dance seductively across Ruth’s mind. Just as she is about to breathe in, daggers of glass pierce every inch of her torso. The cold is so severe that she cannot think, her mind squeezing down into the last thread of basic instinct: do not breathe…do not breathe…For how much longer? Again her mother’s face appears, a strand of Sara’s hair slips from its cowl and spirals down towards Ruth, a shimmering ebony in the darkness. It is like Jacob’s ladder. Ruth knows that if she can only reach out and take hold of it she will climb out of this pain, out of the cold and the
darkness, into the safety of her mother’s arms. All she need do is surrender, breathe in oblivion. Suddenly a congealing blob appears, floating suspended below her. As Ruth stares at it the mass reveals itself to be a knot of slippery eels writhing around each other in a frenzy. A white hand snakes out from the contorting fish. Lilith. Ruth twists wildly in her ropes but it is too late, the demon’s face follows the hand, her huge eyes glowing, her fingers reaching for Ruth, grabbing at her flesh. Her mouth snaps open, teeth glistening, and she lunges for the bound woman.

The viola da gamba clasped between his knees, Carlos watches impassively as a bubble of blood breaks the surface of the dark water. He glances at the hourglass on the walnut table beside him: the sand ran out a full twenty seconds before. His bow trembles in the air before swooping down to begin another stanza.

Juan stares at the floor, watching a cockroach nibble at a clump of human hair with a fragment of skin still attached. It is his way of avoiding witnessing the dunking. A superstitious man who, despite bouts of promiscuity, takes the spiritual aspects of his vocation extremely seriously, the clerk is anxious for his soul. Will he be condemned for partaking even passively in such unholy investigations? He glances up for a second and is relieved to see Carlos finally signal to the torturer.

Herr Bull pushes down on the heavy wooden plank and Ruth’s bound form bursts from the vat of freezing water. Rivulets run from the crown of her head and her long black hair is plastered down, her skin is a bluish-white and blood streams from her nostrils and ears. Her violet lips pull down in a grimace of pain as she breathes in a heaving gasp of air then vomits out a clear stream of bile. With the nonchalance of the professional, the torturer throws a bucket of warm water over her which sets her off in a convulsion of shivering.

The inquisitor thrusts a piece of parchment at her. ‘Confess, Ruth Navarro, and your soul shall be redeemed. Your agony will cease. Do not hide behind the nobility of silence; you are too intelligent to die for some misplaced loyalty. The evidence is indisputable. Why suffer any longer when I promise you not only salvation but sanctuary?’

‘Sanct…sanct…’ she stutters. Bowed over, each sound is a gasp between spasms of pain as more bile heaves through her body.

Carlos grabs hold of her wet slippery hair. It feels good to his touch, like cold silk. Her fragility, emphasised by the light weight of her skull, excites him. He yanks her head back.

‘You are a witch, girl. Sign your confession.’

Ruth merely stares blankly at him. Her pupils dilate as she wills herself away. Far away from this room filled with ugly men, far from the screams which she finally recognises as her own.

Disgusted, the Dominican lets her hair go. Her head slams forward but she is still conscious.

‘Dunk her again.’

Herr Bull glances at Ruth’s limp figure with a professional eye. ‘Sire, given the weight and size of the subject it would be advisable to wait five minutes for recuperation—’

‘Dunk her!’

Herr Bull shrugs; the little friar’s hysterics are beginning to irritate him. If they lose her now it’ll serve the weaselly Spaniard right. There is an art to these things and it annoys him when his clients allow their emotions to interfere with his craft. Nevertheless, flexing his massive forearms he pushes down the plank. Ruth, still strapped to the chair at the other end, sails up into the air. The torturer swings the whole contraption back towards the vat and, with a swiftness that belies his control, again immerses the chair in the freezing water.

Carlos watches as Ruth’s hair and tunic sink slowly after her, then turns the hourglass over.

The young guard who has been thinking about supper—a mutton stew spiced with caraway and chestnuts waiting for him at the house of his new lover (the wife of his landlord)—watches the water splash over the side of the tarred barrel. If the sorceress dies he will have to stand as witness when they make an official report back to the archbishop, which will take a couple of hours longer. The vision of the steaming stew being handed to him by his mistress, her plump bosom pushed up over her smock, becomes more and more distant. To his amazement he finds himself secretly praying that the witch will survive the interrogation.

The inquisitor takes the hourglass and cradles it in his lap. Through the crystal at the top he can see the granules of sand gathering and shifting as ripples of the moving mass beneath suck them into the vortex. Fascinated, he meditates on the instrument, musing how it is the perfect illustration of life. So many of man’s actions appear to have no immediate consequence but, concealed, do their work until finally all catches up and forms a complex web of cause and effect—like this very instant, in which time and events have meshed so that he now holds in his hands the life of the daughter of the woman who almost destroyed his reason. Destiny is a thing of great elegance, he thinks, watching the last of the sand form a shallow pool, which becomes a sharp incline and finally a vacuum as the last grain tumbles through the narrow glass neck. But power is the greater aphrodisiac, he concludes.

‘Sire, the girl will perish,’ Juan ventures nervously.

The inquisitor snaps out of his reverie and realises that all present, even the guards, are staring at him. The page, his young face blank with shock, is doubled over in a bout of trembling. Carlos ignores him.

‘She will not, her blood is stubborn. Trust me, I know her lineage.’

‘What is she—superhuman?’ Herr Bull interjects, abandoning all protocol. ‘Because if she isn’t, and you want me to do my job, we fish her out now else we’ll be rolling in the coffin and the priest.’

‘We wait.’

All turn back towards the glistening black water: the young guard worrying about his receding supper; the page trying not to shit himself; Juan, who wonders about Detlef’s reaction when he hears of the Jewess’s drowning; Herr Bull, appalled at the inquisitor’s waste of a good craftsman; and the older guard who knows it will be he who must drag the corpse out of the barrel later and clean the vat.

If the Almighty wills it, she shall live. If he does not, she shall die, Carlos consoles himself. Part of him furtively longs for the spirit of the mother to appear to rescue the daughter. See, Sara, see where your child is now! Carlos, eyes closed, imagines the face of the Spanish woman as she gazes down at the floating black hair, her beauty wiped away by horror.

There is a pounding at the door. Before the inquisitor has a chance to gather his wits, several guards burst in followed by Detlef and Groot. For a moment the intruders stumble to a halt, overpowered by the stench of shit, urine and blood and the underlying smell of fear.

Detlef, peering into the shadows, thinks he must have arrived in a manifestation of Hell. The darkened chamber with its instruments of cruelty, the guilty look stretched across the inquisitor’s face as if he has been caught indulging in some covert transgression, combine to disorientate the young canon. He stares frenziedly around the cell, wondering where they have hidden the midwife. It is only when Solitario steps in front of the dunking bench that Detlef, with a sickening lurch, realises she is completely submerged.

‘Release her!’

‘On whose orders?’

Detlef knocks the Spaniard to the ground, then with one heave pushes down the dunking lever so the chair lifts up from the vat. Immediately Herr Bull and the guards rush to his aid. Together they untie the prostrate figure and lay her out on the wet stone floor. Her head flops sideways.

‘Bring a torch!’

Under the flare Detlef sees that the woman is lifeless, her eyes rolling back into her head. He clasps the slender shoulders, unable to believe she could have perished so easily. Not this spirit, he prays. Desperate, he tears open her tunic. The pallor of her breast is an appallingly poignant sight, a stark reminder of her youth. The nipple a large purple bud on white. Detlef places one hand on her chest and starts massaging her heart. Nothing happens.

Groot, kneeling beside him, picks up her limp wrist to find a sign of life. ‘Sire, the midwife’s spirit has fled us.’

But Detlef, refusing to hear him, keeps thumping on her chest, a dull thud which resonates through all of his senses again and again. As if all that matters is made manifest in this one gesture: the absurd scale of his huge hand across her narrow chest; the wet flesh which, like clay, gives with each blow; the mud streaking the skin coating his fingers, linking her degradation with him.

Let her live, he prays to his God. If you are to grant me anything, grant me this.

Groot, frightened by his master’s tenacity, tries to pull him away as bruises begin to blossom across Ruth’s mottled skin. But the canon, rigid in his determination, continues to pound over and over.

Suddenly, miraculously, her chest heaves and she coughs. Water streams from her purple mouth.

‘Sire, she lives!’ Groot cries out in amazement.

Detlef rolls her onto her side. Sweat beads on his face despite the freezing air. Only as he watches her shuddering ribs expand does he realise that there is life beneath his hands and for the second time in his existence he is infused with faith.

‘So the midwife lives to face another interrogation.’

Carlos’s voice rings out in the momentary silence and punches Detlef back into the room, to the paper-white faces of his startled audience.

‘Perhaps it would have been kinder to let her perish,’ the friar smirks.

Detlef takes off his cloak and wraps it around Ruth’s shaking figure. Again he is amazed at the delicacy of the midwife’s frame, how small she is under his hands. ‘From now on I shall be interrogating the accused myself.’

‘At whose command?’

Groot hands the sealed scroll to Juan who passes it to Carlos. The inquisitor reads it with pursed lips then crushes it angrily.

‘One word to the emperor will obliterate the archbishop’s sudden affection for the sorceress.’

‘Perhaps.’

Detlef gestures to one of his guards who gathers up the semi-conscious midwife, his face neutral, his eyes only on Detlef.

The canon turns to the inquisitor. ‘I believe that if you leave now you might just catch the night messenger to Vienna. The coach departs at midnight.’

Carlos glances at the soldiers who have accompanied Detlef; several reach for their swords. Acknowledging defeat he turns to Juan who, with an embarrassed air, collects the viola da gamba.

‘I shall remember your meteoric promotion to inquisitor, Canon von Tennen. For your sake I pray it shall be temporary.’ With that comment the Dominican leaves, followed by his clerk.

Herr Bull pulls off his hood to reveal a pockmarked but surprisingly kindly face. ‘Sire, will you be needing my services? Because if not the missus is waiting.’

‘You can go.’ Detlef turns to the guards. ‘You too.’

Empty of the key players the tension in the stone cell dissipates like air out of a balloon.

Detlef kicks at the torture rack. ‘Wood and iron, Groot—they may break a man’s body but never his spirit. That will always remain within the realm of the untouchable.’

But Groot experiences a sudden shudder as a half-formed premonition momentarily grips his senses. Repressing his intuition the assistant quickly crosses himself.

The curved ash-wood bow sweeps across the taut strings, drawing a low moan from the viola da gamba. A furious torrent of semi-quavers follows, a stanza from a Hungarian rhapsody Carlos stole from a gypsy he accidentally tortured to a premature death. In the spartan cell the Spaniard, naked and annointed with myrrh, plays wildly as the music interlaces with the stillness of the monastery. Clutching the shiny instrument between his bony thighs he throws back his head, eyes closing in ecstasy. A delirium both spiritual and aural in nature.

I held her life in my hands, he rages, and he tore her away. I shall make him pay, I shall break both of them. A crescendo of revenge builds with each screaming note. Now he will use the witch’s power against her. He will summon the dark one and bend her to his will. His chair placed in the centre of the freezing room, his shivering and exposed flesh beyond sensation, he works himself into a frenzy.

There is only one light source in the darkened chamber: a smouldering pile of incense acquired especially for the secret
incantation. The burning fills the chamber with a whitish smoke. On the stone floor lies a single amulet, a marble tablet encrusted with jewels. On one side it is carved with the image of Lilith, her body bound by chains, an emerald adorning her navel. This side is hidden, face down on the cold floor. The side which is visible carries a depiction of Lilith breaking free from her chains, her wings and hands raised victoriously. The Aramaic words, ‘Hear me and I shall triumph; worship me and I should serve thee,’ are inscribed into the marble. Carlos himself had this image and text carved into the tablet twenty years before at a market stall in Istanbul to emulate an amulet confiscated as evidence during the arrest of the Navarro family; evidence that mysteriously disappeared after Isaac Navarro’s execution.