The Witch of Cologne (34 page)

T
he only light seeps in
from a tiny crack between the wooden panels. From outside come the sounds of smashing furniture and ripping wall hangings as the soldiers search the rooms.

Detlef reaches for the small dagger he wears at his belt. Slipping it free he tenses, barely able to contain the anger which surges up through his muscles. The soldier within him, long buried, is suddenly alert: he wants to defend his own, to kill the intruders who threaten the life of his woman and unborn baby. He will not squat here in the corner like a coward waiting to be slaughtered; better to perish fighting than to die like a pantry rat run through by a blind sword.

Trembling, he closes his eyes, a picture of himself bursting through the wooden panel and grasping the inquisitor by the throat fills his imagination: the roar of blind satisfaction at plunging his knife in again and again, the blood splattering against the tapestries and coursing down to the wooden floor. Detlef’s sinewy fingers curl around the hilt of the blade.
Slowly he lifts the dagger, his weight shifting as he readies his body to leap out of the confined space. At his side Ruth squats, her body heaving in labour.

The sound of running footsteps and Hanna’s screams pierce the thin panelling. Detlef feels Ruth twitching in fear. Instinctively he reaches out to the wooden partition. But Ruth grabs his wrist as she presses against the back wall for support, a rag between her teeth to prevent her groans being heard. In the dim light he can barely see her terrified eyes but knows they are pleading with him. As she stares at him Detlef suddenly realises that she has total comprehension of the events outside despite her body arching with each spasm of the birthing, her face a yawning mute cry of agony. Fumbling in the dark he runs his hand up her legs then between her thighs; inserting his fingers he can feel the slippery top of the babe’s head. It has almost descended. He glances at Ruth, willing her to push.

Her face clenched and red from exertion, she bears down and with a great gush of blood and pungent meconium the baby whooshes out straight into Detlef’s arms.

Swiftly he wipes the muck from its tiny nose and mouth, then wonders what he is to do with the pulsating birth cord still ravelling out from the child’s belly and back into Ruth. The midwife, feeling blindly, touches the thick slippery cord. Concentrating, she steadies her trembling fingers long enough to tie two pieces of thread around it then reaches for Detlef’s knife. Straining his eyes, he watches her as she cuts the throbbing band. Blood spills then ceases.

Exhausted, she relaxes against the wall then smiles at the baby. Outside the soldiers shout to each other as they run down the stairs. Seeing that the babe is about to bawl, Ruth covers his mouth with her hand. The cry is still perceptible.

Two rooms away in the master bedroom, Carlos rips down the mystical amulets from the walls.

‘Witchcraft!’ he spits, revolted.

He tears up the drawings and throws the pieces into the air where they flutter down like chaotic snow. Spinning around, he stares at the blood-stained pallet. Furious, he pushes it onto its side. Underneath there is nothing, just the dusty wooden floor. But there is a greasy stain beside the pallet.

‘Look, look what magic the witch has made with her wizard!’

The inquisitor pulls down the remaining amulet still hanging over the bed.

‘Canon! Wherever you are hiding we will find you!’

He is answered only by a barking dog out in the courtyard. Just then the captain, his face covered in scratches beading with blood, enters.

‘We have searched the house, there is nothing.’

‘Have you looked everywhere? The servants’ quarters? The barn? The pig sty? I want you to examine every nook, every cranny, everywhere!’

The captain shakes his head slowly and sniffs the air. He starts to back out of the room fearfully. ‘That smell…I know it—they have smoked the place to ward off the plague!’

‘It’s a decoy, you idiot!’

‘How do you know?’

‘I am in command here! Search the rest of the property. I order you! Now!’

Reluctantly the captain goes back to the landing and yells for his men to search the upper floor again. Swearing and sniffing the pungent air nervously, the soldiers march up the staircase, their uniforms incongruous in the domestic setting.

Carlos, still standing in the middle of the master bedroom, looks around slowly. There are the witch’s combs, the soft hair still wound around the ivory teeth. Here are the canon’s boots, fancy French imports. Carlos kicks at them: the idea that a cleric should own such expensive footwear revolts the
frugal Spaniard. There is a corruption in the German Catholic soul that must be stamped out, he thinks, but despite himself cannot help marvelling at the softness and length of the black hairs caught in the ornate comb. The midwife has hair like her mother’s, witch’s locks that can twist themselves around a man and milk him dry.

He runs his finger along the straw pallet: here the canon must have lain with the witch, how many times? As many as the days in a year? Carlos, both fascinated and sickened, suddenly has to leave this room of vice.

Out on the landing he retches then leans his burning face against the cool stone wall. It is then that he hears it: a soft wailing, like an animal or a baby, vibrating through the stone beneath the noise of shouting soldiers and crashing furniture.

Alert with renewed hope, the inquisitor stares down the corridor, assessing which room the faint wail might have come from. He walks across the wooden boards and into the first room. Empty now, it was once a library and several of the bookcases are still piled high with ancient manuscripts. A stately woman stares down from above a small desk; she bears a slight resemblance to the canon. Carlos, unable to tolerate the noblewoman’s supercilious gaze, jabs his short hunting knife into the canvas which rips loudly. He slashes at the eyes, the arrogant face, over and over. Finally, satisfied that the chamber is concealing nothing, he leaves.

Back in the corridor he falters as confusion overwhelms him. Several doors present themselves like the riddle of a maze: which one are they hiding behind, which one? Bewilderment and nausea rise up in him, piercing his brain alongside the insistent acrid odour of brimstone.

‘Lilith,’ Carlos speaks the demon’s name. ‘Show me the right way. Help your loyal servant,’ he continues in Aramaic, knowing the incantation will be incomprehensible if overheard. The smoke from the bonfire the soldiers have lit outside curls
up the staircase creating a fog. Carlos, sensing something more, stares into it. At its misty edge the shape of the fiend appears, a curvaceous phantom of vapour; one graceful arm of swirling grey lifts and points. Following its direction, Carlos approaches a door barely visible beneath a low arched beam. Bending his head he turns the handle and enters.

The chamber is deserted. The purifying smoke seems more intense here, Carlos can smell nothing but amber, brimstone and salt petre. There is a neatly rolled-up pallet in the corner, a washing stand and a rosary hanging over it. The housekeeper’s sleeping quarters, he guesses. A small window is framed by a lip of thick slate and glows with the sunset. The inquisitor reaches across and lights a candle. The flame leaps up and illuminates the wood panelling of the walls. Nothing seems amiss but he cannot allay his suspicion.

Inside their hiding place Ruth and Detlef hold themselves statue-like as they listen to Carlo’s creeping footsteps and laboured breathing. The sleeping baby is on the breast. The bloodstained rags are pressed between Ruth’s legs, crusty with afterbirth. Suddenly the child stirs. Detlef reaches for him but Ruth stays his hand; both stare down at the wrinkled crimson face, willing the child to keep his peace. Oblivious, the babe innocently shifts his weight, snuggling closer to Ruth’s breast. Again Detlef reaches for his blade.

Outside Carlos is convinced he can hear faint rustlings behind the wall. He freezes, waiting for another sound, a sign that will reveal his prey. On the other side of the panel, inches away, Ruth runs her fingers over the raised hennaed hex on her now slack womb and prays.

In that instant Carlos is distracted by the miaow of a cat. Looking down he sees that a small kitten is rubbing itself against his legs. It miaows again, sounding remarkably like a baby. The friar picks it up and ruefully carries it out of the room.

Inside the alcove Detlef’s blind fingers find Ruth’s face; her cheeks are wet with tears. He pulls her and the baby into his arms. They lie with her head curled against his chest, the sleeping babe at her breast. To Detlef it seems as if this darkness is beyond fear, beyond time and space, perhaps beyond mortality itself. Feeling the weight of Ruth’s slight body against his, and the extraordinarily soft flesh of this tiny mortal which is now his child, he suddenly understands love in a way he has never experienced it before, as if tendrils of his very being have intertwined with this woman to make a new soul. Part of him remains in wonderment at the circumstances that have led him to this moment: this instant of great danger yet great hope.

Aware of a new, raw creature emerging from within him, unfurling like the tentative blossom of a poppy, translucent damp petals reaching out of a spiky bud of cynicism and disbelief, Detlef is both exhilarated and exhausted by the abundance of possibilities his future now holds. Weary beyond terror, he finally closes his eyes and lets his head rest against Ruth’s shoulder.

The soldiers crouch beside the roaring fire. A chaotic mountain of broken tables, mirrors, paintings and ornaments waits alongside to feed the blaze. The young guards’ faces, stained with grime and dust, are flushed with the wine they have raided from the cellar. One of the chevaliers sings a mournful Basque melody as he throws a leg of the broken virginal into the flames. The bonfire flares up, throwing light onto the façade of the house, silhouetting a sinister shape that rotates at the end of a rope.

The inquisitor and the captain stand some distance away beside the tethered horses.

‘Monsignor, with all due respect we have explored both the cottage and the grounds. I fear the accused and his accomplice escaped before our arrival.’

“Tis strange for I sense that they are still nearby.’

‘My men have searched everywhere—the barn, the pig sty, the servants’ quarters, even the chicken coop. And you won’t be getting anything out of the housekeeper now.’

Carlos looks over to the raided house, the oak door swinging open, the smashed china, the tapestries scattered on the ground, the wooden shutters banging in the wind. Violated, it is a shattered reflection of its former tranquility.

‘He will be at his brother’s estate. I am told it is thirty miles east of here.’

‘My men will not ride at night.’

‘They must and they shall.’

The captain stares briefly into the determined face of the inquisitor. The officer has taken this commission reluctantly; if he had his way he would be fighting the Ottomans for the glory of the Hapsburg Empire, not chasing an errant canon and his Jewish mistress. But his colonel allowed him no option. If the Spaniard wants to be at Count von Tennen’s estate before dawn, so be it. Let the zealot Dominican deal with the disgruntled chevaliers. The captain spits into the mud.

‘In that case, my good Monsignor, perhaps it would be more appropriate for you to announce your intentions to the men yourself. They are weary in body and spirit but I am confident your rhetoric shall be pretty enough to inspire them to new spiritual heights and maybe even back into the saddle. And if not your rhetoric then your purse will suffice. Good luck to you, sir.’

With a smile he saunters back to his troops.

An hour later the small platoon, exhausted but fortified by thoughts of the extra one hundred Reichstaler the inquisitor
has promised them, ride out of the courtyard and down the narrow tree-lined lane.

A huge yellow moon transforms them into a mass of benign silvery phantoms whose pensive silence is broken only by the clinking of their brass stirrups and the whisper of the plumes on their helmets. The only witness to their departure is a solitary bull, made restless by the scent of a cow in heat four miles away. The creature paws at the ground, nostrils flaring at the aroma of horse and man. But even he knows better than to bellow.

T
he point of light slowly grows
to a slim crescent. It travels across the cracked wall grimy with ancient dust, suddenly hitting a glint of gold which, as the light becomes stronger, reveals itself as blond hair. The bar of light continues its path down the creased forehead, over the closed orbs fringed with long dark eyelashes that open and blink for a second as the pupils, swimming in the centre of a deep sapphire, dilate and focus.

Detlef stares into the sliver of dawn sunlight. As the feeling slowly needles back into his cramped limbs he remembers where he is. For a moment he panics—is she safe? Where is the babe? Terror fills him until the warm weight of Ruth’s body makes itself apparent. He looks down: she is curled up asleep, her head resting against his chest. The baby, wrapped in rags, one arm extended, still stained with blood and mucus, fist clenched resolutely, lies at his mother’s naked breast, eyes screwed shut, mouth pursed in concentration. For a moment Detlef fears the child has died in the night,
when suddenly his eyes blink open and the perfectly formed baby boy stares up at his father with a wide and fearless gaze, as if challenging him on the very reason for his existence. Detlef, caught between wonder and amusement, stares straight back. He reaches down and caresses the soft furry blond down which covers the small head. To his amazement he can cup the whole skull in one palm.

My child, he thinks, allowing the thought to become a solid truth, my own flesh and blood. A wave of emotion surges through him, leaving him wanting to use all his powers to cast a circle of protection around his new family.

Just then Ruth wakes and immediately the babe nuzzles blindly into her breast.

Detlef harnesses the large draughthorse to the simple wooden buggy. Bandits will be a constant threat, he thinks, trying to gather his thoughts while deeply conscious of the danger of lingering. They cannot afford to look like aristocracy or even wealthy bürgers, especially crossing the border and certainly not on the roads between. The cart is rough but it will suffice, he rationalises. At least this way they will look like poor farmers not worth robbing. But as a precaution he has sewn several bags of gold coin into his clothing—protection money—while strapped to the back of the cart are the few expensive antiques the soldiers did not destroy: a chest filled with linen, his aunt’s fine French walnut desk and a box of family jewels to sell in Amsterdam to secure enough money to rent lodgings.

‘Ruth!’

She looks up from where she is kneeling beside a freshly dug mound of earth. A makeshift cross, two pieces of broken wood nailed together, mark it as a grave. Hanna’s grave.
Carefully Ruth pushes a small scroll covered with Yiddish writing into the soft earth. It is a woman’s prayer for finding peace.

‘Say your prayers but they won’t bring her back.’

Joachim, Hanna’s brother, full of anger and grief, stands clutching his cap in his hand. His ruddy face is rigid with the struggle to hold back tears.

‘Last sister I had. One gone in the Great War, two in the plague, and now this. She died for you, she would have done anything for the master.’ He spits into the newly turned earth.

‘She was a good servant,’ Ruth says faintly.

She would like to take the labourer’s hands, to comfort him in his glowering resentment, but knows this would only fuel his anger. Instead she places a single spray of lilac on the grave.

‘Aye. That’s one way of putting it. Should have thought about herself and run. But not Hanna—them that serve don’t survive.’

Donning his hat, he walks sullenly over to Detlef and helps him haul the last box up onto the cart.

They had found her body swinging from the old linden tree in the centre of the courtyard. Detlef cut down the battered corpse and tenderly laid the housekeeper on the ground, talking all the while, reassuring her that all would be right, that the meats would be cured, the apples picked, the apricots dried, that he would make sure Brunhilde the sow was taken care of. He even promised to carry a message to her cousin in the Dutch navy until he realised that he was talking to himself. It was then he found himself weeping over the long grey hair which lay like a halo around the bloated blue face, twigs and straw still woven between the strands.

The baby, wrapped in a blanket and lying on the grass beside Ruth, wakes and starts bawling.

‘My love, we must leave now!’

Detlef tightens the strap around the horse. He would like to pick Ruth up in his arms and tell her that life will resume its normal shape, that one day it will be safe to love again, but he cannot. The raped and desolate house is testimony to his own horror, a horror he cannot yet articulate nor has the energy to battle, but senses that one day he will. The only thing he can do now is force his body into flight and save his family.

‘Please, it is dangerous to tarry.’

Finally Ruth hears him. Lifting their son, she walks to him, knowing that beyond lies Amsterdam and freedom.