The Witch of Cologne (8 page)

‘These are the people from across the river who live in that shiny city which is always out of reach. Now look at them! Dirty as monkeys!’ the children chant in Dutch and Flemish as they sprint ahead.

The prison cart lumbers across the small square with its duck pond desolate in the centre; past the wooden stocks in front of the town hall, a building as immaculate as a doll’s house; the herring stall with its wares already scenting the breeze. It rolls past the Protestant church, its Calvinist severity afire with the sunrise; past the white school with its steep red Dutch roof; past the fishmonger’s and the bakery. Finally, wheels squeaking, the cart halts outside the house of Jan van Dorf, the most prosperous merchant of Mülheim.

The children gawk in bewilderment—surely the soldiers must have the wrong address. A God-fearing man such as van Dorf, whose annual donations keep the small school running, clearly such a man is beyond authority. Why, everyone in Mülheim knows that van Dorf is unassailable, the only Dutchman in the village on first-name terms with the Catholic merchants of Cologne. He even travels over to the city and openly trades with the cargo ships; he has an honorary membership of the goldsmiths’ guild, verified by the shield with golden urns hanging proudly in his window. But the prison cart has definitely stopped outside the palatial shopfront and the friar is climbing down and walking towards the door. The children, amazed, gather in a cluster behind the steaming flanks of the restless horses.

A second later van Dorf bursts out of the shop. A handsome man in his early thirties, his round Flemish face is florid with agitation. He greets the small priest and the tall elegant blond man courteously but soon he is shouting at them in German. ‘Witch! Wizard! Inquisition!’

The frightened children understand only every third word, but they know from his face and the scent of terror which fills the morning air with its acrid tang that the world has lurched suddenly like a shipwreck tilting on its side. Stricken with dread they stagger back as the soldiers move forward.

Unexpectedly van Dorf bolts, fleeing down the lane, eyes rolling like those of a terrified hare, his rotund body wobbling violently as his legs pound beneath him. Shocked at the incongruous sight the children fall silent. One small boy breaks into loud weeping as the soldiers languidly turn their horses around as if van Dorf’s run for his life is little more than an irritant. The mounted guards transform into beautiful centaurs with tassels flying, hooves stomping and tails lashing through the fine morning air. With nostrils steaming like dragons, heads pointed towards the dashing
figure, the horses give chase. In minutes the soldiers catch the Dutchman, drag him face down through the ploughed mud back to the prison cart.

And the watching children think the sky has fallen, for no one is safe if they can take van Dorf. Even the youngest looks up to the heavens, waiting for a vision of the fierce face of God, or lightning, or some other divine sign to show that a terrible mistake has occurred. Instead the church bells start to peal and somewhere a woman begins to wail.

R
uth squats next to her winter herbs,
her skirts pulled up while she urinates onto the icy ground. She looks over at the guelder-roses and nettles tethered to the long wooden stakes pounded into the hard mud. This is where she grows her medicinal plants—motherwort for breastfeeding, skullcap for pain, rosemary for the inflamed womb.

Spread out before her is the valley beyond her small plot of land. The winter forest winds its way down the gentle slopes, broken only by a stream which turns silver as the sunrise breaks over the horizon. Ruth finishes and shakes herself then pulls her skirts down over her hips. The view before her is without the mark of man. If she were to look closer, she would see new saplings sprouting out of the fallow fields which were once farmland. But she chooses not to. She loves this vista precisely because it is nature untarnished, a deceptive Eden which she likes to think of as spirit personified. She pauses, closes her eyes and listens to
the landscape: the rustle of the trees, the faint cry of a hawk, the bleating of sheep and, perhaps, the beating of wings.

Suddenly a woman’s cries pierce the vision. Miriam bursts screaming from the cottage, followed by two young soldiers who, laughing, catch at her skirts and pull her down. A third soldier comes flying through the cottage door and glancing around sees the midwife. Indignation rises like bile in the back of Ruth’s throat but it is laced with a sharp fear which momentarily bolts her to the ground.

Then, without knowing how, she is beside them. She throws herself onto the young soldier’s back and hauls him away from Miriam whose face is now as white as the snow she has been flung against. Lucid with horror Ruth barely notices the blow from the soldier’s fist. Lying on the ground, her petticoats thrown up, she feels nothing but humiliation and intense frustration that she is not strong enough to attack back. Dizzy, she struggles to her knees, dimly recognising the warm liquid running down her cheek as blood.

‘What do you want of us?’ she screams out in German.

She crawls again towards Miriam. Blank with shock her assistant stares back at her. Her white legs are splayed awkwardly like the porcelain peg legs of some grotesque doll as the soldier pounds his body into her over and over. Before Ruth reaches the young girl a leather boot crashes against her shoulder, the pain driving her back down into the muddy snow. This time she rolls herself into a ball, tensing her body for the next blow. It does not come.

‘Ruth bas Elazar Saul, you look like your mother.’

Ruth, shocked at the Spanish words which float down as if from a great height, tries to peer through the streams of blood which have clouded her eyes.

‘Who are you?’ she manages to spit out, her mouth now acrid salt.

A face looms above. Olive skin. A face disfigured by a thin red scar, eyes shining with hate. She is struggling to understand whether she knows this man, trying to recall through the dulling pain whether she has slighted him or wronged him, anything to give reason to the violence that is being done to her and her assistant.

The priest smiles, a deceptively benevolent expression.

‘I am your saviour. I will be your confessor,
bruja
, and you shall surrender all to me.’

Again the Spanish words float down like dandelion seeds and Ruth finds it hard to associate the tenderness of his tone with the stabbing pain which shoots through the core of her body.

The Jewess’s face has a similarity to her mother’s but is different, Carlos observes silently. It has the same narrowness around the jaw and cheeks that widen sharply. The eyes are almond-shaped like her mother’s, but instead of deep black, these eyes are green and a different spirit looks out, a psyche which appears more wary and closed. Part of his own soul cannot help but long for some epiphany to link his flesh with that of the dead woman he both loved and persecuted.
Bruja
, witch, how seductive are the echoes of the flesh, he thinks. Sara…she feels so close he could almost reach out and crush her with one hand.

Aching with longing the priest stands. With a barely visible nod he gestures to one of the young soldiers. Coarse hands push Ruth back against the frozen ground. Her legs are pulled apart. For a moment she sees herself spreadeagled, a tiny figure of white skin and black and scarlet cotton, as the man above her tears at her clothes.

‘Enough!’

Detlef grabs the soldier by his hair and hauls him off the Jewess. The young woman lies still. Broken, like a straw poppet. For a moment he wonders if she is still alive or whether she has died of fright like a caged bird.

‘Not the midwife!’ he bellows into the flushed face of the uniformed youth.

Outraged, Carlos, his own face red with excitement, pushes forward. ‘She is the devil’s spawn, she must be punished!’

‘Nothing has been proved! Besides, she is the rabbi’s daughter, it is not politic to defile her!’

Detlef throws Ruth’s skirts back over her legs. Standing, he wipes his hands on his breeches, finding it distasteful to be presented with the depravity of man. The vision of the sprawling semi-conscious woman is equally repugnant to him. Her dress and manner repulse him, but he knows that her father has some influence amongst the harbour traders and that it would not behove the archbishop to allow her debasement. Behind him the rape of her serving girl continues.

‘I suspect that you have an interest in protecting this creature, Canon.’

‘I have no interest other than protecting the archbishop’s reputation.’

‘The archbishop is a Jew-lover?’

‘I will not dignify that question with an answer. May I remind you that we are on Protestant ground here, our presence is perilous. Make the arrest and let us be on our way, Monsignor Solitario, before my patience wears thin.’

Detlef steps aside to allow the soldiers to carry the midwife to the prison cart. Miriam is left unconscious, her blood staining the snow.

The three men, each trapped in his own misery, cower against the bars as the soldiers push the young woman towards them. Her face streaked with dirt and blood is barely recognisable. The Dutchman glances at her then looks down in embarrassment, while Herr Müller, disgusted that he should be forced to share the prison cart with a Jewess, spits
into the straw. Only Voss, seeing that it is the midwife from Deutz who delivered his own grandchild, reaches over to the bedraggled creature retching with pain and covers her breasts with his own cloak.

‘Child, stand proud, we are not at the stake yet,’ he whispers as he helps Ruth to her feet. Dazed, she grips the bars and stares back at the diminishing view of her cottage.

‘When they know who we are, they will release us. There has been a terrible mistake, mark my words, a terrible mistake.’ The old merchant mutters these words over and over, as if the normalcy of the sentence will reverse what is irreversible.

The prison cart bounces along the cobblestone lane towards the village. As the grim cargo passes each house families come to the windows and stare. Some stand in doorways. Others run inside clutching their children, memories of past pogroms turning their entrails liquid with terror.

Ruth, staring up, wonders why the sun seems to dance. When she looks at the women why do they throw their veils over their faces in shame? And why is the prison cart driving so slowly down the main street?

Carlos glances down the muddy broken road which serves as the central thoroughfare of Deutz. The dark architecture appals him, as do the yeshiva boys with their outlandish forelocks curling around their exotic narrow faces and their strange long black clothes. The Dominican is convinced that these foreigners are staring at him with hatred; he is certain that if he should step amongst them, they would tear him to pieces like ravening dogs. Devil worshippers, the killers of our good Lord Jesus, lost souls all, he thinks.

The cart lurches over a pothole, almost pitching the friar out. Clutching the wooden rail he crosses himself vigorously.

When they reach the synagogue, the inquisitor signals for
the coachman to halt. The cart pulls to a violent stop, rattling its captives like beans in a box. Carlos glances at the small sanctuary with the brass star of David perched on its dome and he waits.

Behind him, her hands curled around the iron bars, Ruth can see that the street is beginning to fill with the curious. Sanctioned by her arrest, they creep from their houses and out of the back lanes, a silent mob, the voyeurs of disaster, the onlookers who believe that in some mystical way the role of witness will render them immune to the peccadillos of fate. Fascinated, they slide like somnambulists towards the prison cart, staring at the midwife’s bare and bruised legs, her exposed shoulders and loose hair.

Ruth, knowing that they are outside her father’s house, is so humiliated she can hardly breathe. The silence stretches, then is broken by the startled flight of a loose hen from under the prison cart. The crowd begins to mutter and hiss. Someone throws an old turnip. It hits her, dense as a rock, but she barely flinches. Let them kill her. Better her own people than the Germans.

‘Witch!’

‘Whore!’

‘Shame! You bring shame on us!’

Staring around wildly she searches for familiar faces, and sees Vida watching from the shelter of the bakery door. ‘Vida! Vida!’ she cries hoarsely.

But the baker’s young wife, catching Ruth’s crazed gaze, turns away to weep in shame.

Detlef, astride his horse, observes from a distance. He does nothing to help the Jewess. Let her people stand in judgement on her, he thinks, but why has the inquisitor halted here in front of the temple? A man who is motivated by a personal vendetta is far more dangerous, he concludes, for such a creature is unpredictable. He watches Carlos’s excitement as he
waits for a response from the shuttered windows of the synagogue. What history does the Dominican have with the Jewess, the canon wonders, curious as to how such an insignificant woman could move powers as far away as Aragon and Vienna.

Suddenly a frail bearded old man walking heavily with a stick pushes his way through the onlookers.

‘Ruth! Ruth!’

The crowd falls silent, parting for the chief rabbi, his white hair sticking up like a feral halo, his embroidered prayer shawl dragging behind him in the dirt. He stops and stares at the prison cart in utter disbelief. He stumbles and in an instant two young men—the same two who were only a second ago yelling insults—are by his side, holding him up. The old man pushes them away and walks up to the bars. He barely recognises the terrified woman cowering inside.

‘Ruth, my child, what have they done to you?’

He pushes his bent arthritic fingers through the iron poles, trying to reach his daughter. He cannot believe that this mute creature who stares at him with bewildered eyes, whose bleeding face retains only a remnant of her beauty, is the proud heretic who ran from the village, who broke the rules she knew he could never trespass himself, even the ones he might secretly have wanted to.

Leaning forward Elazar whispers in Hebrew, ‘Have they stolen your spirit? Have they taken your strength?’

But Ruth, setting eyes on her father for the first time in three years, is unable to answer, her tongue struggling to find the words between her swollen lips, the mucus and the horror.

‘Forgive me, daughter. Forgive me for not forgiving you.’

Weeping, the old rabbi reaches in and strokes the long black hair he once combed himself, now matted with blood. And suddenly there are no bars, there is no prison cart, there
is nothing between the father and the daughter except clemency.

Many watching lower their eyes, unable to bear the agony of such raw intimacy.

But still the midwife is silent. Through his tears Elazar ben Saul notices a rip in his daughter’s dress and under it the scratches welling with blood. A great rage starts to shake his thin frame and it is then, as he spins around to face her captors, that a sudden breeze finally carries back his daughter’s answer. ‘I love you, abba,’ she whispers in Yiddish, the language of women. But the old man is too furious to hear.

He marches up to the inquisitor. With a great sweep of his bony arm, Elazar smashes his walking stick against the side of the cart.

‘What is this outrage? Do you know who you have in your pathetic prison of fear?’ the chief rabbi screams.

Every Jew watching flinches, frightened he will bring the wrath of Cologne onto the whole community. The old man in his rage has forgotten who he is shouting at, who has authority. Unmoved the Dominican looks down at him.

‘Who are you?’ the rabbi demands.

‘I was your wife’s confessor as I shall be your daughter’s. My name is Carlos Vicente Solitario. I am the Inquisitor of Zaragoza, here under orders from both the Grand Inquisitional Council and the Emperor Leopold. Your daughter is charged with witchcraft.’

The inquisitor’s voice, cool and detached, makes the old rabbi sound hysterical. Surprised, Elazar ben Saul falters, peering up at the man shortsightedly.

‘But you have no jurisdiction here, she is a Jew!’

‘Rabbi, your daughter was baptised.’

Horrified, Elazar stumbles back, then collects himself. ‘What is your evidence?’ His voice cracks with fear.

Carlos reaches into his robe and pulls out the affidavit; leaning over he thrusts it before the old man’s eyes. The rabbi reads it then collapses in shock.

Two yeshiva students immediately rush to the old man’s aid and lift him to his feet. Held up, Elazar’s haggard face stares at the gaol cart as it drives off towards the Rhine and Cologne.