The Witch of Cologne

‘The end is embedded in the beginning’

ZOHAR

Cologne, January 1665

Writhing in labour, the pregnant woman screams. Sweat beads her brow. In the flickering candlelight her contorted face bears a strong resemblance to the icon which hangs above the curtained bed: Saint Ursula, one of Cologne’s many saints, martyred for her virginity.

‘Breathe deeply.’

The midwife, Ruth bas Elazar Saul, daughter of the chief rabbi of Deutz, runs her fingers over the taut womb, her hands coated with a slippery ointment made of lily oil, birthwort and saffron.

‘Breathe, it will help ease the pain,’ she instructs. A strand of hair falls from under her twin-peaked damask cap, the telltale bonnet of the Jewess. The two points etch a silhouette of horns against the shadowy wall as she bends to examine the position of the baby.

Slipping her fingers into the groaning woman, the midwife feels how much the cervix has dilated. Her assistant, Miriam, a homely fifteen year old, wipes the patient’s brow and glances anxiously at Ruth. The woman has been labouring for over twenty hours and the baby should have descended by now. Only too aware of the implications for a Jewish midwife should

the birthing of a wealthy Catholic patient go wrong, Miriam discreetly nods towards the birthing hooks: three curved steel instruments by the hearth, sinister in the firelight. Used as a last resort, they are for looping around the head of the baby to force its emergence.

‘No, Miriam, not yet,’ Ruth answers the silent query.

The young woman twists suddenly. The purple veins of her huge belly strain as she grasps the bedposts behind her head. Beneath the greasy skin Ruth traces the geography of the baby, her long fingers searching for the bulge of the head, the tiny knots of the spine and the bones of the feet. Cupping her hands over the vast orb she locates the buttocks, which are pointing towards the cervix. Massaging gently, she tries to manipulate the child so that it will turn, but stubbornly it remains in position.

‘Breech,’ Ruth murmurs softly to Miriam, whose eyes widen in alarm.

The midwife steps away from her patient and opens a leather satchel. Curiously Oriental in design, it has a single letter in Hebrew embossed on the front. With her back turned deliberately away from the bed Ruth lifts out a smoky glass jar filled with a greenish-grey powder.

Crouching, she carefully begins to pour the ashes onto the floor, creating a wide circle which encompasses the writhing woman and the assistant. As she sprinkles with her left hand, she chants the Hebrew names of the three angels—Snwy, Snsnwy and Smnglf—under her breath.

Despite Ruth’s concentration, a fluttering panic begins to rise up in her. It is Lilith, she thinks, who is creeping into her fears. Lilith: the demon that strangles newborns and takes the lives of labouring mothers. The secret embodiment of all her uncertainties, all her desires; the nebulous phantom who has haunted her since she was a young girl and witnessed her own mother perish in childbirth. Ruth imagines she feels the air shift above her; she can almost sense the invisible presence of the fiend, almost smell the sulphurous breath drifting over her left shoulder.

This is not good reason, the midwife reminds herself, and summons the cold clarity of her medical training to expel the dread that is squeezing up through her muscles. But the image of the demon persists: the undulating seductress seems to be staring at her from every corner of the dark wood-panelled room, her misty outline hovering at the edge of Ruth’s vision.

From outside comes the eerie cry of a screech owl. Looming through the grey dawn its white wide-eyed face is suddenly at the window as it thuds blindly into the glass. It is Lilith’s totem, the creature she transforms into to suckle at the breasts of young children or the dugs of goats. Crouching by the bed Miriam gasps in fear, her hand reaching up for the Magen David lying hidden beneath her robe. Ruth, holding down her terror, doggedly continues the hex against the demon.

A second later a long shadow flits suddenly across the ceiling. Shrieking, the labouring woman curls up in agony. Miriam fights to pin down her resistant limbs. Determined, Ruth grits her teeth and completes the circle, her low mantra growing in volume. Soft grey ash meets soft grey ash as the circle of protection is sealed. Sitting back on her haunches, the midwife breathes a sigh of relief. She has taken all possible precautions now, spiritual as well as medical.

She stands and rinses her hands in the washbasin, then steps out to the small chamber that leads off the bedroom.

Meister Franz Brassant rises to his feet. A large man in his early fifties, he is at least twenty-five years older than his wife, nevertheless he wears the fashionable clothes of a younger man: an embroidered velvet waistcoat over a silk undershirt, breeches edged in lace; the uniform of an affluent bürger. Brassant sits on the town council, the Gaffeln, and is connected to the four most powerful merchant families of Cologne.

‘How is she?’ An odour of stale sweat and fear rises from his clothes, still damp from his earlier rush home through the rain.

Knowing there is no time for protocol Ruth decides to trust in the intelligence of the man standing before her. Fastening her gaze to his she pauses for a moment, reading the intensity of the flickering trepidation in his eyes.

‘I will have to cut,’ she answers bluntly.

Shocked, Meister Brassant breathes in deeply, his hands blindly searching for his wife’s coral and silver rosary which he has strung around his thick neck. ‘It is not my custom to allow a Jewess to touch my wife, or even to be permitted into my abode, but they say you are the best in the province.’

‘I am a trained midwife not a miracle-worker.’

‘To not believe in miracles is to blaspheme.’

‘I believe in scientia nova, Meister Brassant. Knowledge and nature. To me, these are the proven properties.’

‘Prayer and faith are the domain of man. All men.’

‘We are wasting time. If the matrix is not peeled back, the child will suffocate and your wife will perish.’

Brassant stares at the small, dark and strangely compelling figure standing before him. This is not a breed of woman he has met before and yet he is expected to surrender the life of his young wife and child to her. His eyes come to rest on a gold crescent pinned at Ruth’s neck—the mark of Spain. She must have Sephardic blood in her. Immediately his demeanour softens: he has traded with the Spanish Jews of Amsterdam and trusts them.