The Witch of Cologne

‘You have fifteen minutes, Rosa, no more, no less. I’ll not lose my head for some old Jewish sow.’ Placing his lantern on the ground he leaves.

Ruth stands paralysed, frightened that if she moves the nursemaid might vanish like Aaron’s spectre.

Rosa barely recognises the bag of bones crouching before her with its mop of hair and burning eyes. Fearing that Ruth might have lost her sanity the old woman speaks first, pointing in the direction of the departed guard.

‘I have broken bread with his mother, she is a good woman.’

Then, unable to contain herself, she pulls Ruth into a tight embrace. ‘Have fortitude,’ she whispers, this time in Yiddish, hiding the shock she feels at Ruth’s shrunken figure and the unbearable stench of her unwashed body.

Ruth, held by those strong arms, the first intimate touch she has had in weeks, bursts into tears. Rosa rocks her until the sobbing has stopped.

‘Think of this as a dream and it too shall pass. In the meantime I have something a little more practical…’

She pulls a loaf of challah from under her cloak and a small sealed clay bowl of harissa, a savoury wheat and meat porridge enriched with melted fat and cinnamon. Ruth falls on the food and Rosa, stroking her matted hair, watches her eat.

‘Your father seeks an audience with the archbishop. Hermann Hossern, the moneylender, has some outstanding debts to be paid by Heinrich himself—he has agreed to waive them for your release. It is a gamble but better than nothing.’

Ruth wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. She is ashamed to be seen like this, so dirty and demeaned.

‘Why? Hermann Hossern has shown no love of me before.’ She is suspicious of the moneylender’s sudden generosity. Hossern is notorious throughout Deutz for his ruthlessness and misanthropy.

‘It is not for you, rather out of respect for your father. Besides, remember that Tuvia is his nephew and the only male heir.’

‘Is Tuvia pushing his suit?’ Ruth asks. The image of the rake-thin young man comes to her mind, his face an acrobatic mask of unfortunate twitches.

Rosa pauses, recognising an old stubbornness. She realises that the young woman’s huge strength lies in her willpower and spirit, that Ruth is an idealist not a pragmatist. The ramifications of such passion make her fear for both Ruth’s safety and her soul. If only there was more of the mother and less of the father in the child. Sara was a survivor, a woman who would adapt and disguise her motives to secure freedom at any cost. But Rosa cannot speak of such things for fear of shattering the young woman’s illusions about her mother.

‘Child, your father has given his consent and blessing.’

‘But he cannot!’

‘He is an old man, your imprisonment is destroying him. He believes that once you are released you will be safe under the strong guiding hand of a husband. It will be an arranged marriage, like the one you should have made so many years ago.’

‘It will not!’ Ruth cannot hide her anger.

‘I see they have not entirely broken your spirit. Maybe there is some meat left on the bone under all that filth.’

‘Forgive me, I stink, I know it. I cannot bear my own stench. I would kill a man for a river to wash in.’

‘I would kill a man for a lot less. But my child, listen closely, you must understand that the com

munity is divided. There are many who have spoken out against you: they say you will bring a new pogrom upon us, as bad as St Bartholomew’s night, that all will be driven from their houses and slaughtered. Your father still has influence, but marriage with Tuvia will convince the people that you are no longer a heretic, that you will abide by the laws of the Torah and become a dutiful wife and queen of your own household, God bless.’

Rosa, carried away by her own rhetoric, starts to imagine a new era of stability and fecundity in the Saul household, sees herself nursing Ruth’s children on her knee. The young woman interrupts her reverie.

‘My father must be confident of my release to have arrived at such an arrangement.’

‘Your father has nothing left but his faith. He is ailing. If you saw how attentive Tuvia is, nursing him day and night, you would not be so quick to judge.’

‘Perhaps I can postpone the betrothal for as long as possible.’

‘But not for ever.’

‘I will consider it.’

Rosa kisses her. ‘Now you are using the head on your shoulders.’

Ruth smiles to see Rosa’s hands weaving patterns in the air as she speaks. The nursemaid is so utterly familiar, it is as if she has swept Ruth’s happier past right into the prison cell with her.