The Witch of Cologne

‘The Jewess is irrelevant. You and I both know the sorcery charges are a sham. What I want to know is what you, as the highest anointed official of the Catholic Church in this city, are going to do about it?’

Heinrich’s ears are still ringing with the Jesuit’s fury and he has come away with a splitting headache. All in all the situation is a catastrophe. On the one hand he has the Jesuits and every other Catholic fanatic bellowing for blood; on the other he has the Gaffeln demanding leniency for the arrested merchants. And that is without taking into consideration the secular politics of the situation. Damn the Dutch, and the French, and damn Leopold and his cronies—especially that oily sadist Solitario, the archbishop thinks.

The Spaniard’s latest atrocity is to dust off the cathedral’s copy of the infamous Malleus Maleficarum, The Hammer of the Witches, a textbook for the identification, prosecution and dispatching of those suspected of sorcery, written by two German Dominicans, Henricus Institoris and Jacob Sprenger, in 1487. Solitario actually had the audacity to tell Heinrich that he was honouring Cologne by referring to the tome. Privately the archbishop is appalled. P

oor van Dorf and Voss are already half-dead from the rigorous methods of detection pulled from the book.

As a consequence, the entire Voss family, including several bawling babies in arms, have been camped outside Heinrich’s chambers for the past week. The young Müller sons are rumoured to be in Paris, attempting to gain an audience with King Louis himself; meanwhile Heinrich and von Fürstenberg live in fear that Herr Müller will confess their involvement in his secret activities for the French and condemn them both. In short the whole situation is shaping up to be untenable.

The archbishop kicks out at a mangy kitten which has sidled up to him. What should he do? Who can he turn to? He trusts no one, least of all von Fürstenberg, who was responsible for planting Müller into the guilds to begin with. Müller—really a Frenchman called Metain—was recruited some fifteen years before and Heinrich had become so accustomed to receiving the clandestine information he had actually forgotten the dangers surrounding his emissary. Without the spy he feels disadvantaged, as if he is missing both his ears and his eyes. After all, the archbishop needs all the information he can get, considering that he is not allowed to remain in the city longer than three days without permission from the bürgers.

What are the guilds actually up to, he wonders. It is impossible to keep track of the machinations of all twenty-two subdivisions of the Gaffeln, damn them. And barely one of them pro-French or supportive of the aristocracy, yet all united in their hatred of the archbishop. And now Müller, a royalist, is paradoxically accused of being a secret Protestant and worse, a supporter of Jan de Witt’s Republican party. Understandably Müller is furious and has already demanded an audience with the archbishop and his Machiavellian minister; Heinrich knows it is to demand a pardon they cannot afford to give. Yes, it is a dangerous, ridiculous situation but something will have to be done, and swiftly.

Frustrated, he looks heavenward and is further aggravated to see the town hall tower, a structure built by the triumphant bürgers with confiscated money from the banished patrician families. To Heinrich the sight is a constant and irritating reminder of his own impotence.

Tap-tap, something brushes against his leg. He looks down to see a dirty fleshy stump being held up for his inspection. A cripple, probably a war victim, squats in the gutter begging for alms. Heinrich, feeling anything but charitable, knocks the pewter jug out of the man’s hand. Coins go flying as the archbishop continues his excursion.

His two assistants hurriedly collect the scattered money and placate the wheedling beggar with a few Reichstaler of their own, while several onlookers watch disapprovingly.

Heinrich pushes open the wooden door of the chapel of Saint Severin. A simple place of worship, devoid of the baroque trappings of the Church of the Assumption or the Gothic ambition of the cathedral itself, it is Heinrich’s personal haven. The small chapel has an asceticism which appeals to his Bavarian sensibility: its white walls, plain wooden pews and unadorned altar speak of humility and an honest spirituality which Heinrich secretly craves.

He nods at one of the nuns and swiftly makes his way towards the altar-piece, a plain wooden carving of the crucifixion. Heinrich particularly likes this depiction of Jesus: the face is the most realistic he has ever seen, carved with the heavy Germanic features he feels his own visage mirrors. This is a man he recognises, a man who, like himself, has been confronted with the complex and compromising politics of his time, but through spiritual enlightenment has transcended and triumphed. It is a comforting allegory the archbishop returns to often.

He crosses himself then kneels carefully, delicately balancing his gout-ridden knee on the cold stone. Resting his elbows on a low rail he presses his hands together in prayer. The light streams across his shaved pate and a cloud of incense smoke hangs for an instant above him, suspended.

An hour later he is still there. Awed, his two assistants whisper with the nun at the back of the church. They have never seen their master so observant. In reality the venerable archbishop, lulled by the tranquillity of the chapel and the rare winter sun falling on the back of his neck, has fallen asleep.

He dreams that he is talking with the Lord Jesus, Our Saviour. The Galilean, dressed rather confusingly in Parisian court clothes, is advising him to stop worrying about loaves and instead place his faith in blood. Heinrich is moved to tears by the profundity of the statement, which, just a little too late, he realises he has absolutely no understanding of at all.

Confused, he looks up and is struck by the radiance surrounding the Saviour’s head. It is not the complex light he had always imagined, but a light he recognises from his early childhood: the luminosity of his mother’s breast as he was feeding there, or perhaps the light shining through the skin of her womb while he lay waiting to be born; whatever the source, it distracts him completely and he forgets to ask Jesus the exact meaning of his parable, despite the twinkle in the Galilean’s eyes.

‘Your highness?’ The wheedling tone of his assistant jolts the archbishop rudely awake.

‘What now?’

Heinrich stands, wrestling with the pain which shoots through his body as he shifts his weight.

‘The father of the midwife, the chief rabbi, is waiting. He begs for an audience.’

The archbishop glances at the chapel door and glimpses Elazar hovering outside, his apprehensive face peering into the shadows. Dressed in traditional robes he looks like the archetypal Jew banned from the Christian temple. Heinrich can only imagine the humiliations the rabbi must have experienced to travel unaccompanied from Deutz into Cologne. Even from this distance Heinrich can see his prayer shawl is muddy and that the old man is fighting exhaustion.

‘He won’t take no for an answer,’ the priest adds unnecessarily.

Sighing, Heinrich hobbles to the entrance. He knows the rabbi will not cross the threshold, out of respect and superstition. As the archbishop moves between the pews he tries to compose a rational explanation for the arrest of Ruth bas Elazar Saul.

Over the years he has grown to admire the rabbi’s dry wit and gift for strategy. The old man is also a potential ally. His Dutch colleagues are strong supporters of William of Orange—all Jews are royalists, Heinrich reminds himself. This makes the two of them bedfellows, admittedly strange ones. He is unaware that this is an illusion Elazar has been quick to exploit.

‘My poor dear man.’ Heinrich grasps the rabbi’s trembling hands. ‘You must be freezing. Come, come.’

With an imperious wave the archbishop dismisses the curious town guards who have followed the old Jew through the icy streets. He ushers Elazar into a small chamber behind the chapel and after helping the old man into a chair sends the nun out for a jug of ale.

Elazar, his long nose purple with cold and the rest of his face shining a ghostly white, cannot quite believe he has made the journey. Anger and desperation have driven him to this place, but now that he is actually here the long supplications he has composed during the dark days since his daughter’s arrest abandon him. He is speechless. A huge shudder passes through his frail body.

Heinrich, ever observant and in a particularly benevolent mood since his celestial discourse, again takes the old man’s long pale hands between his own.

‘Rabbi, we may be of different faiths but we are both spiritual men. I suggest that we pray together—a prayer for clarity and control in a difficult situation over which even I have no jurisdiction.’

And with that both men lower their heads and begin two prayers: one in Hebrew, the other in Latin; one an entreaty for leniency, the other for political grace. The two ancient tongues curl around one another in a strange onomatopoeic dance, then float up to the ceiling to settle between the carved rafters like sacred smoke.