The Witch of Cologne

‘Be careful! You’ll kill him, you fools!’ Alphonso yells out, forgetting his rank and letting his voice fall three octaves in his terror.

Stumbling in his long skirts, headdress clasped in one hand, he runs through the mud alongside the chair as the prince is raced back to Das Grüntal.

Das Wolkenhaus, Some Miles From The Von Tennens’ Country Estate

Detlef lies sprawled on a small divan pushed up against the white wall of the simple parlour. There is little furniture in the large high-ceilinged room, a chamber which has faint echoes of a previous grandeur but now, denuded, is humbled in its asceticism. A large fireplace is set into the far wall, an ornate marble mantelpiece arching over it. A portrait of Detlef‘s aunt depicted as a buxom huntress hangs above, but the painting is dusty and badly in need of restoration.

A virginal, its once glorious gilded frescoes of nymphs and satyrs faded like a beautiful ageing spinster, sits mournfully beside the window. Next to the virginal stands a cabinet. Bavarian, the ornate cupboard boasts a kitsch panorama of the bizarre seduction of Hephaestus by Aphrodite; its spindly legs look strangely defenceless in the bleakness of the room. A worn medieval tapestry, threads hanging out, is stretched across the opposite wall giving that end of the chamber a curiously Oriental mood. A leather ball, a childhood toy, lies abandoned at the skirting board, beside it a chequered spinning top.

While Detlef sleeps, his cloak draped over his eyes, a large pink and black sow enters the room followed by several piglets. She trots territorially around the sleeping man, sniffs at the dried manure packed around his riding boots, then wanders towards the leather ball. The piglets follow, squealing.

‘Brunhilde!’ A matronly woman in a stained smock and sturdy wooden clogs runs into the room waving a straw broom at the pig. ‘This is a place for people, not for a glorified meat platter on legs!’

The sow, backed into a corner, grins crookedly at her mistress then farts defiantly. The noise and the odour drift across the room to penetrate Detlef’s slumber. He stirs and one of his legs slips from the divan.

‘Oh!’ The housekeeper whirls around and raises the broom ready to defend herself from the intruder. Convinced it must be an impoverished journeyman who has crept in to shelter from the cold, she tiptoes over and sees the royal crest embroidered on the cloak. Confused, she carefully raises the damp wool from the intruder’s face. At the same time Detlef opens one eye.

‘Master Detlef!’

The cleric, blinking in the bright light, rubs the sleep from his eyes and peers dubiously at the raised broomstick. ‘Are you going to beat me with that or is it just your latest means of transport?’

‘Beg your pardon, Master Detlef, your Hanna’s no witch,’ she says, lowering the broom. ‘I just thought you was one of those tramps that are for ever taking advantage.’

To cover her embarrassment she begins to sweep the floor. ‘If I had known you were coming, I would have made a fire, maybe cooked some broth.’

‘Well, I’m here now.’

‘And so you are. There’s precious little left of the winter stock in the larder, but I can go borrow some turnips and salted beef from my brother and have you all warm and toasty within the hour.’

‘How about some bacon?’ Detlef glances at the old sow, who glares back with open hostility.

‘You might have to wait a couple of months for one of the young ones. It’s been a mean winter, most folk are reduced to eating their grain. Brunhilde’s fended off several kidnapping attempts, haven’t you, darling?’ the housekeeper says to the pig with rough affection.

‘In that case, reassure Brunhilde. I’ll settle for broth.’

Yawning, Detlef gets up and shakes his stiff limbs, his body reeking of the damp night. Hanna shoos the sow and her offspring back out to the entrance hall and the serving quarters.

Looking around, Detlef feels a wave of affection for Das Wolkenhaus, the small country retreat where his mother’s sister once held her exclusive literary salons far from Cologne. His aunt, an unmarried spinster who had rejected family pressure to enter a convent, had turned the place into an unorthodox sanctuary for the bored wives of wealthy bürgers, and even some of the women merchants. Accompanied only by a few servants they often made the journey by coach or on horseback and stayed several days, gathering in the evening to recite poetry and play music and, more importantly, to exchange valuable information about their men and the webs of power that tenaciously held together the hierarchies of the city.

When his aunt died she left the property to her favourite nephew. The manor has become Detlef’s private home, a refuge from the demands of Cologne and from the affairs of his brother, whose own hunting lodge, Das Grüntal, lies several miles up the road. Never close, the gulf between the two brothers has widened over the years. Gerhard regards Detlef’s tolerance of Heinrich’s vacillating loyalties as weak, while Detlef has long given up hope of discovering anything human beneath his brother’s glittering political veneer. While they maintain the semblance of fraternal affection, in reality each lacks respect for the other. It is hard for Detlef to believe now how desperately he craved Gerhard’s approval when younger.

The slightly decayed atmosphere of Das Wolkenhaus suits its antiquity. The fields beyond the garden are still fallow after being devastated by the Great War. Detlef, relishing the bleak landscape, has let the ambience spread to the orchard and the garden, deliberately allowing the thick overgrowth to creep across the stone walls and raked gravel paths. Such is the success of his plan that from the outside the manor looks so neglected that no one is ever able to tell whether the canon is in residence or not.

Bathed and dressed in a plain damask shirt and jerkin of paduasoy, Detlef takes a seat at the round wooden table in the long kitchen.

‘This should keep the damp from the bones,’ Hanna says, setting the bowl of watery stew in front of him. She watches anxiously as the canon tentatively picks his way through the pieces of gristle until finally hunger triumphs over his palate and he is compelled to eat.

‘Excellent, Hanna,’ he lies. Relieved, the housekeeper turns back to her salting.

As Detlef spoons the greasy liquid into his mouth he muses on her sturdy figure in its stained skirt and grubby bodice. She seems so content, so unquestioning in her servitude. Is it possible that she might harbour the same ambitions, the same spiritual yearnings as himself? His thoughts are drawn back to Ruth bas Elazar Saul: although no peasant, she is still a woman and of far lower status than a Wittelsbach prince. So where does her intelligence, her constant questioning, stem from? The aether? God? From her lineage?

‘Hanna, do you think yourself to be equal to me?’ he asks suddenly.

Hanna looks up from her stewing pan, shocked, and spills some of the beef onto the stone floor.

‘It isn’t a trick question, I’m just curious. Do you think your soul is equal to mine, for example, or to that of my brother the count? Or even to that of the emperor?’

‘Sir, are you drunk?’