The Witch of Cologne

Heinrich, gingerly resting his gout-ridden leg against the bouncing flank of his horse, frowns irritably.

‘Canon von Tennen vanished two days ago. I suspect he has retreated to his country residence to ponder the various techniques available to him as an inquisitor—although, with all due respect, I doubt he will be following in the Spanish tradition. Naturally, if you had not insisted on the executions taking place so soon, he would have been in attendance.’

‘Pity. He’ll miss a good burning,’ the friar replies with a relish that disgusts the archbishop.

The procession passes the town hall then the cathedral. Turning a corner it winds alongside the old Roman wall that marks the perimeter of the ancient city towards the armoury. Next to the armoury stands a tall narrow building, an old warehouse which serves as an annexe. Heinrich cannot help himself: he glances up and sees the midwife at a barred window on the second floor, her face a pale oval topped by a black streak of hair. Despite the callousness that comes with power Heinrich cannot help but feel pity.

‘Isn’t that the tavern where you have rehoused the Jewish witch?’ sneers the inquisitor, interrupting his furtive thought.

For a second Heinrich contemplates rearing his horse into the side of Carlos’s diminutive mule, can almost see the Dominican crashing to the cobbled street. Instead he sets his jaw and silently recites a prayer of redemption for his murderous thoughts,

determined to play diplomat for his own advantage.

‘It is not an inn, it is the armoury, and I might remind you that my cousin acts with the blessing of my jurisdiction, Monsignor Solitario.’

‘I have sent a messenger to Vienna. It will be fascinating to see what the emperor thinks of your intervention.’

‘I sincerely hope that your messenger finds the roads this side of the border less treacherous than my own courier. On a more pleasant note, I have arranged for you and your secretary to accompany me on a trip to the famous Kloster Eberbach vineyard. It is my thanks to you for presenting me with that superb bottle from Najera: what it lacked in age it made up for in character. Kloster Eberbach boasts an outstanding cellar that should meet with your approval.’

And with a swift kick of his stirrups, the archbishop gallops forward. Carlos watches him go then turns back towards the armoury. Gazing up, he catches Ruth’s eye. He bows mockingly to her.

If there is such a thing as manifest evil, then you, Monsignor Solitario, are it, Ruth thinks. Locking eyes with her persecutor she feels a bolt of pure fear, as if his mere proximity can cause her body to remember the pain inflicted upon it.

It has been two weeks since Detlef’s visit. Since then she has seen only the youth who brings her food and collects her chamber pot. At first she lay on her pallet, allowing her body to mend as much as it could. She had even persuaded the boy to bring her some arnica weed to heal her bruising. But as the flesh revives, so the spirit is resurrected. To Ruth’s amazement, her desire to survive burns even brighter than before and with it comes the realisation that her fears and desires are as human as those of the women she treats. Now, confronting the prospect of martyrdom, she finds herself yearning to be something she would never have believed her nature could permit: a simple soul with hut, hearth and husband.

The inquisitor rides out of view and Ruth forces herself to look at the prisoners. Voss cowers against the bars. The midwife, remembering his kindness during the arrests, is horrified to see his massive frame now shrunken, the skin falling off him in folds, the blackened hole in his baffled face that was once his mouth. The Dutchman, however, remains stoic, hands locked to the wooden railings, shoulders hunched against the barrage of mouldy vegetables.

That will be me in my final hours, she thinks, standing there in the swaying cart, absorbing every image, brain and eyes drinking in the last moments of the world: the horizon, the sun and the cosmos.

Suddenly a rotten apple smashes against the bars, sending pieces of putrid fruit into the room. Ruth ducks then fearfully looks back out. Below a crowd of students and beggars stare up at her.

‘Jewish witch, your time will come!’ shouts a tall youth in the cheap black garb of a law student, leering at her. Another, a boy with a deformed leg, scrapes up some horse manure and hurls it upwards, his face a grimace of hatred.

Overwhelmed, Ruth sinks onto the straw pallet and covers her head with the thin blanket.

The hanging hill outside Mülheim is a desolate place populated by rats and stray dogs who live by day in tiny caves in the bank of the Rhine and feed by night on the putrefying flesh of the executed left to rot on rope or pyre. Above are the ever-present crows, circling in a clamorous medley, vying for a better position to swoop down and pluck a milky-blue eye from a green cheek, a purple sinew from a twisted leg, an intestine from a drawn and quartered torso. It is a graveyard of carnage, lacking the eccentric order of the battlefield, or even the plague-yards where child is laid beside mother, grandson next to grandfather. A macabre showground, each gallows, chopping block and smoking pyramid a different sideshow.

Here a murderess dangles, blackened buttocks swaying beneath the decaying skirt, her blonde hair a ghoulish remnant of femininity on her sunken skull. There a man who failed to pay his taxes, his headless torso protruding from a shallow grave, half-eaten by dogs, his head, its mouth cavernous, tossed casually a few feet away. Beyond is the burning field with its outlandish crop, each wooden stake bursting out of the ashes like a deathly sapling with its black fruit of charred bones and smouldering flesh.

It is here that the two new pyres have been erected, posts cut from sweet green birch with the flag of the city fluttering in the breeze atop them.

Already the crowd is gathering. Some come from Mülheim, dressed in the sombre clothes of the Protestant. Others are from Deutz, the Jewish elders with tumbling forelocks and chest-length beards clutching the hands of their young disciples whose wide black eyes roll nervously beneath the tall hats. Others are families bringing their children to teach them a living lesson in mortality.

The Catholics are there in numbers. Some carry straw baskets with bread and liverwurst poking out; others have brought stools to sit on and are accompanied by servants. Defiantly festive, with the white lily of the Madonna pinned to bosoms or woven through buttonholes, they are determined to enjoy themselves.

Elazar ben Saul leans heavily on his stick as he picks his way across the broken rocks and burnt ground through which nothing seems to grow.

‘You do not have to witness this barbarity, Reb,’ says Tuvia, catching the old man’s arm as he stumbles.

‘I need to see the depth of this Spaniard’s hatred,’ Elazar replies. He pushes through the crowd, trying to ignore the searing pain in his arthritic legs.

Weaving her way behind him, Rosa, panting with the effort, catches up. She is dressed in black, mourning for the imprisonment of her dear child. A flask of mead is strapped to her broad back and she carries a small oak stool, a viewing perch for the rabbi.

‘With all due respect, Reb Saul, I can’t think why—the man is the devil incarnate. He was an evil bastard when I knew him back in Spain and he has only grown more wicked with age. May the pox strike him down!’

She spits, then rests for a moment, straightening her back. She is able to see the two pyres in the distance, stark against the backdrop of the glistening Rhine.

‘If I were a Christian I’d cross myself now,’ she mutters, but the rabbi overhears her.