The Witch of Cologne

Finally Ruth stops her scribbling. A servant places another log on the fire while Ferdinand, unconscious, curls his hands up like a sleeping child. His uneven snore rattles through the warm room as Ruth lays the diagram down beside his torso.

‘The ailment is an adhesion made of old scar tissue pressing against the bowel and causing a blockage. It is this that is poisoning the blood.’

‘Will he perish?’

‘If left untreated, yes—it may even be too late now. With your permission I might be able to cut the blockage out, but I shall need to be able to lay both knife and hand upon his highness myself.’

The count looks on as Ruth indicates the illustrated growth. Impressed by her draughtsmanship he is still hesitant—everyone in the room knows that to allow a Jew to touch royalty is a punishable offence.

‘And if I say no?’

‘He will be dead by morning.’

‘And Madame, if you fail you will be dead by the morning after.’

‘In that case I shall arrive at my natural destiny sooner rather than later and,’ she adds, smiling gently at her new patient, ‘I shall have the advantage of company.’

‘Let us hope you are as skilful with the knife as you are with your tongue.’

The count bows slightly, and after giving instructions to his servants to provide everything the midwife should need, is relieved to depart.

Alphonso tenderly pulls a coverlet over the prince while Ruth removes herbs, a scalpel, cleaning tools and a stitching needle from her bag.

‘I cannot protect you from my brother.’

Detlef, reaching across, clasps her hand for a moment. Alphonso turns away discreetly.

‘I don’t expect you to.’ Ruth pulls her hand away. ‘I shall need clean rags, a cauldron of boiling water and sheets. No one is to be in attendance except the prince’s valet.’

The authority of her request distances the moment of awkward intimacy. Noticing the tension between the two the actor steps forward.

‘As I refuse to leave the room you might as well use me as nursemaid. I am good with small instruments and faint not at the sight of blood—I once played Macbeth for three seasons.’

He leans forward, his dishevelled hair and week-old beard giving him an air of desperation. ‘Also, if the prince should perish, God forbid, I would like to be by his side.’

Ruth slowly nods. Already she has laid out the operating tools on a square of clean cloth. ‘I shall come to you when I have finished,’ she says softly to Detlef.

He nods, secretly thankful to leave the musky room with its nauseating odour of illness.

Outside, the canon pauses at the door. He recites a prayer for the protection of all concerned, then winds his way down the candlelit corridors towards the tiny chapel which the count has dedicated to Saint Hubert and all victims of hunting accidents.

The cotton stitches, long and crossed over, hold the swollen edges of the cut skin neatly together. Ruth, her face flushed from the heat, dark circles under her eyes, blood staining her apron and forearms, inserts the last one, pulling closed the incision like a seamstress.

The room stinks of foul air, mead and gore. The patient, still unconscious, dribbles slightly, his head tilted back drunkenly. Beside the bed lies a bowl in the centre of which the putrid growth squats evilly. The brass cauldron bubbles away on the hearth with several stained instruments floating on its surface.

Alphonso, pale with fatigue, dabs at the prince’s bloodied stomach with a clean rag. For hours he and Ruth have worked together and an unspoken but evident trust now links them as strongly as a conspiracy.

Ruth, too exhausted to speak, pulls open the drapes then the heavy wooden shutters. The dawn, framed by the window, streaks the sky with pink and mauve hope.

The prince’s body, newly illuminated, takes on a porcelain grace. Leaning over him the actor meticulously wipes the last of the blood away from the wound. ‘I love him,’ he says softly but definitively.

‘I know,’ Ruth replies, not unaccustomed to this kind of affection between man and man.

But Alphonso persists, looking for some form of absolution from the woman who to him now appears as luminous as a miracle-worker. Risking everything he steps towards her.

‘Fear not, Fräulein, yours are not the first Jewish hands to touch the prince.’

Surprised, Ruth looks up, then without a word leans across and cradles him in her arms.