The Witch of Cologne

‘Ruth, if you desire, you can close your eyes and I will depart. It will be as if nothing happened. As if I were a ghost, a spectre who has merely slipped through the looking glass.’

She leans over him, her breasts soft against his chest.

‘No, that shall not be.’

‘Then let me protect you. For I fear the inquisitor will find a way of avenging himself.’

‘I cannot leave my father.’

‘I beg you—’

‘Then beg no more. We have the moment, let us not waste it in idle fantasy.’

And she pulls him into her arms, as if trying with her slender body to shelter them both from the outside world.

Later, as he watches her sleep, he finds the parameters of his universe have been flung open in a way he could never have imagined, as if a great furnace has finally melted the gaol he built so carefully to protect his heart, mind and faith. The mystery of her transfixes him; banal simple things: her bosom as it rises with every breath, the exotic thickness of her pubic bush curling up the curved belly which, to his surprise, he longs to fill, the taste of her and the taste of her and the taste of her.

A finger of pale blue light begins to creep across the scrubbed stone floor. The first smoke of the early morning fires lies on the air and he knows that he must leave.

With his hat pulled low Detlef makes his way back across the bridge towards the town. This time he has made sure that his boots are well soiled and that he walks with the limp of the homeless.

The sky is streaked with a red sunrise struggling to shine through the clouds. In the distance a young goatherd prods his reluctant animals with a stick as they bleat their way to the new day’s pasture, bells ringing. Detlef walks on into the sleepy town, not daring to lift his eyes to the young wives dressed in the twin-horned cap of the Jewess who shout to each other as they throw their laundry over balconies, the guttural sound of Yiddish floating down. A fetid-smelling cart winds its way slowly along the road as the night-soil man—a dwarf in a makeshift uniform of dark purple breeches and a top coat of black—runs to each household to collect the stinking pails. He hurries past Detlef without noticing him.

Detlef takes comfort in the normalcy of the panorama. This is where Ruth began her life, where she was conceived and nurtured. He finds it impossible to believe that he, a Catholic who has had sexual congress with a Jew, could be at great risk of arrest. Just as he finds it impossible to believe that he is trespassing as he walks along these very streets. The naturalness of his happiness seems to preclude the possibility of danger. And so distracted, he barely notices the intense young rabbi leaving the house by the temple, a bag strung across his back.

But Tuvia, as he climbs into the morning coach bound for Maastricht, spies the tall stranger. Something about his elegance of gait, the nobility of his features, seems odd to the young rabbi, by nature suspicious. The man is obviously not a Jew. In which case, what is he doing in the centre of Deutz’s Jewish quarter at five a.m.?

Disturbed, Tuvia watches through the window of the coach as the intruder strides towards the Rhine.

My dearest Ruth,

What has happened between us is irreversible as the Dawn which, as I write, threatens to expose us as turncoats of Love. If you will not come under my protection then I shall do my utmost to protect you from Cologne itself. But, my dearest heart, I fear there is only so much I can do. The inquisitor will eventually find a way to prosecute and Maximilian Heinrich will be forced to sacrifice your life. This I believe to be only a matter of time. I beg you to reconsider your decision.

Trust that as I watch you sleep, I leave half my soul here in this cottage. Ours is a union that will suffer no restrictions, no ignorance, no borders. I have no idea how I shall be able to walk back towards the Rhine without you, and I vow that nothing—no law, no army or faith—will keep me from your side.

In love and admiration,

Detlef von Tennen

Ruth lies there, his letter pressed against her face, the urgency of the day filtering in through the thin parchment. She should get up. Open the heavy wooden door. Let the early morning sun warm the cold stone floor. Feed the geese, pump water. Instead she stays sprawled across the bed, revelling in the lingering weight of his body echoing across her skin, in her loins. The taste of him, his sweat, which remains faintly palpable. She rolls over and, curling up, reaches across to the slight indentation in the pallet, still warm. She buries her face into the space where he lay, breathing his scent as deeply as she can.

She cannot believe his visit was real. That, despite geography, social mores, tyranny and huge danger, he came to her. She finds it difficult to fathom how an emotion which she was previously unable to define has become so clear, so overwhelming that it has pushed away all other concerns.

Outside she hears Miriam knocking at the door. She slips Detlef’s letter between the bed base and the pallet then, frightened that her young assistant might guess the real reason behind the strewn clothes, she leaps up—only to catch sight of her naked body in the looking glass. To her amazement she appears exactly as the day before. It is as if she had expected the loss of her virginity to transform her, to leave a mark. The absurdity of the thought makes her break into delighted laughter before she covers herself.

Carlos bravely places the morsel of stuffed pig’s intestine into his mouth and tries not to gag. Grimacing, he washes it down with a mouthful of wine, thankfully imported from the Mediterranean.

‘I see the good priest is having difficulty with our German peculiarities?’

Wilhelm Egon von Fürstenberg smiles. Upon seeing the inquisitor splutter he pours him another glass.

‘It is true that we lack the spice and flavour of the south, and we can be a little inflexible in our choice of vegetable. However there are many ways to prepare a cabbage, don’t you agree, Monsignor?’

Carlos glances at the portly minister. His obsequious verbosity is irritating. He trusts him even less than the canon, whose views are at least always transparent, but this man, Wilhelm Egon von Fürstenberg, has to be the real manipulator in the shadows. Suspecting him of having great influence over the archbishop, and possibly the prime architect of Heinrich’s dealings with the French, the inquisitor wonders why von Fürstenberg has invited him to eat at this palatial dwelling, a luxurious mansion on the outskirts of the city by the river’s edge belonging to his mistress, the wealthy widow, Countess von Marck.

Von Fürstenberg must want to strike a deal. But what kind of deal? The internal machinations and politics of this provincial city are beginning to irk him greatly, the Dominican thinks, suppressing a burp. He has been doubly thwarted in his persecution of Ruth bas Elazar Saul by that idiot Emperor Leopold and Maximilian Heinrich. It was a mistake to go to the vineyard, he was seduced by the archbishop’s cheap trick when he should have remained in the city to witness that sham of a trial. But he is determined to find the Jewess guilty, even if that means suffering the further indignity of German hospitality. A greater calling is at stake: the annihilation of the unholy, the purging of an evil seed which, unchecked, could infect an entire population.