The Witch of Cologne

Venus, the first star, has appeared, another child is born and the stream runs on. Water must be a celestial element for it has neither time nor history stamped upon it and is as constant as the tides of the sea or the rising of the moon. I long for such constancy, be it in life or in comradeship. Memory is a great deceiver: it embroiders until naught is left but the glory and the pleasure. Did we really lie together? Was it really your voice that spoke of great affection? Was it you who dreamt a future that cannot be?

I have a noble spirit, but I want to live. Tell me how to live and who to live for. I fear I shall surrender too much in love and then survive to regret it…

She sits with her naked feet tucked under her long stained skirt. It is barely an hour since she left the birthing, smuggled out of the tailor’s meagre dwelling, hidden under an old cloak long abandoned by one of his customers. Herr Rechtschild, profusely grateful, led her down a narrow alley stinking with sewage that only the goats and chickens care to frequent. In lieu of payment he insisted she allow him the pleasure of mending all her shawls for a month, claiming that if anyone asks why he shall say that he is preparing her for her engagement to Tuvia. Ruth, too exhausted to argue, was sickened by his obvious joy at the imagined union. The encroaching expectations of the small community are already fastening around her like tentacles. An old but familiar sense of panic begins to ferment within her: the desire to leave, to break free.

The gutter ended at a sluice-gate, beyond it a field adjacent to her own property. As the tailor unfastened the gate she had made him swear not to tell anyone of her service. As soon as she was out of view, she had run through the long grass towards the cottage, hoping against all reason that Detlef would be there waiting for her, like some glorious apparition from a forgotten daydream.

By the time she reached the dwelling the consequences of her actions had sobered her completely. But the yearning to talk with her lover, to touch him, to share the day, was overwhelming.

Night creeps across the orchard now as the first swarm of gnats begins to dance over the water. Ruth looks down at the sheet of parchment, her handwriting an erratic scrawl, illegible in its jagged eagerness. How is she to send it? A courier would be too dangerous. She could bribe a journeyman, but discovery would mean death and disgrace for at least one of them. Can she trust Detlef? Is she able to discern between the pleasure of the body and the loyalty of the heart?

Uncertain of anything, she tears the parchment into pieces then scatters them across the rushing water.

Detlef stands over the font. Behind him he can hear the last of the sext prayers fading. Looking down he sees his fingertips reflected in the water’s surface as he prepares to dip them to mark himself with the holy cross. He does not think, he dares not.

It is four nights since he lay with the midwife and the potency of their encounter has rendered his ecclesiastical life with its rigid rituals and antiquated traditions meaningless. The prospect of loving her, the sheer audacity of it, has jarred him into a multitude of different futures, as if the road he had carefully mapped out has branched uncontrollably into endless possibilities. Suddenly all his work within the cathedral feels futile, worse than that: hollow.

He wonders how he is to deal with the day-to-day routines of his clerical life: the singing of vespers, the taking of confession, ministering to the poor. How is he to go on as before, an ambitious young canon manipulating his way to a bishopric? Will it be possible for his life to continue without her?

He kneels at the ornate altar. The statue of Saint Ursula is a baroque carving which vividly depicts the young maiden with scarlet cheeks and huge sad eyes, her gown torn, her body shot through with arrows, while at her bleeding feet writhe several of her ravished followers. Here a damsel

of Aryan perfection straddled by a huge dark-haired Briton, his face a puffy parody of arousal; there a pale creature cowers as her gown is torn from her body by a rusty-haired sailor. The saint herself seems to gaze down at Detlef. The more he stares at her the more he is convinced there is a chastising look on her painted face.

Closing his eyes he begins to pray but finds that Ruth’s naked form plays before him: tantalisingly, fragments of memory—the tilt of her chin below a shy smile, cheeks flushed with excitement, an erect nipple—wash over him, weakening his resolve. Each supplication as it forms in his mind concludes with one word: Ruth.

A sharp tap on the shoulder rescues him, jolting him back to within the stone walls of the chapel. Groot pulls at his robe, gesturing that Detlef should follow him outside to a place where they cannot be heard. Together they step through a stone archway into a courtyard where the archbishop’s servants grow vegetables for the kitchen. The midday sun hits the back of their shaved necks, reddening the skin above the rough linen. A page squats on some stone steps, busy mending his boots with a hammer. Groot, edging closer, takes advantage of the loud banging.

‘Canon, I have news from a small but friendly bird. Von Fürstenberg has made water with the Spaniard and we both know how bad their piss must stink. They have made merry and I fear you are to be the cuckold. Find yourself a dance master, for if you falter but once they shall take advantage.’

Detlef, frustrated by Groot’s dramatic and incomprehensible allegories and unsure just how much his assistant actually knows, decides to feign ignorance.

‘Groot, you know yourself that I dance superbly.’

The cleric leans even closer, his pockmarked face looming like a craterous moon. ‘In plain talk, sire, you are watched and closely.’

For a second Detlef’s heart misses a beat. Can Groot know about the midwife when he has been so careful?

The assistant, relishing his master’s paling face, elaborates. ‘Von Fürstenberg seeks favour with the archbishop and both are worried about your recent and growing affection.’

He is oblivious to the sudden silence as the page pauses in his hammering and cocks his ear at the second mention of von Fürstenberg, wondering if he might be able to make an extra Reichstaler through eavesdropping.

‘Affection…?’

‘For those who challenge the way the bürgermeisters favour certain individuals. Even some of the Gaffeln are worried, and everyone knows you haven’t taken Meisterin Ter Lahn von Lennep’s confession for over two full moons.’ Groot smiles lewdly. ‘One might even say you are a chaste man.’

‘Chaste indeed,’ Detlef replies with a serious demeanour, fear prickling still at the back of his scalp.

A few feet away the watching page wonders why the handsome young canon looks so uncomfortable at his cleric’s words.

The infusion of elderflower and ginger root wafts fragrantly from an elegant teapot of Chinese porcelain. Birgit, demurely resplendent in pale mauve damask, pours the tea into two impossibly fragile cups.

‘My husband bought these from an Oriental trader by way of a Dutch ship. They are said to be over one hundred years old.’

She hands the cup to Wilhelm Egon von Fürstenberg, who takes it between his pudgy fingers and raises it above his large ruffled collar. Birgit watches him sip with a surprising delicacy.

‘But you did not visit me to sample tea, Herr von Fürstenberg, did you?’

‘No. I am here on a more sombre matter.’