The Witch of Cologne

‘My son, may God be with you at this dark time, may he illuminate your path with light and fill your heart with love.’ Detlef continues to pray, unable to meet the man’s ferocious gaze for dread his emotions will betray him.

Another young man wearing the black gown of the university student enters the hall. Overwhelmed by the foul air the youth retches then covers his nose with a sachet filled with herbs, stumbling between the diseased and dying as he makes his way across the room. As he draws near Detlef can see the resemblance between him and the man languishing before him. At the sight of the canon the boy stops in his tracks, his eyes cold: this is the third brother he has seen perish, the last of his siblings.

The student kneels beside the priest as Detlef begins the anointing, indicating that he is performing the last rites. The canon reaches for the brow, smearing the scented oil beneath each puffy eye, then marks the man’s nostrils, mouth and ears. He pauses for a moment, wondering whether the youth is still conscious. The flicker of an eyelid indicates some life. Detlef continues.

‘May God pardon thee, whatever sins thou hast committed…’

But the brother speaks over him, whispering into the dying man’s ear. ‘It is the Jews, Stefan. They have poisoned the wells. It is they who have brought this foul pestilence to our fair city. I shall avenge you, Stefan. I swear on your death bed that by nightfall these heathens, these infidels, shall be burning in their houses…’

Detlef stops. The student, wondering at the priest’s sudden silence, looks up.

‘What’s wrong? Canon, can’t you see that he is dying? Finish the last rites for I shall be damned if I don’t see my brother die a good Catholic.’

‘Is there to be a Schülergeleif?’

‘What’s it to you? Those people are the anti-Christ. They are murdering our people with their poison.’

‘This pestilence was not brought by the Jews.’

‘Think what you want—nothing is going to stop us from crossing the Rhine.’

‘But such an act is against the principles of Christianity.’

‘Did not the Jews kill our Lord Jesus? Just as they are killing us now! Look around you! I will not let these people die in vain!’

‘You speak from pain and grief. There are Jews dying also.’

The man lying between them groans as he tries to speak, but his throat and tongue, a blackened lump that sticks to the roof of his mouth, will not work. He clutches at his brother as his eyes start to roll back.

‘Enough! Finish the rites, Canon, if you do indeed have a Christian heart.’ The student stares desperately down at his fading brother.

But Detlef is already standing, his hands shaking with rage as he starts to walk away. The young student runs after him. ‘Finish!’

Several nuns look over. Groot, attending a patient nearby, moves towards the canon. Before the student has a chance to lay his hand on Detlef, Groot is by his side pushing the student away. ‘Careful, boy.’

Detlef steps between them.

‘The good Father Groot will administer the last of the service,’ he announces calmly, then to the student’s amazement runs out of the hall.

Disgusted, the youth spits then turns to Groot.

‘You clerics are all the same, all you understand is the glint of gold.’

The small crowd of young men is already milling by the jetties. The area is eerily empty: the usual mongrels, alley cats and wandering livestock have disappeared entirely. At one end of the wooden docks lies an abandoned fisherman’s net, still full of rotting fish. Neither ship nor sailor has passed through since the plague was declared. One desolate vessel flying the Norwegian flag at half-mast sits in the shallows, caught in quarantine, its crew unable to leave and banned from disembarking. The calls of its cargo of starving livestock drift forlornly across the stagnant bay, adding to the sense that here time has stopped.

Detlef, anonymous in plain clothes, pushes through the rabble. At its centre the leader, a student, stands on the back of a cart goading the motley throng of scholars, apprentices and the dispossessed into action. Another youth hands out all manner of weapons: hoes, pikes, old swords, even axes.

‘Here, comrade.’ The boy presses a hoe into Detlef’s hand. ‘Take this to strike down the infidel.’

Detlef, appalled, hands on the tool as if it were red-hot iron.

From the distance a group of chanting flagellants, stripped to the waist, their backs a seething mass of open sores and scratches, weave their way towards the crowd, whipping themselves with leather straps studded with metal. The wailing devotees—middle-aged women with grey hair wild and unkempt, burning-eyed priests, ruddy farmers driven off their land by disease—are bound by one desire: to take upon themselves the wrath of God who has decided to inflict such grief upon man.

The student leader holds up a cloth effigy of a Jew strapped to a wooden pole.

‘Jude verrecke! Jude verrecke!’

Screaming abuse he holds a torch to it. The crowd cheers as the scarecrow erupts into flames.