The Witch of Cologne

‘Monsignor, we will catch your rodent. If we surround the house, there will be no escape. The forest is too thick and if he runs across the open meadow he will be like a duck on a shooting range.’

‘I want them both alive. I will have them tried and make them a public example. They are no good to me dead.’

The captain nods then signals to his men. The ten guards slip off their horses with the practised stealth of the mercenary, as indeed some of them are. After silently tying their horses to trees, they unhitch their heavy chainmail vests and drape them expertly over the saddles. Then armed with short swords, their plumed helmets glinting in the sun, their tunics blazing with the Hapsburg double-headed eagle, its talons arching proudly over sceptre and sphere, the men glid

e noiselessly through the waist-high grasses of the meadow like a huge emerald and silver snake whose twisting mass catches the sunlight only now and then. Moving in short bursts, each soldier is an extension of the captain as they follow his signals with razor-sharp precision. Ten feet into the tall grass the soldiers halt.

Carlos, sweating heavily under his cassock, squats beside a clump of wild wheat. Pollen and seeds sting his eyes as he struggles not to sneeze. Beneath his foot something—probably a toad—squashes down unpleasantly. To console himself the inquisitor holds in his mind the image of the German canon mortified, his head hanging in shame at the great public auto-da-fé Carlos plans to conduct in the city square of Cologne.

Detlef strokes Ruth’s damp hair which hangs in ribbons down her back. The nightdress stuck to her sweating flesh barely conceals the heavy breasts, now laced with a filigree of pulsating veins, above the enormous sphere that is her belly. She breathes in short pants, her fingernails digging into Detlef as Hanna probes between her open thighs.

‘What do you sense?’ Ruth gasps over her pain.

‘The crown of the head is at the lip. It won’t be long now.’

Hanna withdraws her hands and washes them in a basin of water which quickly becomes bloodied. With Detlef’s help Ruth pushes herself up so that she squats supported by the birthing stool.

‘My love, promise me that if there is any danger you will save the child first,’ Ruth whispers as she wraps her arms around his neck, drawing him to the rich fecundity of her scent.

Detlef has never seen a woman so naked and so undone. And to his amazement, he still finds beauty in the swollen flesh, the struggle in her body and in her face. But birthing is women’s business and the midwife’s doubt of her own survival fills him with an ancient dread.

‘My love, this is demons speaking, there will be no danger to either you or our child.’

But before she can answer him she is swept away by another spasm.

Suddenly there is the sound of heavy banging at the door below. Detlef, his face blanching, stares at Hanna.

‘What is that? Do you hear it? Or is it the pounding in my own head?’ Ruth murmurs.

Detlef races to the bedroom door but the housekeeper is already standing before it.

‘Let me pass!’

‘No. ‘Tis better I go, but first hide yourselves.’

‘Where?’

‘Follow me, there is a secret passage.’

Quickly she bundles up some rags and the birthing stool while Detlef picks up Ruth, now delirious with pain, in his arms. Again there is the sound of fists drumming against the door.

‘Open up! This is the emperor’s men!’

The captain’s voice rings out as a rain of stones hits the side of the house, smashing a window.

Hanna, running, leads them back out into the corridor, past the wide staircase, past two abandoned rooms and then into her own small bedroom tucked into a corner under the rafters. She pulls aside a wooden panel to reveal a small alcove and pushes them into it. Then she slides the wooden panel closed, pulling the tapestry over it so it is as if the alcove does not exist.

As the housekeeper clambers back downstairs she quickly composes herself, adjusting her cap and throwing off the bloodstained apron. Taking a deep breath she strides towards the oak door that is shaking violently with the guards’ pounding. Just before she slips the huge bolt open she crosses herself, muttering a quick prayer to Saint Martha, the patron saint of housekeepers, and Katrina von Tennen, her former mistress, to fortify herself with courage and wit.

The housekeeper stands on the threshold, hands on hips, legs apart. The casualness with which she surveys the soldiers with their swords at the ready, their chests heaving in patriotic excitement, confuses Carlos who thinks for a moment that they might have raided the wrong estate.

The captain, also momentarily bewildered by the sight of this motherly figure, glances back at the friar whose hood is pulled low over his sunburnt face.

‘What do you boys want?’ The housekeeper is flippant in her enquiry, as if confronting a group of errant farmhands, not the guard of the emperor.

‘Not you, mother!’ one cheeky soldier yells out and a few of the others grin sheepishly.

Carlos, sensing a lull in the momentum, steps forward. He pushes back his hood and reaches into his cassock. Speaking in Latin he begins to read out a charge of immoral behaviour against Canon von Tennen by the Holy Roman Empire and the Grand Inquisitional Council.