The Witch of Cologne

Swallowing his distaste, the count feigns a laugh and pulls the child onto his lap. ‘Only if you want him to. Do you want him to tear him up into little pieces?’

Jacob gives his uncle a solemn stare then answers with great seriousness, ‘No, I don’t.’

The count laughs. ‘Then he shan’t. I give you the word of a gentleman.’

A bell rings at the door and a page enters dressed in the colours of his master’s house. He approaches Ruth. ‘Are you Mevrouw Tennen, the midwife?’

‘Is Mevrouw van Voorten in labour?’

‘For a good three hours she has been screaming for you,’ the page replies dramatically.

Smiling at his anxiety, Ruth places a hand on his arm. ‘When women labour they scream, but there is no need to be afraid, she is a sturdy woman.’

‘Madame, my mistress needs you now.’

She glances at Gerhard and Esther and hesitates, reluctant to leave. The count, seemingly reading her distress, puts a hand on her shoulder.

‘Fear not, the child will be safe with me and the maid, I promise.’

Ruth looks into his eyes and for the first time believes she sees genuine affection there. The servant tugs at her sleeve.

‘We must hurry.’

She wraps her cloak around her then pulls her son close, the sweet smell of his hair enveloping her as she lifts him.

‘Jacob, Uncle will take you to the painter’s this afternoon and then home. You will be a good boy, won’t you, and you won’t cry for mama?’

Jacob, swallowing, nods.

Ruth turns to the maid. ‘Esther, make sure he wears his jacket and that he does not go hungry.’

The maid nods, her broad face expressionless. The count puts his hand on the boy’s tiny shoulder.

‘I promise I shall have him safely home before sunset.’

Jacob flings his arms around Ruth’s neck and clings to her. She kisses him then places his hand firmly into the count’s.

‘Jacob, you are to be a brave boy and behave for your uncle. I shall see you in the morning when you will have forgotten I was gone at all.’

‘Kiss Punti.’

Jacob holds up the toy rabbit, and after kissing the motley torn face of the one-eyed cloth rabbit, Ruth steps out with the manservant.

The count curls his fingers around the small hand and marvels at the blind trust of both mother and child.

A chill whistling through the crack under the door teases the back of

Detlef’s neck. He pulls up the collar of his woollen undervest and tries to concentrate on the Dutch pamphlet he is deciphering: a translation of one of his lectures entitled ‘Must man be a slave to superstition?’

Somewhere in the street a door slams shut. It is past midnight and the house feels profoundly empty without his wife and child.

‘…the notion that faith might be a human necessity, a biological need, suggests that perhaps the ability to have faith elevates man above all other animals; but how to transform a belief in witchcraft, goblins, angels and devils to a conviction which embraces the scientia nova and the perfect geometry of nature, which, in truth, can only be a manifestation of the substance of God himself…’

Detlef pauses and absent-mindedly runs his hand along the underside of the Flemish desk. He is surprised when his fingers bump against a protrusion. He looks underneath, an amulet is nailed to the inside of one of the wooden legs. Detlef pulls it off and gazes at the small stone tablet. Tilting it to the light he can see that it has one Hebrew letter carved into it. Ruth’s doing, one of her kabbalistic spells—for what? he marvels, amused. Protection, good study, prosperity? For all her defiant belief in the hard logic of the material world he knows that his wife still clings secretly to the ways of her mother’s family. Confronted by her superstition, Detlef has made the conscious decision to see it not as a flaw but as a strength, and given the Remonstrants’ belief that there is no predestination in life, he finds himself wondering whether Ruth’s instinctive faith in the written incantations might actually influence the outcome of events.

Ruth. He always aches for her when they are apart although he would never admit to such a weakness. Could it be a sin to love one’s wife this much? Possibly, for to love this intensely suggests he cannot accept the inherently transitory nature of both affection and life. He still finds it miraculous that he is able to love at all and that he found love so late in life. It is as if his identity and existence in Cologne now lie under a thick opaque glass, cloudy, out of focus and increasingly immaterial.

The town crier calls one o’clock. Detlef goes to the window and looks out over the narrow canal. A fog has settled on the water, transforming the lit windows of the tavern opposite into an oasis of dull gold in the dirty white. Where is she? And where is the maid? He knows Ruth was called to a birthing but to take the child also…? The notion worries him. Jacob is far too young to be exposed to such female matters. As if to answer his fears the clatter of horses’ hooves echoing in the narrow lane draws him from his anxious reverie.