The Witch of Cologne

Ruth, staring up, wonders why the sun seems to dance. When she looks at the women why do they throw their veils over their faces in shame? And why is the prison cart driving so slowly down the main street?

Carlos glances down the muddy broken road which serves as the central thoroughfare of Deutz. The dark architecture appals him, as do the yeshiva boys with their outlandish forelocks curling around their exotic narrow faces and their strange long black clothes. The Dominican is convinced that these foreigners are staring at him with hatred; he is certain that if he should step amongst them, they would tear him to pieces like ravening dogs. Devil worshippers, the killers of our good Lord Jesus, lost souls all, he thinks.

The cart lurches over a pothole, almost pitching the friar out. Clutching the wooden rail he crosses himself vigorously.

When they reach the synagogue, the inquisitor signals for the coachman to halt. The cart pulls to a violent stop, rattling its captives like beans in a box. Carlos glances at the small sanctuary with the brass star of David perched on its dome and he waits.

Behind him, her hands curled around the iron bars, Ruth can see that the street is beginning to fill with the curious. Sanctioned by her arrest, they creep from their houses and out of the back lanes, a silent mob, the voyeurs of disaster, the onlookers who believe that in some mystical way the role of witness will render them immune to the peccadillos of fate. Fascinated, they slide like somnambulists towards the prison cart, staring at the midwife’s bare and bruised legs, her exposed shoulders and loose hair.

Ruth, knowing that they are outside her father’s house, is so humiliated she can hardly breathe. The silence stretches, then is broken by the startled flight of a loose hen from under the prison cart. The crowd begins to mutter and hiss. Someone throws an old turnip. It hits her, dense as a rock, but she barely flinches. Let them kill her. Better her own people than the Germans.

‘Witch!’

‘Whore!’

‘Shame! You bring shame on us!’

Staring around wildly she searches for familiar faces, and sees Vida watching from the shelter of the bakery door. ‘Vida! Vida!’ she cries hoarsely.

But the baker’s young wife, catching Ruth’s crazed gaze, turns away to weep in shame.

Detlef, astride his horse, observes from a distance. He does nothing to help the Jewess. Let her people stand in judgement on her, he thinks, but why has the inquisitor halted here in front of the temple? A man who is motivated by a personal vendetta is far more dangerous, he concludes, for such a creature is unpredictable. He watches Carlos’s excitement as he waits for a response from the shuttered windows of the synagogue. What history does the Dominican have with the Jewess, the canon wonders, curious as to how such an insignificant woman could move powers as far away as Aragon and Vienna.

Suddenly a frail bearded old man walking heavily with a stick pushes his way through the onlookers.

‘Ruth! Ruth!’

The crowd falls silent, parting for the chief rabbi, his white hair sticking up like a feral halo, his embroidered prayer shawl dragging behind him in the dirt. He stops and stares at the prison cart in utter disbelief. He stumbles and in an instant two young men—the same two who were only a second ago yelling insults—are by his side, holding him up. The old man pushes them away and walks up to the bars. He barely recognises the terrified woman cowering inside.

‘Ruth, my child, what have they done to you?’

He pushes his bent arthritic fingers through the iron poles, trying to reach his daughter. He cannot believe that this mute creature who stares at him with bewildered eyes, whose bleeding face retains only a remnant of her beauty, is the proud heretic who ran from the village, who broke the rules she knew he could never trespass himself, even the ones he might secretly have wanted to.

Leaning forward Elazar whispers in Hebrew, ‘Have they stolen your spirit? Have they taken your strength?’

But Ruth, setting eyes on her father for the first time in three years, is unable to answer, her tongue struggling to find the words between her swollen lips, the mucus and the horror.

‘Forgive me, daughter. Forgive me for not forgiving you.’

Weeping, the old rabbi reaches in and strokes the long black hair he once combed himself, now matted with blood. And suddenly there are no bars, there is no prison cart, there is nothing between the father and the daughter except clemency.

Many watching lower their eyes, unable to bear the agony of such raw intimacy.

But still the midwife is silent. Through his tears Elazar ben Saul notices a rip in his daughter’s dress and under it the scratches welling with blood. A great rage starts to shake his thin frame and it is then, as he spins around to face her captors, that a sudden breeze finally carries back his daughter’s answer. ‘I love you, abba,’ she whispers in Yiddish, the language of women. But the old man is too furious to hear.

He marches up to the inquisitor. With a great sweep of his bony arm, Elazar smashes his walking stick against the side of the cart.

‘What is this outrage? Do you know who you have in your pathetic prison of fear?’ the chief rabbi screams.

Every Jew watching flinches, frightened he will bring the wrath of Cologne onto the whole community. The old man in his rage has forgotten who he is shouting at, who has authority. Unmov

ed the Dominican looks down at him.

‘Who are you?’ the rabbi demands.

‘I was your wife’s confessor as I shall be your daughter’s. My name is Carlos Vicente Solitario. I am the Inquisitor of Zaragoza, here under orders from both the Grand Inquisitional Council and the Emperor Leopold. Your daughter is charged with witchcraft.’

The inquisitor’s voice, cool and detached, makes the old rabbi sound hysterical. Surprised, Elazar ben Saul falters, peering up at the man shortsightedly.