The Witch of Cologne

by Tobsha Learner

  Detlef knocks against the roof of the coach with his cane. The coachman shouts out to the horses in a guttural dialect; their gallop slows to a canter and then pulls to a halt.

  ‘Forgive me. I am, alas, all too human under my breeches.’ And with that Detlef climbs out.

  Ruth gives him a moment then follows. The fresh alpine air sears her lungs and blows away the mustiness of the coach. A few feet away Detlef makes water while Ruth casts her eyes over the panorama.

  One side of the road is the mountain climbing upwards, while below lies a valley with a broad river snaking a path along the bottom of it. Ruth watches a band of sunlight travel across the sloping tracts of forest, transforming the trees from dark olive to a luminous emerald as the light catches their waving tops.

  ‘See yonder?’ Detlef points down. The glistening roofs of a small settlement cradled in a curve of the river are just visible. ‘That is my brother’s land. I grew up riding through the lanes of that village. Das Grüntal, the hunting lodge, is beyond the next valley. The forest is good for boar in winter and pheasant in spring. My brother is uncommonly fond of the hunt. If only he had such a love for his serfs.’

  ‘Do you have no jurisdiction?’

  ‘Fräulein, I am the second son. Naturally the only path which promised influence was the church.’

  ‘Perhaps it is a blessing. At least you will have the joys of being an uncle.’

  ‘The possibility of my brother begetting an heir is remote. His marriage is a childless sham and shall remain so. No, I’m afraid the property will go to my cousin upon the count’s death.’

  ‘Would you wish it to be otherwise?’

  ‘I should wish it only that I might instigate changes.’

  Detlef points again and Ruth, squinting against the sun, can see a patchwork of fields, most of which appear fallow.

  ‘The count has neglected his duty as farmer for too long. Not since before the war has this land been run properly. There is much disease and poverty amongst our peasants yet my brother does little to relieve their misery.’

  ‘If I have time, and with the count’s permission, I shall visit the women myself. There could be tasks I can do to make their burden easier.’

  ‘Be warned: my brother is a creature of politics, he has no sensibility of the needs of others.’

  Behind them one of the horses snorts impatiently. Ruth glances around; the coachman sits on the box chewing a wad of tobacco. He peers down suspiciously but is unable to meet Ruth’s eye. She turns to Detlef.

  ‘You have endangered your position bringing me here. Even the coachman suspects that I have you under a spell.’

  Detlef laughs and, biding his time, pulls a sprig of mountain sage from a large bush. He buries his nose in it and inhales deeply. He does not want to think about the difficulties that lie ahead. All he desires is for the sense of exhilaration and calmness he feels standing next to her to continue.

  Ruth, infected by his boylike abandonment, is confused. She wonders whether he understands how dangerous the situation could be for both of them. Suddenly he thrusts the sprig towards her.

  ‘Sage.’

  ‘The herb to render man immortal,’ she answers, smiling.

  The coachman spits out his tobacco and shouts to them, wanting to move on while the horses are still fresh. Detlef tucks another sprig of sage in his coat pocket. As they walk back Ruth suddenly turns to him.

  ‘Canon, I lied…about the birthing of Frau Brassant. There was an amulet…’

  Detlef, aware of the watchful driver, hurries her towards a stream where he knows the tumbling waters will drown out their voices.

  ‘Was there witchcraft, Ruth? Tell me honestly.’

  Distracted by the use of her name in a familiar and loving manner, Ruth hesitates. An extraordinary sense of excitement rushes through her. Should she tell him about Lilith, about the circle of protection she drew around the ailing mother? Would he comprehend the way the demon has shadowed her life? Can she trust him with her great secret fear or will he crucify her as others wish to? She does not know him well enough, Ruth reminds herself. He is of another race, another world, he will always be other.

  ‘It is a weakness in me. I cannot let go of the ways of my mother. The amulet was there for protection, of both child and mother. The three angels, Snwy, Snsnwy and Smnglf, and Chesed, the kabbala symbol for mercy, that is all,’ she answers carefully.

  ‘No incantation, no appeals to the black master?’

  ‘None, I swear.’

  ‘Then it is a custom not a spell, a harmless token to ensure safety, and no one need know of this but ourselves.’

  ‘Do you think me weak? For all my belief in scientia nova, I must appear a primitive.’

  ‘Not weak, only human.’ He hoists her up into the coach. ‘And that is of great comfort to me as I had begun to doubt otherwise.’

  Outside, the coachman shakes the reins and the six black stallions arch their muscles into a graceful trot.

  Inside, looking away from Detlef, Ruth feels her heart reverberating over and over with the sound of his voice whispering her name.

  The heavy drapes are drawn against the cold afternoon. Two Kammerhunde, their large elegant bodies draped over each other in rough affection, lie sleeping in front of the glowing embers of a fire. The air is filled with the scent of burning cloves and camphor: protection against disease and the terrible smell emanating from the ailing royal. A housemaid removes the copper warming pan from the bed and empties out the cooling coals to replace them with red-hot ones.

  The count, in a Persian day coat, reads in an armchair. Breaking the silence he laughs out loud. Alphonso, bent over the prostrate figure of Ferdinand, sponging the sweat from his unconscious face, hushes him. The count looks up guiltily then back down at his tome, The Ingenious Knight Don Quixote of La Mancha. The tension is shattered only by the clatter of hooves outside the window.

  The prince’s face shines a mottled grey, the skin papery, flaking off around the nostrils and eyebrows. Ruth leans closer; she needs to take her patient’s pulse but it is forbidden.

  Behind her the count, Alphonso and Detlef wait anxiously. Alphonso stares at the midwife as if she is the embodiment of hope, which indeed she is. Ruth notes the colour of her patient’s lips then instructs Alphonso to lift his eyelids. The actor, trembling slightly, peels back the young man’s lids; beneath the eyes roll back white.

  ‘Has he been bled?’

  ‘Every day for a week,’ the count replies dismissively and glances suspiciously at the hide sack the midwife has placed at the base of the curtained bed, expecting her at any minute to produce some ridiculous quackery. Ignoring him, Ruth leans down and pulls out the cow gut and brass cup instrument that was presented in court.

  ‘What is that?’ The count alarmed, jumps back.

  Detlef, amused by his brother’s uncharacteristic loss of control, steadies the count’s lace-clad arm. ‘Fear not, Gerhard, it is an instrument of scientia nova.’

  ‘Indeed. I believe I might have seen one myself at the French court,’ the count replies unconvincingly, trying to cover his humiliation.

  Ruth, sensing that her best protection is to remain enigmatic, shows Alphonso how to place the brass cup over Ferdinand’s heart. While she listens intently the count pulls Detlef to one side.

  ‘You realise that if he dies the von Tennen name will be endangered, not to mention the fact that we shall have to drive the body back to Vienna at our own expense. Leopold will expect a state funeral.’

  ‘The prince shall not perish.’

  The two men watch as Ruth, closing her eyes in concentration, begins to rock backwards and forwards on her heels. It is not a sight the count finds reassuring.

  ‘Nevertheless, you will oblige me by performing the last rites if necessary?’ he whispers to his brother.

  ‘Naturally.’

  Ruth asks Alphonso to pull up the prince’s nightshirt so she may examine his midriff. The sight of the scarred abd
omen, now swollen and bloated like that of a pregnant woman, causes both men to turn away as the actor tenderly arranges the linen sheets around Ferdinand.

  ‘What are the scars from?’ Ruth asks, wondering at the crusty ridges that criss-cross her patient’s flesh.

  ‘From an old injury as a boy,’ Alphonso answers.

  ‘It could be that the current ailment is related to this. Remove the last of the leeches,’ Ruth instructs, but the count stays Alphonso’s hand.

  ‘My medic told us it was an impurity of the blood.’

  ‘Sire, with respect, the prince is weak, his heartbeat is faint. He needs to be given nourishment not drained of it.’

  Reluctantly the count nods his permission and Alphonso removes four bloated leeches from the prince’s groin and neck. Ruth looks down the torso, her focus drawn towards the swollen belly. Below the bony ribs, on one side of the extended sac that was once a stomach, there is a visible growth. Gesturing with her hands she shows Alphonso how to massage gently around the area.

  ‘You must tell me exactly what you sense beneath your fingertips. From this I shall be able to deduce the ailment.’

  Alphonso, almost too frightened to touch his lover for fear of hurting him, softly lies his hands over his sleeping flesh.

  ‘There is a stone, hard to the touch.’

  ‘Is there a ridge of muscle that lies above it?’

  Alphonso hesitates as Ferdinand groans.

  ‘Please, you must continue if we are to save him.’

  As Alphonso describes what he feels under his hands, Ruth sketches out an anatomical drawing on parchment, the ink splattering in her jerky haste. Detlef, watching over her shoulder, marvels at her vision and confidence. It is as if she is sensing the prince’s body through Alphonso’s fingers. The accuracy of the drawing—the stomach walls split open, the rippling coils of the intestines, both greater and minor—indicate that she has been witness to autopsies, a practice punishable by death in archaic Cologne but accepted in Amsterdam.

  The count, after glancing at the midwife’s frantic sketching, looks at Detlef with disapproval.

  ‘Brother, is it not time we resorted to innovation if we are to advance?’ Detlef whispers, distracted by Ruth’s powerful strokes with the quill which belie the fragility of her figure.

  ‘But is this knowledge or alchemy?’ the count murmurs back, watching Ruth trace in the demonic growth visible in the upper intestine.

  ‘She has had training in Amsterdam with the finest medics of the Netherlands, trust me.’

  ‘Just save the youth’s life and we all shall live.’

  Finally Ruth stops her scribbling. A servant places another log on the fire while Ferdinand, unconscious, curls his hands up like a sleeping child. His uneven snore rattles through the warm room as Ruth lays the diagram down beside his torso.

  ‘The ailment is an adhesion made of old scar tissue pressing against the bowel and causing a blockage. It is this that is poisoning the blood.’

  ‘Will he perish?’

  ‘If left untreated, yes—it may even be too late now. With your permission I might be able to cut the blockage out, but I shall need to be able to lay both knife and hand upon his highness myself.’

  The count looks on as Ruth indicates the illustrated growth. Impressed by her draughtsmanship he is still hesitant—everyone in the room knows that to allow a Jew to touch royalty is a punishable offence.

  ‘And if I say no?’

  ‘He will be dead by morning.’

  ‘And Madame, if you fail you will be dead by the morning after.’

  ‘In that case I shall arrive at my natural destiny sooner rather than later and,’ she adds, smiling gently at her new patient, ‘I shall have the advantage of company.’

  ‘Let us hope you are as skilful with the knife as you are with your tongue.’

  The count bows slightly, and after giving instructions to his servants to provide everything the midwife should need, is relieved to depart.

  Alphonso tenderly pulls a coverlet over the prince while Ruth removes herbs, a scalpel, cleaning tools and a stitching needle from her bag.

  ‘I cannot protect you from my brother.’

  Detlef, reaching across, clasps her hand for a moment. Alphonso turns away discreetly.

  ‘I don’t expect you to.’ Ruth pulls her hand away. ‘I shall need clean rags, a cauldron of boiling water and sheets. No one is to be in attendance except the prince’s valet.’

  The authority of her request distances the moment of awkward intimacy. Noticing the tension between the two the actor steps forward.

  ‘As I refuse to leave the room you might as well use me as nursemaid. I am good with small instruments and faint not at the sight of blood—I once played Macbeth for three seasons.’

  He leans forward, his dishevelled hair and week-old beard giving him an air of desperation. ‘Also, if the prince should perish, God forbid, I would like to be by his side.’

  Ruth slowly nods. Already she has laid out the operating tools on a square of clean cloth. ‘I shall come to you when I have finished,’ she says softly to Detlef.

  He nods, secretly thankful to leave the musky room with its nauseating odour of illness.

  Outside, the canon pauses at the door. He recites a prayer for the protection of all concerned, then winds his way down the candlelit corridors towards the tiny chapel which the count has dedicated to Saint Hubert and all victims of hunting accidents.

  The cotton stitches, long and crossed over, hold the swollen edges of the cut skin neatly together. Ruth, her face flushed from the heat, dark circles under her eyes, blood staining her apron and forearms, inserts the last one, pulling closed the incision like a seamstress.

  The room stinks of foul air, mead and gore. The patient, still unconscious, dribbles slightly, his head tilted back drunkenly. Beside the bed lies a bowl in the centre of which the putrid growth squats evilly. The brass cauldron bubbles away on the hearth with several stained instruments floating on its surface.

  Alphonso, pale with fatigue, dabs at the prince’s bloodied stomach with a clean rag. For hours he and Ruth have worked together and an unspoken but evident trust now links them as strongly as a conspiracy.

  Ruth, too exhausted to speak, pulls open the drapes then the heavy wooden shutters. The dawn, framed by the window, streaks the sky with pink and mauve hope.

  The prince’s body, newly illuminated, takes on a porcelain grace. Leaning over him the actor meticulously wipes the last of the blood away from the wound. ‘I love him,’ he says softly but definitively.

  ‘I know,’ Ruth replies, not unaccustomed to this kind of affection between man and man.

  But Alphonso persists, looking for some form of absolution from the woman who to him now appears as luminous as a miracle-worker. Risking everything he steps towards her.

  ‘Fear not, Fräulein, yours are not the first Jewish hands to touch the prince.’

  Surprised, Ruth looks up, then without a word leans across and cradles him in her arms.

  Maximilian Heinrich wakes to the pealing of bells for early morning mass. For a moment he thinks he is still in Cologne, then remembers the hurried ride to Bonn the evening before. Five peals—five a.m. The midwife will have treated the prince by now. The sleepy archbishop shifts his weight around on the lumpy feather pallet, not wanting to open his eyes and face the bureaucratic quagmire that threatens to swallow him up.

  In the distance a cock crows and the smell of fresh horse manure drifts in through the half-open shutters. The midwife. Heinrich, eyes squeezed shut, his massive double chin sagging against the feather pillows above his cotton nightshirt, is already struggling with the machinations of his political survival. What is Detlef’s interest in the plain little Hebrew? Knowing the canon’s susceptibility for the weaker sex, he nevertheless cannot believe that his cousin‘s interest could be romantic. The midwife is so far removed in station that the archbishop can barely think of her as female, never mind desirable. No, it ha
s to be some latent surge of faith in the man.

  Pleased with this hypothesis, Heinrich, eyes still shut, smiles. His valet, having stepped silently into the bedroom, notices the archbishop’s expression of pleasure and thinking that he might be disturbing an early morning moment of erotic delight steps back out. Meanwhile the archbishop, continuing his musing, finds himself feeling almost paternal towards the young canon. In his later years Heinrich has started to cherish in others the youthful passions which were once his own inspiration. The idea of reinforcing a moral world in which everything, even the most mundane tragedies, has meaning, has always appealed to him. It was the experience of watching his father being stripped of land and wealth until all that remained was his title which initially led the young Heinrich to yearn for power to reestablish the old ways of the aristocracy.

  The strict hierarchy of the church with its pomp and glory seemed to provide a stability he craved in the chaotic aftermath of the Reformation. By the time he realised that the theological order was just as corrupt as any other, it was too late for the idealistic young Heinrich. It delights him now to think that, unlike himself, Detlef still retains his passion, perhaps even a small vestige of faith.

  The archbishop opens one eye. From a small side table the timepiece he inherited from his father stares back at him. It chimes again; this time gilded doors fling open and Death, a hooded skeleton, wrestling with Love, a buxom bare-breasted maiden, pop out. It suddenly feels like a bad omen to Heinrich. In an attempt to stem his fears he decides to ignore the chiming timepiece and resume his meditation.

  If the midwife saves the prince, Detlef will have pulled off a coup that will serve Heinrich, Cologne and most importantly the emperor, with the added advantage of being an act of both spiritual and ethical grace. The man is a born strategist; he is his natural heir, not that buffoon Wilhelm Egon von Fürstenberg. Unless the canon has failed, in which case Heinrich will have to banish him to some remote abbey in Bavaria until the name von Tennen has completely disappeared from the mind of that ridiculous puppy Leopold.