The Witch of Cologne

by Tobsha Learner

  The acrid smell of amber, salt petre and brimstone taints the air, obscuring all other odours. Ruth, now labouring, has had Hanna smoke both the house and the grounds for fear of pestilence. With the birth imminent she finds herself in the grip of an irrational terror that she will suffer the same fate as her mother and die in childbirth. For two days Hanna has been running around executing Ruth’s instructions to protect against any unforeseen circumstances, and most of all to ward off the possible intrusion of the demon herself, Lilith.

  Now the housekeeper, with a thin willow stick dipped in henna, traces the last of the Hebrew letters in thick red paste across Ruth’s white stretched skin.

  ‘Have you completed the three names?’

  Ruth, her nightdress pushed up to her breasts, tries to peer over her huge shiny belly. Hanna sits back on her haunches.

  ‘I’ve copied them exactly like your drawing but I’m no artist.’

  ‘As long as the lettering is correct they will work as protection.’

  ‘With this much quackery soon not even the daylight will be able to get through,’ Hanna says, glancing around the room. Hanging on all four walls of the bedchamber are talismans against Lilith and her demons: here the Shield of David, there the three angels, Snwy, Snsnwy and Smnglf, covered from wing to tail with kabbalistic scrawlings. Pinned above the bed is a Hebrew prayer for safe delivery, while another amulet is wrapped around Ruth’s wrist.

  ‘But this amulet is tattooed on my very flesh. Whatever happens Lilith will not be able to penetrate there,’ Ruth mutters through clenched teeth as a contraction suddenly grips her. Frightened that the young woman might be becoming delirious, Hanna touches her forehead. She is hot but not unnaturally so.

  ‘Why such a fear of the devil’s grand-dame?’ Hanna asks.

  Groaning, Ruth props herself up. ‘She took my own mother when she was birthing with her second child. Both died.’

  ‘That will not be your fate, Fraülein. I am sure of it.’

  Sighing, the housekeeper wipes her hands and returns to a stone bowl she has resting in the corner. She starts to stir, mixing a concoction of pellitory, sanicle, chamomile, melilot, green-balm, red-balm, white mullein, mallow, betony, marjoram, nipp, march, violet and mugwort with three pints of white wine—which she now splashes in liberally. She sniffs the mixture, grimaces, then pours out a glass of the foul-smelling liquid and holds it to Ruth’s lips.

  ‘Not again,’ Ruth groans.

  ‘It’s your own recipe, three times a day you instructed—to bring the child forth.’

  ‘And now I feel pity for my poor patients.’ Ruth manages to smile despite another spasm.

  Hanna wipes her brow. ‘There was a woman in the village who was birthing for four days.’

  ‘Did she live?’

  ‘She did, both her and the child. Big baby it was, the length of three hands.’

  ‘Who was the midwife?’

  ‘They sent for one from Bonn, but she got here too late. Was Mother Nature in the end—and your Hanna. So, you see, you should not fear.’

  Ruth reaches out and grasps the sturdy forearm of the housekeeper, the skin greasy from the oil of violets she has been using to massage Ruth’s womb.

  ‘I’ll try not to, but I am impatient for the child to come.’

  She rests her head a moment on the bosom of this sturdy countrywoman who has become mother, friend, nursemaid and now midwife to a midwife.

  Ruth has been in labour for a day and a night and knows from the opening of her womb that the baby will not be hurried. But still she cannot stop the dread which has been eating into her ever since her waters broke. Narrow like her mother, she knows it will not be an easy birth. The memory of Sara perishing from a haemorrhage after the birth of her still-born son is deeply engraved within her. Will this be her fate too? Or will all the amulets and prayers ensure that it is not so? Still her trepidation has grown until she had to summon Detlef to be by her side.

  ‘It be almost two days since my brother left, they’ll be here before sunset,’ Hanna remarks as if reading Ruth’s thoughts. ‘Master Detlef’s a good man, for all his dangerous ideas. He reminds me of my mistress, his aunt, when he talks like that, filling the air with fanciful notions.’

  Another contraction begins, rippling from the base of Ruth’s spine, sending out waves of intense pain. Immediately she starts breathing deeply.

  Hoping to distract her, Hanna wipes her brow. ‘Mind you, dreams like his could get a man killed—just like his aunt. I used to say “Master Detlef, ‘tis a good thing no one can hear you except the wind else we’d both be hanging.” He was a lovely young boy, handsome as the day, always thought he was wasted in the church.’

  She waits until Ruth has stopped thrashing then straightens the robe around her sweating torso.

  ‘The child will be beautiful, despite the poor bastard he is.’

  Ruth, her eyes wide, stares up at the ceiling and tries to breathe some relief into her pain-racked body. Hanna pulls her up so that her back is resting against the wall. She places a goblet of water against Ruth’s bitten, swollen lips.

  ‘Drink, you need to keep drinking.’

  Exhausted, the two horses trot into the overgrown courtyard then invigorated by the scent of their home meadows toss their manes impatiently as Detlef and Joachim slip wearily out of their saddles, thighs and buttocks burning from the long ride. Detlef looks up at the house. Seeing a light glowing in the master bedroom, he fears that he might have arrived too late.

  ‘I’ll leave you here, sire, as is Hanna’s wishes. If there’s anything else you need, I’ll be on the farm with the wife…’

  ‘Could you take my mare? There is better eating for her over your way and she deserves a good feed.’

  Joachim nods but Detlef is already running towards the house.

  He pauses in the corridor, he can hear the soft murmuring of Hanna’s voice as she hums an old folksong. The heavy scents of the birthing herbs float under the closed door. For a moment Detlef hesitates, unsure whether he should enter a domain that is for ever the realm of women, until he hears Ruth call out his name.

  The mounted soldiers wait in the cover of the trees, their green uniforms blending in with the low branches and bushes. Beyond, on the other side of an open meadow, lies the house, a low stone building so ancient and well masked that it takes the eye a few minutes before it is able to focus on the dark thatched roof, the grey walls that merge into the shadows of the forest. It is only with instruction from Birgit Ter Lahn von Lennep that they have been able to approach the estate from this angle. Any other direction would have caused them to completely miss sight of the building.

  Carlos slides gingerly from his mount. He has been riding for hours, struggling to keep up with the soldiers who are all experienced horsemen. Doubled over with pain the inquisitor hobbles towards the captain who silently hands him the eyeglass. The friar, mouth dry with anticipation, peers through it. Instantly his backache disappears and all regret for the agony of the journey evaporates as he sees the burning light, almost hidden under the eaves, on the first floor of the low farmhouse.

  ‘The rat is in his hole,’ he whispers to the captain, who smiles back, his olive face split by the white of his teeth.

  ‘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.

  Hanna listens, not allowing one sign of terror to creep from under her irreverent expression.

  ‘Good sir, I don’t understand the tongue of priests. Speak plain German.’

  ‘In plain German, Madame, we are here to arrest your master Detlef von Tennen on two charges of misconduct: congress with a Jewess and wizardry. Now move aside.’

  But the housekeeper does not budge.

  ‘I know not this gentleman.’

  ‘Then, Madame, you are both a liar and an accomplice.’

  Carlos nods to the captain, who calmly knocks the housekeeper to the ground. She lies gasping for breath as the soldiers, stepping over her, pour into the house.

  The only light seeps in from a tiny crack between the wooden panels. From outside come the sounds of smashing furniture and ripping wall hangings as the soldiers search the rooms.

  Detlef reaches for the small dagger he wears at his belt. Slipping it free he tenses, barely able to contain the anger which surges up through his muscles. The soldier within him, long buried, is suddenly alert: he wants to defend his own, to kill the intruders who threaten the life of his woman and unborn baby. He will not squat here in the corner like a coward waiting to be slaughtered; better to perish fighting than to die like a pantry rat run through by a blind sword.

  Trembling, he closes his eyes, a picture of himself bursting through the wooden panel and grasping the inquisitor by the throat fills his imagination: the roar of blind satisfaction at plunging his knife in again and again, the blood splattering against the tapestries and coursing down to the wooden floor. Detlef’s sinewy fingers curl around the hilt of the blade. Slowly he lifts the dagger, his weight shifting as he readies his body to leap out of the confined space. At his side Ruth squats, her body heaving in labour.

  The sound of running footsteps and Hanna’s screams pierce the thin panelling. Detlef feels Ruth twitching in fear. Instinctively he reaches out to the wooden partition. But Ruth grabs his wrist as she presses against the back wall for support, a rag between her teeth to prevent her groans being heard. In the dim light he can barely see her terrified eyes but knows they are pleading with him. As she stares at him Detlef suddenly realises that she has total comprehension of the events outside despite her body arching with each spasm of the birthing, her face a yawning mute cry of agony. Fumbling in the dark he runs his hand up her legs then between her thighs; inserting his fingers he can feel the slippery top of the babe’s head. It has almost descended. He glances at Ruth, willing her to push.

  Her face clenched and red from exertion, she bears down and with a great gush of blood and pungent meconium the baby whooshes out straight into Detlef’s arms.

  Swiftly he wipes the muck from its tiny nose and mouth, then wonders what he is to do with the pulsating birth cord still ravelling out from the child’s belly and back into Ruth. The midwife, feeling blindly, touches the thick slippery cord. Concentrating, she steadies her trembling fingers long enough to tie two pieces of thread around it then reaches for Detlef’s knife. Straining his eyes, he watches her as she cuts the throbbing band. Blood spills then ceases.

  Exhausted, she relaxes against the wall then smiles at the baby. Outside the soldiers shout to each other as they run down the stairs. Seeing that the babe is about to bawl, Ruth covers his mouth with her hand. The cry is still perceptible.

  Two rooms away in the master bedroom, Carlos rips down the mystical amulets from the walls.

  ‘Witchcraft!’ he spits, revolted.

  He
tears up the drawings and throws the pieces into the air where they flutter down like chaotic snow. Spinning around, he stares at the blood-stained pallet. Furious, he pushes it onto its side. Underneath there is nothing, just the dusty wooden floor. But there is a greasy stain beside the pallet.

  ‘Look, look what magic the witch has made with her wizard!’

  The inquisitor pulls down the remaining amulet still hanging over the bed.

  ‘Canon! Wherever you are hiding we will find you!’

  He is answered only by a barking dog out in the courtyard. Just then the captain, his face covered in scratches beading with blood, enters.

  ‘We have searched the house, there is nothing.’

  ‘Have you looked everywhere? The servants’ quarters? The barn? The pig sty? I want you to examine every nook, every cranny, everywhere!’

  The captain shakes his head slowly and sniffs the air. He starts to back out of the room fearfully. ‘That smell…I know it—they have smoked the place to ward off the plague!’

  ‘It’s a decoy, you idiot!’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I am in command here! Search the rest of the property. I order you! Now!’

  Reluctantly the captain goes back to the landing and yells for his men to search the upper floor again. Swearing and sniffing the pungent air nervously, the soldiers march up the staircase, their uniforms incongruous in the domestic setting.

  Carlos, still standing in the middle of the master bedroom, looks around slowly. There are the witch’s combs, the soft hair still wound around the ivory teeth. Here are the canon’s boots, fancy French imports. Carlos kicks at them: the idea that a cleric should own such expensive footwear revolts the frugal Spaniard. There is a corruption in the German Catholic soul that must be stamped out, he thinks, but despite himself cannot help marvelling at the softness and length of the black hairs caught in the ornate comb. The midwife has hair like her mother’s, witch’s locks that can twist themselves around a man and milk him dry.