The Witch of Cologne

by Tobsha Learner

  ‘I am not a child, I am a man.’

  Jacob stands at the door, playing hoop in hand. He stares at the small dark man who has invaded his home.

  ‘Jacob, it is impolite not to bow. Especially to a great man like Dr Spinoza who is a friend to both your father and myself.’

  The young boy cocks his head at the name Spinoza, it is a name he has heard his mother utter in reverent tones to her associates, a name that comes from that mysterious past he can barely remember, the diminishing crystal ball of his childhood and the memory of his father, tall and fair, a flush of excitement transforming his serious demeanour at the mention of this man.

  Coughing, Ruth turns back to Spinoza. ‘Forgive my son, he is quick to defend his mother.’

  ‘As he should be. Come here, my boy. Let me look at you in the light.’

  Dragging his feet, Jacob walks towards the philosopher, who tilts his face up.

  ‘I see that you are both your mother and your father. A beautiful but dangerous collision of two worlds. Do you remember your papa?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Then you will recall that he was a brave and courageous man who was not afraid to speak out for his beliefs.’

  ‘And I shall be the same.’

  ‘An admirable ambition for a six year old.’

  ‘Are you the same Spinoza that is in our bookcase?’

  Spinoza laughs as Ruth blushes. ‘I suspect so. I should wish to be in many bookcases but there are few who dare to read my words.’

  ‘I will when I am bigger! I’m frightened of nothing!’

  ‘Fear has its place, but you will learn that in good time. Now go and play, I must speak with your mother alone.’

  Ruth stands slowly, coughing again with the effort.

  ‘Obey Dr Spinoza, but be back before dark.’

  Jacob takes a last curious look at Spinoza then turns on his heel. The philosopher bursts out laughing.

  ‘He has very well-fashioned attitudes for his age.’

  ‘I have tried to teach him the same humane beliefs my husband and I subscribe to, but I fear a child is born with his nature already formed.’

  ‘Indeed, but there are graver matters afoot.’

  Spinoza closes both the shutters and the door. ‘You know the Orangists have arrested Cornelius de Witt?’

  ‘Even an ailing midwife knows this. It disgusts me, it is a trumped-up charge. Cornelius would never have plotted against the life of Prince William. Suddenly all these so-called Republicans are blaming the de Witts for France invading Utrecht. Have people no loyalty?’

  ‘People have short memories when they are terrified of suddenly finding themselves on the wrong side of a bursting dam. Since the attack against Jan de Witt and the proclamation of William as Stadtholder, I fear the next step will be the assassination of our brave leader and a purging of all who support him. We must be careful, my friend. Hide your books, your pamphlets, your writings. It is more important that we survive to speak out again than die silenced martyrs.’

  ‘I shall be discreet.’

  She breaks into another coughing fit, this time more severe. When she has finished, her handkerchief is bloodstained. Spinoza, rising in alarm, pours her a glass of water.

  ‘You have medication?’

  Ruth nods, but her face has a new tautness, the skin beneath her eyes shadowy and blue.

  ‘I must leave you to rest. I shall visit again with Jan Rieuwertsz when this summer storm has passed and it is safe to walk the streets wearing the colours of the Republic.’

  After he has gone, she collapses on the bed, fever pumping at her temples and in the veins of her wrists.

  Published at last, she thinks, as exhilaration tears at her agitated body. Her work is to be recognised, to be of assistance to hundreds of women in the future. It is an impossibility come true. If only she could recover her strength, if not for herself then for her child. Perhaps they will be able to afford a warmer dwelling, a tutor even. Jacob must find a livelihood, a profession that will secure his adulthood. Perhaps she can capitalise on the publication, obtain a small teaching post…? As whom? She laughs at herself—Felix van Jos? She has forgotten her sex again. She must be practical, she must…

  Fighting delirium, she tries to clarify her waltzing thoughts, new hopes that refuse to stand still but dance like raindrops splashing onto a sundial while the shadows of time turn regardless.

  ‘…the baby that will not descend should not be forced. A birthing hook that tears open the matrix will result in the death of both mother and child if it should be made of wood and iron. There is a gentler alternative, a loop of cat gut thickened with wax…’

  ‘Jacob, will you stop your foolishness!’

  Ruth, bent over the small desk, quill in hand, pauses mid-sentence, her pale face shiny with strain. Jacob, who is pushing a whirligig around the room, looks at her, his hand hovering over the toy.

  ‘You are too old for such childish things,’ she tells him, unable to keep the irritation out of her voice.

  ‘Jacob, sullen, pushes his lip out then kicks the toy into the corner.

  ‘But, Mama, you said I couldn’t go out to play.’

  Ruth lifts herself with difficulty. She is thinner, her skirts hang loose around her hips and beneath her smock her collarbone is a severe arch rising out of a gaunt breast. She looks at her son: the petulant pout she recognises as her own, but it is Detlef’s obstinacy which hangs over the child like a cloud.

  ‘Come here, I will show you something to amuse you.’

  ‘No! I am bored! I can’t stay here all the time. It is Rutger’s birthday, you said I could go!’

  ‘Jacob, you know it is too dangerous.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because they have arrested Jan de Witt himself. I explained all this before…’

  ‘But what does that mean to us?’

  Jacob, I am weary. I am only trying to protect you. Come here, I will show you something wonderful.’

  Reluctantly, the boy shuffles over to her. For a week now they have been trapped in the small lodging rooms while outside street brawls rage between the Orangists and the Republicans. Battles which began when the young Prince William of Orange finally rebelled against his protector and ordered the arrest of Jan de Witt, the leader of the Republic.

  Ruth pulls the magnifying lens towards her then carefully tips a live aphid from a vial onto a glass slide and places the insect beneath the lens.

  Jacob climbs onto his mother’s knee. The child is already too big and heavy for her but Ruth smiles into his hair. She has grown to relish moments like this when Jacob, locked in an internal struggle between the restless detachment of boyhood and the need for his mother, reverts to his younger self.

  ‘Look through here.’

  Jacob gazes through the lens, fascinated. ‘Mama! It’s a dragon! Or at least a large green elephant!’

  ‘It is an insect that feeds on the leaf of the rose. In its world, it is not a carnivore like the dragon.’

  ‘But it’s green, and hairy! With funny things sticking out of its head!’

  ‘Antennae.’

  Jacob pauses, then looks up at her. ‘Did you show Papa these things?’

  ‘This and much more. There were many things I shared with him.’

  ‘What was he like?’

  ‘You know what he was like.’

  The young boy’s face changes expression as he searches back into his memory.

  ‘I remember walking by the canal with him. I remember the big black cloak he put on when he was going to church and I remember him reading stories to me at night, but Mama, I begin to forget what he looked like.’

  ‘He was fair, like you, with the same shaped eyes and the same mouth, but his eyes were blue. And he had the same temper as you, Jacob.’

  ‘Did he kick things too?’ the child squeals, delighted.

  ‘In a manner. He kicked at authority and questioned all that others took for granted.’

  ‘Som
etimes I get frightened because his face has begun to disappear from my dreams. Does this mean he is leaving us?’

  ‘No, Jacob, and I would forgive you if you did forget, for Papa will always be here, inside you, in your nature and in your flesh.’

  ‘Is that how we live for ever?’

  ‘That is what I believe.’

  She smiles down at him, marvelling at the child’s gift for reasoning, which she recognises as a heritage from both Detlef and herself.

  Thank the good Lord for the philosopher, she thinks, pleased that Spinoza has secured the promise of an apprenticeship from the publisher Rieuwertsz for the child should anything happen to her before Jacob reaches his adulthood. She gazes at the long black eyelashes fluttering against the fair skin. She is a fortunate woman to have this bond of flesh, this profound love, which in times of great loneliness jolts her back to a state of grace.

  Sleepy, Jacob rests his head on Ruth’s bosom, nestling against her like he used to do when he was a small babe, until a tremor of fever forces her to carry him to the bed.

  Twentieth of August, 1672

  My love, I am writing to tell you a wonderful thing. My first paper will be published at the end of this month under the name Frau Ruth Tennen. Is this not an occasion to be joyous? How long have we waited for this moment? Are you not thankful now that you tolerated, nay, cajoled me into all those hours of study?

  My husband, when are you to return? It has been two days since I last saw you and my body grows weary of waiting…’

  ‘Your body has grown weary because you have been waiting for two years. But now I have come back.’

  Detlef stands before her, dressed in his old vestments of the canon, his features as young and handsome as they were when Ruth first made love with him in the cottage at Deutz.

  ‘Two years? But that is not possible. And why do you wear the cloth of the church?’

  ‘I wear the cloth for I am here to give you the last rites.’

  He moves towards her and takes the golden feathered quill from her hand. She looks at the scroll she has been writing on and sees that the calligraphy has begun to fade.

  ‘You are dreaming, my love. You are imagining that you are writing a letter to me and that I am still in the living world.’

  Startled, she jumps to her feet and for the first time notices that she is wearing her wedding gown. But the plain velveteen dress which she wore when they stood in the small Calvinist forest chapel near Nijmegen, before a minister they knew would not ask questions, is now miraculously embroidered with silver thread and beaded with pearls.

  ‘Am I still in the living world?’ she whispers, terrified of the answer.

  ‘Your spirit is at the gateway, but it is time to join with me.’

  She looks over to the window set high in the wall of her small study. Outside it is brilliant sunlight, yet inside all is shadow.

  ‘Which last rite would you administer, my love? And which afterlife do you promise, as I have faith in neither?’

  ‘But you have faith in me?’

  ‘Always. I always did, Detlef, and forgive me if I ever faltered or questioned your love, for I know now that it was merely fear.’

  ‘I loved you anyway,’ he replies with that characteristic shyness she recognises from the first time he ever uttered those words.

  Then she takes his mouth to hers and tastes him. Remembering their lovemaking, desire bolts through both of them, weaving their spirits together again.

  ‘Then this shall be our eternity,’ he whispers, his voice rippling like heat.

  Ruth, her body drenched in sweat, tosses in the filthy bed. The air is rank, the curtains drawn, the window bolted. A bloodstained towel lies tossed on the floor beside a pail filled with soiled bedclothes. In the corner is a bucket of vomit.

  Jacob lies sprawled across the foot of the bed, his arms wrapped around Aaron’s sword. He has been asleep for hours after keeping vigil for three days, sword in hand, beside his dying mother.

  Outside in the streets of the Hague a distant roar rises up from the direction of the castle. It grows louder as the cacophony rolls towards their lodging. Jacob wakes and immediately swings the heavy sword in the air, ready to defend his mother. He glances over at her and reaches out to touch her face. She feels cooler, as if the fever has broken. Momentarily frightened, he places a hand on her chest…a heartbeat is faintly perceptible.

  Don’t die, you can’t, not yet. Not before I am grown and can look after us both, Jacob thinks, staring down at her grey face. I shall build a house with a garden, and there shall be an orchard with a river running by it, and a bridge. And we shall live there together, warm and well fed. There shall be geese in the yard and a forest for me to hunt in. You shall never have to work again and shall wear a new dress every week.

  The boy’s ramblings are broken by the noise of a crowd approaching, running, shouting, the banging of drums, all building until the roar beats against the windows and walls.

  Jacob pulls open the shutters. A torn flag of the Republic covered with human excrement bobs madly up and down below him.

  ‘Down with the Republic! The de Witts are dead!’

  The shout rises up from the street.

  The boy leans out to see a mass of people, flushed with excitement, many with blood spattering their clothes, singing and dancing, drunk with power and excitement. Women with their breasts hanging out, dishevelled drunken soldiers waving the Orangists’ colours, red-faced youths pushing violently through the throng, blowing loudly on horns.

  The horde winds into the narrow lane like a demented snake, filling it until there is little room to move. Packed shoulder to shoulder, the crowd becomes as one, waving bloodstained strips of cloth, flowers torn from passing stalls, ripped flags, rocking from side to side, drinking from casks handed from man to man.

  An object is lifted high above the crowd, impaled on the end of a pike. Jacob realises with dismay that it is a body, the stomach split open, its entrails spiralling out like macabre ribbons, the eyes white, the mouth screaming. Just as suddenly a second body appears beside the first. It is a puppet show of dancing horror as the corpses, blood flying from them, bounce absurdly past the window. Despite the blackened cheeks and missing chunks of hair, Jacob recognises the two men instantly.

  ‘The pensionary and his brother are dead! The de Witts are finished!’ someone shouts, only to be drowned out by a huge cheer.

  A loud scratching sound causes Jacob to swing back to the room. Crouched in the corner is a gigantic raven, its shimmering purple head crammed up against the ceiling. It turns one glistening black eye to the boy then arches a huge claw towards the feverish woman on the bed.

  Jacob slams the window shut and, lifting his sword, moves slowly towards the immense bird of death. A grating rustling fills the bedroom as the raven ruffles its wings, indifferent to the child. Ruth moans very softly. The massive spectre cocks its shiny head and slowly a huge grey scaly foot emerges from the blue-black feathers. The claw descends cautiously to the floor, the long yellow nails scratching against the polished wood. With a loud thump the colossal bird hops once towards the bed.

  ‘No!’

  Jacob rushes the raven, sword aimed directly at its breast. To his amazement, the blade runs right through as the apparition breaks up with a deafening caw, only to manifest again, this time perched on the end of the bed itself.

  ‘You can’t take her! You can’t!’

  Moaning, Ruth opens her eyes and lifts a feeble arm towards Jacob. As he leans down she pulls him to her.

  ‘My child, promise me you will always remember who your parents were…You must fight tyranny always, live for the freedom of belief…the freedom of thought. This is our gift to you…’

  Exhausted, she falls back to the pillow, closing her eyes. Her grip loosens and her hand falls away.

  ‘Mama? Mama!’ he cries, shaking her.

  The raven squawks, breaking into Jacob’s weeping. He looks up. The bird’s massive beak opens
to reveal a startling pink cavern then it looks back down at him with an almost kindly eye. Lifting a claw, the raven extends it towards Ruth’s prostrate figure. Again the boy swipes at the bird, his sword passing uselessly through the phantom as the bird slowly begins to unfurl its long satin wings. A roaring fills Jacob’s ears. Sobbing, he throws himself over Ruth to defend her, his arms stretched across her shrunken form.

  Ruth can hear Detlef murmuring as he finishes the last rites. She looks up and there he is beside her.

  ‘Come, the others are waiting.’

  He pulls her into his arms, and as she stares deeper and deeper into his eyes she sees the ghosts of her past, all waiting for her: Sara, Rosa, Hanna, even Aaron with his serious face, and then at last Elazar steps forward to take her hand.

  Clutching at her withered arms, his head upon her bosom, Jacob feels the last shuddering breath leave his mother’s body, and then the yawning silence as her soul departs the flesh.

  – MALCHUT –

  Kingdom

  The Hague, Spring, 1683

  The scent of poppies fills the chamber. Jacob fingers the silk blindfold. He thinks about cheating by opening his eyes but decides against it. Something luxurious and scented brushes past him. Fabric? Lace? Fur? A perfumed veil of long soft hair falls across his face followed by the touch of a finger against his lips, confusing him further.

  ‘Are you ready for your birthday offering?’

  ‘If it is to be a gift, I am not fully seventeen until after midnight.’

  ‘Can you wait until then?’

  ‘Madame, I believe I have waited long enough.’

  Impatient, Jacob lifts his hands to the knot that has become entangled in his long fair hair, excitement bursting at his loins. As the blindfold falls away she says, ‘And so begins the corruption of a poet.’

  She sits before him on a low ottoman. She is naked except for a diaphanous gown, which seems to float above her nudity rather than lie upon it. Her flesh, which he has touched only through clothing, is curvaceous. Her breasts a jutting whiteness crowned by large dark areolae, her stomach a rounded glory with golden curls climbing up her belly. Thus undone she smiles, not with the guarded arrogance he is accustomed to, but with a timorous almost child-like questioning that plays humorously in her huge brown eyes. Jacob’s mouth dries, his heart races with anticipation. Fifteen years older, she is the first woman he has seen naked. To him she is beauty itself spread before him.