The Witch of Cologne (22 page)

Carlos lifts the wine to his face. The aroma is rich and pungent and, tickling the back of his nose, reminds him of something. Blushing furiously he realises it is the smell of the sex of a woman. Heinrich, watching, winks knowingly at him then turns to the next wine.

‘On a happier note, the next bottle represents Christ’s miracles. After much thought, the wonder I decided upon was the wedding feast in Cana when our Lord turned the water into wine. A difficult decision, but I imagine the wine to have been of a light festive nature, symbolising the rejoicing by his flock at the recognition of our Saviour as the Messiah. So I have chosen a Mosel-Ruwer wine, a Maximin Grünhäuser—this grape would be from the Abtsberg at the centre of the slope. A delicate drop, unbelievably fine yet with an aroma and flavour of an intensity I believe would be impossible from such stony ground without God’s
intervention, and a little help from our Benedictine brothers.’ As he speaks he pours the light red fluid into the handmade glass goblets, then moves on to the next bottle.

‘After that we have the Last Supper. Imagine the atmosphere, a poignant mixture of quiet joy and sadness: joy at what Christ and his disciples had achieved so far and sadness caused by his announcement that one of them is to betray him. For this I chose a sober wine with a poetic background: a red from St Emilion. The town is a medieval labryinth, itself a matrix of spiritual complexity. The wine has a limpidity, almost a grief, that undercuts its darkness. You can imagine Christ holding up a glass and speaking those immortal words:
This is my blood.
’

He lifts the glass; a ray of sunlight streaming through the dark liquid casts an ominous burgundy shadow across his eyes. For a moment Carlos has the uncomfortable sensation that he himself might have been Judas at that immortal table. The spell is broken by a shepherd’s horn sounding out in the valley below. Heinrich replaces the glass on the cold marble.

‘Next we move on to the most pivotal event in the history of Christianity: the crucifixion. Our most Holy Father’s sacrifice of his son, martyred for his love of mankind. When I imagine the crucifixion I always think of the elation of spiritual enlightenment through intense physical suffering and pain. That moment of utter exhilaration Jesus must have felt when he surrendered both his spirit and his life. In honour of this I have chosen the wine of Madeu near Perpignan in Roussillon. The grapes are so rich and the wine so opulent that I like to think there is some divinity in its sweetness.’

He pours two glasses of the rich red. The fragrance drifts over and Carlos finds himself salivating. Heinrich smiles at him as if guessing his thoughts.

‘Patience, brother, we have two events to go.’

‘The resurrection and the ascension,’ Carlos murmurs, now swept up in the corpulent German’s narrative.

‘Exactly. For the resurrection, what would you have chosen?’

Carlos pauses, imagining Christ’s wrapped corpse lying peacefully in the cave covered from head to toe with its shroud, then the slow, magical rippling movement of life as warm blood begins to pump through the stilled heart.

‘A white perhaps?’

‘My thoughts exactly. The Spirit would be fresh and pure, an embodiment that floats above the ground. For this I chose a silky white from the Liebfrauenstift, in commemoration of the joy of Our Lady upon meeting her resurrected son. The vineyard surrounds the Church of Our Lady in Worms and the wine is both gentle and lively. And lastly, for the glory of the ascension?’

‘Red?’

‘Red, full-bodied and extraordinary. A bold declaration that rings out over cities, bells tolling, angel horns blowing, yet illustrating the simplicity of Jesus’ ascension into the arms of his Father. The 1540 Würzburger Stein from Würzburg on the Main—the history of the vintage itself is miraculous. That year the Rhine dried up and wine was cheaper than water; consequently they stored the vintage for over a hundred years in casks in the cellars of the Archbishop of Main, who himself sent me this as a gift.’

‘I am doubly honoured.’

‘Indeed you are, but not as much as you might like to think—I have several more bottles in storage.’

With a smile he pours out the last two glasses of wine in front of the Dominican. Now the sun has risen, a blood-red orb that has turned the clouds above a glorious amaranthine. Carlos, turning back to the table, counts seven glasses of wine poured out for him to taste. The desire to shout out, to laugh,
to celebrate the glory of the unknown the new day brings, sweeps through him.

‘What next?’ he asks, his breath a faint mist in the chill morning air.

‘Next we drink,’ the archbishop replies, grinning hugely.

Carlos leans against the huge wine press, the rich scent of hundreds of vintages ingrained into the oak pores of the ancient machine seeping out into the damp afternoon air.

‘She was a creature not of the flesh but of something far more refined, undefinable. Her beauty, in every aspect: musically, the grace of her gestures, the soaring heights of her wit; all of this was not of this world but one far more devious…’

He pauses, wondering why it suddenly feels as if the wine press has begun to tilt to one side. Heinrich, noticing the Dominican’s hesitation, immediately fills his wine glass again. It is late in the day and the two have been drinking solidly since the dawn toasting. However, Heinrich, blessed with a liver steeled by decades of drinking, is far less intoxicated than the frugal Spaniard—a situation the archbishop foresaw and has every intention of exploiting.

‘You really believed she was of the Devil?’ He leans forward to steady the swaying Dominican with one strong arm.

‘Oh, absolutely. Once during a musical recital I swear I saw her feet hovering at least half an inch from the ground. Not to mention the way she bewitched me with her breasts, her perfume, the fluttering movements of those long pale fingers—all sorcery.’ Carlos demonstrates, swaying his own hips in imitation.

Just another idiot who thought with his cock, Heinrich muses privately, but adopts an air of genuine sympathy.

‘It must have been terrible for you, barely a novice, to have to wrestle with such demonic forces. But Monsignor, I think you won then, for you have managed to cleanse this world of
her evil family. Surely it would be Christian of you to forgive the daughter and let her disappear back into the Jewish swamp of Deutz. After all, would the emperor really notice since we have burnt the other two accused?’

‘I cannot let her go free,’ Carlos announces loudly from where he has climbed on top of the wooden press.

‘Cannot…or will not?’ the archbishop insists, sensing an opportunity.

The Dominican, the world a giddy collage of spinning parts, peers down. The archbishop appears as a tiny figure at the end of one of those new-fangled inventions by the Italian heretic, Galileo: the
telescopio.

‘I will not! I have my duty to God and country!’ he cries out then topples off the press in a drunken faint.

Clucking with disapproval, Heinrich walks over. He stares down at the sprawling friar, now snoring loudly, his habit flung about him. What a waste of a good man, he thinks, how obsession can decay and corrupt the heart. Then, just in case the condition could be contagious, reaches for his rosary.

T
he onlookers are gathered in
the small wood-panelled courtroom with its elaborate ceiling divided into carved reliefs, each crowned with one of the shields of the guilds of Cologne.

The two witnesses fidget in the railed witness box. Merchant Brassant, painfully aware of his belly straining against his tight velvet doublet, his high-standing collar stiffened with buckram chafing his chin, and his groin itching beneath the new French breeches his young wife has insisted he wear, is unbearably uncomfortable. Beside him, in a cream dress made of poplin, hair hidden beneath a white cowl, with gold at her waist and neck, stands Abigail Brassant. Defiant, she clutches her baby, who, sleeping, is blissfully oblivious to the proceedings.

Opposite is the jury: a small panel consisting of four bürgers and two representatives of the higher council, all sympathetic and well rehearsed by Detlef. Next to them sits the magistrate flanked by his two sheriffs. The magistrate, Heinrich’s puppet and a grossly overweight bantam of a man, is infamous for the
amount of ale he can consume at one sitting. An insufferable pedant when sober, his colleagues try to keep him constantly intoxicated to avoid lengthy legal proceedings. Now, squeezed into the austere Gothic judge’s chair, his feet encased in ridiculously ornate embroidered Turkish slippers dangling a good four inches above the ground, he appears to be entirely drunk.

Below the podium, seated on hard wooden benches, are the onlookers. At the front, with grim faces, sit Elazar ben Saul and Tuvia; behind them the few curious relatives of the jurors, and in the very back row, fully veiled, Birgit Ter Lahn von Lennep.

Determined to discover the source of her lover’s recent detachment, Birgit’s inquisitiveness has driven her out of her normal Lent retreat and back into the city. From behind her veil she watches the canon take his place before the court, Groot beside him.

Detlef exudes an air of authority. Feeling Birgit’s gaze he glances briefly to the back of the room. Her presence irritates him. Does she not trust him, he wonders, finding his mistress’s sudden possessiveness less than alluring. Dismissing her, he turns his attention to the rabbi.

Elazar ben Saul stares at Ruth as if trying to will her his strength. The canon cannot help but be affected by the obvious affection between father and daughter. Ruth herself, a diminutive figure in the dock, looks around fearfully. All her previous bravado and determination have vanished, making the manacles on her thin wrists appear an absurdity.

Just then the cathedral minister enters the court, followed by his secretary. What is von Fürstenberg doing here, Detlef thinks. Heinrich had promised no onlookers, no spies. The archbishop himself is not even in attendance. Perturbed, Detlef shuffles the pages of his interrogation notes, hoping that the artifice of the paid jury will proceed smoothly.

Heinrich, determined that the trial should go exactly how he wishes, has removed the Spaniard to take him on the promised tour of the vineyard at Kloster Eberbach further up the Rhine, thus freeing Detlef to conduct the sham tribunal unhindered. But before his departure the archbishop issued strict instructions to both the magistrate and the canon ordering them to arrive at a verdict of innocence within a week. It was his suggestion to hold the trial during Lent, a time when most of the populace were fasting and in prayer, and so distracted would pay little attention.

Von Fürstenberg would be wise not to intervene, Detlef muses, knowing that it will be difficult enough to prove the midwife’s innocence without his meddling. As if reading his thoughts the minister nods to Detlef, his portly face grim.

The air in the windowless court is foul. It is the perfect atmosphere for discomfort, which is precisely why Detlef insisted on this particular chamber, knowing the participants will want to conclude the trial as soon as possible, if only to escape their soporific surrounds. He glances over at the jurors. One of them, a middle-aged blacksmith from the powerful metalworkers’ guild, is already dozing, head rolled back, his velvet cap slipping down over one eye.

‘Good Meister Brassant, is it true that Fräulein Saul delivered your wife of a child on January the thirty-first of the year of our good Lord 1665?’ Detlef begins authoritatively.

The merchant glances across at Ruth. Struggling to hide her fear, she looks tentatively back. Abigail Brassant will not meet her gaze but Meister Brassant smiles at the midwife, embarrassed by her humiliation. He motions to the sleeping baby. ‘It is true. If it were not for her, we wouldn’t have little Franz here.’

‘It were either her or magic,’ Abigail Brassant interjects, widening her blue eyes dramatically at the word. Her husband snorts derisively.

‘I care not a pox whether it were hocus pocus or not. The child lives and is healthy, that’s all that matters.’ He turns to Detlef. ‘Forgive my wife, she is young and the young see demons in mud. She was my housekeeper’s daughter before I married her and she is still new to her station.’

A smattering of laughter around the court brings a blush to Abigail Brassant’s cheeks. Belittled, she scowls at Ruth. ‘I know what I saw.’

‘In that case you should see what you have sleeping in your arms and be thankful,’ Brassant retorts curtly. ‘I’m sorry, Canon, but I have lost five children before this one and as far as I am concerned it is good to be thankful for miracles. For miracles are miracles, wherever they come from.’

Nervous about estranging his key witness, Detlef adopts a paternal tone which he hopes will calm the jittery wife. ‘I believe that is what we are here for: to deduce whether it was
scientia nova
or indeed something of a more supernatural nature that saved the child.’

‘But she used amulets! I saw them!’ the young woman shouts out. The court falls silent. As Ruth turns pale, Detlef struggles with his prosecution, mentally fishing for the right angle to continue his questioning.

‘Is this true, Fräulein?’ he asks Ruth sternly, praying she will not drop her humble demeanour.

‘I used everything I thought fit to save both child and mother,’ Ruth answers in a small voice.

Perfect, Detlef notes, she continues to appear the martyr. From the corner of his eye he can see von Fürstenberg whispering to his secretary who is frantically scribbling notes. The notion of betrayal begins to gnaw at the edge of his focus.

‘Did you use witchcraft to harm anyone?’

‘I swear I did not.’ The midwife lowers her burning face.

Elazar, outraged, tries to stand. Tuvia tugs him back into his chair, stroking the old man’s hand to calm him.

Detlef nods to Groot who presents a large doll to the court, a makeshift copy of a child in roughly sewn cotton with pieces of the straw stuffing still protruding at the seams, its face crudely drawn features upon the bulge of thin cloth which serves as the head. With a dramatic flourish, Groot holds it up to the magistrate.

‘I have had this posy made as a crude model of the baby,’ Detlef announces.

The magistrate peers blearily at the facsimile then glances at the chubby infant asleep in the merchant wife’s arms. ‘A wonderful likeness, Canon, well done,’ he declares pompously in a surprisingly deep voice for such a short man.

‘Thank you, sire.’

Detlef swings back to his audience.

‘For the benefit of the jury, Meisterin Brassant, I would like you to describe what you saw Fräulein Saul do to the child after the birth.’

‘But she cannot. I had administered a draught to stop her pain,’ Ruth interjects, now worried that she might become victim to the woman’s fictions.

‘Despite the opiate I saw what happened.’

‘And what was that?’ Detlef gently asks, trying to coax both witnesses into a friendlier discourse.

‘My child was born blue and lifeless. I saw with my own eyes the witch holding the poor thing up by its feet. It was dead. It was then that I started screaming.’

‘The child was born with the umbilical cord wrapped around its neck, Canon. It is not an uncommon occurrence. I had to cut the cord and peg it while the babe was still emerging in order to save both mother and babe. I also knew that if I untangled the cord quickly enough and brought air into its lungs, the child would live.’

The jurors, captivated by the sudden flourish of activity,
sit up as Ruth gazes pensively at the misshapen parody of a baby lying before her.

‘Fräulein Saul, would it be possible to demonstrate just how you brought the child back to life?’

Ruth tentatively picks up the stuffed doll.

‘As the baby’s head hung from the matrix I manipulated it to free the cord. I pegged it in two places and cut so as to save mother and child from bleeding to death. I then moved the babe so I could free the first shoulder until the rest followed easily, as is the custom in birth. After it was freed, I placed my mouth over the nose and mouth and sucked to clear the passages for breath. I then spat out the birthing fluids and again covered the babe’s mouth, this time to breathe air into the tiny creature.’

‘What happened then?’

‘The child finally breathed life into itself.’

‘There was no witchcraft nor magic used?’

‘Canon, I am a midwife. I use only the practices of my art and some medical knowledge I have learnt in the Lowlands.’

‘But I saw something,’ Abigail Brassant blurts out. ‘There was a circle of ashes and a talisman, a witch’s thing she had hung at the foot of the bed…’

Meister Brassant pushes his wife back down in her seat. ‘Hush, woman, you are full of such fancies!’

‘I am not! I saw Lilith, I swear! Satan’s dame herself, floating before me, one long leg—the leg of a screech owl—reaching out for me with the shining bell of Hades caught in its claw!’

‘She’s right, but it was not a leg of Lilith that Meisterin Brassant saw, rather an instrument of
scientia nova
which she mistook while under the influence of the opiate I administered. It is an object I use to listen to the heart beating beneath the flesh, a wondrous device sent to me from Holland. I needed to follow the life force in mother and child.’

Detlef watches the jury as Groot hands to the first bürger the device made from a single length of cow gut with a small cap of brass fastened to the end. The merchant, a portly tailor, sniffs the brass cap, sneezes, then places it on his wrist.

‘The end is placed in the ear while the small cap goes over the chest,’ Ruth explains, anxious that the object should not be misinterpreted.

Amused, the tailor puts the end of the tube in his ear and places the cap on the chest of the bürger beside him, a scrawny undertaker. Shocked by the deafening heartbeat which suddenly fills his head, the tailor tears off the listening device.

‘’Tis indeed wondrous!’ He turns to the undertaker, ‘Wim, for a cadaverous slip of a man you are thunderously alive.’

The instrument is eagerly seized by the other members of the jury who, one by one, listen to each other’s heartbeat.

‘Gentlemen, gentlemen!’ Detlef shouts over the clamour. ‘As you see, it is definitely
scientia nova
not the black arts that makes Fräulein Saul an eminent and highly successful member of her profession.’

‘’Tis true,’ exclaims the third member of the jury, a robust ruddy-faced sailor in his twenties from the influential guild of fishmongers. ‘She delivered my Maria of twins and both were bonny and very healthy. It would be a crime to wrongfully execute such a valuable midwife. I say we acquit her with no more ado,’ the young man finishes forcefully, repeating with naive sincerity the line Detlef rehearsed with him barely two hours before.

The other bürgers, thankful for the prospect of liberation from the unbearably stuffy chamber, join in with eager yeas.

Confident of a victory Detlef glances at the judge, who winks back. Lifting the hammer, a veritable mallet in his tiny hands, the magistrate slams it down onto his lectern. ‘Silence in court!’

Immediately the merchants cease their chattering. The magistrate, immensely pleased now that he has managed to flex his authority, pulls up his shoulders and adopts a fierce visage which fools no one.

‘I dismiss all the charges on one proviso: that the midwife Ruth bas Elazar Saul is refused the right ever to practise midwifery again within the walls of this fair city.’

Immediately Elazar is on his feet. Tuvia embraces him while the onlookers break into a babble. ‘Court dismissed!’ the judge shouts over the commotion.

Relieved, Detlef swings around to Ruth. Her face is dazed with disbelief as her father hobbles forward to embrace her. Behind them von Fürstenberg hurriedly leaves the chamber; at the same time Birgit slips out unnoticed.

In the sanctuary of her coach, Birgit lifts her veil. She has never seen Detlef so alight with passion, not even in the pulpit. She admires him for it: he is more of a philanthropist than she had realised. She decides to send a message and wait for him that night.

As for the Jewess, she is so plain that Birgit sincerely doubts whether Detlef even perceives her as female. All the midwife represents to him is the key to a spiritual quest, the gentlewoman concludes, the answer to the moral emptiness he has felt of late. And so, excited at the thought of how she intends to reward her lover for his legal victory, she orders the coachman to drive on.