The Witch of Cologne Read Online Free

here remains lush, but further north lie the abandoned fields, the burnt-out farmhouses. A third of the peoples of Germania have been slaughtered, their lands ravaged repeatedly by Protestant and Catholic, Frenchman, Swede and Prussian.
    She stares at the broad back of the coach driver. He probably fought, she thinks, they all did. But he was one of the lucky ones. In many places the working men are only now reappearing, most of them refugees in search of a new start in the empty cities of the north and south. Dutch Calvinists, Italians, even Swedes have fled to the Rhineland, their suffering visible in their hollow cheeks and haunted eyes. Suspicious of these strangers, the local Germans grow defensive and bitter. Resentful of the loss of their own sons, they are being forced to embrace more difference. Now is not a good time to be a foreigner.
    The horse whinnies and rears then refuses to go on. The coachman, grumbling, dismounts and trudges through the slush towards a frost-covered mound in the centre of the road. He pokes at it with his whip and an arm falls out, the skin mottled blue and muddy against the snow. The coachman lurches back and covers his mouth with his sleeve.
    ‘Plague!’
    He stumbles back to the cart. Ruth climbs down to examine the corpse but the driver grabs her arm.
    ‘One touch and we’re all doomed!’
    ‘Calm yourself. I will know if it is plague or just poverty—remember I have some training as a medic.’
    She pulls away from him. Carefully brushing the snow from the wizened face of the man, she finds none of the telltale marks or swellings that speak of the Black Death. The corpse looks about sixty but Ruth guesses he was more likely forty; just another one of the thousands uprooted by the war who spend their lives walking from village to village beggingfor food, sleeping in ditches and fields. The lost peoples of Middle Europe.
    ‘There is no plague here, just Mother Starvation. Load him up onto the cart, we’ll give him a burial back in the village.’
    ‘He’s a Christian, you can’t bury him.’
    ‘In that case we’ll leave him at the church door.’
    ‘It’s too much trouble. He’s just driftwood, he’s worth nothing to anyone.’
    ‘He still has a soul.’
    ‘But is it Lutheran or Catholic?’
    ‘Do you think God cares?’
    The coachman stares at her. If she were a man he would hit her. There is something about her authority which intimidates him. Maybe it is true that she has supernatural powers. He once drove her to the house of a possessed man and she had cured the shuddering invalid before his very eyes. The coachman is not prepared to argue with the devil. Still protesting he throws some old sackcloth over the body and hoists it up onto the back of the cart. The corpse weighs as much as a bag of twigs and there isn’t even enough flesh on it to sell it to the secret anatomists back in Cologne. Curse the Jewish witch, he thinks, this would be the last time he drives for her if she didn’t tip so well.
    The cart wheels start up again. Soon the tall pine trees laden with snow give way to small neat fields where the Protestant farmers grow wheat, barley and oats. But now the fields are blanketed in white. Ruth knows some of the families: some, Dutch Calvinists; others, Lutherans from the north. She has delivered their babies. They are hospitable enough but guarded, always cautious.
    The cart trundles its way towards Deutz. A hawk circles above, hopeful for carrion. Spiralling up from the cottage roofs are pillars of smoke from the bakeries. Today is Friday and already, even at six in the morning, the wivesand daughters of the community are preparing for the sabbath meal.
    Ruth is overwhelmed by a sense of homecoming. It is this feeling of belonging which finally drove her back to Deutz and reinforces her desire to reunite with her father. It is stronger even than the soaring emancipation she found in Amsterdam.

The Holy City of Cologne
    T he lock of flaxen hair is