However, to keep my resolution and become a real forest monk, I pulled on the hair shirt my hermit had left behind and fastened his chain belt over it. Not that I needed them to mortify my rebellious flesh; I just wanted to imitate my hermit in dress as well as in life. Plus, wearing those, I’d be better protected against the harsh winter cold.
The day after said village had been sacked and burnt, as I sat praying in my hut (with a couple of carrots roasting on the fire to keep me going), I looked up to find myself surrounded by forty or fifty musketeers. They were shocked by my unusual appearance, but not enough to stop them from searching the hut roughly for what I could have told them they wouldn’t find there. I’d nothing but books. These they tossed about a bit for me, but books were not what they were after. Taking a closer look at me and seeing from my plumage that they’d caught a sparrow, they worked out that here was an unlikely source of loot. In fact, they showed some surprise at my harsh existence and sympathy for my tender years. Their commanding officer actually bowed as he asked – no, almost begged me to show him and his men the way out of the forest, in which they’d been lost for some time, evidently. I said I would – and led them towards the village where said priest had been so misused. Well, that was the only place I knew how to get to. However, before we reached the edge of the trees we came across a group of peasants, maybe ten or twelve, some armed, the rest hurriedly burying something. The musketeers dashed towards them, shouting, ‘Stop right there!’ The peasants unslung their guns. Then, seeing that the soldiers outnumbered them, they fled. The weary musketeers had no chance of catching even the stragglers. Instead, they decided to dig up what the peasants had been burying – a job made easier for them by the peasants’ having simply downed tools. But the moment they began digging a voice roared from below, ‘Unfeeling bastards! D’you suppose heaven will turn a blind eye on your pagan viciousness and leave your childish tricks unpunished? Never! No chance! Plenty of honest blokes will avenge such savagery. None of your fellow men will ever lick your arses again!’ The soldiers eyed one another in total amazement. ‘A ghost!’, some cried. It was all like a nightmare. ‘Keep digging!’, the officer barked. Before long they hit a barrel, and when they smashed it open they found a man whose nose and ears had been cut off, leaving him bloody but alive. After a moment, recognizing some of the soldiers, the victim recounted that a detail from his regiment had been out foraging the previous day and six had been caught. Not an hour since, they’d all had to stand in a row, one behind another, and been shot. Five had dropped dead, but the bullet had failed to reach him, he being the sixth and last in line and it having five bodies to travel through first. So they’d sliced off his nose and ears instead. That was after forcing him to (begging your pardon) lick the backsides of five of their own number. He’d then, after being so humiliated by these vile, godforsaken barbarians, just as they were preparing to set him free, selected the worst insults he could think of to hurl in their faces. In no uncertain terms he told them exactly what he thought of them, hoping that one of them would lose patience to the point of gifting him a bullet. It hadn’t worked, though. Because of the goading they’d stuffed him in ‘this ’ere barrel’ and buried him alive. He’d begged for a sudden, violent end, so as a joke (they said) they were denying him that pleasure.
While this man was grousing about his ordeal, another party of soldiers arrived on foot. Coming across the above peasants, they’d taken five captive and shot the rest. Four of the prisoners were ones for whom the live-burial victim had so recently been forced to perform the humiliating service described. Discovering from their shouted exchange that they were fighting on the same side, the two groups gathered around to hear once again, from the sufferer’s own lips, what he and his comrades had been through. Well, you simply can’t imagine the going-over the villagers then received. Some of the soldiers were so livid they’d have shot everyone straight off. But others countered: ‘No, first let’s give the bastards a good duffing-up – a taste of their own medicine, that’s what we’ll treat them to!’ The villagers then took such a rib-tickling with musket butts as made them cough up blood. Eventually one soldier, stepping forward, said, ‘Men, it’s a stain on our profession that this poor sod (pointing to the man they’d dug up) should have been so scandalously treated by five peasants. It’s only right that we expunge the blot: let’s have these scoundrels return the favour one hundredfold.’ Another disagreed, saying, ‘The fellow doesn’t deserve such an honour. He’d have shown more spunk and not brought shame on every honest trooper if he’d refused to perform this disgusting task. “I’d sooner die a thousand deaths!” is what he should have said.’ In the end, it was resolved nem. con. that everyone who’d enjoyed such tongue-work should perform the same act on ten soldiers, each time reciting, ‘This wipes away the shame felt by the whole soldiery because one coward agreed to lick our arses.’ The villagers must first pay, it was felt; afterwards they could be dealt with. So they set said peasants to work. However, so stubborn did the villagers turn out to be that neither by promising to release them alive nor by inflicting a few martyrdoms could the soldiers persuade them to begin. One musketeer took the fifth peasant (who’d not been licked) out of the queue and said: ‘Deny God and all his saints and I’ll let you walk.’ To which the man replied: he’d never thought much of the saints and had had few dealings with God himself up to now. He swore solemnly, in fact, that he’d never met God and didn’t give a fig for his kingdom. The soldier promptly shot him. When this had no more effect than if the bullet had bounced off an iron mountain, he drew his blade and said, ‘One of those, are you? Right, I promised you could go, and since you’re not interested in going to heaven, have a ticket to hell!’ With these words, he laid the man’s head open to the teeth, and as the corpse fell added, ‘That’s how to deal with villains – speedy, permanent revenge!’
Meanwhile the other soldiers took the remaining four villagers (whose arses had been in receipt of said treatment), bound them hand and foot, and tied them over a fallen tree in such a way that (begging your pardon) their bums stuck up. Then, after pulling their trousers down, they gathered brushwood, tied it in bundles, and beat and scraped so mercilessly on their new fiddles that the red juice soon flowed. ‘Right!’ they said. ‘Those bums look a bit wet, we’re going to have to dry them out.’ The peasants’ screams were pitiful, but the soldiers were enjoying themselves enormously and sawed away until all the skin and flesh were gone, exposing the bone. As for me, they let me return to my hut. The musketeers knew their way now, so I never found out what they did with the peasants in the end.