I felt like laughing at Olivier’s tale. I had to show sympathy, though. I was just embarking on my own life story when we spotted a carriage with two mounted escorts approaching the town. Coming down from the church tower, we positioned ourselves in a house that fronted the street and offered a handy spot from which to attack passing travellers. I was required to keep my loaded gun in reserve, so it was Olivier who accounted for the first rider and his horse before they became aware of our presence. This caused the second to gallop off immediately, and while I trained my cocked weapon on the coachman and made him climb down, Olivier sprang forwards and with his broadsword split the man’s skull open down to the teeth. He was about to butcher the woman and children sitting in the carriage, who already looked deathly pale. However, this I simply wouldn’t allow, and I told Olivier as much: if that was his intention, I said, he’d have to throttle me first. ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ he said, ‘don’t be an idiot! Who’d have thought you’d turn out to be a wimp as well?’ ‘Brother!’ I answered. ‘What have the blameless nippers ever done to you? If they were grown-ups and could look after themselves, that would be different.’ ‘What are you talking about?’ he demanded in return. ‘Chips off the old block, they are. I don’t want them ever growing up. Anyhow, I know these young bloodsuckers. Their father’s the major – a major bully, more like, and the world’s biggest pain in the arse!’ And so he ranted on, his language growing steadily worse. However, I restrained him for long enough to talk him out of his murderous project. The intended victims were a major’s wife, their servant, and three lovely children who melted my heart. We locked them in a cellar where they’d not be able to give us away before they escaped. They had nothing to eat but fruit and turnips, but someone would release them before long. Meanwhile we ransacked the carriage and rode off with seven fine horses into the thickest part of the forest.
When we’d tied up the horses and I had time for a shufti, I spotted a fellow standing as stiff as a poker against a nearby tree. Pointing him out to Olivier, I said he ought perhaps to be taken care of. ‘Don’t be silly,’ he replied. ‘That’s a Jew I tied up there. The bugger will have frozen to death long ago.’ So saying, he went over to the man, chucked him under the chin, and said, ‘Isn’t that right? You diddled me out of many a fine ducat in your time, didn’t you?’ And as he tapped the Jew under the chin again, a number of dubloons rolled out of his mouth that the poor fellow had kept there until death overtook him. Olivier then thrust his hand into the Jew’s mouth and brought out a total of twelve dubloons and a precious ruby. ‘For this booty,’ he said, ‘I have you to thank, Simplicius.’ Whereupon he presented me with the ruby, stuffing the money into his own purse. He then went off to fetch his peasant helpmate, leaving me with orders to stay with the horses and a warning not to let the dead Jew bite me. This last he added by way of rubbing in the fact that I lacked his courage.
While he was away fetching the peasant, I had a good think. This was a very nasty situation I was in. I could have jumped on a horse and made off, only I worried that Olivier might catch me red-handed and shoot me on the spot. I even wondered whether he was simply testing my loyalty, hiding nearby and watching what I did. I had the idea of legging it, but here my concern was that, even if I ditched Olivier, I’d never get past the Black Forest peasants, who were notorious for bashing soldiers over the head. And another thought struck me: ‘If you take all the horses,’ I told myself, ‘and Olivier can’t chase after you, and if you’re still caught by the Weimarers, you’ll die on the wheel as a serial murderer.’ In sum, I could think of no sure way of making my escape, particularly since I was in a wild part of the world and didn’t know my way around. Also, my conscience had been piqued and now plagued me intensely: I’d held up a carriage and was partly to blame for the driver’s dreadful death and for two women and three innocent children being shut up in a cellar where they might well, like the Jew, snuff it and rot. My own innocence (I’d been forced into it, after all) was no consolation. A nagging sense of guilt insisted: my earlier misdeeds already merited that I should be handed over to the law, along with this inveterate killer, and receive my just deserts. Maybe a righteous God had arranged for me to be punished in this way? I longed for a better outcome, and I begged God in his mercy to redeem me. In my newly pious state I said to myself, ‘Fool! You’re not locked up, you’re not in chains, the whole wide world lies open to you. You’ve horses enough to flee, haven’t you? OK, you don’t wish to ride, but aren’t your two feet up to getting you out of this mess?’ I was beating myself up in this way, still unable to make up my mind, when Olivier came back with our peasant friend, and the man guided us both, together with the horses, to a tavern, where we ate and afterwards took turns to grab a couple of hours’ kip. We rode off again in the small hours, reaching the outer limits of Switzerland towards noon the next day. Here Olivier was a familiar visitor and found us an excellent hostelry. While we sat down to a slap-up meal, the landlord sent out for a couple of Jews, who bought the horses off us for about half the asking price. The sale went smoothly and with minimal exchange of words, the Jews’ main question being: had these been Imperial or Swedish horses originally? ‘Weimarer,’ we told them, to which they replied, ‘So we’ll be riding them not to Basel but to Swabia and selling them to the Bavarians.’ You had to admire their style. They certainly knew what they were doing.
We dined like lords, with me particularly savouring the superb local trout and those delicious crayfish. Evening was drawing in, so we hit the road again, first loading up our peasant like a donkey with joints of meat and other victuals. Next day we came to an isolated farmhouse, where we received a cordial welcome, the farmer asking us inside, and where because the weather turned nasty we spent a few days. After that we travelled through endless woodland and along winding paths until we were back at the lonely little dwelling to which Olivier had led me following our reunion.