I’d been sitting there for less than half an hour, sunk in thought, when along came our peasant friend, running as fast as he could and panting like a bear. He was unaware of my presence until I caught his arm. ‘Why the hurry?’ I asked. ‘What’s up?’ He replied, ‘Quick, get away while you can! A corporal and six musketeers are coming to arrest you and Olivier and carry you back to Lichteneck dead or alive. They waylaid me, hoping I’d lead them to you, but I had a lucky escape and was able to come ahead and warn you.’ ‘A likely story!’ I thought. ‘You informed on us, worm, to get your hands on what Olivier had stashed in that tree.’ However, needing him to give me directions, I kept my suspicions to myself. I said only that Olivier was dead, as were the men who’d been sent to get him. He refused to believe me, so I generously accompanied him back to the cottage and showed him the mess and the seven cadavers. ‘I let the other one go, and I’d have spared the rest too, God willing, if I’d been able.’ The peasant, shocked and alarmed, said, ‘What are we going to do now?’ I replied, ‘I’ve already decided what you’re going to do. You have three choices: either (a) you escort me through the forest to Villingen immediately, taking safe back ways, or (b) you show me the tree where Olivier’s cash is hidden, or (c) you die right where you are and join the corpses. If you escort me to Villingen, you’ll have the money to yourself; if you show me where it is, I’ll split it with you; if you do neither, I’ll simply shoot you dead and leg it on my own.’ Anxious to escape but afraid of my musket, the man sank to his knees and offered to guide me through the forest. So off we went. We walked all day and right through the night (fortunately a bright one), with nothing to eat, nothing to drink, and not a moment’s rest, until towards dawn we saw Villingen town ahead and I allowed the peasant to go home. What had kept us going was fear of death on the peasant’s part and, on mine, sheer longing to escape with my life and my money. Gold, it would seem, gives a man great strength. I was carrying plenty of gold, and not for a moment did I feel particularly tired.
I saw it as a lucky omen that the gates of Villingen opened just as I arrived. Interrogated by the officer of the watch, I told him I was a volunteer trooper with the regiment to which Herzbruder had attached me when he released me from musketry duty at Philippsburg. I also said that I came from the Weimarer camp outside Breisach, having been captured by the Duke of Weimar’s troops outside Wittenweier and pressed into service with them; I was now trying to rejoin my regiment in the Bavarian army. The officer of the watch then turned me over to a musketeer, who took me to see the commandant. The latter was still in bed, having been kept up much of the night by admin work. As a result I was kept waiting outside his quarters for a good hour and a half. While I was waiting, a crowd of townsfolk and soldiery, emerging just then from early Mass, crowded around me, all wanting to know how the siege of Breisach was going. The noise woke the commandant, who had me shown in.
He began grilling me, and I gave him the same replies as I’d given at the gate. He went on to ask me details of the siege and anything else I could tell him. I then confessed everything – namely, how I’d spent a couple of weeks with a bloke who was also on the run and how together we’d held up and plundered a carriage, hoping to get enough loot off the Weimarers as would buy us horses and enable us to rejoin our regiments decently mounted. Plus how only the day before we’d been jumped by a corporal and a squad of musketeers who’d been sent out to seize us, as a result of which my friend and six of the other side had met their deaths while I and one of the latter got away. However, I said nothing about wanting to get back to my wife in Westphalia or about having such solid armour-plating fore and aft – not a word. Ergo I didn’t have it on my conscience that I was keeping anything back. And anyway, what business was it of his? He didn’t even ask me those things, simply expressing amazement that Olivier and I had floored six men and driven a seventh one off, despite my mate getting killed in the process. Talking about this gave me an opportunity to speak highly of Olivier’s sword, which I wore at my side. He took such a fancy to it that I was obliged, if I wanted to get off lightly and obtain a free pass, to swap it for another rapier of his. It really was a fine piece of work, that sword, with an entire perpetual calendar etched on it. In fact, nothing could persuade me it had not been forged under the sign of Mars by Vulcan himself. Certainly, it was just like the weapon described in the Book of Heroes as being the one from which all other swords spring and before which the fiercest, most lion-hearted enemy will flee like a frightened rabbit. Once the commandant had dismissed me and given orders for a pass to be made out in my name, I called in at the nearest hostelry, undecided whether to sleep first or trough first. I badly needed both. However, opting for the second before I indulged the first, I ordered something to eat and something to drink while I sat down to think how to arrange things. I needed to get myself and my money back to my wife in L. safely. I had no more intention of rejoining my regiment than of slitting my own throat.
As I was turning this problem over in my mind a bloke limped into the bar, stick in hand, a bandage around his head, one arm in a sling, and in clothes so awful I’d not have given him a penny for them. As soon as the barman saw him he tried to throw him out. He smelt awful and looked as if he teemed with enough lice to cover most of Swabia. The bloke just begged to be left alone. He only wanted to get warm, he said. However, his pleas fell on deaf ears until, feeling a tad sorry for him, I put in a word on his behalf. Grudgingly, he was given a seat by the stove. I noticed him giving me obviously envious yet enormously reverent looks as I shovelled food into my mouth, and when the boy left the room to fetch me more roast meat he approached my table, holding out a cheap clay pot. It was clear what he was after, so I reached for my wine tankard and filled his little beaker without further ado. ‘Ah, friend,’ he said, ‘give me something to eat too – for Herzbruder’s sake.’ When he said this I felt a stab in my heart and saw: this was Herzbruder himself! It gave me a start – finding him in this dreadful state. However, pulling myself together, I gave him a big hug and sat him down beside me. We stared at each other with tears in our eyes, mine of commiseration, his of pure joy.