There is a commotion in the early hours of the morning.
‘Lucifer!’ comes the shouting from the houses. ‘The demons! For God’s sake, they are coming through the ceiling now!’
Martin immediately jumps up from behind the bedstead, the cauldron, knocks over some logs.
But the actual noise is coming from the roof, from which clattering and bleating can be heard, loud scraping and then a crash, then a hoof suddenly breaks through the roof and gets stuck.
‘The accursed is showing himself!’ the horseman groans, as pale as death.
‘The devils!’ people outside shriek.
The wife calms the crying children. She is not afraid. The hoof wriggles above the stove. Martin takes a closer look. It’s a goat, nothing more, he thinks.
‘Wife!’ the horseman shouts.
‘Just that damned Thomann,’ the wife says.
But Martin storms out of the door. The sky is grey outside. The sound of cursing comes from the row of low houses. And sure enough, Martin sees a couple of goats clattering across the roofs. The body of a billy goat protrudes from their own roof. It’s a long, scrawny animal whose hoof has broken through and who is now jerking back and forth, trying to free itself.
A figure jumps out of the damp mist and looks down at the child.
‘Allow me to introduce myself,’ the man says. ‘Thomann.’ He drags the goat by the horns from the roof. The broken timbers clatter to the ground inside the house.
‘Rotten grazing this morning,’ Thomann says apologetically and throws the billy goat from the roof. It hits the ground hard alongside Martin, but quickly recovers and stares at Martin from three cold eyes. Thomann laughs, rounds up the other goats and throws them from the roofs, from which shouts for the Almighty continue to sound. Then he jumps down himself.
He is tall, with loose limbs in two-tone trousers. Martin stares after him as he disappears in the shadows of the castle.
‘The jester,’ the woman explains later, when Martin asks her about him.
There isn’t much damage. Martin covers the hole.
‘It will do,’ he tells the horseman.
‘Until I do it properly,’ the horseman says.
‘Until you do it,’ Martin says.
‘Until I can go back up there.’
‘Yes.’