Sixteen
Simplicius bags a good haul, which helps him become a marauder
However, it looked very much as if, the longer I spent on this Earth, the worse a pickle I’d get into. I was beginning to think I was a born loser. What happened was, only hours after escaping the clutches of the Croats, I fell into the hands of forest bandits. They evidently thought I was a good catch. It was a dark night, they failed to notice my fool’s costume, and two of them led me off to a spot deeper in the trees. When we stopped (and it really was pitch-dark), one of them promptly demanded my money. He put down his weapon, took off his gloves, and started patting my clothes, asking, ‘What’ve we got here, then? Got any cash on you?’ However, becoming aware of my hairy coat, mistaking the long donkey’s ears on my hood for horns, and seeing the tiny sparks (such as often appear when you stroke animal fur in the dark), he shrank back in alarm. I noticed the sparks too, and before he could recover and continue his search I stroked my hide so vigorously with both hands that it shimmered as if stuffed with burning sulphur. Uttering a spine-chilling growl I replied, ‘It’s the devil I am – out to wring necks!’ This so frightened the pair that they ran off as if the fires of hell were close behind them. The darkness did nothing to slow their pace. Sticks and stones, dead branches and fallen tree trunks, kept tripping them up, and they often fell headlong. However, scrambling to their feet instantly, they plunged on until the sound of their retreat faded to nothing. My guffaws, echoing among the trees of that black wilderness, must have been terrible to hear.
Turning on my way, I promptly fell headlong myself. I’d tripped over the robber’s gun, which I picked up in glee. I could already shoot; the Croats had taught me. Continuing, I stumbled again, this time over a knapsack, made of calf hide like my coat. I picked the knapsack up too and found, dangling below it, a well-stocked ammunition pouch containing powder, shot and all the trimmings. This I slung over my shoulder, and with the gun over the other shoulder like a proper soldier I stole into a nearby thicket, thinking I’d get some shuteye. However, at daybreak the whole rabble came along, looking for the gun and knapsack. I pricked up my ears like a fox and kept as quiet as a mouse. Finding nothing, they tore into the two I’d scared off. ‘You’re a fine pair, you are – letting just one bloke scare you off, abandoning a precious weapon!’ The first of the fugitives swore: devil take him, he said, if their persecutor hadn’t been the devil in person; he’d seen the horns, even felt the rough skin. The second said furiously, ‘The devil or his mother, I don’t give a damn. I just want my knapsack back!’ One of the band (the leader, I’d assumed) replied, ‘Why would the devil want a bag and a gun? I’ll bet you anything: the bloke who made cowards of you swiped them both.’ The man said ‘No’, suggesting some peasants had happened along later, seen the things, and simply taken them. In the end everyone fell in with this view, and the whole crew felt sure they’d actually had the devil in their grasp. In the main, this was because those who’d tried to frisk me in the dark said so repeatedly, backing up their claims with appalling oaths. But they also gave a vivid, detailed description of the incandescent hide as proof positive of the creature’s demonic nature. If I’d stepped out of my hiding place, I reckon they’d have scattered like flies.
Eventually, having searched the area thoroughly and still not found anything, they drifted off. Opening the knapsack to look for some breakfast, the first thing I pulled out was a purse that proved to contain 360-odd ducats. I was chuffed with my discovery, no question, but to be honest, dear reader, I was over the moon to find that the knapsack was as well stuffed with food as the purse was with money. Still, that much pelf doesn’t often come a common soldier’s way, and the fact that a fellow had it with him on a raiding party suggested a different explanation: he’d secretly swiped it while out plundering and popped it in his bag to avoid having to share.
I walked on, contentedly munching my breakfast, and soon afterwards chanced on a bubbling spring, where I took a drink and sat counting my lovely ducats. I had no idea what part of the country I was in, so for the time being I stayed put in the forest. I had food, didn’t I? And I made it last, believe me. However, when my bag was empty, hunger drove me out of the trees into the peasant houses nearby, where I crept around cellars and kitchens under cover of darkness, helping myself to as much food as I could carry and toting it back to the wildest part of the forest. There I resumed my earlier hermit existence. I didn’t steal much, though, and begged even less; nor did I live in the same place all the time but roamed now this way, now that. Summer was just around the corner, and that suited me fine, albeit with my flintlock and ammo pouch I could light a fire if I wished.
Seventeen
Simplicius joins the witches in their dance
On my wanderings through the forest I came across peasants from time to time, but they fled as soon as they saw me. I don’t know why. Had the war made them nervous, perhaps, driving them from their homes or at least never letting them feel safe in their beds? Or had the bandits spread stories about bumping into me, so that folk who spotted me subsequently leapt to the conclusion that the devil was on the prowl in their neck of the woods too? Whatever the reason, I was worried my provisions might run out, forcing me back to a diet (roots and leaves) I’d lost the habit of. So I was pleased when one day I heard some woodcutters working in the forest. Tracing the sound, as soon as I saw the men I took a handful of ducats out of my bag, crept closer, offered the bait, and said, ‘Fellows, if you’ll just help me out this handful of gold is yours.’ But as soon as they clapped eyes on me and my money they took to their heels, abandoning hammer and wedge along with their bags of bread and cheese. Filling my own bag with the contents of theirs, I slipped back into the forest, wondering: would I ever live among men again?
After much thought, I told myself, ‘Look, you don’t know what will become of you, but at least you’ve got money, and if you find shelter with honest folk you can live off that for a while. So I hit on the idea of finding a secret hiding place for my coins. Removing the donkey’s ears from my hood (they only frightened folk, in any case), I turned them into temporary armbands. Then, adding my Hanau ducats to the ones I’d stolen, I stuffed the loot into the armbands and bound them around my upper arms. With my cash secured in this way, I resumed my nightly sorties, pinching from peasant houses only what I needed and could lay hands on. I was still simple-minded, but I was also sly. Once I’d taken something, my native cunning never let me visit the same house twice, so I was never caught.
One May night, as I was quietly ransacking a farmhouse kitchen for re-provisioning purposes (illicit, of course), I became aware there were still people about (places with house dogs I naturally avoided). Having made sure the yard door was ajar and I could nip out quickly if disturbed, I squatted down to wait, keeping as quiet as a mouse, until everyone was in bed and asleep. After a while, spotting a gap in the wall between kitchen and living room, I stood up to check. To my dismay the occupants of the house were still dressed; in fact, they’d put on outdoor clothes. A sulphurous blue glow came from the bench where a lamp had stood before. By its light they were smearing something on broomsticks, pitchforks, chairs and other benches; then, one by one, they flew out of the window astride them. It was horribly surprising and made me more than a little queasy. But I’d witnessed greater horrors. Also, I’d neither read nor heard anything about witches in my life. So I felt no special fear. Anyway, it had all happened so quietly. Once they’d gone, I went into the living room myself, looking for things to steal. Laying my knapsack and weapon on the floor beside me, I sat down on a bench to think. In the same instant (so it seemed to me), I and the bench were flying out of the window too, leaving my bag and gun behind on the floor – in lieu of payment, perhaps, for all the smearing. Sitting down on the bench, flying through the air, and eventual landing had seemed simultaneous; suddenly, a large crowd of folk surrounded me. Maybe in my shock I’d been unaware of how long the journey took. Anyway, the people were performi
ng a marvellous dance – unlike anything I’d ever seen before. Holding hands, they formed rings within rings, twisting back to back the way the Three Graces are painted, their faces looking out. The inside ring comprised seven or eight individuals, the second perhaps as many again, the third more than the first two combined, and so on, until there were over two hundred in the outermost circle. With one ring or circle dancing to the left and the next one around it to the right, I couldn’t make out how many rings there were or what they were dancing around. The whole scene had an eerie look. The dancers’ heads wove comically in and out. The music, too, was strange. All the dancers seemed to be singing as they moved, producing wonderful harmonies. The bench that had brought me had landed neatly among the musicians standing around the edge of the rings of dancers, some of them playing not recorders, flutes, and shawms but actual snakes – adders, grass snakes and slow-worms, all piping lustily. Others had cats and were blowing up their bums and fingering their tails (making a sound rather like bagpipes), while yet others bowed horse skulls as if playing top-quality fiddles or plucked at those cattle ribcages you find strewn behind slaughterhouses. There was even one cradling a live bitch, winding the tail while stopping the teats as if a hurdy-gurdy hung from his neck. Meanwhile demons snorted down their noses, trumpeting in a way that echoed and re-echoed through the forest. And when the dance was over (as it soon was), the whole hellish company began bawling and bellowing, howling and hollering, roaring and raving as if they’d gone stark, staring mad. Imagine how frightening I found it all!
Out of this din a fellow came striding towards me. Under his arm he had a toad the size of a kettledrum, and the toad’s guts had been tugged from its arsehole and stuffed back in its mouth – a sight so repulsive it made me want to puke. ‘Here, Simp,’ the bloke said, ‘I’ve heard you’re good on the lute. Give us a tune!’ I recoiled. I almost fell over, in fact, hearing my name. Sheer terror robbed me of speech. This has to be a bad dream, I thought, and in the depths of my heart I begged to wake up. But the bloke with the toad, when I gave him a hard stare, pulled his nose in and out like a turkeycock and stabbed a finger into my chest so hard I almost choked. At that, I cried out loudly to God and the whole host disappeared. Everything went black, and my heart felt so heavy I went crashing to the ground – crossing myself, I expect, maybe a hundred times.
Eighteen
Why it shouldn’t be assumed that Simplicius is showing off on this occasion
There are folk (eggheads, some of them) who don’t believe in the existence of witches or evil spirits, let alone that they can take to the air and fly. So there are probably those who’ll say, ‘Simplicius is telling porkies here.’ Well, I’ve no wish to challenge them. Bragging is hardly a skill. In fact, it’s become common practice these days. So I won’t deny I can do it too. I’d be a wimp otherwise. However, to those who say witches don’t get about, I say simply this: think of Simon Magus, whom the Evil One took up into the air and dropped on St Peter at prayer. And Nicholas Remigius (a brave, erudite, sensible man who had quite a few witches burnt in the Duchy of Lorraine) writes of Johannes von Hembach that, aged sixteen, he was taken by his mother (a known witch) to one of their gatherings in order that, having studied the recorder, he might play as the witches danced. Hembach climbed a tree for the purpose and played as he was asked, paying close attention to the choreography (because the whole thing struck him as rather awesome, perhaps). When it was over, he said, ‘Good God, where did this frenzied, half-demented rabble come from?’ The words had scarcely left his lips before he went crashing to the ground, dislocating a shoulder. He cried out, begging for help, but there was no one around. When he told the story later, most people thought he was making it up – until Catherine Praevotia was had up for witchcraft shortly afterwards, said she’d been at the dance, and confirmed what had occurred – except she’d heard nothing of the general outcry Hembach had stirred up. Majolus cites two examples: one a fellow who followed his wife everywhere, the other an adulterer who borrowed his floozy’s tub of ointment and smeared some on himself, so that both men ended up at the witches’ gathering. There’s another story about a bloke who got up early and daubed some on his wagon (he’d picked up the wrong tub in the darkness). The wagon took off and he had to haul it back down. Olaus Magnus, in Bk III of his hist. de gentibus septentrional., ch. 19, relates how King Hadingus of Denmark, having been driven from his kingdom by rebels, was borne back there, far above the seas, by Odin’s spirit, transformed into a horse. And it’s widely known how the women of Bohemia, whether married or single, have their far-off lovers flown to them at night on the backs of goats. What Torquemada says about his schoolmates can be read in the pages of his Hexamerone. Ghirlandus, too, writes of a respectable man who, having observed that his wife sometimes anointed herself and then left the house, persuaded her on one occasion to take him with her to the witches’ gathering. She did, and as they sat down to eat and there was no salt on the table, he asked for some and with great difficulty obtained it, at which he said, ‘Praise be, here comes the salt!’ Immediately the lamps went out and everything vanished. As it grew light again some shepherds told him he was near a town called Benevento in the Kingdom of Naples – i.e. hundreds of miles from home. Wealthy he may have been but he had to beg to be repatriated, and on his return he promptly denounced his wife to the authorities and she was burnt as a witch. Dr Faust and others (not witches themselves) were able to fly from place to place, as is well known from his biography. I actually knew a woman and a maidservant myself – both dead at the time of writing, although the maid’s father is still with us. Well, the maid was sitting by the fire one day with her mistress’s shoes, and when, having accidentally wiped ointment on one, she put it down to do the other, the one that had ointment on suddenly disappeared up the chimney. However, the story was hushed up at the time. I mention these things only to show that witches and wizards really do exist in some cases and go flying off to their gatherings – not because I want people to believe that I’ve done the same. Personally, I don’t mind if I’m believed or not, and if anyone refuses, let him or her think of another way I was whisked in such short order from Hirschfeld or Fulda (I don’t know which myself, I’d been wandering in the forests for so long) to the archbishopric of Magdeburg.
Nineteen
Simplicius becomes a fool again, as he was before
I resume my chronicle by assuring the reader that I lay prone until well into the next day. I just couldn’t summon the oomph to get up. Also, I was wondering whether I’d dreamt the events of the preceding chapter or not. I still felt quite woozy, but I’d obviously decided that this could hardly be a worse spot than the wild forest that had been my home for most of the time since I’d left dad’s place, so I’d coolly dozed off again. Around nine in the morning a party of soldiers out raiding came along and roused me – which was when I realized I’d been lying in an open field. I accompanied my new captors to various windmills, where they ground the grain they’d liberated, then to their encampment outside Magdeburg, where I was thrown at the feet of a colonel who wanted to know: where was I from and who was my master? I told him in some detail. Not knowing what Croats were called, I described their clothing, gave an imitation of their language, and told him that in any case I’d run away from them. I kept quiet about my ducats, and what I told him about my flight through the air and the witches’ sabbath he dismissed as a load of rhubarb anyway, mainly because my account was a bit muddled. Meanwhile, a crowd had gathered (one fool attracts a thousand others, you see). I spotted a familiar face: the fellow had been in prison in Hanau the year before, had agreed to serve there, but had later rejoined the Emperor’s side. Recognizing me instantly, he said, ‘Why, if it isn’t the governor’s calf from Hanau!’ The colonel asked him for details, but the fellow knew only that I played the lute, that some Croats from Colonel Corpes’s regiment had nabbed me outside Hanau, and that said governor had been sorry to lose a cracking fool. Here the colonel’s wife, remembering
that another colonel’s wife played quite good lute, so always had one with her, sent a servant to ask for a loan of it. The instrument was brought and a tune requested. Quick as a flash, I replied: first I should be given something to eat; my empty belly and the lute’s very full one would scarcely be in tune. So food was brought, and after I’d knocked it back, following the victuals with a good slug of Zerbst beer, I did indeed, to the best of my ability, give them a tune – both with the lute and with my tonsils. Meanwhile I prattled, saying the first thing that came into my head, so I easily fitted the bill that my clothing suggested. The colonel asked where I was headed, and when I answered, ‘Nowhere in particular’, we agreed that I should remain with him as his page. He also wanted to know what had happened to my donkey’s ears. ‘Aha!’ I said. ‘If you knew where they were you’d find them a pretty good fit.’ But of course I kept quiet about how they contained my whole wealth.
In a short time I got to know most of the high-ranking officers in both camps, the Elector of Saxony’s and the Emperor’s, and especially their womenfolk, who’d festoon my cap, sleeves and ear stumps with silk ribbons of every kind and colour (in fact, certain peddlers of the current fashion may well have copied it from me). The money the officers gave me I spent liberally, down to the last penny. It went on good beer from Hamburg or Zerbst (both kinds suited me equally), quaffed in fine company. I could afford to be generous, you see, being able to cadge plentifully wherever I went.
The Adventures of Simplicius Simplicissimus Page 16
