Twenty-Three
A brief episode illustrating Olivier’s trade, at which he was a master and Simplicius his would-be apprentice
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.
Twenty-Four
Olivier croaks, taking six men with him
As we sat around, resting our bodies and refreshing our minds, Olivier sent the peasant out for something to fill our bellies and something to fire from our guns. When the man had gone, he pulled off his jacket and said to me, ‘Brother, I’ve had enough of lugging this damned money around on my own!’ Unwinding two long sausage-like bundles that he’d been wearing next to his skin and flinging them down on the table, he added, ‘You’ll have to take care of these until we’ve both got enough and I pack it in. The ruddy stuff’s giving me blisters!’ I replied, ‘Oh, brother, if you had as little as I have it wouldn’t bother you so much.’ ‘No, listen,’ he broke in: ‘what’s mine is yours, and whatever we take in future we split equally between us – right?’ I picked up both rolls and did indeed find them extremely heavy. They were full of gold, and very uncomfortably packed. Would he like me to sew the money into our clothes, I asked; that would halve the weight and make the burden easier to bear. He agreed and took me out to a hollow oak where he kept his scissors and his needle and thread. Using an old pair of breeches, I made each of us a sort of vest or scapular and sewed the fine red coins into them. When we put them on under our shirts, it was just as if we’d been wearing gold armour fore and aft. The effect was so amazing, I asked him whether he had silver coins too. He did, he replied; he had a thousand-thaler hoard stashed in another tree that the peasant used for housekeeping. He never asked the man for receipts, either. To him it was gnats’ piss.
The job completed and the money packed away, we went back to the house, cooked a meal, and dozed off by the warm stove. An hour after sun-up, when we least expected an attack, six musketeers and a corporal burst into the house with guns at the ready, flung open the door of the room we were sitting in and ordered us to give ourselves up! However, Olivier (who like me kept his cocked musket and his sharp sword at his side at all times and who just
then was sitting at the table, while I’d moved to a position behind the door) responded with a couple of bullets, dropping two of the men instantly. I accounted for a third and wounded a fourth with the same shot. Olivier then reached for his trusty sword (so sharp it could cut hair, and well up to the standard of the English King Arthur’s Excalibur), whipped it out of its scabbard, and brought it down on the fifth man’s shoulder, splitting him open to the belly. As the fellow’s corpse slid to the floor, his guts spilt out beside it. Meanwhile I gave the sixth such a blow over the head with the butt of my musket as laid him out completely, and Olivier took a similar blow from the seventh, delivered with such force that his brains came squirting out. I promptly dispatched Olivier’s killer, sending him to join his slaughtered companions. Lastly, the man I’d injured with my first shot, on coming to and seeing which way the wind was blowing (I was about to crown him too with my reversed musket), flung his weapon down and took to his heels as if the devil in person was after him. The fight lasted no longer than it takes to recite the Lord’s Prayer, in which short time seven brave soldiers bit the dust.
I was the only one left – master of the field, you might say. I looked at Olivier to check whether he still had a breath in his body. However, seeing he was quite past it, I thought it made no sense to leave a corpse barded with that amount of pelf. He’d have no use for it. So I stripped off the gold cuirass I’d fashioned only the day before and donned it myself, on top of the other one. And because I’d ruined my own weapon I took Olivier’s musket and sword, just in case, and made myself scarce, following the same path as I knew our peasant friend would return along. After a while I sat down to wait for him – and ponder my own next step.
Twenty-Five
Simplicius comes away rolling in it – whereas Herzbruder, for his part, comes away skint
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.
The Adventures of Simplicius Simplicissimus Page 37
