Death and the Devil

“You can. I used to have a friend in Cologne, Bram, an old whistle player who lived in a house in Spielmannsgasse, where all the musicians and players live. He was also a storyteller,” Jacob went on. “He would stand at some corner or other and play his whistle, until he had enough people watching. Then he’d start talking about far-off countries, legendary kingdoms, and enchanted castles, about fair princesses and fearless knights, journeys across storm-tossed oceans, combats with giants and sea monsters, and about the world’s end.”

“Nobody’s ever been to the world’s end,” snorted Goddert.

“Maybe. But Bram earned quite a lot of money with his descriptions of it.”

“I remember Bram,” said Jaspar, frowning. “He claimed to have been a crusader.”

Jacob nodded. “Yes. He was on the last Crusade. You should have heard him telling his stories in Haymarket. Everyone listened, even the great merchants, the Hirzelins and Hardefusts, the Quattermarts, Lyskirchner, or Kleingedancks, stopped their horses to listen. Patricians and clerics, monks and nuns, even the suffragan of Great St. Martin’s, the one who’s always fulminating against the works of the Devil. And Bram knew how to tell a story! The merchants laughed at him, claiming his descriptions were completely devoid of truth, but they listened spellbound. And they all gave him something: money, wine, fruit. God knows, we had a good life in those first years.”

“I always say those mountebanks don’t do too badly,” Goddert declared.

“Bram took me in when I finally reached Cologne after several days wandering around. I can’t have been particularly pleasing to the eye. A scrawny, red-haired thing with big eyes and an even bigger appetite.”

“A little fox-cub.” Jaspar grinned.

“It was Bram who called me Fox. Strangely enough, not because of my hair. He thought there was something of the sly fox in the way I kept on at him until he decided I could be of use to him.”

“And were you?”

Jacob shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Where is he now?” asked Richmodis. “I can’t remember ever having heard of this Bram.”

“He’s dead. Died years ago. Toward the end he was so ill I went out and played the whistle by myself. Bram taught me everything he knew. He even had a few clever conjuring tricks.”

“That’s right!” exclaimed Richmodis eagerly, giving her father’s beard a tug. “Jacob will pull a whistle out of your ear.”

“Ouch. Stop that. You wouldn’t get a whistle in a respectable person’s ear.”

“Oh, yes, you would,” Jaspar broke in, “if there’s no brain behind it. I’d say you could pull enough whistles out of your ears to supply Mainz and Aachen as well as Cologne.”

“It didn’t bring much in.” Jacob hurried on with his story before the two of them could start another of their disputations. “I played my whistle and tried to tell Bram’s stories, but people didn’t stop and gather around.”

“Even though you play so well,” said Richmodis with a look of outraged astonishment.

“Half the people in Cologne can play the whistle.”

“But you play better,” she insisted.

Jacob gave her a grateful smile. “I’ll teach you. I promised and I’ll keep my promise.”

“And now?” Goddert demanded. “Do you still live in the house in Spielmannsgasse?”

Jacob, somewhat embarrassed, stared at his piece of yeast cake. “No. After Bram died I didn’t have enough money. And I had problems with a gang of beggars. So I left Cologne and tried Aachen. But I had trouble there, too. The last few years I’ve just been traveling around. I find it difficult to stay in one place for any length of time.”

“So what brought you back to Cologne?”

“I don’t know. The past? I had a piece of luck when I inherited the lean-to by the Wall. Soon after that I met Maria. She had a real roof over her head, and at first we got on so well I promised Tilman to let him have the shack, because I thought I’d soon be moving in with Maria and her brothel keeper. Well, I was wrong.”

“So now?”

“So now I play my whistle. Not very often, though I do make new ones to sell. Occasionally I find work down at the harbor. And then sometimes—”

“And then sometimes you steal what you need,” Jaspar said. He gave Jacob a long look. “But that’s not the story you were going to tell us. Or, if my instinct does not deceive me, will have to tell us if you’re to get out of the mess you’ve obviously got yourself into. With God’s help, of course. Right. You’ve kept us entertained, Jacob, I’m not ungrateful, and even in Goddert’s tub of a body there beats a true Christian heart. How can we help you—provided, that is, that you haven’t killed someone?”

Jacob felt their eyes on him. He thought about leaving. The image of Maria had come into his mind, Tilman’s grotesquely contorted body. As if he only had to tell what he had seen to condemn his audience to death. All of them sitting there, Richmodis, Jaspar, Goddert. As if nothing could protect them from the short, swift bolts from the miniature crossbow once they had heard his secret. He could not sacrifice more people for the truth.

Run away, then. Once again.