"So tell me, Andreas, what's this about 'arriving nearly naked'?"

"I think I'll have to start a little earlier, sir. When the Swedes came into Erfurt after the battle of Breitenfeld-"

"That was last September?" Marshall interrupted.

"Yes, sir. September 30th-or 20th by the Protestants' calendar-they entered the city. My papa was very furious when he heard that. He was a member of the city council and had always been against paying so much money to the Imperials to leave Erfurt in peace.

"But now he feared that the Lutheran 'Wettin Johanns' as he called them would use the opportunity to seize Erfurt from His Excellence the High Reverence in spite of the peace treaty of 1530.

"So he left home to 'stop these crazy barbarians' he said. And he never returned." The boy's voice got muffled by his tears.

People who had noticed the event called it an appalling accident. Jakob Becker had really tried to stop the Swedes.

He was so furious; he stepped in the way of Wilhelm of Saxe-Weimar's horse, who had led the marching in to the city hall to accept the mayor's surrender. He called the Wettin dukes in particular, and all Protestants and Swedes at large many names that the witnesses didn't want to repeat. Wilhelm only shook his head, Becker was shoved aside and the Swedes moved on.

But he was still shouting, and suddenly one of the cavalry horses shied, kicked out and hit him exactly in the chest. The people said he was dead before he fell to earth. A Swedish medic even tried to help him with no success.

"When our neighbors, who had been witnesses, came to our home on the bridge-"

"Bridge?" Marshall interrupted the boy.

"He's referring to the Kramerbrucke-the merchants' bridge, sir," Melchior answered with his tour-guide voice. "It was built three hundred years ago with houses on both sides of the street, but it existed as a market place two centuries earlier."

"And we had our own house," this was the first time the boy showed some eagerness. "Mama worked as seamstress downstairs, and we all slept upstairs. And we even had-how do you Americans call it? — a water closet."

" Ja," Melchior commented. "A hole in the floor, where the shit can drop directly into the Gera. And what about the winter?" He shuddered. The boy laughed.

"Okay," Marshall sent an approving gaze to Melchior, but then turned back to Andreas. "Then what happened?"

The boy took a deep breath. "When they came and told what had happened, Mama panicked. She said we should flee to her relatives in Techstedt or Pechstedt-I had never heard of them and I could not exactly understand the name of the village. And we had to run now.

"She took Maria by her hand and left the house. I had to run after them. We left the city and walked over the fields. Mama didn't want to use a road.

"After an hour or so a thunderstorm was coming up. Black clouds towered higher and higher and then it started pouring water. The soil turned into mud, but still we walked on and on.

"And then we reached the Linderbach. I didn't know that the creek was called that name then. And I wouldn't have recognized it, had we been there before. It was a black and raging current. No bridge; no chance to cross."

The boy stopped, apparently overwhelmed from the pictures in his memory. Then his voice got completely flat.

"But Mama tried. She slipped. She fell. Her head hit a boulder, and then she disappeared in the water. Maria wanted to run after her, and I could barely hold her. Then I took her in my arms; and we cowered down and cried together until the rainstorm ended.

"And then we walked on. We had lost our shoes in the mud. We had torn our clothes. When we reached the farm, we collapsed in the yard." Andreas' voice was choking.

Then he straightened. " Der Waidbauerwas very nice to us. But he told us that he had nothing himself and he could not feed two more mouths easily.

"He didn't know either Techstedt or Pechstedt, and there are two villages called Bechstedt, and there is Eichstedt, and I even don't know the name of Mama's relatives. So if we wanted to stay with him, we both had to work for food and lodging and the shoes and clothes he bought for us.

"He asked for Mama downstream, but on that day the Linderbach not only killed her, but also made the bridge on the road to Weimar collapse. People thought her body had probably been washed all the way down into the Unstrut.

"So we settled down here. I worked in the stable and on the fields, and Maria sewed and mended and embroidered. Until the day the outlaws appeared."

"'Outlaws'?" Marshall asked quizzically. "You mean like 'Robin Hood and his Merry Men,' that kind of outlaws? And you called this 'a boring part of Germany,' Melchior."

Melchior shrugged. " Shit happens, sir. Former Imperial mercenaries, perhaps."

"No, Herr Nehring," the boy said. "They are real bandits, criminals. At least their chief. He visited my father once, some years ago. At that time his name was Wilhelm Schontal."

Papa had told him that the man was a Catholic from Hanau, and was wanted for murder there, for killing a Calvinist tax collector.

He swore on the Bible that it had been in self-defense, and that there was a conspiracy going on against pious Catholics. So the auxiliary bishop of Erfurt granted him asylum.

That lasted until the day when the Kanonikusof St. Mary's was found dead and some very nice pieces of the church treasury had disappeared along with Wilhelm. And nobody heard of him afterwards.

"But this spring the farmers talk about a Catholic 'Robin Hood,' who robs the wealthy Lutheran merchants on the High Road to Leipzig, and gives their money to the poor. Exactly as told in the old ballads."

"Ha!" shouted Marshall. "You're joking."

"No, sir. They don't make presents, but they pay generously for food and other supplies they buy from the farmers. And their captain uses the name Guillaume de Beauvallee."

Melchior's lips moved, when he repeated the name. "That's 'Wilhelm Schontal' translated into French!"

"Yes, Herr Nehring. That's what I thought, too. And I told the woad farmer about what that man had done in Erfurt. But he didn't believe me.

"And last week the outlaws appeared here."

Andreas had managed to hide in the stable when they turned up, but Maria unsuspectingly left the farmhouse, and froze when she saw the captain of this troop. She had been only nine years old when Schontal had visited Jakob Becker and his family in his house. But she obviously remembered that short, sturdy man with his enormous black mustachio, who had frightened her the first time she had seen him.

The next day Maria was missing. Andreas was sure that Schontal had something to do with it, but he couldn't convince the woad farmer. The farmer was adamant that Maria certainly had run away to find her mother.

"So I had no choice, I had to find her. But my search for her ended soon afterwards in the thicket, where the woad farmer found me."

A field near Erfurt

Some days later

" Guten Morgen, meine Herren," Melchior greeted the peasants who were harvesting flax in a field.

Not being accustomed to be addressed so courteously, the men stopped working, straightened and examined the scenario before them: A chubby young man with glasses on a mule, a tall, haggard, oddly-dressed man behind him on a large horse, and the obviously young stable hand on another mule holding the reins of a third mule.