Turn back.
For a moment he hesitated. Isabella. The city. Pulsating with life like the heart in his chest. Then he picked up what was left of the bread, turned around dejectedly, and tried to work out which direction he had come from. After casting around for a while, he found the path that led back to the farms. He had run quite a way, he realized, and set off as fast as his legs would carry him.
It was late afternoon when, with a heavy heart, but ready to take his deserved punishment like a man, he came around the hedge bordering the land his father leased. Their hovel could be seen from here and, despite his fear, he was almost glad to be back. He would think up some explanation, perhaps he’d even tell the truth. His father wouldn’t kill him; after all, he needed him in the fields. Perhaps he’d have to go hungry for a day, but he’d survive. Or perhaps he’d have to herd the pigs when it was his brother’s turn. He could live with that, too. Or he’d have to—
His musing came to a sudden halt.
There, some way in front of him, where his home was, a column of dirty brown smoke rose up into the blue sky.
At first he thought his father must be burning some rubbish. It must be a big fire he’d lit. Too big. There was no reason for such a big fire, nothing he could think of, anyway. He looked again.
Their hovel had disappeared.
Jacob felt his limbs go numb and a lock seemed to snap shut in his mind. He felt he couldn’t breathe. His reason pointed out that there ought to be a shack there and demanded that reality go back to the former, accustomed version immediately.
The column of smoke stayed.
Jacob dropped the bread. With a cry he set off running, stumbling over the furrows, waving his hands around wildly, until he was close enough to the dark smoke to see clearly the charred beams that were the remains of his home.
His eyes burned. His mind refused to comprehend, but gradually the terrible truth crept into his mind like a spider.
He went closer.
And closer still.
One more step.
And saw—
—saw—
What?” Richmodis asked softly.
Jacob stared into space. He felt he had fallen backward through time. With difficulty he forced himself to return to the present.
“Yes, what?” Jaspar Rodenkirchen leaned forward. “What was it you saw?”
Jacob was silent.
“Nothing,” he said eventually.
“Nothing? What do you mean, nothing?” exclaimed Goddert, clearly dissatisfied with the answer.
Jacob shrugged his shoulders. “Nothing. There was nothing there. Just charred wood and smoking lumps of peat.”
“What then? What did you do next?”
“What I had intended to do anyway. I went to Cologne.”
“And your father? Your brother? What about—”
Jaspar interrupted him. “One moment. Our young friend has presumably not come here to tell us the whole story of his life, although I have to admit I find it very moving.”
Jacob didn’t know what to say. He had not intended to tell them everything. He hardly knew these people, but they had been hanging on his every word, as if it had been a sermon about the Last Judgment. And it was just the story of any little boy.
A little boy I used to know. That thought suddenly appeared in Jacob’s mind. Was that really me? He felt as if he had been telling the story of someone else, without really knowing why.
“I went to Cologne,” he repeated pensively.
Richmodis placed her hand on his arm. “You don’t have to tell us any more.”
“Why not?” bellowed Goddert. “It’s a truly beautiful and interesting story. You don’t often hear stories like that nowadays. And paying a doctor with a story seems to me a highly original idea.”
Jaspar nodded. “There’s no disputing that. Though once again you can see no farther than the ruby-red tip of your nose. Or do you imagine I could buy wine with stories?”
“Of course you could,” said Jacob.
“I could?” Jaspar’s nose and chin went on the attack together. “Then you know more than I do. How can you do that?”
“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.
