wooden swords and ran towards each other, yelling. As always, there was a great tumult as they sprang about, uttering wild curses and clashing wooden swords. Apart from a few bruises, nothing worse had ever happened.
John stopped and called out, "Peter, Tom, look at the clouds gathering."
"It's going to be very dark," said Tom.
"Scary," Peter added, "seems quite a storm is coming."
As soon as he said it, it poured cats and dogs, lightning flashed and thunder rumbled violently. There was no longer any sun to be seen and the strong wind had completely drenched them with rain in seconds.
"We'd better get a roof over our heads as soon as possible," exclaimed Peter.
"Come over to me quickly, I live closest," Tom replied.
They were already running as fast as they could in this storm to Tom's childhood home just below the big hill.
Tom's mother was already waiting at the door. "Oh, how do you look," she blurted out, "just take off your wet clothes, I'll get you towels."
The three of them dropped all their clothes while they were still in the hall, which now was swimming with water. Tom's mother came with the towels and said, still excited, "Come, come, come into the living room and dry off. I'll make you a hot chocolate and call your parents so they know you've arrived here safely."
It was so dark outside that the lights had to be turned on in the house. What none of them knew, the three boys had been observed for hours. Two dark figures dressed in
black waxed coats reaching to the ground and big-brimmed black waxed hats, had sat and waited all day in the thicket at the top of the hill. Again and again they had whispered to each other in somber voices and watched the children playing. But they became particularly attentive when Peter, Tom and John came up the hill with their flag.
Now the two of them, unimpressed by the rain and storm, were still in their hiding place and watched the three boys through the living room window as they sat there on the sofa with their hot chocolate wrapped in towels and being cared for by Tom's mother.
Peter's and John's parents had allowed them to stay with Tom. Both of them lived only a few houses away, but the storm had become so bad that not even the cats dared to go outside.
The thunderstorm lasted all night. After that, everything would change for the children.
The Field Day
The next morning the sun had conquered the clouds again and burned the earth. It was getting late for everyone on this noisy night. Now it was too late for Peter and John to go home and get new clothes to wear. Their clothes were virtually freshly washed by the storm.
Time was of the essence, there were only 10 minutes left until the bus was due to leave the school to take the children to the museum, which was hosting a traveling exhibition of some sort of history. Peter and Tom got bored, that was more John's area of expertise, who had always been interested in history, but also in legends and myths.
Armed with sandwiches and bags of orange juice, which Tom's mother had hastily handed them, Tom's father drove the three of them to school. Her class teacher was standing agitated at the bus door. Tom's father had to apologize a thousand times for being late. Meanwhile Peter, John and Tom slipped past her onto the bus and took their seats amidst the excited children from their own class and their classmates who were talking, screaming, fighting. It was just something special to make a day trip, even if it went to a boring museum. Still better than having to sit in the even more boring school.
As soon as they arrived at the museum, the children pushed out of the bus in a great tumult. The two class teachers had a hard time putting things in order. Then it went through showroom after showroom, each with clothing, household items and hand tools from all centuries.
Peter and Tom were already bored in the second museum room, while John was really enthusiastic about these historical things. "What could they tell, could they talk?" he thought to himself.
"Oh is that boring" Peter said with a good yawn.
"But really! Not a single weapon,” Tom added, bored.
"But just look at all the great stuff, here the washtub and there the royal toilet chair from the middle ages“ John replied all excited.
"Great," said Tom, "then I know where I can go to the toilet right away."
All three of them giggled, their teacher standing near them and looking down at them with a punishing look, she must have heard Tom's words.
"Well, this is getting to be too much for me," said Peter, "let's disappear secretly and look around for weapons ourselves, there must be some around here somewhere, after all it's a museum."
Tom jumped in right away, they had to nudge John three times in the side before he agreed.
In the throng of children, it was easy for the three to slip away unnoticed. They crept through room after room, always careful not to be picked up by a museum attendant or even get caught in the clutches of their teacher. But the oh so boring exhibition actually seemed to run through the entire huge museum complex.
They grew farther and farther away from the other children. When they had combed everything, only the basement remained. Here, too, the weapons the three had so longed for could not be found.
Arriving in the last room of the basement, a chain blocked their way at the other end with a sign saying “No entry – only for museum staff”.
"That's it then," sighed Tom, "nothing with guns."
"What a bummer," said Peter disappointed, "but as long as our teacher didn't notice anything, it was worth it a little bit."
Meanwhile, John had also studied all the exhibits in this room extensively and had arrived in front of the forbidden passage that led to the museum archives.
"Hey, come here quickly," he called to Peter and Tom, "there's another room here to the left of the blocked passage that you can get in."
Peter and Tom were with John in a flash. You could only see the entrance to this room if you got directly in front of the prohibition sign. Now they were standing in front of this very last exhibition room in the museum. Only the flickering of a few candles along the walls of this room was visible. The three of them could only guess what was inside. It was a spooky atmosphere and they got goosebumps just thinking about walking into that room.
"Look" whispered Peter, "over the entrance it says 'Albert Bowlegs Collection'. Who is Albert Bowlegs?
John and Tom only gave a few shrugs in reply.
Cautiously, the three walked into the room, pressed tightly together. Peter and Tom pushed John forward to their middle. "You're the history expert," Tom whispered.
There they stood in the middle of the room, their eyes wide with tense excitement. In front of them, on a small pedestal, lay open an old thick book with characters beautifully decorated. Between the text were wonderful colored drawings of cavalry battles. Along the wall behind the dais was a table on which three magnificent short swords gleamed, blades pointing downward, in the dim candlelight. They excitedly approached the long-sought weapons, which were made in a style similar to Roman short swords. But they had to be younger.
"It must be Damascus steel, the way the blades shine," John said in a tone of knowledge, "and the hilts are gold. But those huge stones at the ends of the handles are definitely made of glass. There are hardly any gemstones of this size and they certainly would not have been mounted on sword hilts.”
"How right you are, my boy," came a deep, commanding but gentle voice from a dark corner of the room.
Albert Bowlegs
With a loud yell,