and Albrecht. He approached at a steady pace with his hand thrust out in greeting.
Eberhardt was relieved to see that the man looked like a travelling artisan. He was short and slight; wearing undyed woollen hose and a shabby leather coat down to his knees. He had a broad-brimmed felt hat with a grey cloth wrapped round his head against the cold. A satchel was slung over one shoulder with a bedding roll and a cooking pot over the other.
Eberhardt was, without realising it, impressed by the confidence in the strong clear voice and the man’s open-handed approach. The hand he shook was small but the grip was sharp.
‘Eberhardt the Woodcutter,’ he said.
Albrecht could not look him in the eye but muttered, ‘Albrecht the Steward,’ whilst looking down at the man’s hand. He was used to appraising men for work and judging their capabilities. The thin-boned hand had no scars or calluses; it had never plied its trade as a carpenter.
‘Good day to you both. A fine day to be out walking across this great German land of ours,’ breezed the stranger, waving an arm at a shaft of light catching in the snow-laden treetops.
Eberhardt was puzzled by the man’s accent: the cadence was the flattened Schriftdeutsch of the educated élite, not some carpenter’s burr.
The man also had an intriguing face. He was in his mid-thirties, but seemed much older. His face was thin and pinched with hunger; it looked burned out, with large bags under his eyes that had been drawn down where his cheeks had shrunk in the cold. Yet the eyes themselves showed no signs of exhaustion. Indeed, quite the opposite: his glance was quick, taking everything in, his movements rapid and decisive.
‘There is, however,’ he continued, ‘rather a lot of our German nation.’ He indicated the path with an ironic smile and dip of his head. ‘It looks like our paths have joined — shall we?’ He held a hand out to indicate the road ahead.
‘Hmm,’ said Eberhardt, realising that there was no alternative and that the three of them would have to walk together for some time. He handed his axe wordlessly to Albrecht, who strapped it onto his pack and shrugged it back onto his shoulders.
They set off down the path. Eberhardt glanced at the stranger as he tried to work out what he was about. Albrecht tagged along behind. The tension of their sudden coming together made them all edgy and they plunged into conversation to relieve the awkwardness.
‘So where are you headed for?’ Thomas took command of the discussion.
‘Leipzig — I have friends there from …’ Eberhardt was about to say university, but realised that did not fit with his cover story so finished lamely, ‘from before … The German nation, you said,’ he blustered, trying to think of a way off the subject. ‘What do you mean by that?’
This was not just a diversion; the subject was of great interest to him. He had been trying to think who could be the new saviour of Germany ever since the Knights had failed.
‘Well,’ Thomas laughed, ‘Dr Luther and his Protestants would have us believe that we are the new nation of God,’ he said mockingly, ‘rising up to throw out the Whore of Rome!’ He laughed again.
‘It’s not a bad thing to give those Italians a taste of the Bundschuh,’ muttered Eberhardt.
‘No, they haven’t made themselves many friends,’ agreed Thomas, flicking a quick glance at Eberhardt to gauge his expression.
Albrecht had been walking along behind his master, fearing that his lack of discretion about the Knights would give them away. ‘That Luther’s bad news,’ he muttered.
Thomas chuckled again as if he didn’t really understand it all. ‘Well, he says he wants to reform the Church, to take it back to its roots.’
‘Yes, but he says there’s something special about Germans,’ continued Eberhardt, immune to his servant’s subtleties, ‘that God has chosen us to reform the Church and bring light into the darkness that has grown up under these popes.’
‘And what do you think?’ asked Thomas. He shot a sideways look at Eberhardt.
Instinctively he knew who the leader of the pair was, despite Albrecht ostensibly outranking him socially. A steward should not have been deferring to a woodcutter. Equally a woodcutter should not be discussing politics. None of the three of them was fitting his story well.
‘Well, he’s certainly stirred up the whole country,’ Albrecht cut across the question, trying to override Eberhardt’s tactlessness. ‘Stirred ‘em up good and proper down south last summer, he did.’
There had been riots, rent strikes and refusals to pay tithes by the peasants in Franconia, and open rebellion had broken out in the Schwarzwald.
‘Yes, but that’s not Luther, is it?’ Eberhardt turned round to look at Albrecht scornfully. ‘He’s not running round stirring up the peasants, is he? God knows who’s been doing that!’ He looked at Thomas for support.
‘Malefactors!’ said Thomas, and laughed. His tone mocked the term used by the authorities in their proclamations issued against the rebels.
Albrecht fell silent in the face of the rebuke from his master. He had tried what he could to keep him from self-incrimination but he seemed hell-bent on it. Albrecht retreated to following on behind the other two.
The track now turned left up the side of the valley and so the conversation slowed down as they leaned into the gradient and took breaths between sentences.
‘The peasants are just jumping on his cart. They don’t know a bloody thing about his theology, they just think it’s an excuse to get rid of their lords,’ Eberhardt continued. ‘… But we’re all just buggered as long as the Princes keep running the country. They’re the real problem! I would challenge any man to disagree, be he big Hans or little Hans.’
‘You’re no friend of the Princes then?’ asked Thomas.
‘The Princes betrayed the Knights in their attempt to cleanse the realm of Popish trash! May the Devil shit on them!’
Albrecht groaned inwardly. This was the rant that Eberhardt had brooded on since the war. The steward had heard it often enough, he just wished that the knight would be more careful about who he said it to. The Devil only knew who this man was.
‘Only the Knights could have saved Germany … but now their cause is lost …’
Eberhardt suddenly felt a strange need to confess all. He was big and could put on a show but inside he was a hollow man; Thomas was the more confident.
He stopped and turned to the carpenter. ‘I should say that I am not what I appear,’ he said hurriedly.
Thomas stared at him patiently as if he had been expecting some revelation.
‘I am a knight … Eberhardt von Steltzenberg. I fought in the Knights’ War. I wanted to serve the German nation — this land.’ He repeated Thomas’s phrase self-consciously. ‘Albrecht was my steward … We escaped the Princes and have been wandering ever since …’
He dried up as Albrecht stood behind him, aghast.
Thomas stared at the knight for a few seconds and then looked down. He bobbed his head, looked up at Eberhardt and said quietly, ‘I too am not what I appear. My name is Dr Thomas Müntzer.’
The name of the infamous rebel crashed into Eberhardt’s mind, stunning him.
PRESENT DAY, MONDAY 24 NOVEMBER, MBOMOU PROVINCE, CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC
‘So how are they doing then?’
Yamba pointed to the Blackburn Rovers tattoo on Col’s forearm. He had a heavy Angolan accent, with a rising and falling cadence.
‘Er