We arranged to meet several miles outside of Reims on the road we had arrived on, and then the group split into two. Hurland slowed us down, but he was a good shot with his musket so Godke had decided to keep him in the group going to the marketplace. With Thies, we were four horsemen and we led most of the following crowd away from Gunnar and Jacob and Ros, and back into Reims in a mad sprint to find some loot and get out before the Frenchmen could respond.

At first all went well. We left the crowd far behind as we were unladen by Ros’ carriage and the marketplace was uncrowded due to the hour.

‘Meet back here in five minutes,’ Godke ordered and our small group fractured into quarters.

I rode straight for the stall where I had seen the beautiful French girl and to my unlimited joy there she was, carrying a basket of goods in one hand and shifting the goods from the basket to the market stall with the other.

I told Grane to stay – not that she’d ever shown a shred of obedience to verbal commands in the past – and dismounted. I jogged the few metres from my horse to the stall and spoke to the French girl.

‘Will you come with me?’ I asked her.

She did not respond, at least not in words. She did smile, however, and a few seconds later I heard her master call for her.

‘Fleur! Fleur! What are you doing?!’ he was calling and I decided to take her smile as consent and liberate her from her servitude.

The market was arranged such that the wagon-stalls were placed directly next to each other with very little gap between, forming a makeshift barrier between the merchants and their customers. I told Fleur to jump it, and she clambered onto her higher end of the stall but stumbled and fell. I caught her in my arms and she looked up at me and smiled again.

Her fat master arrived on the scene and he was shouting at me. ‘What do you think you’re doing?! Unhand my servant!’

I gave him a smirk. I was full of manly bravado and confidence because I held a beautiful woman in my arms and the big Frenchman began to push the wagon out of line in an attempt to reach me. I kicked it and it smashed into his hip, sending him sprawling to the ground. I quickly hoisted Fleur onto Grane and she sat atop the beast like a man, with a leg on either side of Grane’s spine. I mounted my steed behind Fleur and kicked her into a gallop as Fleur’s master came at me brandishing a metal cooking pot.

I left him far behind but as I neared the rendezvous location, a large and noisy rabble blocked me from approaching. Godke rode up behind me seconds later and looked at Fleur for a few long seconds. Then he shook his head, as if coming out of a daze, and pointed past the crowd to the other entrance to the rendezvous site, where I saw Thies through the haze of smoke and farming equipment. We were separated from him, and a moment later Hurland arrived behind me and helpfully said, ‘he’s on the wrong side.’

‘We’ll have to break through,’ Godke said. ‘Karl, you’ll have to lead.’

I almost fell off my horse. I was both surprised and scared at the order, but I felt neither emotion so strongly that I was unwilling to follow Godke’s orders if necessary. I just didn’t understand why he was giving them.

Godke sensed my hesitation and raised his right hand to me. To my surprise it was bleeding profusely, and I wasn’t sure whether it was the difficulty of the moment but I thought he might have lost a finger or two. His right hand was both his sword and his gun hand, and as Hurland was far too old and feeble to lead such a charge I accepted Godke’s responsibility and rode in front of both of them. I offloaded Fleur onto Godke’s horse, knowing that she stood a better chance of surviving there than with Hurland.

Godke passed me his sword, still wet with Mathilde’s blood, and Hurland loaded his musket. I could see Thies loading his wheellock pistol on the far side of the crowd and I knew that we had to go very quickly, before the crowd saw our preparations and decided to strike preemptively.

‘To Thies!’ I charged for a lack of anything better to shout as I raised my sword and kicked Grane into action. She was not barded but the undisciplined Frenchmen parted before me as I entered the crowd and at first I was not forced to hack at anyone with Godke’s sword.

However, the crowd had swelled during the time we had taken to procure our reward and prepare for the charge, and the furthest ranks of the crowd began to reform before me, lowering pitchforks to deter Grane’s approach. Thies fired into their rear and felled several, as did Hurland with his musket, but several of Mathilde’s supporters were still arranged before me when I arrived.

I did so, swinging Godke’s sword in a downwards arc. They foolishly attempted to unhorse me rather than attacking Grane with their weapons, and I punished them dearly as my one-handed sword was far more nimble than their farming implements. Three men fell to Godke’s blade.

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Soon their nearest fellows fled, and I broke through the crowd and joined Thies on the other side. He was still firing his pistol and I realised that in the heat of battle I had failed to notice the silence of Hurland’s musket.

I turned back to see that Hurland had been pulled from his horse, a victim of his own slow pace.

‘No!’ I shouted, but Hurland was quickly enveloped by dozens of Frenchmen who descended upon him as wolves upon cornered prey.

Thies said nothing and held his fire after Godke emerged from the chaos seconds after me. Godke knew what had happened, and the fact that he had managed to protect Fleur escaped my notice or comprehension due to my sorrow at Hurland’s violent and brutal death. I stared back at the crowd and part of me considered a foolhardy rescue attempt, but Godke saw the look of anger and of fury in my eyes and calmed me with a brief speech.

‘He’s already dead, Karl,’ Godke told me. ‘It was a quick death.’

I ground my teeth against each other and looked at my sword. I was still angry, and at sixteen I was not well-practised in controlling myself.

‘We have to go, Karl,’ Godke said. His eyes were moist with unreleased tears, but his self-discipline had taken control. ‘We have to go now.’

I took a deep breath and turned to him, but instead found myself looking at Fleur who was seated in front of him. She was looking up at me with her big blue-gray eyes and a blank expression and it was the first time I had seen her not smile at me. I realised that we had to go.

I made the sign of the cross towards Hurland’s body and turned Grane away from the marketplace. I led Godke and Thies out of Reims and to the scheduled rendezvous point with Gunnar and Jacob. Godke informed them of what had happened and dismounted. Gunnar angrily kicked a tuft of grass. Jacob closed his eyes, made the sign of the cross, and whispered a prayer. Thies simply cried, rubbing his eyes raw. Godke indulged them for a few minutes but then we had to get moving. Godke led the warband as they began to unload the contents of their saddlebags into Ros’ carriage. I remained in Grane’s saddle. I didn’t want to slow down. I didn’t want it to catch up with me.

At my subconscious command, Grane began to trot in circles around the rest of the warband. The others ignored me, either involved in their own sorrow or busy with the work of preparing for the journey ahead.

Eventually Fleur walked up to me and rendered Grane immobile with a hand to the back of the neck. Grane was certainly taken with her, and I soon remembered that I was too. I offered her my hand and she joined me on the horse, though this time she sat like a lady with both of her legs strewn over the right-hand side of the horse. The earthen brown of her ragged dress disguised its unwashedness.

‘I’m sorry Fleur. I…’ I began to say, but she placed a finger over my lips.

I waited for her to say something, but even as the group mounted their horses and began the journey back to Metz she did not and it was then that I realised.

Fleur was mute.

And Hurland was dead.

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Unencumbered by Hurland’s advanced age and his impending exile, we arrived back in Metz at dusk. The journey had been as quiet as Fleur, and we silently dismounted and separated for the night. The only good news was Thies’ announcement that Godke’s wounded hand would heal fully in a matter of weeks. I was surprised that he said nothing about the fact that I had taken Fleur, considering his discontent at Sabina’s kidnapping, but I guess he declined to contribute to the general mood, which was already sufficiently sour.

I took Fleur to the small wooden building which I had been renting for over a year. Hurland had helped me find it after we’d returned from Prague, I recalled sadly. It contained only two adjacent rooms, with a bed and table as the only furniture, but it was the closest thing I’d had to a home since Bielefeld nearly five years earlier. I lit some candles and emptied my pockets of coin, hiding it behind a loose wall panel as I often did for reasons of security.

Fleur had taken a seat at my table and I sat beside her. Hurland had been fond of quoting ancient Greek philosophers and one such quote entered my head as I looked at Fleur:

An object in possession seldom retains the same charm that it had in pursuit.

Yet this was not the case with Fleur. I did not hate her for her disability, nor did I blame her for causing Hurland’s death. Hurland had grown slow and weak and witch hunting was not for the slow and weak.

Fleur pushed her chair next to mine and slouched against my body. I think she was grateful for being rescued from what was essentially serfdom, and she probably sensed my pain. She had been there in Reims, she’d seen Hurland pulled down by her townsfolk.

‘Were you a serf?’ I asked her eventually. She sat up and flicked an unruly strand of straight hair out of her eye, before nodding. ‘How did you become a serf?’

I wondered how she was going to answer me, and I contemplated finding something for her to write with. This proved to be unnecessary as she simply mouthed the word ‘born’ to me. As in, she was born a serf. I sighed and put my arm around her. She had a cute smile that had sadly been wasted in bonded labor, and I felt good about rescuing her. I wasn’t like Gunnar at all, as he had kept Sabina against her will. I was a saviour, a rescuer of the vulnerable, and Fleur was grateful to me.

Despite this, it was a difficult time for me, and for the warband. If Godke was like a father to me, Hurland was the kind grandfather who doted on his grandchild. Even to powerful men who had nothing to fear from combat like Gunnar, Hurland had possessed a paternal aura of wisdom and non-judgement. We all felt his loss, and the remainder of 1622 and the early part of 1623 were spent resting in Metz. Me and Fleur began to share the virulent emotions of two sixteen year olds physically and we were physical most nights. Unlike with Gunnar and Sabina, I did not grow bored of Fleur despite her lack of conversationality, nor did I fall in love with her. But I loved being with her.

She communicated with me through writing. I learnt that her full name was Fleur Bonetti. It was an expensive way to talk so she often refrained, and I learnt to speak to her using questions easily answerable with nods or shakes of her head.