I carried his body out of the church and left some coin that I had found in Jacob’s cloak to cover the cost of cleaning the confessional of his blood. I’m not sure why I did that, but facing God in times of tragedy can make people do strange, often charitable things.

Fleur walked beside me, crying or attempting to stifle herself from doing so. I slumped Jacob against the wall of the witch house as it was the nearest building and I took his pulse.

It was only a formality, but he was indeed dead. The knife in his hands was unfamiliar, and looked to be of Bohemian origin. I told Fleur to get Godke and a few minutes later he arrived. His own eyes were flush with tears but, like me, he held them back.

‘We should bury him,’ Godke said.

It was a difficult decision, because Jacob had committed suicide and that meant that God would deny his entrance to Heaven. We found Gunnar and Thies and they agreed to the burial so it went ahead anyway. I liked that. God rules our lives every day, and I didn’t think it was fair that He should heap such an unnecessary misery on top of Jacob’s death.

Godke and Gunnar carried Jacob’s body just outside of the town to a small grassy hill. They dug a grave as Thies neatened Jacob’s blood-stained clothes and closed his eyes. Jacob and Hurland had been the holiest members of our warband and now we had no obvious choice to lead the service. Once the grave was dug, I helped lift Jacob’s body into the shallow pit and then looked to Godke to begin the service.

Godke took up the burden and said a few words about Jacob. He said that Jacob had led a troubled life but had tried harder than any man to redeem himself from his sins. ‘Sadly, they caught up to him in the end.’

We all said a few words, but Godke’s stuck with me so I approached him after the burial when he, Fleur and I were seated around a table at the Leer tavern.

‘What was his sin?’ I asked Godke. Of course we all sinned, most of us many times, but Jacob clearly had committed an act so heinous it had forced him into the life of a penitent. It was obviously also what had led him to take his own life, though the struggles and moral ambiguities of witch hunting certainly hadn’t helped. Godke hesitated, considering whether he should say anything, but eventually decided to reveal Jacob’s secret to me.

‘You are to repeat this to no man,’ Godke prefaced his response. He asked Fleur to leave but I told him that she wouldn’t tell anyone and he seemed to accept that.

I do not share here what Jacob spent his whole life repenting for. He was a troubled man when I knew him, but he was even more troubled when he was younger and it was right that he spent his days devoted to God in penance.

‘Despite that, he was a good man and that was why I took him on,’ Godke concluded. ‘He never knew that I knew what he had done, and I never told him. His shame was his own and I hope that I did the right thing.’

We nodded solemnly and then downed a few ales. We retreated to the tavern and I took Fleur to bed that night without making love to her due to the sour mood of the town and of the warband. At least we had an execution to look forward to in the morning.

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I awoke at dawn to find that Godke had not slept at all. Gunnar and Thies were already up and though they did not look to have slept well, they had at least got some rest. But Godke was not in a good state of mind, and as such it fell to me to lead the warband to the witch house to get Anneliese’s execution under way.

With Gunnar’s help, I unchained her and escorted her from the witch house to the town square. Unlike in Pilsen, this town square had no raised platform and so I relied on Godke and Thies to clear some space.

‘This woman is a witch!’ I declared to the crowd, and many of them turned from whatever they were doing to face me. ‘This woman is a witch, and deserves to die!’ I repeated and this time I was met with a loud cheer.

‘She is responsible for poverty and for illness in Leer,’ I continued, a small exaggeration about the pig that had to be slaughtered because of her. ‘And she must have the Devil driven out of her by execution!’

The crowd cheered again as did Gunnar beside me. I was about to continue when I saw someone in the crowd that I recognised. Someone who didn’t belong in western Germany.

It was Jaromil.

We locked eyes across the square and I immediately offloaded Anneliese’s oblivious form to Gunnar.

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‘Continue without me,’ was all I could say as I ran into the crowd and started pushing the townsfolk aside to get to Jaromil, who was at the rear of the mass of people. My crooked nose twitched in aggrieved memory.

By the time I broke through the crowd Jaromil had fled, but I caught a glimpse of him further down the road so I unsheathed Joyeuse and sprinted after him. I hoped that Fleur had stayed with Gunnar and the others rather than follow me, because I doubted if she could keep up.

As I chased Jaromil I slowly gained on him. Despite my increased age, he was still larger than me but I had the advantage in speed and so he pulled over nearby barrels and piles of wooden crates in an attempt to slow me down. Thankully I was just as agile as I was fast and I avoided most of the crates, though I received a number of bruises along my thighs and hips for my trouble.

Eventually, my catching up to Jaromil became inevitable so he drew his own sword and turned to face me.

‘Why do you chase me, German?’ he asked. He somehow made the word German sound like an insult as he spat it at me, in German. Perhaps it was an effect of the damage to his tongue that we’d caused.

‘Why do you follow us?’ I asked him in return.

‘You killed my brother!’ he shouted back at me. We were circling each other now, swords held ready but as yet they did not clash. Jaromil spoke like one who had learnt to speak at a very late age, and it was not because German was his second tongue. ‘You killed my brother and you stuck a nail through my tongue!’

‘He was a heretic and a witch!’ I yelled back to him. ‘And you are Bohemian swine!’

‘I am no more swine,’ he began slowly, ‘than your priest friend was. He hated himself so much that all he needed was a gentle push.’

That was when I remembered the knife. The Bohemian knife that Jacob had used to kill himself.

It had been Jaromil’s.

‘You killed Jacob!’ I shouted at him and it was all I could to not to charge right then as Jaromil laughed in my face.

‘I did no such thing,’ he replied. ‘I simply gave the spineless dog a small gift. Oh, and I met him in the confessional. You should hear my priest impression, boy. I think it’s really quite something. Jacob did the rest on his own.’

‘You will die for what you’ve done,’ I said, gritting my teeth.

‘What I’ve done?’ Jaromil repeated. ‘You killed my brother! You killed my brother and now you will die!’

All conversation ended as Jaromil lunged at me with his sword. As I parried his blow with Joyeuse I realised that I may have been a tad reckless following Jaromil here on my own. He was a formidable fighter and I had to strain to stop his sword from knocking mine aside everytime they met.

I used my light weight and more nimble feet to dance around him. He struck right and I dodged left and I thrust my sword at his gut but he parried it. We were getting nowhere, but I was fatiguing faster than Jaromil and I knew that I had to find a way to gain the advantage.

‘Your brother cried like a woman when Gunnar beheaded him!’ I shouted in an attempt to incense him, but he only came at me harder and I realised that angering him was the wrong approach. He swung his blade with twice the force and my tired parry served only to slow its approach. It was all I could do to jump aside to avoid the blow.

‘You are weak, German,’ Jaromil said and he swung his blade for what could be the last time in my life.

That was when God made his presence known. He had clearly been watching the battle for as Jaromil began to strike he lost his footing on a patch of wet dirt and slipped onto his knee. I quickly took advantage of the opportunity and kicked him in the chest so that he fell onto his back.

I was faced with a decision then. Jaromil still had his sword in his hand and though he was down he was not defeated. I could still leave the duel undecided and face him another day, hopefully one when I wasn’t as physically exhausted.

The latter was the course of action I chose. I was not scared, at least not more than was reasonable given the circumstances. Rather, I fled because otherwise Jaromil would have killed me. He was stronger and less tired than me, and though I may have been able to strike at him before he could regather his lost sword I did not want to risk underestimating him and falling prey to a hidden weapon or his own quick reactions.

‘Run, German! Run from me you coward!’ Jaromil shouted after me and I briefly reconsidered my decision but decided to stick with it. He was taunting me because he knew that he’d defeat me if I returned.

That was when I made the second oath of my life. I swore that I would kill Jaromil the next time we met or die trying.

It was an oath made in a desperate attempt to avoid the humiliation of fleeing from Jaromil in the streets of Leer. I returned to the town square but sheathed Joyeuse and merged with the crowd rather than rejoining my warband on the stage. Godke looked concerned and I thought that it was probably because I had run off without telling anyone why.

Anneliese had been strung upon a breaking wheel. Her limbs had been tied at opposite ends of the wheel across the spokes of which she lay. Gunnar had handed the townsfolk of Leer his hammer and they were taking turns to bend and break Anneliese’s arms and legs through the spokes of the wheel.

By the time I arrived she was probably dead, or at least very close to it. With that in mind I left the crowd and walked back to the stable and started preparing the horses for our departure. This had been a short, routine witch hunt, but we didn’t travel all the way to East Frisia to leave without getting paid. We were probably going to be leaving under fire as we had at Prague and Reims, so I collected the group’s things from the tavern and put them in Ros’ carriage. When the carriage was loaded I leaned against it and waited for the others to return.