‘Make sure you tell them you’re a deserter,’ a man called Wolfie said. He was the only man in the cells who’d bothered to speak to Johannes. He didn’t have many teeth left but liked to smile. The boy reminded him of a brother, long gone now and buried in the mud of some forgotten battlefield.

‘But they’ll know,’ Johannes said.

‘Just tell them. They’ll put you in the army if they think you can hold a musket. Then at least there’s a chance to run. Otherwise it’s the galleys and an oar at your guts until your beard reaches your balls. That’s if you don’t die first and they throw you overboard. Right?’

‘But I didn’t do anything!’

‘That doesn’t matter anymore, my friend. Best forget it.’

The day everybody went out to see Napoleon Bonaparte enter the city, Wolfie had been caught breaking into houses. His wife had sewed long pockets inside his coat and Wolfie had filled them with bread, brandy, sausage, silk handkerchiefs, jewellery, silver cutlery. He told Johannes it had been a grand day, the best day ever, until they caught him. ‘I was greedy,’ he said. ‘I should’ve gone home after the first few houses. But what a day! I couldn’t resist. It felt so good to be rich.’

He slapped Johannes on the back. ‘Trust me, boy.’

‘But what will I say? I don’t know anything about the army.’

‘Tell them you deserted from the Puttkammer Infantry Regiment. Number forty. Auerstedt. Got it?’

‘They might check.’

‘Be confident! What’s there to check? They always need soldiers.’

When the sergeant came and took Johannes away, Wolfie called after him, ‘Look ahead, son. Dead straight ahead. The past is over.’

In Pessac’s office, the sergeant pushed Johannes towards the desk. His wrists were shackled and so were his ankles.

‘Stand there.’

Pessac sniffed a lavender-scented handkerchief at his wrist, tucked inside the cuff of his jacket.

‘Proceed,’ he said.

The sergeant began to narrate the circumstances of the boy’s arrest. Johannes quickly interrupted.

‘Sir, I did nothing wrong!’ he said. ‘I’m innocent of all charges!’

‘Silence!’

‘It’s a misunderstanding!’

The sergeant punched Johannes in the kidneys.

Pessac held up his hand and nodded. The details really had no bearing on things. While Johannes Meyer groaned and kneeled into the pain ripping through him, Pessac dipped his quill into the inkpot. He wrote agitator into the last blank column.

Johannes managed to look up. He knew for certain now that everything was over. He wasn’t going home. The realisation came coldly and, to his surprise, with strange relief.

‘Sir, I’m sorry,’ he said. There was nothing to lose now. ‘Sir . . . I’m a deserter.’

The prison commandant frowned. ‘From where?’

‘Puttkammer Infantry Regiment, sir. Number forty. Auerstedt.’