And on the long march to the peninsula with Général Jean-Andoche Junot, strange coincidences and converging events, though there were no Talleyrands to warn the unsuspecting, horny soul how to act.

‘I’ve got the itch!’ Wolfie said, putting a hand down the front of his pants and scratching vigorously. The men laughed, and so did Johannes.

‘The girl in Angoulême?’ someone said.

‘By Christ!’

Johannes began on the drum and the men fell into song.

‘The girl from Angoulême, by Christ! The girl from Angoulême!’

THE COLEOPTERIST

The 4e Régiment Étrangers were marched south-west, back across Poland and Prussia and all the way down through France (including Angoulême), about thirteen hundred miles or thereabouts to the Pyrénées, then up and over the mountains into Spain, and then further on, finally, into Portugal.

Along the way, men bandaged their feet and treated their sores, cut and bled their swollen blisters and shoved army communiqués into their boots for padding. They stole food and liquor and seduced village daughters (there were rapists, too), helped themselves to horses and sheep and wheels of cheese. Other men deserted and disappeared, as though blown off the marching columns by a sudden gust of wind, as easily as dust.

Johannes Meyer ran twice (against Wolfie’s advice) and was caught twice and both times he was beaten with a cane. He was fortunate to live (it was considered bad luck to execute a drummer) but he hardly seemed to appreciate his position. Every other deserter who’d been caught was shot by firing squad, their trials over within seconds; just a reading-out of the inexcusable crime and then the musket salvo and their bodies dragged away into a greasy ditch.

Wolfie grew exasperated. ‘You’ll take it too far,’ he said. ‘The drums won’t save you forever.’ He didn’t think the boy had it in him to survive on his own, a fugitive.

‘Next time I won’t get caught.’

‘Where do you think you’re going anyway?’ Wolfie said. ‘What, there’s a young princess waiting for you somewhere, in an enchanted castle? She makes the best dumplings in the world and all she wants to do is feed and fuck you?’

‘Come with me,’ Johannes said. ‘She’s got a sister.’

‘They’ll shoot you eventually! Don’t you understand?’

But Johannes Meyer simply didn’t care anymore.