The other soldiers stepped away. Johannes Meyer suddenly turned, stood and lunged for the lieutenant, crashed him to the ground. He scrambled over Schneppen in a fury, got his hands to the man’s throat. Everything that had ever happened to him, every misfortune, here was the cause.

‘He’s going to kill him!’

‘Do it!’

The two men struggled. Schneppen grimaced, made a tight, phlegmy, gargled sound. He took Johannes by the wrists but couldn’t loosen the boy’s hands on his throat.

The soldiers moved in around them.

Then, just as it appeared that Lieutenant Schneppen was about to take his last breath of damp English air, two ensigns pushed through the crowd of soldiers. The first one grabbed Johannes in a headlock, the other kicked him in the side. Still Johannes wouldn’t let go. It took a second kick and a tightening of the headlock before he finally released the lieutenant.

More soldiers pushed through the men.

‘Step aside!’

Lieutenant Schneppen was helped to his feet. He spat on the ground, coughed and spat again. He rubbed his neck and pointed at Johannes.

‘Arrest him!’ His voice was a thin, harsh whisper.

Johannes Meyer lunged, tried to attack the lieutenant again, but was held back. He was thumped in the stomach then dragged away to the guardhouse.

Somebody said, ‘Oh, that’s it. He’s done for now.’

BAYMAN QUINCE ROTTERDAM

He said, ‘Oh, Great Lord, by God, Good Lord Jesus Christ Our Saviour and King!’ He took off his plumed, fur-trimmed cocked hat and held it to his chest. ‘The lame one be dead! And the Devil take his soul and the Heaven be free of his wickedness!’

He was an old Negro with a huge barrel stomach and a black, silver-tipped cane, dressed in loose, torn stockings and worn heels and a long, dirty white wig that hung over his frayed admiral’s epaulettes. The blue coat was trimmed in gold and silver, and the lace cuffs of his white shirt, gone yellow now from sweat and age, flowered at the wrists. Children had followed him into the tavern, street urchins laughing and running up to pull at his tails when he wasn’t looking. Every now and then (if the children had bothered to count, they would have learned that it was every third time), the old Negro whipped his silver-tipped cane around behind him, fast and without warning, and the children jumped and dodged and laughed hysterically, though some were caught about the legs, the sound a loud and terrible whack. They ran to their friends again and rubbed at the painful welts, laughing through their tears and keen to try their luck again.

‘To your health, sir,’ Bayman Quince Rotterdam said to Krüger. ‘And to the soul of that poor horrible Negro, that he might suffer no more than one eternity, and possibly a half again.’