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The villagers found his wagon one winter morning; his horse hipshot, lather frozen on its flanks, still standing unharnessed. Slagsted was huddled in the wagon box, a great, red shield of blood frozen on his chest. The monks, as monks in spite of their religion will, were kind to him, carried him into the monastery, revived him with crude brandy and shook their heads at Jacob's tale of assault by highwaymen and attempted robbery and a gallant fight against overwhelming odds. Some may have doubted his story, but none doubted that he would die before morning, and the shelter and care they offered was to a dying man. But the old devil wouldn't give up the ghost, and once he had his hands firmly around it, he wouldn't leave the village. Through the long winter he stayed, helpful at small tasks, beer casks, and tales as he repaired crockery and tin for the village hausfrauen. Oh, the heathen wars he had lived over, the fighting, the looting… But as spring came, Slagsted went more often for singular walks, roaming the stubbled, muddy fields or the small, irregular hills near the edge of the valley, and once even disappeared into the forest for several days. He returned, but when asked where he had been, he merely gave a deep, serene smile in answer. Somehow, however these things happen, the rumor started that Jacob Slagsted, man of uncertain origin, man of Low German, High German, Bohemian and other unknown tongues, had been seen conversing with the Virgin during his wanderings.
Then came the freshest day of spring, dawn in the sky like a blush, the air like spring water, and Jacob Slagsted standing on a nearby hill, silhouetted against a rosy horizon, standing still and black, his arms stretched for heaven.
The villagers noticed first, then called the monks, and they all gathered at the foot of the hill, awed and silent. Jacob stood as he was for what seemed hours as the villagers and the monks kept their watch. Then with a motion so swift as not to be seen, Jacob cast himself upon the earth, and above him rose a shadowy, wavering figure of white, a small cloud of fog on a fog-less morning, a translucence, a virginal white. Jacob remained against the hilltop until the figure dissolved in the breeze, then he knelt in prayer, his voice deep and echoing across the valley, his prayer in an unknown tongue. When he finished he strolled quietly down the hill and that same day, in an unusual, unheard of ceremony, took his vows as a monk, then embarked on a daily ritual of ordeal, fasting, hairshirts, prayer, and flagellation. Such piety had not been seen in many years; some of the older monks even cried. Ah, there were those, those who doubted, who claimed Jacob's miracle to be of his own doing, created out of a wisp of gauze, a bit of smoke, and a handful of wind; but there will always be those who doubt.
No one could deny, though, Jacob's devotion to duty, his piety, or his love for the prayer and the fast. If the truth be known, Jacob quickly embarrassed the other brothers – even those who had shed a tear or two – about their vows of poverty, chastity, and sobriety so loosely taken. Even worse, this Jacob-come-lately to the Church became a constant nuisance with his endless preaching against those brothers who kept wives of a sort which indeed included all those who had ever been young enough.
"Chastity, chastity fills the soul with purity, purity," he would chant at night in a low voice which invaded every polluted cell.
"Aye, he can speak of chastity, him who's had half the heathen bitches in this world and the next, already," one brother complained.
Brother Jacob so troubled the Father Superior about the laxity of the morals within and without the monastery walls that the old soul left his desk one morning, walked back to Hof to live with his married sister, and left the administrative chair in the spiritual hands of Brother Jacob.
And with this event began another period of quietude. The spiritual leader of the brewery again wandered the hills and forest, occasionally seen walking slowly, hands clasped devoutly before him, head bowed, followed by a one-eyed little man with a ring in his ear. The rumors ran again, except that now Brother Jacob had been talking with Satan instead of the Virgin and that the pious brother was negotiating for his (the devil's) salvation. But all remained quiet for the present, and the rumors died a worthy death. (It was during this time, I believe, that Jacob slipped into Hof with the yearly tithe for the old abbot, and released a dozen pigeons from the sleeve of his habit, and, during the confusion, nipped all the records of the monastery. Within the year the village was forgotten – few knew where it really was, anyway – forgotten, except for a few stout beer-drinkers who momentarily raised their watery eyes above their stomachs, belched and complained about their beer. Jacob somehow made arrangements to cart the beer north to Dresden for John George, Elector of Saxony.)
Things were easy now; Brother Jacob drank more and preached less and took a woman – more than his share, it was said. Then the Reformation came to Krummel one drunken, rainy night as Jacob Slagsted, Protestant spy and revolutionary, drove the good brothers out in the rain with a large sword he had hidden in his now rotting wagon. The brothers huddled in the rain, in the cold wind until they converted. Jacob dispensed with baptism, claiming God's own tears of joy water enough for any good follower of Luther. The brewery was seized in the name of good business; Jacob had laid his plans well, recruited some of the younger brothers and villagers secretly, and carried the coup with little bloodshed and less sweat.
The Reformation caused a slight ripple in the placid pond of Krummel; Jacob and the one-eyed man, who had silently appeared the next day, ran the brewery, the brothers became laborers, and the villagers farmed as always. Jacob married in a mass ceremony in which he married all the other brothers and their sinful women. Life was peaceful; living was good. Jacob's old wounds didn't ache so badly, and the beer sales to John George kept Jacob from drinking the village out of house and barrel. Oh, an occasional befuddled tax collector from the abbot's office blundered into the village; those unconverted by drink and fine living were buried with full rites by Jacob in the forest. But another came searching accompanied by five men-at-arms, and wasn't so easily disposed of. So Jacob, the one-eyed man, and several of Jacob's friends who had found shelter in the village began training the young men of the village in the varied pleasures of combat. The farmers and brewers took well to the excitement of pike and musket, and defeated, in ambush, several larger groups of tax men, some of whom came from the abbot's office and others from a duchy in Bohemia who unfortunately mistook Krummel for some other delinquent village. But all in all these were the quiet years, and during them Jacob produced four living sons, Joha
But Europe wasn't quiet; the Holy Roman Empire was begetting wars as plentifully as soldiers bastard children in a foreign land. In 1618 the new Catholic deputy-governor and his secretary, appointed by Archduke Ferdinand of Styria, King of Bohemia, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, had been attacked by a Protestant mob in Prague. The mob heaved the new deputy-governor and his secretary out of an upper-story window, exclaiming, "Now call on your Mary to save you!" When they looked out the window they saw, some sixty feet below, the two good Catholics ru
Two years later when Jacob heard about the incident while on a trip to Dresden, he remarked in his journal, "She did, my God, She did." He began drinking heavily before breakfast and feeling badly about it. And once more he walked alone in the hills.
While Jacob brooded, Central Europe stumbled through the begi