Jan Mattys was a high-ranked coach. Okay, so he wasn't a coach at all, he was a baker. But he was a good baker. It was hard to scrape together a dime living on the tough streets of Amsterdam (and Munster) in those days, but when you could you'd be a fool not to spend it on one of his pastries. He'd protest at first, but when he saw those shiny beautiful round silver coins a smile lit up his face like he didn't have a care in the world.

And yet the last time I saw his face he wasn't smiling at all. He had the look a man would have if he found you skinning his cat alive. If he liked his cat, that is. Of course, it can't have helped that the head that wore that expression was stuck on the end of a pike, not a pastry or a round coin in sight.

Nor any bourbon either. I wonder if that was what made him do it. Go out to face the bishops for the last time. We ran out of bourbon in the last few days while they had us holed up. Jan Mattys would get restless and fidgety, breaking into sermons then going quiet just as quickly. You could tell he was planning something but somehow we never guessed what.

Like I always say, you go up against the bishops, you can't expect to win. The bishops could always put more money, more men, more pikes on the streets. It can't end well when you go up against the bishops, and it certainly didn't for Jan Mattys.