Q by Luther Blissett (poetry books to read txt) 📕
The final blow: 'Omnia sunt communia, sons of whores!'
His head flies into the dust.
* * *
The houses are being ransacked. Doors smashed in with kicks and axe-blows. We'll be next. No time to lose. I lean over him.
'Magister, listen to me, we've got to go, they're coming... For the love of God, Magister...' I grasp his shoulders. He whispers a reply. He can't move. Trapped, we're trapped.
Like Elias.
My hand clutches my sword. Like Elias. I wish I had his courage.
'What do you think you're doing? We've had enough of martyrdom. Go on, get out while you can!'
The voice. As though from the bowels of the earth. I can't believe he's spoken. He's moving even less than be
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Bnernhard Rothmann runs his hands over his face and shuts his eyes: ‘We don’t want to throw everything away. It isn’t happening the way we thought it would, but it’s happening.
‘What? What’s happening?’
A sigh: ‘Something that’s never happened before: the abolition of class, the community of goods, the redemption of the last men on this earth…’
‘The blood of Ruecher.’
Sombre, his hands on his face again.
‘It has abolished hope, Bernhard. New laws won’t give it back to us. Before, God was fighting at our side. Now he’s come back to terrorise us.’
Rothmann stares into the void, murmuring: ‘I’m praying, brother Gert, I’m praying a lot…’
I leave him alone with the anguish that is bending his spine, whispering invocations that no one will hear.
What I have to do.
*
I turn up in front of� W�rdemann’s mansion, embellished with bronze plaques and bulbs_, _artfully carved wood right up to the top. It is here, in the residence of the richest man of the city, that the Prophet has made his home.
Immediately inside, four armed men: faces I don’t recognise, people from elsewhere, probably Dutchmen.
‘I have to search you, brother.’
He looks me up and down, perhaps he recognises me, but he’s had his orders.
I glare at him: ‘I’m Captain Gert from the Well, who the hell are you?’
He senses: ‘I can’t let anyone go up without frisking him first.’
The other guard nods, hackbut at his shoulder, moronic expression on his face.
I reply in Dutch: ‘You know who I am.’
He shrugs, embarrassed: ‘Jan Matthys told me not to let in anyone armed. What can I do?’
Fine, I leave my pistol and my dagger. A second glare is enough to put him off, he doesn’t dare touch me.
He walks me up the stairs, lighting the way with his lantern.
What I have to do.
At the top of the second staircase there is a corridor, another light catches the eye, it comes from a room off to the side, the door is open: she is sitting down, brushing her radiant hair, which reaches almost to the floor. She repeats the movement, from top to bottom. She turns around: terrible beauty, innocence in her eyes.
‘Move.’ The guard’s voice.
‘Divara. I didn’t know he’d brought her here.’
‘And as a matter of fact she doesn’t exist. You didn’t see her, it’s better for everyone.’
He guides me to the drawing room. A gigantic fireplace holds the fire that lights the room.
He is sitting brazenly on an imposing throne, his eye fixed on the flames that are consuming the log. The Dutchman nods to me to go in, turns on his heels and disappears.
Alone. What I have to do.
My footsteps echo like the tolling� of a bell, lugubrious, heavy.
I stop and try to look into his eyes, but his mind is elsewhere, the shadows draw strange features on that pallid face.
‘I’ve been waiting for you, my brother.’
The pokers are lined up on the wall of the hearth, like a row of pikes.
A massive candelabra on the long walnut table.
The knife that he’s been using to cut the meat of his dinner.
My hands. Strong.
What I have to do.
He barely turns around: a face without determination, without menace.
‘Fearless hearts love the depth of night. It’s a time when it’s hard to lie, we’re all weaker, we’re all vulnerable. And blood-red fades with all the other colours.’
He swings his leg over the arm of the chair and lets it dangle there inertly.
‘Some burdens aren’t easy to bear. Difficult choices, that the coarse minds of men can’t grasp. We make an effort, each day we struggle to understand. And we ask God to give us a sign, a nod of assent to our miserable deeds. That’s what we ask. We want to be taken by the hand and guided through this dark night, till daylight comes. We want to know we are not alone, not to be in error as we raise our knife over Isaac. So we wait to see the angel to come and stay our blade and reassure us of God’s goodness. We really want to see the futility of our gestures confirmed, we want it to be nothing but a ridiculous pantomime, its sole purpose to test our absolute devotion to the will of the Lord. But that’s not what happens. God doesn’t put us to the test in order to amuse himself with these wretched mud-forged creatures, just to test our devotion. No. God makes us his witnesses, he wants us to sacrifice ourselves, to sacrifice our mortal pride, which makes us love being loved, exalted, elevated as prophets and saints. Captains. The Lord doesn’t know what to do with our good faith, with our goodness. And he turns us into murderers, unscrupulous sons of bitches, just as he converts murderers and panders to his cause.’
Matthys’ voice is a murmur that reaches the ceiling, touching the heads of our elongated shadows. It is the voice of mortal illness, of a profound gangrene: there is something chilling in his words, in his body that now looks exhausted, something that makes me shiver despite the fact that I’m only a few feet away from the fire. It’s as though he knew why I came. Like a mirror reflecting the image of what I felt within.
‘Sometimes the weight of that choice becomes unbearable. And you feel like dying, like blocking your ears and deserting the Lord. Because the Kingdom, Gert, what we’ve been dreaming of since we were in Holland, you remember? The Kingdom of God is a jewel that you can win only if you get your hands dirty with mud, shit and blood. And you’re the one who has to do it, no one else, that would be easy, no: you’re the one. Reciting your part in the plan.’ He smiles crookedly at his ghosts. ‘Once a man saved my life. He jumped out of a well and, all alone, he faced the men who wanted my blood. When I entrusted that man with a mission, to come here, to M�nster, and prepare the coming of the Kingdom, I knew he would not fail. Because that was his role in the plan. As mine is to keep the throne of the Father until the established day.’
What I have to do.
The poker.
The candelabra.
The knife.
‘When is the day, Jan?’
I was the one who was speaking, but it was a different voice, the thought formed within me and came out without passing through my lips. It was the voice of my mind.
No, he turns around without hesitating: ‘Easter. That’s the day.’ He nods to himself. ‘And until then, Gert, my brother, I entrust you with the defence of our city against the forces or darkness that are gathering out there. Do that for me. Protect the people of God against the last tremor of the old world.’
Yes, you know what I’ve come to do. You knew the moment I came in.
We stare at each other for a long time, promise in our eyes: you’re a fixed-term prophet, Jan of Haarlem.
_M�nster, 16th March 1534_
We’re on a reconnaissance mission, tracing trajectories that gradually fan out further and further from the city walls. A group of seven, we are testing the solidity of the bishop’s encirclement. We move in silence, some distance apart, within reach of signals in light or sound, often aided by darkness, on the bare stone paved by Master Winter and turned by polished by Blacksmith Wind. As soon as we see the lines of mercenaries, we begin to skirt them, hidden, until we can find gaps between them.
Waiting patiently, frozen, slight movements, furtive incursions, signals disseminated and annotated on improvised maps to record our journeys, gaps in their defences, escape routes.
We’ve already escaped von Waldeck’s blockade twice, and we’ll do it again, we’ve worked out that it’s disjointed, ineffective, sluggish.
We’re short of a stretcher where we could lay the bones of the brave brothers Mayer, heroes of the February barricades; we’re short of a cup to pour herbal infusion, copiously topped up with schnaps by the farrier Adrianson; beer for the bigger of the Brundt brothers, Peter, simple and enthusiastic as the noonday sun.
Although he doesn’t say anything, Heinrich Gresbeck misses the lamp that usually illuminates the incessant nocturnal reading of that exact and impassive soldier, whose thirst for knowledge must have been born in a very different time from this one.
On the other hand we have Arrow, the falcon that Bart Boekbinder, a young cousin picked up along the way, is raising with paternal care and surprising results.
As to myself, I don’t know what I can say with any clarity about my own condition during these days: my mind and body are going in different directions, not in open opposition, but remote nonetheless. My thoughts, in turn, are divided within themselves, accumulating page by page, action and memory, reflection and decision, leaving me like a great onion, layer after layer. At its deep heart, searing and profound, lie the words of the Great Matthys, the Baker God.
We spur our horses the minute we’re out of the J�defeldertor, heading northwest, to circle the bishop’s positions.
Gresbeck is riding at my side, along with five of his best men. I’ve chosen people who fought under my orders on the ninth and tenth of February: the new arrivals from Holland don’t inspire great trust in me; they bear arms, certainly, but they’ve also brought women and children, more mouths that need to be fed in a terrible winter: they barely know who von Waldeck is, and they don’t even know how this all started: all they can see is the beacon of Jerusalem in the night. It’s the ardour of the Prophet.
The bishop has recruited a ludicrous army, a thousand men, well-armed but underpaid, with little reason to risk their lives: once toppled from his throne, the pig in purple is nothing. They say the Philip, Landgrave of Hesse, has sent two enormous cannon, bearing the impressive names of ‘The Devil’ and ‘His Mother’, but refused to send troops. I’m convinced that von Waldeck is trying to persuade all the minor lords in the vicinity to help him fight the Anabaptist plague. For the time being all he has done is to dig embankments to close off the exit roads towards Anmarsch and Telgte. And given that he isn’t stupid, he’ll be putting all the noblemen of the lands between here and Holland on the alert, to block the flow of heretics heading for M�nster.
We gallop into the Wasserberg forest, travelling along the path that connects with the road to Telgte. We dismount in silence and bring the horses to the edge of the pond, an obligatory stopping-point for anyone coming from the north: the horses can drink, and an old abandoned cottage shelters us from the snow and rain.
In the intense cold, our breath forms clouds in front of our beards. We squat on the damp moss.
We count a dozen men, hackbuts, a row of banners, a small cannon.
‘The bishop’s mercenaries.’ His scar stands out even whiter than usual.
‘Do you recognise their standards?’
Gresbeck shrugs. ‘I don’t think so. It could be Captain Kempel… I told you, it’s a lifetime since I’ve been in these parts.’
‘These people are fighting for tuppence ha’penny.� Jackals, they are. With everything that’s been requisitioned from the Lutherans and the papists, we could offer them more than von Waldeck could afford.’
‘Hmm. It’s an idea. But we should be careful, our strength lies in our brotherhood.
‘We could print fliers and distribute them in the countryside.’
‘M�nster can’t go on taking in
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