Q by Luther Blissett (poetry books to read txt) 📕

‘Let’s go.’

We set off, four parallel tracks in the sand.

‘You’re Gerrit Boekbinder, aren’t you? The one they call Gert from the Well?’

There’s no curiosity, no special emphasis in his question.

‘I’m the buyer.’

The dyke is a palisade of rotten wood. The sea has penetrated it, forming a narrow channel that disappears into the hinterland. At the top, the low cottage of the coastguard stands out against the sky.

The barrels are covered with worn sail-cloth on which terns are walking. When they lift it up, a swarm of flies abandons the stinking fish crammed into boxes. Underneath: the barrels, lined up. One of the three lets me choose: I point to the barrel in the middle, he takes off the lid and steps aside.

The pirate wants to reassure me: ‘It’s from England. The stench of the fish will keep the cops away.’

I plunge a hand into the black powder.

‘It’s very dry, don’t worry about that.’

‘How am I going to transport it?’

He points behind the dunes, where I can see the head of a horse and the high wheels of a cart: ‘You’re on your own from here.’

I untie the purse and hold it out to him. ‘While you’re counting it, your men can load up.’

At a nod of his head the two reluctantly lift the first barrels, starting to stagger clumsily towards the path.

A gull lets out a cry above our heads.

The crabs slip beneath the carcase of an old boat.

The sunlight begins to weaken the morning breeze.

Absolute peace.

Van Braght finishes counting. ‘There’s enough there, mate.’

I reach for my pistols. ‘No there isn’t. It’s less than half what we agreed.’ A moment’s indecision, he can’t see the guns under my coat. ‘The bounty on Gert from the Well must be twice as much as that.’

I don’t give him time to move, my shot explodes right in his face.

The other two come bounding back, swords drawn. Two against one, I pour the powder into the unloaded pistol, load the bullets, more powder, faster, prime the guns, pull the trigger, they’re a few yards away, arms outstretched, a deep breath, no shaking, I aim at the moving limbs: two shots, almost in unison, the first one collapses at my feet and the other falls, his pistol explodes, perhaps I’m dead already, but my ghost draws a short dagger and plunges it into his throat.

A groan.

Silence.

I stay where I am. I watch the gulls coming back to settle on the beach.

I’ll have to load the barrels on my own.

*

Rotterdam, 21st July 1534

‘And that makes fifty.’

Adrianson finishes checking the weapons, then gives me the list of what we’ve got.

‘Fifty hackbuts, ten barrels of powder, eight bars of lead. And ten thousand florins.’

‘We’re going to need two carts. Did Reynard give you the passes?’

‘Here they are. He says they’re practically authentic: the seal is the same as the one they use in the Hague.’

‘They’ll get us as far as the border. Then we’ll have to think about something else. We’ll leave as early as we can. We’re going to have to stop at Nijmegen and Emmerich, and I don’t know how much time it’ll take us to get there. It’ll be a long journey, we’ll have to avoid the busier roads.’

The farrier offers me one of the rolls of dried tobacco from the Indies, he says he was taught to smoke them by the Dutch merchants. The Spanish call them cigarros, they smell of another world, of shacks, leather and green pepper. The smell is aromatic and leaves a pleasant taste in the mouth.

We throw ourselves into the hammocks offered to us by brother Magnus, preacher of the Baptist community in Rotterdam. He keeps a frugal table, but his generosity to the cause makes up for the banquet one might have wanted.

We let the smoke swirl along with our thoughts, and it hangs there in the middle of the room, in the attic of the house.

The brethren over there are meek people. They admire M�nster, and they’ve been a great help to us. But they wouldn’t challenge the authorities with an insurrection: they content themselves with practising their own faith in secret, in nocturnal meetings and communal readings. I haven’t come across the combative spirit I was expecting. On the other hand I have encountered generosity and esteem in abundance.

It’s hard to blame them, things don’t work the same way in the big mercantile cities as they do in our German city-state. And the Spaniards are here too, which means the locals have the Emperor right in their own back yard.

But I’ve discovered that there is a party of discontents, there are a few turbulent brethren who want to follow and our example. Few in number inexperienced, lacking a real leader. One of them is Obbe Philips, who has denied his past as an apostle of Matthys, and pretends he’s always followed the same moderate line as he does today. Then there’s young David Joris of Delft, a brilliant orator whom our host identified as a promising guide. It seems that the future of the movement depends to a large extent on Joris. His mother was one of the first Baptist martyrs, beheaded in the Hague when David was a child. He is wanted as a highly dangerous criminal throughout the whole of Holland, so it’s difficult to meet him. He has no fixed abode, he’s always travelling about the place, he turns up and off he goes again, he often uses false names with the brethren for fear of infiltrators. It seems that he doesn’t shirk the sacking of churches, but even he, like Philips, vociferously denies murder.

The situation is far from stable, but likely to end up with nothing but a lot of fine words being bandied about.

Meanwhile, we’ll be on the road again tomorrow, heading back with our precious cargo to hide from the road blocks and prying eyes. Another two communities to visit. Back in M�nster in a month.

‘Goodnight, Peter.’

‘Goodnight, Captain.’