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

‘So I went back to fighting. By now it was the only thing I knew how to do.

‘ In March of ‘35 we were in Bolsford, taking the monastery of Oldeklooster. We barricaded ourselves inside for a week. Van Geelen thought that from such a strategic position we would be able to dominate the Gulf and at the same time relieve Frisia, where the peasants were already rebelling. But contacts turned out to be harder to maintain than we had expected.

‘In May we took the Council House in Amsterdam. Van Geelen’s plan was that the common people should rise up and join us. That duty fell to me, while he barricaded himself inside the municipal building, keeping the Civil Guard at bay.

‘It was a complete disaster, the final act. No one followed us. Van Geelen was wrong. The humble folk had no intention of risking their lives for us, we’d gone too far, we’d pushed too far ahead, failing to notice the extent to which fear and poverty had ravaged our people’s souls. The occupants resisted through to the last bullet, and in the end they attempted an exit bearing only their swords. They were massacred to a man.

‘There was nothing we could do. Van Geelen was dead, I had about thirty badly-armed men with me, and an old fishing boat. In these circumstances I took the decision to dissolve the brigade: with a bit of luck some of them would get away. If we stayed together we would soon be identified and captured. They understood, no one asked any questions. That was the final order of Captain Gert from the Well.’

Eloi tries to smile at me: ‘Another name?

‘No name. No friends. The soldiers were scouring the whole region, nowhere was safe, all the peasants could have betrayed you, any wayfarer along the road could be a bounty-hunter on your trail.�

‘I walked for days, I slept in barns, begged for food. I had no news of the brothers, I didn’t know what was happening away from the precise place where I happened to be. I also started to lose my bearings, my mind grew cloudy. I only knew I was heading northwards. I had lost everything. M�nster, my men, Van Geelen, the brethren who had believed in me in Amsterdam. Finished. After four days of fasting my legs were beginning to collapse under me, I saw things that heralded impending madness. I was dead, a ghost, I might as well just lie down on the ground and wait. I no longer had a reason to drive myself on and survive.

‘They found me there in the mud, ragged and as good as dead. I found myself hoping that I would be stabbed by a brigand’s blade: I almost wept because I had nothing on me worth stealing. They wouldn’t grant me that coup de grace, they picked me up and took me with them.’

I let the cigar go out over the fire, my memory is confused, they seem like events that I have lived through in a dream. ‘And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name was Death, and Hell followed with him’

Eloi is grave, crouching, a nocturnal predator sunk in his armchair. I hear him murmuring that name: ‘Jan Van Batenburg’.

*

‘The Sword Bearers. A ragged army of survivors, almost all them men who had escaped from M�nster, who formed a column behind the last horseman of the Apocalypse left standing. Our time was over, as Jan Matthys had said. We couldn’t help believing that the mystery of iniquity had spread across the earth, head by head, brother by brother, to lead us into that blind fury. All that remained was to devote ourselves to the death of the world and swear fidelity to its final conflagration. We would end up like that, swords in our hands and patches on our arses, high on fear and ostentation, while we still had breath to fight. We no longer expected anything, we were already beyond Apocalypse, far from everything, we were nothing but murderers. There was no longer any room for innocence, in our eyes it became cowardice, damnation. So we spat the scraps of our lives in the face of anyone left.’

Eloi has disappeared into the shadows, into the depths of his armchair, I’m not quite sure he isn’t actually shrinking.

‘I don’t have a clear memory of that period, that wouldn’t be possible. I have killed, tortured, destroyed. I have seen whole villages burning, the terror of the peasants escaping the moment they saw us appearing on the horizon. I have seen friars impaled like pigs on the spit, I’ve seen the scarecrow figure of the Pale Horseman galloping along the edge of the hills, with us behind him, on the rim of that abyss, tracing the borders of holiness. After Matthys and Bockelson, the third Jan of my life: the third curse. When they finally caught him he laughed in the face of torture and death. He delivered a great yell of victory from the scaffold: I heard him…’

I relax into the armchair, stretching my legs. ‘And that’s really it, glory and wretchedness.’

I listen to the silence. I’m tired.�

His faceless voice cradles my exhaustion: ‘It’s the most magnificent story I’ve ever heard. And without a doubt you’re the person I’ve been looking for.’

I strain my eyes, but he’s just a patch of deeper darkness beyond the desk. ‘I’m tired, Eloi. Too tired.’

‘You’re alive. That’s what counts.’

*

I’m tired.

The corridor that separates me from my bed is very long, the light flickering from the candle barely illuminates it, while I grope my way along it.

I’m tired.

And yet I have the feeling I’m not going to get any sleep. Eloi’s thirst for knowledge has awakened my own. M�nster fell on 24th June 1535. Gert from the Well had been gone nine months. And what of the others?

A sleepy voice replies to the knocks on the door.

‘Who is it?’

‘It’s Gert.’

The light of a candle is added to mine, I study the face of Balthasar Merck. Without asking any questions, the old Baptist points to a chair beside his bed.

‘Take a seat by all means, but I’m not sure I can be of any use to you.’

‘Just this: who got out?’

He puts the candle down on the little table and sits on the edge of the bed massaging his face.

‘All I can tell you is that there were five of us: Krechting the young one, the miller Skraup,� Schmidt the armourer, the carver Kerbe and me. All Krechting’s men. Kerbe they got in Nijmegen, shortly after we split up. I heard that Schmidt and Skraup were executed in Deventer two years ago. Krechting I know is still around the place, and some people say Rothmann is too: his body wasn’t among the corpses in M�nster.’

‘None of my men?’

He shakes his head. ‘I have no idea. Some of them weren’t even in the city. Bockelson had got rid of them because he was terribly scared of you.’

‘Gresbeck, the Brundt brothers…’

He nods his head. ‘They came back just in time to witness the final delirium. They hoped to see you, but you’d gone, never to return.’

‘Why did they stay?’

‘Gresbeck and the Brundts tried to get away, but the bishop’s men caught them just outside the walls. Horrible end.’

I sigh, exhausted, no longer having the strength to imagine, my questions are coming out automatically. ‘Which front caved in first?’

‘The Kreuztor and the J�defeldertor, the most undefended parts of the walls: someone must have told the bishop’s men. A squad got in during the night and at dawn it opened the gates to the rest of the army. The massacre lasted for days. I entrusted my sick wife to the care of a beguine, making her promise that she wouldn’t denounce her, and made off with the others. I haven’t heard anything of her for three years.’

We stay there in silence, listening to the roar of memories, savouring the bitter solidarity of survivors.�

I get up, almost regretfully. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Captain…’

I turn around: his eyes are swollen with tears and fatigue.

‘Tell me that what we were fighting for wasn’t a mistake.’

I clench my jaw, my fists clenched.

‘I’ve never thought so, not for a moment.’

The sea

(1538)