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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Bernardo refills the glasses. Jo�o raises his first, he’s got his smile back: ‘To the future Pope, then!’
We all erupt in hearty laughter.
Q’s diary
Venice, 14th November 1548
Information picked up in places frequented or managed by Germans:
— ‘Silver Lily’ bookshop, specialising in Lutheran and sacramentist books, owned by one Hermann Reidel.
— Friedrich von Melleren, count, head of the small circle of German men of letters in Venice, has a palazzo just behind the Fondaco.
— ‘Black Forest’ inn, run by a German woman married to a Venetian merchant. It’s the meeting-place of the artisans: wood-carvers, goldsmiths, cobblers…
— ‘ Caratello’ inn, owned by Ludwig Schaliedecker, known as the German, and a Greek woman. The brothel of choice for important Germans, and for those with well-filled purses.
— ‘Silk’ inn, meeting-place for merchants, run by Hans Gastwirt. Games of chance and favourable rates of exchange.
— Workshop Jacopo Maniero, glassmaker, every Thursday after vespers: meeting-place of the Calvinist community (Italians, Swiss and Germans).
Venice, 15th November 1548
Spent a day in the ‘Black Forest’ and in Hermann Reidel’s bookshop.
Nothing.
A name that rings a bell: Ludwig Schaliedecker. Where have I heard it before? Among the German apostates? Something to do with Wittenberg.
Ludwig Schaliedecker, manager� of the ‘Caratello’.
Check tomorrow.
Venice, 16th November 1548
She leans against me to avoid losing her balance as she climbs aboard the boat that will carry us to the Miquez brothers’ carrack, moored on the other side of the island. With the other hand she holds her heavy cloak, helped by a servant-girl, taking care to ensure that her clothes don’t get wet. She manages to preserve a boundless dignity where other noblewomen would simply have appeared clumsy, encumbered by all their flummery. I can’t help reflecting that Beatrice is a special, luminous creature.
I help her to settle on the seat, with her cloak rolled up under her arms.
Hunchbacked Sebastiano is ready with the oar at the stern.
Jo�o and Bernardo embrace us.
‘Don’t be afraid, Aunt Beatriz, I’m leaving you in good hands. Write to me when you reach Ferrara, and do pass on my greetings to Duke Ercole and Princess Ren�e.’
‘And you be careful, Jo�o, these streets can be more treacherous than the castle dungeons. And keep an eye on your brother Bernardo, if anything were to happen to him I’d hold you responsible.’
‘Don’t worry. We’ll all meet up again very soon.’
Jo�o flashes his smile: ‘Good luck, my friend. Keep your powder dry, and don’t be too impulsive. These people are dangerous…’
‘I can be too, if the occasion calls for it…’
Sebastiano has already unmoored the boat from the jetty, the two brothers say goodbye to us, their hands raised to the sky.
The news arrived at dawn. A Franciscan who came to the Caratello for a quiet fuck: the Venetian Inquisition is planning to arrest Beatrice. Today they would have interrogated her concerning some informer statements identifying her as a crypto-Jewess, a false Christian.
An act of intimidation, a feeble attempt to pressurise a family whose presence is awkward for everyone, perhaps to blackmail them to obtain discounts on credit. The patricians of La Serenissima are shitting themselves. Who hasn’t had loans from the Mendesi, as they call them here? Who doesn’t covet their vast family wealth?
Jo�o immediately prepared the carrack, there was no time to lose.
So we’re leaving without even having time to think.
Ferrara. That will have to be the starting-point of Titian’s journey. A long journey, this time, using the city of the Este family as a safe house to which I’ll return to pick up news about the situation in Venice. My plan is to head south, towards Bologna, and cross the Apennines, get to Florence. Before I bade him farewell, Perna told me I couldn’t die without having seen Florence. Poor little Perna, dispatched along the Croatian coast. I have no doubt that he’ll be a great success down there; Pietro the bookseller weeps and wails, but in the end his big balding head always pops up again, unharmed and ready to resume its endless logorrhoea.
So here we are. We’re on the home stretch, the last bit of our journey and a new adventure. I’m a madman, an old bird perched here on this seat with my grey beard and aching bones that won’t leave me in peace. I’m mad, and I still want to laugh. I still can’t believe I’m off on my travels again, preaching up a storm. I find myself thinking about how it all began. I find myself thinking that my life has coincided with war, with flight, with sparks that set the plain alight and waves that covered it over. I should leave my tired old bones in a hole somewhere and slip serenely away, a little bit at a time, reviewing the faces of my friends and lovers in my memory. And instead I’m still here, dogs snapping at my heels, settling the score on behalf of all those faces. The obsession of an old heretic who can’t find peace.
The last challenge, the last battle. I could have died in Frankenhausen, in the squares of M�nster, in Holland, in Antwerp, in the prisons of the Inquisition. But here I am. And finishing the game, solving the mystery, is the last thing that remains to be done.
Q’s diary
Venice, 16th November 1548
Visit to the ‘Caratello’. Ludwig Schaliedecker, or ‘don Ludovico’, the manager, isn’t there. He’s left, no one knows where he’s gone. I throw out the occasional question, I don’t want to arouse anyone’s suspicion.
Clearer memories: Eloisius de Schaliedecker. Wittenberg, more than twenty years ago, a man who came to challenge Luther and Melanchthon. He was the talk of the whole university, because of his strange notions about sin and perfection.
He might have come from the Netherlands or Flanders, I can’t remember.
Try and get some information. Write to the Inquisition in Amsterdam and Antwerp. A letter of introduction from Carafa might be useful. And that would mean telling him of my suspicions.�
It would still take a matter of months.
Keep on searching here in Venice. Keep an eye on the ‘Caratello’, in case he comes back.
Write to the Inquisitors in Milan, Ferrara and Bologna to get fresh information about Titian the Anabaptist.
Letter sent to Rome from Venice, addressed to Gianpietro Carafa, dated 17th November 1548
To the most illustrious and honourable Giovanni Pietro Carafa
My lord, I have just today received Your most urgent communication. You will receive this reply at most two days before I arrive in Rome. I will immediately be available for whatever tasks Your Lordship may wish to assign to me.
It is my duty and my wish to inform you that the sudden deterioration in the health of the Farnese Pope is taking me away —� with a displeasure that I am unable to conceal — from a promising trail concerning the distribution of the Benefit of Christ Crucified. My immediate assumption is to imagine that this little treatise features largely in Your Lordship’s plans to obstruct Reginald Pole. I therefore hope that the precipitation of events involves only the suspension of the investigation that I have been conducting for months, since it is still far from its conclusion, and has certainly not exhausted its fascination.
Trusting in the speed of Italian horses to put me at your disposal as soon as possible, I kiss Your Lordship’s hands.
Venice, 17th November 1548
Your Lordship’s faithful servant
Q.
Finale Emilia, on the border between the Duchies of Modena and Ferrara, 2nd April 1549
The way station is an isolated farmhouse in the middle of flat, even land. A few scattered little bushes break up the monotonous line of the horizon. The horse is tired, and so are my back and legs.
The internal courtyard is a hubbub of chickens and sparrows fighting over invisible crumbs among the pebbles. An old dog barks at me without a great deal of conviction, probably out of duty, after all the years he has wasted guarding this place.
‘Hey, groom, do you have room for this nag of mine?’
A stout character, moustache down to his chin. He points to a low door, the upper panel of which is closed.
I dismount with some difficulty and take a few steps, legs still splayed into the shape of the saddle.
He takes the reins: ‘Bad day to be travelling.’
‘Why’s that?’
A vague gesture towards the west: ‘A storm brewing. The road’s going to be a river of mud.’
I shrug. ‘That means I’ll have to stop here for a bit.’
He shakes his head. ‘No beds. Full up.’
I look around in search of any traces of overcrowding, but the courtyard is empty, and there isn’t so much as a sound from the house.
The stable-man clicks his tongue and the tips of his moustache spring up. ‘We’re waiting for a bishop.’
‘You could stick me in the barn.’
Another shrug of the shoulders, as he disappears into the stable with my horse.
The dog has returned to lie down in the sun. The tufts of grey hair around its muzzle make it look like an animal replica of the groom. When I see him coming back out of the stable, I smile at the resemblance.
‘How old is it?’
‘The dog? Oh, eight, nine, more or less. It’s old, it’s losing its teeth. I’ll have to kill it before long.’
Eyes narrowed to slits and paws outstretched, just a slight movement of the tail and one raised eyebrow. Even its facial expressions look like its master’s.
I stretch myself, and my bones make a curious cracking noise.
‘There’s some hot soup indoors if you want some. Ask my wife.’
‘That’s great. But won’t you want to serve it to the bishop?’
He stops, puzzled, and scratches the sweaty back of his neck. ‘You see, we don’t get fine gentlemen in these parts all that often. We’ve never had a bishop here before.’
I bend down to check that my knees are still working, roll my head around and I’m as good as new.
He thinks about it. ‘It’s actually a bloody nuisance. His whole entourage, all those lackeys…’
‘His secretaries, his servants, his personal guards…’
He gives a worried sigh and shrugs his shoulders: ‘They’ll have to be content with what they get.’
He climbs the stairs back into the house.
‘Soup’ll do fine for the guards and the lackeys. But the bishop’s going to want some game… By the way, who is he?’
He stops in the doorway: ‘Cardinal Bishop His Lordship Giovanni Maria Del Monte Ciocchi. He’s coming from Mantua, on his way to Rome.’
‘Ah yes. That’ll be for the Conclave… they say the Pope’s ill, but as we know, popes take a long time to die…’
He looks perplexedly at the tips of his shoes, uncertain whether to encourage me or tell me to go to hell.
‘I don’t know a bloody thing. I just have to put the bishop and his entourage up for the night.’
‘Of course, of course. But you haven’t got any game for his dinner.’
He turns purple, and if the stairs weren’t between us I’d fear for my throat: ‘We haven’t got any today! It’s a way station, not an inn!’
He goes into the house.
I chuckle to myself and walk over to the dog. It seems to have calmed down, and allows itself to be stroked. It doesn’t seem particularly keen on snarling at me, or even, particularly, on living. Soon its hour will come.
‘You’re no better than the Pope. And at least you
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