Q by Luther Blissett (most recommended books txt) 📖

isn’t one of those jackals sitting in the Council who hasn’t taken loans from us. Without the Jews Venice will lose its trade-routes, the Sultan will take them all, one after the other, business will dry up, the city will go back to being a spit-stain on the map, squashed in between the empires. These smug aristocrats are condemning themselves to become irrelevant little country squires.

He sighs. ‘But there we are. If that’s what they’ve decided, you know very well, Excellency, that we won’t allow ourselves to be captured without a fight. The merchants who depend on my purse-strings have already announced that they’re going to suspend all traffic with the Orient unless the authorities put a stop to this indiscriminate Jew-baiting. And as far as you’re concerned, if what this old acquaintance of yours tells us is true, I think that this time Cardinal Carafa is going to have to get by without his foremost agent.’

Gresbeck continues looking at him without batting an eyelid, a tired, inoffensive expression on his face, breathing with difficulty.

Jo�o gets to his feet and walks pensively up and down.

‘You’re pretty shrewd, my dear sir, and I’m sure you can understand where my interests lie.’

He sits back down again. Silence. Only the surge of the waves and faint footsteps on the deck. The daylight shines in from two big side windows to illuminate the captain’s cabin: a table, two armchairs and a bed.

I get up with enormous difficulty. Gresbeck glances at me serenely. I sit down on the edge of the desk, moving aside the chart of the Adriatic. It’s my turn.�

‘The advantage of having come this far is that we need no longer deceive one another. At the age of fifty, I no longer have the holy fire of rebellion in my veins, and I haven’t slept for two nights. My fatigue will help me speak clearly, and keep my words to a minimum.’ I press my fingers to my temple to ease my headache. ‘Your prick of a boss is seventy-five. Most men are under the ground by that age. What I wonder is what that wicked old man is demanding of himself, of his men, and of us. I wonder what plan he has truly had been urging on for all those years. Defeating heresy? Punishing beggars for trying to stand up for their own redemption? Setting up tribunals of conscience to control people’s thoughts? I wonder what use it was to him, accumulating all that power. And even now that the heads of the spirituali are falling one by one, and attention is being focused upon the Jews in Venice, I wonder why. It isn’t the money of the Sephardic Jews, or the affairs of Venice, or a settling of scores with Carafa’s enemies among the spirituali. And it isn’t the Papal Throne either, Heinrich. Not at seventy-five. Carafa has never suggested himself as being eligible for the papacy. What is at stake is something higher than all those things put together. Something that is hanging over all our heads. To understand what’s going on here, what awaits us, we must have a complete understanding of his project.’

A suspicious smile under Gresbeck’s moustache.

Hoarse breath, a deep voice: ‘The Plan. What Carafa has been working on all his life. That phrase that fills the mouths of the humblest country priest, that is written on the standards of the armies, on the swords of the conquerors of the New World, on the facades of parish churches and cathedrals alike.’ He lets the words fall like stones. ‘The greater glory of God.’

He barely shakes his head. ‘Imposing an order on the world. Enabling Peter’s Church to remain the unquestioned arbiter of the men and nations of the world. Carafa has understood the foundations of a millennial power better than anyone else. A simple message: fear of God. A gigantic and complex apparatus that inculcates that message in people’s thoughts and deeds. Spreading the message, managing the knowledge, observing and assessing the minds of men, investigating every impulse that dares to go beyond that fear. Carafa has assumed the enormous task of opening up the foundations of that power to the light of the new age. The ambition that he embodies has drawn out all the weakness of the body of the Church, and turned it into a concentration of strength. Luther has been both his most vehement enemy and his best ally. Without diminishing the fear of God, the Augustinian friar made everyone aware of the need for change. The first ones to understand this were the most intelligent men, like Carafa, like Pole, like the founders of the new monastic orders. More than thirty years on, they’re only ones still in the game. He had to respond with the right weapons to the gauntlet thrown down by Luther. And it was there that the conflict came into being: Pole and the spirituali were willing to mediate just to preserve the unity of Christendom. Carafa wasn’t, he preferred to abandon the Protestants to their fate rather than allow so much as a tiny crack in the absolute authority of the Church: he had to strike back at the Lutherans blow for blow, make a clean sweep within his own church body and establish new apparatuses that would rise to the challenge. If the spirituali had won, Rome would have lost its primacy. If some friar, or even a layman like Calvin, had been allowed to discuss matters as an equal with a descendant of St Peter, what would have become of the millennial order? What would have become of the Church of Rome? What would have become of the Plan?’

Gresbeck stops, exhausted.

Miquez can’t contain himself: ‘From our present vantage point, my dear sir, the question is a rather different one. What will become of us?’

The same calm tone: ‘You will be sacrificed.’

I look into his eyes. ‘To the greater glory of God.’

‘Exactly. And this time, messer Miquez, it won’t be as it was in Portugal, or in Spain, or in the Netherlands. This time it will be for good. Inquisition proceedings concerning donna Beatrice are already in preparation; they will be put into effect within a matter of days. The Venetians are only interested in your money. Carafa wants a demonstration of strength by the Inquisition. He wants to reduce you to powerlessness, to leave a desert around you and crush you. And may the lesson be a warning to everyone. You can’t buy your safety as you have done in the past: Carafa’s men are incorruptible, they have a mission to accomplish, and they’re very good at their work. The merchants can’t frighten them with boycotts, they simply don’t matter. You’re right, Venice will do itself irreparable damage, but he who does not adapt to changing times is destined to perish.’

Jo�o is black-faced, stiff in his seat like a mahogany statue, he isn’t speaking.

Gresbeck turns back to me: ‘And your Anabaptists are about to be swept away, too. Every single one.’

‘That’s impossible.’

‘The idea of Titian was a clever one. But no plan is perfect; trusting the wrong person is the kind of mistake you end up paying for.’

A twinge in my stomach.

‘Two weeks ago Pietro Manelfi gave himself up to the Inquisition in Bologna. He really has an astonishing memory. He gave us all the names, professions and places of origin of the members of the sect. Of course he talked about Titian as well. If he carries on being as helpful as that, he’ll win himself a pardon.’

I breathe deeply, thoughts rushing into my head. Then, I have a sudden realisation: ‘You’ve met him.’

He coughs. ‘I was on his trail for a while. I hoped he’d lead me to you. When I got the news I dashed to Bologna. Just in time to meet him, because Leandro Alberti, the Inquisitor, had already decided to send him to Rome so as not to have the responsibility of dealing with such an important affair. At this moment Manelfi is repeating his confessions before the Congregation of the Holy Office. All the people he’s baptised over the past few years are going to be for the chop.’ His grey eyes pass from me to Jo�o. ‘You’ve done well. Printing The Benefit of Christ Crucified, contacting all those men of letters. Pontormo’s coup was admirable. Anabaptism was a ridiculous enough idea to be able to work. But you couldn’t make it. Not when you were up against Carafa.’

Jo�o draws his sword with a swift and elegant gesture. ‘So, Excellency, at least allow me the satisfaction of sending you personally to hell, depriving you of the pleasure of witnessing the fruits of your vile labours.’

Gresbeck doesn’t move. He doesn’t look at the blade.

I raise a hand. ‘No. You haven’t told us everything. You knew what your fate would be, you knew it the moment you looked me in the face. You could be silent. You could say nothing, and meet your death while leaving us all in a state of uncertainty.’

He smiles: ‘My time is over, Gert. When the Jews are on their knees Carafa will want me dead. I know too much.’

‘There’s something else, isn’t there?’

‘No plan is perfect. No plot is safe from contingencies. And there’s always a flaw, a little detail that risks ruining everything at the last moment, something that has been thought irrelevant and forgotten, but which suddenly becomes the spanner in the works that could demolish the whole machine.’

Jo�o has lowered his sword. ‘What are you talking about?’

Gresbeck: ‘I no longer have that fire in my veins either, Gert. I’m dead already. Whether it’s you or one of Carafa’s hired killers doesn’t make much difference. I’ve been carrying out orders all my life. I can allow myself an ending other than the one that lies in wait for me around the next corner. I can give that privilege to you, Captain Gert, my lifelong adversary.’

‘Why?’

‘Because we’re two sides of the same coin, because we’ve been fighting the same war and neither of us is going to emerge the winner. The field belongs to Carafa, the hope of the ragged ones has been sunk in the mud, but Qo�let, too, must make his exit.’

This time I’m the one to smile, the words come out slowly, as though I was weighing them on my tongue: ‘You’re wrong, Heinrich. While it might seem easy to believe, you and I aren’t actually the same. You’ve been fighting someone else’s war, you’ve been obeying orders, you’ve been carrying out a part in his plan. You’ve served other people all your life, for a goal that you won’t even see accomplished: that’s your defeat. You weren’t beaten in the battlefield, like those thousands of ragged men and heretics who fought against their masters and against the power of Rome. You have nothing, not even the sense of what you’ve done. That’s why you must give me the last chance, because it’s yours as well, the last chance to take back the life that you’ve sold to someone else.’

He says nothing. He slips his hand under his jacket and hands me a sheet of paper. ‘Manelfi didn’t just give me the names of his brethren. He told a story when he faced the Inquisitor. The story of a heretic who went around rebaptising people and a cardinal who then became Pope. A story which, if it reached the right ears, would blow Carafa’s whole plan away.’

*

Et in primis interrogatus de quis eum initiavit doctrinae anabaptistae, respondit:

In Florence Titian began to preach the Anabaptist doctrine to me and rebaptised me telling me that I was not baptised because I had not faith when baptised as a child, and telling me of