Q by Luther Blissett (most recommended books txt) 📖

He nods. ‘I’m a buffoon, yes, a real buffoon. But they wanted hope, you saw them, they wanted me to tell them what I told them. They wanted me this way, and I did it, I made them happy, I restored their strength.’

I sit there in silence, lifeless, my head, the blow, the confusion of the past few hours.

He seems to recover a little. ‘Yesterday they were lost, today they could resist von Waldeck with their bare hands!’ He looks over at me. ‘I’m not Matthys. We can start over, we can fuck, you know, we can stuff our faces, we can do everything we want to do. We’re free, Gert, we’re free and in charge of the world.’

I don’t feel like talking, there’s no point, but the words come out all by themselves, for me and this crazed character with whom I’ve shared the stench of the stables: the new prophet of M�nster.

‘What world, Jan? Von Waldeck is no fool, the powerful never are. Powerful man helps powerful man, prince supports prince: papists, Lutherans… it doesn’t matter, the ones at the bottom rebel and you find them all united, with their horsemen and their gleaming armour, lining up to fire. That’s the world out there. And you can be sure that that hasn’t changed just because you’ve given these people the lovely dream of Zion.’

He is whining like a puppy, his fingers clutching at his blond curls.

‘Tell me. You know how things happen. I’ll do whatever you tell me, but don’t leave me, Gert…’

I rise to my feet in astonishment: ‘You’re wrong. I don’t know either. I don’t know any more than you do.’

I reach the door amidst his childish whinging.

She’s behind the door. She’s been listening to everything.

Her hair is so bright and luminous it could be made of platinum.

Divara: a low-cut dress that shows off her perfect body to marvellous effect. In her face the innocence of a child, white child-queen, daughter of a Haarlem brewer.

A light touch raises my hand and slips a tiny blade into it.

‘Kill him,’ she barely murmurs, indifferently, as though talking about a spider on the wall, or an old dying dog that needs to be put down.

Her dress opens over her full breast, to reveal the prize. Her eyes of an intense blue that sends terror through my very bones, sending my hair straight up, making my heart thump like a tambourine. A pile of corpses: the vision of what could happen, the abyss opened up by a girl of fifteen. I have to clutch the banisters as I hurl myself down the stairs, far from Venus, Dispenser of Death.

*

M�nster, 22nd April 1534

Torpor. Of the limbs, of the mind. I don’t recognise anyone, these aren’t the same people who defeated the bishops and the Lutherans in a single night. My men, yes, they are that, they would follow me to hell, but I won’t be able to take them with me: someone has to stay, to control the jester, the White Queen and their Kingdom of Wonders.

All alone. Get away from here, get away right now, to find the outlet of the sewer before it’s too late.

The events of the past few days have been frightening. Yet morale is as high as it could be. In one sortie I captured a troop of horsemen trying to attack the J�defeldertor, and now we’re trying for an exchange of prisoners. We’ve also stopped the bishop’s men lining up below the city walls, just out of the range of the hackbuts, and showing off their pale arses crying, ‘Oh, Father, give it to me, I crave your dick!’, a habit that they had developed over long evenings of drunkenness and debauchery. With a bit of decent ballistics, all we had to do was get one of them with a cannonball, right between the cheeks, turning him into dog-meat.

For a week, all the men in the bastions pissed and shat into a barrel, which was then rolled into the bishop’s camp. When they opened it up, the stench almost reached all the way here.

Along with Gresbeck I organised shooting practice for everyone, women and boys included. We are teaching the girls to boil pitch, and to pour quicklime on the heads of our besiegers. The walls are guarded on a shift basis, shared out among all the citizens, of both sexes, between the ages sixteen and fifty.

I’ve had them put a bell on each bastion, to be rung in case of fire, so that we know where to run with water.

We’ve discovered that Matthys wrote an inventory of the goods impounded from the Lutherans and the papists, as well as the supplies of food in the city. He jotted down everything down to the last chicken and the last egg. We can survive for at least a year. And then? Or rather: and in the meantime?

It isn’t enough, it can’t be enough. The tall tales of Prophet Charlatan won’t get us very far.

The Low Countries, the brothers. Tell them what’s happening in M�nster, organise them, select them, maybe even train them to fight. Request money, ammunition.

I don’t know. I don’t know the right thing to do, I’ve never known, I’ve chosen a different path each time. You just feel that things can’t go on like this, that the walls, inside and out, are getting too close for you, and that your mind needs some fresh air, your body needs to feel the miles passing beneath you.

Yes. There’s one more thing you can do for this city, Gert from the Well.

Ensure that it is not abandoned to the madness of its prophets.

*

M�nster, 30 April 1534

My luggage is light. Inside there’s the old leather bag: biscuits, cheese and dried herrings, enough for a few days; a map of the territories between here and the Low Countries; a full powder horn, make sure it doesn’t get wet; the two pistols that Gresbeck insisted I carry with me; and three old faded and greasy letters that betrayed Thomas M�ntzer. Relics that I won’t be parted from, those last, the only tangible souvenir of what died and was buried beneath the debris of the failed Apocalypse.

‘Are you really sure you want to go?

The rough voice of the ex-mercenary comes through the door. It isn’t the tone of someone who has an objection to raise, but someone who’s wondering why I don’t take him with me.

‘We’ve miscalculated, Heinrich.’

‘You mean with Matthys?’

‘I mean with these people.’ A fleeting glance as I do up the last straps. ‘They want to believe that they’re saints. They want someone to tell them that everything gone smoothly, that M�nster is the New Zion and there’s no longer anything to fear.’ I test the weight of the sack: perfect. ‘Whereas in fact they should be shitting themselves. Have you taken a look outside the walls? Von Waldeck is raising fortifications, and I’m sure I saw trees being felled to the north-east. Do you know what that means? War-machines, Heinrich, they’re preparing for a siege. They have every intention of keeping us here for as long as possible, at least until the last tales told by the last prophet kissed on the lips by the mouth of God have left us well and truly fucked. The ships carrying the Baptist brethren here from Holland have been intercepted on the Ems. They were bringing weapons and supplies. Von Waldeck’s men are closing the borders, the roads. All the signs are there, but no one can see them. They’ve got it very well planned.’

Gresbeck gives me his surly look. ‘What do you mean?’

‘A long siege. They want to shut us up in here, tighten the noose, and wait: hunger, the next winter, internecine rebellions, what the fuck do I know. Time is on their side. If I were von Waldeck here’s what I would do: I’d point the cannon and fold my arms.’

The bag is already over my shoulder, Adrianson should have my horse saddled down below. I’m almost serene.

‘We need new contact with the Dutch brethren. We need money to buy von Waldeck’s mercenaries and turn them against him. We need to discover safe routes to force the blockade. And above all we need to understand whether anyone out there is willing to take up arms and follow us or whether, as Matthys said, it really is a desert out there. We’ve got to do it quickly: each passing day is a gift to those vultures.’

‘And what are you going to do about Bockelson?’

I burst out laughing. We go down the stairs: the mares are ready. The farrier tightens the belts of my saddle.

‘If they’ve chosen him, what can I do?’

I jump into the saddle and pull on the reins to restrain the animal’s ardour.

‘Jan’s pathetic, he’s a scoundrel. That’s why I’m not taking you with me. I want you to keep an eye on him, you’re the only one who can do it: Knipperdolling and Kibbenbrock have gone soft, Rothmann’s ill. Be careful to choose men you can count on, and keep the city defences solid. That above all: von Waldeck will try to exploit any blunder, any distraction. Give him as good as you get, deluge his mercenaries with fliers, they can be worth more than cannonballs, remember that. I’ll be back soon.’

A strong handshake: life-defining choices are still being made. Gresbeck shows no emotion, it isn’t his way. It isn’t mine either, I now discover.

‘Good luck, Captain. And always make sure you’ve got a good pistol in your belt.’

‘See you soon, my frind.’

Adrianson walks ahead of me. My heels strike the flanks of the horse: I don’t look at the houses, the people, I’m already at the Unserfrauentor, I’m already out of the city, I’m ten miles along the road to Arnhem.

I’m alive again.