Q, Luther Blissett [children's ebooks online .txt] 📗
- Author: Luther Blissett
- Performer: 0156031965
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It can’t be happening. I swallow hard. ‘Magister, this… is this what you are going to preach today, in the presence of the Dukes of Saxony?’
A chuckle, a gleam in his eyes, more alert than ever.
‘No, my friend, not just them. If I’m not mistaken, the chancellor of the Br�ck court will be there too, Councillor von Grefendorf, our own Zeiss, the burgomaster and the rest of the town council of Allstedt.’
I stay there, rooted to the spot, while he gets up, stretching his arms.
‘Thanks for your help in dispelling any doubts. Now I think I’ll take your advice and lie down for a while. Please call me when the bell tolls.’
Eltersdorf, Christmas 1525
Pastor Vogel wasn’t speaking for me today, not to brother Gustav. His voice was like a dull, distant rumble. I’m alone. Not a word can persuade me. Not after the slaughter of those unarmed people, not after that cry in the void. He can keep the comfort he takes from the Word — and I’m one of those who used to believe in its strength.
In the evening, in my room, blue with cold, I read the letters. And I feel something vague happening, getting closer with each passing day: something is struggling to get out, but I choke it back down again, to the pit of my stomach, with all my strength. It gets harder every night.
To the most illustrious Magister Thomas M�ntzer pastor and preacher of the town of Allstedt.
Most illustrious Master
May the Spirit of God, which instils wisdom and courage, be upon you in these hours of torment.
I am writing to you with all the haste and agitation of one who sees danger creeping along in silence, suddenly leaping out behind the man in whom he has placed his hopes. I have already shown you how my ears might help you, given their proximity to certain doors behind which intrigues lurk. Well, I cannot say which is stronger in me, whether it is the joy of finally being of use to you, after the many months that have passed since my first missive, or my anxiety and contempt for that which is being plotted against you.
The Elector, who had hitherto maintained a waiting position, really did not like your League of the elect one bit. Likewise the sermon you delivered in the presence of his brother. Above all he is alarmed by the fact that you have a printing press at your disposal, and that your words might reach the hearths of revolt that are gradually being lit throughout his territory and beyond. He has no intention to attack you directly: I think he fears possible repercussions of a rash gesture. But he wants to remove you from Allstedt, from your press and from his Saxony. A certain Hans Zeiss paid him a visit here some days ago, and spent a long time talking to Spalatin, the court counsellor. They want to isolate you. Zeiss will pretend to be on your side, but in the meantime, in accordance with his promises, you will see a revolt against you, if not from the whole town council then at least from your burgomaster. He has said he is sure of success, and it did not sound like a mere promise.
For his part, Spalatin will write You a letter on behalf of the Elector Frederic to invite you to Weimar, where You will be given the opportunity to expound your theses at length and before some important theologians. Do not grasp the hand they seem to be holding out to You! Do not imagine that You will end up playing the most important role. Do not count on the support of Zeiss and his colleagues: once they are far away from your people they will abandon you, swearing blind that Your arrival has brought nothing but confusion to their town, that Your theories are dangerous, that You are entirely lacking in the submission to authority that Martin Luther preaches.
You have one great strength: the strength of the word of God that reaches His people through Your lips. Between those walls, far from the peasants and miners, the strength will be sucked from you as though you were a new Samson. Zeiss will be Your Delilah, and he already holds the scissors in his hands. I repeat: do not leave Allstedt. It is there that they fear You, for Your sermons and Your printing press, they fear the people’s reaction to any violent action against You. They won’t risk touching You. Do not leave for Weimar.
May the Lord God enlighten and sustain you.
Qo�let
the 27th day of July, 1524
This letter was certainly delivered to the Magister too late, after his return from Weimar, by which time the die had been cast. Perhaps, in those difficult days, he did not have the time to assess its importance, and yet he made no mention of it.
What is certain is that this letter revealed in advance what was about to happen. The man who wrote these lines was very close to the princes’ rooms.
It was the clear-mindedness of Ottilie that saved us during those days. We could have been lost for good, but that woman pulled us up again and led us out of the black marshes of crazed desperation. Ottilie… you won’t be there now to take me away from here. I don’t know how you met your end: a plaything for mercenaries, food for crows. My arid heart almost leads me to hope that you did not survive to witness this void, the cold loneliness of Christmas in this year of death.
Allstedt, 6 August 1524
Ottilie is strong and resolute, with a magnificent bosom. The Magister, when those distillations of herbs and grape-juice loosen his tongue, letting it slide cheerfully towards the lower parts both of the body and the spirit, says that those big, firm breasts contain the secret and the strength of creation, and that the impetus and revelations of these past frenetic months come straight from them. Then he adds, with a snigger, that the new faithful, poor things, have only second-hand knowledge of such matters. Never, though, does he issue such boasts or assertions in her presence, since she exerts an aura upon this great thundering pile of flesh, spirit and intuition that no one else, whether prince, bishop or constitutional authority, has been able to impose_._
The gleam in her eyes is sometimes even brighter than the flame in the Magister’s, when he sets whole public squares ablaze with his oratorical power. The strength of a human male, however big he is — and by God, Thomas M�ntzer of Quedlinburg harbours a mountain of strength —� often finds its origin and its discipline in the women who guide and accompany its flux.
The Magister’s strength sometimes turns into profound despair: the outbreaks of rage, the sudden attacks of pride and the acute resentments of a man burdened with a ferocious task perhaps beyond human endurance. On such occasions Ottilie alone can calm his excesses, calling up the reason and genius that allow his vigour to re-emerge, to permeate the hearts of the common� people of the whole of Germany.
One sultry night beneath the first August moon I tell you both, you and the woman sitting opposite me, my hope and my thoughts, such as they are, to get us out of a situation we have found ourselves in over the past few weeks, fraught with hidden dangers and as suffocating as a noose around the neck. As we stare into each other’s anxious, tense and heat-flushed faces, sitting at the table where the pastor of Allstedt writes his own sermons, the Magister is wandering, at the mercy of a gloom-filled rage, through the streets and alleyways of this town, armed and in his warrior’s garb, inciting the faithful to follow him, like the wolf which, on nights just like this one, gives up his lonely howl to the moon as he pleads for help. He walks under the protective eye of the indomitable Elias, who follows him from close by, some steps behind him in the darkness, ready to leap on anyone who might try to attack him.
Everything seethes with events, hard to interpret, apart from the one, the sole clear and distinguishable one: here, now, in Allstedt, a noose is tightening, a trap is about to snap shut on all on our lives and those of the insurgent peasants. There’s no time to lose, the Magister needs help.
‘The snakes that rule this town will not harm us any more. Let’s leave.’
The voice is firm, it has a solidity that contrasts with the woman’s youthful face.
‘What?’ Ottilie’s words suddenly lift the weight from my eyelids. ‘But… what about the Magister?’
‘He won’t be long, you’ll see. But we’ve got to get our minds working before they crush us like insects.’
Of course, Ottilie, the mind. That wasp’s nest of unease that never stops buzzing. I turn towards the window. In silence, I try to listen to the Magister’s far-off cries. I don’t know whether I can really make them out or whether I’m just imagining I can. He is shouting that David is here among us, with his slingshot in his hand. The words of his last sermon to the League of the elect, when the people almost turned around to look for little King David with the rock in his slingshot, so much did the Magister’s words have the tone of a genuine evocation, rather than a mere rhetorical device. If we had to praise you as you deserve, Lord, our lips would burn with the ardour of your Word. Instead, fear extinguishes those flames.
‘I imagine the Magister had the same idea in mind,’ My words have a ring of hope.
She smiles. ‘Ideas… Did you see his eyes when he left here? I know, he’s got a thousand ideas and a thousand contacts, from the North Sea to the Black Forest. But now the decision’s up to us…’
‘Why don’t we wait another little while? Is it that necessary to leave?’
Without a moment’s hesitation, those softening lips: ‘Yes, brother, after Weimar, yes.’
‘Three days was really all it took… three days without the Magister for us to lose everything…’
‘That was just the coup de grace. Things had already started going wrong.’
‘Not while the Magister was with us they hadn’t. A swamp of desperate people swelled that bog, you remember? They flowed here from all the towns all around, driven out by the lords… The flood could even have engulfed Duke John!’
As I walk back to my chair, for a moment she seems to be listening, too. Then she runs a hand over the table, full of the crumbs from dinner. ‘You see?’ she says, pushing them all into the middle and gripping them in her fist. ‘That’s what they did,’ and she opens her palm and blows on it. ‘Now they’re about to sweep us away.’
The words emerge with difficulty from my parched throat. ‘But one thing is certain, Ottilie. They are afraid of Magister Thomas as animals are afraid of fire. They had to remove him from the city so they could start their intimidations and their beatings. No one would have risked driving out our Wychart and closing down the printing press if the Magister had stayed.’
‘And they won’t try and get him tonight, either. Of course, of course… no one has said we’ve got to flee for the Indies. Just think about somewhere else where we could continue the work we’ve started here.’
I shake my
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