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be of use to you.

I most humbly kiss Your Illustrious and Reverend Lordship’s hands.

Wittenberg, 10th October 1518

Your Lordship’s faithful servant

Q.

PART ONE The Coiner

Frankenhausen

(1525)

Chapter 1

Frankenhausen, Thuringia, 15 May 1525. Afternoon.

Almost blindly.

What I have to do.

Screams in my ears already bursting with cannon-fire, bodies crashing into me. My throat choked with bloody, sweaty dust, my coughs tearing me apart.

Terror on the faces of the fleeing people. Bandaged heads, crushed limbs… I’m constantly turning round: Elias is behind me. Huge, pushing his way through the crowd. He has Magister Thomas over his shoulders, lifeless.

Where is the omnipresent Lord? His flock is being slaughtered.

What I have to do. Clutching the bags tight. Mustn’t stop. My dagger bumping against my side.

Elias still behind me.

A blurred outline runs towards me. Face half-covered with bandages, tormented flesh. A woman. She recognises us. What I have to do: the Magister mustn’t be discovered. I put my finger to my lips: not a word. Shouting behind me: ‘Soldiers! Soldiers!’

I move her aside, to get to safety. An alleyway on the right. Running, Elias behind us, running headlong. What I have to do: try all the doors. The first, the second, the third, it opens. We’re in.

We close the door behind us. The noise drops. Light filters faintly through a window. The old woman is sitting in a corner at the end of the room, on a dilapidated wicker chair. A few pathetic objects: a shabby bench, a table, coals from a recent fire in a soot-black chimney.�

I walk towards her. ‘Sister, we have a wounded man. He needs a bed and some water, in the name of God…’

Elias is standing in the doorway, filling it. Still with the Magister on his shoulders.

‘Just for a few hours, sister.’

Her eyes are watery, seeing nothing. Her head rocks back and forth. My ears are still ringing. Elias’ voice: ‘What’s she saying?’

I walk closer to her. In the midst of the roaring world, a barely murmured dirge. I can’t make out the words. The old woman doesn’t even know we’re there.

What I have to do. No time to lose. A staircase leads upstairs, a nod to Elias, up we go, finally there’s a bed where we can lay Magister Thomas. Elias wipes the sweat from his eyes.

He looks at me: ‘We’ve got to find Jacob and Mathias.’

I put my hand on my dagger and make as though to leave.

‘No, I’ll go, you stay with the Magister.’

I have no time to answer, he’s already on his way downstairs. Magister Thomas, motionless, staring at the ceiling. Vacant eyes, eyelids barely beating, he looks as though he isn’t breathing.

I look outside: a glimpse of houses through the window. It looks out on to the street, too high to jump. We’re on the first floor, at least there’s an attic. I peer at the ceiling and can only just see the cracks of a trapdoor. There’s a ladder on the floor. Riddled with woodworm, but it’ll hold me all the same. I slip in on all fours, the roof of the loft is very low, the floor covered with straw. The beams creak with each movement. There isn’t a window, just a few rays of light slanting in between the chinks: the roof-space.

More boards, straw. I’m practically lying down. There’s an opening out on to the roofs: sloping. Magister Thomas will never make it.

I go back down to him. His lips are dry, his forehead is on fire. I try to find some water. On the floor below there are some walnuts and a jug on a table. The singsong chant drones endlessly on. When I put the water to the Magister’s lips I see the bags: better hide them.

I sit down on the stool. My legs hurt. I hold my head in my hands, just for a moment, then the hum becomes a deafening roar of screams, horses and iron. Those bastards in the pay of the princes are entering the city. Run to the window. To the right, in the main street: horsemen, pikes levelled, are raking the road. They are furiously attacking anything that moves.

On the other side: Elias pops out into the alleyway. He sees the horses: stops. Foot-soldiers appear behind him. There’s no escape. He looks around: where is the omnipresent Lord?

They point their spears at him.

He looks up. He sees me.

What he has to do. He unsheathes his sword, hurls himself at the foot-soldiers. He’s ripped one open, butted another to the ground. Three soldiers are on him. Their blows bounce off him, he clutches the hilt of his sword with both hands like a scythe, still slicing away.

They leap aside.

Behind him: a slow, heavy gallop, the horseman charging behind him. The blow knocks Elias flying. It’s over.

No, he’s getting up: a mask of blood and fury. Sword still in his hand. No one goes near him. I can hear him panting. A tug on the reins, the horse turns around. The axe is raised. Back at a gallop. Elias spreads his legs, two tree-roots. His head and arms turned to the sky, he drops his sword.

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 before. A knocking and crashing from below. My head is spinning.

‘Go!’

That voice again. I turn towards him. Motionless.

Crash. Down goes the door.

Right, the bags, they mustn’t be found, come on, over my shoulders, up the ladder, the soldiers are insulting the old woman, I slip, nothing to hold on to, too heavy, come on, I drop a bag, damn!, they’re coming up the stairs, I’m in, pulling up the ladder, shutting the trapdoor, the door’s opening.

There are two of them. Landsknechts.

I’m able to spy on them from a crack between the floorboards. I mustn’t move, the slightest creak and I’ve had it.

‘Let’s just take a quick look and we’ll be off, we’re not going to find anything here… Hang on, though, who’s this?’

They walk over to the bed, shake Magister Thomas. ‘Who are you? Is this your house?’ No reply.

‘Right, then. G�nther, look what we’ve got here!’

They’ve seen the bag. One of them opens it.

‘Shit, there’s just paper, no money. What’s this stuff? Can you read?

‘Me? No!’

‘Neither can I. It might be important stuff. Go downstairs and get the captain.’

‘What’s this, are you giving me orders? Why don’t you go?’

‘Because I was the one who found the bag!’

In the end they make their minds up, the one whose name isn’t G�nther goes down to the ground floor. I hope the Captain can’t read either, or we’re fucked.

Heavy steps, the one who must be the captain climbs the stairs. I can’t move. My mouth is burning, my throat choking with the attic dust. To stop myself from coughing I bite the inside of a cheek and swallow the blood.�

The captain starts reading. I can only hope he doesn’t understand it. In the end he lifts his eyes from the paper: ‘It’s Thomas M�ntzer, the Coiner… You might say the penny’s dropped.’

My heart leaps into my throat. Delighted expressions: double pay. They drag away the man who declared war on the princes.

I stay there in silence, unable to move a muscle.

The omnipresent Lord is neither here nor anywhere else.

Chapter 2 16 May 1525

Finally, the light of dawn. I collapse, exhausted.

When I opened my eyes again, in the complete darkness of night and my existence, my first sensation was the absolute torpor in my limbs

How long had they been gone?

Shouted abuse from drunks in the street, noises of merrymaking, the screams of women submitting to the laws of the mercenaries.

To remind me I was alive, a diabolical itch; on my skin, a carapace of sweat, straw and dust.

Alive, free to cough and groan.

Merely getting to my feet and hoisting myself up on to the roof with my bag and sword was a laborious task. I waited for my eyes to get used to the darkness, studying the face of the city of the dead.

Down below, the glow of scattered bonfires lit the grinning faces of the carousing soldiers, busy gulping down their reward for the easiest of victories.

Darkness ahead of me. The total darkness of the countryside. To the left, a few yards away, one roof jutted out more than the others, over the alley below, to the edge of absolute darkness. Creeping over the roofs, I have dragged my aching back to this boundary: walls ahead of me. As tall as three men, no one on duty. I managed to walk along them.

At first I wasn’t aware of the smell: my mouth was a sewer, my nose filled with sweat and dirt… Then I noticed it: dung. Dung just below. I dropped, like that, into the darkness, hoping for the best.

A dungheap.

Running, away, thirsty, running, then I walked, tripping, away, and walked, away, away, hungry, faster, brushed by death and swathed in the stink of shit, until finally my legs gave in.

Dawn.

Lying in a ditch, I drink muddy water. I collapsed into darkness as the sun rose.

*�

The sky is aflame to the west. Every corner of my body is on fire; encrusted with mud and shit: alive.

Fields, sheaves, the edge of a wood a few miles to the south. Have to get on with my escape. I’ll have to wait for the darkness.

Alone. My companions, the master, Elias.

Alone. The faces of the brothers, corpses laid out on the plain.

My bag and sword seem to have doubled in weight. I am weak: I’ve got to eat something. A few yards away there are green ears of corn. I grab them by the handful and swallow them down with difficulty.

I wonder what I must look like, and study the elongated shadow on the ground. It raises a hand to its face: the eyes, the beard, it’s not me. It won’t be me ever again.

Think.

Forget the horror and think. Then move and forget the horror. Then again, destroy the horror and live.

So think. Food, money, clothes.

A refuge, far from here, somewhere safe, where I can get some news and track down the brothers who got away.

Think.

Hans Hut, the bookseller. In the plain, running off at the sight of Duke Georg’s suit of armour, before the slaughter began. If anyone got away, Hut will have been the one.

His printing-works is in Bibra, near Nuremburg. Years ago it swarmed with brethren. A way station for many of them.

On foot, at night, keeping off the roads, through the woods and at the edge of the fields, it’ll be a couple of weeks at least.

Chapter 3 18 May 1525

A soldiers’ bivouac.

Long shadows and coarse northern accents.

For two days and nights

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