Q, Luther Blissett [children's ebooks online .txt] 📗

silence. Suddenly the reeds come to an end. A marsh leading to a flat, sandy island.

The boat. Five men: one of them is mooring the barge, the other four are carrying the two boxes. They are advancing on to a spit of land. My two oarsmen resume their rhythmical rowing while I pick up the hackbut. They haven’t seen us. We quickly slice through the stagnant water. He looks up too late, when I’m already taking aim. The shot sends clouds of birds flying in all directions. When the smoke clears I see him creeping towards his colleagues. One of the boxes is being left behind, and they’re loading him on to their shoulders. We push our boat on to the island with a jolt. I unsheathe my dagger, and am the first to jump down; up to my belt in the slime, stuck there like a pole. I almost burst out laughing. Sebastiano goes ashore a little further along and pulls me free.

‘Come on, come on, your lordship, they’re getting away!’

To the other boatman: ‘You load the hackbut and stay and guard the boat.’

Running the length of the spit. We see them limping along with the box and the wounded man. Sebastiano’s curses are like projectiles fired at the fugitives. I’m out of breath, although I really want to laugh.

Another water-logged clearing, full of reed-covered islands. If I run any further I’m going to have a heart attack.

All of a sudden they stop.

I slow down.

Sebastian catches up with me, spluttering. Breathing as deeply as I can, I load the pistol. We walk on, they appear to be armed only with sticks. The injured man is laid out on the ground, he might be dead. Pale, terrified faces, men dressed in filthy rags. Gaunt, their hair sticking to their heads like mud skullcaps. Strikingly gaunt, barefoot. Now that we’re very close I aim the pistol, a glance at the poor man on the ground: he isn’t unconscious, his eyelids are beating. I can’t see any blood.

At that moment they appear.

A brief rustling in the reeds and about thirty ragged ghosts emerge, clutching raised sticks and sickles.

Shit.

All around there are marshes as far as the eye can see. I finally do burst out laughing, to shake off my tension and fatigue. That must come as something of a surprise to them, because they press their weapons to their chests and retreat suspiciously.

An almighty racket emerges from the depths of the vegetation. One silhouette looms over all the others. A mud-caked habit, two pieces of wood dangling from his neck, tied together to form a crucifix. He clutches a knotty stick, which he swings to left and right, babbling incomprehensibly.

He goes over to the box and opens it. I see him raising his eyes to the heavens, losing heart. He goes reproachfully haranguing the crowd.

He comes towards us. ‘Perdono, perdono fratres, perdono.’ His grey beard is longer than mine, and encrusted with mud and insects. His eyes, two pale blue embers peering out from wrinkles in which the mud of centuries appears to have accumulated. His hair falls to his shoulders, resembling a bird’s nest.

‘Perdonate fratres. Simplici ingegni, sicut pueri. To eat, eat solum. Numquam� libres videro, they don’t know what they are.’

At that moment I become aware of movement on the islands. The reed-bed is artificially arranged, I glimpse holes, animated shadows. Wide nets held up by cords and sticks at water level.

A village. By God, the reed-bed’s a village!

‘They don’t know about your mission. They can’t read. They’re not wicked, they’re just ignorant. I,’ he brings his hand to his chest, ‘am brother Lucifero, Franciscan.’

He searches for words. ‘Don’t worry, most reverend fratres. I know. Missals from the abbey.’ He points to the box. ‘The holiest of books. They don’t know that.’

He turns towards the gathering, uttering words that we can’t understand, but which sound like reassurance.

‘Come, come.’

As though in response to a signal, the clearing springs to life. Women and children creep out of the cabins and appear on the marsh. The men stream towards the dwellings, shouting indistinctly. The injured man is lifted up, he speaks, he too joins in with the general tumult.

Sebastiano stands there open-mouthed. I pull him along with me, frowning at him not to say a word.

Brother Lucifero, bringer of light to the rejected people, hidden in the marshes of the Po as though in an impregnable fortress. A bogland that stretches from the mouth of the river to the territory of Romagna. A no-man’s-land, as wild and remote as the New World. Frate Lucifero was sent to evangelise these forgotten people almost thirty years ago, and was in his turn forgotten and left behind. Far from contemporary speech and the vicissitudes of politics. Lost in an inkblot on the map, following the example of St Francis of Assisi, as though he had uprooted the cross of Christ to replant it in the shifting sands of these moorlands, as a challenge to pagan superstition.

Thirty years.

Almost unimaginable. Thirty years away from the fortunes of the Church. Away from Luther, Calvin, the Inquisition and the Council of Trent. Free to cultivate a faith based on pure charity towards humble people.

Ignoring our apparel, he has taken us for missionaries like himself, Friar Titian and Friar Sebastiano, sent from the abbey of Pomposa, to spread the doctrine and the book to teach it with. He has flattered us most sincerely and asked us to serve mass in his place. I couldn’t get out of it.

And so it was that don Ludovico, manager of the most luxurious brothel in Venice, in the garb of Friar Titian, found himself facing the entire population of the marshlands, celebrating the only religious rite he is capable of performing. He rebaptised all the adults. From the first to the last.

When the time came to turn back, we were supplied with a guide and a gift of a barrel of live eels, in exchange for a new faith and two copies of The Benefit of Christ Crucified.

Q’s Diary

Viterbo, 26th February 1548

If I know the old man he’ll start with the little fishes as I suggested. The booksellers, the intermediaries, the printers…� And if that isn’t enough to frighten off the major players, the ones who are financing the operation, he’ll come up with a way of getting them off the scene. The old man never acts on impulse, he knows how to wait. Death, in turn, seems to be waiting for him, it’s as though it won’t take him until he’s accomplished his plan. You don’t easily get rid of people like Reginald Pole, let alone influential families like the Mendesi clan. You’ve got to come up with something complex, you’ve got to unsettle the most stable arrangements. The wealthy Venetian Jews are cunning characters. They’re used to being hunted out, they’re used to paying out money to save themselves, forging strong contacts with merchants and men of letters, being treated as equals with them. You can’t help admiring the Mendesi family, especially the women, who have had to learn the art of negotiation and subterfuge, business and politics.

But it’s always a mistake to oppose Carafa. A fatal mistake. Who can say that better than I, who have served him for thirty years?

Meanwhile information from the Venetian inquisitors is bringing fresh concerns about the distribution of the Benefit of Christ. It seems it’s causing a great deal of trouble in the countryside.

News� from Venice

The Venetian Inquisition is on the trail of a Franciscan going by the name of Friar Poplar, who is active in the Po Delta. Many peasants in those parts have revealed in confession that he has baptised them ‘in the new faith of the benefit of Jesus Christ crucified’.

On the other side of the Po, a family of fishermen refused to have their own son baptised, ‘since he is not yet capable of understanding the mystery of Jesus Christ on the cross’. They made no mention of Friar Poplar.

In Bassano a woman sought refuge in a convent because her husband beat her, in an attempt to persuade her to have herself rebaptised. A copy of The Benefit of Christ Crucified was found in the man’s house.

This crude outpouring popular religion is giving rise to the most ludicrous juxtapositions. Powerful ideas in simple minds. Where did the idea of rebaptising adults spring from? Certainly not from the material in that heretical little book.

We need more information.

Talk to Carafa about it?

27th February 1548

Why has the old man not yet used the Benefit of Christ Crucified as a weapon against Pole and the Spirituali? Why has he not yet excommunicated his enemies? It wouldn’t take much: the book faces excommunication from the Council, and the old man would only have to put Friar Benedetto of Mantua in jail and make him give the names of his protectors, whoever it was who took delivery of the text and edited and printed it.

In all likelihood Carafa is worried about showing his hand too soon. He’s still waiting. But what for? Paul III’s days appear to be numbered, and the Englishman could become Pope. That would delight the Emperor, who would expect him to set about establishing a reconciliation with the Protestants.

Perhaps that’s the only reason why the old man is waiting patiently. He’s waiting for the coup de grace, delivered at the last minute. But how much longer does he think he’ll be able to live?

Q’s Diary

Viterbo, 4th May 1548

Friar Michele da Este, prior of the monastery of San Bonaventura in Rovigo, heard by the inquisitors of La Serenissima on the 12th of March 1548, concerning the activities of a certain Friar Poplar, suspected of heresy.

A first name and a surname: Adalberto Rizzi, a Franciscan at the monastery of San Bonaventura, who disappeared at the end of January 1547 along with a German guest, a pilgrim who said his name was Titian, and who allegedly rebaptised him with water from a puddle.

Additional information from the Venetian inquisitors

Vicenza, 17th March 1548: a carpenter and an innkeeper apprehended in the act of barking during a baptism. Interrogated about who it was who had persuaded them that ‘baptising newborn babies is like washing dogs’, they replied, ‘someone who professes the German faith, and is able to do so with authority, because he is German.’

Padua, 6th April 1548: the student Luca Benetti publicly maintains that ‘baptism is useless for minds which cannot know the mysteries of faith, particularly the benefit of Christ crucified for the whole of humanity’.

Pressed on his statements, he maintains that they were suggested to him by a German man of letters, going by the name of Titian.

Elements of the picture

Rovigo. Bassano. Vicenza. Padua.

A trajectory, a path. A journey from one place to another? Or a semicircle, whose centre is quite definitely Venice.

A German. A German, whose presence may perhaps explain the origin of the idea of the second baptism.

(An Anabaptist?)

A German who says his name is Titian. Who hands out copies of the Benefit of Christ Crucified and rebaptises peasants.

Titian the German.

The Fondaco dei Tedeschi in.Venice. The frescos painted by Giorgione and his pupil Titian on its external walls.

Our Anabaptist is a German living in Venice.

Like a needle in a haystack.

5th May 1548

There’s a time and a place for everything that has a beginning and an end. And then, on the other hand, there are those things that return. They rise up to the surface from the dark places of the mind, like pieces of bark to the surface of a