A series of irregular portals winked open and in a deserted town square, lit by the moon of Slovo’s world, the Admiral saw Cromwell cornered – and then averted his eyes as the Prioress skinned the screaming soldier alive.
When it was done, she draped herself in the red pelt and eagerly ran off to an eternity of new wickedness. Except in dreams, Admiral Slovo never saw her again.
The obscure tides governing the display shifted and snapped the windows shut, at which point Cromwell was spewed forth on to the ground before the Admiral’s feet, naked but otherwise untouched – and miraculously alive.
Less grateful than he might have been, Cromwell staggered to his feet and felt his chest and arms, half fearful that their solid attachment was illusory. ‘I am whole again!’ he gasped.
‘Well, almost,’ said Slovo gently. ‘Save that she has carved the Papal Cross-keys upon your arse.’
Cromwell nearly turned to look but, higher sensibilities such as dignity now returning, he restrained himself.
‘I suspect it may be permanent,’ added Slovo rather gratuitously.
Cromwell nodded, ‘I will be avenged, you know.’
Slovo smiled. ‘How so? The Prioress is beyond your reach in the most profound of ways.’
It was Cromwell’s turn to smile and there was a greater coldness in it than ever. Previously, his ambition had been undirected, but now it was mounted upon a mission and accordingly speeded and energized in a way that, he sensed, would last him out his days. ‘She has left hostages behind, Admiral,’ he said, waving his bare arm to encompass the entire priory, ‘things that she cared about: bricks and mortar, institutions and a culture, a whole way of life! With these tools I’ll pay her back, blow for blow, wound for wound, as she watches down, helpless to intervene. And since I’m an honest man, Slovo, after my own lights, I’ll repay her with proper interest, you mark my words!’
Admiral Slovo did as he was bid and noted the simplicity and innocence of a civilization younger than his own. He firmly believed that Cromwell would be as good as his vow. Slovo also felt that though the die of history was cast, the protesting squeak of those that history would crush should be heard.
Aloud he said, ‘But concerning the life to come and such; surely the Prioress was right, was she not?’
Cromwell looked at the Priory Tower, seeing demolition gangs and secular inheritors. ‘She was right,’ he agreed. ‘That only makes it worse.’[14]
‘He’s even forbidden us the solace of sausage!’ The monkish face was alight with indignation, squinting against the Roman sun. ‘Can you believe that?’
Reawakened by the rebarbative images this statement conjured up, Slovo forced himself to pay attention. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Since time immemorial, eminent Admiral,’ said the monk in a whiney tone, ‘each brother has been granted a daily pork-and-blood sausage of the type we Germans love. By partaking so intimately in the raw components of recently living things, we draw near to the divinely created cycle of existence. Von Staupitz has now forbidden us this ration!’
‘Give us this day our daily sausage, eh?’ grinned Numa Droz, as huge and unlikely in his clerical gown as a lion in a mitre.
The monk wasn’t sure whether the jest was in mockery or support but, too frightened of this monster of a ‘priest’ to do otherwise, accepted it as the latter. ‘That’s right!’ he said. ‘And that’s not the least of his savagery. He’s watering the wheat-beer as well.’
Father Droz’s eyes – as evil as a goat’s at the best of times – flared. ‘Now that’s not on!’ he said. ‘I reckon you ought to go back to Efurt and cut a blood eagle on the bastard!’
The monk was perturbed now, worried by the floodgates of ‘sympathy’ he’d opened. ‘Oh, I see … um, what’s that?’
‘A blood eagle?’ answered Droz. ‘The Vikings invented it – I’ve always admired their good old ways. First you put your man down, though it can be done on women too. Then you get ’em face to the ground and cut through the back till you see the ribs and can pull ’em up and through. It looks like they’ve got wings, d’you see? An eagle, get it? They can live on for hours sometimes.’
When the monk could manage no response, Droz took the open-mouthed silence for approval. ‘There you are then!’ he concluded. ‘Simple, isn’t it?’
‘What I suggest,’ interjected Slovo, forcing himself to try and regain control of events, ‘is that you go and indulge yourself. Here is a florin. Over there is a purveyor of processed dead animals. Go and consume blood sausage therein until funds are exhausted.’
‘Well, actually, Admiral,’ replied the monk, ‘I’m not all that hungry at the moment and—’
‘I insist,’ said Slovo, so that even Numa Droz had to fight the urge to leap forth to buy sausage. ‘And do not return until you are surfeit. Otherwise I shall think your complaints of ill-usage are as empty as your monastery larder.’
The monk looked into the Admiral’s eyes and saw a blasted landscape not at all to his liking. He was up and away like a greyhound.
‘So, Brother Martin,’ Slovo resumed to the remaining monk, ‘perhaps you will have the chance to speak now. What say you about all this?’
‘I think I’d best say nothing,’ returned the dumpy and intimidated German.
‘Sorry. That’s not permitted,’ replied Slovo, with great finality. ‘Whilst His Holiness deliberates on your Order’s complaints against their new Vicar General, we are deputed to entertain and enlighten you. We cannot entertain a silent man.’
‘Yeah, that’s right,’ said Droz, fixing the monk with his awful gaze. ‘Give us some of that tempestuous Teuton tomfoolery I’ve heard so much about – sausages, big women, Jew-baiting – anything that takes your fancy.’
‘This is my first visit to Rome,’ stumbled Brother Martin. ‘I am a little overwhelmed by it all and tired, yes, very tired. Perhaps I should rest and—’
‘No,’ said Slovo as decisive as before. ‘Tell us what you think of us Romans.’
The monk proved to have more backbone than first impressions suggested. His face directly hardened, his Latin acquired a harshness beyond that grafted on by a guttural mother-tongue. ‘You are loose-livers,’ he said. ‘I have never seen so many people seduced by the call of the flesh.’
Admiral Slovo leaned his chin on his hand. ‘Yes … that about sums us up.’
‘Present company excepted,’ added the monk – but only out of politeness, not fear.
‘I resent your prejudice, Brother,’ said Droz, smiling horribly, in a way which told Slovo that someone, somewhere, would suffer before the day was out. ‘But everyone’s entitled to their opinions, I suppose.’
Admiral Slovo called for another flask from the wine-shop owner and its speedy arrival smoothed over the awkward lull. He sampled its contents before asking, ‘So the new Augustinian General is giving your Order a hard time, is he?’
In fact Slovo knew full well that was so. Johann Von Staupitz – Thomist, Augustinian, member of the currently fashionable ‘Brethren of the Common Life’ and (more to the point) Vehmist – had been drafted in to do just that. Resentment boiled marginally below the violence point in the Order’s German houses as a result. Two eloquent (by the standards of their type) brothers had been deputized to take their grievances to Rome for restitution and it just so happened that Brother Martin Luther was one of them. It was he that the Vehmic talent spotters had adjudged ready for the influence of Rome and Admiral Slovo’s company.
‘I should say so,’ now replied Luther. ‘A monk’s life should be austere but nowhere do I find it justified that it should also be miserable. If it were not wrong to impute bad faith, I would say Von Staupitz was out to upset us for reasons of his own.’
14
It was always known that Thomas Cromwell had, as a young man, served as a mercenary in Italy. However, the period’s true formative power was not, until now, suspected.