When Luther added to himself, ‘I must think about this some more; it has such profound implications …’ then Slovo knew that the deed was done.
The monk would be given all the opportunity to think that he wanted. Johann Von Staupitz was under orders to cherish Luther upon his return and allow him free rein. The German Augustinian Order would have switched dramatically from over-severity to discreditable laxity when Brother Martin got back to Efurt. In order to disorientate, he who had been his sausage-stealing enemy would become his patron, friend and teacher.
‘The thing is,’ said Admiral to monk, transfixing Luther with cold eyes, ‘to think your own thoughts, become sure of them and then don’t budge. Nail your colours to the mast.’
‘Nail … to the mast!’ echoed Luther, fixing the advice in his befuddled brain.
Admiral Slovo was no prophet or seer, but perhaps long association with the Vehme had granted him gifts of insight. Whatever the cause, he saw ahead and felt impelled to add: ‘Well, nail them to something anyway.’[16]
‘What could we say, Admiral?’ asked the Welsh Vehmist. ‘Your name was cropping up at nigh on every Council meeting and the praise was getting wilder.’
Admiral Slovo was looking at the distant activity in and around his villa and thinking how marvellous it was at last to be free of care. ‘Was it actually all that much?’ he queried, albeit without great interest. ‘Didn’t you have myriad other agents burrowing away through the woodwork?’
‘None so gloriously favoured by success and omen,’ replied the Vehmist. ‘You were featuring in The Book with monotonous regularity, once we could see it, slipping with perfect fit into the predicted roles; those man-shaped spaces in history we’d allocated to be filled by one of our own. A Council member told me there’d not been such fulfilments of scripture since Attila appeared on the scene.’
‘I’m not sure,’ said Slovo, ‘that the comparison is altogether flattering.’
‘Everyone has different parts to play,’ explained the Welshman. ‘We don’t necessarily approve of everything that’s predicted, but what is written is written and some of it you just can’t get round. You, however, we could applaud. You were worth all the tolerance and patience expended on you.’
‘You think so?’ said the Admiral, tracking the movements of a tiny fishing smack on the glittering waters below. He was jealous of the fisherman’s short and ignorant life.
‘Undoubtedly,’ answered the Vehmist, wondering what was so absorbing about a stupid plank-and-rope boat when they were discussing the turning of the world. ‘After the event, we saw how needful it was for you to be there for the inspiration of Thomas Cromwell. It was awesome to see the fulfilment of Pletho’s words in so small a way – I mean – flowers and a branded bum! Fancy those insignificant things wreaking, by the gears and pulleys of position and power, such mighty violence on history!’
‘You would soon tire of it if you’d been as close to the machinery as I have,’ warned Slovo. ‘The cogs slip and grind and they spit blood. People are the grist under the mill-wheels. What emerges, that cake you call history, is bound together with gore.’
‘It was always so,’ replied the Vehmist blithely. ‘But please do not think us so crude or superficial as to aim for mere visible events. True, we wish for Cromwell-the-catalyst to purge the Church and religious-houses from his native land but that is not the entirety of it. All the foretellings, the anti-Papal legislation, the dictated divorce, the martyrs and creation of another Protestant super-power are incidentals. Do you think we’d really stretch forth our hand to create the … “Church of England”?’
‘Possibly not,’ said Slovo to humour him. ‘There’s small pleasure in seeing an abortion get up and walk away.’
‘Just so, Admiral. As it happens, Cromwell, our little joint creation, will succeed beyond our wildest expectations. But even so, we have others in place to serve our desires. No, the crux of the matter is to destroy a way of life, a vital social support system for the poor and needy, as well as ideological centres of resistance to us. We want to knock a prop away, bring the edifice down, and let someone else build anew in its place. It’s in our mind to provide a mighty leg-up for the land-seizing classes, the secular and nationalist proto-bourgeoisie, you understand. In selling them the expansive monastery lands – as he shall – King Fatso VIII of England will sign the death warrant of his kind and there is also a certain beauty in seeing that social algebra start to work through.’
‘And with Luther it is just the same only writ large,’ said Admiral Slovo, assisting him.
‘Exactly,’ smiled the Vehmist. ‘And, as a by-product, all the chopping and changing and cynicism will discredit religion for the masses. The whole thing is so elegant.’
‘It was bound to come,’ said Slovo indifferently. ‘The rumblings of reformation were heard throughout even my life.’
‘Debatable, Admiral,’ countered the Vehmist. ‘It takes individuals, men acting under free-will to turn those “rumblings” into proper thunder and lightning. The Reformation needs its gardeners before it can flower. What you, and we, have caused to live will grow and change Europe – and thus the world. The playing out of that particular game occupies two full pages of The Book. Seeing it through is to be our major preoccupation for the next half-millennium!’
‘I did well out of it, I suppose,’ said Slovo wistfully. ‘Bracciolini’s[17] personal, annotated copies of Lucretius’s On the Nature of Things and Epictetus’s Encheiridion. Quite some finds!’
‘We had to send his heir floating under the Bridge of Sighs to acquire them,’ agreed the Vehmist. ‘He wouldn’t sell, you see.’
‘They certainly kept me diverted for upward of a month,’ said Slovo, indicating he thought the arrangement well worth it. ‘The outpourings of Lucretius were quite scandalizing however. Epicurianism is the antithesis of Stoicism!’
‘There will be room for both persuasions in our world, Admiral,’ said the Vehmist, in liberal mode. ‘And in so saying I’m reminded that it’s you we have to thank for there being such a world to look forward to … The prophecies focused and converged, all matters appeared to come to a point – and at its centre was you.’
‘Mere chance,’ said Slovo.
‘All predicted,’ the Vehmist objected. ‘Because of you, there was a Grand General Council meeting, one of only two ever convened – and that previous one was to note the conversion of the Emperor Constantine.[18]
‘This Council,’ asked Slovo, ‘it wouldn’t have been six summers ago, would it?’
‘That’s right,’ answered the Vehmist. ‘In the Damascus Casbah, away from prying monotheistic eyes.’
‘I thought I discerned a certain thinning in the ranks of high society,’ said the Admiral, pleased even at this stage in his life to have a wild supposition confirmed. ‘I had Vatican security look into it.’
‘I know – you scamp, you.’
‘But nothing came back to me.’
‘I should hope not, Admiral. It was the most vital of ventures, and far from lightly undertaken. Our wisest and best people, those who’d spent their life in analysis of The Book, couldn’t see beyond the crisis that was developing. We sensed either the ending or success of our plans. There were even suggestions that the day of the gods’ release was at hand.’
16
Which he duly did, seven years later, appropriately enough on All Saints Day, to the door of All Saints Church at Wittenberg.
17
Poggio Bracciolini. Famous Florentine Latinist and ‘discoverer’ of lost classical texts. 1380-1459.
18
Presumably Emperor Constantine the Great (274?–337) who proclaimed Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire.