Notes from "Q"

Vilvoorde, Brabant, 5th April 1538


To you, Jan. To your merciless butchering. To the baying mob spewing forth humours of all kinds as the cart passed through it leading you slowly in chains towards the place of execution. To the vomit that rises in my throat and the fever that burns my bowels. To the Babylonian Whore as she drowns the mad David to whom she has given birth in his blood and the blood of his brothers. To the never-ending horror that has devoured our flesh. To oblivion, which has erected this tower of death beyond the sky. To the end, a pitiful end, a vicious end, an ordinary end and a definitive one. I have forgotten.

To you, Jan, brother, bloody, wicked man, your swollen face confronting hatred and the blows that come from all directions. To you, demon shat out by innumerable orifices, your ragged clothes drenched in blood, a shapeless blood-clot where an ear should be. To you, pig to be flayed for the feast day, I hide and see you laying your head on the block, yelling once again the final insult: FREEDOM!

I have struck, plundered, killed.

The crowd would quarter you with their own hands, the executioner knows it and spins the axe around in a little dance, tests the blade, leaves time for the thirst of blood that rises to submerge everything in an unearthly noise.

I have destroyed, plundered, raped.

Everyone is an executioner here, and everywhere else. Everyone is insulting a son or a brother who has had his throat slit by the devil Batenburg and his Sword-Bearers. That’s not how it is, and yet it is the truth. I have forgotten.

He raises the axe, sudden silence, he strikes. Two or three times.

A flood of vomit sullies the shoes and coat in which I drag myself bent double, the roar goes up once again, the dripping trophy is raised, sins cleansed, the vileness can continue.

They will kill me like a dog. What was the point, what, what was the point? Cold, in my mouth, cold, the cold of abandonment. I’ve got to get out of here, I’m dead already. Coughing, my left hand is burning madly above the wrist, down to the elbow, I’m dead already. What I had to do.

The crowd disperses, light rain, cowering among baskets piled up against a wall. Arse perched on unsteady heels. What.

They’ll hang me from a pole, I’m finished, all the people I’ve ever been are calling for my death. Or I’ll be kicked and knifed to death in a shitty dark street, away for the love of God, my strength ebbing from me. To England, far from this blood-puddle, maybe to England, crossing the sea, or going to sea and escaping the fate of the relic I’ve become. My names, the lives. Jan, bastard, come back here, you murderer. Bring those lives back, or else take what little remains.

‘Start loading up!’


Extract from "Q" The novel

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