John McPake and the Sea Beggars

by Stuart Campbell

  ‘Tell me, tell me,’ he said quietly, all the anger in his voice doused, replaced by a pleading desperation. ‘What do you know?’

  ‘I’ll pluck your vile tongue from your head if you say another word!’ said Cornelius.

  Johannes held him back. ‘Let him speak’ he said.

  For what seemed like a long time Blindman’s humming was accompanied by the sound of the ship stretching its wooden bones in response to the swell.

  Blindman nodded sharply. ‘Very well. My mother was a soldier’s whore. She followed the camp through Dettingham and Veirholm; raped and enslaved she hoisted her linen for farthings, fucked for bread and favours. She squatted and squeezed me from her womb over a ditch by the road and held me under the fetid water before limping back to join the troops. My young skull burst from the water screaming

  for the breast and the sweet milk of revenge until the rats fled from the ditch, unable to stand the noise. A passing

  witch, whose own child had been stolen before her aborted drowning, heard my cries. Thrusting her arms into the slime, she pulled me into the world for a second time. After

  spitting on her ’kerchief, she wiped the blood and

  mud from my face and was smitten. Such a beautiful child. Soon I was melting hearts as she tugged at the coats of

  strangers begging for money. “For the child, not you,” said the gentry.

  ‘As I grew she tired of me. No longer a beautiful baby, no longer a changeling infant left by an angel who would melt indifferent hearts and loosen purse strings. Just an urchin like many, many more. One night she soaked my bread with laudanum, forced it into my mouth and held my jaws until I choked. Her lover roped me across his horse. Long we rode into the bleak night before he untied me, kicked my arse and left me in the fields. Like a dog I howled at the moon and drank at the pond, and saw a face smiling at me from the depths of the water. Behind the face the demons danced. I was the Chosen One, I would wreak havoc on the earth. I was the emissary of God himself. That night I suckled on cattle that gave their teats willingly to one such as I.

  ‘On rising, I stole a poacher’s pelts from a drying pole and tied them like a lady’s shawl, prancing and preening across frozen earth that was all mine, beneath the sun that I owned. After stealing from a sleeping tinker, catching and selling birds from hedgerows, and robbing other children of their fancy toys I made my entry into Antwerp. My city. My time.’

  ‘Where’s Michel?’ shouted Johannes in exasperation.

  Unhappy at having his story interrupted Blindman became silent. Through the criss-crossed shafts of light leaking from knotholes in the timber, the weavers saw that Blindman was once again completely still.

  ‘Tell us in your own time,’ pleaded Balthasar, aware that the strange figure might abandon his tale if they annoyed him. He did know things. He just might know something about Michel.

  ‘Strange times for a boy. A score of naked Anabaptists were running through the street beating their chests and shouting about the Lord. In pursuit were the guards competing to see who would be the first to plant his pike in a holy man’s hairy arse.’ Blindman paused and chuckled. ‘I knew then where to go.

  ‘The fat parish priest looked both ways up the street to see if I was a stooge but then let me in to his house. I was his boy, and his alone. I was to be his companion and plaything.

  ‘As I grew to be tall and strong for my age things changed. I became his master and he became my dog, but he needed me to protect him from the Lutherans who wanted to string up his carcass that it might be eaten by beasts. Happy to oblige, I broke the neck of a preacher who made the mistake of knocking at the door and left his body for all to see. Word must have travelled. During the night an emissary rattled his golden-headed cane against the window and said I now worked in the employ of his most Gracious Lordship.’ He chuckled again.

  ‘And so it came to pass. With my talents I soon rose to be high executioner and torturer to the Inquisition. I knew tricks. I could make grown men weep, but I also had compassion. Even apostates deserve a say in the manner of their death. Henceforth their choice was either beheading or being burned alive. Much simpler. In any case the soldiers had long complained at having to plunder faggots from farmyards, and uproot trees to make their pyres. It was a hard, messy business driving the stakes into the frozen ground and tying up stupid folk who pled and wept for their unfinished lives, their fat-faced children and their soon-to-be-grieving spouses. As an act of kindness, some said weakness, I insisted that strong liquor be dispensed to the souls while they waited strapped to the stake, their mouths puckering up like small birds craving the liquid that would make the pain easier to bear, but it didn’t of course. One, perhaps two mouthfuls, and then feed the rest to the young hungry flames licking at their taut calves. The stink of burning leather, damp cloth – they always wet themselves you see – and flesh was never pleasant. So beheading was my decree. That was more of a sport. The soldiers kept a tally of heads separated from bodies. One or two kept the scalps and used them as ’kerchiefs.’

  The weavers shrank closer to each other as Blindman paused a second time.

  ‘Nothing lasts. One night when the moon, for shame, would not show its face the rebels poisoned the dogs and slit the throats of Alva’s honest men. Unable to sleep, I had earlier fled along the byway taking only a beggar’s coat and stave.

  ‘After travelling for two nights and a day Christ himself found me and smote me to the ground in his righteous anger. The pain from my burning eye sockets taught me that God in his infinite wisdom had struck me blind. Praised be His name, and from my darkness he gave me new sight – I could see into the souls of men, I could foresee events as yet undisclosed. I knew when this man would die, when that woman would give birth. In villages they feted me as the prophet, as the soothsayer whose arrival had long been foretold. I placed my hands on the heads of children and wished them long lives. I blessed the young corn in the fields that it might grow and bring riches. I denounced the thief in their midst and shamed the adulterer wallowing in his mess.

  ‘Soon my prowess, my inestimable gifts, came to the attention of William’s men and I threw in my lot with this honourable crew of sea beggars whom I serve with the gifts of prophesy and foreboding in equal measure.’

  He threw back his head and howled with unbridled raucous laughter that echoed round the confined space below decks.

  ‘Where is Michel?’ asked Johannes, with mixed anger and despair.

  The laughter stopped instantly. ‘Leyden,’ replied Blindman, turning on his heel and shuffling off along the dark corridor. Johannes made to pursue him but was held back by Balthasar.

  ‘Let him go,’ he said. ‘The foul creature will not say more.’

  ‘A blow to the throat might change his mind,’ suggested Cornelius.

  ‘No,’ said Johannes. ‘You are right. Let him go. Michel is in Leyden. We will find him.’

  In desperate need of fresh air, Johannes clambered through the hatch and went to the side of the ship. Although he could not see the vessels of his fellow countrymen, he sensed their presence somewhere in the sea fog.

  FORTY-FIVE

  ‘Let me understand,’ said the Bastard, in a convincing tone of reasonableness. ‘I’m losing the plot here. One of your other Voices, the boring one, is essentially dictating a story inside your head which includes a character who is a paranoid schizophrenic with delusions albeit placed in an historic context. You’re madder than I thought, my friend.’

  ‘ Disagree,’ chipped in the Academic.

  ‘Who cares a flying fart what you think?’

  ‘On three counts. The tradition of the interpolated tale in picaresque narrative is well established. The Narrator is to be congratulated on his skill and knowledge of literary tradition.’

  Thank you.

  ‘It has to be said, the facts, as far as we know them, are historically accurate. It is true that in Catholic countries the Anabaptists were, as a rule, executed by burning at the
stake whereas in Zwinglian states generally by beheading or drowning.’

  ‘Zwinglian? Jesus wept!’

  ‘On the third count I think that some of your assumptions about John’s underlying diagnosis can be questioned. A slavish adherence to the categories defined in the latest version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is unhelpful. I think that Dissociative Identity Disorder should remain firmly on the agenda.’

  ‘Speaking personally,’ said the Jester ‘I far prefer the Spanish Inquisition sketch in Monty Python where Cardinal Biggles places the old woman in the comfy chair and attempts to torture her with a cushion … ’

  Mick paused at the foot of Leith Walk and wiped his brow. John put the bag of Domestos and ten cans of Tennants onto the pavement. A bald man with spectacles, and a cardigan knitted by his mother before she went off him, thrust a leaflet into Mick’s hand.

  ‘God-bothering bastards! Don’t speak to me about God’s essential goodness. You should try living with a diagnosis of schizofuckingphrenia in a hostel for the damned and demented. It makes Calvary an easy place.’

  The bald man backed off and hid behind a large placard proclaiming that we are all loved equally. His associate, a woman who had embraced premature old age as a welcome respite from the trials and disappointments of being in her late twenties, turned up the volume on the cassette player. Jesus Wants me for a Sunbeam fought a losing battle with the Red Flag as Mick bellowed in the woman’s face, making her cover her nose and visibly shrink into the background.

  ‘Easy to mock,’ said the Tempter, as John put his own newly acquired leaflet in his pocket. ‘Perhaps he did die for your sins.’

  ‘You don’t know the half of them,’ interjected the Bastard.

  The ten-year-old John knelt on the cushion in the confessional. ‘God bless me for I have sinned … ’ Even then the idea of three Hail Marys magically wiping clean the debilitating emotional impact of endless lustful thoughts rang false somehow. ‘On your own or with others?’ asked the priest enthusiastically.

  ‘Fat chance,’ commented the Bastard, intruding unwanted into an already unpleasant memory.

  Where was his brother in that memory? Had John taken him to the chapel or was he waiting outside for his turn? He couldn’t see him. The failure to visualise Andy felt like a betrayal.

  Within a microsecond of that last thought being shaped in words John knew what would follow.

  ‘Yes, old son, you’re gradually erasing all trace from your memory. Finish the job, airbrush him from your consciousness. You might as well just kill him off. Ah, we’re on to something here! It all falls into place now! That’s precisely what you did isn’t it. Fratricide!’

  To drown out the Voice John moved closer to the loudspeaker elevated to face height on an improvised stand. The tactic worked as his head soon rocked with holy decibels. He could hear nothing but God’s own white noise. The woman approached and, her bravery nurtured by a perceived insult to her own private deity, tried to shoo John away.

  The Tempter tried to console him. ‘Don’t worry, John, don’t worry, all will be well. Ignore the messengers, listen to the message.’

  John and Mick were both slumped in the sitting room when Beverley came through to remind them about the house meeting. Self-consciously, John wiped the dribble from his chin, a constant unwanted reminder of his new medication, and stood up from the armchair. His legs ached and his head was awash with fading images of somewhere he couldn’t quite remember, and snatches of dialogue that meant little. Mick was reluctant to relinquish his grip on the remote and, in a pointless demonstration of power, flicked from Flog it to the snooker and back again. It occurred to him that the vases on either side of the fireplace might just be worth a bob or two. They wouldn’t be missed.

  ‘A sham of democracy and consultation,’ he muttered as Beverley aimed a friendly slap at the side of his head.

  ‘Come on, you old Communist, move your arse.’

  Paul was already in his place on the opposite side of the dining table directly facing the door. His book was resting on the cruet set. Page 241 was proving difficult to memorise, his lips moved and his brow creased under the strain. The frequency of gerunds in the third paragraph grated somehow.

  Janet joined the group, smiled, and inadvertently irritated Mick by telling him he looked well.

  ‘I’m not well, slow poisoning … ’

  ‘You look good too, John.’ John smiled briefly and looked away.

  Kevin ostentatiously moved his chair away from Mick then flapped at the air in front of his nose, ‘You’re humming. Had a wee drink have we?’

  ‘Mind your own fucking business!’

  ‘Language!’ said Derek.

  ‘Mick’s stinking, Miss,’ said Kevin in the high-pitched voice of a snitching schoolboy.

  ‘You’re not the finest example of personal hygiene yourself,’ said Beverley, who then glanced anxiously at Mick to gauge the likely degree of retaliation but Mick had already been reclaimed by his own demons. He was shaking his head in disagreement with whoever was taunting him from a different place.

  ‘Where’s Dennis?’ asked Kevin brightly. ‘He could teach us how to play hangman … there’s a noose loose in the hoose the nicht … ’ He then snorted from the corner where he was rocking on the back legs of his chair.

  ‘It’s your last warning,’ said Beverley. ‘Just remember the conditions that were put on your tenancy last time. Sit on a chair properly, Kevin. If you break it again, you pay for it. Right. The house meeting is officially convened. Just to remind you all what we decided last time. We agreed to keep the sitting room tidier, and there has been an improvement, so thank you. Paul, you were a bit anxious when we had that temporary cook at lunch times who never managed to make your toast the way you liked it. Well, I’m able to tell you that, for some unfathomable reason, Linda likes working here and has no intention of leaving.’

  ‘Great,’ said Paul, without looking up from the irritating pattern of gerunds. ‘It was always too dry.’

  ‘Kevin has already made an unkind reference to Dennis but I want to say something about last week.’ With the exception of Kevin who smirked in anticipation of what was to come, the men grew still. All of them had attempted suicide, most of them on several occasions, to escape their own tyrannous cacophony of Voices.

  ‘Dennis struggles with people, you know that. He gets frightened. He has panic attacks.’

  ‘He’s on a list, his card’s marked.’

  ‘Quiet, Mick. You must be kind to him. If you see him looking round his door, have a word.’

  ‘There’s a smell of piss by his door.’

  ‘We all know he has a problem, Kevin. It doesn’t help if you go on at him.’

  ‘I’ve tried three times now,’ said Paul with the resigned disappointment of someone describing a failed hunt for bargains at a sale. ‘Drowning proved difficult. Logically a man should be able to hold his head under water and keep it there, but it didn’t happen. I don’t know why.’ He finally gave up on the gerunds and turned the page. ‘Jumping from the North Bridge should have worked too. When I stood there in the wind I could hear people down below shouting for me to jump. Some of them were holding up their phones to take photos. I felt encouraged. They understood what it was like. They wanted me to jump, but there was a net and it caught me.’

  ‘Poor bloody fisherman,’ said Kevin as Derek made a threatening gesture at him.

  ‘I went to Haymarket Station. I knew that between the 10.34 to Glasgow Queen Street and the 10.45 Cross Country to Motherwell, East Coast Line, they always let through empty rolling stock going back to the shed. They would always announce that the next train would not stop and tell the passengers to stand back from the edge of the platform. I waited for it but it didn’t come … it didn’t come.’ His voice trailed away and he gave his full attention to the challenges of the new page.

  Beverley eventually broke the silence. ‘We must all look out for each other and if you
think one of the residents is at risk you must tell someone. Is that clear? Are there any other issues you want to raise?’

  ‘I would like to know,’ said Kevin, innocently, ‘if John found his brother, what with him sending a postcard saying that he was waiting for him at the seaside. I’m just curious, that’s all.’

  John looked down and shook his head.

  ‘Right, that’s all,’ said Beverley. ‘Apart from next week’s menus and remember to keep the sitting room tidy. Oh, I meant to say John, your CPN’s here to see you.’

  On occasions Rosa Durkin could barely conceal her frustration with John. Part of her genuinely liked the large vulnerable man sitting in front of her. She liked the way he would always wear a knotted woollen scarf as if it were a badge of his former life and status. Nevertheless the phrase blood from a stone came to mind. Over the months she had become increasingly adept at interpreting his sophisticated repertoire of smiles, nods, shrugs and if she were very lucky, and the moon was blue, occasional shy words signifying agreement with her suggested course of action or changes to his drug regime.

  Janet would invariably make herself available for these meetings, changing her shifts if necessary. She acted as interpreter of John’s silences and all three parties accepted that in some strange way she did indeed speak his mind.

  ‘John’s doing OK but there was an incident last week wasn’t there, John?’ He looked down at the stained carpet where he noticed a beige-coloured resident’s file lying on the floor. Beverley will go ballistic when she finds it missing, he thought.

  ‘Yes, I heard,’ said the CPN, consulting her notes. ‘Who was it saved you before you fell?’ John looked at her blankly.

  ‘Tell her the truth, tell her the truth,’ hissed the Bastard so loudly that John visibly flinched. ‘Tell her you were saved by the Flying Dutchman, you mad sod. He just happened to be shopping in Great Junction Street, straight off a cruise ship that had docked in Leith from Amsterdam. Tell her the ship left Holland four hundred years ago. She’ll love that. You’ll be back in the Hilton before your feet touch the ground.’