John McPake and the Sea Beggars Read online

  As he stared at the phalanx of train details on the electronic board the letters and numbers on the digitalised display reconfigured themselves in front of his eyes. 8.10 TO PLYMOUTH CALLING AT DUNBAR NEWCASTLE YORK DARLINGTON LEEDS CHESTERFIELD TAMWORTH DERBY BIRMINGHAM NEW STREET CHELTENHAM SPA morphed into TRULY THIS IS THE HOUR WHEN YOUR SEARCH WILL YIELD FRUIT PRAISE THE LORD BE MINDFUL OF THE PASSAGE OF TIME.

  ‘You’re sitting in my seat, pal.’ John stared back at the square-necked man with tattooed arms that could have belonged to a Maori warrior. He had staked out his territory by plonking down four cans of Special Brew on the table in front of John who avoided eye contact and moved to the next carriage.

  ‘Granddad, you sit there.’ John glanced at the man being steered to the seat next to him by a large woman who then turned her attention to several squalling children for whom Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder was a shared badge of honour.

  ‘You’ll never be a grandfather.’

  John half smiled. For a moment he thought the Bastard had missed the train.

  ‘That old boy’s got furry ears,’ commented the Jester.

  They were all here.

  ‘He’s probably a dirty hobbit. He’ll be a werewolf before Durham.’

  ‘‘It’s a complaint associated with an overactive thyroid,’ suggested the Academic.

  ‘Or wanking in your youth,’ said the Jester, ‘look at his palms.’

  ‘A total myth,’ said the Academic.

  Granddad looked blankly at the man opposite him.

  Reluctant to wake the miller, Cornelius and Balthasar eased themselves down the ladder and stretched in the half-light. Balthasar strode towards the sleeping dogs curled round one of the pillars supporting the mill. The hounds shook off the husks sticking to their coats and sniffed at the damp breeches of their masters. The miller had directed them to the frozen river which would take them close to the regional courthouse and prison where they hoped to find Johannes.

  A fresh smattering of snow prevented them from sliding on the ice which they knew, despite creaking under their weight like the timbers of a man-of-war, was as thick as a human thigh.

  ‘He never finished his tale.’

  ‘What?’ asked Balthasar, whose thoughts were leagues

  away.

  ‘His story, the miller. What happened on his journey home? Did he smuggle the tracts into the country? Was he caught?’ Cornelius kicked a small branch lying on the ice then watched it skid and spin its way over the frozen surface.

  ‘Well, who knows? It’s the same for all of us if you think about it. We never live to see how our story ends … few stories end happily anyway.’ (As Narrator I could not possibly comment.)

  ‘There will be a reckoning,’ said Cornelius. ‘The fires of vengeance will roast their hearts.’

  Balthasar thought of Johannes. What if they arrived too late to save him, or worse, before the process is complete? What if the grinning interrogators accepted the piece of wedding gold in exchange for his still living but half-broken body? How could they carry him home with crushed bones and stretched tissues? In his mind’s eye he saw them laying Johannes’ half-crucified body in front of a cold hearth.

  To distract themselves from their respective thoughts, the travellers paused briefly alongside a semi-submerged coracle frozen into the ice. The oars stuck out of it like arms pointing at the pink sky. A single boot thick with frost nestled incongruously in the prow. On the near bank several willow trees bowed obsequiously under the weight of snow like petrified petitioners. Balthasar blew on his threadbare mittens and stamped his feet.

  The train slowed on the approach to Morpeth giving John a clear view of the fluorescent graffiti that adorned a wooden fence. The purple and yellow tags and regally flourished initials spelt a secret message for John. KEEP THE FAITH – HE IS THERE – YOU WILL KNOW HIM BY HIS DEEDS.

  ‘Do you shave the top of your head, granddad?’ asked one of the ADHD kids.

  ‘He shines it with boot polish,’ confirmed his brother.

  As granddad had irritated the guard by failing to locate his rail pass, his impatient daughter rested her bosoms on the table and riffled though his pockets. She quickly sorted through a lifetime of passes, old warrants, identity cards and sundry envelopes before grumpily thrusting a small plastic folder at the guard.

  ‘I was made redundant on Tuesday,’ a passenger shared with the whole carriage through the medium of his mobile phone. ‘You’ve received my CV … Yes … Yes … I used to wear jeans and t-shirt on the shop floor so that’s not a problem …In fact I’m going to Leeds now for an interview. What’s your name? Ok, Roger, that’s great … ’

  ‘And you thought you were mad,’ exclaimed the Jester. John looked at a woman standing further down the carriage in bridal headdress surrounded by her hen party acolytes.

  ‘She’s got the wrong aisle. At least she chose Virgin Trains. All train guards can marry folk you know. But the vows are only valid for the duration of the journey. You can always get off at Haymarket, know what I mean?’

  The women shrieked as the inflatable male doll her friends had stowed in the overhead luggage rack idly dangled a leg.

  ‘Remember your wedding, John?’ chipped in the Bastard. ‘You left a spare seat at the top table for your brother. Even then you were obsessed. Everyone kept asking “Where’s Banquo?’’’

  The Jester pointed out that a small light was flashing in the woman’s veil, so her husband could tell which way up she was in the dark but John had already resigned himself to the Bastard’s tirade.

  ‘It was like rentacrowd wasn’t it John? No living relatives, and no pals, just vague acquaintances from university days. And so much for your best man. He was the first to forsake you when you became mad, wasn’t he? Not a peep out of him ever again. Funny that, no one wanted to know did they? “Always been a bit odd,” they said. “Inevitable really. You could see the signs. He didn’t deserve her.”’

  John concentrated on the canal through the window, staring at the green water and the faded bricks in the arch of the bridge. He was powerless.

  ‘And what a wedding night. Too drunk to perform. Sick in the bed too, if I remember. The hotel charged you for cleaning the duvet.’

  John knew the only way to still the Voice was to give it what it wanted. If he just embraced his essential worthlessness and consummate failure … (An ironically apt phrase, said the Bastard) … then he would be left alone.

  Even granddad noticed that the man opposite seemed to be weeping.

  Johannes looked up as the priest stood in the doorway flanked by henchmen wearing masks. He disdainfully picked his way over the fetid straw and crossed himself with two podgy fingers. The father and son shrank against the wall; the pastor too instinctively moved backwards.

  ‘In nomine patri et fili spiritu sancte. You have placed yourselves beyond the pale of Christ’s salvation. Your putrefying vileness will drip down the hot walls of hell. Your deaths will be slow and protracted so that in full consciousness of your own turpitude and spiritual decay you can contemplate your imminent lingering death on the scaffold, the rack and the wheel. Your flesh will be ignored by the carrion; your putrid organs will rot and your scattered bones will turn to foul smelling dust. Amen.’ The priest yawned. Sometimes religion and death were so boring.

  It was not the imminence of his own death that disturbed Johannes, rather the knowledge that he would slip into that dark night without ever seeing Michel, without ever seeing his son alive again or, indeed, knowing what his fate had been. He looked at the sneering cleric whose fingers were hovering round his nostrils to protect them from the smell of the dispossessed, and walked purposefully towards him. The henchmen moved to restrain him and each seized one of his arms but not before Johannes’ face was within inches of the priest’s. The startled cleric was trapped in a protracted moment between disbelief and fear. He saw something in the older man’s eyes and shrank backwards. ‘You first, Anabaptist!’ he shrieked. The
guards bustled Johannes through the door that opened onto the plain of Golgotha.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Newcastle station was busy and, for a moment, the echoing announcements drowned out the Voices. He accidently knocked against a woman who turned and swore at him. The vacuum thump of a newly arrived train startled him as he felt himself being flattened up against a billboard extolling the benefits of the Halifax Building Society.

  He entered the Centurion Bar but, despite ducking and diving between various punters lined up at the bar, failed to get served. Increasingly agitated he pushed his way into a gap that instantly closed with the consequence that he spilled the drinks of two men jealously guarding their easy access to the next pint. One of them sprang from his stool as if scalded, brushed the beer from his jacket and turned towards John. The barman noticed and without any hint of ambiguity indicated the door towards which John was propelled.

  He showed Paul’s card to the taxi driver. ‘You’re five years too late, mate, they demolished that street years ago. It’s a supermarket now.’

  Johannes stared at the killing field that lay before him. Fires burning at regular intervals were being fed with the clothes and possessions of the dead by bored troops who stirred the embers with staves. A black figure on horseback supervised proceedings, chiding or encouraging as he deemed necessary. A servant wrote in a large tally book at his side with an oversized quill. Someone had to record last minute confessions and retractions, not to mention the curses and imprecations that would be punished with an even more painful death. He crossed out the last entry and wrote over it muttering beneath his breath, ‘So much work, so little time.’

  A red semmit was refusing to burn and Johannes couldn’t stop himself wondering which material was proving so resistant to the flames. The Antwerp merchants would certainly be interested if they could produce a batch. In the foreground a body was being taken down from a gibbet, its limbs still pliable, its arms draping themselves round the shoulders of its rescuer as if in gratitude, its eyes open. The soldiers instinctively riffled though the pockets of the corpse before loading it on the already overburdened cart. The nag in its yoke seemed unnaturally small, withered and diminished by its human load. Johannes looked away.

  ‘Not this again.’

  Quiet!

  A single magpie perched on the crossbeam of the scaffold, its head jerking as if it was interested in the proceedings. One for sorrow, thought Johannes. The two soldiers holding his arms handed him over to an adjutant whose job it was to bind prisoners’ hands behind their backs as part of the efficient progress to execution and oblivion. He had prepared well for his duties; several equally sized pieces of hempen rope lay side by side on his table, improvised from provision boxes on which Spanish writing was legible. As the ropes cut into his wrists Johannes looked at the watery sky. Was Michel looking at the same clouds thinking about his father?

  ‘My son, my son.’

  ‘Save your prayers,’ said the ropeman. ‘No one’s listening. There’s no place for Christ here, but you can see Lucifer if you look hard enough. That might just be him over there, that old fellow licking his lips and rubbing his hands. No wonder, a good haul today and no mistake.’ He gave a final tug on the cords and patted Johannes as if acknowledging another job well done.

  The magpie took flight in slow motion into the smoke. As he followed its flight, Johannes saw on the far horizon the grave diggers, their ritual movements of raised and plunging spades resembling one of the new pumping engines powered by human treadmills installed near his village.

  On the return journey the Voices chattered and boomed in his head. The carriage was full of them. He thought he could see them standing on the seats ahead, craning to locate him. The Bastard was manoeuvring the drinks trolley down the aisle. ‘Have a drink, John, celebrate another glorious, ignominious failure. I can only offer you a can of Strongbow or Carling Special. Nothing else left I’m afraid. I’ve got a tikka masala sandwich if you want. Demolished five years ago, would you believe it. Perhaps Andy died there, John, have you thought of that? He’s probably under the foundations of that supermarket. They’ll find his skeleton sometime in the next century. An archaeological dig will speculate over the identity of the desiccated pile of bones wrapped round a fading picture of you. Like that Richard III they found in a car park. Sure you don’t want the sandwich?’

  ‘I must say,’ said the Academic, ‘this is all very interesting. You realise the figure dressed in black was probably the Duke of Alba appointed by Philip II to oversee the persecution of the Calvins and Anabaptists?’

  ‘Not to worry,’ said the Tempter, ‘one of Paul’s cards will come up trumps, next time.’

  ‘The detail of the magpie is equally fascinating. Bruegel used the bird as a symbol of his own paranoia.’

  ‘Did you hear the one about the magpie that went into a pub and asked for a pint of black and tan?’

  The Voices shouted louder to make themselves heard over the train tannoy. WILL PASSENGERS LEAVING THE TRAIN AT DUNBAR REMEMBER TO LOOK ROUND FOR ANY PERSONAL POSSESSIONS THEY MAY HAVE LEFT. THE LORD HIGH EXECUTIONER IS MAKING HIS WAY DOWN THE CARRIAGE PREPARE TO DIE.

  ‘Are you losing it, John? Is it a real crisis this time?’

  THANK YOU FOR AGREEING TO TRAVEL WITH VIRGIN TRAINS ON YOUR LAST JOURNEY EVER BEFORE YOU ARE ANNIHILATED BY THE FORCES OF RETRIBUTION.

  ‘This is it, John, here you go!’

  ‘Ah, delusions of reference as first identified by Dijkman in his monogram Ten Types of Psychotic Disorder published by Yale University Press in 1938. A seminal work.’

  ‘Brace yourself, John, here he comes!’

  ‘Don’t worry, John, things will work out, your brother might be in the next carriage.’

  ‘Christ, John, here he is!’

  The figure on the black horse burst through the door at the end of the carriage. Flames shot through the visor eyeholes. Decapitated heads hung by their sinews from the saddle. Balthasar was there, Beverley, Paul, Antonia. The stench of death filled the carriage. With a blood harrowing cry Alba forced his horse into the space occupied by John’s body. Horseflesh, breath and saliva. John’s trousers were soaked in an instant as his bladder emptied.

  Aided by the passengers not rendered immobile by shock, the train guard finally extricated himself from John’s grasp and reached for his mobile phone. Within moments the buffet car staff arrived to restrain John, already beyond further struggle as he prepared himself for his inevitable death at the hands of the Spanish commander.

  The Bastard smirked as the police who had been waiting for the train in Waverley station snapped the handcuffs on each wrist and led him away.

  TWENTY-THREE

  They soon caught up with the tiny figure tugging a sledge loaded with twigs and branches. It was not apparent whether it was a child or an age-shrunken adult. ‘Is the courthouse near?’ asked Balthasar, while the dogs sniffed at the haul of wood. The old woman, for such it was, stared straight ahead and muttered something that seemed to have no connection with Balthasar’s question. After dismissing her invisible inner gossips with a few well-chosen words she turned her face towards Balthasar, who saw that she was blind. The angle of her head made her resemble a caged bird craning towards a source of food. He dug into his tunic and took out a small quince, given to him by one of the wedding guests, which he pressed into the woman’s hand. She stood stock still, fingering the fruit through the worn fingers of her mittens and looked up completely puzzled. ‘God’s peace, woman,’ he said.

  The increasing frequency of frozen buttresses of water hanging from the riverbank suggested the likely approach of a village or town. A half-built wooden pump had fallen into one of the frozen channels. As if demonstrating its superior strength, a scarecrow maintained its outstretched arms while straining under thick, perfectly symmetrical muscles of snow.

  ‘Do you think the problem is with the heddles?’ asked Cornelius.

  ‘What?’ asked Balthasar, trying hard to catch up
despite not having been party to the previous stages in his friend’s inner discourse.

  ‘If the ridges could be bevelled then the rate of flow would increase without snagging.’

  ‘Surely the warp threads would build up at the point.’

  ‘True,’ conceded Cornelius.

  Both men were now concentrating on a low blanket of dark smoke sitting just above the horizon to their right.

  ‘Not long now,’ said Balthasar.

  John stood between the two policemen at the reception desk of the Royal Edinburgh Hospital.

  ‘Answers to the name of John,’ said the taller of the two. ‘I think he lives in a hostel in Leith. We’ve met him before. Creating a commotion on the London train. Risk to himself and others, as the manual says, so he’s all yours.’ A cursory nod to the nurse and they turned and left. At least he hadn’t damaged the car, nor had he been sick, nor had he wanted to talk shite at them. Could have been worse.

  ‘Do you know where you are, John?’ the nurse asked with the patronising tones of an infant teacher consoling a small child who had got lost on the way back from the toilet and arrived in tears in the wrong classroom. John nodded.

  ‘It’s John McPake isn’t it; you’ve been here before, haven’t you? I’m Mary MacDonald, do you remember me, John? Is there anyone you would like us to contact? Wife, sister, brother?’ John flinched. ‘You’ve got an Advanced Statement haven’t you, John? We’ll look it out once the doctor has spoken to you. All right? Do you want a cup of tea? You wait in here,’ she said, guiding her new charge into a smaller room with windows on all sides so that he could be observed more easily.

  ‘Home sweet home,’ said the Bastard. ‘Not much of a reception party though. They might have managed some bunting, the odd banner, don’t you think? Welcome home, John, to the house of the truly, irredeemably mad.’