Last Days (43 page)

‘Who was he?’

Pieter turned back to the table, looked at Kyle intently.

‘He is not the subject of your visit. Like you, he was a commentator. A recorder of things. The man we must speak of is Konrad Lorche. A German. From Cologne.’ Pieter studied the end of his cigarette, nodded, muttered to himself.

‘Lorche was a printer with big ideas who became a play-wright. But not successful. Then he was a travelling actor.

And it is said he was charismatic. Persuasive. A well-educated man. He even went to university. You see, his parents had some money, for a while. And like many opportunists, after the Reformation Lorche also declared himself a prophet of God. Claimed to be in receipt of divine insight. He attracted many disaffected people about him in Germany, then the Netherlands. Walloons, English protestants in exile, French Huguenots. He and his followers they moved around, you know. Set up in villages and small towns. Got chased away often. You see, they grew from the tradition of Taborites and Anabaptists. From the 1530s. You know of these?’

Kyle shook his head.

‘These groups, they governed themselves. They thought they were an elect. They looked with contempt upon all authority. Government. All faith, Lutheran or Catholic. They were radicals who denounced the State and Church. Mili-tant. Who answered only to God directly through their prophets, their leaders. Lorche even survived the siege of Munster. He learned from Prophet Matthys and John of 381

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Leyden there. Leaders of the Anabaptists who once took over a whole city. Made it their own. And Lorche, he transported their ideas. He copied them. And like the Anabaptists, Lorche was also persecuted. In Germany. In Switzerland. But he had total power over his followers. We don’t know how many.

We think maybe a few hundred.

‘And eventually, he moved his operation south to Utrecht, Ghent, even London before the reign of Queen Mary. But 1566 is the year in his life that we must concentrate on.

The Duke of Alba with ten thousand Spanish soldiers came into the Low Countries. On the orders of Philip II, King of the Spanish Netherlands. To suppress Protestant heretics.

It was called the Edict of Blood. And Lorche and his Blood Friends were hunted. Again. So they went to France, where the Huguenots, the French Protestants, had much power at that time. Lorche took his people, his Blood Friends, to this little place called St Mayenne in 1566. He declared that he would walk no further. That he and his people were The Last Gathering of Saints and they came there to build a New Jerusalem.

‘St Mayenne was a small town in farming land. This place you have seen. It had a wall around it, like Munster. That suited him. Not just to keep people out, but also inside. It also had a peasant population he hoped would be keen on his New Jerusalem. On his own brand of salvation. This town is no longer there. But he renamed it New Jerusalem in 1566.’

Pieter looked at Kyle sideways and acknowledged his unease with a tilt of his forehead. Observing that no one was eavesdropping, Pieter leaned back in his chair, waved a cigarette through the air. ‘You know this place as a farm. That came much later, in the 1830s. But once it was a whole town. I 382

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have been there too, many years ago, and I found bits of the original walls in the fields nearby.

‘But here, in 1566, Lorche had visions. Like he did in every place he had been. He ran through the street naked. He frothed at the mouth. He spoke for God. Great angels had come to him and spoken to him. They told him he was the messiah. And the peasants, they loved him. He convinced them, this actor. And then the usual thing happened. The Catholics were thrown out, as were the Protestants who didn’t rebaptize in Lorche’s faith. All the clergy too. Anyone who did not accept and obey the prophet was gone.

‘The church was ransacked. He took control of the town.

Total control. His followers had fought many sorties in the Low Countries, so they came here prepared for violence.’

Pieter paused and closed his eyes in concentration, then sighed as if with impatience at himself. ‘Lorche’s Blood Friends even outlawed private property here in the New Jerusalem. Ownership of any possession was forbidden. Even the ownership of food. The buying and selling of anything, no! Working for money, that too. Usury, lending. Like com-munists. All worldly possessions were to be controlled by a depository, like a bank. Overseen by the prophet, Lorche, through whom God spoke. He took everything for himself.

And next, all activities were communal. Sleeping, eating.

Doors on buildings were taken away. Spiritual teaching, guidance, all public life, was controlled by Lorche and his council of seven elders.’

Kyle started in his seat. Pieter peered at him intensely, but only with the one eye that rose above his spectacles. ‘You see, eh? The pattern forms already.’

Kyle swallowed the rest of the beer in his glass. Pieter 383

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looked at the table, frowned in concentration. ‘Lorche the Prophet. He slept for days and woke to announce new pro -

clamations from God that had come to him through his whispering angels. Then he went and spread the word in New Jerusalem. And at first, celibacy was the rule of his law. Of God’s law. Fornication a capital offence, punishable by death.

The New Jerusalem only had room for the purist disciples of his scriptures, his interpretation. The world had lost its way and was damned and Lorche was the saviour. Angels told him this. When there was a problem, or opposition to what he wanted, then the angels spoke. Some said they were devils, but those that did were not only banished, but executed too. It is a terrible place, but he called it paradise.

‘The first big trouble came because there were too many widows. Life had been hard. Their husbands had died in wars for sure. But mainly through banishments and executions ordered by the Prophet. So he introduced polygamy. Lorche himself, he took the three youngest and most beautiful girls in the town as brides. Lorche even had an accession. He crowned himself the King of Israel, with all the world as his dominion. He said he was the messiah as foretold in the Old Testament. He wore fabulous robes of purple. All the gold in the town was melted to make him rings, jewellery fit for God’s one king. His court of seven elders also had magnificent clothes. They went everywhere with him. He made up new holy days. There were festivals and parades. All had to bow. He never got tired of it. Soon he had fifteen wives. All were made queen. They had the best houses by the church.

They lived in luxury. The people of the town gave up all their clothes, their possessions and their food was rationed. The market square became his court. His soldiers protected him; 384

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they encircled the square. On his throne that he stole from the Bishop of the diocese, Lorche sat in the market square and he announced new laws from God. Gave out sentences too. He claimed he was the Emperor of the Black Forest, who would reign for one thousand years.

‘But was it through God his power came? And which God?

we must ask ourselves. And who were these angels as emis-sary to the chosen one? We do not know. But his followers believed him and that was enough. He proved it by pouring out his sin in serpents, from his mouth, you know. And by walking above the ground. By finding hidden gold, where people buried it. It is said he knew all the secrets of their hearts. That he controlled their souls. That he turned them into dogs should they displease him. To prove his power he made some of them see through his eyes. See through the eyes of God, he claimed. Others, he made them see through the eyes of dogs. The children, he claimed were to become true angels, to be saved from the sins of their fathers. He took them too and kept them in a barn in isolation. He smashed apart all families and marriages. The Church, they thought he was a witch. That he consorted with devils. Who can say? Who even thinks in these terms now?

‘In France, this was also the time of the Wars of Religion, and the House of Guise heard of Lorche and his vandalism, his heresy, his iconoclasm in St Mayenne. But it was only when Lorche killed the local Bishop that he signed his own death warrant. Then he became a priority for the Guise family. Lorche even had the Bishop beheaded in the market square to show the people that the Church had no power over them. He also fed the Bishop to a pig and then appointed the pig as the new Bishop. He claimed he put the Bishop’s 385

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soul inside the pig. Such was his power. It was called the Unholy Swine by the people in the town. They dressed it in robes and a hat. It even had a sceptre.

‘The House of Guise was, of course, outraged. And so a small army of fanatical Catholics was sent to St Mayenne.

And they were horrified with what they saw there. The people even starved now because Lorche ordered from his throne in the market square, with his pig-bishop beside him, that no one was to work. They were to wait for God, and to do nothing else . . . besides, of course, to listen to him. They even turned the church into a stable.’

Pieter sat back and sipped his drink, sighed. ‘What happened next, was inevitable.’ He took another cigarette from his case.

Burning eyes made Kyle realize he’d stopped blinking. The Grote Markt no longer seemed to be around him. He wondered again, and hoped, that this was all some elaborate practical joke of which he was the secretly filmed victim.

Pieter studied his face. ‘I can see that you do not laugh. This has your interest. Because you identify a beginning of something terrible that was to be repeated, as all terrible things are.’ He smiled. ‘Now, I think we can go and see
The Saints
of Filth
.’

‘Niclaes Verhulst, the painter, he survived the massacre. All the others who came down from the Low Countries with Lorche, they were slaughtered or they burned. Pope Pius V

in Rome give the order himself. He said the soldiers were to take St Mayenne off the map. Burn it. So the place went back to nature afterwards. Became farmland again. But the land was no good after the Blood Friends.’ Pieter paused 386

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before a vast wooden door in the deserted street he’d led Kyle to.

As Pieter talked, they had walked south from the Grote Markt to a tall, thin building with a pointed red-tiled roof in St Andries. It was unmarked and appeared empty. The huge door was set between a gallery that featured in its win -

dow a few sculptures made from wire and on the other side was a shop selling maritime antiques. Neither seemed to be open. The narrow lane was still, silent, chilled by shadow in the gully formed by the steep-faced buildings on either side, and shielded from the sounds of traffic by the high facades.

‘At the moment, the family keep
The Saints of Filth
in here.

But it often moves.’ Pieter placed both hands upon the ancient iron door handles. He smiled at Kyle. ‘But not by itself.’

Kyle followed his guide into a narrow reception with plain white walls. It was an innocuous space; clean, lit with dawn-light simulator bulbs. A smell of incense dominated. Opposite the door, a thin staircase with a black iron handrail began an ascent.

Once inside, Kyle felt peculiar; dizzy, unwell now they had left the big sky and the thoroughfare of the Old Town. His stomach popped and fizzed. He tried to put it down to lack of sleep, then accepted his guts jangled at the expectation of seeing something he was sure would not be good for him.

‘And now, I am afraid, I must search you.’ Pieter said without a trace of humour.

‘Sorry?’

‘The family insist. Cameras are very small these days.

Please do not take offence.’

‘Who are these people?’

Pieter put his index finger against his lips. ‘Guardians.

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Their ownership is, shall we say, reluctant. But necessary.

Even if you come back here, the paintings would be gone.

And it’s not good to look for too long. Many people who have done, they never have a good end. They go mad. When the family realized this many years ago, they took measures.’

He looked Kyle in the eye. ‘May I?’

Kyle couldn’t disguise feeling insulted. ‘Go ahead.’

Pieter inspected the lapel of Kyle’s leather jacket, his collars, belt buckle. Crouched down and studied his boots.

‘Your bag, leave it here.’ Kyle slid it off his shoulder and dropped it.

Pieter smiled when he was satisfied. ‘Good. Now I think we can go up.’

They passed two floors of closed doors, two per floor. Went up through the intense light of the stairwell to the small landing of the top floor, which no more than two people could stand on together. Pieter entered a code into a metal panel in the door of the street-facing room. Looked over his shoulder at Kyle, nodded, and then entered the room.

Steel blinds covered the windows. White paint softened the walls and ceiling about an unfurnished room, its floor plain wooden boards. A quartet of aluminium stands in each corner of the room held clusters of powerful dawn-light simulators. Wires trailed from them to a multi-plug board. A concentration of their luminance upwards prevented a direct focus of the lights on the three wooden stands, upon which three large paintings were mounted. Each painting was cover -

ed with a black cloth. Behind the easels were three black cases, open to reveal protective velvety interiors.

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Pieter smiled. ‘Come.’ Under their feet the floorboards groaned. ‘Here.’ He stopped Kyle about five feet from the stands. Positioned himself between Kyle and the stands.

Checked his watch. ‘Look at the painting on the left. Do not look to your right until we are ready. I’ll tell you when.’

Kyle nodded. The paintings were unveiled.

Pieter turned, then moved and stood beside Kyle and faced the triptych.
‘The Saints of Filth
.
’

Kyle’s eyes refused to stop flicking across all three paintings. Each canvas was at least four feet across, as many high, and all dark as if sooty. Within the shadowy smears the only details he took away were those of intense red fire in the first two frames, like occasional flashes. The tone of the last picture was much lighter, the colour of smoke.