Thomas Nashe’s 1594 novel The Unfortunate Traveller (Wikipedia, original text, modern-spelling text) is a strange and grisly piece of work, equal parts The Spanish Tragedy, Inglourious Basterds, and The Dying Earth. It follows Jack Wilton, an Englishman who is half scoundrel and half philosopher, on a picaresque journey through mid 16th-century Europe. (“I was at Pontius Pilate’s house, and pissed against it.”)
One passage in particular has stuck with me. Earlier in the novel, Jack and his companion Diamante encounter an Italian named Bartol and a Spaniard named Esdras, who have been raping, robbing, and murdering their way through Rome, taking advantage of an outbreak of plague to prey on rich, defenseless women. In their raid on the house where Jack is staying (with rape, robbery, and murder described in lurid detail), Bartol abducts Diamante. Esdras lusts after her, so he picks a fight with Bartol, mortally wounding him.
At the end of the novel, Jack and Diamante, reunited, come across an execution. The condemned man is Cutwolf, Bartol’s brother. In a long speech, Cutwolf explains that he that swore revenge on Esdras and spent twenty months chasing him across Italy, begging rather than break off the pursuit to go back for money.
Cutwolf finally locates and corners Esdras in Bologna, saying, “I have promised the devil thy soul within this hour; break my word I will not; in thy breast I intend to bury a bullet.” Esdras pleads for his life piteously and at great length. He offers Cutwolf riches, he asks Cutwolf only to maim him, and he finishes by imploring Cutwolf to consider his own soul’s fate:
Spare me, spare me, I beseech thee; by thy own soul’s salvation I desire thee, seek not my soul’s utter perdition; in destroying me, thou destroyest thyself and me.
Cutwolf is unmoved. “There is no heaven but revenge.”
Esdras tries again, offering to carry out whatever horrific and humilating demands Cutwolf makes of him:
Command me to cut all my kindred’s throats, to burn men, women and children in their beds in millions by firing their cities at midnight. Be it pope, emperor or Turk that displeaseth thee, he shall not breathe on the earth. For thy sake will I swear and forswear, renounce my baptism, and all the interest I have in any other sacrament. Only let me live how miserable soever, be it in a dungeon amongst toads, serpents and adders, or set up to the neck in dung. No pains I will refuse, howsoever prorogued, to have a little respite to purify my spirit; oh, hear me, hear me, & thou canst not be hardened against me.
At this, Cutwolf has an idea. Esdras, he says, must do three things to live:
First and foremost he should renounce God and his laws, and utterly disclaim the whole title or interest he had in any covenant of salvation. Next, he should curse him to his face, as Job was willed by his wife, and write an absolute firm obligation of his soul to the devil, without condition or exception. Thirdly and lastly (having done this), he should pray to God fervently never to have mercy upon him, or pardon him.
Esdras complies, blaspheming with such fervor that Cutwolf is amazed the earth doesn’t open up and swallow the two of them on the spot. And when Esdras is done, Cutwolf completes his plan:
These fearful ceremonies brought to an end, I bade him ope his mouth and gape wide. He did so (as what will not slaves do for fear?); therewith made I no more ado, but shot him full into the throat with my pistol; no more spake he after; so did I shoot him that he might never speak after or repent him. His body being dead looked as black as a toad; the devil presently branded it for his own.
And that is it. Cutwolf has had his revenge—not just on Esdras’s body, but on his soul.
I learned about The Unfortunate Traveler in college, in a course on Shakespeare. Hamlet’s reluctance to kill Claudius while he is praying echoes Cutwolf. As always with Shakespeare, you can have what may well be the source material right there in front of you (Hamlet probably dates to somewhere between 1599 and 1601) and still be amazed at how differently a line like “that his heels may kick at heaven” lands.
For some reason, I have been reminded of Esdras’s fate the last few days. Sometimes, it is good to think about what you are and are not willing to do when there is a man with a gun to your head.