Journey to the Isles of Atlantis and Other Fanciful Excursions

by Brian Stableford

  “Making watches?” said Lorenz.

  Hyrcanus shrugged his shoulders. “Watches!” he said. “Clocks! Thousands of men can do that. I want to make something unusual, unknown, impossible. But I need eagle feathers.”

  “You won’t lack them. Oh, I forgot! Show me how to wind my watch.”

  Hyrcanus gave him a pretty key, a niello-inlaid silver chain, like the watch, and, smiling at his joy, happy himself in expectation, shook Lorenz’s hand and sent the apprentice to tell Gnomo to come and carry his master to the main square.

  III. At the Schloss von Ittenbach

  The same day, Lorenz, having played dice again before dinner, won a small sum, which permitted him to pay the landlord. Determined not to risk the few florins he had left, he gave the order to saddle his horse, and, without listening to the pleas of his friends, who wanted to take him to see a cock fight, after which there would be dancing in the square, Lorenz departed, walking his horse rapidly as long as he was in the crowded town. He crossed the triple enclosure of the fortifications, completed in accordance with the plans of Albrecht Dürer, passing under the sonorous vaults and over the drawbridges, and, once he was in open country, urged his mount to a gallop.

  Blum knew full well that he was returning home, so he ran like the wind across the fertile plain, where the hasty waves of the Peignitz caused numerous mills to turn. But the terrain rose up and the road became rocky, furrowed by little streams that flowed down the mountains; Blum was eventually obliged to slow down.

  Then, letting the reins hang loose, and trusting in Blum’s sagacity to avoid the obstacles he encountered, Lorenz gazed at the vast landscape while he rode. Cultivated fields became rarer at the sides of the road. Heather, increasingly numerous clumps of bushes, and widely-spaced thatched cottages offered a less cheerful aspect than the plans of Nuremberg, but the keen mountain air, the penetrating perfume of fir woods and the spreading horizon charmed the young hunter, and above the peaks, whose first slopes he was climbing, above the cascades falling like silver ribbons along somber walls of sheer rock, his piercing eye distinguished moving black dots circling in the azure of the sky. They were eagles, soaring on high, staring at the sun or watching out for prey: eagles in indefatigable flight.

  Oh, Lorenz said to himself. Why am I not on those peaks, with my bow in my hand? But I will be tomorrow.

  After having traveled for four hours he finally arrived at Schloss von Ittenbach, situated on a crag, which advanced like a promontory above a lake in a valley full of pastureland. Without paying any heed to the herds of cattle that were the pride of his brother, Baron Georg von Ittenbach. Lorenz went up to the schloss, led his horse to the stable himself, and, after having made sure that it was being well cared for, went into the main hall, were Baroness Adelaide von Ittenbach was occupied in making supper for her children. She had a great deal to do, as had her two maidservants, to content that turbulent and capricious band, the eldest of whom was not yet ten years old. There were eight of them, four boys and four girls, blonde-haired, pink, joyful, charming and absolutely insupportable. At the sight of their uncle they uttered cries of joy, launched themselves from their seats, overturning plates and goblets, and the smallest of all, attached to the arms of his high chair, unable to follow the general movement, screeched like a peacock.

  “Have you bought me something from the Nuremberg Fair?”

  “Give, give!”

  “Me first!”

  “No, me!”

  Lorenz, putting on his authoritative voice, ordered them to sit down and shut up; otherwise, he said, he would not give them anything. Then, when the little troop was lined up again around the spoons, he took out of his pockets as many gingerbread men and painted wooden toys as there were children, and distributed them all, beginning with the smallest girl, her sisters, and then the boys. He gave a ribbon to each of the maidservants and a little ivory box to his sister-in-law; those gifts, although very slight in value, caused veritable transports of joy.

  An hour later, the children, having nibbled their gingerbread, were asleep, the little girls with their dolls in their arms, the little boys beside the debris of their toys, already broken, and, Baron Georg having come home, the reasonable people were having a tranquil supper.

  “I didn’t expect you today, brother,” said the Baroness. “The fair isn’t over. Isn’t it good this year?”

  “As usual, my sister, it’s quite brilliant, but having made my purchases I preferred returning home to exposing myself to the temptation of running up debts.”

  “What a marvel! You’re becoming reasonable, brother. I congratulate you. But what’s that pretty niello chain? I don’t recognize it?”

  “Look, my sister, isn’t it beautiful? And, taking it from around his neck, he put it down, with the watch, on the Baroness’s plate.

  “A watch!” she exclaimed. “Oh, how pretty it is! I’ve never seen one so small. Georg’s is twice the size.”

  “At least mine is good and solid,” said Georg, frowning, “and furthermore, it’s paid for. This is another one of your follies, Lorenz. That watch will cost you a year’s allowance, and how will you replace your clothes? I’m not in a position to add anything to your pension this year, as you know.”

  “Don’t worry, brother; my watch is paid for, or, at least, soon will be. I’ve struck a bargain to settle my account with the products of my hunting.”

  “That means that you’re going to massacre our hinds and our hares.”

  “No, brother, I shan’t kill a single one. It’s with birds of prey alone that I’m due to pay for my watch.”

  “Kill them all, then, if you can, but don’t break your neck. That’s a singular bargain, though. If it weren’t you who were saying it, I wouldn’t believe it.”

  “Nothing is more true, brother. Tomorrow, I shall enter into campaign against the eagles.”

  “Oh, so much the better,” said Baroness Adelaide. “Only yesterday they carried off a little white kid, one day old, and so pretty—so pretty that my little girls wept for it. I abandon the eagles to you, brother, with great heart. But how beautiful this watch is!”

  After supper, the Baroness brought her servants together to say prayers, and the signal for bedtime dispersed the company.

  IV. In flight

  Lorenz scarcely slept. He only did so to dream that he was flying and pursuing eagles in the region of the clouds. His bedroom, large and vaulted, was illuminated at sunrise, and as soon as white light, rapidly pink-tinted, appeared on the horizon in the gap between two wooded mountains, he got up, put on his hunting costume and good gaiters, and picked up the iron-tipped staff that aided him to climb rocks, his best bow and his sharpest arrows. He went downstairs quietly to the servants’ parlor, equipped himself with a few provisions, and, without waking anyone, went out through a postern to which he had a key.

  His favorite dog, shut in the kennel, scented him passing and growled, his nose under the gate, but Lorenz said to him: “Be quiet, Rapp. I’ll take you when I go hunting fur, not feather.”

  He soon reached the forest of firs, whose somber depths were beginning to be penetrated by the sun’s darts. He traversed it, reached the heather and the sterile rocks, lay in ambush in a fissure in a rock where he knew that eagles nested, and, silent and still, waited for them to pass.

  Soon, a sound of wings resonated in the calm air, and an eagle passed rapidly overhead. Lorenz fired, but his arrow was lost in space, and the disdainful eagle continued its flight.

  I’ll wait for it to come back, Lorenz said to himself, and he waited for long hours. He did not get bored. When his eyes, fatigued by exploring the sky, were lowered toward the ground, he perceived on a slope of the mountain, perched proudly on its pedestal of rocks, Drakenberg Castle. At that distance, the fortress seemed to be the size of a hand, and it required the eye of a hunter to make out its sparse casements, but Lorenz counted them easily, and only looked at one of them: the one in the western tower, on the stone balcony of whic
h, perched a hundred feet above the moat, Hilda von Nauemburg, the lady of his dreams, came to lean at an agreed hour every evening.

  At the same hour, except for the days when he was playing dice, watching cock fights or bear baiting, supping in company or allowing himself to be drawn away by the pleasure of hunting. Lorenz gazed at the sunset and the evening star, and renewed in his heart the oath he had made never to love anyone but the beautiful Hilda.

  Whether that charming individual was as inexact in her rendezvous with the stars as her young knight, I do not know, but she surely did not have as many good reasons for not thinking about it. A maid of honor of the aged Princess von Drakenberg, the most severe and most sedentary of women, Hilda had not crossed the enclosure of the castle for more than a year. Prince von Drakenberg, the son of the dowager princess, often absented herself, and when he was in the castle he did not bring any diversion with him. He had been the saddest man in Franconia since he had lost his third wife and the heir to his name, the only child that remained to him of his three marriages. The Duke of Bavaria wanted Prince von Drakenberg to remarry, but stupid legends ran around on his account. It was said that he had killed his three wives, and throughout Franconia and beyond, not one noble damsel had consented to marry him, in spite of his wealth and his reputation for bravery and loyalty.

  As for Hilda, a penniless orphan, she had been confided, when she emerged from the convent, to an old lady whose schloss was the rendezvous of all the nobility of the surrounding area, but, that noble and prudent lady having observed that Hilda liked amusing herself too much, and had chatted a great deal, while dancing, with the young Ritter von Ittenbach, who was also penniless and was reputed to be a crackbrain, had hastened to place Fraulein von Nauemburg with the venerable Princess von Drakenberg. There, Fraulein Hilda leaned to embroider in a hundred fashions, to hold herself upright and to keep quiet, to make reverences and cultivate patience, waiting for her proofs of nobility to be made in order to enter as a canoness into the Prague chapter.

  What is she doing now? Lorenz wondered. Oh, if I had the wings of an eagle, how I would fly to that balcony, how I would say to her: “Dear Hilda, don’t go into a convent. At any moment, I hope, war might break out; I’d enlist, and perform prodigies of valor; the Duke of Bavaria would give me a choice of domains in the countries I had conquered. I would throw himself at his feet to say to him: ‘My lord, I only want one very little grafschaft or markgrafschaft, but give me the white hand of Hilda von Nauemburg and deign to sign my marriage contract.’”

  Noon approached, and Lorenz perceived the eagle in the distance, in the aerial plains, returning back laden with booty. The hare that it was crying in its claws weighed down its flight. Lorenz took aim, the arrow departed, whistling, and the eagle, struck in the heart, released its bloody prey, spun, and came to fall, bleeding, a hundred feet away from the hunter, on a slope covered with heather.

  Triumphantly, Lorenz went down, and admired the gigantic dimensions of the bird. He cut off its wings and abandoned the rest to the crows. He returned to Ittenbach and made his preparations to return to Nuremberg the following day.

  V. Master Hyrcanus

  In order to attract the least possible attention from the clockmaker’s neighbors, Lorenz left his horse at the inn and, carrying the eagle’s wings carefully wrapped in his cloak, he went to the main square. It was the last day of the fair, and Master Hyrcanus, surrounded by customers, seemed to be very busy. Nevertheless, he shivered with pleasure on hearing Lorenz’s voice and seeing his joyful pink face appear above the crowded heads of his clients. Lorenz made him a sign of intelligence

  “This evening, Meinherr,” Hyrcanus said to him. “I can’t go home before nightfall, but please, come to supper with me.”

  “Agreed,” said Lorenz. “And my parcel?”

  “Give, give, I beg you!”

  And, extending his hand, he received the package, carefully wrapped in gray cloth and neatly tied up, which Lorenz handed him over the shoulders of two good burgers.

  Hyrcanus stowed it preciously in his large drawer and a housewife cried: “What’s in there that’s so beautiful?”

  “A deerskin that I’m going to have tanned in order to clean my clocks and watches,” said Hyrcanus. And he continued selling his watches and his gold and silver chains.

  In the meantime, Lorenz amused himself wandering around the fair. He recognized the Princess von Drakenberg’s steward, who was buying colored fabrics, and, approaching him, tried to engage him in conversation.

  “Has your princess quit mourning-dress, then?” he asked, saluting him.

  “Yes, Meinherr,” said the steward, removing his hat. “May it please God that it’s for a long time!”

  “Amen, with all my heart. Has the prince returned from the court?”

  “He’s expected soon, Meinherr.” Addressing the merchant, he added: “Come on, hurry up and send all that to my inn, the Golden Sun. I still have other purchases to make. You can present the bill whenever you like.”

  He drew away, and Lorenz saw him buying lace, gold braid and a host of other objects, of which he had a list in his hand.

  “Has Fraulein Hilda von Nauemburg given you commissions?” he asked the steward.

  “Certainly, Meinherr, certainly.”

  “Ah! Would you care to give her a little packet that someone desires to send her?”

  “Yes,” said he steward, winking. “Gladly, but I warn Meinherr that, following the custom established at Drakenberg, the packet in question would pass through the hands of the Princess.”

  “Thank you,” said Lorenz. “I’ll go fetch it.” And he drew away. But he did not come back, and wandered idly until the time for supper.

  Master Hyrcanus treated his guest even better than the first time, and showed himself so content with the beautiful eagle plumes that Lorenz could not help saying: “But after all, Master Hyrcanus, what are you going to do with those feathers?”

  “You’ll soon see, Meinherr. Go hunting again as soon as possible, I beg you. The next time you me, I’ll no longer have that accursed shop in the square to keep. I’ll receive you in the morning, and you can see my workshop. Tell me, then, how you killed that eagle.

  Like any hunter, Lorenz loved to narrate his exploits. As he spoke, Hyrcanus refilled his glass, and the attention he paid to the story excited the verve of the storyteller.

  “Can you swim?” the clockmaker asked him, suddenly.

  “Oh, yes,” said Lorenz. “At swimming, as at running, I know of no one who can surpass me.”

  “And you like running, climbing the highest peaks and the tallest trees. Why?”

  “Why? Well, for the pleasure of being able to see a long way, testing my strength and my skill, imagining that I can fly above the mountains, in the clouds in the sky. Almost every night, I dream that I have wings.”

  “Ah!” said Hyrcanus. “The dream of your nights is that of my entire life. Listen, Lorenz; since my childhood I’ve spend the entire year bent over a table fashioning gold, silver or precious stones, or next to a forge, always indoors. I’ve lived like that except for two years that I employed traveling around Germany in order to perfect my artistry, when long days were spent in journeys on foot. But in Sundays, as a child, I went up into the bell-tower and there, looking at the towns, the countryside and the immensity of the sky, I followed the flight of birds with an envious eye, and of all the riches that the earth offered to my eyes, and all the promises that religion makes us of heaven, I only desired one thing. Alas, I’ve desired and sought that treasure, and old age has arrived. I no longer even have legs to drag myself over the miserable earth, over the dust to which I shall soon return. But so long as my heart beats, so long as a glimmer of intelligence animates my brain, so long as my hand—the hand that is still the most skillful in Germany—can hold an implement, indicate a point and quiver on contact with an object, I shall pursue my goal, I shall strive, I shall seek...”

  “What?” asked Lorenz, moved b
y the passionate expression that animated the old man’s eyes.

  “Wings,” said Hyrcanus. “Wings.”

  VI. The Trial

  Spring had ended, summer was advancing, and Lorenz, who had taken his sixth eagle to the old clockmaker a long time ago, no longer heard any mention of him. Whether he was afraid of having talked too much, or because he was not in a position to satisfy his young friend’s curiosity, Hyrcanus had not kept his promise to show him his workshop.

  “I’ll show it to you later,” he said, “when I’ve finished a certain mechanism that will interest you.”

  Lorenz began to forget the clockmaker. There was talk of war, and, avid for news, he traveled the country and often came to Nuremberg.

  One day, when he had arranged to meet one if his friends, a recruiting captain, under the porch of Saint Lorenz, the friend did not arrive. A rainstorm followed, and Lorenz went into the church. It was very dark, because of the stained glass and the storm clouds, and a few frightened women were praying in the chapel of the Holy Virgin.

  After a brief prayer, Lorenz glanced at the clock by the light of a lightning-flash. It was about to chime. He drew closer, as he had done in his childhood, in order to see the wooden figurines emerged at the moment when the hour sounded. It chimed, but Saint Michael slaying the infernal dragon did not appear, the angels equipped with trumpets remained mute and Saint Peter’s cock did not crow. Only then did Lorenz perceive that inside the little perforated edifice that contained the clock, a light was shining, and the sound of a file could be heard.

  He approached, put his eye to one of the holes in the wood and saw Hyrcanus sitting inside, working by the light of a little lamp. He greeted him, and Hyrcanus, recognizing his voice, uttered an exclamation of joy.