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The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte: pages 190- 194

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 8, 2026| Leave a Comment »

The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte by Paul Busson and translated by Joe E Bandel

Somebody came, put me in a cradle and sang to me, so
that I could fall asleep.
But I was awake again in a moment. Lying in the bed
with the angel heads, I saw in the first morning light the
candles, the light rectangles of the windows, I wanted to move,
but my limbs were too heavy.
“You have a fever!” said a dull voice.
Next to me, in a patched robe, sat the magister stirring
something in a glass.
“I happened to see you in the meadow outside doing
strange leaps, Baron,” said Hemmetschnur. “Johann and I ran
out there and with great difficulty put you to bed. That is all I
know. If I had not still been up the entire night over the cursed
wood bills who knows whether we would not have picked you
up frozen to death in the cold dew.”
He held the glass to my lips, and I drank.
“Am I sick then?” I asked.
A great weakness was in me.
“It seems so,” he returned. “I knew how it would turn out
if one had to lie in this room at night, and especially on the last
of April, at Walpurgis. The master of the hound is already up
and asks vehemently what the noise in the break of day was all
about. I must tell him; otherwise all hell will break loose. Get
some sleep and next time keep your hands off things that are
not fun to play with!”
And he pointed with his finger at the blue pot that lay
shattered on the floor.
His face seemed to me to be as morose and off color as
the nasty day that was slowly creeping up. I closed my eyes
and called inside with all my might for the Ewli, who did not
want to appear to me.
I had indeed become seriously ill and lay weak and faint
in the four-poster bed, whose bruised angel heads made faces at
me when the fever heat rose.
The magister took good care of me, and the master of the
hound appeared once, with his foot still wrapped, sat next to
me for a while and again told me a stunt that he and my father
had performed at the duke’s court, by putting a large water frog
into the night gown of a distinguished lady.
In the evening between eleven and half past eleven I
heard his loud singing. I distinguished the manner of a hunter’s
song:
“A little fox I want to catch,
Red as my beloved’s hair.”
This song made me weep in my weakness, and I thought
with new, hot tears of my Zephyrine in the rose bushes, as she
had said, “I carry under my heart a little vixen of the female
sex,” and how horribly it had turned out.
And yet it had been so long ago that I was allowed to
believe that the pain in my chest had cried itself to death.
My eyes became wet around Aglaja, too, and I saw her
again with the glittering crown of the dead in the flickering of
the candles.
What purpose had my unhappy, miserable life served? To
whom had it been of any use? Passions, all the garbage of sins,
and wicked ghosts were its contents, and now the path
descended gently toward the end. Oh, how I resented myself so
deeply when I looked back at the lost years! Hardworking
farmers plowed their meager field in trickling sweat, craftsmen
worked their hands without rest for the sake of their daily bread,
doctors sat at the beds of the sick, full of care and heavy with
knowledge, scholars researched and pondered with
extinguished lamps, musicians delighted with the sweet playing
of the human heart. And me? Here I lay, a diseased trunk that
bore neither leaves nor blossoms and was devoid of any fruit of
life. Hans Dampf himself had not staggered more uselessly
through existence than I had. But suffering, suffering had been
heaped upon me to the fullest extent, and now I felt more than
pain. For within me was the terrible feeling of purposelessness
and the ripeness of decay.
“Everything served your purification,” said a soft and
mild voice in a language that was completely foreign to me.
Yet I understood it, as if it were my own.
Beside my bed, in the twilight, stood, enclosed in a very
fine, clear bluish light of its own, Ewli.
It was him. Under the black turban between the arches of
the brows was the red horizontal mark; the eyes shone like
black fires, in which the noble, brownish face was without
wrinkles. Around the neck and on the chest were yellow amber
beads on the reddish-brown cloth of the robe.
“Who are you -?” I asked.
My voice was toneless, like the voices one hears in a
dream.
“I am here,” it wafted toward me.
Around the red lips, which crowned a small black beard,
went a mild, understanding smile, which was like a soft caress
for me.
“At last you have come -” I whispered.
“I have come.”
“Is this your true form?” I asked.
“It is the shape you gave me.”
“I gave you?”
“You chose this shape.”
I suddenly saw myself as a child, immersed in adoring in
front of the glass lintel, under which stood the small image of
the one who now appeared to me, as he had so often before. I
feared very much that he would slip away this time too, but
Ewli, as if he had guessed my fear, smiled softly and said, “You
are close to me.”
Then it was as if I saw, over his shoulder, a distorted,
mischievous face with yellow, piercing eyes, and I cried out,
“Another is also close to me!”
“He is everywhere,” answered Ewli. “He always walked
beside you and beside me.”
“Fangerle -” I groaned.
“To name is to call,” the voice continued. “Give him no
name, and he is no more.”
The sickeningly grinning face behind him disappeared
into the half-light, and was no more. A golden gleam entered
the eyes which looked at me benignly, like a reflection of
immeasurable glory.
“You have walked so deeply through hardship and
torment, that he has no more power over you. You are near the
goal, brother.”
“Help me!” I moaned. “I am so weak -.”
“You are tired from the long way and still have more to
walk. Only you alone can help you, for I am you,” he said.
“I don’t understand you -“
I lifted my aching head.
“What then is the goal?”
“Eternal life,” he said, and in that moment, the gloomy
chamber became so dazzlingly bright, that I closed my eyes.
When I opened them again and feared to look into the
void, I saw, to my indescribable consolation, that Ewli was still
with me.
“I am Isa Bektschi, Isa the guardian,” I heard him say.
“So you watch over me?”
“Always over you.”
“And where is my path going, Isa Bektschi?”
With a trembling heart, I looked at him.
“To the rebirth,” he replied, and over his unspeakably
beautiful face, once more shone a bright radiance.
“But death-“
“The immortal returns to God,” It sounded solemnly.
“Every man’s immortal?” I asked, reaching out to him.
“Every human being.”
“So everyone is reborn, Ewli?” Sweet hope descended
upon me.
“Twofold is the way of rebirth according to the law,” he
spoke, and his voice was deep like the sound of bells.
“Unconscious and conscious.”
Fear seized me at this word.
“And I -?” I groaned out. “Help me, Brother!”
“Only you can.”
Agonizing effort was in me, the ardent desire to
understand.
I wanted to stand up, to ask, to plead – but I could not. I
looked at him imploringly, praying in mute fear that he would
stay. But he spoke quietly and insistently, and from his gaze
poured a bright glow into my soul.
“Take note! A powerful ruler and wise man once had a
villain put to death, and there was a voice in him that no human
being should end another man’s life prematurely. When now
the condemned knelt on the blood leather to receive the fatal
stroke he looked at the ruler with a look in which there was so
much fervent hatred that the wise ruler was frightened. Then
the ruler said:
“If you desist from evil, I will give you life.”
Then the evildoer laughed and cried out, “You only dare
not let me be killed, for you fear the revenge that my departed
spirit will take on you.”
The ruler looked at him and said:
“As little as your head, separated from your body can
move towards me and pronounce the word revenge, that is how
little I fear revenge from you!”
The condemned man laughed and shouted.
“Executioner, do your duty!”
The sword fell down, and to the horror of those present,
the head of the slain man rolled towards the ruler, stood in front
of him on the cut neck and formed with the lips, clearly
recognizable, the word “Revenge!”, while the gaze took on a
horrible rigidity due to the extreme effort and willpower. The
faithful saw it in great fear. Then the wise man spoke:
“Fear nothing! I may have done wrong in having this
man killed, yet I have protected myself from his anger. For, see,
he had to use all his willpower at the moment of death in order
to carry out what I had told him. And thereby no power has
remained for his later evil intentions. His will has been
consumed in a useless effort, and when he returns, he will be
without consciousness of what has happened to him. If only he
had thought of how to retain consciousness beyond death, he
would have become an Ewli, one who returns. But no evil one
can become an Ewli!”

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The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte: pages 185- 189

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 7, 2026| Leave a Comment »

The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte by Paul Busson and translated by Joe E Bandel

“Hell! Hell!” groaned Hmmetschnur and ran his hands
through his wild hair. “If only I could get away from here!”
I said good night to him and went to my room.
By the light of the burning candle, I searched for the lady
of hell’s little pot and cut with the knife around the rock-hard,
dried-up bladder. Inside was a crisscrossed, cracked greenish-
brown substance. This may have been an ointment, but the
excessively long time had made it firm and brittle. I thought
that perhaps the candle flames might warm it up enough for it
to take on more or less its old consistency, and so I held the
blue jar over my candlestick. The melting stuff stank
disgustingly of old fat and pungent herbs, but I gradually
managed to soften the sediment, so that I could investigate the
ointment and test its magical nature.
In the glow of my five wax candles I saw again the gray
eyes of the Lady of Weinschrötter, who appeared to smile in
amusement at my cheeky beginning.
“Shall I not?” I addressed the painting. But neither an
answer nor a sign came from the now lifeless painting, which
yesterday had greeted me with a now vanished resemblance
that had frightened me to my very soul.
Was it the heat of the candles or the vaporous fat and
poisonous herbs that made me behave in this way: a flying heat,
which I had already felt in the afternoon during the walk, came
over me, and when I undressed, I felt how leaden my limbs
were. My blood pulsed in rapid throbbing as if a fever were
near.
Nevertheless, I remained stubbornly determined or
forced by something to stick to my plan to try the ointment. I
took off my shirt, spread the stuff on my chest, belly, hands,
feet and forehead, as I had learned from the horror stories, that
old Margaret had told me in childhood, and still remembered
the witch’s spell:
“Out the top and nowhere on!” laughed at myself for my
silliness, blew out the candles, and lay down in the creaking
four-poster bed.
The blood rang in my ears, a tingling sensation ran
through my limbs. I saw the half moon in the window, which I
had forgotten to close.
And then I slowly sat up in bed, slipped out from under
the low canopy and floated between the ceiling and the floor,
without me finding this strange. I had often flown like this in
my dreams, with casual movements of the arms or some
footsteps to steer the flight. But I now saw myself lying in bed,
illuminated by the blue moonlight. Open-mouthed with two
sharp wrinkles in my face, that went from my nostrils to my
chin as the result of some evil experience. I saw the
extinguished candles with the long scrolls, the bare cleaning
scissors, and my robe on an upholstered chair, the open hair
bag. I was amazed at nothing, nor was I startled when Lady
Heva Weinschrötte- cautiously climbed out of the picture frame
and floated out through the open window. I kicked the air with
a feeling of well-being, like a swimmer treads the water that
carries him. All of them followed after Heva. An old Jew with a
caftan, another one, whose white, scabby skull peered out of
the raised trapdoor, a hunchbacked woman with a snuffy nose
and eternally smacking mouth, and with a black tomcat that sat
on the hump and a white, lame little dog that was running after
her, another ugly, goggle-eyed woman, who sneaked to my bed,
hissed at the resting body and with crooked fingers reached for
the little pot to quickly lubricate her yellow, wrinkled skin. And
then in infinite well-being I turned to the open window and
flew in an instant over the bent and wind-shredded poplars, full
of joy at the regained skill of flying.
At will, I ascended with a very light hand and foot
stirring up and down, shooting light as a feather upwards or
slowly downwards, turned immediately, let the air carry me
horizontally or sank like a rock, just as I liked. Nevertheless, it
continued like that without me being frightened, and I drifted
like a flying feather before the wind. Even if I remained
motionless, I saw beneath me tree tops, reflecting water,
meadow surfaces and lonely little houses gliding past. But this
did not worry me at all; rather I surrendered with full pleasure
to the bliss, liberated from the weight of the body and floated
through the silvery moon light like a cloud. Also I made no
steering movements any more, but gave myself completely to
such bliss of an earth-liberated state.
Then, however, I saw closer and more distant figures in
the milky air, on the same path as me, gently drifting and
hovering like old wives’ summer. Young women with white
and golden brown limbs, with loose hair and willingly naked,
their eyes closed as if in sleep, their arms spread out; but in
between also bony and shapeless hags, then again fat ones with
sagging and flabby fullness, scrawny old women, disgustingly
hairy and coarse male figures, slim-limbed girls with weakly
curved breasts, beautiful boys and skinny, miserable bodies of
gaunt old men. However, as soon as I made an effort to focus
more sharply on a face, it became a vague round egg of
whirling mist and dissolved. But even that did not put me in
fear or astonishment. Rather, everything had long been familiar
and quite right, as if I had experienced and seen this many
times. And effortlessly, I was blown, through the will-less,
delicious detachment of my own limbs and the lightness of my
body, by the air between clouds, moon, stars which drew me
toward the friendly tugging of the earth deep below.
I sank. The figures gathered more densely around me.
I went down into the depths, gently sinking. A pale glow
dazzled. Lights bounced beneath me, bluish and yellow lights.
Faces with slanting eyes and flaring scoops of fire. And there
was fire everywhere.
Between bushes and grass there was a swarming and
jumping, a twisting and turning of innumerable figures that
surrounded me. Some squatted in rigid clusters around red-
yellow brushwood flames, murmuring in swelling, nasal song
from books, keeping the beat with their hands. A brown boy
with pointed ears, handsome and cheeky, round-hipped like a
woman, was chasing a black, bearded shaggy goat with wild
heel kicks through the midst of couples, who were twisting in
spasmodic entwinement as they rolled in the leaves. Gray
wolves whose dark sweat dripped from their muzzles crept
with glowing red eyes between beautiful, naked women. A
crippled man without legs pushed with agile monkey arms the
rest of his body through the tumult in a wheelchair and looked
out of long distended eyes like those of a crab. One, whose skin
stretched like parchment over the fleshless bones, blew
squawking on a hollow leg bone, while glow worms crawled
around in his eye sockets. A dwarf’s body consisted of a
bagpipe, and the purring and humming pipes protruded from
the back of his trousers, while the trunk-mouth blew into the air
tube and the twisted fingers of his hands wandered over the
indecent flutes. A row of gray-toothed women with dangling
tits danced hand in hand in circles around these musicians.
“Are you here too? Hussah!” There was a bellow next to
me, and when I looked, Montanus had just passed by, and his
belly was hanging red like glowing iron from the inflated
trousers. More and more new dance groups formed. I saw legs
from which the skin was hanging in shreds and laughing
mouths, out of which white and yellow worms crawled.
Dissolute children with disgustingly twisted eyes were writhing
in the arms of hermaphrodite creatures, women cried out
ruthlessly and dragged giggling, skinny boys to their steaming
wombs, from goat udders fat milk ran into the toothless mouths
of old men. One with broken, buckling limbs led another, who,
leaden-grey faced, had a rope around his neck and displaying a
monstrous manhood stumbled forward to a black-haired
woman who was shrieking and twitching and rolling. Flames
danced and shot pointedly out of the earth, and from out of a
bush in front of me rose the deathly sad, pale face of the
Bavarian Haymon with the crushed red nose, and his mouth
whispered:
“Take some advice and see that you will come again,
Mahomet!”
There arose a tremendous shouting, whooping and wild
singing. They waved with their hands, their legs flailing and
jerking against a high black stone block, on which, in the
wavering, uncertain light, a figure was crouched, his knees
drawn up to his chin, angular and silent.
I stared at it and recognized with raging horror Fangerle.
As if fused to the rock, he squatted there, his evil,
pinched face under the big peasant hat glowed like rotting
wood, and his long-hunters coat glowed in all its buttonholes,
as if blue fire was hidden under them. The piercing goat eyes
were directed straight at me, full of indescribable malice. And
then he uttered the horrible scream that Heiner had in front of
the wheel.
“I-i-i-ilih!”
A thousand arms, fingers, claws and nails stretched out
towards me. I wanted to rise quickly into the free kingdom of
the air, but they hung on to my feet, pulled me down.
“Catch him! Stop him!” shrieked Satan on the block.
Desperately, I kicked my feet and flailed around. But
new ones came, arms of women wrapped heavy and soft
around my neck, hot lips pressed sucking against my face,
claws tore at my hair; heavy masses clung to me, squeezing out
my breath. I could no longer get up, saw in deathly fear the
yellow goat eyes stare, the saw teeth bared, paralysis was like
tough dough around my limbs, my heart was hammering, close
to bursting, my breath caught, choking my throat.
“Lord, my God!” I cried out in deathly peril.
Then the hand of Fangerle grabbed me and flung me high
into the air. Scornful laughter rang out behind me, neighing.
The fires went out in the deep night, shadows flitted. Whirled,
it whistled in the air, cried, screamed, howled —.
I lay in my shirt in the middle of a wet meadow.

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The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte: pages 180- 184

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 6, 2026| Leave a Comment »

The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte by Paul Busson and translated by Joe E Bandel

“I will venture on it,” I said.
“You, a person of noble heart, will not be harmed by the
room, although –” he faltered and bit his lips.
“Although?” I pressed him.
“I, Baron, would not like to sleep here, and if there were
only one other place in the house, where it does not trickle in
by the ceiling or blow through empty window holes, I would
have chosen it for you rather than this damned courtroom! But
now I wish you a restful night!”
He bowed low and left.
I was alone, and took the candlestick to look around.
The wide chamber had been decorated with precious
leather wallpaper, which was now, of course, everywhere
damaged and tattered on the wall. It showed in hundredfold the
Treffenheid coat of arms with the Moor’s head, which had an
arrow shaft sticking out from the eye. Under it on a ribbon was
to be read the heraldic motto:
“One dies – another lives.”
In the corner next to the door stood a two-sleeper four-
poster bed with twisted columns and angels’ heads, the gilding
of which was worn away. At the lead-framed windows, which
had small gaps, the pale moon wandered behind wisps of
clouds, and a withered, broom-like poplar treetop sometimes
poked at the rickety panes. A table and a few chairs had just
been put there for me, as could be seen from the dust on the
floor.
More remarkable than all this, however, were two large
paintings, which were next to each other on the wall, separated
by a horizontally stretched out naked human arm, extending
from a red sleeve which, was holding a simple executioner’s
sword.
I approached the paintings with the light. The first one
was rich in small figures, and I had to look for a long time in
the restless candlelight until I recognized a procession on the
dark canvas, which was leading the sinner in a cart with solemn
seriousness to the place of execution. Under the picture, on a
white background, it read:
“If you have patience in pain,
It will be very useful to you,
Therefore give yourself willingly to it.”
The unknown painter had understood it, and painted into
the faces of the accompanying persons, secretly and
immediately recognizable to everyone, stupidly proud dignity,
thoughtlessness, malice, cruelty, indifference, and cowardly
contentment; but from the face of the man on the execution cart
cried out fear, and the staring look was almost a longing for the
final redemption by the redcoat, who stood tiny and distant on
the scaffolding.
This image made me fall into a depth of consciousness or
foreboding, which filled me with fearful darkness for several
minutes. It told me that something had happened or was about
to happen, and from my soul a voice spoke barely audibly:
“I know —.”
The roots of my hair were on fire, drops of sweat covered
the inside surface of my hands. But what it was, I could no
longer grasp with my mind, for as quickly as it came, it sank
again into a dark abyss. I turned my gaze from the terrible
image, ducked under the threatening sword arm, so as not to
touch it, and lifted the light towards the other painting.
A fine and cutting stab went through my heart. This face,
blissful and childlike, with reddish shimmering braids under a
small hood, with the delicate nose and the small mouth, with
the curved eyebrows, it was…
“Aglaja,” I whispered softly, and the heavy candlestick
almost fell from my hand.
But then it seemed to me as if a sad, dark glow went over
the lovely face. No, not Aglaja! It was Zephyrine who was
looking at me, as if she were breathing. The slender hand,
coming from a lace ruff, wore a silver ring of woven serpentine
bodies with a fire opal and held daintily between pointer finger
and thumb were three crimson roses and a snowy lily. But what
was written underneath, confused me in the face, which always
showed a beloved face. I ran my hand over my eyes and read
the characters under the painting:
Likeness of Lady Heva Weinschrötter,
Canoness to St. Leodegar, accused of sorcery
and sentenced to the sword
In the year anno 1649.
And then I stood for a long time, until the candles began
to crackle and the wax dripped. – What was appearance and
what was truth? The night had passed quietly except for some
creaking and cracking in the room and in the floor as is natural
in such old buildings.
The new day was of dull light and unfriendly, full of
wind and falling drops. There was a rustling in the walls, as of
rats.
The servant, who brought my breakfast, informed me that
the master of the hound was suffering from gout and would not
be visible before the evening. I should not enter uninvited into
his room, because he had a saddle pistol next to him loaded
with rock salt and pig bristles, and in his piercing pain he was
well able to burn one on me and everyone, as he had already
done to magister Hemmetschnur once before.
So I looked once more in the gloomy light of the room, at
the ruined face which was now even more clearly visible than
in the candlelight. I also discovered the trapdoor in the floor,
through which one could enter the dungeons and chambers
under the earth. And whatever I did, the gray eyes of the
painting of Lady Heva Weinschrötter followed me. But as I,
mindful of the evening’s feelings, looked firmly and attentively
at the rosy face under the gold hood, it seemed to me strange
and distant to me. The resemblance to Aglaja-Zephyrine faded
into the distance and finally disappeared completely.
While wandering around in the spacious chamber I
discovered opposite my bed a door so carefully fitted into the
wallpaper that it was easy to miss. When I pushed its creaking
hinges, I came into a narrow chamber with racks, in front of
which were rotten curtains of shot green damask, all covered
with dust. When I pushed them aside, I found in the
compartments whole bundles and piles of old files, and all sorts
of formerly confiscated corpora delicti, such as knives,
hatchets, bludgeons, rotten wheel locks, thieves’ hooks, gypsy
casting rods and the like, and attached to each item was a
carefully written note. Some I read:
“The knife, with which Matz from the Schellenlehen
stabbed Schieljörg,” and “Explosive and grenade called, Reb
Moische, the Hendl from Poland”. Finally I came to an earthen,
smoky pot, blue-glassed, which was tightly tied with a pig’s
bladder and on the square parchment on the handle, was
written in brownish faded ink:
“Numerus 16. Flying or witch ointment, found under the
bed of the lady of hell, and dug out of the earth.”
This relic of one of the women who had stood here
during the inquisition, aroused my curiosity very much, and I
hid it near my bed, in order to visit it later.
At the midday meal, only the magister appeared, who
asked me politely about the night spent and then said that I was
the first to have been granted a quiet sleep in this room. After
the meal I went for a walk with him despite the rain showers
and gusts of wind, and talked to him. The knowledge of this
man was astonishing, his exact knowledge of languages, and I
could not help but ask him, how he, with his erudition, could
not have found anything better than that of his unworthy
clerical services for the old master of the hound, who seemed
to take special pleasure to humiliate and make fun of his
education in front of others.
He heaved a deep sigh and said that if he only had
enough money so that he could reach the city of Paris, or only
to Strasbourg in the former German land, which the French had
stolen, it would be better for him in an instant. There he would
have friends who would gladly continue to take care of him.
But even if he had as much as he needed for the journey, he
would still have to be on his guard. For the master of the hound,
as he said, had already impudently threatened him, the
magister, and would not refrain from accusing him of
embezzlement and to have him punished, which he, as a poor
and helpless man, was unknown and without any ability to
defend himself.
I said nothing, but made up my mind, to help this
unjustly tormented person, if I could.
For dinner, the gentleman from Trolle and Heist was
brought to the table in a carrying chair, his right foot bound
thickly and sweating with pain. It was hardly possible to hold a
conversation with him, and only in view of the fact that I had to
stay here at all costs, I allowed myself to be subjected to
various of his quarrelsome and irritable moods. It was worse
with the magister than with me, he threw a pig’s bone at his
head for no reason and as for the hunters who were waiting for
him, he would spit wine at them or hit them with a stick. At ten
o’clock he began to drink murderously again, and at about
eleven he started his howling anguished chant. But the
intoxication did not work this time, and I saw how he looked in
fear with puffy eyes into the corner of the chamber devastated
by the fall of the wall. Finally- he hurled a heavy mug in the
direction of the apparition visible to him, laughed, and then
sank down, muttering to himself several times something about
a useless rhyme smith and court poet, and then sank into a
frenzied sleep, whereupon they lifted him up in the carrying
chair and carried him away.

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The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte: pages 175- 179

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 5, 2026| Leave a Comment »

The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte by Paul Busson and translated by Joe E Bandel

We walked up and down the cool arcade of the manor
courtyard, and I saw, with a tormenting restlessness in my heart,
and indifferently looked at the hundreds of wooden carved deer
heads, boar’s tusks and deer antlers on the walls, from which
long spider threads hung and swallow’s nests stuck. On the
floor lay almost hairless wolf-pelts and worn deer blankets,
which gave the impression of decay and abandonment even
more. And the old man next to me was Heist, of whom my
father had told me that he had killed the duke’s court poet in a
duel, and of whom Gudel had spoken of with disgust.
“Well, well!” said the Master of the Hound, standing still
and stuffed a pinch into his fiery nose.
“Mort de ma vie, you are not a child, after all, Dronte,
and it will not offend you when I tell you that your father and I
were the best sire stallions at court. Isn’t it still told today the
fun of how we stood one of the chambermaids of the duchess
on her head and filled the woman with champagne so that
Serenissimus almost suffered a stroke from laughing? Or how
we pinched the hopeful Annemarie Sassen in the dark on her
firm arse, so that she cried for help and the duchess swore to
have the culprits publicly flogged, even if they were of
standing? Oh, those were good times, wild days! What do you
youngsters know of them?!”
To distract him from those wild memories, which
reminded me in a terrible way of all the suffering that had
come to me from my father, I asked him about the man with the
missing ears who had been sent to find a shelter for my person.
“Him?” laughed the old man. “That’s a former magister,
who went about all over the place and also came to the court of
the grand lord. And there it seems to have gone wrong for him,
for they cut off his ears at the bridge of Stambul. He has lived
here for several years and provides me with board, lodging and
a few pennies, but he is kept quite short.”
Just at that moment the man had silently appeared behind
us; a sour smile on his disgruntled face told me that he had
heard the words of the hound master. But then he said, dryly
and without any raising and lowering of his voice, to his master:
“Accommodation is found, my lord, Master of the Hound.
In the hall of the former patrimonial court, the ceiling is
tolerable and impermeable, in case of new rain. The bedding is
with sufficient linen, the windows are washed and quite clean.
The foreign master can dwell there, if — if namely–“
“Don’t be so long in talking about “if” and “when, but tell
him what the catch is!” the octogenarian snapped at him.”You
educated ass!”
The grumpy one didn’t make a face at this.
“Provided the gentleman is not afraid of ghosts that
sometimes haunt such old chambers.”
“Triple-horned dromedary!” rumbled the hound master.
“Just so it stays in the courtroom! What’s for dinner?”
“Venison with four kinds of brawn, boiled blue tench
with millet porridge and a nutmeg tart,” said the magister.
“Good. Now get back to your writing!”
The gray man walked away with his back bent.
“You don’t treat the poor man very well,” I couldn’t help
from saying.
“That’s how you must deal with such learned dicks or
else they’ll be ridden by conceit and arrogance,” laughed Troll.
“Believe me, Dronte, no one needs to be put down more and
castigated than the learned rabble who stir up the common folk
and make them dissatisfied with us. But now I will show you
your chamber – a rascal who gives more than he has!”
As we ascended the stairs, he asked me, as it were, if I
had any business in the area, and when I said that I hoped to
meet someone here whom I had not been able to identify, he
was satisfied and said that I could remain as a guest as long as I
wished, for he had plenty of food and wine.
Then he showed me the door of my room and reminded
me to be on time for the meal.
With a disconsolate heart I entered the wide room, in
which I now had to stay in uncertainty and wait for Ewli. The
manner of the old man was extremely repugnant to me, and the
form in which he finally offered his hospitality with reference
to the abundance of the food, seemed to me so hurtful that I
would have preferred not to unpack my coat bag at all. Also I
was dreading the constant togetherness with the hearty, by his
age by no means internalized man, and it was completely
incomprehensible to me that Ewli should have chosen this very
place to come close to me. Tormenting doubts came over me
and aroused in me the thought that I had turned in the wrong
direction and could have missed the actual place. But now I
had to good or bad, be satisfied and hope that the man from the
Orient would also know how to find me here, if this would be
in his mind.
Since I would be in the spacious room later I hardly took
any time to look around the barely illuminated and gloomy
chamber. I also found no light, so I hurried with makeshift
cleaning in a metal basin, into which I let water bubble from a
hanging dolphin by means of a faucet, and then went down to
the dining room.
The hall was a reflection of all the misery in the old stone
box. In one corner a part of the wall covering had fallen down
and formed a pile of rubble that no one seemed to have been
obliged to clear away. The darkened ancestral portraits of the
counts of Treffenheid, to whom the coat of arms of the arrow-
headed Moor belonged, looked with white, staring eyes from
the wall, and in a once beautiful, but badly damaged dragon
fireplace blazed, despite the warm day, a huge fire made of
beech logs. At the large, heavy table I sat next to the hound
master in the midst of all the dogs, who were eating chunks of
meat and pieces of cake and biting each other, and at the very
end of the table like a gray shadow squatted the unfortunate
Magister Hemmetschnur. Such was his name, the peculiarity of
which still elicited a guffaw from old Heist, when he
pronounced it, twisted and misshapen in all ways. But the food
was good, and even if the wine in the pewter cups was a bit tart,
it nevertheless pricked pleasantly on the tongue and palate.
After the meal, which proceeded rapidly, the dogs were
driven out, and the old man lit one of the many lime pipes,
which were placed in front of him, stuffed in a cup. When he
had smoked one out, he threw it, breaking it in shards, and
grabbed the next one, so that we were soon sitting in a thick
blue fog, watching the ever coughing figure of the gray clerk
almost disappear in the haze.
I was tired and sad, and also exhausted from the terrible
adventure in the Ball Mill and yet out of courtesy had to stay
and listen to the coarse jokes and jests of the master of the
hound, which were never ending and to show me a picture of
my father, with whom he had committed a large part of his
deeds, that was even more ugly and unpleasant than it already
was in my memory. But since the old man drank intemperately,
his tongue soon became heavy. When the eleventh hour struck,
he opened his mouth wide and began to shout out songs with a
false and booming voice:
“A little rabbit would creep” and “It runs to the wood
unharmed, fellow,” and so on, without pausing, until at last his
bald head sank with a jerk on his chest and out of his open
mouth came a sawing snore and a rattle. As if this had been
awaited, immediately two powerful hunters and a hunter boy
entered, grabbed the hound master by the head, shoulders and
feet and carried him out without bothering about me or the
mute magister. Although curiosity was far from me, I did
nevertheless address a few questions to the man who had been
treated so disdainfully, and who seemed to me to be worthy of
some attention, and I learned that every day at the same time
the intoxication and singing began. And this had its origins in
the fact that years ago, between eleven and half past midnight,
the wife of the master of the hound had found her husband in
the arms of a maid and became so transformed that she was
killed on the spot by a stroke. Sometimes, however, the ghost
of the Duke of Wessenburg’s court poet, who had been killed
by his hand, would appear. This was the reason why the old
man tried to drown out this period of time.
If no one is present, the old man sings alone, but then,
before eleven o’clock, the head hunter Räub must appear with
his hunting horn and stay until the moment he falls asleep, and
then blow the horn as loud as he can. After this explanation,
Hemmetschnur seized one of the candlesticks with five candles
and asked for the honor of escorting me to my bedchamber.
We climbed through the dead quiet house, around which
the wind whined and the poplars rustled, onto the upper floor,
and in front of my door the magister gave me the light, humbly
bowed and wished me a good night.
“Tell me still, Herr Magister, what you meant when you
spoke of a haunting in this room?”
I stopped him. At the same time I opened the door and
invited him to enter the room with me.
He bowed and closed the door behind us, a smile sliding
across his grizzled gray face.
“Certain things I cannot say,” he said, looking around.
“But consider what may have gone on in this chamber for all
the uncounted years, since the jus gladii and the jurisdiction of
it all rested on Krottenriede. People say many things. Like for
example, that old Krippenveit, whom they torqued to death
here, sometimes lifts the trap door in the floor and looks around
horribly.
Or that the horse Jew Aaron, whom they wanted to tickle
for his money, suddenly stood in a dark corner screaming for
mercy. They tortured him here, too, and because he was over
seventy years old, when they raised him, he fell into the
fainting sleep of the tortured, they put boiling hot eggs into his
armpits and pressed them with their arms to get the gold hiding
place from him. But he would rather have died than have given
it away, Emmes gedabert, as they call it in their language,
truth-talking. Up there is still the iron ring on the ceiling,
through which the rope ran. Here they also had the Bee’s Agnes,
also called the honey lick, brought to a confession and then
handed her over to the redcoat, who burned and roasted her and
then buried her at the cemetery of Saint Leodegar with a black
cat and an old hen that would not leave her. The Frau of
Weinschrotter however, a woman of nobility, who grew roses
and lilies from her pots in the bitter winter, was sentenced to
the sword. Her portrait hangs here in the room. You Baron, can
see the crudeness and stupidity of the people that has been
celebrated in this room. From the futile sighs and tears of the
poor, who fell into the hands of these animals and of the
abominable events that have taken place here, a shadow or
image may still adhere to the cursed walls, and for those
predisposed or through special arts those events may appear as
alive once again to suitable persons. That is what I meant.”

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The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte: pages 170- 174

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 4, 2026| Leave a Comment »

The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte by Paul Busson and translated by Joe E Bandel

Tiredly I groped behind the others, who had the bunch of
keys from the innkeeper’s belt and now climbed into the cellar.
In the hallway lay, big as a calf, the dog shot by Garnitter.
Behind empty wine barrels and other junk we found an iron
door, discovered the key on the key ring and opened it – rusty
dust flew into our eyes – but, good heavens! What was this?
All four of us jumped back in horror.
There were probably twenty corpses, brown, dried up,
withered, eaten by rats, stripped of all their clothes. And on
their shoulders they carried wide-squeezed disks with mouth
gaps, hair tangles, jumbled white teeth. One could see an ear, a
lower jaw, which was pressed up to the empty eye sockets, a
worm-like black tongue that stretched sideways, clenched
hands, blood crusts, splintered bones —
We rumbled up the stairs, ran out of the house and sat
down on the mossy stone balls, breathing deeply, and the rain
trickled down on us.
In the east it shone drearily. When it became quite light,
we fed the fat horse of the innkeeper with oats and hay, and
then harnessed him.
Before that, Hoibusch had looked in on the girl. She hung
with twisted eyes as if fainted in the ropes. – Then they climbed
up into the innkeepers’ bedroom, rummaged in cupboards and
chests and found a whole hoard of gold and silver coins,
jewelry, precious garments, fine linen and weapons of all kinds.
In the meantime, I crept into the chamber of horror. The
girl was awake, and her face was shining with tears. Silently I
went there and cut the ropes with the landlady’s knife, which I
had picked up, cut the ropes in such a way that she herself
could untie herself.
“Wait until you hear us leave,” I said, “and then see to it
that you save yourself -.”A glow of hope passed over her
decayed face, in which, despite all the depravity, showed the
harmless child of old.
“Gracious Herr-” she stammered.
“Be silent and do not stir until we are gone. Perhaps that
you may become honest again, girl. I dare on it!”
“Every day I will pray to God for thee, Lord,” she
whispered, “that he may have mercy on you as you have had on
Bärbel -“.
Quickly I went out.
I asked the three boys, as they came out of the house to
leave me out of the game, since I had important things to do at
Krottenrieder castle and the court could ruin all my plans.
It was all right with them, and since the way to the town
would certainly pass by the castle, we traveled with each other
through the dull morning toward the army road, the shivers of
the night in all our limbs.
“With all my heart I pity the young blood on the
column,” said Garnitter after a while. “She is not at all guilty of
any serious crime, and even if she came to listen, because she
had to, and one or the other prey fell into her lap.
“What are you babbling about?” Hoibusch said and he
struck at the lame gray horse. “One can see that you are a
windy philosopher and know nothing of legal matters. I know
the Roman law as well as the famous Carpzov enough to
already know today the judgment that she will and must be
given. And besides, I know myself to be of one mind with
Baron Dronte and the Sollengau -“.
“There is also a jus divinum, and of that you are
obviously ignorant. Of course, it has nothing to do with
scholarship, and has no paragraphs and subtleties and is better
to be found in simple-minded people than in those who, like
peacocks, have a green-gold wheel to beat, but have a nasty,
inhuman voice,” Garnitter replied.
“Are you trying to cheat me?” asked Hoibusch and pulled
back on the reins.
“No fighting, gentlemen,” I admonished. “Let us rather
be grateful to Providence, which has saved us from death.”
“This is also my opinion!” agreed the squire.
Thus peace was restored, and the Philosopher shook
hands with the jurist.
But no matter how often we tried to turn the conversation
to more pleasant things, again and again the terrible night came
to our minds and the danger from which we had escaped, but
from which the unfortunates in the cellar and our companion,
Haymon, the last Baron of Treidlsperg, had fallen victim to.
Around noon we met on a heath, which lost itself into the
forest, an old shepherd with his herd and asked for the way that
led to Krottenriede castle.
“The gentlemen have to drive far around there,” said the
old man and stroked his wolfhound. “Or else get down from
the wagon and take the narrow forest path on the right hand. It
goes straight to the castle, whose sheep I herd.”
Then I quickly climbed down from the wagon, took my
coat bag and shook hands with the good fellows who had
brought me this far, wishing them all the best in their lives.
Garnitter, however, I looked especially into the eyes; at first I
liked Hoibusch the best when I entered the Ball Mill, but now
because of the kindness of his heart, I was sorry that I had not
talked to him a few more times.
Once again, I asked them to let me, who had neither had
to make use of a gun nor had I been harmed, keep silent to the
courts, that I was involved in other matters that were extremely
important to me.
They promised me cordially and then drove on and went
to fetch the courtiers, to clean out the robber’s nest and to
arrange for Christian burials for the lamentable corpses in the
cellar, and also to redeem Haymon from the death stone and
bury him as well.
As I turned to go, Hoibusch stood up in the carriage and
shouted:
“Baron Dronte, I have sensed that you are on the side of
the philosopher, and that out of love for you, I want to turn it so
that Bärbel gets away from the tower and keeps her life!”
I waved back at him and slowly went my way.
But then I had to sit down under the trees and cry. I cried
for the Bavarian Haymon and about our young years–.
The path I had taken on the advice of the shepherd was
an old, dilapidated horse path, which led quite steeply uphill. In
places, falling water and landslides had torn away many meters,
and I had to, badly hindered by the coat bag, climb over the
steep clay slopes. But the higher I got, the better the climb
became, because all kinds of bushes and alluvial forest
strengthened and thus protected the path from destruction. The
hike lasted long enough, and it was getting late when I reached
the uppermost part of the moderately high castle. After a bend
in the path I stood unexpectedly before castle Krottenriede,
where I longingly hoped, I would finally be granted an
audience with Ewli.
But if there was something even sadder, neglected and
gloomier than the Ball Mill, it was this castle. A monstrous,
gray stone box with formerly red-white-red shutters, now faded,
peeled off and crooked on their hinges, it stood between
disheveled, thorny, mighty poplars and two ponds with brown,
putrid water, which was overgrown by poison-green lentils. On
the steep, damaged roof was a weather vane bent by the storms
and eaten by verdigris- representing an upright lion. Part of the
window panes were gray with dust, other parts had only jagged
shards in the rotten frames. A large pile of garbage, in which
broken bottles, scraps of clothing, rags, bones and ashes were
mixed together, piled up not far from the main entrance, a
pointed arched gate, over which a Moor’s head was carved as a
coat of arms, in one eye of which was an arrow. Since no one
was to be seen, I entered the castle courtyard and was
immediately attacked by a pack of spotted hounds. But before
the wild males could quite snap at me a silent young man with
a sullen wrinkled face appeared and whipped them into their
stone kennel, whose torn down iron grille had been replaced
and strengthened with a couple of heavy stones leaning against
it. I saw that both of his ears had been smoothly cut from his
head.
I was about to turn to him, but out of a gate a huge, fat,
white-haired man with a red face and a glowing nose
approached me and gruffly asked for my name and desire.
I named myself, and his face became immediately
cheerful. He held out his hand to me and shouted loudly while
he shook my right hand:
“What?”How? A Dronte? Melchior Dronte, perhaps even
the son of my old crony and Willow comrade?”
When he then learned the name and last place of
residence of my dead father, he embraced me, blew his warm,
wine-scented breath into my face and shook me by the
shoulders.
“My lord Baron, I rejoice to the depths of my eighty-
year-old hunter’s soul to get to know you. Your godly father
was a hunter comme il faut, and there will not be many more
like him in these shitty times. Ei, how the time goes by, and
now I get to know Melchior, whose birth we celebrated with
champagne from the big ducal silver cup, called the
“Sauglocke”, and look, this child, whom I saw with wet panties
already has gray hair at the temples. But what is the reason?
Has the skinny hunter already put the bullet in the barrel, in
order to lay an old deer on my blanket? So let’s be happy my
Lord Baron, and commemorate the knightly days of which
your name reminds me so fiercely.”
I thanked him, strangely and not pleasantly moved by the
fact that he had been my father’s friend. Even the morose man
who was missing his ears and who was now ordered to find a
place for me to stay somewhere in the castle, did not make me
feel very cheerful.
“But now I want to introduce myself formally,” said the
old gentleman and stood up straight in his green coat. “I am the
Master of the Hound of the erstwhile Duke of Stoll-
Wessenburg, Eustach von Trolle und Heist, and I have been
sitting here for twenty years among crows and owls, with a
small salary on Krottenriede. We hadn’t a thought at the time
squire, not a single thought, your Herr Father and I, as we held
Serenissimo’s head when the wine was about to run out for
those at the top.”

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The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte: pages 165- 169

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 3, 2026| Leave a Comment »

The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte by Paul Busson and translated by Joe E Bandel

Since the candle threatened to go out, I asked Garnitter to
come out with his treasures, and soon there was a new light
burning in the candlestick.
“Hang cloaks or blankets in front of the windows, so that
they do not see the light from outside,” I admonished, and
immediately they went to carry out the advice. In the meantime
I looked at the door. There was probably a strong wooden latch
on the outside, but there was no way to secure it from the
inside. The hinges, however, seemed quite freshly oiled to me,
and I brought it to the attention of the others.
“That bastard of an Innkeeper is up to something,” the
squire from Sollengau blurted out, “and because there are four
of us, since the drunk is not to be counted, we must be hellishly
on the watch, because the host can get help from the
Spillermaxen Gang or from the blue whistlers.”
I said nothing and continued my investigation. The floor
was made of tamped earth, the walls had been built up with
solid blocks and cement and were ancient, and the ceiling had
no visible opening and consisted of heavy, dark beams, such as
one can only rarely still find in such length and strength.
Then Hoibusch emitted a low whistle and beckoned me
hastily. He was standing by the pillar. We trod on the rustling
straw and followed his groping hand with the light. And there
we saw something that revealed to us the trace of the satanic
trickery that was at play here.
In its entire length, from top to bottom, the rough stone
column was smoothly polished as if something heavy often slid
up and down on it and transformed the roughness of the
friction points into polished grooves. And seized by the same
thought, we looked upward at the ring or the capital of the
column, which with its excessive projection and mighty width
enclosed the column. It stood out brightly white in its fresh
coat of paint, and was separated from the narrow, circular space
of the column itself, so that this heavy load, when it was
loosened at the top, could fall down.
And it was precisely in the area of this ring that our head
pillows were arranged around the column.
Haymon straightened up halfway in his sleep and
stammered with wide-open eyes:
“Don’t you want to rest, Montanus? – You can’t get ducats
from your Mary, brother – let go, put away the blue hand–” and
then he vomited out the wine and food from his stomach,
which had long since been ruined, and defiled himself nastily.
“Pull him away from this death-trap” I shouted.
Then they grabbed him by the legs and pulled him away
from the dangerous bed, but he crawled back in his madness,
while we continued and once again he was dragged away. Then
he seemed to want to keep quiet and remained lying down.
“Shh!” whispered Garnitter, who was listening at the door.
We quickly extinguished the light and stayed as quiet as a
mouse. Light footsteps came along the corridor.
“Bärbel, the false hussy -“.
“Shh!”
She listened at the door, leaned. The wood creaked softly,
Haymon chattered in his sleep.
“What say you of sulphurous flames, Portugieser? – Great
hell, brother, how it stinks from your throat! I won’t give you
my hand, you are black all over, you devil- roast -“.
Quietly she scurried away from the door, down the
corridor.
We heard Haymon rustling in the straw, hitting the floor
with his foot and stretching with a groan.
Footsteps again. The boys quietly drew their long blades;
I drew the pistol, my thumb on the hammer, finger on the
trigger, without cocking it. It coughed, scrabbled at the door.
Then it slunk away again.
“They think they’re safe now, the murderous hounds,”
said Hoibush. On the ceiling above us something slid. A low
rattle arose. A dull unintelligible voice spoke something. A
whirring, a grinding, a whooshing fall–
Boom! – It struck heavy and pounding, softly muffled.
Feet drummed like madly on the clay floor, leathery,
clapping…- in our room.
“Strike fire, Hoibusch!” cried the squire hoarsely.
Pink, pink! The tinder glowed up, the sulfur- twitched
blue and sizzled with acrid stench, the candle burned -.
“Almighty!” Garnitter wanted to cry out, but Hoibusch
quickly put his hand over his mouth.
It took our breath away. The wide column ring had
crashed down and buried the head cushions and the unfortunate
head of poor Haymon, who had crawled back in the dark
without our knowledge. His feet were spread apart, his hands
were clasped on his chest in the robe and the rest of him lay
under the murder stone. Like a thick, dark snake, glistening in
the candlelight his blood coagulated in the straw.
“Lights out!” commanded the squire. “They’re coming!”
Ready to strike, we stood on either side of the door in the
darkness. Speaking loudly with echoing footsteps the landlord
and his pointy-nosed wife came down the corridor and pushed
open the door.
There they stood. The innkeeper carried in his left hand a
large stable lantern, in his right fist a sharp axe, and the fury
behind him was clutching a butcher’s knife. We only saw them
for a moment. Hoibusch’s blade went through the guy, and
Garnitter slit through the yellow neck of the woman, so that she
fell down with the squeal of a stuck pig. The host was dead in
an instant, speared through the heart like a starting boar. The
woman was still wriggling, and then lay still on her side.
“Are you dead, bloodhound?” shouted Garnitter and
kicked at the dead man’s belly with his foot. Up in the house
the dog howled.
“The dog! The wench!” cried Hoibusch. “We have to
catch the wench; otherwise she will run away and send the
host’s henchmen after us!”
He and the squire set off with the lantern to look for the
woman.
Now Garnitter and I saw the four holes in the ceiling and
the ropes hanging, by which the stone could be pulled up again.
We set about freeing the dead Haymon. But the stone was
too heavy for us to lift, and when we pulled on the feet of the
murdered man, the bones of the crushed head crunched so
horribly that we had to let go with a shudder.
Then we heard a shot, the wailing of the dog, and then a
dragging and a whimpering, and immediately Hoibusch and the
one from Sollengau came with the woman in shirt and smock,
whom they had dragged out of bed, where she had been under
the blankets and had fallen asleep. They had tied her hands
with a calf rope.
“I am innocent,” whined Bärbel when she saw us.
“Jesus Maria!” she shrieked out, as she stepped with her
naked foot into the pools of blood in which the landlord and the
landlady lay.
“Confess, whore, or we’ll lay you down next to the two of
them!
Both!” said Hoibusch calmly. “Did you not set the dog on
us? Confess, I say to you!”
“O thou bloody savior! What shall I confess?” Howled
the strumpet and fell on her knees. “I have done nothing,
except that I went to listen at the woman’s command to see if
everyone was asleep. I have never known of murder in my life”.
“And what is this, you shamed woman?” cried Hoibusch
in a strong voice and produced something he had been hiding
behind his back. Stones and gold flashed – a necklace with
almandines and artfully forged links shone in the light.
The girl’s face was white with fear and she looked around
with confused glances.
“Red!” said Hoibusch quite coldly, and put the point of
the blade on her bare breast, so that a small little red drop
sprang up.
“Ouch! Mercy -” clamored Bärbel as she squirmed to and
fro. “From the lady in the cellar -“.
Then she fell down in convulsions, and foam poured out
of her mouth. It was a pity to look at. But Hoibusch remained
unmoved.
“You have learned your art of eye-rolling well, you
robber whore!” he said. “Stop making foam out of saliva, and
get up!”
And once more he tickled her with the point of his rapier.
Then, in spite of her tied hands, she sprang to her feet like a cat
and cried out in despair:
“Well, if that’s what it is, I’d rather be dead right now
than let the gallows man sound me out with the thumbscrews!”
And she made such a swift and violent push against the
drawn blade, so that it missed going through her body by a hair.
But Hoibusch was on guard, and immediately let go of the
handle, so she only slashed her shirt so that her dark breast
bulged out.
“To the pillar with her!” cried Garnitter, and the three
students dragged her there in spite of biting and shrieking, and
bound her by body and legs next to the dead Haymon, so that
they could remain in silent and terrible company. For we took
the lantern with us and left the room with its sweetish haze of
blood, leaving only the candle burning as a death light for the
deceased. As we stood in the corridor, we heard the shrill
screams of the tied up woman.
And I must confess it: I took pity on her, because I felt
that it was not only her fault that she had to become like this.
Surely an evil fate had clawed at her from childhood; an
unguarded youth, instincts unleashed at an early age, abuse,
which one with her child body already suffered, poverty,
misery and lack of love did a terrible work on her. Was I
allowed to judge, when I opened the abysses of my own soul?
But as clever as the three students were, and as good as the
heart of one or the other might be, at this hour and in view of
the poor dead they would have looked at me with disgust if my
thoughts had become spoken aloud, and I would not have
helped anyone. So I kept silent and mourned in silence how
wrong people’s customs are, and how thousands and thousands
of children grow up without any care. And not only the brood
of the poor people –. How had it been with myself?

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Anarchist Knight Journeyman: Chapter 26

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on January 2, 2026| Leave a Comment »

Chapter 26 Journeyman

“You claim to add your light with ours, but you have only led us further into darkness and danger, making our entire community more vulnerable. How will you defend us in our weakness?”

Once more Tobal had no reply, and his guide remained silent. He was led roughly to the center of the circle and held pinned between two hooded guards.

The High Priest continued. “The Apprentice degree is of spiritual protection and growth. In your progress through that degree, you have been magickally protected from evil influences that might have otherwise entered your life. Then, as a member of our sacred circle, you will always have protection from the evil of the outside world, but we can never shield you from the evil within your own nature and within each one of us. You must learn to master this evil—the weakness and fear that prevents you from acting when needed, and that drives blind, destructive choices. This is the work of the Journeyman. You must combat these inner demons with your own Inner Light, or they will become your masters. Only when you have mastered your own inner demons will you have truly earned the right to this degree—a lifetime work we all face. Symbolically, this inner battle is marked by success in defeating six members of this degree in combat. After defeating six members, you will be considered eligible for the 3rd and final degree of Master that leads to citizenship. Are you ready to continue?”

“Yes.”

“Then let the fight begin!”

Six dark hooded figures stepped forth from the circle and stood in menacing silence as the High Priest, High Priestess, and the two guards moved away. His guide took his torch and left him alone within the circle. Tobal stood silently in confusion, pain exploding in his side as a fist connected, the torchlight blurring his vision.

Gradually, he realized he was expected to fight all six figures. He pulled himself into a fighting stance and began circling defensively. None moved. He circled closer to one, feinting with his right—the figure stayed still. Encouraged, Tobal struck lightly on the shoulder and doubled over as a savage punch to his belly knocked him to the cave floor, fighting nausea. Struggling up, he faced the unmoving six, unsure. He lunged at a second, his thrust parried as a hard blow slammed his head, sparking stars. Rising again, rage built, and he grappled a third, only to find it stone-solid. A crushing bear hug bruised his ribs before he was thrown, wind knocked out, refusing to rise, sobbing in frustration.

“He refuses to fight!” a voice cried from the circle’s edge.

“Yes, he refuses to fight!” murmured the hooded figures, moving silently widdershins. After one circle, drums pounded eerily within the cave as black-cloaked figures drew near, striking light, stinging blows. Tobal couldn’t see their faces or recognize them.

The energy felt wrong, building. Fear and panic gripped him at his tailbone, climbing his spine, his energy slipping counterclockwise. What were they doing? The energy grew, strange and dark, not evil but dangerous.

The High Priest placed his hands on Tobal’s head, his voice echoing. “In the name of the Lord and Lady, I draw the dark energy of the earth up into your physical body and soul that you might become master of yourself and Journeyman.”

Tobal felt a weird tingling and warmth as a glowing yellow-green energy pooled at his feet, rising through his body, exiting his head into spiritual light. His father’s spirit entered, looking out. “You have done well,” said his father. “We will wait for you.”

The High Priestess stepped forward, Tobal recognizing Misty. “In the name of the Lord and Lady, I draw the dark energy of the earth into your physical body and soul that you might become a master of yourself and Journeyman.”

A darker, threatening energy carried frightening images—a feminine Goddess force curling around his legs, tendrils choking his throat, filling his mind like a giant tree of life and death reaching for the spiritual sun. A surge of warmth flooded him, easing the pain.

Then his heart ached as his mother’s spirit held him, her aura protecting. She left with a kiss and a whispered “be strong.” He felt his father holding her hand, their love for each other and him, rejoicing as the energy sank into his bones, changing him forever. Their touch echoed the cave’s astral warmth, a bridge between circle and spirit.

The High Priest continued. “Are you ready to receive wisdom and be nourished by life?”

“Yes,” Tobal mumbled through a split lip. He was helped to his feet.

“The first and most important lesson is that there are times in life when you must fight for what you believe and times not to fight. Learn to choose your battles, and if you fight, fight to win, giving all you have. You will be respected even if defeated, as must sometimes happen. There is no shame in losing a battle. There is shame in not giving all you have.”

“The second lesson,” he continued, “is that fighting is hard and thirsty work!”

“Let’s party!”

As the energy settled, the High Priest’s voice softened, shifting the ritual’s tone. A throaty welcome echoed in the cavern as hoods were thrown back, and Tobal was half-dragged, half-carried into another chamber where food and drink awaited. Goodwill filled the air as he was hugged and congratulated by familiar faces he hadn’t seen in ages.

Rafe pounded his back, laughing as Tobal winced. “Thought you would never get here!” he shouted over the crowd.

Ellen gave him a hug and a kiss.

Tobal stayed a few days, exploring caverns and chatting with 2nd-degree peers. He retrieved his parents’ items, feeling better wearing them again, catching up on their news.

After a few days, his trail food dwindled, and restlessness grew. On the third day, he set out alone to process the initiation’s meaning, bidding farewell to his new brothers and sisters, heading to base camp.

His black tunic felt strange after gray, the shift from a year of intense living and training to idleness jarring. Time dragged, and he dreaded his first fight a month away. Worry gnawed at him—his parents might still be wired to a machine on life support. He preferred Crow’s view of them as the Lord and Lady.

The midsummer celebration at circle was a welcome change. Hot, fair weather made him miss newbie training. As a new Journeyman, his first duty was guarding Apprentice initiations, expected and unsurprising. He arrived early, donned black robes, and stayed on duty until the last newbie was initiated late that night—a long day missing Becca and circle.

Though absent, he heard the news: Sarah, Anne, Derdre, Seth, and Crow’s newbies soloed with Elder approval. Tyrone, Zee, Kevin, and Butch initiated newbies, expected after a month’s wait. The surprise was ten initiates—Becca and Fiona not only initiated but soloed theirs, earning fifth chevrons. Nikki earned her fourth but wasn’t there; Tara and Nick likely waited at Sanctuary.

Becca gave him a brief kiss and hug at the guard post, sharing Rafe’s Council of Elders role. Glowing, she promised, “We’ll talk later,” holding him close before seeking Fiona, who’d already dropped her newbie.

Nikki lost out, still waiting at Sanctuary with others. Mike and another Apprentice quit, hitting Butch hard due to their friendship.

After initiations, Tobal entered the circle in black robes. Friends congratulated him but some eyed him differently. “I’m still the same person,” he thought, then realized he wasn’t. Most friends were Apprentices; Masters like Rafe and Ellen were exceptions. Newbies didn’t know him, and black-robed peers kept to themselves. He hoped to stay connected to Apprentices.

Heading for the beer barrel, he met gloomy Wayne and Char, considering quitting. “Why don’t you talk to Crow first?” he suggested. “He’s taking a group to the village. I visited last month—it’s neat.” Char doubted a primitive life but nodded for a vacation. Wayne agreed, hoping the newbie bottleneck eased, frustrated by month-long waits. They hugged, seeing it as a chance to reconnect.

Tobal hoped he hadn’t erred suggesting the village, liking their simplicity. He moved on, finding Becca and Fiona by the drum circle, high-spirited. They partied, planning a month off awaiting official solos and sixth chevrons. Tobal proposed a lake trip for swimming and berries, ready for a break. They agreed, shifting topics. Fiona asked, “What have we missed about the City Council and village? We’ve been busy.”

“Lots to catch up on,” he laughed. “Let’s find out.”

“Where’s Llana?” Becca asked.

“That’s part of it,” he smiled, kissing her. She didn’t press.

They joined Rafe and Ellen. Becca’s presence felt good; he squeezed her hand, she smiled. Crow’s group discussed teleportation—Char and Wayne listened. Tobal stayed with his group, needing their talk.

Ellen started, “We finally met with the City Council. It’s been a rough month; our lives are changed.”

“An understatement,” Rafe nodded. “Our world’s upside down.”

Ellen continued, “The Council cleaned house—new members, none at the last meeting. The mayor apologized again for the assassination attempt, relieved Howling Wolf’s safe. New members knew and respected him, explaining their selection. Once a clansman, always a clansman—all had done Sanctuary, many served the Elders. The mayor assured full support.”

“This time, General Grant was absent. The Council requested a Federation internal affairs probe but heard nothing. Grant denied Howling Wolf’s claims; the Council believed Wolf, deeming Grant a liar, so he wasn’t invited.”

Ellen smiled at Tobal. “Howling Wolf appeared, offering teleport and time travel skills if the city split from the military project. He rejected the machine’s dangers and inhuman wiring, demanding Ron and Rachel Kane’s release for peace after years of torment.”

“Things got interesting,” Ellen said. “Wolf vanished; Adam Gardner appeared with a pack, introducing items—mostly past, some future—confirming his work with Wolf on Kane’s research and ongoing time explorations.”

“We were impressed,” Ellen chuckled. “The Council sought proof of training. Llana appeared, revealing plans for a secret time traveler group.”

“My COM buzzed—medics were evicted from the mountain, losing the ER and supplies. Grant barred us, even from belongings. The Council, shocked, with Wolf’s approval, made the village a temporary base until a new site by the lake.”

“We chose the old gathering spot for a permanent base, requesting supplies and comms. The City Council voted and agreed to provide immediate provisions for uninterrupted medic work, directing serious cases to the city. They’ll build modern facilities for winter use.”

“Most of us hauled supplies that first week,” Rafe grumbled. “No rogue attacks noted. We’re settled, trained now at Heliopolis hospital.”

“I leave for months, and it falls apart,” Becca quipped. “Danger from Grant’s rogues?”

“No way to know,” Ellen said. “We hope the investigation curbs worse.”

The meeting sparked thoughts. Becca’s questions persisted post-bed; kissing silenced her, leading to delays before sleep in each other’s arms.

Being with Becca, free of duties, felt good. With two weeks before Journeyman circle, they maximized it. Mid-June’s perfect weather brought Fiona, and they headed to the lake, first meeting Llana at Tobal’s winter base en route.

Evening, Llana greeted the campfire. Becca and Fiona, updated, joined Tobal’s group—Rafe, Ellen, Tobal, Becca, Fiona, possibly Nikki (unasked). Tobal eyed Tyrone; Fiona suggested Butch. Newbie training clashed with Llana’s lessons, delaying theirs until Journeyman.

“Tobal’s done two months with Crow, one with me,” Llana told them. “He’s ahead, can help you catch up. I’ll teach him, he’ll teach you. Practice daily, support each other.”

“What about Ellen and Rafe?” Tobal asked.

“I’ll teach them individually,” she said.

Tobal nodded, “Rafe wants you to scout forbidden areas on his air sled map. Drop you off, you teleport out. No med-alert, no monitor.”

Llana thought. “Good. Tell him to meet me at my old base, two days post-new moon, noon. See if Ellen joins. I’ll train them, plan further.”

“Have you time traveled?” Becca asked.

“Once,” Llana smiled. “Awesome, frightening, like teleporting once mastered. Grandfather and Adam check areas for safety, gauging Grant’s time meddling.”

“How soon?” Becca pressed.

“A year to two, depending on training intensity and aptitude. We want both groups ready together to collaborate.”

“What’s Crow’s group doing?” Fiona asked.

“They’ll exit Sanctuary, ditch bracelets, train off-grid like us, likely faster since we juggle Journeyman duties. No contact until all teleport.”

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The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte: pages 160- 164

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 2, 2026| Leave a Comment »

The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte by Paul Busson and translated by Joe E Bandel

Our entrance attracted noisy attention. Immediately they
dragged Görg to the table and quickly brewed a mixture in a
mug of beer, wine, spit and pipe juice, which he had to empty
immediately as a toast to the well-being of the four senses. But
me they mockingly addressed as “Your Honor” and asked if I
did not know that one has to make three bows and a scrape of
the foot when entering, such an illustrious group or if the fine
gentleman felt like a few passes with the rapier. This I could
have in a moment.
“Are you still acting so wild, Bavarian Haymon?” I asked
and had to smile wistfully, when I recognized my old Order
brother.
He sat there with his mouth open, as if he had been
struck by a blow.
“I know you well,” I said, stepping close to him. “Even if
time has run away!”
“Pinch me, Hoibusch, pinch me!” he sputtered and
nudged the student next to him. “A ghost stands before me-“
“Ei, what, a ghost!” said I. “its Mahomet and no other!”
Something like a pathetic joy was in me, that I saw him
again, although degenerated and aged before his time. And on
the lapels of his skimpy coat he still wore the letters of our
secret slogan, artfully entwined from silver wire:
“Vivat circulus fratrum amicitiae!”
Long live the brotherly circle of the Order of Friendship.
I pointed with my finger and said smilingly:
“Vivat, crescat, floreat!”
Then he jumped up on both feet and shouted:
“Murderous hail of bombs! Stinking foxes, kneel down!
An old Amiciste stands before you, Mahomet, who has wiped
more blood from his thrusting blade than runs in your sour
veins. O brother of heart! What a race has taken our place!
Drinking from little cups, crying for their mothers when they
run out of veal…and run into the lecture hall with their pens
and notebooks. -O the old times! O Amicitial!”
He threw his long arms around me, kissed me
resoundingly on both cheeks, and the tears trickled from his
inflamed eyes.
“And now here, by my green side, Herr Brother, and that
none open their mouth till Mahomet has told us about the best
of his famous life experiences – Hey, Ball Mill Innkeeper, hey,
Bärbel, jump and swing and bring as much wine as the table
can bear. And the farmer shall join in the drinking!”
But he had gone out and was no longer to be seen.
The innkeeper now approached the table very politely
and asked what we wanted. I looked at him with a certain
horror. In his one eye was a false squint, the other lay as a
white, blind glass ball between slitted eyelids. A fiery red cut
scar, shaped like an ‘S’, ran across the bald skull, eye and the
cheek, to the fat double chin. I knew that murderers marked
traitors with such a cruel mark.
Soon there were large bowls of venison on the table
along with flagons of wine on the table, and a wild carousing
began, in which I participated with caution. My heart was
loaded with feelings that had nothing to do with those of the
people at the table, and I had enough to answer Haymon’s
questions. The three others were listening quite modestly and
the girl looked at us like a cow at a new gate.
When the candles had burned down and Haymon’s
tongue grew heavier and heavier, I first learned how his life
had turned out, how, when all his parents’ property was gone,
he had to be glad to be able to crawl under somewhere as a
town clerk. And that was also the end since his hand was so
shaky from the continued drunkenness that his squiggles were
no longer legible. Now he had set out to find one of his former
tenants who had become rich, from whom he thought he could
still claim something, however little it was, and while
wandering he had met the three students today and continued
together on the path with them. After a long wandering back
and forth in the wild forest they had found the lonely Ball Mill
about two hours before I arrived with Görg, and were glad to
find a roof for the night, even more so, as a whizzing west
wind brought up ever wilder clouds and the earth smelled of
rain.
Now, however, the many wines had won Bavarian
Haymon’s heart completely and utterly, and with many gulps,
belches and weeping he could not do enough to remember
those wild times full of youthful foolishness and exuberance in
the magical false light of memory, keeping the good and the
pleasant, but completely forgetting the excess of adversity and
bitter worries. And after each sentence he spoke, he let a new
cup trickle down his skinny, knitted neck, while the three
young students only dared to talk quietly in a whisper so as not
to interrupt the dialogue of their mossy superior. I was hurting
enough. Friendship and youth were gone.
“Strike and heavy death, Herr Brother!” He cried out one
more time, “What kind of guys we were! Do you still
remember the same night, how tall Heilsbronner gave up the
ghost in the road dirt? How the brave Montanus emptied the
glass boot into his gullet for the last time? O brother, Finch has
also perished, drowned in the Murg, and the Portugieser has
rotted alive in the Spittel in Erlangen, so badly did the Dancing
Lily, with whom he had lived, make such a mess of him. And
Wechler, I don’t know if you would still know him, has become
a cathedral lord and no longer acknowledges me. O vanitas,
vanitatum vanitas! Gone are all the oaths and brotherly love!
Hey, Bärbel! Where is that bitch in heat? Give me some light!
Are we to remain in this hellish darkness? The three vixens
have enough money to pay for several candles!”
Then the innkeeper came out from behind the tiled stove,
where he had been lurking without our knowledge and said
rudely and hoarsely that it was bedtime, and new candles had
to be fetched from afar. Only a stump remained, and that was
just enough to find the sleeping room.
One of the young boys wanted to say something but
another one next to him, a quiet, nice boy who, as I had
observed the whole time, had drunk almost nothing and was
quite sober quickly nudged him and said softly, but in such a
way that I could hear it:
“Quiet, Hans! We may yet need your candles!”
The lout of a landlord without further ado took the last
candle, which was barely enough for a quarter of an hour, from
the table and mumbled, “Now whoever wants to sleep, let him
follow me. Who does not like it can squat in the dark room.
Nothing more will be poured out!”
Haymon wanted to stay, but I quickly took him under the
arm, and so we went behind the innkeeper and his big dog to
find our resting place.
We walked through a long corridor with several thick,
dusty or boarded-up windows. Haymon’s intoxication came out
as we walked, and I heard him say something about a
goddamned town piper, who he wanted to wipe out.
Meanwhile I remembered that the farmer was not with us.
“Where is my driver?” I asked the innkeeper, whose giant
shadow slid along the wall.
“Rehwang?” he grumbled, half looking around. “He’s
long since gone home with his harness.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?” I was annoyed. “What
shall I do tomorrow?”
The hulking fellow stopped in front of a door and
shrugged his shoulders.
“If the gentleman had drunk less and had paid attention
to Rehwang, he could easily have kept him here. It’s not my job
to care about such things.”
He threw a sidelong glance with his one-eye at me.
“And who knows if tomorrow will be so urgent.”
I kept silent, and he pushed open a wooden door with his
foot, holding his hand in front of the stump in the tin
candelabra.
We entered and found ourselves in a large, completely
empty hall, which had probably once been the pouring floor. In
the middle of the room stood, oddly enough, a thick, round
column, which supported the main beam of the ceiling on a
wide annulus. Star-shaped around this column were five berths,
better than we had thought. On clean, fresh straw were coarse,
but white sheets laid down, hard against the pillar there was a
head cushion for everyone, and five thick red-woolen blankets
were spread out for covering.
“We don’t have any better than this in the Ball Mill,” said
the innkeeper, as if embarrassed.
“The gentlemen must make do.”
We testified that we were satisfied, and so he, smiling
and bending down, put the burning light on a stool, showed us
the little luggage that was ours, and under the evil growl of his
mutt, wished us a good night. We heard him shuffle away
through the hallway and then throw the heavy front door shut,
sliding the bar and locking it with the turning of a key.
The two who had led Haymon so far now let him slide
gently onto one of the beds, and it was not two minutes before
he began to snore and mumble meaningless words, which the
wine had given him. A frightening restlessness was in me, and
some dark foreboding lay warningly and heavy in the pit of my
stomach. I took the light and looked around. Sooty cobwebs
hung like banners of mourning from the old beams of the
ceiling; the three small windows with their blinded, lead-lined
bull’s-eye panes could not be opened. A choking musty cellar
odor brooded in the wide room with the column. The wide ring
it wore at the top had recently been whitewashed, so that it
stood out glaringly against the lurid ceiling.
When I turned around, I saw that my feelings were
shared by the three students. None of them made any
preparations to visit the tempting beds or to put their swords
away.
“It smells like old blood in here,” said the bright-eyed
Hoibusch, who had already impressed me with his sobriety and
calmness at the table.
Also Hans Garnitter, who was lighting the candles said,
“This is where the devil is supposed to spend the night!” and
the third, a young gentleman of Sollengau, who gradually
became free of the wine spirits, nodded apprehensively.

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The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte: pages 155- 159

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 1, 2026| Leave a Comment »

The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte by Paul Busson and translated by Joe E Bandel

I jumped up from the table. As if in a bright light, for a
small moment I saw the connections of all the mysteries of my
life. But quickly enveloping veils descended on an image that
was not accessible to my ordinary senses.
“May I make a great request?” I asked.
“If it is in my power to grant it.”
“Lead me to the dying man,” I asked.
“So come,” said the priest.
We went quickly to the little cottage at the end of the
village. A reddish light pressed through the tiny, dim windows.
We heard many people murmuring, and when we entered the
low room, we saw several men and women kneeling in prayer.
In a meager bed lay an old man. His small, shriveled face
stood out from a blue pillow and was surrounded by the glow
of the dying candle burning at his head.
We approached his bed. The heavy eyes were glazed, his
mouth was open.
I saw at once that this man, in his distress would no
longer be able to answer the questions that were burning on my
lips.
Then something incomprehensible happened.
Slowly, the staring eyes turned and looked toward me. In
the face already marked by the paralyzing finger of death, there
was a faint movement, a joyful smile played around the thin,
sunken lips, and before we knew what was going on in the
dying man, his upper body rose, his haggard arms stretched out
toward me, and almost sobbing, the thin old man’s voice came
from out of his mouth:
“So you have come after all — at last!”
Radiant joy flamed in his eyes, then his head fell back
into the pillows, a gray shadow ran over his mouth and nose,
his body stretched so that the bedstead creaked.
The clergyman stepped in and closed the eyelids with his
hand.
“Rest now, thou faithful servant,” he said softly. “Let us
pray!”
We said the Lord’s Prayer, and as we left the parlor, I felt
everyone’s eyes on me.
The deceased believed he had seen his friend, Ewli, in
me.
The clergyman did not speak a word. When we were
back in his comfortable room, he looked at me with uneasy
eyes.
“It must have been the scar,” he said to himself.
“What scar?” I asked in amazement.
“The red scar that is between your eyebrows, Baron
Dronte. – No, no!” he cried suddenly. “Further brooding over
these things would be called trying God! – If it is convenient
for you I will show you your bedroom!”
I bowed my thanks and went with him.
When we were standing in the room I had been given, he
took me by the shoulders with both hands and looked me in the
face for a long time.
“Forgive me for my rude confusion!” he then said. “But I,
an old man, have experienced too many incomprehensible and
disturbing things. I myself am not able to solve the terrible
riddles of providence. I want to be alone. Please don’t be angry
with me. I need to flee from the confusion of these mysterious
incidents to a safe haven! In the faith in Him, who directs
everything according to His high will, and in the peace of
prayer.”
“Pray for me, too, Reverend Herr”, I asked with emotion.
Then I was alone. And restlessly I groped with the
feeling that the mind was not able to bring me any help, to find
the little portal within the dark wall that would lead to the truth.
But here and there, in the sleepless night, appeared a faint
glimmer of foreboding – I could not grasp anything of that,
which in the deepest and darkest depths of my soul approached.
A farmer, whom I had taken into my service with his
team and asked for the most stately building in the entire area,
assured me that it was Krottenriede Castle. But the road that
led there was a two day journey through a thick forest and a
horrible moor and was by no means safe. Not too long ago the
Spillermaxe gang had lain in wait in the Damned Quarry and in
Klosterholz near the road, and the poachers were not doing too
well either, and seldom gathered together, for example, to hunt
a more spirited game than a deer or roebuck.
Also the priest, whom I clearly saw had kept watch
through the night, warned me of the vast forest, where it was
not safe. When I had made up my mind to leave, he took his
leave visibly moved and commended me to the blessing of God,
who would protect me from the false arts and deceitfulness of
Satan. For after careful reflection he could not believe that God
would want to use a Mohammedan monk or dervish to help a
believing Christian, whom he recognized me to be.
I thanked him for the night’s lodging and the food and
urged the farmer, whose name was Görg Rehwang, to hurry,
since I had every reason to fear that the little courage the man
had would evaporate before the journey began. After I made
sure that the mail coach driver would be able to travel home in
the course of the day and was quite well, we drove into the
middle of the forest.
By the crouched neck and the shy side glances, which
Rehwang did to the right and left, I soon realized that his heart
was in his pants, and it was not long before he half turned
around and asked with a cheese-white face:
“”Didn’t you hear something, Herr?”
“Nothing,” I said.
“To the right hand someone has made a whistle or I shall
not be blessed!” he whispered, scratching his furry hair.
But nothing happened. It might have been a wild bird.
Then, however, when we reached a marshy area of heath
he began to talk about the inn, in which we were to find
accommodation for one night and which was called “The Ball
Mill”.
“Supposedly there were many a man there with heavy
stones on their feet, without clothes and possessions, in the
depths of the black moor waters, to the delight of crayfish,
water beetles and eels.” he babbled, his teeth chattering.
“Lord, how about we turn the foreheads of our nags to
where we came from?”
I gave him no answer, and so he drove on with a deep
sigh. The area was gloomy and sad. Between shimmering pools
stood ancient and gnarled trees, covered with warts and goiters.
Dead trunks and those peeled by lightning desperately spread
their twisted serpentine arms. On water covered with a skin of
thick green slime, lurked crippled willows, on which hungry
crows squatted. Trunks and branches were whitewashed with
the droppings of the resting birds. Sometimes a duck would
rise out of the reeds with a whistle and beating wings. Very
distant, mournful notes from a flute purred in the wind, and
gray misty women dragged their dripping gowns through the
treetops.
“Here it’s called the Damned Quarry”, the farmer began
again. “And the path there, between the young birches, leads to
the Ball Mill, where we can spend the night.”
But it went on for a long time, until we arrived in front of
the dark gray and unfriendly building. Large, stone balls, green
with moss, eaten by rain and snow lay next to the door, and a
moldy soft spot still showed where the dammed waters of the
moor brook had driven the mill, which had long since become
an inn.
The farmer got off the wagon with a crooked back and
shouted a few times:
“Hey there, the inn!”
But nothing moved, yet we thought we heard wild
singing coming through the greenish windows behind the
strong square bars. After long shouting the host finally
appeared with a huge black and white spotted dog, whose dull,
raw face was not unlike that of a man. The broad-shouldered
man, who had an excessively long knife sticking out of his fat
leather pants, looked at us unkindly enough and grunted:
“Hoho, Rehwang, what do you bring us there for a
distinguished gentlemen?”
“The gentleman has a long way to go,” the farmer
apologized. “And so goes inquiry on account of the night’s
lodging.”
“Still don’t know the household custom, you living cow
patty?” the rude host dug at poor Görg Rehwang. “And if the
emperor and the pope and all the electors and as far as I’m
concerned, also the empress and the archbishop’s bed warmer
come riding and driven, there is nothing else in the Ball Mill
but a bundle of straw in the large room. – The Herr can do with
it as he pleases!” he said with a treacherous look at me.
Behind him, pointy-nosed, shabby and rattle-thin like the
forest crows on the garbage heap by the building, suddenly
stood, as if grown from the earth, the landlady who smiled
wryly and said:
“If it is convenient for the Herr he is welcome! While
there is nothing but a poor man’s bed, we have good wine and a
company in the house, where there is a great deal of fun.”
“There is no lack of wine,” the innkeeper in the woollen
doublet interjected much more friendly. “I just wanted to warn
the gentleman that he does not expect anything fine from us
and does not beat the wheel in disgust at the burping and
farting of the sleeping companions around him.”
I did not reply to the coarse lout’s rude speeches and
entered the house. Roaring laughter and shouting rang out to
me from the tavern when I opened the door, and stinging pipe
smoke billowed out in clouds.
At the long table, above which was an elaborately carved
in wood, six-horse carriage with all the accessories hung in toy
size, also burned six or seven candles in tin lanterns. Three
students sat at it, their long swords strapped around them, their
sleeves pinned up, drinking Runda. With them was a tree-tall,
gaunt fellow with a bald skull and a fiery red vulture nose,
dressed in a scuffed black robe, who held a cheeky brown-
skinned woman on his lap, with his hand waving a yellow neck
cloth in the air. The black-eyed woman laughed in such a way
that her exposed breasts trembled, and she pinched the old beau
in his drunkard’s nose, so that he cried out loudly and let her go.

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Order of Anarchist Knights

Posted in Uncategorized on January 1, 2026| Leave a Comment »

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