The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte by Paul Busson and translated by Joe E Bandel
When I wanted to go I noticed that a few steps behind me was a lean, white-haired, very stately and upright peasant, who looked at me with a less than friendly and piercing look. “I suppose the gentleman is coming to see us?” he said lurkingly. “I will show him the way to the inn.” And with that he walked beside me. The village mutt, which wanted to come at me with loud barking, gave way with retracted tail before his hard look. The people before the houses pulled their caps before him. “Here it is.” The peasant pointed to the door of a large house, in front of which a couple of fellows stood chatting quietly. “Enter.” That sounded like an order and gave me a jolt. “Ei, is this the only inn in the big town?” I turned mockingly to my companion. “And how do you know that I want to enter this one?” He looked me sharply in the face with his cold, blue eyes and replied only briefly: “It is best for the Lord to enter here!” I complied with the strange compulsion, entered and sat down at a table on the wall under the deer antlers. The old man sat down with me, had wine brought, set fire to a short silver- beaten burl pipe and said: “You look like a man of status in spite of your rather scuffed clothes. The question is how you have come to so lonely a wandering?” “Aren’t you being a bit too curious, Herr Mayor,” I replied. This was the title he had been given by the little girl when she had poured the wine. “Curiosity, as you call it, is the right of the established against strangers. Besides, here I am the authority. So you want to tell me something about your status, name and what you are doing. Its better speaking over a glass than on the bench in the basement, if one is the judge and the other is the indicted.” This sounded like a threat, and I would certainly have responded sharply if there had not been something special in the man’s nature and especially in the look of the man, there was something that I did not want to resist. The mayor also knew how to get answers to the questions that he addressed to me so cleverly and forcefully that I, not knowing why myself, shared my entire life to him with the greatest frankness. I admitted that I had deserted from the army of the great king, not out of cowardice, but to flee the cruelty of a state that seemed to me to be an excess of servitude and annihilation of free will which had become abhorrent to me. “Young Herr,” said the old man thoughtfully. “In such a way it can still take a good course with you. As I hear from your speeches, you have had pity on the poor man, and that is a great and precious rarity among people. To what extent your unprotected youth pushed you into ruin, I cannot judge for the time being. But I hope that a suspicion which distresses me and which is very threatening to you, will prove to be false.” “What suspicion?” I asked, astonished. “Be patient,” said the mayor. “Where will your wanderings take you?” “To my homeland,” I answered. “Tell me,” he continued, again looking sharply at me. “Why did you stand so long in the snow looking at the wayside shrine?” Gradually, his imperious way of asking put me in harness, and I briefly asked him whether he thought of himself as a judge who had a poor rascal before him. “That is what I think.” He laid his hand firmly on my arm. “You know that I am the mayor of this village and as such I ask you: Do you have anything to tell me about the welfare of the village?” “Yes,” I said quickly. “Your village is threatened by a grave danger.” It was as if a kindly glow flitted across his weathered face. But it became immediately serious again, and he said, apparently indifferently: “Gee up! Who told you that fairy tale?” “It’s not a fairy tale,” I said, glad to bring in my nearly almost committed grave omission. “Believe me, you are in danger!” “Go ahead and speak, Squire.” “There are certain signs,” I said, “by which the murderers and the marauders announce their wickedness to each other. I found such signs on your wayside shrine. Now you know why I stopped in the snow.” He made a movement as if he wanted to reach out his hand to me, but dropped it and asked dryly, where I got such dubious knowledge. I reminded him that I had already told him about my time with the gypsies, who understood such things well. The old man laughed briefly and his wrinkled face came near. “Perhaps it true that I also know something about such things?” he murmured. “You?” I shook my head doubtfully. “We could try it out,” he said and poured me some wine. “Describe the signs to me, and then let’s interpret them together like the old magicians of whom we read in the scriptures.” “Very well,” I said. “There were on the Wayside Shrine: a full moon, a one, three houses, the first two of which are crossed out, and the third not, a comb with teeth, a snake or a viper, two dice with five on top, three crosses, each in a square, two of which are crossed out and one of which is not, a knife, two shoes, a rooster and the letter F.” “Quite so.” The old man nodded and took a thoughtful sip from his glass, “Now let’s divide ourselves in the work. You, valiant squire, point out to me the rogue’s signs up to the two fives of the dice, and then I will explain the rest of the drawings that have been on the Wayside Shrine since yesterday.” “We could leave the interpreting for later. Better to take precautions now -“ “Don’t be concerned,” he rebuffed. “It will be on my, the village mayor’s cap, if something is missed, you are in no way to blame. And now off with your gypsy wisdom!” “So listen,” I began. “The signs are thus to read: On the first day of the full moon we gather. The target is for the third house in the village. This all means the moon, the one and the not crossed out third house. A comb with teeth indicates: a sharp dog is on guard. Then the snake means a lump of poison, to make the watch dog dumb.” “It’s my house,” nodded the white-haired man, “which they have in mind, and my Packan, who admittedly will not take a lump from a stranger’s hand. You have interpreted well. Now it is my turn.” “Better let me.” “Chamber. Two fives on the dice: that is ten o’clock at night, because the moon is in front; three crosses, each in a square, two painted: get in at the third window. A knife: murders quickly and safely. The shoes: then make haste away with the loot, but first put the red rooster on the roof as it is shown, so that the fire will erase all the evidence. And F? What does that mean?” He looked at me with a smile. “That’s a name sign,” I replied quickly. “You can’t get the name itself from it. Certainly it is the captain, whom the others obey.” “The F means Frieder,” said the old man, “and this devil of a fellow is the leader of five journeymen murderers who have drawn themselves from the Spessart region and call themselves the Red Hat, as Frieder likes to wear a fox-red cap. Now you also know the name sign.” “A good guess,” I admitted. “Now I may trust you, young Herr.” The mayor extended his hand to me, which he had previously refused to do. “Even though it stinks that you know how to read tines. You know that earlier I took you for one of their henchmen and spies, when you were at the wayside shrine and looked at the signs so devoutly. Hey, Hannes, Matz, and Kilian!” he shouted loudly. In an instant the door opened, and three tree-strong fellows with rifles, sabers and two huge gray shepherds’ or catchers’ dogs came straight towards me with ropes in their hands. “Leave the gentleman!” the mayor waved them off. “Go back to the others and tell them that this one is a righteous man and no one may harm him. Make it very clear, as I have shown you. Veit and Leberecht at the sloe bush, old Knolb and Heger’s boy on the roof of the first house, four in the ditch, two behind the dung heap, ten in Heger’s stable and the others, as the case may be. Let them come right on in, don’t bother taking prisoners. The five helpers may kiss the snow, Frieder, the one with the red cap, we want alive.” The strong fellows looked at me and laughed. “So we would have soon sent the wrong man on his way to heaven,” said one of them, nudging the two others, who burst out with their boorish laughter. The dogs growled and pulled their chops from their white teeth. “Now go again!” the old man instructed them, and immediately they stomped heavily out the door. Outside the last light lay blue and darkening on the white land. The old man ordered me not to leave the inn for the time being. Later, the taciturn tavern maid, who answered all my questions with a “Don’t know.” brought me a chicken roasted on a spit and a jug of red wine. Once, when I felt the urge to go out, one of the dogs struck close to me. So I had to stay and wait until everything was over, and tired from the long way and sleepy from eating and drinking, I fell into a half slumber.
The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte by Paul Busson and translated by Joe E Bandel
And when I thought of it, it shook me coldly. I quickly went up to the sleeping mortuary attendant, grabbed him by the shoulder and called out: “Wake up, man! Robbers are outside –“ The peasant, who was wearing a coarse shillelagh, jumped up and looked at me in alarm. “Where?” he slurred. “Outside,” I said again and closed the door behind me. I heard him quickly slam the heavy latch shut. As soon as I stood outside in the breeze, crooked fingers clawed at my tattered coat, two eyes shone like brass, and from a black gaping mouth he bleated: “Throw them away; throw them away from you all at once!” “What do you mean, cursed one, that I should throw them away?” I shouted in his face. “Our Lord Christ’s cross -?” Fangerle bent back as if I had struck him in the face, twisted and turned like a worm and began to run, cross-country. The wind raced behind him, whistling and whirled up his coattails, and as he was carried away into the twilight, it seemed to me as if instead of him a giant bird with black wings soared over the furrows, just as owls fly. I stood without money, abandoned and damp from the dew on the lonely road. But then I remembered the satchel with the soul mice. Who was screaming so miserably in the hunting bag of the evil one -? The evil one! A paralyzing fright crept into my legs. Calling on the name of God a hundred times, I went towards the next place and did not dare to look around.
The gypsies, with whom I had long been walking, the brown Romi, as they called themselves, had wandered back across the border, and I had to separate from them, if I did not want to be married by the provost to the rope maker’s daughter. My misery was boundless. Here and there I found some work and food in the farms, I even received a damaged piece of clothing that was even better than my rags, but most of the time I was starving and freezing to death. One day I was lucky and found half a loaf of bread on a country lane, which had been lost from a cart. And when I saw the ruins of a castle on a mighty, wooded hill, I decided to light a fire in a hidden place in the walls, so that I would not have to spend the icy winter night without the comfort of close warmth. After some climbing around in the rocks I soon found a still fairly preserved vault, on the whitewashed wall of which still the remains of Al Fresco paintings could be seen. Among other paintings also the wedding of Cana was depicted (as I could see from the remains of clothing and heads, as well as the large, ancient wine jugs), and when I saw the mural, which was in a bad state of disrepair, I noticed that one of the wine jugs bore the barely legible inscription: “Hic jacet”, or “Here it lies”. Perhaps it was a joke that the painter made for himself, telling the thoughtful observers that in these jugs and in the wine that fills them, in fact something lies and rests, namely the spirit that enters into the body of man with the drink and gradually unleashes all passions, which overwhelms and rapes the mind, through intoxication; but perhaps it was also said that all gaiety slumbers in the round belly of the pitcher and after drinking the drink, it would froth up in laughter, cheerfulness and songs. About this and the like, I pondered until the lack of the warming fire made itself violently known and forced me to tramp up and down in the spacious vault for a while, in order to warm myself and to let my stiff hands be used for starting the fire. When passing the unfortunately only painted brown jug, I could not help but tap the thick belly of the vessel with a bent forefinger, even though its rounded appearance was only the skill of the painter, who through the distribution of light and color had achieved a high degree of plasticity. But when I playfully tapped at the seemingly round curvature of the drinking vessel, I felt as if it had a dull, wooden, and hollow space. I knocked again, and two or three more times. The sound gave way at the place where the Latin words were written; it differed from the sound of the walled environment. Following a sudden impulse, I peeled off the paint and the lime with my blunt knife, dug a little and immediately came to a wide, rotten storage cache. I increased my efforts, and soon the old wood was crumbling away in brown flour and damp splinters, exposing a small niche in which lay a round, greenish-white mold covered sphere. After some hesitation, in which I saw that the object was a decomposed human head, I plucked up my courage, reached in and pulled out a completely decomposed leather sack, which made a fine sound when I lifted it out. It was heavy with metallic contents. Then I made a fire, probably also for this reason, to calm my hammering heart by doing an indifferent work. When the little fire was burning and flickering merrily, I proceeded to examine the leather container, which the inscription on the wine urn had advised. Those, to whom this sign had once been made because of the danger of forgetfulness, had been dead and gone for many years, perhaps buried under the rubble of the castle. The bag offered little resistance. It fell apart as I carried it to my fire, and its contents rolled ringing on the damaged stone floor. My breath was taken away by the sheer joy of it. Doubloons, sun-crowns, guilders rolled out of the greasy, wet bag and flashed in the glow of the dancing flames. I laughed, shouted, and leapt around the fire. I let the blessing run through my unwashed fingers, shook the coins into my hat, stroked them, and twisted individual pieces between thumb and forefinger so that they reflected the embers, paving the floor with them and throwing ducats in the air to catch them again or to search for the unrolled ones among the debris. But then reason prevailed. How easily the firelight, my foolish shouting and stamping could attract passersby and betray me and my refuge! In great haste and yet cautiously I tore my sweat-glued shirt and produced by knotting and folding a kind of money bag in which I concealed the not inconsiderable number of gold pieces and hid them on my bare body. When I was finished with everything, I pulled the smoldering wood apart and thoughtfully descended the hill of ruins to reach the next town in broad daylight. This I succeeded in doing and after a short time of sneaking, searching and cautious questioning, I found the store of a junk dealer. I told him that I was a runaway soldier and that I needed clothes, linen, shoes and a warm coat. Fortune demanded that I had come across a reasonably honest man, who, though not cheaply, did not cheat me for inordinate profit, and even had a bath prepared for me against good money and an ointment that freed me from the torment of the vermin. The only thing that bothered me was the hurry, with which all this had to proceed, and the visibly growing restlessness of the man, as daylight gradually began to fade. At last, however, his insistence became tiresome to me, and I asked him gruffly whether the chosen people practiced hospitality in such a way, and how he seemed to hold it in low esteem that I had willingly let him earn a nice piece of money. For I was well aware of the price at which worn clothes and worn linen and clothes were traded. Nevertheless, I would have paid what I had received without question as if it had just come out of the workshop of the tailor and garment maker. Then the Jew laughed and said: “The gentleman has probably also been rendered a service so that he may have cleaned and equipped himself in all secrecy, so that the bailiff does not even look after him, when he crosses the street. If the gentleman were a Ben Yisroel, one of my people, it would be a pleasure for me to house him. But because the gentleman is from the others, it must not be so. Because it is Friday evening, which we Jews call Eref Shabbiss and it is against our custom, to suffer strangers in our festive house. May the Lord forgive; I know well that he is a Purez, a distinguished man, who has suffered from the Balmachomim, and may he go his way in peace and forgive that it cannot be otherwise!” Thereby with a deep bow he tore open the iron door of his store and politely beckoned me to leave. Only when I was standing outside on the street did it occur to me that in his way he had acted honestly toward me. For it would have been easy for him to keep me in his house and betray me to the king’s troops lying not far away in their winter quarters. Despite the armistice, they could have picked me out and abducted me, and with some skill the Jew would have not only had a reward, but also the money hidden on my person, which would have not gone unnoticed to his quick eyes. Thus it was not by my cleverness, but by my good fortune, that I had escaped the greatest danger to my life. For the sake of safety, I decided to wander deeper into the country and far away from the border to make use of a mail coach. So I trudged on my way in the thick snow and strove towards a village in which I intended to spend the night. At the entrance of the respectable and, judging by the clean houses that were spared from the war, prosperous location stood an artwork, the sorrowful mother with her son in her lap. The base of the sandstone had been freshly plastered, and so I immediately noticed a few figures and strokes on the white surface drawn with charcoal which I knew as “marks”, as the country and traveling thieves call their secret signs. When I was with the gypsies I had learned such science, which is useful for everyone to understand. But these signs on the wayside shrine were about murder and burning and I shuddered when I deciphered their meaning. Undecided what to do with them, by no means to carelessly disregard the threatening message for other people I stopped.
The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte by Paul Busson and translated by Joe E Bandel
Nevertheless no one seemed to pay any attention to the ugly one but I. And sometimes it seemed to me, as if a chirping and whistling sound as of mice came out from his bulging satchel. Not infrequently he rolled his squinty eyes toward me and laughed impudently at me, as if we were old acquaintances. I racked my brains, in fact, to find out where I might have seen this mask before, but as hard as I tried, I could not think of it. After a while, a beautiful carriage stopped in front of the inn, and several handsome merchants entered the drinking room, and were very courteously welcomed by the innkeeper’s wife and the barmaid. Then I thought that it was now time for me to go, and crept out of the door. But when I found myself on the wet street in the roaring dew wind, I held my fluttering rags with my hands to cover the worst of the bare spots, there was such a shrill laugh right next to me, that I collapsed. The man with the hunter’s hat walked next to me, as if he had been my companion all his life, and looked at me piercingly from the side. “Well, your Baronial Grace,” he grumbled, “what peculiar garb I must find you in again. The new, lavender-gray little coat suited you better that day, when you were watching with your strict father, as the magistrate cracked Heiner’s rough bones.” I looked up, now I knew where I had seen him. It was at Zotenbock, where he had been hanging around in the linden trees, eavesdropping at the market place. “Who are you?” I asked. “Me? I’m just Fangerle,” he replied, suddenly quite humble. “I’m glad when, with much toil and trouble I fill my blue satchel so that my master, who is called the Highest- Lowest, can be content. I now have an extremely annoying job and would be really happy if someone wants to take some of the work off my hands. It is nice money to be earned. Don’t you feel like it, your Baronial Grace?” “Listen,” I said, raising my ash stick. “I am in great distress, but if you have come with your gallows face to mock me, then I will show you that even in rags I can still be a gentleman, if need be.” He ducked his head as if he were afraid, and asked me not to be rude. He was a joker by trade, he said, and as such earned a lot of money at peasant weddings and funeral banquets. And whether I got angry if he said it now – it is a disgrace that one of the house of Dronte is in such an outfit, when it would have been no trouble to earn a bare hundred thalers in a few moments. And before I could reply he reached into his satchel with his crooked fingers and pulled out a handsome canvas pouch, in which it clinked. “A full hundred,” he whispered in my ear. “Hihi – hoho!” he laughed, and it was as if an echo came down from the skies. But it was only a great train of crows and Jackdaws, which moved with Krah and Kjak in the sky, and when I looked up, a crow detached itself from the flock, swooped down and fluttered very low above our heads, so that I saw how it moved its cunning, black ball eyes. At that the thin man straightened up and called out to it: “Black Dove, go and tell the Highest – Lowest, that Fangerle is on the way and to take the quiet one his consolation!” “Krah – Krag!” cried the bird and shot after the others. “What are you chattering about?” I prevailed over my uninvited companion, who was jingling his money bag. “What are you talking about?” “This?” he gave in reply. “One of my jokes, nothing else. Remember: If you’re riding in a wagon and there is a barking mutt, like your master father’s black Diana, following behind, you need only turn and tell the animal where to go. Then it will leave you immediately. This and nothing else I have done with the raven. Otherwise Master Hämmerlein’s songbird would fly with us.” My eyes were glued to the clinking money bag, and I thought of how I could equip myself with a hundred thalers and become a human being again. There was another strange squeaking in his satchel. “What do you have in it?” I asked, pointing with my finger, “that it squeaks like that?” “There in the blue satchel?” The merchant made a face. “It’s little animals that I’ve caught and bring them to their place.” “What kind of little animals?” I pressed him. “Soul mice, tiny soul mice that I’ve been gathering around there.” “Soul mice?” “It’s just a word,” he laughed, reaching into the sack and quickly pulled out a small, shadowy-gray thing that wriggled and screamed. Quickly he hid it again, and although I had not been able to see what it had actually been, a violent shudder ran through my body. Then came a howling gust of wind and almost pulled me down. The money bag fell out of the old man’s hand. Flashing, brand-new thaler pieces rolled out. He quickly picked them up from the ground and threw them back in with the others, and once again my desire for all that money awoke. “What must I do to make the money mine?” He stopped, rolled his eyes, and muzzled his mouth. “In a moment, my boy, my brave boy, just be patient until we reach the two Ka- Ka -“ A fit of coughing almost tore his throat. I followed the direction of his outstretched hand and saw a chapel by the road, not far from the village I was walking toward. I hurriedly strode and the merchant, who suddenly seemed to get sour from walking, only followed with difficulty. When we came to the little church, he stopped, bent over and scratched himself with his nails behind his pointed ears, with his mouth hanging down. “Now you will tell me,” I said angrily, “or do you think you can continue to mock me?” Then he became completely submissive, bowed to me and said softly and almost shyly: “Baron Dronte, I am a coward, and I am afraid of many things that a brave soldier does not fear. There is one lying in there, and he’s dead, so he can’t bite. In his hands are two wooden sticks, one long and a shorter one, which I must take from him for all the world. It is only a handle and a hitch, so he must leave them.” “That would be robbing a corpse,” I stammered, startled. “That would be the gallows.” “Many names exist for the businesses in which there is much to earn. And there are many gallows, but most stand empty.” Under his broad hat, his eyes glistened like St. John’s beetles. “I’d love to,” he croaked hoarsely, “but I can’t touch such sticks. Everyone has their own characteristics. Like, for example, many a man would rather die than touch a toad with his bare hand. “ “What kind of sticks are they, for which you have such a great desire?” “Don’t need them,” he hissed crossly. “Only that the one in there shall be free of them.” Again there was a clang and a sound. My wound hurt. The water stood in my pierced shoes and bit open my frostbite. “I’ll do it,” I said, and reached for the door handle. He looked at me like a hawk. It dawned heavily. The wind rumbled over the steep roof of the chapel. The trees rustled. I entered. In the middle of the whitewashed room, in the corners of which the darkness was already eerily stretching, there was a coffin in front of the altar on the collar. A single light flickered at its head end. A guard sat on the floor and slept. Next to him glittered an empty bottle. In the open coffin, however, lay an old, distinguished man with a face in which life had drawn furrows and wrinkles. He was dressed in a new coat made of black, watered silk; also the vest, the leggings and the stockings were black. A white, well coiffed state wig framed the wax-yellow, smartly pinched face. In his folded hands he held a small wooden cross. I had seen many dead people and even had to help bury them. I didn’t feel much at the sight of lifeless bodies that were left to decay. But this old man with his wise and so unmoving face, in which countless joys and sufferings had been marked, this defenseless man, whose guardian lay there in deep drunkenness and left him defenseless and exposed to everything that might befall the lonely church. I took pity on him. And what was I supposed to steal from him? Then I recognized it: It was the death cross, which his hands were holding tightly. I was supposed to snatch it from him. This should not be difficult. I took hold of the cross. Who sighed there? I almost fell to the ground from fright. But then I got hold of myself, remembered that the dead are dead forever, and reached out my hand again. But I lowered it. What did it matter to the merchant with his disgusting eyes of a bitch, whether this deceased was brought under the lawn with or without his cross? And now he would give me a talking to, the barnacle-eyed fellow with his thalers. I went toward the door. It was only two steps, but I looked back at the dead man. He was lying quietly and peacefully, and as if in great fear, the pale fingers closed around the cross. I had to think of the despicable guy who had hired me. How could this madman or villain think that I would take the cross of a lifeless man away from him? What had he been chattering about, how the ravens flew over us? “To take the silent man’s comfort -?”
The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte by Paul Busson and translated by Joe E Bandel
He fell silent, exhausted, breathing heavily. “Not everything he says is a lie,” murmured Repke. “You too?” roared Zulkov, spitting on the ground. “Oh, about you Germans! You misjudge what alone is necessary for the salvation of the German nation, the army and the wise hand to guide it.” “Germans are over here and over there. Have always been a poor, betrayed people,” said Repke. “It’s a pity that I’ve shot my powder outside, Fritze Zulkow,” sneered Wetzlaff. “Otherwise maybe you would like a warm plaster glued to your mouth with all the strength of your body, you foot stinker, you are the miserable archetype and symbol of the subservient subject. Decomposing even in a living body and still singing the praises of the one whose furies flay us and torment us until death. But you just wait until they put me on outposts again. I’ll cross over; I’ll cross over, so help me God… O hell, filth and Satan — it overcomes me again –!” With a staggering leap he was up, and again we heard his blood gurgling outside. “He has a bad fever!” waved Repke at the enraged Zulkov angrily. “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about in his pain.” Then Kühlemiek raised his nasally trembling voice and began to sing from his book, so that we all shuddered: “The abomination in the darkness, The stigma in the conscience The hand that is full of blood The eye full of adulteries, The naughty mouth full of curses, The heart of the scoundrel is revealed.” “Oh my God -!” It was I who cried out thus. Then a loud trumpet blared. – “Alarm!” Zulkov shouted, squeezing his sore feet into his frozen shoes. “Alarm!” At the glow of the extinguishing fire, we gathered everything together. Distant shots. The trumpets began to scream all around. Wetzlaff stumbled in. “Up, brothers, up! We want to light up the royal bastard’s home. Vivat Fridericus!” That was Wetzlaff. Bent with body ache, he took up his rifle. Zulkov moaned softly with every step. All around there was noise, horses neighing, clanking. But in all the raving, running, shouting orders and muffled noise of the shooting in front swung mewling and horrible the merciless voice of the pietist, who sang his song to the end. Dreadful fear descended from the tones. The fear of what would happen after death. The drums were beating. Heavy smoke rolled in thick clouds, dissipated, came in new blue-white balls, and dissipated again. Fog and stink lay over everything. Dull roaring thuds, crashes, whipping bang, chirping of bullets. I stood with the others in lines and ranks, bit off the bullet twisted in rancid paper, kept it in my mouth, poured the black powder into the hot barrel, ran my fingers between my teeth and pushed the cobbled lump of lead down with the ramrod until it rested firmly and the iron rod jumped. Just as it had been drilled into me. Then powder on the pan, with the thumb on the cock, aimed it horizontally, and into the wall of fog in front of me, in which shadows were moving. The stone gave off sparks and it flared up before my eyes, and then came the rough recoil against my sore shoulder. The lieutenant on the wing waved the halberd and shouted. “Geg – geg – geg,” was heard, not understanding a word. A big iron ball rolled and danced across the frozen snow, then a second one. A third bounced along beneath us and smashed Kühlemiek’s feet out from under him. “O Jesus Christ!” he cried out, crawling a little on his hands in his own blood. Then he fell with his face in the snow, became silent. “Flü – flü – flüdeldideldi,” lured the pipes. “Plum – plum – plum.” The drummers worked with sweaty faces. The legs lifted and lowered in time with the beat, one was sitting there, with his head between his spread legs. The blister on my heel was burning, the lice were crawling restlessly on my scratched skin, and there was a rumbling in my guts. I looked around… rows, rows of blue coats, skinny faces with small mustaches, white bandoliers, and bare barrels. “Kühlemiek – Kühlemiek – miekeliekeliek”, trilled from the lips of the pipers. In front of us a row of red lights flashed. A cloud of gray smoke rose behind it. Repke roared and grasped with both hands between his thighs. A tall soldier leaped like a carp and drove with his head into a snowdrift, his feet stretched upwards. Next to me, one screamed like a frog. I could still see the blood pouring out of his ear, before he collapsed to his knees. Zulkov suddenly had no head anymore, walked next to me and sprayed me with hot blood. Then he fell down. The squire was knocked backwards as if he had been hit by an axe. Wetzlaff sat down first, screamed, “I can’t,” and then lay down. In front of me crawled a man who was blind-shot, and Ramler had his right hand twisted and hanging out of his sleeve. He looked at it in amazement and stayed behind. His rifle fell to the ground. Large shapes came swaying out of the haze, and quickly became clear. White coats, black cuirasses. Broad blades stabbed at us, horses’ heads snorted, fled to the side startled. A horse stood on its hind legs in front of me. I saw the rider, who was holding the hand with the broadsword hilt in front of his face, with his left hand clasping the saddle horn. I saw the whiteness of his coat under the edge of the dark armor and hastily thrust with the bayonet. It was soft. He fell forward onto the horse’s neck, glared in my face, and cried out. “You-!” It was Phoebus Merentheim… He rattled down. I no longer saw him. But another one came, lifted himself in the stirrups and hit me on the head with lightning speed, so that I staggered around. The edge of the tin hood cut my forehead, warm and thick water flowed into my eyes. My feet went on. My arms pushed the barrel forward with the bayonet. I tore it from the neck of a brown man. The horsemen were gone all at once, vanished. “No rest – no rest – no rest,” the drums murmured. I slept while walking. We were suddenly among houses. A woman cried out in fear; fell on her face with her arms outstretched. A pig ran between us. Then there was a small forest in front of us. People stepped on bodies, on guns. A dog, skinny and with its tail between its legs, crept past. A peasant lay there with his body open – without intestines. The dog came from him. There were bushes, white-ripe, dense, and impenetrable. I crawled into them. Moss lay there on a pile as if someone had gathered it together. A bed, a bed. I burrowed into it. No one saw me. Wonderful, warm, soft moss. Somewhere in the snowy forest lay the rifle with the bayonet, with Phoebus’ blood on it, the tin hood and the bandolier with the sidearm.
I had been wandering about the border for many days. I had found the torn coat in a shot-up house, the pants on a hanged man. The right leg had received a weeping wound from frost and vermin, which bit and hurt me, my nose and lips were etched from the running sniffles. I had slept in barns and haystacks, teeth chattering, and the previous years frozen and woody rotten beets had to fill my stomach. In this inn on the country road it was the first time that the landlady gave for God’s sake a bowl of warm food to me and allowed me to sit at the back by the warm stove. If, however, distinguished guests came, I should generally trot myself out and not be begging for something around the tables, she said. The barmaid also took pity on me and secretly slipped me a large wedge of bread, and just as stealthily she poured my empty glass full of thin beer. I, the baron Melchior von Dronte, had lived the life of the despised and the poor, the outcast and the lawless. And with the most miserable of them, I had sometimes found more Christian charity than among those who were sitting in their own chair in the church. But how hard people had been against me in the last days! Of course, these were the times that no one should open the door to a stranger in bad clothes without necessity. War and terror all around, victory and parley, robbing, plundering, desecrating and burning without end. So it was like a miracle to me that the landlady said: “Come and eat and warm yourself. You look like the death of Basel.” Not far from me at a small table sat a merchant or cattleman in a light, thick fleece, a large Hessian peasant hat next to him on the bench and a satchel over his shoulder, the leather flap of which was inlaid with all kinds of brass figures. The face of this skinny person was the most disgusting, that I had ever encountered in my life. Soon he pulled his wide mouth into a gap that reached from one of his pointed ears to the other, and then he stretched it out like a pig’s trunk to drink from the glass. His vulture nose lowered against the upwardly curved chin, and his yellow wolf’s eyes, in which the black was transverse and elongated like those of a goat, squinted pathetically.
The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte by Paul Busson and translated by Joe E Bandel
He was a tall, very young boy with sunken cheeks. Apart from his pants and shoes, he was wearing only a dress shirt. He was shivering from frost and fear. Kregel was his name. All the sticks stood steeply in the air. Two sergeants walked at our backs to see who would be casual about the beating. The drums started pounding and the man was pushed into the alley. He ran. The sticks whistled, clapped down on him, the tatters flew off his shirt and skin. He shouted something that you couldn’t understand. I hit him on the neck, and saw raw flesh splattering. But he was through, and outside he fell down on all fours. They grabbed him and pulled him up. He groaned. “Forward!” shouted the provost. The deserter’s eyes protruded out of their sockets, saliva ran from his open mouth. His lips were torn. He was running again. The sticks struck smacking, blood ran, and chunks flew. The man jumped, bent down while running, whined like a dog, stretched out his beaten and swollen hands, pulled them back screaming when a blow hit the knuckles, fell to the ground and collapsed like a sack at the end of the double row. He lay motionless, gray in the face. One could see his heart beating furiously under the bleeding skin; under the back, on which he was lying, a dark pool formed. The army doctor came, took a breath and laid his hand on the ribs of the prone man, then beckoned two soldiers and told them to turn the unconscious man over. Then he pulled out a bottle of wine spirit from his bag and poured it on the torn back. With a piercing cry of pain, the runner came to. “He’s beeping again!” said the man next to me, Wetzlaff. “They always recover their strength with the palm leaf!” They picked up the senselessly slurring man and pushed him into the alley for the third and last time. But this time he did not get far. After a third of the way he fell down, and as much as his comrades tried, even from behind by beating him with a stick urging him on, he did not move any longer. “Now he is done for!” said one of them, and the sticks lowered. But all of a sudden the fallen man jumped up and shot like an arrow through the alley. A few blows hit, the others missed. Furious, the corporals beat those who had allowed themselves to be fooled. “Such a false dog – such a cunning scoundrel!” they scolded. Outside the alley, the runner stood still and smiled in spite of his pain. From above came a peculiar giggling sound. We looked up. At the windows of the officers’ quarters stood a number of preened ladies, holding handkerchiefs in front of their mouths and laughing their heads off. “Plum – plum – berum!” Warned the drums, urging us to move in.
In the guardroom, an oil sparkle was burning. The wall was thickly stained with squashed bugs. The bottles of brandy were empty, and the tobacco smoke drifted in blue clouds under the sooty ceiling. It had been a retreat for a long time, but no one stretched out on the cot. “If only she comes, Kinner!” said Private Hahnfuss, “but such prizes are smarter than clever!” But he had not yet finished speaking when the door opened and Wetzlaff entered with the girl. The sergeant nodded, looked at the thing with a half a glance, and then, as if by chance, walked quickly out of the guardroom. Behind him the door was immediately locked and barred. The soldier-Catherine now stood alone among the many men in the middle of the room and looked from one to the other. Her cheeky smile became anxious and shy. Her hood was crumpled, the striped skirt was stained, and the heels on her shoes were badly worn. She scratched her hip. But when everyone remained silent, she became afraid and made a movement as if she wanted to run away. She threw a stray glance at the closed door and then she said with a gulp in her throat: “Well, you won’t let me out, boys?” “That’s the way it is, girl,” said the corporal, putting the burning sponge to his pipe. “You lied to us. Didn’t you?” “I keep my mouth shut,” she said, “what’s this all about? What am I supposed to have lied about?” “We asked you once how it was with your internal health, girl – didn’t we? Because otherwise – we would not touch you! And now look at Beverov! – Come here to me, Beverov!” One of the guards stepped forward. The corporal opened his coat, vest and shirt. The man’s chest was covered with nasty red spots. “Do you know what that is, little Cathrine?” the corporal asked treacherously. “They are – real Frenchmen aren’t they!” In the girl’s face shock alternated with fear and anger. “From me? From me?” she shrieked and put her hands on her hips. “You pack of louses, you tripe eaters – I’m still with the sergeant – let’s see if -“ “It’s the same!” the corporal interrupted her and at the same time hit her so hard on the mouth that she cried out. But then she was silent. A drop of blood stood on her lower lip. “Down with the skirt!” She screamed, squealed like a rat, kicked her feet and bit. But it did her no good against the fists that were angrily attacking her from all sides. In a few moments she was standing in the pathetic nakedness of her spent body, writhing under the hard hands that held her wrists and arms. “Bring the lamp!” The corporal shone the oil sparkler all around her. A hot drop fell on her skin, making her cry out. “Don’t worry – you’re not going to be roasted!” he reassured her. “Look, comrades there -!” And he pointed with his finger to many white spots, which clearly stood out from the brownish skin of the neck and the shoulders. “Do you still want to deny that you have the French, are contaminated and infectious, you lout, you?” She did not answer. But then she raised her head and spat her reddish saliva right into the corporal’s face. “Well wait, you human!” He said calmly and wiped his face with his sleeve. “What do you think comrades? I’m for some horseplay.” “Do it!” everyone shouted. “Horseplay!” “You are a fungus from birth,” continued the corporal, blowing the stinging smoke of his smoldering pipe into her face. “What do you want to be? A fox – or what?” “Damned pig,” she hissed and cringed, snatching at the restraining hands and snapping. “I want out! Let me out! Let me out!” “Black is my favorite color!” the private shouted into the hubbub. “Give me the boot polish -!” Amidst roaring laughter, in which the voice of the desperate creature was drowned, they spat into the jerk-off boxes, dipped the coarse brushes into them and went to it. So far I had sat on a cot as in half anesthesia and watched the incomprehensible to me happenings. But now I was seized with horror and agonizing pity for the miserable, broken and destroyed creature. I saw how they reached for her, heard the insane shrieks and screams of the martyred woman, as they dragged her by the hair and stepped on her bare feet with their clumsy shoes. She squirmed like an eel, screamed with a squeal when one of them approached with a whip in his hand, whimpered for mercy and in one breath uttered the most vile curses. “What do you want with the wench?!” I shouted at Wetzlaff and held him by the sleeve. “Well first she must be scrubbed shiny,” he grinned in my ear. “And then she must run at the long leash until she can no longer. That’s our horseplay, boy!” A shrill scream went up. The corporal had grabbed her from behind and held her tightly, however much she resisted. “Go for it, comrades!” he encouraged the others. Then I jumped over, tore his hands from her trembling body and stood wide in front of her. “Let her go!” I shouted loudly. “Let her go!” “Oho!” he roared back at me. “Look! Dronte!” With his fists clenched and his face contorted in anger Wetzlaff stepped toward me. I looked at him firmly and calmly. His angry eye strayed from mine, his clenched fists opened. The others fell silent, looking at me as if amazed. “Comrades,” I said, “have mercy. She is not guilty. And she is as poor and abandoned as the rest of us!” No one answered. I went to the door, without anyone trying to hinder me and opened it. Then I bent down, picked up the prostitute’s rags and gave them to her. “Go, Cathrine!” I heard myself speak, in the surrounding silence. She stared at me with wide eyes, bent down as if to kiss my hand, then laughed hoarsely and was out in one leap. We heard her walk on bare soles along the stone-paved courtyard. Nobody said anything. Slowly, people put boxes and brushes to their designated places. One of them yawned loudly. Then Wetzlaff laughed strangely, stood in front of me, swayed his head back and forth and looked at me penetratingly. “It is so,” he growled. “Dronte has it in the gaze- He has the power in his eye.” No one remarked anything to it. Silently they stretched out on the hard cots to get some more sleep before Ronde arrived.
Chapter 23 The City Council of Heliopolis and the Circle of Elders
Tara and Nick were the next to join in the dance. Tara had always been into dance, but this was the first time he had seen Nick get into it. Again Tobal was impressed at how the winter had matured Nick. Then he thought of the changes in his own life. He was not the child that had been dropped off at sanctuary almost a year ago.
He realized he had been here one year and he still had one more newbie to train. He was not going to beat Rafe’s record after all. Looking around the room he spied Mike and Butch talking with some girls and urging them to dance. They were laughing and having fun. He figured that Mike and Butch were also looking for newbies. A murmur rippled through the crowd, pulling Tobal’s attention from the laughter to hushed whispers about Sarah, Anne, Derdre, and Seth still at the village with Crow. Rumors of jailed Elders added a tense edge, though they seemed old news from last month.
Wanting to hear something new, he looked around for Ellen and Rafe. He spied Ellen over in a corner talking with Rafe and made a beeline toward them, trying not to spill his tankard in the jostling crowd. At least it was warm in here, he thought, moving past bodies that smelled of wood smoke.
“We can’t talk in here,” he shouted to Ellen above the drum beat.
She nodded and shouted back, “We are meeting in the brewery in a few minutes.”
Tobal nodded and went off to find Fiona, Becca, and Nikki to tell them about the meeting. Their robes were still wet but warmer, and they put them back on before dashing over to the brewery where they took them back off and found places around the fire to sit. They folded their robes and sat on them on the wooden floor.
Ellen and Rafe welcomed them, and Ellen brought everyone up to date on what had been going on with the Council of Elders.
“We tried everything we could think of to contact the city government through the communications and computer systems we have access to,” she said. “What happened was we were warned not to make contact with the city and just to mind our own business. The city will contact us when we are ready to become citizens. We are not part of the city yet and have no legal rights until we complete our training and become citizens.”
“These messages were prominently displayed on each air sled monitor screen and on the computers at home base. No one even thought to come to us in person to explain or hear our concerns,” she said bitterly.
“This did not sit well with the Council of Elders, especially since the arrest and questioning of the five of us that had been sent to the village. We were released, but the Council of Elders now realized someone thought they had the power to arrest clansmen anytime they wanted and hold them without cause. They believed this same someone was responsible for the rogue attacks. The council wants to know why these things are happening and if they are happening with the approval of the city.”
Ellen looked around the small group. “The final decision was that the same five delegates would journey on air sleds to Sanctuary and then cross the wall into the city. We would find a place with lots of people and set our sleds down and wait for the authorities. We would probably be arrested, but the city itself was populated with clansmen. We were counting on that bond of kinsman to get a fair hearing.”
She grinned, “I was the first to go across the wall and land my air sled in a central area. The others followed me in. Even before we had landed, a crowd of people appeared wondering what was going on. I called out that there was an emergency, and one of the citizens nodded and started talking on her cell phone. Several of the others were also on cell phones. It was a matter of minutes before authorities arrived and put us on some type of air transport. We were not arrested or treated as prisoners, but we certainly were not given any choice about things either.”
“They took us down to the police station where we gave our statements.” She laughed, “It was obvious that the persons involved wanted no part of this and were way over their heads. They passed us on to the mayor who listened and then called an emergency session of the City Council. This was against the strong opposition of someone wearing a Federation military uniform. I gathered this uniformed person was the representative of the mountain complex and the ones that had arrested us.”
“I was elected the spokesperson for our group,” she told them, “and with grim determination I faced the City Council and told our story of being arrested and questioned, about the massacre at the lake and the mass grave, how it was a forbidden area. I told them about the rogue attacks that were centered around the lake itself and the attempt to make it seem the village was responsible for those attacks.
Then I told them that was impossible because the rogues have some way of tracking anyone that has med-alert bracelets and are able to hide in a way that the villagers can’t. I told them of the rumors the city was going to lead an attack on the village. Several members of the City Council looked at each other quickly, and at least a couple had red faces.”
“They weren’t the only ones,” she continued. “I could see the man in uniform getting redder and redder and angrier and angrier. I spoke about Crow who had grown up in the village and now wanted to become a citizen. How his concern for the safety of his village was the reason that led him to make the journey back with four of his friends. The entire group is still within monitor range of our air sleds, and they can visit the village according to our own Council of Elders.”
“I told them how we were suddenly alerted that the village was forbidden and that we needed to keep Crow and his friends from going there. That was not right. I faced the City Council and told them Crow was technically a citizen of the village and had every right to be there. He could also bring friends if he chose to do so. Then I mentioned how the air sleds went back to the base and were severely reprimanded and ordered back out to bring Crow and his friends back by force.”
“The City Council was pretty quiet by then,” Ellen said. “They listened as I told them of the confrontation between Howling Wolf and the other villagers that offered to protect Crow and the others. I told them how I was there and that pressing the issue then could have resulted in injury or death to innocent people.
At the mention of Howling Wolf, I saw several council members glance at each other and take stronger notice in what I was saying.” She chuckled, “I took advantage of that interest and told how the Council of Elders decided to send a delegation to talk with Howling Wolf and find out the truth of things for themselves.”
“I then described the armed strike force I had seen waiting by an air transport back at the mountain complex when we returned. I also told how we five members of the Council of Elders had been immediately arrested and held for an entire week without being told why. The man in uniform was a pasty white by now and struggling for composure. I told them how we tried every possible way to make contact with the city itself. We needed to see if the City was aware of these things and if it supported them. I told how the Council of Elders had tried all ways possible to reach the city but been blocked and told it was forbidden. That is why in a last ditch effort we chose to fly a delegation over the city walls and speak with the city officials directly.”
“They didn’t know what to think or say,” she chuckled. “There was a dead silence as the City Council looked toward the man in uniform and waited for his response. He was clearly uncomfortable and said that he was not prepared to respond to these allegations and needed to consult with his superiors.”
“The Mayor then asked what the Council of Elders would like to have happen. I said the Council of Elders would like to ensure the safety of the villagers and Howling Wolf. They would like communication between the village and the city so they could monitor and address any abuses that were happening.
I mentioned this could be done by opening new communication lines to the city from the base in the mountain where we were stationed. I concluded by saying this was a matter for the Elders of the village, the City Council and our own Council of Elders and there were many things that needed to be discussed and brought out into the open. We also wanted the rogue attacks to stop and whoever was responsible for them to be punished.”
Ellen continued her story, “The Mayor looked pretty grim and told us the City Council would need to do its own research and find out what was going on. They also needed to hear from the Federation, and he looked pointedly at the uncomfortable man in uniform. He suggested they adjourn until next month and set a time to meet again here in the city and asked for a vote from the City Council. All voted in approval.
He then asked if the City Council approved a direct communication line to be opened so the Council of Elders could contact them and keep them informed of developments. Again all voted in approval. At that, the Mayor asked the uniformed person if it would be possible for the Federation to open a communication channel for the Council of Elders or whether the City Council needed to do it. He saluted and said the Federation would provide the link.”
“ I think it’s bugged,” Ellen continued, “but it’s more than we had before.”
She continued, “Then the Mayor adjourned the meeting and escorted us back to our air sleds. He told me we had done a very brave thing coming into the city and they would look into our story and be looking forward to our meeting next month.”
Ellen completed her story and looked at the others.
“So it seems things are happening. Hopefully next month we will know more about what is going on.”
They talked a bit more and asked more questions until they reached the point where they just needed to leave things and process them later. The talk shifted to other subjects.
The big news was Rafe had gotten his sixth chevron and would be leaving with Ellen after the party to get his Master’s initiation. With all that was going on, he was eager to get his own air sled and do some snooping around on his own even though Ellen was warning him not to.
The meeting broke up and most of them went back to the dance. Tobal spent a little more time in his farewells with Becca. After a final kiss and hug, he took his pack and left in the pouring rain.
Tobal was getting impatient. It had been almost one year and he wanted to move on into the Journeyman degree. After Tyrone soloed this month he would have five chevrons. He only needed one more newbie to train. He was no fool. After talking with the others he knew at least eleven of them wanted newbies to train and they would be lucky if five showed up. He left immediately in the rain heading for sanctuary. He had not been the only one with that idea. Kevin and Zee were already there ahead of him when he finally got there a few days later.
April rolled around and spring was in the air. Tyrone was on his solo and Tobal was at sanctuary waiting for a newbie to show up. There had already been three and it was not likely there would be any more this month, but he was determined to hold his place in line and get it over with. Kevin and Zee and some others had already taken their newbies and left. This would be his last trainee and then he would be ready for the 2nd degree. He wondered about his last student and who it would be.
Would it be a boy or a girl, somehow it didn’t matter. The skills they needed were all the same. He thought about his last five newbies. Some like Melanie and Crow he had grown very close to. Others like Nick, he hadn’t hit it off with and didn’t see very often. Sarah and Tyrone were fun to hang around with and he loved doing things with them, but they weren’t really that deep and sometimes he missed the serious side of life.
Still, he wasn’t prepared when Llana walked through the door for the first time and claimed sanctuary. He did a double take as he saw a fierce Native American warrior dressed in soft decorative buckskin with a claw necklace around her neck and tattoos on her face.
She was tall and good looking with straight ebony hair like Zee’s. She was about his age, older than most of the newbies and from the village. She was Crow’s older sister. He remembered Crow had a sister but hadn’t thought he would meet her here. He was shocked at how little he really knew of Crow and his family. She had been training with Howling Wolf since she was a little girl.
“I can’t train you,” he said in dismay.
Tobal’s pulse quickened, the cave’s echo fading as he braced for her reply. She studied him, her gaze steady, before speaking. “Why not?” She looked at him pointedly.
“I already went through this with Crow,” he protested. “You already know more than I do. I can’t teach you anything you don’t already know. It would be wrong to take credit for teaching you when I didn’t.”
She relaxed a little. “Is that all that’s bothering you?”
He nodded glumly.
“Let me ask you something,” she said quietly. “Do you have any doubt in your ability to train newbies in survival skills? Any doubt at all? Even the smallest?”
“No I don’t,” he said.
“Why not?”
“Last fall I had to give additional training to three of my newbies so they would be ready for winter. I thought they were trained well enough and then realized they weren’t, so I took extra time and gave them more training.”
She nodded, “Nobody made you do that did they?”
“No.”
“What does the Council of Elders think of your training?”
“I’m one of the better trainers.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because the newbies I train are happier and healthier than a lot of the others. They also seem to make good trainers themselves and most are willing to train through the winter.”
She smiled at him. “Your parents created this program to bring people up to a certain skill level in both knowledge and demonstrated ability. Do you believe you have reached that skill level and are ready to move on to the next?”
“Yes I do.”
“But you can’t advance because the program will not allow early advancement even if you are already prepared correct?”
He nodded, “That’s right.”
“Well, I’m in the same situation,” she said. “I already know how to survive, how to defend myself, and I am also a healer. I also know advanced techniques that my grandfather taught your parents and other advanced techniques that your parents in turn taught my grandfather.”
“Can you talk to my parents?” He interrupted.
“Yes,” she nodded biting her lower lip. She paused, letting the weight settle.
“Are they going to be alright? Can we save them?”
“Tobal,” she said slowly, with pain in her eyes. Her voice softened, eyes glistening with shared pain. “Your parents are no longer human, and they are dying. They are asking for our help.”
“What do you mean, no longer human?” he shouted. “I see them and talk with them during circle.”
“What you see and talk with are their spirits,” she whispered. “They have developed their spirit bodies to the point where they are almost physical. In fact, once their spirit bodies were physical and they could go anywhere they wished by changing their physical bodies to energy and teleporting instantly to where they wanted to go. They can’t do that anymore. That’s the problem. The Federation keeps their spirit bodies deliberately corrupted so it can use their vital life force for their own projects.”
She shuddered, “Your uncle captured them and imprisoned them. He wired them like electrical components into the circuitry of their time travel machine and they have been kept alive artificially for over twenty years in special fluid-filled tanks.” Tobal’s breath caught, the image searing his mind.
“Tobal,” she said looking hard into his face with tears in her eyes. “I have traveled in the spirit to where they are kept imprisoned. Their physical bodies have mutated and become grossly deformed. Only their spirits remain human. They wish to be free of their physical bodies and become simply the Lord and Lady. But your uncle won’t let them die.”
“I need to see!” He sobbed in denial and fear. “I need to know for myself. I need to see them and talk with them. I need them to tell me.”
She put her arms around him as his shoulders shook and comforted him till he regained his composure.
Wiping angry tears from his eyes, he asked, “You’ll teach me?”
She held him against her breast. “I’ll teach you, Tobal. I promise.”
The first thing she taught him was the story of his parents and their classified research involving time travel. Ron and Rachel had built a matter transmission machine and tested it. This machine used powerful pulsating magnetic fields at certain resonant frequencies, powered by the earth’s own core energies, to create a gateway into time and space, much like the ones in current use for matter transmission. The problem was that mineral and crystalline objects would work, but organic materials would not.
After several years of research, Ron and Rachel developed the first gateway or portal that allowed living matter to be transported through it to target locations and began using it themselves. Something about their soul relationship allowed them to work together in a very powerful and unknown way. This was an important military breakthrough, or could have been. It allowed troops to be transported instantly from one area to another and was immediately highly classified. But it never worked unless Ron and Rachel were a part of it.
It was purely by accident the time-traveling capability was developed. One of the giant capacitors malfunctioned while transmitting Ron and Rachel to a target location. It threw the entire machine out of phase, and Ron and Rachel ended up in the 16th century.
When they didn’t appear at the target location, retrieval was attempted, and they were brought back successfully. They also brought some artifacts back with them. From that point on, the classified research became about time travel, not troop transmission.
By trial and error, they were able to travel into the past and into the future and achieved access to four historical time periods and four future time periods. Each time period seemed to act as a nexus point in time and space. If the machine wasn’t keyed to a nexus point, nothing happened. There were nine stable points in all, including the world we live in, and they were called: Hel, Niflheim, Svartalfheim, Vanaheim, Midgard, Alfheim, Jotunheim, Muspelheim, and Asgard after Nordic mythology.
Working with the machine gave access to other probable worlds that were not as stable. It was like working random codes until you found one that worked. The process was slow and frustrating but also highly exciting at the same time. That was when the problems arrived. Ron and Rachel were able to go back in time through the machine, but no one else could and live to tell about it. The machine did horrible things to those that tried, drove them insane or deformed their bodies. No one knew why it only worked for his parents. Howling Wolf says that your parents were divine counterparts. He said time travel only worked with special couples whose souls were linked together. The Time Knights called the females spinners, because they were able to weave new timelines with their partners.
“I’ve met some Time Knights,” Tobal interrupted. “Lucas and Carla. They are going to help free my parents, but I haven’t heard from them for a while.”
“Really,” Llana said pensively. “That is very interesting. I would like to meet them.”
They had developed the necessary training programs to prepare other time travelers. But the machine only worked for Ron and Rachel. It was a classified military project, and a team of scientists worked furiously to remodel the machine and make it work with other people.
It was only when both Ron and Rachel were hooked into the circuit with the machine at the same time and used as buffers that others were able to go through it. Tobal’s Uncle Harry was the first one to successfully time travel through the machine when it was hooked up in this fashion. He led a team through the machine several times to many previously unknown time periods in addition to those that your parents had discovered on their own.
There were problems with this because Ron and Rachel were not willing to be wired into the machine for hours at a time waiting for other time travelers to come and go. Trips into the past or future could only take two hours at the most, and the drain on Ron and Rachel was severe. Their health suffered each time they hooked themselves into the machine and others used it.
Ron and Rachel were able to time travel themselves without any of those restrictions and could be away for weeks at a time. They felt it was more important they be allowed to make extended trips and do research than be confined and wired to the machine so others could experience briefly what they could do for extended periods. They altered the machine and designed different programs searching for ways that others could use it.
Still, the machine would only work if Ron and Rachel were wired into it. They tried wiring other time traveler couples into the machine, and it killed them. It almost killed his Uncle Harry when he tried wiring himself and his wife into the machine. It did kill her and left his uncle paralyzed.
That was when his uncle went mad and had the gathering spot attacked and the villagers massacred. Ron and Rachel were seized and forcibly wired permanently into the machine and declared dead. That was when the program was officially closed down.
That was the story the Federation knew and was trying to keep secret. But there was much more to the story than that. There was an even greater part only Howling Wolf had known. Halfway through the project’s developmental stages, Ron and Rachel were beginning to think that the problem was with the people and not with the machine itself. They discovered Howling Wolf and his secret shaman bi-location ability.
His parents thought this additional training was needed and started working in secret with Howling Wolf and a handful of others at the gathering spot on the lake. It was after Howling Wolf’s training on bi-location that they realized they no longer needed the machine to time travel to places they had already visited. They met in a secret place under the waterfall at the lake to do this training. It was where they would travel back in time and return with items to prove they had done it. That was when the Time Knights showed up. They had higher technology and understood time travel a lot more. It was not necessary for the team to be divine counterparts; they could also be soulmates. So members of a team could change partners if they were all trained properly. Not only that, but once a team traveled to a location in time and space, they could revisit it by themselves because the pathway had already been formed. Time Knight teams could also take others through the time rift with them if they were vibrationally pure enough.
Howling Wolf needed help to time travel at first. Ron and Rachel had linked together with him and had made several trips back into different time periods. Later he was able to go to those same locations but he was not able to go to new ones. It seemed the machine opened the gateway the first time and that once it was opened by a spinner and a person properly attuned, they could travel through it at will. Even Ron and Rachel had needed the machine to open the gateway the first time to new locations.
At the lake, the group discovered two people who had already been to a specific time period could take a third person without using the machine. Once that person had been taken and brought back, they could make the journey on their own without help. Still, they were only allowed access to the four future times and four historical times that Ron and Rachel had personally gone to. They were not able to go to the alternate probable realities that had been discovered while Ron and Rachel were wired into the machine.
Llana had completed this training, but her grandfather couldn’t link with her well enough to take her through by himself. He needed one other person to be able to do this. Both Ron and Rachel had linked with him and taken him through. There needed to be one more person to take Llana through without the machine, and there were no others.
Howling Wolf thought they were all gone. All except Ron and Rachel, he and the others had called them the Lord and Lady. They were still there in the mountain complex held prisoner and alive. Things were not right because they were both ill and were both slowly dying.
Llana felt they needed her help, and she needed their help to time travel. She had talked with them in the spirit, and they had told her they would help her.
Then Llana spoke of the massacre at the lake and how the small group of people had been below in the cave time traveling when it had happened. Howling Wolf and the others had emerged from the cave only to find their families murdered. They had buried them in a mass grave and raised the pile of stones over the dead bodies. Afterward, they had left, not knowing whom to trust and knowing their very lives were in danger if they were ever found.
This was all news to Tobal, and he was beginning to think she was crazy until he remembered Fiona had said something about time travel. He thought about the strange shop in Old Spokane with its “replicas” and suddenly he wasn’t sure about anything anymore. He hadn’t thought about Heliopolis as having the secret technology of time travel the Federation was willing to kill for. The Federation would kill to keep it and would kill to prevent it from getting into the wrong hands.
Suddenly he thought of Sarah’s father, Adam, and knew Adam and Howling Wolf could teach Llana time travel if they did it together. They were both trained and could take her with them if they went together, at least to the locations his parents had gone to. Lucas and Carla could also teach him more if he were properly prepared. He thought about telling Llana about Adam and decided to wait until he had been trained so he could go with her at the same time. They didn’t need his parents to time travel, but they might need to time travel to rescue his parents.
He thought of circle and the pagan rituals they practiced with the Lord and Lady. They represented much more than the old ways suddenly, and he liked them that way. They were ways to communicate with his father and his mother who were still alive and needing his help. Then he thought about the 3rd degree and the medics flying around in air sleds and the med-alert bracelets they all wore, and suddenly a throbbing headache crept in as he grappled with the med-alert bracelets’ implications, shifting his focus to Crow’s spirit teachings.
Llana’s lessons offered a new path, teaching him to draw energy from the earth’s depths. One evening, she pressed his palms to a gnarled oak, its bark cool under his touch, guiding a surge that left him steady yet awed as a deer approached. She taught him how to use the earth’s energy to make himself stronger, how to stand against a tree and recharge himself after reaching the point of exhaustion. She also taught him how to control that energy and send it out. He shook off the pain, eager to learn her ways, turning to her with renewed focus.
He saw her one time walk up to a deer and pet it. Birds would come to her when she called them. Llana said the spirits of the plants and animals talked to her and told her what they wanted or how to make use of them. As the sap started running in the trees, they collected maple sap to boil down for maple syrup and collected other newly sprouting plants and herbs for medicinal uses. Tobal vowed to master these skills, a step toward freeing his parents from their wired prison.
The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte by Paul Busson and translated by Joe E Bandel
“Your stay here is no more. I know the Portugieser. They will be hard on him, and he’ll whistle. And at night they’ll get you out of bed. Take my advice, brother, you’ve always been faithful and it’s a pity for you that we forced you into a drinking and roughhousing Order: In Thistlesbruck are recruiters of the King of Prussia, who let trumpets and violins and wine flow, and gold foxes patter on the table.” “Soldier – you mean? -” I asked, trepidatiously. “Do you want to be excavated tomorrow and lie in the tower on the straw with the bed bugs? You know that there will be no help from the principal and the senate, if someone has to take the blame. If you still had your mother’s pennies – but like this! There is no other way, comrade, than to run behind the calfskin. There you are as safe as if you were in Abraham’s bosom.” I was frightened and bitterly remorseful about the years of my youth, which I had so wickedly squandered. “Don’t fool around,” urged Haymon. “I mean it honestly. And if it hadn’t happened with the Ansbacher, how long would you have been able to play with your feathered cap and a racket? There is one thing called ultima ratio, and this is it. No amount of twisting or intriguing can change it. By day and dew you can be in Thistlesbruck. By the bridge you can already hear the roar in the ‘Merry Bombardier’. And now, old Swede, God protect you, and so that life may bring us together once again.” He kissed me quickly on both cheeks and turned. “Here you can have my rapier, and here – cut off the four silver buttons that still hang on my Gottfried,” I said. But Haymon only shook his head mutely and disappeared into the shadows. Slowly I walked along the road to Distelsbruck. I tore the crimson-yellow-blue feather from my hat and threw it into the next stream. And went on. I was sick to death from the Hungarian wine, tobacco smoke and noise for three days. Whenever the timpanist struck the cymbals, it drove like a painful lightning through my devastated brain. “O my Bärbele -!” howled one of the caged birds, with whom I was sitting at the table. “Yes, and what will the Herr Father say?” jeered the hussar who was guarding us, so that no one could escape who had taken hand money and drank to Friderici’s health. The lad bawled even louder. Then they held a glass of wine to his mouth and tipped it. So he had to swallow, if he did not want to completely suffocate. And then he became silent. “And you?” the moustache turned to me. “Did you do something wrong, that you got into the yarn of the recruiters? You don’t seem to me to be one of the stupid ones.” The sergeant came up to us, decorated with gold cords and dressed up with braids and buttons, so that the poor peasants would run more easily to him. “That’s the best of them all,” he said to the cavalier and pointed to me. “The only good ones are those who come of their own accord. For the coat with the blood- splatters, fellow, you get a new one from His Majesty!” And in the rosy glow of the approaching day I saw with horror that my right sleeve showed many dark stains, stains from the blood of Heilsbronner’s death wound. For this I was now cruelly sold. I looked around like one who is drowning in wild waters and looks for rescue. But there was no help. All around were soldiers with a cold look and at the table were the poor rogues who yesterday and before yesterday had jumped in the dance with the prostitutes and had thrown thalers, feasted and shouted and talked about the merry life of a soldier, which would now begin. In the doorway and in front of the window stood a hussar with a loaded carbine, and I had to follow behind one of them in a red monkey uniform with a saber and saddle pistol. In the miserable room it smelled musty from spilled wine, and from the puddles, of those who had let it trickle out of their wells in the corners. A haze rose that bit into the eyes. “Stop that doodling and whistling!” the sergeant suddenly shouted. The music stopped and the tired musicians puffed out their breaths; they went to divide the money that lay in heaps on the table in front of them. The sergeant buttoned and thoughtfully knotted the golden tassels and catch cords from the dolman, carefully wrapped them in paper for another time and then shouted into the hall: “Up, lads, up! Everybody get going!” “Where to?” shouted a cheeky one with a cheese-blowing face. “Where to? Where they dig a hole in the sand for you and put three shots over it, snotty nose!” laughed the sergeant. “Whoever still has wine in his glass, throw it down. The wagon will be harnessed, my little birds!” He drove us out. There were eight of us on the ladder wagon. On the trestle sat a hussar and two behind us. The others trotted alongside. The Moravians pulled up. People came out of the houses and talked quietly with each other. One wept bitterly when she saw the soul-seller driving away with his people. “Oh, dear Lord!” one of them wailed. “O Mother, mother! Let me go free -“ Then the sergeant trotted up and shouted: “Shut up, damned fellow!” “Mercy, Herr!” cried the poor wretch. “Let me, for the blood of Christ, just this time go free and single! I am so sorry!” “Have you already wet the seat, peasant girl?” he sneered from the horse. “Look at the student there next to you; he’s not twisting like a maiden the first time. Now let up with your snotting and blubbering!” The boy raised his hands and whimpered: “Have mercy! I can now and never live the hard life of a soldier -“ Then the non-commissioned officer drove the horse so close that the white foam from the bit flew onto our coats, and roared in a horrible voice: “Peasant sow, dirty one! Should I leave you right here on a slab, or should I wait until we get there, where we will soon be, and have you flailed, so that you can’t pull your pants off the open flesh, you bastard, you recruit’s ass!” Then the lad hung his head and kept silent. We went out of the village, and the children followed us for a while. But they didn’t scream, as children usually do at every spectacle. They stopped by the two linden trees at the wayside shrine and looked behind us with wide eyes. But there was one that sat by the lime trees and looked at me, with the same eyes – full of compassion and pure kindness. It was a man in a reddish-brown robe, with a string of yellow beads around his neck and chest. Under the black turban around his head was a face of indescribable mildness and beauty. It was the man who had approached me in the church when they sang the lament for Jerusalem. Ewli, the man from the east. I jumped up from my seat and spread my arms out to him. But suddenly I did not see him any longer. Only the gray weathered stone of the Wayside Shrine was between the old trees. “What are you up to, recruit? Do you want to run away from us?” shouted the sergeant. I sat down on the shaking and bumping board, and in spite of all the misery I suddenly felt light and joyful, as if nothing serious could happen to me for all eternity.
It was a thousand times and a thousand times worse than I had ever imagined, and now I knew, how to deal with the common man. Of course, there were some bad fellows among my comrades -. I was the musketeer Melchior Dronte. I concealed my nobility, so that I would not get more scorn like pepper added to a bitter meal. My shoulders ached from the rough blows of the corporal’s baton, which danced on all of us during the exercises, my left eye was swollen from the lieutenant’s beating me with the riding whip, my hands were chapped and torn from the rifle lock, and pus oozed from under the nail of my right thumb when I attacked something. Vermin itched and ate all over my entire body. My body was tired to death. So that morning, when the drums were going, I could hardly get up. Twice I tried to lift myself up, and twice I fell back. The barracks elder poured a bucket of ice-cold dirty water over my body and pulled me out of bed by my legs. The old soldiers were a thousand times rougher than all the officers and non-commissioned officers. To one who remained in a deep sleep, they stuck pitch on the big toe and set it on fire. There was a great laughter, when the poor devil, half mad with fright, howling and screaming ran around in the sleeping quarters. Quickly we washed ourselves at the well, crunched up lice, which got between our scratching fingers, and drank our half nösel of brandy, which the camp followers poured out, with the black bread. The braids were twisted together so that the back of the head ached, the gaiters were buttoned. When we were standing in the yard, the hazel sticks were distributed from man to man. They had lain in the well water all night and whistled venomously when they cut through the air. The battalion stood in two ranks. “First rank – two steps forward! March! Halt! -About face!” Two long, endless lines stood face to face. The provost brought the deserter. He was from my unit.
The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte by Paul Busson and translated by Joe E Bandel
“And now attention!” He opened his mouth wide, put his lower lip tightly to the glass and let the wine gurgle down his throat with a loud belch. “Hell, plague, and whore child!” cursed Finch. “He does it, by the devil’s ear-washes – he does it!” Only a residue was left in the glass, not worth mentioning. But still too much. For before it ran down, Montanus opened his eyes wide, as if in a sudden fright, so that one saw the blood veins swell in the white eyes, and his face became dark blue. Then the boot fell and broke into pieces. The hands let go of it and reached into the air. A gurgling came from the open mouth. And then fat Montanus fell like a sack to the floor, so that the chair, which he was dragging along, crumbled under the weight of his body. Haymon, who had studied medicine for many years and understood some of it, knelt down by him, let his hand rest on the chest of the fallen man for a while, then stood up and groaned, “Died! Apoplexia! Has already gone to Hell, our fat goose-eater. Fiducit!” Sweat stood on his brow. I felt nauseous. But Hercules bent down nimbly, reached into the pockets of the dead man, found the purse and shook a few coins and a Marien ducat onto the table. “There you have your winnings, Nebuchadnezzar”, said Haymon and immediately pushed Finch the silver watch with the chain and the stone. Then he tossed me the pennies and nodded: “Take it! He will never need it!” Then he weighed a ducat in the flat of his hand and said to the suffocated: “Heart brother! This gold fox will be drunk to your memory!” But the dead man gave no answer, and so Haymon shook him a little, so that we heard the wine rumbling in his stomach. “He doesn’t say no!” “And now someone call Venus,” ordered Haymon. “It would be a pity if we left the money for the Manichaeans in the bag. The Jew shall see for himself how he comes to his own, and thus the bear remains firmly tied. – Do not stand there, Mahomet, like a stuck calf, but call Venus to fetch some wine and bring poor Montanus on to some straw in a quiet chamber!” Then I went out into the dark corridor and called out to Venus in a trembling voice.
On the evening of the day when the Jew Lewi told me that my father was no longer going to send any money and that after so many pranks he was now leaving me to my fate, I drank myself crazy and full. Later, the Portuguese came and told us that Phoebus Merentheim had arrived a few days ago and had been employed as a parlor boy by the tall Count Heilsbronn on the Gerbersteig. I left immediately and the entire corona with me. We put a cracked night tile on the head of the stone Roland at City Hall, and on the wall of the beautiful and virtuous Demoiselle Pfisterin, who always had her back turned as we walked languidly by, on the wall just below her window Hercules drew with red chalk a delicate buttocks and wrote with big black letters under it: All the kisses I sent you, connected, you are quite charming! Then we went with many hussahs and hellos over to the city fountain and drove wooden wedges in its four copper dragon tubes, so that the water above, beneath the feet of St. Florian began to bubble. But we courted the mayor on the top five steps of the staircase and stuck a goose tail feather in each pile, because it was said that the Mayoress was dissatisfied with him in puncto puncti. Soon, however, I remembered Phoebus again with his snooty rice soup face, and I urged on to the Gerbersteig. “Shit, Mahomet – take it easy, he won’t run away from you now!” Haymon held me back. “You shall drink his blood today!” For they still had something to do at the pillory. When we arrived at the goose market, the Portuguese had already prepared a paper, a hammer and nails, and while we were keeping watch, he struck the paper against the pillory so that in the morning light everyone could read it and our tormentors and enemies could be recognized: “Shmule Levi, a Jew and a bloodsucker, Abraham Isaac’s son, likewise, Liborius Schmalebank, calls himself a Christian, Gotthelf Titzke, goes to church service every Sunday, Simche from Speyer takes a hundred percent.” We moved on again, and in the dark we shouted at the top of our voices: “Mordio! Firerio! So help us!” until all the windows were lit up and the sleepy city soldiers came trampling down. In the meantime, we were already on our way to the Gerbersteig. “It is as I tell you,” murmured the Portuguese, “Merentheim lives in the same room as the Count of Heilsbronn and is with the Ansbach Student Union.” “Didn’t the Count of Heilsbronn steal the red haired Jule from you, Portugieser?” teased Galenus. “Shut up, or I’ll let out all my water against you, so you’ll drown miserably”, growled the Portuguese angrily. “I have already wiped fifteen of you off my club with two fingers.” “Give peace!” admonished Finch. “Otherwise take your blasphemous speeches before the Committee. – You’d better watch out how little Phoebus will shit his bed linen with fear!” So I stepped forward, just in front of the window, which the Portugieser had pointed out to me, pulled out the little saber and began to wet my feet on the pavement. I shouted at the top of my lungs: “Merentheim! Dog fart! Come out and present yourself! Pereat!” Then the window opened, and a stark naked guy looked out. “Pereat!” I shouted. “Pereat Phoebus Merentheim!” “Camel!” echoed down from above. “What in thunder do I care about your Merentheim who today at two o’clock went to his kin over there?” “I hope you don’t choke on your stinking lie!” I shouted against him. The man above laughed: “You shall have your share, brothers! You just have to be patient, Hans Unknown, until I’ve donned my shirt and have a sword in my hand!” And he slammed the window shut so that the glass shards rained down. But then we saw a little light wandering in the room until it was dark again. We heard footsteps in the corridor; a key turned in the lock, and in the doorway appeared the tall Count Heilsbronn, dressed in shirt, pants and a long sword under his arm and his hat with the scarlet and white feathered cap of the Ansbachers on his head. The moon was just coming out from behind the clouds, and it was light enough to see the wild, scarred face of the old braggart. “All by the rules, Herr Brother!” interposed the Bavarian Haymon as we wanted to quickly draw our blades. “You, Portuguese, serve as second for the Ansbacher Herr and me for Mahomet! Get ready! Go!” I pushed nimbly, but didn’t hit him. He parried as fast as lightning and was at home with all feints. I hit a wrong quarte, because he drove under me and sliced, burning my upper arm. I quickly fell back and struck hard, slid off and stabbed him deep in the chest. The sword fell rattling from his hand. “Stop there!” immediately roared the Portuguese and held his blade in front of me. “That sits,” gurgled Heilsbronner. “A lung foxer.” His pitted face looked green in the moonlight. “Take me – to bed, Herr Brother – to” He fell into Haymon’s arms, spat out quite a bit of bloody foam and rolled his eyes. There was a dark stain in his shirt that spread like spilled ink on a bad piece of paper. “By all the sacraments, help me hold the man,” gasped the Bavarian Haymon. “He makes himself heavy as if -“ We jumped over and took hold. “When I fall asleep, it’s over for me”, whispered the Ansbach man and blew blood again.”The rosary above my bed is moving back and forth by itself. If only I had had my heavy intoxication, you might have long stood there and shouted pereat -“ And shrilly: “It crushes – me – my – heart -“ We lowered him to the ground. I broke out in a sweat. “He’s gone,” shouted the Portuguese. “You take to your heels. The windows are already opening.” From above they shouted. “Damned boys and ragamuffins! Won’t you be quiet down there?” “I want to salt their hams with rabbit shot,” one shouted rudely. We heard many feet pattering, coming closer. The guard ran up. “One of them never moves. – Guard! Guard! Mordio!” clamored a woman. We ran as fast as we could, a jumping stick flew between my feet, so that I would have fallen. Haymon stayed beside me, the other was off. We had heard screaming. He had jumped over a fence and sank deep into a buried cesspool. They had him all ready. “Brother!” The Bavarian Haymon breathed in quickly from the long race and leaned against an old wall. “Your stay here is no more.
The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte by Paul Busson and translated by Joe E Bandel
“Silentium!” he shouted. All was silent. “As a mule you came from your mother’s apron, and as foxes and the future night terrors of the Philistines, you have entered the sacred halls of the Amicist Order, immature and foul-smelling, but partaking of our grace. We do not want to leave you to the pathetic institutions of the compatriot societies, which will be in the next hostel lurking on chaises and mail coaches, and we do you the honor of not even asking you about your obscure origin. Do you want to be alone and without a distinguished comitat, as a mockery of all right lads, or shall the high Order solemnly escort you in as members?” Finch and I looked at each other. Already on the trip we had decided to join one of the student unions because we knew very well that the lonely and defenseless could not be happy because of being stepped on, being pushed off the sidewalk and otherwise jostled. After all, it did not matter to us which brotherhood took us in, and since it happened that way, the Amicist order was all right for us. So we nodded and said that we would like to be counted among the high Order. A violent trampling with the feet took place. This is how the applause for our decision was expressed. “Omnes ad loca!” cried the tall one. “And you Foxes, just stand still!” All sat down and one of them, about our age, ran to the door and roared with all his lung power: “Cerevisiam!” Immediately a bumping and rumbling started. Two bartenders rolled in a stately barrel, placed it on the collar and tapped it. The girl with the messy hair carried such a number of mugs in each hand, that one would have thought she had twenty…fingers. They were filled and overflowing with foam, and placed in front of everyone. “Out, profane pack!” shouted the tall one again and hit the tabletop with his club. The servants and the maid hurriedly trudged away from there. “Come to me, foxes!” he commanded. They grabbed us, roughly enough, and brought us in front of him at the other end of the table. “Put your hands on this death’s head and the crossed blades and swear!” We obeyed and willingly recited an oath to him, in which we pledged our allegiance to the enlightened and high Amicist Order until death and unbreakable loyalty to its members, brotherly love and help of all kinds, and to other people the deepest secrecy. If we broke our oath, our chest would be pierced by sharp steel and our faces would become like that of the skull on whose boney dome our fingers lay for the oath. “I am the Bavarian Haymon,” said the tall one. Profanely, I am called the Baron Johann Treidlsperg from Landshut. But what are your names?” We gave our names, and one wrote them in a booklet, which was bound in crimson, yellow and blue. “Bend your heads,” Hans ordered. We did so. In the next moment, each of us had beer running down our faces, necks and shoulders from overturned jugs. When we looked up coughing and spitting, under the thunderous laughter of about fifteen lads who were in the room, we were given our Order names. They called me “Mahomet” and Finch “Nebuchadnezzar”. Then we had to sit astride the chairs. The others lined up in a long row behind us, and in front of us rode the Bavarian Haymon around the table, helping us with his spurred legs, while everyone sang a song: “The fox wants to go out of the hole, There stands a green hunter outside of it. Where from, where to, you young fox. Today you do the last jump. And I’ll do my last dance, Kiss me, hunter, under the tail. The hunter did not do it And had to let the little fox run. Yee-haw, yee-haw, yee-haw! Optima est cerevisia!” Then it was on to hugging and kissing. On our hats, which were too new for the Amicists were therefore bent and pierced many times, Then they put the tricolored hats on us. Again, the one they called “Portugieser” had to go to the door and shout, “Coenam!” And with great speed came a large wooden platter with roasted chicken, rice with raisins and hot wine sauce, baked fish with green salad and ducat noodles with sugared brandy. Then the scrawny thing was allowed to stay in the room and had enough to do with dodging ankles and pouring beer mugs. “This epicurean feast is provided to Mahomet and Nebuchadnezzar by the illustrious Order”, announced Haymon and ordered us, moreover, to drink a full measure for the good of the entire brotherhood, without stopping. “And lest I forget,” he shouted in the commotion. “to the brave postman who brought you here so beautifully to the ‘Beer sack’ with his coach, each will dedicate a hard thaler!” Over the daily life of the carouser and wild parties I forgot everything in a few months. Our favorite place was the “Kind Prince”, where they served heavy brown beer and good Mosel. The Bavarian Haymon had already returned from the first intoxication to sobriety and had spread his spurred boots on the table where the stars of the spurs tore holes in the dirty tablecloth. The shirt stood open over his hairy chest, and his sleeves were rolled up, but he did not take off his hat with the feather trim from his head. The Portuguese lay with his head on the tabletop and snored. Finch or Nebukadnezar sat bent over on a chair in the corner and puked back the wine he had drunk so that it stank sourly and foully in the whole room. Hercules, a weak little man from Meissen, had caught a louse, let it crawl around on a plate and laughed beyond all measure. Montanus knuckled with me. He had the terrible pig. Again he knocked the leather mug on the table and gaped with watery eyes at the throw: Five-three-one. “Pregnant fleece – tripod – polyphemus”, he bellowed with joy. “Gimme that mammon!” I had only thrown five in the whole. With his hand, he raked in my last ten silver pennies and clapped his hands on the sweaty shirt of his fat belly with joy. “Venus! Where is the old sow?” he then shouted toward the door. The old waitress came. She wore a wooden nose on her face by two ribbons that ran across her forehead, and was grizzled all over. We called her Venus. What she was called by her real name, she probably no longer knew herself. “Bring the boot, the big one, with Mosel wine, Dearest of hearts!” ordered Montanus. Finch came to the table. He was white in the face from puking so much and smelled from the throat. “You have to eat sometimes, Nebuchadnezzar. -” puffed Montanus. “You only drink all the time and eat nothing. That makes ulcers in your stomach, brother, like happened to Gideon of blessed memory. All his blood jumped out of his mouth and that was the end of him.” Finch burped and pointed to the table. “Ei, brother, say, why are you so tenderly concerned and yet you have stolen from poor Mahomet his aunt’s money? Spend some of it!” Venus came and placed the large glass-boot before the fat man. It held three full measures of wine. Montanus caressed the vessel, let a sound that came from under the table, and laughed muffledly: “What I buy – I will also drink! Alone, most estimable!” “Drink alone?” Finch’s eyes grew round. “That’s what the stupid devil from the cathedral at Cologne believes.” “If you bet your sword with the gold-inlaid Toledo blade, then I’ll swallow the boot in one go!” bellowed the fat man. Finch wiggled toward the sleeping Portugieser and gave Hercules a rib-bump. The Bavarian Haymon came closer and helped to wake up the snoring Portuguese. “Wake up, open your little eyes, brother pants- full – you shall be a booze judge!” The Portuguese raised his head, grunted, and ran all ten fingers into his frizzy hair. “I got lice – damn!” he yawned. Hercules burst into a silent laugh. He knew where the vermin that had crawled into the sleeping man’s hair came from. The Bavarian Haymon was appointed judge. “Here we go!” he slurred. “Huh – brr!” Finch waved his hands between them. “The mastiff has bet nothing against his boozing. What are you putting on the table, your belly?” Then Montanus pulled a thick silver watch out of his pocket; a short chain hung from it, and on the chain hung a polished ball of carnelian stone. “This here!” he said. “Go, go!” everyone now shouted. “Drink up!.” Montanus stood up instantly in spite of his heaviness. The soft, monstrous belly hung over the waistband of his bulging pants. “Until the nail test!” resisted Finch, who was in fear for his beautiful blade. “Will suck yellow ox milk to my end, if a drop remains in the glass,” the fat man boasted, raising the boot glass with both hands.
The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte by Paul Busson and translated by Joe E Bandel
I did not answer, but inside the rage ate at me. Then Diana jumped at my hand and grabbed it playfully with her teeth, as if she wanted to make up with me. She always did that when I scolded her or was otherwise in a bad mood. Then a sudden anger seized me, and I bent down for a large stone. The dog believed, she was now going to play the beloved game of fetch and crouched, whimpering with joy, ready to jump. With all my might I threw the heavy, angular stone at her and hit her in the ribs with a dull sound. The bitch fell, emitted a howling, high-pitched scream, and then wailed in shrill tones, unable to rise, her pitiful, horrified gaze fixed on me. “Die, you bitch,” I screamed and lowered my hand. Phoebus and Thilo, who were to blame for this, immediately drew back from me. “Your father’s best and perforce trained bird-dog -” said Sassen, and the other added that crudeness against a noble animal was unworthy of a Nobleman. The bitch tried to get up, collapsed and came up again. Hunched over and whimpering she crawled towards me, tried to reach my hand with her red tongue to lick it. “Come!” said Phoebus to Thilo, and walked with him, walking away from me with obvious contempt. Then I sat down between the vines and took the bitch’s head in my lap. Blood flowed from her fine nose onto my light robe. Her eyes were directed at me plaintively, begging for help. Her body trembled, the little legs twitched as if in spasm. Aglaja’s white hand had so often rested on the black silky hair of the beautiful head. “Diana!” I cried, “Diana!” She pulled her lips from her white teeth. She laughed in this way. Once again she tried to lick my hand. Then in her eyes came a green, glassy glow, her body convulsed. I stroked her in deathly agony, calling, coaxing — she no longer moved. A blood bubble stood motionless in front of her nose. No more breath came — “This beast will bring her lament before God on the Last Day, and God will also give her His justice, like any other creature”, a deep voice spoke. I looked around with veiled eyes. The old tusker was standing next to me, and the sun wove a terrible golden glow around his snow-white head.
My father had returned from the hunt and went with ringing spurs up and down in the room. The floor creaked under his riding boots. I looked steadfastly at his green coat with the silver braid. When he turned around, I saw the tightly twisted braid. This braid was merciless, black, stiff, insensitive, a symbol of his nature. “Lout, pray!” he thundered again. “You have dared, in front of the street rabble, to hit Phöbus Merentheim in the face, to the amusement of the scum of craftsmen and other fellows? Hey?” “He said that my mother, before her marriage, was bed warmer to the Duke of Stoll-Wessenburg,” I blurted out and looked my father in the eye. “You don’t hear and listen to that kind of thing,” hissed my father and became dark red in the face. “And remember: Do not disgrace princely blood! You will ask the young Count Merentheim for forgiveness, lad!” I did not understand him. Was he serious? “Answer me,” he cried. “Never,” I said, “I will not.” “Damn dog! Swine! So I’ve got problems again with another of the duke’s huntsmen, and I can wipe my mouth. I need the intercession of old Merentheim, you wretched knave. Do you understand me now? Will you or will you not?” “No.” He raised his hand, but lowered it again. With a heavy step he left the room. In the afternoon he sent for me. He sat in the same chair in which grandfather had died, and next to him on the table was a half-empty wine bottle. The room was blue with tobacco smoke. “Stand here,” he said, pointing in front of him. “Tomorrow I’ll send you to high school, so you’ll be out of my sight. And so that you know the truth, whether your mother was once the mistress of the noble lord, I don’t know. But in any case, she has given this property to me. Whether you come from my loins or from those of Serenissimi or whether even that windbag of court poets in one of the duke’s Venetian overnight parties – that scribbler whom Heist later shot down in a duel, only God knows. I almost want to believe the latter, for from a true and right nobleman you have nothing in you of the old bread and butter. Now you know what Merentheim wanted to rub your nose in. You may have that in you. Process as you wish. I have nothing for sentiments. Everything is as it is, and nothing can be dismissed. The Jew Lewi will give you the money for school every month; there is nothing more, now or ever. If you go to the dogs through partying and drunkenness, like many a nobleman, I or Serenissimus or the hunted down court poet had a son. You can save yourself the trouble of writing because I don’t read letters and other written or printed stuff, although I once learned to do so. If you come back to me as a real cavalier, then I will assume that you are from my seed. And now troll yourself away!” I wanted to say something, but the words died on my lips. Slowly I turned around. A glass flew after me, smashing against the wall. Angrily, my father shook his fist at me as I looked around once more, and in his eyes there were bloody red veins. Below, old Stephan stood and muttered: “Don’t believe a word the Herr Junker says! Your mother was a saint and is enthroned in God’s countenance!” Then I fell around the neck of the faithful servant and cried out for my mother as if I could call her from the grave.
It was a tedious journey. Every quarter of an hour we had to get off the stagecoach at the behest of the driver and push and clean the wheels with a mud knife. The horses trembled and snorted, and their flanks were covered with foam. And once we had to chuck our suitcases and travel bags and then lift them back onto the roof and tie them up again. With me rode one, who was from Austria, was called Matthias Finch and seemed to be a cheerful man of good manners. His clothes and linen pointed to a son from a decent family. He was not a nobleman. As we approached the city, the coach stopped in front of an inn called “Zum Biersack”. We looked out the window on both sides and noticed that the street was filled with chairs, benches and a long table, at which sat a party of students, looking wild and daring with greased boots, round spurs, feathered hats, and swords. They sat quietly, smoking from long lime pipes, spreading their legs and did not seem to be willing to give way to the mail wagon on the army road. A straggly half-grown thing with bobbing breasts under the cloth ran between this table and the dirty inn, swapping the empty pewter mugs for full ones and shrieking under the coarse grips of the journeymen she had to pass. The driver half turned with a grin and said: “May it please the gentlemen to get off and allow themselves to be welcomed?” “Drive on!” urged Finch. “The road is clear!” “What’s that stinkfox barking about?” rumbled a deep bass voice from the table. The one who had shouted was as bulky and thick as a six-bucket barrel, and his three fold stubbly chin was resting on his badly smudged vest. “Let it be, Montanus,” shouted a tree-tall man with blonde hair and a sharp, crooked nose. “They’ll crawl out of the burrow in time.” Since we saw that nothing could be done with defiance and pounding, and that the others were masters in such things, we came out, but we had enough sense to order the driver to take our travel belongings to the tanner Nunnemann, with whom we had ordered lodging through the messenger. We had hardly crawled out of the yellow box when they also quickly moved the table to the side and told the driver to put the steeds to the trot. He did not need to be told a second time. But two of them took us under their arms and led us into the interior of the house. There they pushed us up the stairs into a long, low room. On a table covered with wet glass curls lay an earthy, yellow skull, which looked as if they had just stolen it from the charnel house, on two crossed swords. They immediately lit two tallow candles in porcelain, placed us at the narrow end of the table, themselves around the table with their hats drawn, shook each other’s hands across the table and sang in rough voices: “The covenant is solemnly sealed By the noble oath of allegiance, Our hearts are unlocked Strike only of true friendship. This sword shall pierce The one who leaves brothers in distress. And, by this leg of the beast! A thousand times he is threatened.” When the song was over, Finch, who had looked at me several times in amazement, spoke up and said: “Gentlemen, forgive us if we would like to know in what illustrious company we have unawares fallen into?” “Insolent stink-fox,” belly-laughed the fat man again, the one they had just called Montanus. In the meantime they had put their hats back on, and I saw that their plumes were carmine, yellow and blue, and the blond one with the vulture nose had also put on a fox tail, which gave him a wild appearance. At Finch’s speech, he pulled his bat out of its scabbard and hit the table with it so violently that it boomed and we were badly frightened.
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