by Mike Ashley
“We should run and hide,” Jehan said. “They will not stay long, whatever they do while they are here.”
“No,” said the dwarf. “I shall receive them as a polite host, and speak to them calmly. I shall persuade them, if I can, that there is nothing here to be feared. What manner of man, do you think, is the one who bears no arms and who seems to be guiding them?”
Jehan shaded his eyes against the sunlight and squinted. The dwarf was presumably afraid that the man walking with the captain at the head of the column might be a churchman, but he was not. “I know him,” Jehan said. “He’s a colporteur by the name of Nicholas Alther. Our paths crossed on the far side of Évionnaz, and he guessed where I was bound. He told me he’d seen the ruins of the château on the horizon. That may be why they brought him as a guide – but he didn’t seem to me to be a fearful or a hateful man.”
This judgment proved not unsound, for as the party came closer Jehan was able to read in Nicholas Alther’s face that he was certainly not the leader of the expedition, and that he would far rather be somewhere else, about his own business.
“I know him too,” murmured the dwarf. “I’ve seen him in Évionnaz, and bargained with him for needles and thread – and metal-working tools, alas.” Raising his voice, the little man added: “Ho, Master Alther! Welcome to my home. Where’s your pack?”
Alther did not reply, but thumped his chest to imply that he was out of breath in order to excuse his rudeness. It was the captain who spoke, saying: “This is not your home; the land belongs to the city of Geneva, and the ruins too. You have no right here.”
“I am doing no harm, captain,” the dwarf replied. “I make no claim upon the land or the house; I merely took shelter here when I was in need.”
“Is your name Pittonaccio?” the captain demanded.
“No,” said the dwarf. “It’s Friedrich Spurzheim – and Spurzheim is a good Swiss family name, worn by many a man in Geneva and even more in Bern. I’m a Christian, as you are, and I have my own Bible.”
It was the first time that Jehan had ever heard the dwarf’s surname – and he realized, as he heard the little man’s forename spoken for the second time, that he had never addressed him by it, or even thought of doing so, since he had first heard it pronounced. He had always thought of his host as “the dwarf.”
The captain did not repeat the name either. “Where is the Devil’s clock?” he demanded.
“I doubt that the Devil possesses a clock, or needs one,” Friedrich retorted, boldly. “If he does, he certainly does not keep it here. The only clock here is mine.”
Jehan was not in the least displeased to be offered no credit for the restored Clock of Andernatt. He had seen the expression on the captain’s face before. There had been soldiers abroad on St Bartholomew’s Eve and the day that followed; there were always soldiers abroad when there was killing to be done, for that was their trade.
Jehan felt fingers plucking at his sleeve, and allowed himself to be drawn aside by Nicholas Alther.
“It was not I who betrayed you,” the colporteur whispered, fearfully. “They do not know that I met you on the road. For the love of God, don’t tell them. I could not refuse to lead them here, for they knew that I knew the way, but I mean you no harm. Say nothing, and they’ll let you alone – but you must say nothing, else we’ll both be damned.” He stopped when he saw that the captain was looking at him, and raised his voice to say: “This man only took shelter in the château – he has nothing to do with the clock.”
The captain immediately fixed his stare on Jehan’s face. “Are you Jehan Thun?” he demanded.
“I am,” Jehan replied, knowing that it would do no good to lie.
“What business have you here?”
“I was a Protestant in Paris, until it became impossible to be a Protestant in Paris,” Jehan said, flatly. “My father was born in Geneva, which is a Protestant city, so that was where I came – but everywhere I went in the city, people who heard my name looked strangely at me, and I was afraid all over again. My grandmother had spoken of a village named Évionnaz as a remote and peaceful place, so I decided to go there, but when I arrived I found the same dark stares, so I continued on my way. Friedrich Spurzheim is the first man I have met hereabouts who did not look at me that way, and he made me welcome as a guest.”
“Are you a clockmaker?” the captain asked.
“No,” Jehan said. “I’m a printer. I made Bibles in Paris. My father was murdered, my press smashed and my home burned.”
“Have you seen the Devil’s clock?”
For the first time, Jehan hesitated. Then he said: “There is only one clock in the château. It is shaped to resemble a church. There is nothing devilish about it.”
“Lead us to it,” the captain instructed.
Jehan exchanged a glance with Friedrich; the little man risked a brief nod of consent. Jehan led the way around the château, through the garden and in through the door on whose step the basket of apples still lay. Then he led the captain and his men to the Clock of Andernatt.
It was an hour after noon; while the soldier was studying the clock, the hour struck and the words CARPE DIEM appeared, as if by magic, in the space beneath the rose window.
“What does that say?” demanded the captain of Nicholas Alther, his voice screeching horribly.
“I don’t know!” the colporteur replied.
“It says Carpe Diem,” Friedrich told them. “It’s Latin. It means Seize the Day. The other mottoes . . . .”
But it did not matter what the other mottoes were, any more than it mattered what carpe diem actually signified. It would have made no difference had the motto been in French or German rather than Latin, or whether it had been a quotation from the Sermon on the Mount.
Much later, Jehan guessed, the captain and all of his men would be willing to swear, and perhaps also to believe, that the mysterious legend that had appeared as if by magic had said HAIL TO THEE, LORD SATAN or DAMNATION TO ALL CALVINISTS or CURSED BE THE NAME OF GENEVA, or anything else that their fearful brains might conjure up. They would also be willing to swear, and perhaps also to believe, that when they attacked the clock with half-pikes and maces, sulphurous fumes belched out of its mysterious bowels, and that the screams of the damned could be heard, echoing all the way from the inferno. They would probably remember, too, that the château itself had been buried underground, extending its corridors deep into the rock like shafts of some strange mine, connected to the very centre of the spherical Earth.
When they had finished smashing the clock the soldiers smashed everything else Friedrich Spurzheim had owned, and cast everything combustible – including his printed Bible – into the flames of his fire. They killed his milking-goat, and as many of the others as they could catch. They ripped up all the vegetables in his garden and stripped the remaining apples from his trees. Then they smashed the shutters that remained on some few of the chateau’s windows, and the doors that remained in some few of its rooms. But they did not kill the dwarf, nor did they kill Jehan Thun. They worked out all their ire and fear on inanimate objects, and contented themselves with issuing dire warnings as to what would happen if Friedrich Spurzheim or Jehan Thun were ever seen again within twenty leagues of Geneva.
Afterwards, when the captain and his men were preoccupied with the items they had kept as plunder – which included, of course, the silver disc that had served as a pendulum bob – Nicholas Alther took Jehan aside again, and offered him something wrapped in silk. Jehan did not need to unwrap it to guess that it was the colporteur’s watch.
“Your grandfather made it,” the colporteur said. “You should have it, since you do not have one of your own. It keeps good time.”
“Thank you,” Jehan said, “but it isn’t necessary. You owe me no debt.”
“I didn’t betray you,” Nicholas Alther insisted. “I didn’t want this to happen.”
“I know that,” Jehan assured him, although there was no way that he could.
“I won’t repeat the tale,” the colporteur went on, in the same bitter tone. “If this becomes the stuff of legend, it shall not be my doing. There will come a day when all this is forgotten – when time will pass unmolested, measured out with patience by machines that no man will have cause to fear.”
“I know that, too,” Jehan assured him, although there was no way that he could.
When the soldiers had gone, Jehan went back to the clock’s tomb. Friedrich was waiting for him there.
“One day,” Jehan said, “you will build another. In another city, far from here, we shall start again, you and I. You will build another clock, and I shall be your apprentice. We shall spread the secret throughout the world – all the world. If they will not entertain us in Europe, we’ll go to the New World, and if they are madly fearful of the devil there, we’ll go to the undiscovered islands of the Pacific. The world is a spinning sphere, and time is everywhere. Wherever men go, clocks are the key to the measurement of longitude, and hence to accurate navigation. What a greeting we’ll have in the far-flung islands of the ocean vast!”
The little man had been picking through the wreckage for some time, and his clumsy hands had been busy with such work as they could do. He had detached half a dozen of the plaques from the wheel that was no longer sealed in its housing. Now he laid them out, and separated them into two groups of three. TIME OVERTAKES ALL THINGS, TEMPUS FUGIT and TIME NEVER WAITS he kept for himself; THERE IS TIME ENOUGH FOR EVERY-THING, THERE IS A TIME FOR EVERY PURPOSE and FUTURE TIME IS ALL THERE IS he offered to Jehan. “I’d give you the pendulum itself,” Friedrich said, “but they stole it for the metal, and the escapement too. It doesn’t matter. You know how it works. You can build another.”
“So can you,” Jehan pointed out.
“I could,” Friedrich agreed, “if I could find another home, another workplace. The world is vast, but there’s no such place in any city I know, and wherever there are men there’s fear of the extraordinary. It’s yours now; you’re heir to Master Zacharius, and to me. You have the stature and the strength, as well as the delicate hands. The secret is yours, to do with as you will. The world will change regardless, so you might as well play your part.”
“Wherever we go, we’ll go together, Friedrich,” Jehan told him. “Whatever we do, we’ll do together, even if we’re damned to Hell or oblivion.”
And he was as good as his word – but whether they were damned to Hell or oblivion we cannot tell, for theirs is a different world than ours, unimprisoned by our history; all things are possible there that were possible here, and many more.
AUTHOR’S NOTE.
Jules Verne is rather vague about the exact time-period in which the events of “Master Zacharius” take place and exactly what kind of escapement mechanism the Genevan clockmaker is supposed to have invented. So far as history is concerned, though, small spring-driven clocks and watches were reputedly invented by Peter Henlein circa 1500; given that “Master Zacharius” takes place before Calvin’s reformation of Geneva, that implies a date somewhere in the first two decades of the sixteenth century. Verge escapements, consisting of crossbars with regulating weights mounted on vertical spindles, had been in use in weight-driven clocks for some time by then, so the escapement credited by Verne to Zacharius must have been either a stackfreed (a kind of auxiliary spring) or a fusée – a conical grooved pulley connected to a barrel round the mainspring.
The latter invention is usually credited to Jacob the Czech circa 1515; I have assumed that to be the device Verne might have had in mind, but I have also credited Zacharius with manufacturing a fusée in brass, although history has no record of that being done before 1580. The discovery of the isochronicity of the pendulum is, of course, credited by our records to Galileo in the early seventeenth century; pendulum clocks first appeared in our world circa 1650 and were first equipped with recoil escapements ten years thereafter, some 87 years later than the device credited to Friedrich Spurzheim in the story.
“Master Zacharius” was one of the earliest stories Verne wrote, and embodies ideas that he subsequently set firmly aside; this sequel is, I think, far more Vernian in the best sense of the word.
SIX WEEKS IN A BALLOON
Eric Brown
Verne’s first novel, Cinq Semaines en ballon, was a huge success, not simply because of the book itself, but because of several associated publicity stunts. One in particular was by Verne’s friend Félix Tournachon (usually called Nadar) who planned to emulate the adventure in the story and fly a balloon from Paris across Europe to Africa. He never made it, getting only as far as Hanover, but it captured the imagination of the French who blurred fiction and reality and treated Verne’s work as a real story, which forms the basis for the following tale. Over the years there have been many who have taken Verne’s tales as true, because he was able to blend scientific achievement so faultlessly into a story that it was wholly believable. Well, usually. We’ll come to Hector Servadac later. It was this success that established Verne’s reputation, and assured the confidence of his publisher, Jules Hetzel, cementing a relationship that would last for thirty years.
I arrived in Glasgow from the west coast on the 8th of February, 1930, and made my way to the British Dirigible Company depot on Sauchiehall Street, intending to catch the noon flight for London.
It was a short walk from the bus station, but I witnessed much poverty and degradation on the way. Entire families made their homes on the pavement, and my progress was impeded by the incessant importuning of child-beggars. I gave them what little change I had in the pocket of my threadbare overcoat, and in doing so experienced a curious, double-edged guilt. I felt guilty for being unable to give more and, paradoxically, for being in the situation where I could give at all.
I arrived at the dirigible depot, which was guarded by both black-shirted militia and a division of the local constabulary, with seconds to spare. The last of the passengers were crossing the swaying drawbridge on to the gondola, and I just had time to buy an early edition of the Herald.
The purser gave me a resentful look as I proffered my ticket and hurried across the drawbridge to the Spirit of London. I wondered whether it was my tardiness or the state of my overcoat that had roused his ire.
The gondola was only half-full and I found a window seat with ease. Ever since German planes had downed the Pride of Benares last year, the public had shied away from air travel.
A klaxon sounded. Hawsers whipped away from capstans on the platform. With a sudden lurch we were in the air, floating silently over the bomb-sites and the few remaining tenements standing after the recent blitz.
Already I longed for the solitude of my island retreat. The crass advertisements which decorated the interior of the carriage sickened me with their creators’ assumptions that the populace might be so easily tempted. Outside, the eye was offered no respite. The ruin of the city gave way to the slag heaps of the country, with pathetic stick-figures scratching for coal and whatever growing thing might be stewed in the pot. Even the air of this benighted land sat heavily upon my chest.
I opened my notebook and reread the first lines of the poem I was working on: As I stood at the blackened gate/ With warring worlds on either hand . . .
For the next hour I reworked the line and then, tired, tried to absorb myself in the Herald. War coverage predominated – the usual exaggerated claims of success, with little actual analytical reportage of the politics behind the conflict. But what did I expect, with the newspapers of Great Britain in the strangle-hold of the capitalists?
I tossed aside the rag and pulled from the inside pocket of my coat the letter which was one of the reasons for my journey south.
Dear Sir, Ever since reading your piece on the war and its evil in the New Statesman, I have considered writing you this letter. A very long while ago now I was involved in a series of events which became famous after being published in a book by my master, Dr Samuel Fergusson. You will know this book as Six Weeks in a Balloon
, published in 1863. It is these events about which I wish to speak to you. Such is the nature of things at the moment – and I am sure I need not spell out my meaning – that I feel constrained from revealing my thoughts herein, but if you were able to make the trip to London I would most gratefully receive you and apprise you of my story.
Signed, Joe Smith.
The letter was intriguing in itself. Why might Joe Smith wish to tell me, a lowly journalist, about his balloon adventures in Africa? I had read the book – who had not? – and was aware of it as another piece of Imperialist propaganda, all the more obnoxious for its xenophobia.
I was also aware of its influence on events at the time, and the significance it had played in exaggerating Anglo-German enmity ever since.
I was more than intrigued by the line in his letter, Such is the nature of things at the moment – and I am sure I need not spell out my meaning – that I feel constrained from revealing my thoughts herein. What heretical inside story might the loyal manservant have to tell me of that famous balloon journey taken nearly seventy years ago?
I witnessed an ugly incident as I stepped from the London depot. Night had fallen and with it the temperature, and I was one among hundreds of citizens who, bundled up in their winter wear, departed the station and hurried into Baker Street. Most were so intent on thoughts of home that they failed to notice the fracas across the street, either that or they effected not to notice.
Six militiamen had arrested a pamphleteer and were giving him a beating for his troubles. At one point the man fell to the ground, and a militiaman stamped upon his face, again and again. I made to cross the road, if not to intervene physically, then to register my vocal protest, when I felt a hand grip my upper arm like a tourniquet.
“Caution, Comrade. There’s nothing you can do but get yourself arrested, and we need men with conscience for the coming fight.” And before I could catch a glance at my interlocutor, he thrust a pamphlet into my hand and became one with the flowing commuters.