The Mammoth Book of New Jules Verne Adventures (5 page)

“No,” Jehan confessed. “I have no watch at all.”

“No watch!” Alther seemed genuinely astonished. He offered Jehan Thun the first slice of cheese he cut off, but Jehan shook his head and the other continued, punctuating his speech with the motions of his meal. “Perhaps you are not related to the old clockmaker — but your French has a hint of Geneva in it, and I doubt there was another family hereabouts with that name. Aubert Thun must have been one of the first men ever to use a spring to drive a clock, or at least a fusée regulator in place of a stackfreed — and the escapements he made for weight-driven clocks will preserve his reputation for at least a century more, for they’re still in use in half the churches between here and Bern. He was a greater man than many whose names will be better preserved by history, although I don’t recall hearing of anything he did after he quit Geneva.”

Jehan Thun looked at the colporteur sharply when he said that, wondering whether Alther might have the name of Calvin in mind, but all he said, reluctantly, was: “Aubert Thun was my grandfather.”

“Did he abandon his trade when he went away?” the colporteur asked.

“No,” Jehan admitted, “but there are locksmiths and clockmakers by the hundred in Paris, which means that there are escapements by the thousand and far more watch-springs than anyone could count. He had the reputation there of a skilled man, but there was no reason why rumour of his skill should carry far. It has surprised me that his name is still remembered here; he told me that he was only an apprentice to the man who first used springs in Genevan watches and first put verge escapements into the region’s church clocks.”

“Is that true?” Alther replied, his features expressing surprise. He had wine as well as cheese, and offered the flask to Jehan Thun, but Jehan shook his head again. Alther took a deep draught before continuing: “I heard the same, but always thought Master Zacharius a legend. Even before Calvin, Genevans were reluctant to think that anything new could be produced by the imagination of a man; everything had to be a gift from god or an instrument of the Devil. The tale they tell of Thun’s supposed master is a dark and fanciful one, but nothing a reasonable man could believe.”

Jehan knew that the conversation had strayed on to unsafe ground, but he felt compelled to say: “I agree, and I’m sorry to have found people in Geneva who still look sideways at the mention of my grandfather’s name. Master Zacharius did go mad, I fear, but the stories they tell of him are wildly exaggerated.”

“And yet,” Alther observed, “you’re coming away from Geneva. Are you, by any chance, heading in the direction of Évionnaz . . . and the Château of Andernatt?”

Jehan suppressed a shiver when Alther said that. Colporteurs were notorious as collectors and tellers of tales, for it oiled the wheels of their trade; Alther’s stock was obviously broad and deep. He said nothing.

“I’ve seen the château on the horizon,” the colporteur went on, eventually, “and that’s more than most can say. No one goes there, and it seems to have fallen into ruins. Whatever you’re looking for, I doubt that you’ll find it.”

“My destination might lie further in the same direction,” Jehan pointed out.

“There is nothing further in that direction,” Alther retorted. “Évionnaz is the road’s end. I’ve travelled it often enough to know.”

“The world is a sphere,” Jehan said, knowing as he said it that it was not an uncontroversial opinion, and hence not entirely safe. “There is always further to go, in every direction, no matter how hard the road might be — and the Dents-du-Midi are not impassable at this time of year.”

“That’s what I thought before the rain set in,” Alther grumbled, following his cheese with some kind of sweetmeat — which, this time, he did not bother to offer to his companion, “but the people of Évionnaz think the world has an edge, no more than a league from the bounds of their fields. They never go to Andernatt.”

“I have not said that I am going that way,” Jehan said, rudely. “But if I were, it would be no one’s business but my own.” He felt that he had said too much, even though he had said very little, and he indicated by the way in which he gathered his cloak about himself that he did not want to waste any more time before going to sleep, now that the colporteur had finished his meal.

“That’s true,” Alther agreed, shrugging his shoulders to indicate that it was of scant importance to him whether or not the conversation was cut short. “I’ll venture to say, though, that you’d be unlikely to meet the Devil if you did go that way, whether or not there’s anything more than a ruin at Andernatt. There are half a hundred peaks on this side of the lake alone where Satan’s reported to have squatted at one time or another — and that’s not counting dwellings like this one, whose former inhabitant was reckoned his minion by the Calvinists down in Geneva.”

“I’ll be glad of that, too,” Jehan assured him, and said no more.

Jehan Thun and Nicholas Alther parted the next morning on good terms, as two honest men thrown briefly together by chance ought to do. They wished one another well as they set off in near-opposite directions. Whether Alther gave another thought to him thereafter, Jehan did not know or care, but he certainly gave a good deal of thought to what Alther had said as he made his way towards Évionnaz. It was a difficult journey, but when he finally reached the village, huddled in a narrow vale between two crags, he was able to buy food and fill his flask. He passed through with minimal delay into territory where the paths that once had been were now hardly discernible. No one in the village asked him where he was bound, but a dozen pairs of eyes watched him as he went, and he felt those eyes boring into his back until he had put the first of many ridges between himself and the village.

Jehan no longer had precise directions as to the path he must take; he had not dared to mention the château in Geneva. All he had to guide him now was vague advice handed on by his grandmother, which told him no more than to steer to the left. Inevitably, Jehan soon became desperately unsure of his way. While the sun descended into the west he wandered, searching the narrow horizons for a glimpse of the ruins that Nicholas Alther claimed to have seen. At least the sun was visible, so he was able to conserve a good notion of the direction in which Évionnaz lay, but by the time he decided that he would have to turn back he knew that it would be difficult to reach the village before nightfall.

Then, finally, he caught sight of a strange hump outlined on a slanting ridge. He was not certain at first, given the distance and the fact that he was looking at it from below, that it really was the remnant of an edifice, and it seemed in a far worse state than he had hoped, even after hearing Alther’s judgement.

Because it lay in a direction diametrically opposite to the route that would take him towards Évionnaz, Jehan Thun knew that he would be in difficulty if there were nothing on the site but broken stones, but he had to make the choice and he was not at all confident that he could find his way back to his present location if he did not press on now He decided that he must trust to luck and do his utmost to carry his quest forward to its destination.

Again he reached his objective just as night was falling, and again he saw no light as he toiled uphill towards the crumbled stonework, until he lit his own candle — but this time, there seemed at first glance to be no roof at all to offer him shelter, merely a tangle of tumbled walls, cracked arches and heaps of debris.

He did not realize for some little while that he had only found an outer part of the ancient edifice. He might easily have laid himself down to sleep without making any such discovery, but as chance would have it he was fortunate enough to see a flock of bats emerging from a crevice behind a pile of rubble. When he climbed up to see if he could insinuate himself into the gap he did not expect to find anything more than a corner of a room, but he was able to make a descent into a much broader and deeper space that had two doorways. These gave access to further corridors, each of which contained a stairway leading into what had seemed from beneath to be the solid rock of the ridge. He quickly came to the conclusion that the château must have been much larger than it now seemed, built into a groove in the ridge rather than perched atop level ground. The lower parts of its walls had been so completely overgrown that the casual eye could not distinguish them from the native rock that jutted up to either side.

One stairway turned out to be useless, the wooden-beamed storage-cellar to which it led having caved in, but the other led to further rooms and further portals, some with ceilings and doors still intact. The route was awkward, not least because of the stink — the bats had been depositing their excreta for generations — but he managed to open three of the closed doors to expose further spaces beyond, two no bigger than closets but one of a more appreciable size. This one had a slit-like window, through which the stars were clearly visible, although no such aperture had been discernible from the side of the hill he had climbed on his first approach.

That first room was uninhabitable, but when he went on again he found one that the bats had not yet turned into a dormitory; the shutter on its window was still intact. The bare wooden floorboards seemed more hospitable than stone, and they seemed remarkably free of dirt, so Jehan set his pack down. He was so exhausted that he stretched himself out and blew out his candle without making a meal.

His thoughts immediately returned to what Nicholas Alther had said about Master Zacharius, and he began to regret not asking exactly what story it was that Alther had heard. According to his grandmother — who believed far more of the tale than her husband — her father had put his soul into the spring of a clock commissioned by the Devil, thus conceding the Adversary power to transmogrify and finally obliterate his work. Aubert Thun’s son, Jehan’s father, had been as sceptical as the old man, and Jehan had the same attitude; he would never have come here had it not become impossible for him to stay in Paris — but once the capital of France had become as unsafe for Protestants as Geneva had once been for Catholics, the only choice remaining to him was the direction in which to flee. Since he had had to go somewhere, and had no other destination in mind, it had seemed to Jehan that he might as well do what his grandmother — who had died of natural causes thank God, long before the massacre — had always wanted his father to do. Now that he was here, though, he could not help reflecting lugubriously on the fact that he had come in order to have a destination at which to point his automaton limbs, not because he believed that there would be any treasure to find or any curse to lift.

He decided before he fell asleep he would explore the ruins as thoroughly as was humanly possible on the following day, and then make further plans. The food he had bought in Évionnaz would be enough to sustain him for more than a day, although it should not be difficult to find pools of rainwater to drink. He would have to decide soon enough whether to retrace his steps in the direction of inhospitable Geneva, or to make his way back to the Rhone and follow the path that Nicholas Alther had presumably been walking, or make his way eastwards along the north shore of the lake — or go on into the Dents-du-Midi, into a bleak and empty region which the people of Évionnaz took to be the limit of the world.

In the morning, Jehan Thun was woken up by a hand placed on his shoulder. The room was still gloomy but the shutter had been partially opened; the beam of sunlight streaming through the narrow window brightened the plastered walls, reflecting enough light to show him that the person who had woken him was very short and stout: a dwarf.

That was a terrible shock — not because it was unexpected, but for precisely the opposite reason. His grandmother had told him that the Devil had come to her father, Master Zacharius, in the form of a dwarf named Pittonaccio.

“Who are you?” Jehan stammered, quite ready to believe that he was face to face with the Devil. The moment of awakening is a vulnerable one, in which deep impressions can be made that are sometimes difficult of amendment.

The little man paused momentarily, as if he had not expected to be addressed in French, but he answered fluently enough in the same language. “I am the Master of Andernatt,” he said, proudly. “The question should rather be: Who are you? You are the invader here — are you a bandit come to rob me of my heritage?” His Germanic accent was not as pronounced as Nicholas Alther’s, but was evident nevertheless.

“I’m no bandit,” Jehan said.

“Are you not? Are you a guest, then? Did you knock on any of the doors you passed through last night? Did you call out to ask for shelter?”

“I saw no light,” Jehan protested.

“You would have seen a light had you taken more care to look around,” the dwarf replied. “My chamber has a broader window than this one, and I lit my lamp before sunset. I suppose you did not see my goats on the ledges either, or my garden in the vale.”

“No,” said Jehan, becoming increasingly desperate as the challenges kept coming. “I saw no goats — but if I had, I’d have taken them for wild creatures. Nor did I see a garden, but it was dusk when I approached and I was fearful that I might not reach the shelter of the ruins before night plunged me into darkness.”

“The stars were shining,” the dwarf observed, “and there’s near half a moon. Your eyes must be poor — but I suppose you came from the direction of Évionnaz, from which my window would have been hidden. You still have not told me who you are, or what business you have here.”

Jehan Thun hesitated fearfully; he felt a strong temptation to declare that his name was Nicholas Alther, and that he was a colporteur who had lost his way — but he had no pack of goods and trinkets, and no good reason to lie. In the end, he plucked up his courage and said: “My name is Jehan Thun. My grandfather was Aubert Thun, apprentice to Master Zacharius of Geneva.”

The dwarf recognized the names, but he did not look sideways in suspicion, let alone recoil in horror. Instead, he smiled beatifically, and the expression caused his unhandsome face to become quite pleasant. “Ah!” he said. “The answer to my prayer! There have been others here before you, searching for the clock, but none named Thun. Zacharius must have been your great-grandfather, Master Jehan, for Aubert Thun married the clockmaker’s daughter, Gérande.”