Prologue
The world, noble sirs, has lately grown bigger. And shrunk at the same time.
You laugh? Do I seem to talk nonsense? Does the one contradict the other? I shall soon prove it does not by any means.
Look out of the window, gentlemen. What view meets your eyes? The barn, you answer truthfully, and the privy beyond it. And what lies beyond the privy? Heed, if I ask the wench hurrying here with the ale, she will say that beyond the privy is a field of stubble, then Jachym’s homestead, the tar kiln and finally Mała Kozołupa. If I ask our innkeeper—a more worldly man—he will add that beyond Mała Kozołupa is Wielka Kozołupa, then the hamlet of Kocmyrów, the village of Łazy, then Goszcz, and beyond Goszcz there’s Twardogóra, I believe. But heed: more learned fellows with more enlightened minds—like you, for example—know that the world doesn’t end at Twardogóra, either; that beyond it is Oleśnica, Brzeg, Niemodlin, Nysa, Głubczyce, Opava, Nový Jičín, Trenčín, Nitra, Esztergom, Buda, Belgrade, Ragusa, Ioannina, Corinth, Crete, Alexandria, Cairo, Memphis, Ptolemais, Thebes… Well? Isn’t the world growing? Doesn’t it become ever larger?
Yet that still is not the end. Going beyond Thebes, up the Nile—which issues from its source in the Garden of Eden as the River Gihon—we come to the lands of the Ethiopes, and thence, as we know, to barren Nubia, sun-baked Kush, gold-bearing Ophir and the whole of vast Africa Terra, hic sunt leones. And beyond that is the ocean that surrounds all the Earth. But in that ocean, of course, are islands like Cathay, Taprobana, Bragine, Oxidrate, Gynosophe and Zipangu, where the climate is wonderfully fertile and jewels lie around in heaps, as described by the scholar Hugh of Saint Victor and Pierre d’Ailly, and also by Sir John Mandeville, who saw those marvels with his own eyes.
Thus, we have proved that over the course of those few centuries the world has grown markedly. For even if the world hasn’t increased in terms of matter, the number of new names certainly has.
How then, you ask, can we reconcile the claim that the world has also shrunk? I shall tell you and prove it. I only entreat you first not to mock or jibe, for what I shall say isn’t a figment of my imagination, but knowledge gleaned from books. And it doesn’t do to mock books, since their writing is the result of somebody’s arduous labour.
As we know, our world is a small piece of land, shaped like a round pancake with its centre in Jerusalem and all engirdled by the ocean. At the Occident, the edge of the Earth is formed by Calpe and Abila—the Pillars of Hercules—with the Strait of Gades between them.
And to the south, as I have just said, the ocean extends beyond Africa. In the south-east, the end of the mainland is marked by India inferior, which belongs to Prester John, as well as the lands of Gog and Magog. In the septentrional of the Earth is Ultima Thule, and there, ubi oriens iungitur aquiloni, lies the land of the Mongols, or Tartary, while to the east the world ends some way beyond Kiev, with the Caucasus.
And now we come to the crux of the matter. By which I mean the Portuguese. But more specifically the Infante Dom Henrique, Duke of Viseu, the son of King John. Portugal, it can’t be denied, is by no means a large kingdom, and the king’s infant was his third son in a row. So, unsurprisingly, Henry gazed more often and with greater hope from his palace in Sagres towards the sea than at Lisbon. He invited to Sagres astronomers and cartographers, wise Jews, navigators, sea captains and master boatbuilders. And thus it began.
In the Year of Our Lord 1418, the explorer João Gonçalves Zarco reached some islands called the Insulae Canariae, so called because of the vast multitudes of dogs found there. Soon afterwards, in 1420, the same Gonçalves Zarco and Tristão Vaz Teixeira sailed to the island christened Madeira. In 1427, the caravels of Diogo de Silves reached some islands which were named the Azores—only God and Diogo know why. But a few years ago, in 1434, another Portuguese, Gil Eanes, rounded Cape Bojador. And rumour has it that Infante Dom Henrique—who some are now beginning to call El Navegador or “the Navigator”—is planning his next expedition.
Truly do I admire those seafaring explorers and hold them in great esteem. They are intrepid men. After all, it is terrifying to venture onto the ocean under sail. Why, there are squalls and storms, hidden rocks, magnetic mountains, rough and sticky seas. If there aren’t whirlpools, then there’s turbulence, and if not turbulence, then currents. It teems with a plenitude of sea monsters and serpents, tritons, hippocampi, mermen, dolphins and flatfishes. The sea is awash with diverse sanguisugae, polypi, octopodes, locustae, cancri, pistrixi et huic similia. The most dreadful place is at the end—for where the ocean finishes, beyond its edge, begins Hell. Why do you think the sun is so red when it sets? Because it reflects the infernal fires. What is more, there are holes spread over the entire ocean, and when a caravel imprudently sails over one, it tumbles straight into Hell. It is clear it was created in such an image to stop mortal man sailing the seas. Hell is the penalty for those who break the rules.
But, from my experience, it won’t stop the Portuguese, since navigare necesse est and there are islands and lands beyond the horizon that need discovering. Distant Taprobane must be drawn on maps, the route to mysterious Zipangu described on roteiros, and Insulae Fortunatae—the Isles of the Blessed—marked on portulan charts. One must sail ever further, in the wake of Saint Brendan along the route of dreams, to Hy-Brasil, towards the unknown. In order to make the unknown known.
And that is why—quod erat demonstrandum—our world is diminishing and shrinking, because soon everything will be visible on maps, portulan charts and roteiros. And suddenly everywhere will be close.
The world is shrinking and becoming depleted of one thing: legends. The further the Portuguese caravels sail, the more islands discovered and named, the fewer legends there will be. Another one vanishes like smoke. We have one less dream. And when a dream dies, darkness fills the place orphaned by the dream. Then monsters awake at once in that darkness, particularly when our minds are lulled. What? It has been said before? M’lord! Is there anything that has not already been said?
Oh, but my throat is dry… What would I say to a beer, you ask? By all means.
What do you say, devout brother of Saint Dominic? Aha, that it is time I stopped digressing and took up the story again? Of Reynevan, Scharley, Samson and the others? You are right, Brother. It is. Thus do I resume it.
Anno Domini 1427 dawned. Do you remember what it brought? Indeed. It cannot be forgotten. But I shall remind you nonetheless.
That spring, in March, I believe, certainly before Easter, Pope Martin V announced the papal bull Salvatoris omnium, in which he declared the need for another crusade against the Czech heretics. Pope Martin named Henry Beaufort, the Bishop of Winchester, the brother of the King of England, cardinal and legate a latere in the stead of Giordano Orsini, who was elderly and dreadfully feeble. Beaufort took up the matter vigorously. Soon a crusade was declared, meant to punish the Hussite apostates with fire and sword. The expedition was diligently prepared; money, of prime importance in a war, was meticulously collected, and this time—mirabile dictu—no one stole the cash. Some chroniclers believe the crusaders had become more honest. Others that the cash was guarded better.
The Diet of Frankfurt proclaimed Otto of Ziegenhain, Archbishop of Trier, commander-in-chief of the crusade. Everyone who could be was called to arms and soon the armies were ready. Frederick Hohenzollern the Elder, Elector of Brandenburg, reported with a force of soldiers. The Bavarians arrived under the command of Duke Henry the Rich, and Count Palatine John of Neumarkt, and his brother Count Palatine Otto of Mosbach also answered the call. The juvenile Frederick of Wettin, son of the infirm Frederick the Belligerent, Elector of Saxony, came to the rallying point. Raban of Helmstatt, Bishop of Speyer; Anselm of Nenningen, Bishop of Augsburg; and Frederick of Aufseß, Bishop of Bamberg—each came with a sizeable regiment. And Johann of Brunn, Bishop of Würzburg. And Thiébaudde of Rougemont, Archbishop of Besançon. Plus contingents from Swabia, Hesse, Thuringia and the northern Hanseatic cities.