The Romance of Atlantis

THE ROMANCE

OF ATLANTIS

Taylor Caldwell

with

Jess Stearn

First published by

William Morrow & Company, Inc.

1975

An extraordinary manifestation of psychic phenomena, a literary discovery!—the first novel by one of America’s most popular novelists, written sixty years ago when she was twelve, permitted to lie fallow for over half a century, and now prepared for publication by a prize-winning reporter, a best-selling author himself and specialist in the occult…

THE ROMANCE OF ATLANTIS

by Taylor Caldwell

Author of
Captains and the Kings,

Glory and the Lightning,
etc
.

with Jess Stearn

Author of
The Search tor a Soul,

A Prophet in His Own Country,
etc
.

Taylor Caldwell’s own grandfather, a book editor in Philadelphia, suppressed
The Romance of Atlantis
, for he could not believe that this extraordinary creation was the work of a young girl, could only conclude that it had been plagiarized. Reading the novel today, assured of its authenticity, one nonetheless understands and shares his sense of wonder.

In its grasp of technology, for example, it is clearly prophetic for its time, while the detail of scene and action is so ample and varied as to suggest an eyewitness account. And whether or not one finally decides that this is the result of extrasensory perception or—as many will—singular evidence of reincarnation, one is certain to be beguiled.

The Atlantis which Taylor Caldwell pictures for us with such immediacy is a highly sophisticated society. Its technology is so advanced that it has harnessed both nuclear and solar energy. Its birth-control techniques are perfect, though practiced only by the upper classes. It understands the processes of rejuvenation. For all of this, not unlike many other sophisticated cultures, past and present, Atlantis is in moral decay, dissolute, and like an overripe peach ready to fall to the ground.

It is a caste society. Faction fights faction, and decadence is rile. Moreover, as the novel opens, Atlantis is subject to strange omens and portents. A never-lifting mist hangs over the country, and the flow of both nuclear and solar power has been mysteriously interrupted. In the streets of Lamora, the capital city, newly arrived foreigners are proclaiming the one and only true god and prophesying the imminent doom of Atlantis. In the north of the continent of which Atlantis occupies the temperate southern zones, Signar, king of the Althustrians, is jealous—jealous for possession of Atlantis and of its splendid, even glamorous queen, Salustra.

It is Salustra, in fact, who provides the focus, and the reader is caught in the ebb and flow of her personal fortunes, as well as those of her beloved Atlantis, right up to the cosmic climax.

Fascinating in content, dramatic and apt to our times, mysterious in its origins,
The Romance of Atlantis
is a true wonder.

Jess Stearn and Taylor Caldwell earlier collaborated on Mr. Steam’s
The Search for a Soul: Taylor Caldwell’s Psychic Lives
.

From Taylor Caldwell’s Postscript to

THE ROMANCE OF ATLANTIS

“I knew, months ago, that Jess was going to do something about my childhood novel on Atlantis, but I forgot it completely in the stress of my existence. So I have no explanation of suddenly ‘experiencing’ my life on Atlantis after all these years, when I dreamed that I was the Empress Salustra in this book. This dream happened a few weeks ago, and then in the weeks following, I had two other ‘experiences’ as the Empress Salustra of Atlantis…

“I cannot imagine from where these strange dreams emerged, or what their significance is—if there is any significance at all. The only thing I know with certainty is that the dreams were more vivid than my present reality, more poignant, more agonizing and more joyful. They haunt me, coloring my whole existence, and I feel deprived and filled with an ancient longing.”

Books by Taylor Caldwell

DYNASTY OF DEATH

THE EAGLES GATHER

THE EARTH IS THE LORD’S

THE STRONG CITY

THE ARM AND THE DARKNESS

THE TURNBULLS

THE FINAL HOUR

THE WIDE HOUSE

THIS SIDE OF INNOCENCE

THERE WAS A TIME

MELISSA

LET LOVE COME LAST

THE BALANCE WHEEL

THE DEVIL’S ADVOCATE

NEVER VICTORIOUS, NEVER DEFEATED

TENDER VICTORY

THE SOUND OF THUNDER

DEAR AND GLORIOUS PHYSICIAN

THE LISTENER

A PROLOGUE TO LOVE

GRANDMOTHER AND THE PRIESTS

THE LATE CLARA BEAME

A PILLAR OF IRON

NO ONE HEARS BUT HIM

DIALOGUES WITH THE DEVIL

TESTIMONY OF TWO MEN

GREAT LION OF GOD

ON GROWING UP TOUGH

CAPTAINS AND THE KINGS

TO LOOK AND PASS

Books by Jess Stearn

Fiction

THE REPORTER

Nonfiction

A PROPHET IN HIS OWN COUNTRY:

The Story of the Young Edgar Cayce

THE SEARCH FOR A SOUL: Taylor Caldwell’s Psychic Lives

THE MIRACLE WORKERS: America’s Psychic Consultants

A TIME FOR ASTROLOGY

ADVENTURES INTO THE PSYCHIC

THE SEEKERS

THE SEARCH FOR THE GIRL WITH THE BLUE EYES

EDGAR CAYCE—THE SLEEPING PROPHET

YOGA, YOUTH AND REINCARNATION

THE GRAPEVINE

THE DOOR TO THE FUTURE

THE SIXTH MAN

THE WASTED YEARS

SISTERS OF THE NIGHT

In Collaboration

THE ROMANCE OF ATLANTIS

For the feathered Caesar, whose own forebears were quite prominent in Taylor Caldwell’s Atlantis.

“But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city.”

—HEBREWS 11:16

Foreword

At the age of twelve, Janet Taylor Caldwell wrote a romance of Atlantis, a presumably legendary land that she knew nothing about. Her father, a newspaper artist, was amazed by the perception in the manuscript, its detail and insight. He sent it to the child’s grandfather, a book editor, in Philadelphia. The latter, promptly horrified, suggested the manuscript be destroyed immediately. He did not feel that any child could have produced so unusually mature a work, intellectually and philosophically. The only alternative that suggested itself was that she had borrowed freely elsewhere. In a way, he was right. She had borrowed from the past, not knowing herself how she was dredging up that past.

The manuscript lay fallow for sixty years. Then, on the strength of my collaboration with the novelist in
The Search for a Soul, The Psychic Lives of Taylor Caldwell
, I was given the task of readying the manuscript for publication. Provocative situations that Miss Caldwell had touched upon were amplified, some of the child’s prose simplified; but the situations, descriptions, characters and story line remain pretty much as they inexplicably came from the pen of a twelve-year-old child. The insight, the wisdom, the biting wit, the disenchantment and yet the eternal optimism that intrigued and affected me are still there, together with an allegorical narrative that seems to fit our world with dramatic aptness. Indeed, it almost seems at times that the famous novelist as a child wrote this, her first novel, with prophetic insight. Judge for yourself.

J.S.

1

The Emperor was two hundred years old, and even with the rejuvenation chamber few lived more than two hundred years in Atlantis. His fierce eyes were dimmed, lines of pain threaded the tired face. His forehead was beaded with sweat, which a dusky eunuch wiped at intervals with a silk cloth banded in gold. Around the Emperor’s throat was a chain of gold, fastened in front with a crystalline seven-colored gem, which gave renewed energy to the weary. His hands, once powerful, were folded in resignation on his breast. A solemn-looking physician stood behind the Emperor’s great bed, registering just the right note of concern. The Emperor had already sent for his two daughters. Salustra, the elder, was in the glorious dawn of ripening womanhood; Tyrhia was yet a child with a boy’s figure. The father’s fevered eyes turned to them with passionate intensity. Salustra! Was there anything more magnificent than this girl? She was not unlike her mother, thank the eternal gods! For her mother, the incomparable Maxima, had been an aristocrat to her impenetrable core. Salustra was tall for a woman, and her figure was such as to give the imagination pause. She had the Emperor’s eyes, flashing with vitality. Her skin was pale and clear, with a birthmark high on the cheekbone which turned scarlet when she was aroused. Her mouth, though proud, was warm and inviting. Her tawny hair, reaching to her knees, glistened with a luster that seemed to catch the highlights of the sun. The white column of her throat, rising proudly from her marble shoulders, was strong and supple, giving her the carriage of a queen.

The dying Emperor sensed instinctively the feminine glory Salustra would soon know. He noted the sinuous curve of her thigh and calf and, with satisfaction, the strength in the line of her jaw and the blue steel of her eyes. Perhaps she walked too confidently, too arrogantly for a woman, but the muscles under the shimmering skin were as sinewy as those of a man. Lazar smiled as he saw in Salustra his own indomitable will. As he looked at Tyrhia, the smile faded. Though actually but a few years younger than Salustra, she was still unformed, with a vapid, unclouded countenance. A circlet of gold dangling from her arm matched the yellow curls that framed her pretty face. Her hands were fluttering and white and somewhat helpless.

She was like her mother, the base-born Lahia. Seeing the child, the Emperor remembered the mother. She had been a slave of surpassing beauty, a tribute from the petty kingdom of Mantius, to which he had granted independence, taking only the beautiful Lahia as a victor’s spoils. Lahia had been weak, often vicious, constantly conniving. Nevertheless, Lazar, succumbing to the tyranny of the weak over the strong, loved her until his betrayal. Not until she carried his child did he discover that the Empress had plotted with an envoy from powerful Althrustri to poison his wine. Tyrhia was about due, and Lazar, who yearned for a son, had refrained from one word of rebuke. However, the Empress had guessed from his averted eyes that he knew, and she had literally died of fear after the child was born. Lazar had had her entombed with ceremony, and the world, aside from the Althrustri regime, was none the wiser. He had not thought about any of this for years. Now he held out a wavering hand to his children. Tyrhia, with the easy tears of the emotionally unstable, kneeled beside him, curling herself in the hollow of his wasted arm. Salustra stood looking at her father gravely, and waited. She was very white, and though her pale lips were set, they trembled slightly at the corners.

She bent closer to her father. At the touch of her fingers, it was as though under the smooth skin he had felt the sinew of steel. His eye notably brightened, and any misgivings he had vanished.

“My children,” he said wistfully, “I am dying. But it is a natural and peaceful thing; where I go, you too will go one day. I am merely taking the path before you. I am accepting death as naturally as I have accepted life. It is but a phase of the human drama.”

Tyrhia’s sobs rent the air, causing the doctor to look at her reprovingly. Unheeding of her sister, Salustra gazed at her father, her dark eyes still and watchful.

“Salustra, my daughter.” He motioned to her. She took the cloth from the eunuch and wiped the perspiration from the dying man’s forehead. He drew a deep breath and closed his eyes as though willing his departing soul to halt its flight for a grudging moment.

“Salustra,” he said, his voice hoarse with the effort of speaking, “in thy hands I leave my empire. Dost thou understand, girl?” He looked up into her face, and something he saw there gave him joy. “My time is near, Salustra,” he said, “but what I have to say must be said. My empire is thine. Think of it! From east to west it extends three thousand miles sea to sea! From north to south, four thousand miles from icy glaciers to the tropic sands! A glorious heritage for him who merits it.”

Salustra said nothing, but her eyes had begun to glitter.

The sun, gleaming through the pillars, cast a golden glow over her features. A pulse leaped in the hollow of her throat. She fingered the chain on her father’s neck and he nodded feebly for her to take it.

The Emperor groaned, and his head moved agonizingly on the silken pillows. Salustra laid a steady hand on his forehead. “Rest, my lord,” she said quietly.

He turned his head slowly toward her and, his gaze again meeting that serene eye, his face brightened. His hand clutched hers. “Thou art only a girl,” he gasped. “But thou hast the wisdom of many wise men. Thou hast sat with me in the courts, and heard my judgments. Thou hast heard me attacked, and seen me fawned upon. As I hate a lie, so thou dost hate it. As I loathe injustice, so thou dost loathe it. Thou hast the vision which detects falsehood and dissimulation. Such vision normally is a curse; it bars one from even the semblance of friendship. But a ruler should have no friends. Friends lull one to false security. Hold thyself aloof, Salustra.” He heaved a great sigh. “I need not speak to thee of the dull procedure of government which thou hast learnt at my knee, I speak to thee now of greater things, of the soul of government, of the heart of a people. Dost thou understand?”