The Astrologer (14 page)

“You think I am an idiot,” Marcellus said.

“Nay”

“You think you can outfox the truth and speak more cleverly than I have craft to understand.”

“Nay”

“You think that I will not cut you open and pull your entrails from your living gut and feed them to the crows while you watch the feast.”

“What madness is this?”

“You are bleeding, astrologer.”

I put a hand to my face and it came away with a trail of blood on the palm. My left eyebrow was cut open. My head still rang from the blow Marcellus had given me.

“I belong to the king,” I said. “You cannot torture me. You do not have the right.”

“I can deliver you such pain as you have never dreamed of,” he said. “Tristram is dead. I am master of Kronberg while the king and Bernardo are away. You are a murderer. My rights are to pull your fingers from their joints, cut off your ears, skewer you on red hot irons, knock out each tooth in your jaws, suck the eyeballs from your skull, and choke you with your own bollocks. Do you think I cannot do these things?”

Marcellus smiled and I believed that not only could he do these things, but that he had done them before, to other men, many times.

“I am no murderer.”

Marcellus made a fist and put it against my ribs, below my heart. His men seized my arms and held me down in the chair.

“Oh, astrologer,” Marcellus said. He pushed against my ribs with his fist. “You are not being honest with me. Tristram was seen bringing the bottle of wine to you. He was later seen taking it to his own rooms.”

“What of it?”

Marcellus pushed harder against my ribs and I felt the bones shifting, pressing on my lungs. His face was very close to mine, his breath sour and hot. I thought I might vomit.

“Why do you care about Tristram?”

“Aha.” Marcellus removed his fist from my ribs and stood away from me. My chest ached as I inhaled and I imagined the bruise I would have below my heart.

“I do not think you meant to kill Tristram,” Marcellus said.

“I did not kill him at all. The wine—”

Marcellus drew back his fist and I turned my face away. He did not hit me.

“The wine was poisoned. Tristram’s physician is a doddering fool, but we Swiss have a surgeon who knows the smell and actions of uncountable poisons. He was not deceived. Tristram’s wine was tainted. By you. Deny it not.”

I saw how things were. Either Marcellus or the king would have my head over this act. I had failed my mission and so I must take the whole blame to protect Torstensson and his allies.

“Tristram was an accident.”

“Now you are being honest, astrologer. And what of Straslund? An accident?”

“Straslund?”

“You were seen with him as he fell into the moat. We Swiss have sharper eyes than you Danes credit. There was a snake in a snowstorm. A most curious thing it was, too.”

“An accident.”

“Your associates are plagued by accidents. Tell me, why were you in the king’s sleeping chamber the morning Straslund had his accident with the snake?”

I shook my head. Was there nothing they had not seen? Was Torstensson also being questioned, watching as his family was tortured by agents of the king? Were all the others who were involved being beaten by interrogators this morning?

“How long have you spied upon me?”

“We see everything,” Marcellus said. “We have seen you with poisonous snake and poisoned wine. We have seen how your poisons struck well outside the mark. Accidents, as you say. But who is the mark? We have seen you spy upon the king’s coming and going. We have seen that your target is no other than King Christian of Denmark.”

I said nothing. Marcellus shook his head and sighed.

“You are a most clumsy assassin. Must every man in the nation fall prey to your accidents while the king dies slowly of old age? You are not the man to do this deed, astrologer. That much is clear. You will need our help.”

A LOCAL LEGEND, VERY ANCIENT, TENS OF THE GIANTESS Hvenhild who gathered up an armload of hills in Denmark and put the acres of earth into her apron. She waded into the Sound and walked carefully against the current toward Sweden, ten miles away. When Hvenhild was halfway across the water, one of her apron strings snapped and all her thousands of tons of soil fell into the Sound. I have often imagined the giantess looking sidelong at the great pile of earth she had dropped, pushing at the hills with her bare toe for a moment before lumbering off through the waves to sit on the Swedish shore and repair her apron, abandoning her lost acres without another thought. When Hvenhild was long dead and we Danes came to settle her accidental island, we named it after her.

Hven rises up from the waters abruptly, a flat bluff with steep white cliffs all around and dangerous, rocky beaches on the north and west. There is one small harbor on the north side of the island, where a steep road angles up through a gap in the cliffs. Visitors to Hven are obliged to climb hundreds of feet up this road to the peasant village of Tuna. Standing, finally, on the rolling plain above the cliffs one can turn and look northward to see Kronberg, seven miles distant. On the faraway shore the castle is a brick red and coppery green smudge. Hven is likewise visible from Kronberg. The cliffs form a hazy white
line which seems to float on the Sound, and the bell tower of the church of St. Ibb is a dark obelisk, a black speck.

It was not snowing on the morning that I crossed the Sound from Elsinore Harbor to the landing at Hven’s north shore, but nor was it a pleasant day. A low mass of gray cloud filled the heavens and the Sound was a seething, undulating serpent of gray wave upon gray wave. The coastlines of Denmark and Sweden were buried under three feet of snow. The world looked hewn from ice, frost, and granite.

The crossing took two hours in our small boat. I was accompanied by a pair of Danish soldiers who Marcellus had assigned to me as assistants. During the voyage Cornelius and Voltemont played dice, drank mulled wine, and complained of the cold and wet. They complained when we landed at Hven because there was no one at hand to unload our supplies at the wharf. Their complaints as we dragged our trunks, sacks, and boxes up the road from the wharf to the town were doubtless audible as far away as the moon.

“There is no inn on this island,” Cornelius said.

“Nor a tavern, neither,” Voltemont said.

“We must carry our trunks two miles, over hills buried in snow, and then build our own fire at Brahe’s ruin,” Cornelius said.

“There will be no dry wood.”

“There will be no dry bed.”

“There will be nothing but a hole in the ground, and we three freezing in it.”

“You men,” I said. “Have either of you been to Uraniborg since Tycho left it?”

“Nay,” they answered. Neither man had stepped foot on the island in his life.

“Go to the church and borrow a cart and oxen,” I said. “We will light a fire in Tycho’s kitchen by noon, I tell you.”

Voltemont hurried to the church while Cornelius and I stood at the edge of town, stamping our feet and rubbing our arms beneath our cloaks. Tuna was a village of a few score houses
built from stone and wood with roofs of thatch. There were no people about, but smoke rose from the roof vent of every house and we smelled pottage and bread cooking.

“Voltemont takes his time,” Cornelius said. “Belike he joins the priest for a meal at the fireside. He will forget his friends, who turn to ice outside.”

“Nay, here he comes.”

St. Ibb’s is a small stone chapel that is centuries old with a bell tower the height of eight men. Voltemont hurried from the church, coming forth in a cloud of steam from a narrow side door. Before the door closed I saw the great bulk of Father Maltar. He was not smiling. I had almost forgotten Father Maltar.

“That ancient priest refuses us,” Voltemont said. “His cart, oxen, and driver are not at the beck of every slave from Elsinore, he says.”

“Says he?” Cornelius put a hand upon the hilt of his sword. “Well, we ought at least claim right of sanctuary in the chapel and go inside.”

“Aye,” Voltemont said. “It is warm in the church. We have missed Matins, but we may be in time for dinner.”

“Enough.” I picked up my cases and walked toward the church. With each step I sank past my ankles into the snow and I tried to remember Hven during the summer, when the hillsides flowed under carpets of long grass where sheep and cattle grazed, when crops rippled in a gentle breeze and fish schooled in the sixty linked ponds Tycho had dug west of the observatory. I tried to recall the good smell of the earth beneath the maples where I had read Copernicus in the hours after dining. These memories refused me and I had nothing but the air filled with ice and wind, a low gray sky, the noise of waves all around, and deep snow lying over the whole of the island. My ears and nose felt brittle in the cold.

“Bring over your packs and trunks,” I called to my assistants. “We will speak to Father Maltar.”

It was dark inside St. Ibb’s, and humid, but it was warm. Father Maltar took up most of a low bench by the stove. A young priest and a boy who I took to be a villager sat near him on wooden stools. Maltar did not look up even when I dropped my cases into a pew with no little noise. Cornelius and Voltemont set up their own racket a moment later as they dragged two large wooden trunks over the threshold and across the flagstone floor.

“We are on a mission for the king,” I said, walking over to the stove. I stood beside the young priest, stretched out my hands to the fire, and tried to catch Maltar’s eye. “We require your assistance.”

“So you’ve returned,” Maltar said. His voice was low and rumbled deep in his chest. He looked at the door of the stove, as if he spoke to it and not to me. “The great man’s toad hops across the Sound and into my church once again.”

“Brahe is not here, only the will of the king,” I said. “We serve the king. As do you, Father.”

“Brahe is dead.” Maltar groaned out the words.

“Aye, but the king lives, and we do his bidding.”

“Brahe is dead.”

“Indeed, Father. I have been tasked with removing all traces of him from Hven. You should thank me.”

“Were I a younger man, I’d thank you with a beating.”

“You are thankfully spared that effort, then. We only require cartage to Uraniborg.”

“I had a dream.”

“Did you dream of an ox cart, Father?”

“I had a dream.” His voice grew loud for a moment, the protests of a forgotten god. “I dreamed of the moon floating above on a clear night.
Luminare minus ut praeesset nocti.
I watched her proceed across the heavens, and my heart was full of God’s love.
Et posuit eas in firmamento caeli ut lucerent super terram.
I felt the contentment of every soul on the island, as if we all shared the same grace. The moon was full, a beautiful and perfect disc, the Host held out to Earth by God Himself. I stood in awe.

“And then lo, a man approached, a man made of tin with a golden nose,
dividerent lucem ac tenebras.
This awful man pointed his evil tin finger at the moon, and she was cloaked in a darkness most terrible. My heart was filled with despair, and all of Hven wept at it. Then away went the man, and with his leaving the moon returned. But soon the evil man of tin was back, and he labored to build a monstrous hand of metal, of steel and brass and copper standing three yards tall, and he points this horrible thing at the moon, and she retreats behind a veil of darkness. Oh, most horrible. The man left us again and the moon came out from behind her arras. But she was diminished, faded and translucent. I saw stars shining through from behind her, and I was afraid to my marrow.

“Once more there came the vile man of tin, constructing a stone platform and a set of stairs upon the backs of Hven’s people. Their wailing was deafening. The demonic hand of metal was dragged up to the top of the stairs and pointed at the moon. Oh, the horror as she shook, and shriveled, and crumbled, and fell away like a dead leaf, and was no more.

“This dream I had nightly for twenty years. I dreamt it as I slept and when I awakened I found that I was still dreaming it. What do you suppose this dream meant?”

“It hardly takes a mystic to interpret.”

“Indeed. Two decades my nightmare continued, and then came that blessed day when it ended, four years ago. But now look, you are come again, handmaiden of the devil. You return to Hven to plague us. What towers of Babel will be raised this time?”

“Tycho is dead, Father. None comes to take his place. My mission is to inventory and sell off whatever remains of his instruments. As I say, this ought to gladden your heart. You will be happy to see the vestiges of Tycho leave Hven.”

“Happy indeed. Your sorcerer’s temple sits out there at the heart of the island, a knife in our breast.”

“And so, Father, you will order your driver to harness the oxen and cart us with our supplies out to Uraniborg.”

Maltar was silent, his huge body immobile, and I wondered if he had fallen asleep. The priest was at least eighty years old; when he did not seem to be breathing I considered that perhaps he had died. It would have simplified my morning immensely. At last he turned his face to me.

“You will not use my cart, nor my oxen, nor my driver, Soren. You may light a taper at the altar to St. Ibb before you go.”

“I come at the king’s bidding. You cannot refuse me.”

“I do refuse. There is no man on Hven who will raise a finger to help you. We were afflicted with Brahe for twenty years, boy. You stink of his poisonous breath and we despise you. Go to your observatory and see if there are toys you desire among the fallen walls, but ask none of us to aid you. We spit upon whatever you do. Speak to us no more.”

Maltar turned away and closed his eyes.

“You cannot refuse me.”

The old priest refused to answer and perhaps he did sleep then. The other priest, a man younger than me, stood and took my arm.

“Leave us, sir. Father Maltar has answered you.”