The Astrologer (19 page)

“I have never considered the idea, my lord.”

“Thou shouldst. When a man is able, he sets up his surroundings as a mirror to himself. Look you here, at this church. It is austere, mysterious in its depths, containing nothing superfluous, and every empty inch is dedicated to God. It is the very brainpan of Father Maltar, I dare say.”

Maltar nodded, unsure of the compliment.

Christian rubbed his hands together and looked to the rectory door.

“Where is Father Stepan? I can smell that herring, and I am starved enough to eat a lake full of them.”

The herring was worth the walk from Uraniborg. The cream was fresh and the bread soft and delicious. Christian entertained the two priests with colorful gossip about the sinful life at Copenhagen and I ate more or less in peace. Father Maltar and I avoided each other’s eye and Father Stepan was polite enough. When we had eaten, Father Maltar surprised me by offering the use of his cart and driver to return us to Uraniborg. Christian was happy to accept.

The driver was the same boy who had taken Cornelius, Voltemont, and me out to the castle the day we arrived. Christian sat beside him on the plank. I climbed into the back of the cart and sat on a bale of damp wool. The day was still bright and where the sun could reach it, the surface of the snow shone with slick melt. Our driver snapped his whip over the oxen and we were underway.

“You have brought another soldier from Zealand,” the boy said to me, inclining his head toward Christian.

“Indeed no,” I said. “This is the crown prince of the realm, Christian son of Christian.”

The boy performed an awkward sort of bow but did not stop the cart.

“My lord,” he said to the prince.

“And what do they call you?” Christian said.

“My name is Justus Axlrod,” the boy said, and turned briefly to look at me.

“Do I know you?” His name did seem familiar.

“I knew you once,” he said. “Before. When you were one of Brahe’s men.”

“Soren is still one of Brahe’s men,” Christian said. “Though he did belong to me once.”

“I confess the name Axlrod strikes a familiar note,” I said. “But I cannot place you in my memory, lad.”

“No doubt you would recall better the name of my sister, Astrid.”

“Astrid! You are her brother?”

“Aye.” The boy kept his face turned to the front, else I would have searched for a resemblance to his sister. I remembered Astrid well.

During my last year at Uraniborg I saw her almost daily, for she brought milk and cream to Tycho’s kitchens. Astrid’s parents were dead and the girl tended the family cows by herself. I do not have any strong memories of her brother, though perhaps I remember Justus as a small boy, sitting beside Astrid on the cart. Astrid was not tall, nor was she particularly slender, and though she kept her hair always tucked beneath a bonnet, there
were times when a stray lock or two fell out over her forehead. Astrid’s hair was always dirty, but had she troubled to wash it, I think it may have been a pretty golden color.

Her voice was soft, barely more than a whisper. It was often impossible to hear her at all. Perhaps she thought that the daughter of a dairyman would have nothing to say that Uraniborg’s educated citizens wished to hear. It is true that, for I know not how long, I did not notice her at all. She may have spoken to me, she may have stood directly in my path as I wandered through the kitchens or the yard on my way from the machines at Stjerneborg to Tycho’s office, and I did not even see her. It was not until I heard her laugh that I noticed Astrid Axlrod.

I will not wax poetic like some second-rate playwright or a penner of sonnets, nor will I pretend to remember a bright spring morning when I first heard Astrid’s laughter amid the trilling and babbling of songbirds. Such a memory is something I do not possess, but I know that it was Astrid’s laugh which caused me to look up from some task and see her, lifting clay jars of cream from the back of her cart. Her hands were red and raw from her labors and she smelled of the barn, but I heard Astrid laugh in bell-like tones, a descending fragment of the Ionian mode, and then I was beside her cart, moving jars of milk and cream. What she laughed at, I know not. Nor can I recall what we spoke of nor how I explained that despite my lofty place assisting the lord of the island, I was compelled to help a dairy maid unload her cart. All of it is lost, for I was not thinking as rationally during those first moments as a scientist ought.

Astrid was not to be compared to a summer’s day, nor her eyes to the sun, but neither was she one of those dirty, brazen wenches a man speaks of when telling false tales about his conquest of farm maidens. If any man at Uraniborg claimed that Astrid had taken him for a tumble, he would be a liar. Once I overstepped myself and asked her if she would come to the hazel grove with me to dine upon fruit and bread and wine, and Astrid struck me on the cheek with her red milkmaid hand. An hour later my face still did sting.

“Unloading my cart is not courting me, sir,” she said. I had to strain to catch her words even when she was angry. “Your help these mornings is pleasant and when you babble about the moon your face takes on an aspect which sometimes approaches handsome, but you do not thereby purchase my favors, sir. I have no such commerce with any man, as Jesus is my witness.” She crossed herself, took from my hands the jug I held, and did not speak to me for a week. It was a lonely week.

Among Uraniborg’s inhabitants there were but two women, Tycho’s wife and Tycho’s daughter. All the men were forbid to even speak to them, except for Tycho’s most favored assistants, and I was not of that select number. I rarely left the island while apprenticed to Tycho, and as one of his men I was not well liked on Hven. Astrid was the only woman with whom I had any kind of friendship during my years at Uraniborg. I cannot say exactly what I wanted from her, but Astrid’s attention, and most especially her laughter, were welcome respite from the long nights of planetary observations and the long, dull days of calculations. The half hour that I spent every morning unloading milk and cream with Astrid became an event to which I looked forward with the greatest anticipation. When the king stole the island from beneath Tycho’s feet, we scholars were also forced to flee and find other ways to live. Before I left, I told Astrid that one day I would return to Hven and see how she fared. During the intervening years I forgot this promise, but fate had returned me to Hven and I desired to see Astrid again. When I thought of her my pulse quickened and my mind became distract.

I leaned forward and put a hand lightly on Justus’s shoulder.

“I do remember your sister,” I said. “It has ever been my intention that should I come back to Hven, I would visit her. Tell me, how fares Astrid?”

“She is dead, sir. These three years.”

“What?”

“Aye, my sister is no more.”

I took my hand from the boy’s arm. He did not turn to look at me.

“We lived in a stone house on the western bluff,” he said. “When the walls needed repairs, Astrid came to the abandoned manor, to take bricks from one of the abandoned towers.”

“She must have taken a great many bricks,” Christian said. “For there was once a very tall tower, with parapets and cupolas. That is all gone now.”

“She only needed a few dozen,” Justus said. “But the tower was ill-made, and while Astrid pried her few bricks loose, the face of the building came apart and fell down upon her. Father Maltar said it was a miracle that Uraniborg stood as long as it had before collapsing, so badly is it designed. Father Maltar took me in after Astrid died, and I drive his cart and do other work for him. He and Father Stepan are teaching me Latin so that I might go to seminary when I am older. I shall not return to Hven if I become a priest. There is nothing here for me.”

I knew not what to say. My head ached suddenly and I saw that the sky had clouded over while we traveled. The ruins of Uraniborg loomed up the road, just ahead of us.

“I grieve for your sister,” I said. The words sounded empty and foolish.

“I grieved three years ago,” the boy said. “When you were no longer here. But now you have come back.”

“I have come back.”

“Well, here you are then, good sir. I fear it may snow again, and I must return the oxen to their shed. Fare you well. Fare you well, my lord.”

Christian and I stood down from the cart. Justus steered the oxen in a circle around us and drove toward the village. The boy did not look back at us before he disappeared over the first of the low hills.

Christian took my elbow.

“Come, Soren. Let us go in.”

WE HAD BEEN AWAY SOME FOUR HOURS, AND IN THAT time Cornelius and Voltemont had proved industrious. In a short span they had accomplished more useless work for the prince than ever they had labored on my business.

The smaller bed chamber at the head of the stairs was cleared of rubbish and Voltemont displayed to Christian with pride the shutters he had affixed at the windows to stop the wind. Cornelius pointed to the stove in the corner; it was alive with a warm fire. They had even built a low wooden pallet for the prince along one interior wall.

“We must yet wrap ourselves in our furs to sleep, but this should prove a worthier chamber for my lord than the kitchens below.”

“I am well pleased,” Christian said, and took their hands. “For these labors you shall both have what thanks as fits a prince’s remembrance.”

The men smiled like children and bowed to the prince. Christian released them and paced along the walls as an admiral inspects a ship of the line.

“The room is safe? It is surely warm, at least.”

“Aye, my lord,” Cornelius said. “The chimney works. I am not sanguine about the exterior walls. It would be wise, I think, to keep away from them.”

“That’s the failure of the Italian school of building,” Christian said. “Brahe should not have used Palladio as his model. What succeeds in the Mediterranean is not suited for the hardier climes of Denmark, eh Soren?”

“I cannot say, my lord.”

Christian walked to the window, opened one of the shutters, and looked out briefly before closing the shutter again.

“Cannot or would not or will not. Not to speak ill of the dead, eh?”

“My lord?”

“You will not condemn your master whilst standing in his very cranium. That is commendable.”

Christian pushed against the wall beside the window, leaning against it with all his weight.

“One can discuss any man, or that man’s home, with a free tongue,” he said in a sharp tone. “As long as he makes not his home in that good man’s head. It would be unseemly to sit beneath a friend’s crown and speak the truth, eh, gentlemen?”

“My lord, I know not what you mean,” I said. “And it is unsafe to so beleaguer the walls, my lord. Do stand away, prithee.”

“You are afraid one of Brahe’s bricks will crown me?”

“You would surely regret such a coronation, my lord. I beg you, stand away from the wall.”

Christian shrugged and began to beat against the wall with his right fist. Cornelius and Voltemont exchanged a look of alarm and stepped over to the prince.

“My lord,” Voltemont said. “To speak of heads, my lord.”

“Aye?”

Christian did not look at Voltemont. He continued to pound the wall.

“My lord, I wonder if you wish to visit the surgeon.”

“The surgeon?”

“My lord,” Cornelius said. “Will you not rest elsewhere than on the wall? It may fall in, my lord. It is not safe.”

“Safe? Nothing is safe.”

Cornelius and Voltemont reached out to take Christian’s
arms. The prince slipped between the men and came to where I stood. He leaned close to me and spoke in a low voice.

“Who are they, Soren?”

“My lord?”

“Those men.” He nodded toward the window, where Voltemont was inspecting the wall and Cornelius was watching Christian. “Who are they?”

“My lord,” I whispered. “That is Voltemont and Cornelius. You know them.”

Christian snatched at the collar of my cloak and pulled our faces even closer.

“Not those men, of course.” He blinked rapidly and shook my cloak. “The other men.”

“My lord, there are no other men here.” I thought that perhaps Voltemont’s advice was sound, that the blow to Christian’s head caused him to wax desperate with imagination. The prince’s left eye was bloodshot, and I could not recall if it had been thus since we discovered him in the night.

“Did you send for them, Soren?”

“My lord, these are wild and whirling words you speak. There are none but the four of us in this room.”

Christian rolled his eyes like a dog with hydrophobia and shook me harder.

“Not us,” he said. “I dare say I worry the cold affects your brain, Soren. Look out the window, sirrah. There are three men on horseback coming from the north. Who are they?”

“Three men? Why, I know not.”

Christian took his hand from me and I went over to the window and opened the shutter. Below us was a trio of riders on coal black mounts, wearing the black and yellow of Swiss mercenaries. I did not know what they were doing at Uraniborg. Perhaps Marcellus had sent them to fetch me back to Kronberg, though it seemed doubtful he would dispatch three lancers for such a purpose.

“They are your father’s Swiss guard,” I said. “I know not why they have come.”

Christian slipped into a corner of the room and looked up at the shadows over his head.

“I doubt it is no other reason than your mission,” he said. “Go and speak with them.”

“Aye, my lord.”

“And take these two with you.”

“My lord,” Cornelius said. “We think it best we remain here, at your service.”

“You do me no good service when you disobey me,” Christian said. “It is writ down in your duty, is it not, to leap or stand as I declare? Am I not crown prince of Denmark? Is not your king my own father?”

“Aye, my lord.”

“Then go with Soren. You are all honorable men. I will remain here. Go.”