The Astrologer (26 page)

The prince sat up, crying out. His right hand grasped at the air before him.

“Father!”

“My lord,” I said, going to him. “What is the matter?”

“Oh, Soren.” He pulled me down onto the pallet with him and touched my face as if he did not believe I was real. “I had a dream. Most horrible, I tell you.”

“Will you tell me your dream?”

Christian hesitated and then turned away.

“It is but a foolish spirit who visits my sleep, no more. I did not mean to alarm you.”

“I am concerned for my lord.”

“You are a good man,” he said, and pushed me away. “How long did I sleep?”

“An hour, or less.”

“Well.” Christian rubbed his hands over his arms and adjusted his fur cap. “It is not so late, then. I have no wish to sleep again immediately.”

“Do you desire to talk, my lord?”

“No. No, I do not. Let us go investigate Brahe’s library.”

“The sun has gone down and the library will be dark. I know not what there will be to see.”

“Are you afraid of a dark room, Soren?”

“No, my lord, but I am afraid of the ceiling falling in a dark room. This castle is unsafe.”

“It will be a brave adventure,” Christian said. “Come, let us go down to the great hall.”

I did not point out that the adventures Christian had led me on that day had all ended unhappily. The wisest course was to confront the prince about the murder of Ulfeldt, to sift him for aught he knew of Vibeke and the king, and to find why he thought it needful to pretend he had drowned. His earlier answer told me nothing, and surely he did not wish to punish his mother with false reports of his death. It would have been better to sort through this tangle with Christian, make him explain himself and think of how he would answer the questions he would face at Kronberg, but I was tired of thinking on difficult subjects. There would be time for these discussions later. For now, Christian wished to amuse himself in Tycho’s empty library, and so I followed him down the spiral stairs, out to the yard, through the door to the great hall, and then into the library. A tall bookshelf had fallen against the door from within and had prevented our entrance earlier. Christian explained how he had worked the door back and forth an inch at a time, opening and closing it by degrees for hours until the
shelf shifted and toppled a little away from the door, making the noise that had so alarmed me. A gap a foot wide now let us squeeze into the room.

Tycho’s library had been a fine place, with desks and chairs along two walls, a fireplace in another wall, with high windows in the wall opposite. Walnut bookshelves stood in ranks down the middle of the room, rising to the ceiling. The peasants would have used these priceless cabinets for firewood had they known of them. Part of the ceiling had collapsed; it was the falling plaster and wood that had knocked one of the bookshelves over, blocking the door.

The noise of our boots on the rubble echoed in the dark. When I lived at Uraniborg there were thousands of books on the shelves, all of them Tycho’s personal property, which he let any of us read as long as the books did not leave the library. One of my saddest days had been spent helping Tycho pack the books into crates to be taken away. Every volume put into a box had seemed a wound on Tycho’s heart, a dead child lowered into a coffin.

Christian ran his hand along the wall by the door.

“This is fine paneling,” he said. “Brahe spared no amount of my father’s gold to build this room.”

“I was ever happy in the library,” I said.

“It is no library now.”

“No. It is more a plague house emptied of the dead.”

“Very poetical. The people of Hven will say this is a dead house emptied of the plague.”

I passed down one of the aisles between the rows of shelves. Plaster crunched underfoot and I thought perhaps I heard something small scuttle away from me. I heard Christian walking down another row of shelves to my right.

“Sometimes in my dreams,” he said, “Denmark is a great maze, and I am alone in it.”

“You have many friends,” I answered. “Prince Christian need never think himself alone.”

I came to the end of the row of shelves and stepped around,
peering into the dark of the next row. It was not possible to see where Christian was. Trailing my fingers along the empty shelves, I walked down the aisle, expecting to encounter the prince. When he spoke I was surprised that he was now on the other side of me. He must have circled around several rows of shelves.

“The lord of Denmark is ever solitary,” he said. “On the last day, every man is alone.”

“It is not the last day.” My own voice sounded distant in that emptied room and I could not recall how far apart the walls or bookshelves were. It was dark, nearly pitch black. I stumbled into a cabinet and even as I held onto it I felt as if I were still falling into some vertiginous, lightless pit.

“Where are you, my lord?”

“Behind you.”

I spun about and groped at the dark with both hands. There was no one there.

“My uncle reports that Gustavus’s little son is raising an army in Jutland,” Christian said. “The Swiss told me so this morning.”

“Do you believe them?” I took a few careful, slow steps along the aisle. I could hear Christian’s boots on the tiles, but the footfalls seemed to sound from two directions.

“The Swiss are not trustworthy, but they do love their battles and talk of war. I think this news is true.”

“More bloodshed, then?” At the end of the row I looked to my left and saw only an old desk, its drawers missing. I walked to my right.

“The Swiss think so. There will be bloodshed, aye.”

“As long as Denmark looks backward, my lord, there will be bloodshed.”

“Backward? As long as Denmark is awake, there will be bloodshed no matter in what direction she looks. Save Paradise for eternity. You should be a priest, not a writer of philosophical treatises. What would you have of us? We are Danes.”

“We need not be so bloodthirsty a people, my lord. Denmark could put her mind to arts other than war. The Swiss are barbarians. Denmark can be a modern nation, if a modern king would lead her.”

“A modern nation? With a philosopher king? With no armies and no church but the temple of knowledge, as you write in that book of yours?”

I moved through the darkness, down one row of bookshelves and then another. Christian and I seemed to be circling each other, our orbits matched, or so charted as to not intersect. His voice drifted closer and then farther away and I kept walking, groping along in the shadows of the empty library.

“My book?” I said. “Why not? I may be no Cicero, nor a Dante or a Castiglione, but, my lord, I do believe the words I have put down.”

“But these words are only air! Tycho is mere air. Where is Brahe? Dead. He is real no longer. Open your eyes, Soren. The king is real. The Church is real. Denmark is real. I reach out and it meets my hand. Your future of philosophy does not.”

“It will, my lord. The king is real, but he will not live forever. Who follows him can make Denmark a kingdom of science. A kingdom of the future.”

Christian laughed.

“Denmark is a kingdom of herring, not of science. It is a kingdom of timber and amber. It is a kingdom of land and sea, not of stars and philosophy.”

“Denmark can be a modern nation.”

“You have made a refrain of those words, but you do not see how you insult the whole of the nation with your song. Denmark is already a modern nation. There is no land less primitive, anywhere. You look at your family, at your place of birth, at your king, your friends, and even at your God, and you declare it all mudbound and primeval. You violate every commandment and duty within your reach. I caution you against yourself, Soren. Not every prince is as forgiving as I am. My father hath warned you already. Do you disregard
my father as readily as you disregard your own sire? Think carefully before you answer.”

“My lord,” I said. “I do love you, but blind loyalty to kings is an outmoded fashion. The future requires not only kings, but kings of a new vision.”

I stood still and waited for an answer. When Christian finally spoke, his voice was hard and mocking.

“If you so love this future you imagine, you love not the king and you love not his son. You flirt dangerously with treason, my old friend. I do not like to think what will become of you.”

“My lord, one day you will be king. It is only fitting that I bend your thoughts to the possibilities of the future, to the miracles that might be, if only Denmark leads the way. My book—”

“Your book? Your book has some very fine prose and even approaches poetry when you describe mankind walking ever from horizon to horizon, the stone axes and mud huts of our ancestors receding into the distance behind us.”

“Thanks, my lord.” We had begun to creep between the tall shelves again, circling slowly through the dark.

“But this book, Soren, is not even yours.”

“What means my lord?”

“You write in much loving detail, but you describe nothing more than the shadow of other men’s dreams. I have heard all of these arguments—though not so nicely put as in your book— from lecturers at university in Wittenberg. And no matter how beautiful your poems, at least half of them are lies.”

“My lord, you do wound me.”

“Soren, your philosophy is no more than pretty falsehood and attractive heresy. It is not true. I doubt the stars are fire. I doubt the Earth moves. Copernicus is a liar, and you would rebuild the whole world upon the foundation of his lies.”

“Nay, my lord, you are wrong! On the evening of the eleventh of November in the year of our Lord 1572, Tycho himself discovered a new star in the sky, that burned and then
burned out! The stars are fire, my lord. The heavens themselves evolve. It is my bounden duty to make my lord see how change itself is the way of the world.”

“It is the bounden duty of every Dane to follow his lord and defend the glory that is Denmark. Denmark does not need your astronomy, nor your telescope, nor your book. Denmark is benetted ’round with enemies. Denmark lost nothing when Tycho Brahe fled her borders. Let not the same be said of Soren Andersmann! You push me, and it likes me not at all. I am not your tabula rasa, a sweet prince with an empty head. You will not make of me your puppet, your philosopher king! You will not! Christian is his own man.”

“My lord, that is not my intent.”

“Buzz, buzz, Soren. I see much now. I thought you were shamed before your father as I am before mine, but I was wrong. You told me so yourself, and I should have heard you, for you have no shame for yourself. No, you are ashamed of your father, of your king, of Denmark itself. Denmark’s enemies love her more than do you.”

“Nay, my lord.”

But he was right. His father’s every decision dragged my Denmark backward, toward darkness and ignorance. I hated what the nation was becoming under his rule.

“It saddens me,” Christian said. “But thus runs the world away, when treason is as easy as lying.”

“Treason? Nay, my lord.”

“Oh, I am not your lord, sirrah! I see that. My eyes have been opened. You are no Dane. You are ambassador from some foreign land, from some world where there is no Denmark, and no Christian. I know you not, sir.”

“Nay, Christian. This is not so.”

“Away. Our business is concluded.”

Christian was very close, either in the aisle where I stood or the next one. I did not like the tone of his voice. It had the same hollowness I had heard that afternoon, just before he put a rapier through Ulfeldt’s heart.

“My lord, you did love me once. Let us not argue.”

I heard the steely slither of a rapier being pulled from its scabbard. To my right, I thought.

“Away, villain!” Christian cried. “Away, sir!”

I ran, away from the voice, down the dark aisle, and out into the room, stumbling hard into the wood paneled wall. With only my hands to guide me, I made my way along the wall to the door and squeezed through into the great hall where there was more light. Christian knocked things about in the library behind me, calling my name and cursing me for a traitor. This was not what I had anticipated.

“Run, Soren!” he cried. “Run or I shall mete out what justice you deserve! Run, treacherous friend! False tutor! Run!”

I ran.

I DID NOT RUN FAR. BILLOWING CLOUDS OF SNOW FROM a sudden storm met me in the courtyard. I could not find my way through it to the village, nor did the church there offer safe refuge in any case. There was nowhere to go but back into Brahe’s castle. Christian roared within the great hall, making a mad animal sound, and I fled through the cooks’ door and down to the kitchen. The trunks Voltemont and Cornelius had carried from Kronberg were not large, but I am a small man and I managed to hide myself in one of them. I lay on my side, my knees against my chest, listening as the prince raged through the dark of the ruin, calling my name and bellowing a promise to feed my guts to the ravens. I am not valiant, and I remained hidden. At length Christian fell silent. For all I knew he stood over me, rapier in hand, waiting for me to come out of the trunk. I stayed where I was and prayed that I would neither sneeze nor cough, betraying my hiding place.

Even a frightened man will exhaust himself eventually. I slept until a voice called my name and startled me to wakefulness. I did not move until the lid of the trunk swung open. I recoiled from the sudden light and turned my head to find Ulfeldt bent down over me. Behind him the kitchen was lit by a fire burning in the oven. I sat up and Ulfeldt backed away, waving his hands as if to ward me off.

“At last you wake, young man. I began to despair of rousing
you. It is said that one sleeps as the dead, but sadly we dead do not sleep. We are forever awake; we see and hear.”

He walked to the oven and bent to put a fresh log into the fire. It was a roaring blaze, sap popping and sparks shooting up the flue, but still the kitchen was cold, and I shivered.

“I have today seen and heard the most interesting things,” he said. “Most interesting things indeed, as I lay dead upon the wharf. By the way, I must thank you, sir, for closing my eyes and mouth. It was most civil of you. But even after this kindness, I find that I must fault you with my murder.”