The Astrologer (9 page)

“My lord,” I said. “I am aware that Tycho’s stationary implements remain out at Uraniborg. My lord forbade Tycho from removing them to Prague.”

“Prague.” The king made a face as if the word tasted bitter on his tongue. “These tools were built with my gold.”

Tycho had constructed the observatory with his own money and what sums the king had supplied him—and I know there were large sums of gold over the years—was money given
after Uraniborg was built, granted supposedly in good faith and in furtherance of science. The island, the observatory, and the instruments all were Tycho’s personal property before the king stole them away.

“All these marvelous inventions belong to my king,” I said. “Monarchs of any sort of learning must envy you, my lord.”

“I care not for the envy of other monarchs.”

“Nay, sir, not a whit.” Kirsten smiled at the king and placed her right hand atop his left. “Not a jot. Not an iota, sir.”

“Not a speck,” the king said, brushing Kirsten’s hand away. “I care about recouping some of the gold I poured into that charlatan’s laboratory.”

Charlatan? I bit down hard on my tongue.

“I need a man who knows the worth of Brahe’s abandoned toys, to conduct an inventory of them and provide me with a bill of sale.”

“Bill of sale, my lord?”

“These toys rusting on my island have been requested by the Holy Roman emperor, and I see no reason not to sell them to him. They will find themselves crated and shipped off by springtime.”

“To Prague, my lord?”

“Aye. You will prepare the inventory and negotiate the price with that idiot whom Rudolph has found to replace Brahe.”

“Kepler?”

“If it is Kepler, then yes. If it is some other man, so be it. Lord Ulfeldt has the pertinent names.”

The king waved a hand vaguely and turned to Ulfeldt. They began speaking of some other matter and I realized that I had been dismissed.

“Majesty!”

“Eh? You may speak to Ulfeldt on the morrow about the terms of your commission, Soren. I am concluded with you.”

“But you will remove Tycho’s instruments to Prague and allow that Kepler—that German cripple—to claim the greatest discoveries of the age? Majesty, you ought to keep these
treasures and raise a new observatory. And more, there is a new invention, called the telescope. If my lord would only give me leave to have one built by his royal craftsmen in Copenhagen, the science of astronomy could remain Denmark’s triumph to intellectual greatness! The loss to science—”

I had been raving, and I knew it. The king meant to strip the last remnants of my master’s brilliant work from Denmark and turn over all that remained of Tycho’s legacy to a lot of foreigners. I had risen half out of my chair and all those at the table stared at me, I who dared lecture the king about a man he despised. I closed my mouth and dropped back into my chair.

“Forgive me, my king.”

To my great surprise, he laughed.

“I have been told how you love your new philosophy,” he said. “Such is the damage done by too much exposure to universities and too much time cloistered with madmen like Brahe. You have ever been clever, and a good servant to us. Your passion is misplaced, but still I admire a man of passion.”

The baboon had forgiven my rudeness. I swallowed and cast about for something meaningless to say.

“Majesty, my passion has ever been the philosophies.”

“Indeed, father.” Christian patted my arm as if I were his pet. “My old tutor has even written a book on the manner whereby the philosophy of discovery will improve the world.”

“Oh, rubbish,” Ulfeldt said.

I waved a hand and shrugged, a stupid smile upon my face. The conversation had just become worse, and I sought a way to end it.

“My book is nothing, my lord. I regret my ill behavior after his Majesty had dismissed the subject. I am happy now to be silent and eat my fruit.”

“Yet you intend to publish this book of yours?” Ulfeldt turned to Bishop Harlan. “This is the author of whom I told you yesterday. He calls for an end to our religion and a worship of Copernicus instead.”

“Lord Ulfeldt, I must protest!” I tried hard to laugh and
maintain my forced smile. My laughter sounded like a babe wailing with colic. “I do not write that we should worship Copernicus, but that we ought worship God while at the same time look at the evidence of our own eyes.”

“You would put the Sun where the Earth stands?” The bishop had turned to me, his cheeks coloring. Had I been able to turn invisible, I would have. “By what right does the Sun— which by the evidence of all our eyes circles about us—think itself as noble as the Earth, from the soil of which God Himself formed man in His image? Put the Sun at the center of God’s universe? Madness, boy. Why not Venus, or Mars, then? Why not the moon, or one of the comets, or my slipper, or even the left bollock of the least dog in Denmark? Nay, this is chaos. Nothing but a striving toward nothingness. When all creation is equal, there will be nothing that matters. As with the Earth, so also our kings, the saints, and even our Redeemer, our God Himself. No. No, I say. Some things, young sir, are superior to others.”

It was a very quiet room when the bishop finished lecturing me. My face burned with shame and anger, but I held my tongue and looked down at my plate.

“You would have the king command his jewelers to build you a device—this telescope of yours—so you might prove the king is insignificant,” Ulfeldt said. “You take your philosophy rather farther than is wise.”

I shook my head, feeling both hugely conspicuous and miniscule. It was as though the world had suddenly turned into a deadly storm, a whirlwind of daggers all about me, and my least misstep would prove fatal. Should the bishop even whisper the word “blasphemy,” I might well find myself in chains on the way to the stake. All for a book a mere handful of men had read.

“Well,” the king said. “I have no interest in this book, or in your astronomy, Soren.”

“I am sure the king’s brother would find this volume fascinating,” Kirsten said. “Prince Frederik enjoys the sciences,
and such harmless, enlightening thought experiments as these Soren has written.”

“My brother spends his all too many idle hours considering much he ought not.” The king belched and wiped his mouth. “I doubt it nothing he is even now, off in Jutland, boring my generals with hypotheticals and poetry. I pity them.”

“I miss his conversation,” Kirsten said. It was widely held that having been born under Venus made Kirsten a good match for the king. Her coolness was said to temper the fire of Jupiter’s influence over her husband.

“I doubt it not that you miss Frederik’s tongue,” the king said. “Be content that he is safe where he is, well-guarded by my soldiers.”

“I believe you, my husband.”

“Thou shouldst, my good wife. It has been the study of hypotheticals and poetry which have made Frederik into a prancing fat courtier instead of a knight. Sometimes my brother’s words are a poison in my ear, and nothing else. Your endorsement of Frederik’s interest in this book has decided me. Soren!”

I jumped in my seat and nodded, unwilling to say another word.

“This book of yours distempers me, and it is meet you should not wish to disturb your king.”

I nodded.

“I wish to hear no more of it, tonight or ever, as long as I live.”

I nodded.

“Therefore I forbid you to publish this poisonous little volume. Do you hear me, sirrah?”

I nodded, coughed and whispered that I heard his command. Oh vile king, thou beast in a crown, thou rodent swaddled in ermine, I do hear thee.

“Excellent. But look you all, how our mood is spoilt. This night was to be a celebration of my Kirsten’s arrival to safety
with me. I say shame, on all of you men. Even you, my cousin Lord Bishop, yes. So, then.”

The king pushed back his great chair and rose. We all stood, Tristram groaning as he put weight on his gouty leg.

“My appetite for food and drink is gone, but my taste for merriment is unsated.” A monstrous grin split his face, a pig at his trough. “Therefore I bid you gentles goodnight, so that the queen and I may retire.”

We bowed. The king took Kirsten’s hand and marched out of the room, pulling the queen after him. Vibeke giggled and looked at her plate.

Christian leaned close to me and whispered, “Some of your book is writ quite well, I thought. I am sorry that you can never print it.”

WITH IMMENSE RELIEF I BADE THE PRINCE AND THE other guests a good evening, explaining that I had nine horoscopes to cast before dawn and must begin the work immediately. Neither Ulfeldt nor the bishop acknowledged me as I left the hall. I fled, almost running down the corridors to my chamber, where I bolted the door behind me. It was to be a long night, with many interruptions.

Ulfeldt had known that the king would give me this astrological task; during the banquet one of his clerks slipped a sheet of paper under my door with Baron Jaaperson’s date, time, and place of birth listed on it. I knew nothing of the baron except that he owned an estate west of Copenhagen and, according to the note from Ulfeldt, was a year older than me.

I set my lamp on the table by the window and from my traveling trunk produced bottles of ink in three colors, pens, a brass rule, my compass, paper for the charts, and those books I used to calculate the houses, the positions of the heavenly bodies, the Arabic parts, and the aspects. If I could draw up each horoscope in less than an hour, the king would have his charts by morning. My main concerns were to make the charts beautiful and to stay awake long enough to complete them.

The horoscopes would of course be fantasies, having little to do with the men’s nativities or the positions of the planets. What the king expected were heavenly blessings upon him
and his son, balanced by the condemnation of his enemy. Yet even completely false horoscopes covering three consecutive days for three men would consume a good deal of time. I was already drowsy from the wine and my head ached from the attacks upon my book that I had endured during the meal. The king forbade me to publish my book, but he would not be king long, and so I pushed the insults and ignorant remarks from my mind, inked the nib of my compass, and drew the great circles which formed the frameworks for the nine maps of heaven I would prepare. Someday, I thought, I would pay a printer to make up sheets with blank templates on them to save me time. There is much to be said for crafting every element of a horoscope by hand, but there is an equally compelling argument for eliminating those repetitive tasks that require no learning. An entire chapter of
Nunc Scio Mysterium
is devoted to an idea I had of mechanical inscribing tools, arrayed in long banks which would mimic the movements of a scribe’s hand, and thus many copies of autograph manuscripts, notes, letters, or new laws could be produced without the necessity of typeset and presses. Any secretary or draughtsman with a legible hand would become a printing house at will. Later in the book I extend this idea to include other craftsmen using hand tools, such as bootmakers or wood carvers.

I had no such machine in my chamber at Kronberg, so I drew the concentric circles and intersecting primary angles with my own hands, and that alone took an hour. This mindless work relaxes some men, but it tried my patience and I stood away from the table and paced about my tiny room, wondering how to proceed. The king’s horoscope must predict his good fortune in a manner different from the good fortune predicted by the prince’s horoscope. The ill fortune of Jaaperson must grow out of yet a third set of circumstance, else it would be clear to any that I had fabricated all of the astrological charts. I sat down and scribbled some notes for the prince’s chart, looked through my tables, and tried a few calculations regarding Christian’s planets that I did not like at all. No real progress did I make, and
another hour slipped away. The room felt close and distracting; the coal stove was too hot and my eyes closed against my will. Soon I was face down over my notes and charts, dead to the world.

I dreamed of a warm, late summer night. There was a clear sky, moonless but bespeckled with stars. I crossed a field of wheat stubble toward a small farmhouse. A full hayrack stood before the house and a skinny milk cow was tied up within the barn, visible through the open doors. The house was of unpainted wood, its roof of willow branch and thatch. I knew it to be empty, but I did not know where the farmer and his family had gone.

The torch in my hand cast ruddy light that etched deep shadows into the scene around me. I walked to the hayrack and touched the torch to the dry wooden frame. It blazed up like a festival bonfire and I knew that the farmers saw me, that they watched from the darkness as the hayrack erupted into flame. Men shouted across the field of stubble, their voices growing rapidly nearer. I threw my torch into the burning hayrack and ran to the left, down a slope toward a river.

A large round stone came hurtling out of the surrounding black and struck me hard in the skull. I tumbled to the ground and lay dead or dying with my cheek against the warm, soft bosom of the earth and my eyes open. A few inches from my face a handful of my brains glistened wet and bloody in the dirt. The sound of the stone flying against my head was hollow and wooden and I continued to hear that sharp knocking, over and over again.

After a minute—perhaps many minutes—I sat up in my room, disoriented and alarmed. The knocking continued and I realized that someone was at the door.

“A moment,” I said. “Who’s there?”

“A servant of her Majesty the queen. You are summoned.”

I rubbed my eyes.

“What is the hour?”

“It is gone two o’clock,” the voice said. “The queen instructs you not to delay, and to dress warmly, sir.”

“This is all most unlikely.” I opened my door and found a page standing in the hall. He looked no happier than me to be awake at that hour.

“You will need a heavy cloak,” he said. “The queen awaits you at the top of the east tower. It will be cold, sir.”