The Astrologer

{ Chapter Twenty-Three }

TIME ALONE WITH HEAVEN


CHRISTIAN RAN UP TO THE PORTCULLIS AND STOOD within the great stone maw, a tall youth with a halo of unkempt blond hair, holding a bloody sword and a dead man’s bloody head, an archangel at the final apocalyptic battle. Bernardo was but five or so yards from Christian. He looked the prince up and down and finally recognized the gruesome prize Christian carried.

“My lord,” Bernardo said. “Is that the head of one of my men you hold? Where is the rest of him?”

Bernardo sounded curious and a little annoyed, no more.

“You sent this cur to seek me out,” Christian said. “He laid his eyes upon me before his death. I return those eyes to you.”

Christian flung the dead man’s head to the ground at Bernardo’s feet. Bernardo took a step forward and rolled the head over with the toe of his boot.

“Ah, Tomas. He was a good soldier. Did he die a good death?”

Christian moved toward Bernardo, the sword shaking in his hand. Behind Bernardo, his half dozen men had formed into a line and were slowly approaching, swords ready in their hands. Bernardo signaled with a casual wave of the hand and the men came no closer.

“I know of only one good death for a Swiss,” Christian said. “And that is to kneel for the headsman’s axe.”

“The king values us higher than that.”

“The king?”

Christian stomped the muddy flagstones. He wore a velvet slipper on his left foot, and a riding boot on the other.

“The king, Bernardo? Where is the king? Where stands my father, eh?”

“Where indeed, my lord?” Bernardo looked past Christian, at me. I was a dozen steps behind the prince. The air was poisonous with smoke, the sky a sickly brown swirling into black. The snow around us melted from the great heat of the burning castle. I wished to join the Swiss outside the battlements. I did not think the prince would let me pass.

“The king is dead,” Christian said.

“Is he?”

“Aye, and this you know already, Bernardo.”

“You are mistaken, prince.”

“He died with your dagger in his back!”

“My dagger is at my waist, prince.”

“A Swiss dagger. Do not deny it, thou murderer!”

Christian took a step toward Bernardo, the bloody sword held before him. Bernardo stood his ground and made no move to draw his own weapon.

“Murderer, my little prince? We Swiss are surely killers, killers of great renown the world over. We are here to kill on Denmark’s behalf, for profit. But murder? A man who murders his customer soon goes hungry, my lord.”

“Lies!”

“Indeed not. For my part, I do not even know the king is dead.”

“You think me mistaken? An idiot? I tell you I saw him.”

“Has my lord drunk much wine today?”

Christian’s face purpled.

“You insult me!”

“Indeed not.”

Christian shook the king’s great sword at Bernardo.

“You think me afraid of you? You think me a weakling? Christian seems a cowardly boy, eh?”

Bernardo smiled.

“I know not ‘seems,’ my lord.”

Many years before this, when Prince Christian was a boy preparing for university and I was his tutor, we argued over the wrath of Achilles as writ of in the epic poem. I claimed that Achilles’s refusal to join the war was justified. No man is obligated to give his life in the cause of a morally bankrupt king. Achilles’s duties to Apollo and to himself were greater than those he owed to Agamemnon. Achilles’s refusal to leave his tent and join the battle was a noble act.

Christian denied this. A lord, he said, be he king or god, is the law personified. To be a civilized man—a good and moral man—is to obey the law, to obey your lord. Achilles was a rebel, a traitor, a dog pissing on his own master’s leg.

Christian let out a howl of rage and closed on Bernardo, swinging the king’s great sword in a wide arc. Bernardo took a step backward. The prince was pulled to the left by the weight of the sword, which flashed harmlessly past Bernardo and arced down to strike the flagstone drive. The air rang with the blow and sparks flew from the blade.

“My lord, be careful you do not injure yourself. You hold a man’s weapon.” Bernardo was still smiling.

Christian raised the sword again, both hands on the hilt, the point aimed at Bernardo’s throat.

“I am your king,” he said. “You will treat me with respect. You will obey me. Lay down your weapons, all of you Swiss. I command it!”

“I see no king before me,” Bernardo said. “I see a half-dressed lad with a belly full of wine and a sword too big for him. I do not think we will be commanded by such a one.”

Later, Bernardo would ask me if I had truly slain King Christian.

“I did not think you man enough to do it,” he would say. “You prove yourself useful, astrologer, and full of surprises.”

Bernardo would clap me on the back and walk with me into town, for I was now something of his equal. I had joined him in the fraternity of traitors, assassins, and liars. A special ring of Hell exists for our brotherhood, if you give any credence to Dante.

“You need not obey me,” Christian cried, moving around Bernardo and crouching like a rapier fencer. “All you need do is suffer my wrath and die.”

Bernardo at last drew his sword and feinted to the right, drawing the prince off balance. He slipped to the prince’s left and brought his sword up, overhead and down swiftly onto Christian’s weapon, striking the blade near the hilt in a mighty blow as if his sword was a great maul for driving piles into the earth. The sound of it hurt my ears and the blow knocked the king’s sword from Christian’s hands. Bernardo came quickly forward and drove his left elbow into Christian’s jaw, breaking a few of the prince’s teeth. Christian staggered backward, clutching his bleeding mouth with both hands. A pitiful sobbing escaped him.

The whole of the castle was in flames. Any man who had not escaped was burned to death by now. I was caught between the tall brick battlements and the roaring blaze of the keep. The air was full of the color of fire; the prince, Bernardo, and his men all were crimson, black, and orange as if fashioned from burning wood. The flames rose into the evening sky, and to the citizens of Elsinore it was as if the sun set in both east and west. Many irrational men feared the blaze would grow so immense it would consume the battlements, leap the wide moat, catch hold on the town walls, and burn down every house and shop, hall and church, every ship in the harbor, every tree growing in the forests north and west of town, and every other thing on Zealand. A few families threw their possessions into carts and fled to the west, toward the harbor at Rostock. One such family froze to death in the night, alone on the road.

Kronberg aflame was visible as far away as Copenhagen, where it was seen as a red glow over the horizon. There was much argument as to what the light meant. Some claimed it was a new heavenly phenomenon, such as a comet or the aurora borealis. Others said it was a battle at sea, frigates burning in the Sound. A few wiser citizens guessed that the fortress was on fire and sent riders north for news.

Father Maltar and Father Stepan had a good view of the castle from the cemetery where Ulfeldt had been murdered. The priests stood watch there much of the night. The fire burned for days after, and whenever Maltar looked out at the pall of smoke in the day or the hellish red glow after dark, he crossed himself and said a prayer for the safety of the king and the royal family.

Prince Christian could have used those prayers. Bernardo struck him again, this time with the flat of his sword, across the ribs under the prince’s left arm. Christian cried out and reeled away from the blow. Bernardo was slowly driving Christian back toward the burning castle, away from the portcullis and the drawbridge. There was none to witness this battle save Bernardo’s half dozen captains and me. So many things transpire without a witness. The moon that evening waned in its last quarter, but it could not be seen from Elsinore through the mass of smoke hanging over the town. It is unlikely that the great fire, so bright and horrible on Earth, was seen by the inhabitants of the moon. The moon is visible nearly every night to every man on Earth, but we have known since Ptolemy corrected Aristarchus’s computations that the moon orbits at a distance of sixty times the Earth’s radius, an impossible number of miles from Denmark. It is a distance we can compute, a distance we can span with our vision, but also a distance no man can truly imagine. Such a simple thing as the moon is enough to confound the mind.

Christian son of Christian, crown prince of Denmark, was at Bernardo’s mercy. The Swiss forced him back step by step until the king’s sword was well out of reach, lying useless on the road a few feet from the head of Tomas.

Christian would not take the throne after his father. His uncle, Frederik son of Rorik, was summoned to come as quickly as possible from the governor’s palace in Aalborg. Frederik was thought highly of by the noble families and the Privy Council, was known as an educated and diplomatic prince, and it was only a matter of a week or so before the Moot elected him king of Denmark. His coronation at the cathedral in Copenhagen was a noisy and colorful affair, even while the palace was draped in black crepe. Frederik’s marriage to Kirsten a month after the coronation was an even louder and more colorful celebration, with all of Copenhagen decorated to honor the royal couple. A few old wags called the union of a widow with her husband’s brother no better than incest, a sinful wedding none should recognize as legal before man or God, but those tongues became still quickly. Possibly the Swiss— who remain in Denmark to lead Frederik’s army and protect the royal household—moved to silence any dissent over Kirsten’s choice of a second husband. There has been nothing said in public in the years hence, nor has any man been foolish enough to make mouths at the news that the queen, at three-and-forty years, is again with child. It is hoped she will bear Frederik an heir.

Bernardo circled round Christian, beating on him with the pommel of his sword, cutting at his arms and smiling the whole time. It was the way a cat toys with a mouse, batting at the tiny prey for an hour or more, withholding the blow that kills and ends the game. I could watch this cruelty no longer.

“Enough,” I called out. “Enough of this, Bernardo!”

The Swiss looked at me, surprised that any man would interrupt him at his sport. Christian gave a wordless cry, nearly a shriek, and ran from Bernardo, toward me or toward the burning castle, I know not which. Bernardo laughed, his head thrown back and his mouth wide open, and then he ran after Christian, overtaking him in half a moment, swinging his sword with both hands, the noise when the blow landed like the splitting of firewood.

I have retained my post as royal astrologer under the reign of King Frederik. He has given his blessing to the publication of Nunc Scio Mysterium and I have written a long dedication to his Majesty. In addition, I have been named royal mathematician and royal astronomer. The observatory at Uraniborg was not raised again. It is little more than a pile of brick and rubble that the islanders quarry for their huts and barns. But Frederik is a man of wide interests and a collector of mechanical marvels; he refused to allow Tycho’s instruments out of Denmark. Brahe’s machines found their way to Kronberg, which Frederik rebuilt as a modern fortress. There is even a proper chapel in the east wing. My office, my library, and my chambers are nearby.

I do not spend many nights making observations with the old armillae and sextants. I do not have a staff of assistants. My astronomy is not that of Tycho Brahe; I leave that to the Germans and their Kepler. He has the patience and intellectual gifts that I lack. My time alone with Heaven is given over to peering at the mysterious face of the moon, looking up through the tube of my beloved telescope. Sometimes I turn my lenses upon the stars, which flicker against the great black dome of the universe. There are many more stars than the thousand Brahe knew. I do not know how many. When Lippershey and Janssen, my Dutch lens makers, have crafted a better telescope for me, it is possible I will discover that even more stars than I now see lie beyond the planets. It is a foolish and impossible idea, but sometimes I dream that the heavens are infinite, reaching outward from the Earth in all directions forever unbounded, majestical fires spangling night beyond night beyond night and there is no end to it, there will be no end to it, there can never be an end to it.