The Astrologer

The Astrologer - By Scott G.F. Bailey


{ Chapter One }

JUPITER DESCENDING


GUSTAVUS HAD LOST A GREAT DEAL OF BLOOD. THE spots and trails of crimson that stained the surface of the frozen lake all came from his wounds and he was now sluggish and dragged his left foot. Even I could see that he would not survive the contest, that his heart would soon beat its last. Gustavus’s opponent—Christian son of Rorik, king of Denmark—was unharmed. He laughed and swung his great sword as if it weighed no more than the leg of a roasted goose, as if the last hour of bashing and being bashed had taken no toll on him whatever. This was most vexing to me. I had cast the king’s horoscope the night before and the heavens had declared some great misfortune was his destiny on this day. I looked for a lucky turn for Gustavus; it was not too late for the Earl of Jutland to strike a fatal blow against the king.

I let my eyes be drawn down to the patterns formed by the blood on the ice. It is a star chart, I thought. The king stands in Orion while Gustavus drags his wounded foot through Cassiopeia and spits a mouthful of blood onto the Pleiades. I wondered if Gustavus had any regrets. If he did, he did not have time to think of them. Christian son of Rorik swung his sword in a bright, deadly arc that Gustavus could barely arrest. The king’s blade rebounded at a sharp angle and struck a glancing blow against Gustavus’s right shoulder. Something came spinning across the ice, hitting my left boot. It was one of the buckles from Gustavus’s cuirass, fashioned from steel and brass in the shape of a rampant bear. The bear’s head had been struck off.

If that fool Gustavus was about to die, it was his own doing. A month earlier, he had sent a messenger to the royal palace, armed with a long and passionate letter that questioned King Christian’s legitimacy as ruler and made a claim to the crown of Denmark. Gustavus demanded that King Christian abdicate, abandon Copenhagen, and swear fealty to him. The messenger’s head, his mouth stuffed with the treasonous letter, was sent back to Gustavus in Aalborg. Carved into the dead man’s forehead was an answer from the king: “I come.” And so he went, with his terrifying Swiss mercenaries, an army of five thousand conscripts, and a dozen German cannon for good measure.

I rode with the royal party in the king’s ship, a carrack christened the Odin. We set off from the harbor at Copenhagen and sailed around the northeast coast of Zealand. I squinted into the morning sun, straining to make out the old observatory on Tycho Brahe’s island in the middle of the Sound. I could see nothing before the island passed out of sight, and soon the Odin turned northwest to sail across Kattegat Bay toward Aalborg. The king remained below with his generals and advisors while I stayed on deck with his son, Prince Christian. We were wrapped in furs and stood along the port deck rail below the bow castle, holding on to the rigging as the ship rode the bucking sea. By midday, the coast of Jutland, flat and dull and buried under a layer of fresh snow, lay to our left. On our right was the Bay, a kaleidoscope of grays and greens that shimmered and rolled out to the horizon beneath the uneven white of the sky. A score of warships with glistening black hulls followed the Odin across the water. The atmosphere was festive, like a foxhunt.

The prince was in high spirits. He was home for Yuletide from school at Wittenberg and this little war was a welcome entertainment for him. Christian was one-and-twenty years old and I had not seen him except at holidays for nearly three years. I had been his tutor before we went our separate ways, he to university in Germany and I to the island of Hven, where I had explored the heavens with Tycho Brahe.

“This is most exciting, Soren,” Christian said.

“I have been aboard ship before, my lord.”

The waters were choppy and rough. Every few minutes, a wave broke against the ship’s hull and a cloud of spray washed over us. Our furs and hats were beginning to ice over. Beneath his furs, Christian wore his finest armor.

“Nay, not the voyage,” Christian said. “The coming battle, as you know I meant. Great armies move into position, ready to butcher each other on their lord’s command. Have you ever seen a battle?”

“Nay, my lord.”

“Nor have I. It must be a wonder.”

“I do not wish to see wondrous death, or glorious death, or any other manner of death, my lord. Not today, nor on any day soon to come.”

“You fret like an old woman,” he said. “We shall not take to the field, you and I, to witness the battle close at hand. We shall stand on a high ground and watch my noble father lead the slaughter of the treacherous Gustavus.”

“As you say, my lord.”

“Do not be concerned. We shall be back in Copenhagen come Christmas.”

In the afternoon, the ships tacked into the wind and made for land. The king came up on deck, shoving sailors and soldiers aside as he made his way to the bow and climbed up onto the castle. He raised his fists and roared at the city of Aalborg, ten miles inland and invisible from the coast. The air quaked with the king’s anger. He turned about and stormed back to his cabin below.

“The lion of Zealand is aroused,” Christian said. “I am sure Gustavus could hear my father’s battle cry even from here and will sleep poorly this night.”

Our war fleet landed along the coast, well south of Aalborg’s harbor. Waiting for us on the shore were soldiers from Jutland who remained loyal to the king. The leader of these men pointed to a great rolling mass of smoke that rose from the plain directly west of us.

“That is the town of Skorping,” he said. “The citizens refused to welcome Gustavus’s allies and their troops. It is now burning. The whole town.”

“We will cure my cousin and his friends of their reckless disloyalty,” the king said, and mounted his horse to lead the army inland over the low, snowy hills. The prince rode beside his father and I rode in a cart with the surgeon and the priest.

We arrived at the loyalists’ camp as the sun was setting. Within an hour, the king’s army had established a sprawling town of tents, fires, men, and horses on the southern shore of Madum Sø, a great oval lake that froze solid in winter. The fires of the enemy camp burned across the ice. So many armed men, I thought, gathered here to die for no purpose but the pride of their lords. It was madness, but this madness would end soon. Mars in Aries with Jupiter descending; the king’s defeat was certain.

Prince Christian went off with his father and I made my way to the soldier’s mess, a circle of rough tables surrounding a great fire pit. I ate some roast venison and drank a stoup of wine. The army of Denmark was well fed, and there was drink for every man at arms. I found the tent that was set aside for the prince, which he had offered to share with me. Christian was not there and I spent the next hour casting his father’s horoscope again. Just as I had seen the day before, the king’s synodical lunations did not favor him. Jupiter was going to be a most ill influence over the coming events. I fed my scribbled calculations into the stove and crawled under a pile of blankets to sleep.

In the morning, I accompanied the king, his generals, and his advisors out onto the frozen lake to meet with the Earl of Jutland and his band of traitors. Everything was layered in ice, snow, and frost. The sky hung low and smoke from the campfires rose straight up like spears of ebony to pierce the heavens. My feet slipped on the ice and twice I fell during our advance across the lake. No other man stumbled, nor did even Prince Christian pause while I climbed to my feet after each fall, scuttling after to catch up.

“Will you parlay with Gustavus?” It was the king’s brother, Prince Frederik, who asked this. Frederik’s armor was ornate, beautifully wrought and entirely decorative. He wore it only during ceremonial occasions and parades when he was forced to stand with the knights of the realm.

“Words are for women,” the king said. “War is the use of arms. Talk is pointless now. I need to fight.”

Gustavus’s party met us at the center of the lake, facing us over an invisible line in the ice. My gloves were not good enough for the weather and I hoped the polite formalities of war would go quickly, so that I might soon return to camp and warm my hands over a fire.

“I do not withdraw my claim to Denmark,” Gustavus said. “Yet I would avoid a civil war that devastates the nation.”

“This affront to our honor cannot be ignored,” King Christian said. “Even if you withdraw now and your allies return to their own estates, we have put great expense into bringing our army into Jutland, and the village of Skorping will need to be rebuilt. That will require gold, cousin.”

“I am governor of Jutland. Skorping was mine to burn.”

“We made you governor, cousin. We are your king. Jutland is ours. All of Denmark is ours.”

“Aye, for now. But all of that will change. I do not withdraw, cousin.”

“We can make war and soak these snowy hills with blood,” the king said. “But there is another path we might take. We can decide our dispute in the honored manner of our ancestors.”

Gustavus laughed.

“Cousin,” he said. “You challenge me to single combat?”

“We do. The survivor keeping the crown.”

A few flakes of snow fell, settling onto King Christian’s beard.

“My good cousin,” Gustavus said. “I am twenty years younger than your royal person. I keep my broadsword in constant practice and my joints neither creak nor ache. You are an old man, my lord. Has your son not made you a grandfather yet?”

“Cousin, you make the blood in my heart boil with such talk. I need hear no more of it.”

“Then I will pit my life ’gainst yours for rule of Denmark, cousin. I will drain the blood from your royal veins, and then your kin and kind will swear allegiance to Gustavus.”

“Allegiance has little meaning here in Jutland,” King Christian said. It was the fourth Sunday of Advent, in the year of our Lord 1601. I stood on a frozen lake with Prince Christian on my left and a Danish general named Constantin to my right. In a week, I would turn thirty. Tycho Brahe, the most brilliant man in all of Europe, had been murdered by the king only three months earlier. I reminded myself to make a show of grief when his Majesty died.

Christian son of Rorik and Gustavus of Aalborg raised their great swords within the ring of men standing in the center of Madum Sø. There was snow on their armor and white breath streamed from their helmets into the still air. Mars in Aries, I thought. Jupiter descending.

Gustavus had lost a great deal of blood. He swung wildly at the king, missed, and fell to one knee as his lame foot slipped on the ice. He knelt in Perseus, frost and blood on the face of his helmet. King Christian stood in Taurus and brought his sword down in a mighty blow, cutting Gustavus’s left arm apart at the elbow. Gustavus bellowed like a wounded bear and dropped his sword. The king rained death down upon him, hacking him to pieces. Bright blood spread over the ice, flooding through my imagined constellations. King Christian, still ruler of Denmark, stood over his dead cousin. He pushed up the beaver of his helmet to lick some of Gustavus’s blood from his blade. One barbarian had killed another, and the rebellion was over.

Prince Christian took my arm and whispered in my ear, his voice shaking with excitement. “My father hath slain his enemy. Was it not a glorious, fine thing?”

“Aye, my lord. Your father was never in any danger.”

“Do not sound so disappointed. You have seen my father in his native element today. It was like unto the ancient knight in our great epic.”

“Gustavus was no Grendel, my lord. He was a man, not a monster.”

“His treason was monstrous.”

“Aye, my lord, and surely a treacherous knave earns his reward.”

A squire threw an ermine over the king’s broad back. Towering over the men who had come onto the lake with Gustavus, the king looked each of them in the eye and growled low in his throat. These men were Jutland nobles, tall, bearded, and rich. They cowered and bent their knees, swearing an oath to never again bring such troubles against the crown. Christian son of Rorik promised a punishment of heavy fines to remind them of their fealty, but he let the traitors escape with their lives.

A boy of twelve or so years remained behind on the lake after the treasonous lords fled. This was young Gustav, son of the man who lay butchered at the king’s feet. The boy’s slender hand closed around the grip of a ceremonial dagger at his belt. I held my breath, my every muscle tense, and I thought the child might somehow put the blade through the king’s throat, but he disappointed me. He knelt by his father’s bloody corpse and bowed his head.

“Majesty, I beg your leave to take my father home and bury him.” He had a high, clear voice. I imagined him singing hymns during Mass.

“Your father was a heretic,” the king said. “Rebellion is an affront to God Himself, but I killed your sire honorably, in battle. We should by rights have burned him alive at the stake, but you may drag his bones to your church and pray over him. Let this be a lesson to you, boy. A king will only show mercy to his enemies after he has defeated them.”

“Aye, Majesty.”

That night there was a great feast in the camp to celebrate the victory. I was invited to the king’s tent by Prince Christian, who had drunk many cups of wine before he found me.

“My father brought eels from home in anticipation of this victory,” Christian said.

“Eels?”

“Aye, fished from the harbor at Copenhagen. My mother doth not care for them, but they are my father’s favorite meat, be they boiled into soups, soused in brine and served with lemons, breaded and fried, smoked, jellied, grilled over the fire, or diced and baked inside game birds. There are few ways to prepare eels that do not please my father.”

“I have no appetite,” I said.

“That is your misfortune. But we will celebrate the king’s brave deed today. My father bows before no man. Come.”

Christian dragged me to his father’s tent, where generals and other nobles celebrated with the king. I kept to one side and avoided the wine-soaked brawl while I observed Christian son of Rorik, king of Denmark, lord of Schleswig and Holstein. With his head tilted forward and with the swaggering limp of an experienced campaigner, he marched the length of his tent and made merry with his staff. The generals drained cup after cup in his honor.

“Death to Gustavus!” cried a drunken lord. “His widow and son will have no feast this night!”

“His widow? I should show her the royal scepter,” King Christian said, grabbing the front of his breeches. The drunken lords rocked with laughter, braying like asses.

“And that little brat,” the king roared. “He dared speak to me, did you all see? We should have dragged him to camp and roasted him for our dinner! I’d crack his leg bones with my jaws and suck out his young marrow! Who dares defy Christian son of Rorik? No man! No man dares defy me! Now give me wine, you dogs! Wine for the king!”

A goblet was given to his Majesty. Someone pushed a cup into my hand. We lifted our drinks and a cheer was raised by every man in the tent but me. Christian son of Rorik was a fearless warrior who had never known defeat, but I would dare defy him. He was my enemy, and I had sworn to kill him.