The Astrologer

{ Chapter Thirteen }

THE SINFUL LIFE AT COPENHAGEN


I WAS NEARLY FROZEN TO MY VERY SOUL BY THE TIME Christian and I walked through the door of St. Ibb’s. We stumbled to the font, pulled off our gloves to genuflect, and knelt to the crucifix. I thought how lucky Christ had been to live in Galilee where it is ever warm. Had He been buried in Denmark, our Lord may well have remained in His tomb.

Father Maltar sat on his bench, warm by the stove at the rear of the chapel. He gave a black look after he recognized me. When he saw that I was with the prince, he rose to bow slightly to Christian and then settled down again on his bench. I moved to the blessed warm atmosphere of the stove while Christian piled greetings and flattery upon the old man.

“I heard a rumor that you were too elderly to maintain your parish, but clearly this is mere slander,” Christian said. “I do not think you have aged a minute since I first laid an eye upon you, Father.”

“I was old then,” Maltar said. “I am much older now, my lord. I am ancient.”

“Nonsense, Father. You have a clear eye and a strong voice. I had expected a withered leaf of a man, not a stout oak. You are yet a powerful warrior of Christ.”

“I am a barrel of lard, you mean.” Maltar put a wounded tone into his voice, but he smiled at the prince.

“You do not waste away and that is an excellent piece of news, Father.”

“As you insist, my lord.” Maltar raised a hand as if to ward off any further praise. “Tell me, my lord, what do you at St. Ibb’s?”

“I come to confess.”

“My lord?”

“I have joined good Soren’s party out at the old Brahe manor and must take the sacraments here, Father. I am not shriven since going into battle at Copenhagen, and I would confess myself to you, if you will do me the duty.”

Maltar did not seem to know what to think of this request. He sat on his bench with eyes half closed and shook his heavy head.

“You recall how to take confession?” Christian prompted him.

“I do, my lord.” Maltar blinked slowly, an old bear caught hibernating in his den. “Is not the bishop of Copenhagen your confessor, my lord?”

“He is. The bishop is a most excellent fellow. My mother is fond of him also.”

“I doubt it nothing.” Maltar turned his face away from the prince. “My lord, I cannot take your confession. The bishop is a nobleman, but I am not. Before I found my calling, I was the son of a journeyman stevedore who worked Elsinore’s wharves. Men such as I, even though we wear cassock and Roman collar, are not fit to be in your confidence. Go to Copenhagen to be shriven, my lord. Or at least to Elsinore. Father Olaf is a gentleman. I am proud to be a peasant and a priest, but I am still a peasant.”

The old man was talking rubbish. He wanted the crown prince of Denmark to beg him to be his confessor. He would brag about it for years to come.

“You are a priest,” I said. “Do your priestly duty as your lord commands.”

“Peace, Soren.” Christian sat next to Maltar and I wondered that the bench did not break beneath them. The prince laid his hands atop Maltar’s. “Good Father, I recall how you petitioned the king to have St. Ibb’s restored when the roof was falling in and the altar damaged by weather. I recall with what solemn piety you did entreat my father to restore God’s house, comparing the king to that venerable saint from Assisi. You are a more noble man than I am, Father, and I humbly beseech you to hear my confession this morning.”

Maltar inclined his immense head and stared at the floor. He breathed deeply and I thought again that he slept, but he arched an eyebrow and looked slyly at the prince.

“My lord, you honor me with this. I am yours to command. Hven is ever grateful to his majesty your father for the repairs to our church, which was so long neglected in such sinful and illegal fashion by that conjurer Brahe.”

Father Maltar’s eye twitched briefly in my direction, but I did not rise to his bait. He sighed and then lifted his face to look at Christian.

“I will hear your confession now, my lord, if it pleases you.”

“Excellent, good Father.” Christian stood and helped Maltar to his feet. “And after I have said my prayers you will perhaps share your dinner with us.”

“The honor is mine, my lord. My assistant, Father Stepan, is even now in the kitchen.”

“Is he preparing eels, perchance?”

“Eels? Nay, my lord. Steamed herring with cream and bread. I believe there is enough to feed your servant here as well.”

Christian frowned, scuffed the heel of his right boot across the edge of an uneven flagstone and shrugged.

“Well, Soren, we must have eels when we return to Kronberg.”

“Aye, my lord. I have patience enough to wait.”

“Hm. Will you hear my confession, Father Maltar?”

Maltar led the prince into the chapel. Rather than going into the confessional, they sat beneath the altar to St. Ibb and whispered together. I could hear nothing of what was said, but they spoke at some length. Christian coughed a great deal as if he had caught a chill, and then Maltar left him alone in the chapel. Coming back to the coal stove where I waited, Maltar sat on his bench and we looked each other in the face for a long moment but said nothing. In the end I looked away.

“You heard my complaint about Brahe,” Maltar said. His low, rumbling voice had none of the sharp vowels one heard in the speech of Elsinore’s laborers.

“I heard you, Father. You have spoken a lie.”

“A lie?” Maltar inhaled sharply, the breath hissing through his teeth. “A lie? You must know better than that, sir.”

What I knew was that Tycho had been born on December 14th, in the sign of Sagittarius. Sagittarius is an ingenious and daring sign, ruled by Jupiter. Men did envy my old master his daring and ingenuity, and many spoke ill of him even after his death.

“I recall that Tycho mentioned some demands regarding the church roof before he was driven from his island, but it was merely the maneuvering of certain envious members of the court. Tycho was disliked, Father, for he shone more brightly than any mind in Denmark. Such brilliance will gather enemies the way a perfect sweet confection will attract flies.”

Maltar sighed.

“You are an idiot,” he said. “Do you know why Brahe died in Prague?”

“I do,” I said. “I do indeed.” Intrigues, bribes, and murder killed my master. A cousin with gaming debts and a king ashamed of his own ignorance killed Tycho. Erik Brahe, with a vial of poison and a purse full of King Christian’s gold, killed him in Prague.

“I say you do not know,” Maltar rumbled. “I say you worship a false prophet.”

“He was not false.” I made every effort to control my voice. I would not act a fool before the old priest.

“Brahe was a liar and a brute. You were nothing but a babe when he came to Hven and built those walls and towers. You did not see how it was. Brahe enslaved the men and women of the island, stole their waking hours, their oxen, and their grain. Do you know what your master built first? A dungeon in which to imprison disobedient peasants.”

“That was his right, as lord of the island.”

“Lord of the island. Hah! We have laws in Denmark. We are not a primitive people. The farmers and fishers of Hven brought constant complaints to the king against Brahe, and the governor of Zealand himself did come to the island every two years to bring order and discipline and to hold the lord of the island back. Your eyes were turned to books or watching the sky. You saw none of what happened on the Earth just outside your door. Tycho Brahe was a monster, a demon with an absurd golden nose and no regard for man or God.”

“Tycho was a good man. You fought against him because he forbade you the barbaric custom of exorcism. You were disciplined by the bishop. Deny it, thou.”

“I do not deny it. Brahe interfered in the sacraments.” Maltar raised his heavy arm and stabbed a finger in the direction of Uraniborg. “He dared lecture me about superstition while he chased Mars and Saturn for their advice. I threw him out. He laughed and told me he had his own temple, a temple to reason. Blasphemy, it was. Heresy and sacrilege. Yet even so, as you say, he was steward of Hven. This church he so despised was his trust, and even a chapel on remote Hven is sacred and beloved of the king. Brahe was charged to maintain the building and grounds and he did nothing for St. Ibb’s during his twenty years as lord of the island. He ignored his duty to me, to the king, and to God.”

“It is an old church,” I said. “It is an ugly slab of stone. What did you want of Tycho? For him to raise a cathedral of marble, stained glass, and gold?”

“I wanted a roof that did not let in the rain! I wanted a bell tower that was not falling over! For years I petitioned Brahe and was ignored. Finally I took a boat across the Sound and spoke to the bishop. The bishop is second cousin to her Majesty the queen. The queen is a pious woman. She spoke to the king. The king ordered Brahe to repair the church. Brahe ignored him. He refused the king’s direct command. I was livid. The bishop was livid. The queen was livid. The king stripped your beloved conjurer of his lands and titles, and off Brahe fled to the Emperor in Prague.”

“Tycho was exiled because your roof leaked? I do not believe this.”

“I do not care a whit. It is true. Four years ago, Hven escaped its captivity from a man more cruel than Pharaoh. We began to tear down his castle when we learned that the king would appoint no one to replace him. Oh, those were glad tidings to the island.”

“Tycho was—Nay, I will hear no more of this.”

It would have been easy to shove Maltar off his bench, to silence his horrible, smug tongue with hard kicks to his fat belly and bald skull. I stood and pulled on my gloves. My hands were shaking.

“Where do you go, Soren?”

It was Christian, walking toward us from the chapel. His cheeks were red with cold and the knees of his breeches had dirt on them. He stood between me and the priest and put a hand to my breast, over my heart.

“I have concluded my prayers, as you see, but we will not leave without the dinner Father Maltar has promised us. I am famished, Soren. Are you not?”

“My work is not concluded at Uraniborg,” I said. “Tomorrow is Christmas Eve, my lord. My men must dig out the chambers at Stjerneborg and I must waste no more of Father Maltar’s time.”

Christian raised his hand from my breast and touched me lightly on the cheek.

“Christmas Eve so soon?” he said.

“Aye, my lord. I have promised Cornelius and Voltemont that they will have Christmas Mass at Elsinore. I have also promised Captain Marcellus that my business here will be concluded by Christmas.”

“I see.” Christian’s fingertips were still against my cheek. He leaned his face very close to mine. “You have made promises.”

“Aye, my lord.”

“Then we shall honor those we can,” he said. He stood away from me and turned to the priest.

“We accept your offer of herring in cream,” he said. “But we must not dally as there is, as Soren says, much to do yet inside that marvelous edifice of Uraniborg. Have you been to Tycho’s fair palace, Father?”

“Never.” Maltar thrust out his lower lip. “Brahe did always come to me.”

“I find somehow that being in that fine house is like walking about inside Tycho’s very head,” the prince declared. “His Latin mottoes above every doorway and the walls, crumbling as they are, still glow with the great man’s favorite colors. Was Tycho alike in any way to his magnificent house, Soren?”

“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.”