The Astrologer

{ Chapter Sixteen }

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO CHRISTIAN


THERE WERE TRACKS LEADING WESTWARD FROM Uraniborg, toward the margin of the island. Christian had risen at dawn and walked through the snow drifts, around the frozen fish ponds and artificial streams Tycho had built, across the flat plain and down a path to a small rocky beach. Tycho once desired to make a harbor here, below the hillside where he had built his paper mill. There had been dreams of a publishing house based on Hven, with scholarly books printed and shipped to all corners of the civilized world. The harbor, the publishing house, and the mill were all abandoned when Tycho fled to Prague.

Christian and I picked our way down the path to the beach. The old mill loomed above us on the left, empty but for whatever rats took shelter there against the cold of winter. I had not seen the mill since leaving Hven a month before Tycho’s exile, and I was surprised at the extent of the damage to the building. One afternoon, without warning, the entire north side had collapsed. Tons of brick and timber fell suddenly inward and filled the factory with rubble, taking the lives of five men. It is said that Tycho picked a bad spot, building upon unstable ground. The king had sent men to inspect the mill and it was their bad luck to visit on the day the wall fell. I had been told the men did nothing to bring about their deaths. The wall was fated to collapse that day, nothing more or less.

I looked away from the ruined mill. To the southwest, across the Sound, I could see Copenhagen glowing in the morning sun, a glittering smudge of warm golds and yellows. Christian cast a gesture toward the city.

“That is what I came to the beach to see, Soren. It was much finer at daybreak, quite miraculous and strange. But I saw something more strange here below, on the shore.”

I looked toward the beach. A strip of rocky gray sand exposed by low tide was littered with objects: chairs, tapestries, casks, timbers, a carved horse’s head, dresses and robes in vibrant hues, a broken theorbo, chopines and sandals, wooden boxes of all sizes, and a great many sheets of printed paper scattered withal. It seemed as if a household of literate prostitutes had fallen from the sky or been blown out of a cannon.

“What is this?” I asked.

“Oh, it is quite plain,” Christian said, leading me down to the water’s edge. “There was a terrible storm last night.”

“I heard the wind, my lord.”

“It roared like a lion and doubtless stirred the seas without mercy. There was a ship caught on the waters during the storm, and we see on this miserable shore the jetsam left behind when she sank.”

“Horrible.”

“Most horrible,” Christian said. We had come to the line where the waves at high tide ate away at the fallen snow. It was strange to find shells and fish bones at my feet beside bright cloths, ribbons, and ice. Christian walked along the water and bent to pick up some of the pages strewn about.

“This is a great catastrophe,” he said. “Do you know whose ship has gone down? Do you know what Denmark lost in the storm?”

“Nay, my lord.”

“Look around you, Soren! Here, and here! Costumes, artifacts, and pages of verse. Oh, all ye hosts of heaven! These were the tragedians of Copenhagen, coming to Elsinore to perform for my father’s name day.”

“Actors, my lord?”

“Aye, actors! These were the very best men, well suited to comedy or tragedy both. I have seen them play often. Did you not come see them with me?”

“My lord, you did drag me to some play or another as was your whim.”

Christian walked down the line of the surf, examining the colorful rubbish washed ashore there. Some things he lifted up and turned about in his hands. A few objects he kept with him, tucked under his arm.

“I saw them do The Murder of Gonzago once,” Christian said. “Do you know it?”

“No, my lord.” I am not fond of plays, or of actors. The loss of a boat full of tragedians and their accouterments was to me little worse than the loss of an empty boat.

“This sight is dismal,” Christian said. “I remember a year ago seeing a very fine enactment of the fall of Ilium. Pyrrhus, black with blood and gore, stumbles upon old Priam in an alley while all around him the city burns. Priam has not girded for war, and runs about in his dressing gown. Pyrrhus comes up behind him with a raised blade. Oh, it was terrible, but most fine. Hecuba wailing, her mournful cries fit to astound the gods, she wandered the stage wrapped in a blanket, her hair and jewelry in disarray. It moved the audience to tears, Soren.”

“I doubt it not, my lord.”

“These players were fine men.” Christian bent and retrieved a tin crown from the surf. “Were I not destined to be a king, I would be an actor, you know.”

“Ah, indeed?” I could not manage to put the requisite enthusiasm into my voice.

“I have told you this before.”

“Many a time, my lord. But happily your lordship is destined to be king.”

“Aye.” Christian carried his armload of jetsam to a large, flat stone. He piled his goods there and sorted through them for a moment, then took off his fur hat and put the tin crown upon his head.

“I shall play you a scene, Soren.”

“The Murder of Gonzago?”

“Nay, not that. About, my brains. Ah, I know.”

Christian drew Voltemont’s sword and pointed it toward the sky, striking a heroic pose. He held his other hand out to me.

“Good Soren, thou hast supplied us with proofs shewn in the heavens that victory is ours this day. We thank thee, and now we go direct to battle! Your line here is, ‘God go with you, Majesty.’”

“God go with you, Majesty.”

“Soren, that was poorly recited and lacked all emotion. You must do better. Again.”

“God be with you, Majesty!” I said, with more volume than enthusiasm.

Christian shook his head.

“Well, I suppose that will have to do. I proceed. Now I go direct to battle. Here is our opponent!”

Christian turned and faced the opposite direction, removing his crown.

“Your lordship is most unwise to meet me on my own ground,” he said, forcing his voice to a low and husky register. “You shall not live to regret it, however. Your line here, Soren, is ‘Do not credit his boasts, my lord.’ With some feeling, if you would.”

“My lord, do not credit these boasts,” I said. My hands were cold. I brought them to my face and blew into my cupped palms to warm them.

“That is not how the line goes. Well, I shall continue as a company of one if you will be so poor a player.”

“I am sorry, my lord.”

“No matter. We cannot all excel at the finer and more subtle arts. Here, I shall finish the scene.”

He turned again and replaced the crown on his head. A scowl twisted his face.

“We will hear no more of your empty air, thou traitor! Come sir, to the fight!”

Christian swung the rapier, cutting the air before him, miming epic swordplay and forcing his invisible foe down to the rocks and sand, finally thrusting the rapier’s point into the ground with a wild cry.

“Death to you! We are victorious!”

He left the sword standing like a headstone in the sand, turned to me, and bowed from the waist. The tin crown fell from his head and the scene was ended. I clapped my hands.

“Most excellent,” I said. “Your father’s victory over Gustavus, yes?”

“Well done, Soren.” Christian smiled. His mood had much improved since the previous night. “Now I shall play you another scene.”

“You need not, my lord. You have shown your skill as an actor, I think.”

“Nay, you do but flatter me. Now, attend.” Christian took up his sword and climbed onto a round stone the size of a small table.

“I sit astride a stallion,” he said. “The action begins thus.”

Christian mimed riding horseback, his left hand gripping imaginary reins. He held the rapier low in his right hand.

“We approach the enemy! Just there, at the foot of the hill.”

He swept the sword through the air before him and crouched on the stone as if preparing to spring.

“We drive into their ranks and hew all ’round! Men writhe in agony, their blood everywhere! The shadow of the angel of death falls across their eyes! The terror, the monstrousness, the noise of it! It goes on and on!”

Christian thrust the sword about madly, battling foes on all sides of him.

“I strike a man! Another! Again! Down he goes, cleft to the breastbone, or losing an arm! I am the angel of death! I am the devil himself! I am king! King! King!”

Christian closed his eyes and hurled the sword away into the snow. He slipped down from the stone into the surf and walked blindly a few steps this way and that, icy water splashing to his knees.

“Oh, that this too solid flesh might melt!” He beat his breast with his fist and staggered up the beach, falling to his knees in the sand.

“So I come to hide on Hven,” he said. “I fled the battle, Soren. I fled.”

I took a step toward him.

“General Bernardo says you acquitted yourself well at Copenhagen.”

“Does he? He lies to you.”

“What says he then to you, my lord?”

Christian looked up. A pair of gulls wheeled overhead. One of them cried out, an inconsolable sound.

“What says he? Bernardo repeats the lies he tells you. He looks me in the eye and tells me of my heroism.”

“A man like Bernardo would know heroism when he sees it, my lord.”

“You are a fool. You ever see a hero in the wrong man. I abandoned the field at Copenhagen. I was not brave.”

“My lord, pray you stand.” I offered Christian my hands. He reached out to me and I helped him to his feet. “If you are no hero, what means Bernardo’s story? I think you are mistaken. Perhaps, my lord, the battle was confused and we ought to take the witness of other men’s eyes?”

“It is you who is mistaken.” Christian took my face between his hands. His eyes were squeezed half shut and his skin flushed red. I made to pull away but he held me by the hair.

“I am a coward! A coward! Before my father’s very eyes I fled! Craven son of the brave king! My father, Soren, will forever think me unmanly. He will wonder who is this girl masquerading all these years as a prince. It shall go hard for me, most hard. I do not know how I can look the king in his eye again.”

My scalp burned where the prince held my hair. I tried not to move my head.

“My lord, perhaps you fear too much your father’s wrath.”

“Of all people, you should know the lie of that.”

“My lord?”

Christian released me and stumbled away, down the beach. He waved an arm at the ruins of the paper mill above us on the hillside.

“You know too well the wrath a father may feel toward his own son.”

“It is cold, my lord. Your boots are wet. Let us go back to the castle.”

“Nay, I will not be distracted from this argument. You do not wish to speak of your father. You pretend there is no poison in that history, but in your portrait do I see the mirror of myself.”

“You are mistaken, my lord.” I began to walk up the path leading from the beach.

“Hold, sirrah. You will hear me out. You deny my father’s rage in order to deny your own father’s. I see it now.”

“My lord, why do you abuse me thus? Pray say no more on this, not here.”

“Not here?” Christian looked up at the mill again. “What better place? Is it not fitting that we eulogize your father at the scene of his death?”

“To what purpose? All is ended between that father and his son.”

Christian scrambled up the hillside and took me by the arm.

“I do not believe you. I know your history.”

“Many tales we hear are not true, my lord. The day is very cold. I beg your leave to return to Uraniborg.”

“Nay, you will stay and hear me out. I know how you disappointed your father. He intended you for the priesthood, but you disobeyed his will. Is this not true?”

It was true. It cost money to send a boy to Latin school, and my father’s purse was not heavy enough to afford it. He promised me to the Church, that the diocese would pay my tuition. Even later when my father’s purse grew fat, he was resolved to give me to God and so save himself the cost of my education. At sixteen I defied him; I refused to go to Italy and take holy orders. My father was enraged but found he could not force me into the clergy, even after beating me soundly. He put me out of his house, saying I was dead to him. I found my way to Wittenberg, and I stayed in Saxony five years. There I earned my bread as a Latin tutor, and I also earned degrees in Philosophy and Law.

“My lord,” I said. “I would have made a miserable priest. But you must not conflate my father with the king.”

“No, I must not.” Christian waded out into the snow and dug until he found the rapier he had cast aside.

“I shall give you one last scene,” he said.

“I pray you, no more today.”

Christian stretched out his right arm and pointed the tip of his rapier at my heart.

“You must face your shame, just as I must face mine.”

“I have no shame. You mistake me.”

“I will set you up a mirror, and you will see that I speak the truth.”

“My lord, no.”

“You will be silent and hear me out.”

I saw there was no arguing with him. I shrugged and pulled my hat down as far as I could, over my ears and all but covering my eyes, affecting indifference.

“Can you see me, Soren?”

“Aye, my lord. You still point a blade at me.”

“Very well.”

Christian lowered the sword and took a few steps past the snow and onto the wet sand of the beach. He drew himself up to his full height and jutted out his chin proudly.

“My son,” he declaimed in an irritating nasal voice much like Bernardo’s. “I am no longer trusted by the bishop, for you have made me a liar. I am no longer respected by my lords, for you have shown me weak as a father. I am laughed at by my neighbors, alone in this house with naught but the resentment and lies you leave with me. Your line here is, ‘I am my own man.’”

“I am my own man.”

“That had conviction, Soren. Well done. Now I continue as before. You return to Elsinore with your precious German degrees, to seek a living. Though you gall my patience and spurn my paternal love, I will take you back into my home until your employment is secured.”

“This is an amusing fantasy, my lord.”

“Ah, but is it not true?” Christian raised his index finger. “Did you not return to Elsinore eight years ago, after having defied and humiliated your father?”

I looked out into the Sound. Merchant ships sailed past us, bound for England, Brittany, the Mediterranean, or returning south to the shores of the Baltic.

“I stayed with my father no more than two months upon my return from Germany. These are not happy memories, my lord. Do you throw your darts at any target?”

“We move to the next scene. Here, I place this poor crown upon my head and play my father. Attend me, sir. Our son the prince requires a tutor in Latin, Greek, history, and mathematics. You have been recommended to us.”

“I recall the interview with your father,” I said. The king, with his advisors and the bishop of Copenhagen, were on one end of the royal office and I was bowed low, my eyes on the magnificent carpet, thirty feet away from them. I mumbled my credentials and strove to keep my sweating palms from touching my clothes and staining them. I had never known such humiliation and fear.

“Do recall that we appointed you to this illustrious post. Do recall that we had letters on your behalf writ by Sir Tristram, by Father Olaf, and most persuasively, one writ by your own father.”

“He wrote no such letter.”

“He did. I have seen it. And so we brought you to our court at Copenhagen. Your successes from that day to this are all part of your father’s glory, Soren.”

“No.”

“And yet when he died here,” Christian pointed behind me with the rapier, to the ruined mill. “When Brahe’s badly wrought factory collapsed, killing your father and four other good men, you did not so much as come to claim his corpse.” “Nay! I was aiding Tycho on the road to Prague. I could not leave him.”

Christian was wrong, about so much, but I felt blood rushing to my head and did not like what thoughts came to me. The prince sought an ally in his cowardice and fear, but I was not the man for it.

“Soren, be even and direct with me.”

“My lord is mistaken. There was no shame in my heart that kept me from my father. Not a drop of my blood feared him.”

“Aha.” Christian leaped at me and I jumped aside, stumbling and falling backward into the tracks we had made earlier. Christian stood over me and put the point of his rapier to the base of my throat.

“So now you fly your true colors, eh?”

“I know not what you mean, my lord. Pray let me rise.” I made to sit, but Christian put his left foot onto my chest, keeping me down on my back in the snow. I felt the cold tip of his rapier against the skin below my chin. Bernardo’s dagger, hidden in my doublet, was half beneath me and dug into my ribs.

“You think my blood swims with cowardice. You think, ‘Why, the prince confesses his fear himself.’ Is that not so?”

“No, my lord.”

“You lie. But it is no matter. This battle showed me afeared, yes, but I shall in future make Death himself tremble before me! Who dares to call me a coward shall taste my new boldness. I will show the world that I have the heart of a lion, like my father. Aye, though he be ashamed of me today, I will make him proud. I shall be king one day, no matter else. I shall be king, do you hear?”

He looked down at me and moved the rapier’s tip from beneath my chin to a point a few inches from my left eye. Bitter cold as it was, I broke into a sweat. Christian’s voice had grown calm and quiet, yet he stood on my chest and waved his sword in my face. He had ordered two harmless men put to death, and his mood was stranger now than it had been yesterday. I have ever feared my own death, and I felt it close at hand there on the beach. There was a smear of wet gray sand across the toe of Christian’s boot, and a glint of ice in his beard, where a single drop of water had frozen.

“My lord, I beg of you, leave off.”

“Is there not many a man who has disappointed his father, but has lost all chance to redeem himself before that goodly sire? Oh, I pity you, Soren.”

“My lord, I beg you.”

“I at least do not kneel before my father’s enemy.”

“My father had no enemies,” I said. My skin was everywhere slick with sweat. Bernardo’s dagger was slowly tearing a hole in my blouse, along my left side. “My father was no king. My father was a backward man, a villager, a laborer with some skill, that is all.”

“You are better than your father?”

“I am,” I cried. My voice was high, shrill and womanish. “And I served a better man than he.”

Christian pushed hard on my chest with the heel of his boot.

“Brahe was no hero.”

“Aye, he was. A hero to the ages, to the future.”

“Brahe loved his dwarf and his pet elk more than he loved any of his assistants.”

“That is not true. Tycho brought me here to Uraniborg.”

“At the king’s bidding.”

“Nay, my lord. I entreated Tycho by letters for a year, since I first learned that you would go away to school in Saxony. My list of academic accomplishments and my ideas did buy my admittance to Tycho’s employ.”

Christian sighed and moved the tip of his rapier away from my face. He spoke slowly, in the singsong rhythm one uses with dogs and children.

“My father has ever been fond of you. You tutored me well, but when I left to Wittenberg, you no longer had a pupil or employment. I put a word in the king’s ear that the stars did fascinate you, and he then shipped you here to Brahe, who had protested against it. He gave in to my father’s command, being short of hands at the time. But it was my father’s favor, not your epistles to Brahe, that delivered you to Uraniborg.”

“This is not true. No, this is not true, my lord. It cannot be true.”

Christian took his foot from my chest and stepped back. I sat up and felt a flood of protestations in my chest, all demanding to be spoken. But I said nothing more. I looked away from the prince, at my hands.

“We must be as heroes,” Christian said. “No matter what say any. I shall return to my father’s fortress and rise above my shame. I shall be heroic. My father is a hero, and worthy of respect. Your father too, Soren, was worthy of respect. He died on a mission to repair Brahe’s mistake, there in the mill. Brahe failed the king and was exiled for it. Brahe failed himself and your own father died for it. And finally, Brahe did fail you. He abandoned you and all his other assistants when he left this island. Is it true that he did not pay your final wages before he ran to Prague?”

“Aye.”

“There you have him, in a nutshell. He would have you think him the noblest king of infinite space, while he buys new traveling clothes with the money he owes you.”

I had forgotten that Tycho was yet in my debt. I wondered if he had purchased butter and milk on credit.

“Your father was a good man,” Christian said. “You’d do well to visit his grave and pray for his forgiveness. It would be heroic.”

I nodded. Christian sheathed his sword and gave me his hands, pulling me to my feet. He brushed the snow from my back and shoulders.

“It is time for us to be heroes,” he said, and like a mother walking a child he took my hand and led me up the hill, past the ruin where my father had died, to the top of the island again. We adjusted our cloaks, gloves, and hats and then marched through the snow toward the broken hulk of Uraniborg. Somewhere during this walk I remembered that it was Christmas Eve.