The Astrologer

{ Chapter Two }

EVEN THE HEAVENS CHANGE


PRINCE CHRISTIAN AND I STOOD ON THE DECK OF THE Odin as it sailed away from Jutland. The king and a number of his officers were returning to Zealand, leaving behind a large force of men who would march into Aalborg later in the day. The royal army would put to the sword all those citizens who had openly followed Gustavus, and terrorize a great many innocent citizens besides. No matter a man’s own politics, it is always bad luck for him if his lord fails in battle.

The day was cold, but the overcast had cleared here and there to let show patches of blue, clean and pure. I made a wish that the clouds would blow away by sundown so that I might behold the heavens. It had been nearly a week since I had observed the night sky, and the moon was waning but still three quarters full. The phases of the moon are all pleasing to the eye.

“Will we be in Copenhagen by dark, my lord?”

“Nay, Soren.” Christian no longer wore his armor and sword. Under his cloak he dressed in a crimson velvet doublet with white trim to honor his father’s victory. “Tonight we will be in Elsinore. My father would speak to the lord of the castle there.”

“Elsinore,” I said. Decades of memories struggled to surface and I willed them back to stillness.

“Will you visit your father?”

“Perhaps,” I said.

“How long has it been since you were in Elsinore?”

“Eight years, my lord.”

“Eight years.” Christian peered at my face and I looked away. “Eight years, during which you were half a day’s travel from him.”

“I was busy on Brahe’s island, my lord. There was no time to come to Elsinore. Nor have I the time now. I will return to Copenhagen tomorrow, by the king’s leave.”

Christian again studied my expression. I tried to form my face into a mask of indifference; I did not wish to discuss my father.

“The king will not give you his leave,” Christian said. “He wishes you to remain with him.”

“He can surely let a week pass without a new horoscope, my lord.”

“’Tis not that. He hath an especial employment for you.”

“Indeed? I would hear of it, then.”

“Then you will, but not from me.” Christian smiled and put his arm about my shoulders. A wave fell into the ship’s side, sending a fountain of spray over the deck rail, soaking our fur cloaks. “You must allow my father to speak to you himself regarding your excellent new task, but I believe you will be pleased. There is no man in Denmark—or even the world— more fit for this duty than is Soren Andersmann.”

“My lord, your habit of withholding facts after pricking my interest is most vexing. It is highly irritating.”

“You must be patient, my friend. But be not alarmed. You will enjoy the work, and it is so important that during this employment you shall be free of your duties as court astrologer.”

“Am I to lose my appointment?” I broke free of Christian’s arm and took a step away from him. “My lord, if this is some misdirection, some plot to remove me from court while your father interviews men with none of my past associations, I demand that you be even and direct with me about it.”

“Soren, you speak quite out of turn!” The prince closed the distance between us and took my hand. “I tell you my father knows you are his man. You must take me at my word. This task will surely increase your esteem. But I will not reveal the details. I leave that pleasure to the king.”

“Very well. I shall await his Majesty’s pleasure.”

Christian shook my arm playfully.

“Do not be petulant. You have quite the fiery tongue when you are anxious to think yourself injured, but mark me: you are in no danger of losing your appointment. The king is most impressed with the horoscope you cast for his confrontation with Gustavus.”

The prince referred to that horoscope filled with optimistic lies which I had drawn up and presented to his father on the morning our war party set out from Copenhagen. Abundant signs of victory and good fortune were clear to any with eyes to see, I claimed. Perverting science for political reasons galled me, but I sided with the angels. Perhaps the charlatans who sell only horoscopes that please their clients also feel they are doing a higher service, but I do doubt it.

“I am always happy to please the king,” I said.

“He may not always be pleased with you.”

“What do you mean? Did you not a moment ago say that I had impressed the king?”

“I mean your book. I believe it will not impress my father. You must not mention it to him at all, especially now that he is preparing to reward you.”

I had written a short volume called Nunc Scio Mysterium, in which I contrasted the weaknesses of received wisdom with the strengths of observable data, and predicted a time to come when inquiry would trump folklore and tradition. Writing not for my fellow men of science but for all men with any learning, I showed the future as a bold vista and revealed the past for the storeroom of broken ideas that it is. Rationality shone on every page of my little tome, and I was justly proud of it. The book had not been published yet, but I circulated the manuscript among some of my educated friends, including Prince Christian.

“There is nothing in my work to distemper the king,” I said.

“In some readings, it challenges everything that stands.” Christian leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Lord Ulfeldt hath seen it, you know. He intimates that he wishes a word in your ear about it.”

“Against it?”

“Very like. Ulfeldt says you challenge the rights of kings.”

“Ulfeldt misreads me.”

“Then so do I.”

I looked out over the water, at the northern coast of Zealand. The Odin was bound for the eastern tip of the island, for the town of Elsinore where I had been born, in a region of forests and farms. Elsinore lay but thirty miles north of Copenhagen, which is a city of sophistication and culture, but Elsinore seemed to inhabit some remote century, existing always in a time of primitive ignorance. It was the king’s favorite place in Denmark.

“My lord,” I said. “My book only observes that what we can see is to be more trusted than what we are told without evidence.”

“That is a dangerous statement. And heretical in some eyes. I know that you write merely of the natural philosophies, but men will read it more broadly, as a political commentary. The Devil is the prince of lies, Soren. We must put our faith in our kings and our church, for we know truth lies therein.”

“Truth lies all around us! The Wise Men followed the stars to find the Redeemer, my lord. I also follow the stars, for careful and accurate observation of the universe will lead us to prosperity and happiness. I am an astronomer because by looking at Heaven I see the Earth.”

“Brahe used to say that. I remember. You ought not quote him on my father’s ship. This book of yours may be read by men such as Gustavus, who will see it as a call for dissention and change. You might accidentally spur my father’s enemies into action against him. Surely that is not what you intend?”

“My lord, it is in the nature of nature to change.”

“It is in the nature of nature to remain as God hath made it.”

“Even the heavens change, my lord.”

Christian waved a hand as if to sweep away all we had said.

“This conversation likes me not, Soren. Come, let us speak of other things.”

“As you wish.”

“If you intend to publish your volume in Denmark, you must dedicate it to my father, using your most flattering tongue, and you must be certain to inform all readers that you write only of art and philosophy.”

“Aye, my lord.”

“But I do not wish to speak of it. This book upsets me, Soren. I may agree with you that an understanding of the great machine that is the Earth can be a good thing, but I do not like your disrespect for the whole of history on which your new science is to be built.”

“I bear no such disrespect to history.”

“Nonsense. You are like a man so in love that he sees his betrothed as the pinnacle of femininity and his own mother as an ill-bred hag. The days to come will not be perfection, nor are the days past so awful as you paint them. But let us speak on another topic.”

“As it suits you.”

His words were more like those of a closed-minded privy counselor than the young scholar I myself had tutored. I was happy to leave off the topic, but the prince had more to say.

“There are men who have my father’s ear who would take your book as a placement of academia above the nobility. It could be said that you set Tycho Brahe above the king in importance.”

I could not with any honesty discuss with Christian the relative importance of his father and Tycho Brahe. Did the Danes think Christian son of Rorik a great man? Then they knew nothing of greatness. History forgets the man who squeezes taxes from peasants, but history remembers the man who increases the knowledge of all mankind. Brahe had turned his back on such pettiness as Danish politics, and instead he measured the extent of Heaven. He opened the eyes and imaginations of a generation of astronomers—scores of us who followed our master’s lead and placed the power of facts above the power of the sword. The discoveries of science endure as guarantees that civilization will go on. No king can make such a claim about his reign.

“I do not mention Tycho.”

“Nay, but he is there on every page, edging you onward and drawing the argument into this rosy dawn you imagine. But Brahe is no hero to pattern yourself after.” Christian shook his head. “Come, come. I wish no more to discuss it, Soren. Prithee do stop hectoring me about it.”

“I am sorry, my lord. I meant no offense.”

“Let us talk of other subjects.”

“With happiness.”

“Excellent.”

There was a heavy silence between us, a wall that descended into our conversation more often as Christian grew older and spent time away from Denmark. I wondered what sort of nonsense he learned at Wittenberg, what sort of lies he heard behind my back at Copenhagen. Christian’s mind had been in large part mine to shape when he was younger and I taught his lessons in the four branches of knowledge. His reasoning was no less sharp for the loss of my tutelage, but certes his frame of reference for all manner of thoughts was no longer influenced by mine. The prince was becoming his own man, and so he drifted away from those neighbored to his youth. Even as a boy, Christian had always felt free to challenge me, but now his challenge took more the shape of command. I did not like it, but he was my prince and no longer my pupil. It was not my place now to lead our conversations, and so I stood by Christian at the railing, waiting for him to speak. The ship pitched and rolled beneath our feet and I listened to the creaking of the hull and the low croak of ropes pulled tight by the full sails above and behind us. Being aboard ship always thrilled me. I cannot swim a stroke, and to be on the open water was to defy death itself. The king could swim no better than me and hid himself below. When he was younger, the king fell into a lake when he was very drunk, and Tycho’s uncle Peter had dived in to save his life.

“My father thinks his horoscope very well cast,” Christian said. “He tells me that he walked into battle confident of victory, knowing that the heavens called for him to defeat Gustavus.”

“Aye, my lord.”

It is at such moments that one has a fleeting urge to give over all belief in astrology. But I must have cast my secret horoscope poorly, not seeing what the stars truly showed and looking only at what sat brooding over my heart. The fault was my own, not my art’s.

“Alas for Frederik, though. My father hath named him interim governor of Jutland. This is a profound sadness for my uncle.”

“I can well imagine.” Frederik so loved Copenhagen that in the last years he only left the capital to accompany the king and queen on royal progresses through the country. It was no secret at court that Frederik had urged the king to leave him behind on the expedition against Gustavus.

“My uncle shall grieve his appointment, but he is left behind in Aalborg only to show my father’s wariness. The daily management of Jutland will be in the hands of my father’s generals, not left for Frederik.”

“Then what shall Frederik do in Aalborg?”

“Faith, I know not. Pine for my mother’s good conversation and the cook’s excellent cuisine, I imagine.”

The Odin pitched again and slewed into the trough between two great waves. Christian and I were thrown against the deck rail and the ship slanted at a sharp angle as the next wave hit. The water broke over the deck with heavy force. I was knocked down onto my knees and blinded for a moment by the spray and foam. When I opened my eyes Christian was half over the side, his hands slipping along the top of the rail as the ship rolled to starboard. I seized his arm and cried out for him to hold fast. When he was safely back with both feet on the deck, he embraced me.

“You have saved my life!” he said. “By my soul, Soren, I would’ve died.”

“My lord, you were in no real danger, methinks. The wave had not washed you overboard.”

“Nay, Soren! You have done a great deed. The king will reward you as I cannot.”

“My lord, it was nothing.”

“Nothing but my life!” He pulled me to him and pounded on my back.

“Nay—”

“Come, let us go below and see my father.”

Christian dragged me across the deck and down a gangway. Below, the ship was warm and lit with lamps that swayed with the rolling of the boat. The king usually stayed with his advisors in the royal stateroom, he and his men gathered around the long mahogany dining table there. Christian led me toward this chamber, but we were intercepted in the corridor by Lord Ulfeldt, the king’s chief advisor.

“Your father is in a bad humor,” Ulfeldt said, taking Christian by the arm. “The pitching sea agrees not with him and he wishes to be alone with his physician.”

Ulfeldt was pale and wrinkled, dried up like an autumn leaf, his bones and brittle skin rattling inside robes that were increasingly too large for him as he shriveled away during his declining years. He was too old for winter expeditions into battle, but whither the king went, so also Ulfeldt, lest another man should gain his lord’s ear.

“We shall let the king rest,” Christian said. “Will you dine with us, my lord?”

“Nay.” Ulfeldt blenched and put a frail, white hand on his belly. “I share the king’s quease today. I shall be greatly relieved when I step onto solid ground once again. But I would speak with you now, my lord, and you also, Soren.”

We followed Ulfeldt aft to his quarters, a small but well-lit room with a large window through which I saw the wake of the ship and the darkening clouds of a storm that gathered behind us. Christian and I hung our dripping furs on pegs and then we joined Ulfeldt at a table by the window. In the afternoon light, Ulfeldt seemed to be wrapped in onionskin, his flesh delicate and translucent with blue veins standing out on the backs of his hands. He wore a large sapphire in a silver ring on one finger, and his nails were long and clean and glinted like polished glass. He turned the many papers on his small table upside down and rested his hands atop the documents.

“How do you, my lord?”

“I am old, Soren. I am old and the world is old, but the world and I must now look to young men to defend us.”

“Are you retiring from service?” Christian leaned across the table and placed a hand on Ulfeldt’s arm. “This is sad news, my lord.”

“Nay, my lord.” Ulfeldt laughed, a disquieting wheeze that I had never heard before. “I will leave Denmark’s service when my blood stops flowing through my veins, but no sooner. My lord, I speak of your own place in Denmark’s government.”

“Indeed?” Christian sat back and looked out the window. “I have no such place, my lord. I am heir to the crown, but until then I am no civil servant.”

“That must change, my lord.”

Christian turned from Ulfeldt to me, a desperate expression upon his face. I knew he wished me to bring up some other topic, but I could think of nothing to distract Ulfeldt.

“Soren hath saved my life,” Christian said. “But five minutes ago.”

“Indeed?” Ulfeldt sat up, alarmed. “Was there some trouble on the deck, my lord?”

“Some trouble indeed, my lord. The same waves that so affect you and my father did try to sweep me into the sea. Had Soren not been there to preserve me, I should have drowned.”

“It was no brave act,” I said. “The prince held fast to the rail and I merely helped him regain his feet.”

Christian put his hand on my shoulder and looked up, closing his eyes.

“Providence put you there with me, my friend, and I shall never forget this.” He opened his eyes and turned to Ulfeldt. “I was taking Soren to the king to relay news of this adventure when you found us, my lord. I dare say the king will reward Soren for his service.”

“I dare say he will.” Ulfeldt nodded. “Perhaps this fine deed will go some way toward diminishing the king’s suspicion.”

“Suspicion?” I leaned forward, shrugging away Christian’s hand from my shoulder. “What does the king suspect?”

“The king likes not this book of yours.”

“Hath the king read it too?” What understanding of my book could that fen-sucked ape have? He preferred a comedy or a bawdy song, or he fell asleep. But why were all these men reading my manuscript?

“His Majesty hath neither time nor interest in such things, as you ought to know, young sir. But I have read it, and it falls within my duty to report anything of danger to my lord the king.”

“It is a book, my lord.” I made myself smile at Ulfeldt. “How can there be any danger to the king? It is but ink on paper, no more.”

“Is it not finely written?” Christian said. “Some of the metaphors are lovely.”

“It is no Ovid,” Ulfeldt said. “And I do not judge the merits of the prose, though there were turns of phrase which would have pleased me had the whole not been the seductions of seditious sentiment.”

“Seditious? Nay,” I said. “It is a rumination upon how we might build a rational future. I say nothing of kings.”

“Kings,” Ulfeldt said. “They are conspicuously absent from your ruminations.”

“It is but poetry,” Christian said. “Ideas and phantasms to catch up the imagination.”

“Aye, springes to catch woodcocks,” the old man said. “I do know how the soul lends the tongue poetry when the imagination burns. But these blazes of imagination give more light than heat and we must not take them for fire. This book implores unholy suits, whispering like a sanctified and pious bawd, the better to beguile.”

“Nay, my lord—”

“I would not, in plain terms, have any man go slandering a moment of leisure as to read it.”

Ulfeldt shook his head, wrinkling his long nose as if some foulness had entered the cabin. He reached beside him to where bundles of documents were stacked on the floor, and after a moment lifted up the very copy of Nunc Scio Mysterium that I had lent to Christian. He placed it on the table before him, untied the ribbon, and leafed through the pages as he talked.

“It is an ill book,” he said. “I am glad that Prince Christian bethought himself to bring it to me that I might know of it before you attempt publication.”

I looked at Christian. He looked away, at the tossing sea through the window. I had assumed Ulfeldt knew about my book only because he spied upon everything and everyone at court. It never occurred to me that Christian had carried my pages to Ulfeldt. The prince had been given a copy only to read in confidence, as a friend.

“My book is ever respectful of the king,” I said. “It sings the praises of natural philosophy and is thus a hymn to God Himself.”

Ulfeldt leaned forward, his white beard jutting out. He raised a pale hand and pointed a finger at my chest.

“Your imagination seeks not the truth of nature, and thus not the truth of God. You would have us reimagine God, young man. God is not to be imagined; God is, and He is as He is. You cannot demand that we change God to allow your philosophy.”

I reached over to take the manuscript and Ulfeldt slapped the back of my hand, an old governess with a misbehaving child. I pulled back from him.

“My lord—”

“Enough on this. My apologies to you, my prince, as well. But I cannot discuss the work, especially as the seas are pitching more violently now. The king is not pleased to think of what Soren hath written.” Ulfeldt hefted the manuscript and shook his head. Again I reached to take it but, moving quickly as a cat, Ulfeldt twisted away and shoved my manuscript out through the cabin window, opening his hand to let the pages flap and flutter in the wake of the ship. “Perhaps Soren’s brave deed will soften your father’s opinion. I cannot say. But I bid you both please leave an old man to his nausea in peace. With your leave, my prince, I should take to my bed awhile.”

Christian stood and tugged at my sleeve. I rose to my feet, still looking out Ulfeldt’s window as sheets of my writing drifted and dove into the waves we left behind us.

“Your pardon, Lord Ulfeldt. We leave you with our wishes for calm seas and calmer sleep.”

“My thanks, my lord.”

Ulfeldt took our hands briefly, his skin like paper, and then he bowed to Christian and I bowed to him and the prince pulled me into the corridor outside Ulfeldt’s door.