The Astrologer

{ Chapter Twenty-One }

FRANCISCO THE BEAR


I WAS FOND OF VIBEKE, BUT I DID NOT FOLLOW HER FROM the chapel. There would be time to look in on her after a while and I made my way first to the northwest tower and climbed the stairs. No real business took me there, only a wish to be alone a moment to clear my head, and perhaps I had a desire to look down over Elsinore in the light of day. My father’s house, I reckoned, should be visible from the parapet. I was nearly at the top of the stairs when I heard my name called from below, down the stairwell. It was Fritz Torstensson. I waited for him to overtake me and together we stepped out onto the cold platform atop the tower.

“You have survived your visit to the island,” he said.

“Barely. I did not think my bones would ever thaw upon my return.”

“The winter is newly upon us, and still gentle. It will be very hard after the new year.”

“I doubt it nothing, Fritz. Have you seen the king today?”

“Christian holds court in the armory, and grants boons to his favorites. He is in fine fettle, dressed in new clothes and already in his cups. This celebration promises to become quite a spectacle. The queen has brought tumblers, jongleurs, and a band from Copenhagen to amuse the guests. I hear that very soon in the courtyard there will be a performance by a bear.”

“A bear?”

“Imported from Finland at great cost. He will stand on his hind legs and roar at the crowd to frighten the women, no doubt. We ought to find a place in the yard to witness it.”

“I am not come to laugh at women who tremble before a trained bear.”

“Nonsense. It will be amusing.”

I looked to the west, across the moat and over the field to the town. I knew the grid of streets well, but somehow I could not find the house where I had been a boy. Surely it was just a trick of perspective, or that all the roofs of a town look alike, but it was as if the house had sunk into the ground.

“Have you seen the prince?” I said.

“Nay. Certes he will be at the banquet.”

“I am worried over him. He becomes daily more like his father.”

Torstensson fussed with his gloves, distracted.

“Well,” he said. “When his father is no longer here to influence him, he will be a reasonable man, do you not agree?”

“Possibly”

“It does not matter.” Torstensson left off adjusting his gloves and looked at me. “As long as we are revenged.”

“At Hven I had opportunity to sift the prince’s mind regarding the future. I am not sanguine about Christian’s bent toward the philosophies.”

Torstensson leaned over the side of the parapet and carefully spat before he answered.

“Life to you concerns nothing but your sciences and philosophies, but it is not so with most men. You have friends in this deadly enterprise, but we are driven by familial loyalty and our allegiance to the old ways of reciprocal fealty. A king cannot be allowed to murder men of the noble class, men with uncles and fathers in the Privy Council. There are limits even to the power of kings, and we enforce those limits. That is our aim, not the advancement of philosophy.”

“You know I am here because of who Tycho was as a man, not out of regard for his family name.”

“Yes, you came to us. You volunteered to be our pioneer, but we do not seek revenge because you think our cousin was a saint. This is not to do with your sciences.”

“But it is,” I said. “Like it or no, the new order is coming.”

“Well, we shall have to stop it. My friends and I act to protect our rights as noblemen. You would know nothing of that. The king cannot take a lord’s home and property from him at whim, even if that lord lets every church and abbey fall to the ground. Let Rome maintain her churches. Brahe’s business was his own, and the king ought not have interfered. Do your duty to Tycho, play with your philosophies, but leave the larger questions to men bred to answer them.”

Every man I knew was born to disappoint me. I looked away from Fritz, away from Elsinore, to the glassy gray tapestry of the Bay.

“Have you any plan for the king?” he said.

“I will deliver this horoscope and hope, as has happened in years past, for a meeting in secret with the king, that he might learn what fearful news I have not publically given him. When he is bent over his table reading the chart, I will put a blade into his heart from behind. I already have the dagger and now only require the unwary back of Christian.”

Bernardo had guaranteed me this opportunity. I told myself that the Swiss would not kill me the minute the deed was done. I hoped I was right to believe this. There was no choice but to trust in Bernardo’s baffling code of honor.

“Excellent well,” Torstensson said. “It is a much simpler plot than frozen snakes and poison. I predict you will have success.”

“God willing.” Down along the shore, a gray heron took to wing and flapped slowly inland, to the snowy trees north of Elsinore, and disappeared from view.

“Let us go down to the courtyard,” Fritz said, putting an arm around my shoulders. “I would not miss this Finnish bear. His name is Francisco.”

Francisco was an impressive old bear, nine feet tall, a thousand pounds of meat and bone on him, his broad body covered in ruddy brown hair patched with white around his face and neck.

“He is big as a bull,” Torstensson said.

We found a place in the courtyard near the bear and his trainer, a bent Finn of some antiquity who wore layers of cowhide and carried a thick whip in his right hand. In his left hand he held one end of a long iron chain. The other end was fixed to the heavy iron collar encircling Francisco’s massive neck. The bear was muzzled like a dog, but that did not seem to render him harmless; his claws were as long as my fingers and they looked sharp enough. Francisco the bear was nearly twice the height of his trainer and I wondered that so slight a man could control him. I agreed with Torstensson that the women were sure to be frightened.

The courtyard filled with guests, puffing out clouds of breath and stamping their feet. A lot of mulled wine had already been drunk by those who had arrived early, and the yard smelled like a tavern by the time the king, queen, their retainers, and guards came crowding in. All made way for the royal party and bowed low, even the bear.

The king roared with laughter at this, and with Kirsten on his arm Christian took a place directly before Francisco. King and bear looked into each other’s eyes. Francisco reared up suddenly to his full height, his paws batting the air before him. Beneath his leather muzzle he growled, a wet, metallic bubbling that shook the flagstones. Those closest to the great animal took a step back.

The king released Kirsten and mimicked the bear, holding up his meaty fists and punching the air. He bared his teeth and growled.

“A pugilist, are you? You are a great ugly animal, sir!”

Like a dog throwing off water, Francisco shook his head rapidly from side to side. He took a heavy step toward the king, raised his paws, and bellowed again. One of the queen’s ladies-in-waiting fainted dead away, falling into the arms of a Danish captain. Francisco’s trainer pulled against the chain and barked out a command in Finnish. The bear dropped to all four paws. His head was very close to the king’s.

“You think yourself better than Christian son of Rorik, do you, bear?” The king grinned wide and cocked his black bearskin hat at a rakish angle. His generals laughed.

“Majesty,” one of them said. “You shall wear him before he shall wear you.”

“Wear him?” The king laughed again. “This beast’s pelt is unfit for any man in Denmark.”

Christian cuffed the bear roughly on the side of the head and turned to smile for the court. Francisco the bear blinked, shook his massive head, and then raised one great paw to knock the hat from the head of Christian son of Rorik, king of Denmark.

The assembled guests drew a shocked breath. I put a hand over my mouth. A brave page rushed forward to pick up the hat. He wiped it clean and offered it to the king.

The king ignored both the page and the fur hat. He faced the bear and frowned. Francisco cocked his head and stared at the king, growling low in his throat. The king also growled, then made a fist and punched the bear with a great hammering blow in the eye.

“I am Christian the Dane,” he roared.

Francisco shook his head and raised himself up, towering over the king. He rubbed his eye with the side of his paw. His trainer made soothing Finnish noises behind him, and then Francisco bellowed, a deafening rattle of pain and anger, and he leaned down and raked his claws at the king.

King Christian was beyond the bear’s reach. The Finnish trainer barked commands and pulled hard on the chain, uncoiling his whip. The bear turned from his trainer to the king, roaring at both men and ducking his head as if to slip free of the iron collar. The trainer cracked his whip over Francisco’s head. The bear swung his great forelegs and caught the iron chain, tearing it from his master’s hand. The loose end struck a duke from Holstein, owner of a fleet of fishing ships that plied the Bering Sea. The duke cried out in alarm and fell to the ground.

“Give me your sword,” the king cried, and took a weapon from the nearest Switzer to him.

Francisco stood on his hind legs, bellowing at his trainer. His trainer cracked the whip and bellowed back at Francisco. The bear fell silent and dropped to all fours. Christian swung the sword he held—not a gentleman’s rapier, but a soldier’s heavy broadsword—and struck Francisco on the right shoulder, hacking the bear’s foreleg almost free in one blow. A great eruption of blood spilled from the wound and the bear rolled onto his side, thrashing about and howling madly. It was a wretched sound that I hope to never hear again, more calf than bear, more babe than mighty hunter.

King Christian bellowed and thrust the sword into the bear’s great body, over and over again. The Finnish trainer dropped his whip and ran at the king. A few soldiers held him back. Francisco coughed, a wet wheezing sound, and then he was dead.

“I shall cut him open and eat his heart,” the king roared. “I am master of all Denmark!”

The king stepped away from the bear. A streak of Francisco’s blood ran down Christian’s face by his left eye, trailing onto his white ruffled collar.

The Finnish trainer was released and he circled around the great bear’s bleeding corpse, his hands over his mouth and his eyes wide. He looked from his dead Francisco to the scowling, triumphant king and back, saying not a word. When he came to the huge head, he knelt on the bloody flagstones and pulled at the straps of the leather muzzle. It fell away from the bear’s face. Francisco looked like an old man, his dead eyes staring at nothing, his ancient mouth open and toothless. The muzzle had only been placed over Francisco’s face to hide his great age and his harmless purple gums.

I looked away. The king handed the gore-covered sword back to its owner and offered his arm to the queen.

“That was a fit entertainment, my lady,” he said. “Have you brought more sporting beasts for me to kill?”

“You were not meant to slay the poor bear,” Kirsten said.

“He soiled my favorite hat.”

“Even so, my lord.”

“I will not grieve for a bear, my lady. I am Christian son of Rorik.” He held a fist in the air and the crowd cheered his name. It was only then that someone noticed the castle was afire.