The Astrologer

{ Chapter Twenty-Two }

A VIKING FUNERAL


A ROLLING PLUME OF BLACK SMOKE BOILED UP FROM the north wing of Kronberg. We could see no flames from the courtyard because the fire burned on the far side of the fortress, and had not yet eaten its way to the inner rooms. Torstensson put a hand on my arm and we watched without comprehending as the thick smoke rose higher. A few of the king’s guests went into the castle, a few left through the great gates, out into the yard. Most stood where they were, looking at the black cloud billowing upward.

“Is that the kitchens?” someone said.

Marcellus appeared and conferred with the king a moment and then he dashed into the castle, followed by a few soldiers.

“My lady,” King Christian said to Kirsten. “I think it best you join those outside the walls, down at the drawbridge. Go, now.” He pushed the queen away and she left the castle with her guards and ladies-in-waiting. I took a step toward the gates myself, but stopped when I heard the sound. It was a cracking, a great breaking as I had never heard, coming from the north wing. There was a hiss like sand poured onto parchment and then the burning wing of the castle exploded.

The blast was deafening, the air and the Earth shaking against each other. My head and neck ached instantly and for a moment I was blinded by the flash. I do not recall being knocked over, but I found myself on my back, pushed up against the bloody hulk of the dead bear. The air was full of flying brick, marble, wood, and more. I saw a piece of stone the size of a barrel fall onto Fritz Torstensson, killing him instantly. Chips of plaster, hunks of copper tile, and all sorts of scraps fell around me, maiming indiscriminately. Noblemen, their ladies, soldiers, and pages ran about or cowered. Only the king stood his ground, staring open-mouthed in the direction of the explosion, at the burning roofless wreckage that had been a minute ago a goodly portion of his impregnable fortress.

“We are under attack!” he cried. “Assemble the guards! To arms! To arms, all! My yeoman, by the Cross, where is he? To me, to me, to me!”

Flames began to spread along the castle roof and the roar of the fire grew louder by the moment. I stood between the corpses of Francisco and Torstensson. All around me courtiers collided with servants and soldiers, half of them running away from the castle as the other half ran in to fight the fire and seek out the rebels who had set off the explosion. But there were no rebels, nor had there been.

Here is what one of the survivors from within the castle later reported. While the king was outside butchering an old bear, Vibeke was busy inside Kronberg. She appeared in the chapel with a large jar of lamp oil and, while loudly singing a bawdy known to the army for its many obscene verses, Vibeke poured the oil over her father’s corpse, over the chapel floor, and over her own head. The priest called for assistance and a few soldiers ran down the hall toward the chapel. Vibeke struck the priest over the head with the empty jug. The old man staggered into the hallway, blood running over his cassock.

The doors of Kronberg were all of heavy, thick oak and banded with iron, for Kronberg was a fortress, not a palace. The chapel had originally been a large, drafty storeroom and even after it was blessed and fitted with a font, cross, and pews, it remained a chamber in an old fortress. Vibeke pushed shut the heavy doors and shot three iron bolts to lock herself in with the body of Ulfeldt. Under the eyes of Christ and the local saints, Vibeke sang her song of whoredom and touched a candle to the lamp oil she had poured out. This was her Viking funeral in honor of her father, in the belly of the Danish ship of state.

Vibeke had been about ten years old when I met her, on a summer day in the queen’s garden at the palace in Copenhagen. The garden was laid out as a series of concentric rectangles, alternately herbs and flowers, with narrow stone paths and a stone bench in the center. Vibeke was walking slowly between the beds, picking herbs and flowers. Her back was to me and I observed her some time before I entered the garden and bade her good morning.

“You are Soren the tutor,” she said. “My father has pointed you out to me. I am pleased to see you here in the garden, sir. Do accept some herbs for your chambers. Lavender is a good scent to help one sleep.”

She placed the herbs in my hand and curtsied.

“I thank you, lady. This is a very pretty garden.”

“The queen and I have labored over it together this whole summer, though the queen does not allow me much freedom in pruning or weeding. But see you? There is basil and red mint, and germander and chamomile, and over here the lavender and roses, and there daisies and beyond are rosemary and thyme. Here, let me pick you some daisies. The queen says they grow like weeds and have not the most beautiful scent, but they are an honest flower of friendship.”

She stepped lightly away, slipping through a row of orderly plants. Even as a child Vibeke was all grace and ease, floating about the garden with no more weight than sunlight. She gathered a goodly collection of daisies and other blossoms and pushed them all into my arms.

“I shall look like a flower monger with this bushel,” I said. “Pray take some for yourself.”

“Indeed I shall not,” she laughed. “Methinks you look very sweet so laden with color! Here, sit we down a moment.”

We sat together on the stone bench, Vibeke taking back the flowers. She lay them in her lap to pick over the blossoms and groom the stems. She seemed most confident for so young a girl, though she had already taken up her habits of not looking directly at whomever she spoke to, of moving her head at sudden strange angles, as a little bird does when watching out for danger.

I imagine that Vibeke climbed atop Ulfeldt’s body when the oil caught, like a widow in the ancient Viking ritual. They say her singing turned to shrieks and the soldiers battered at the doors to no avail. The tapestries must have gone up in flame, and the altar cloth, and then the pews, hymnals, and pulpit and the wood panels on the walls. The noises I heard before the explosion were the upper floor collapsing and then the sound of the chapel’s own floor, tiled in pretty marble squares, splitting open to let the flaming corpses of Ulfeldt and Vibeke fall into the storerooms below the chapel, where the cannoneers’ supply of gunpowder was kept.

The castle could not be saved. An attempt was underway to form a brigade of men with buckets, to bring water from the moat to the castle. The Swiss had all mounted their horses and were forming up into ranks between the fortress and the battlements. They killed a few servants for no purpose while waiting for the rebel army they assumed was coming immediately down upon Kronberg. Bernardo, astride his magnificent black horse, predicted a gloriously bloody evening and was most disappointed later when no enemy descended to do battle against him and his men.

The castle could not be saved and was not under attack, but no man knew that yet. The king looked about for his yeoman, who did not come. He bellowed for men to assemble beside him and a few paused in the courtyard, unsure what to do.

“Where is my yeoman?” The king took hold of a Danish guard and repeated the question. “My yeoman, have you seen him?”

“Nay, Majesty,” the man answered.

“And what are you doing?”

“I am—I was—”

“Coward!” The king pushed the guard away. “Go! Go join the men with the buckets. I will find the enemy myself. Go!”

Confused soldiers and servants fled from the courtyard. The king looked around him and his eye fixed on me. I took a step backward.

“You, there,” he said. “You. Soren. Is it that brat, Gustavus’s son, come to fight me?”

“Gustavus? The boy? Perhaps, Majesty.”

“Excellent! What good news on my name day!” The king came to me and took me by the arm. His grip was like iron, like a bear trap. “Let the castle burn! I shall do battle today!”

The king smiled, his teeth flat and huge and ugly. I squirmed against his grip.

“Come with me,” he said, and dragged me into the burning fortress. The air thickened with smoke and I coughed, my eyes stinging.

“Majesty,” I said. “Should we rather not go from the castle?” It was dark within Kronberg. I could smell burning wood and everyone was either fighting the blaze or fleeing from it. King Christian and I were ignored as we hurried along the corridor.

“Go forth?” Christian shook his head, pulling me behind him. “Aye, we will go forth, boy. But first I must have my armor. You will be my squire.”

“Majesty, I know nothing of armor.”

The king stopped and drew my face close to his.

“You are an educated little idiot,” he said. “But you need only do as I tell you. Now come along and no more protests. You are not a woman. Come.”

We arrived at the king’s chambers. The air was hot, heavy, and tasted of ash. Christian threw his cloak and hat aside and opened a large armoire to reveal his plate, mail, helm, and weapons, all polished and beautiful. The gold fittings caught the light and for a moment I saw that the manly arts were somehow fine and delicate for all their primitive heart. The opened cabinet and the gleaming metals seemed an altar, or a triptych of Byzantine icons. It was clear that war was the king’s religion, his one true faith and his nationality, as science is mine. Perhaps there was no man present at all when the king was out of his armor. Perhaps blood only pumped through his heart when he was spilling the blood of another man. There was a kind of sense to it, a kind of logic.

“The padded shirt first, and then the mail, and then the cuirass,” Christian said. He ripped at the frogs of his doublet, tore off his sleeves, and tugged his blouse over his head. Somewhere behind me I heard a tremendous crash as the eastern tower fell away from the castle, collapsing against the battlements and killing two of Bernardo’s lancers.

The king stood with his naked back to me, his arms raised over his head. His waist was thick and his back matted with hair, but he was muscular and terrifying.

“The padded shirt,” he said. “Now!”

“Aye, Majesty.”

I took the heavy shirt from the cabinet and stood behind the king.

“A moment, my lord.”

“Hurry, boy!”

My fingers found the front of my doublet and I undid the bottom frog. Bernardo’s dagger fell into my hand. It slid easily from the sheath and I raised it before me. I know nothing of the military arts, but I know a well-made tool when I hold it. The blade was thin and straight and I recalled the surgical knives I had seen at university. I have witnessed the dissection of corpses. I put my left index finger to one side of the king’s spine at the bottom extent of his shoulder blades. His heart beat a few inches away, through cartilage and flesh. As Bernardo had promised, when I put the point of the dagger beside my fingertip on the broad back of my king and let my weight fall into the length of the weapon, it slid into his Majesty’s body as easily as a hand cuts through still water. The blade seemed eager to bury itself in the king’s flesh, stopping only when the quillion hit his spine.

I dropped the padded shirt I had been cradling in the crook of my left arm and backed a step away from the king. His hands dropped to his sides and then he turned to face me. He opened his mouth, a look of curiosity and surprise on his face. A bright bubble of blood formed over his lips and then burst, a trail of crimson threading down his beard. For a moment I thought I had missed his heart and that even with such a terrible wound the king would live, that I would die instead. Christian son of Rorik held up a hand, made a fist and shook it at me, and then his legs collapsed under him and he fell, the floor shaking as his huge body crumpled and landed at my feet.

I had imagined this scene many times over the previous days. I had seen myself standing over the royal corpse and giving a speech, telling the king that he had wasted his hour sitting upon thrones and horses, pretending to lead the kingdom but going nowhere at all. I had imagined how I would tell him that we philosophers now march over him into the future; we tread upon his bones and shake the dust of him off our shoes. But I felt nothing of triumph, and no gloating lecture to the fallen tyrant was on my lips. I felt a vague sense of empty release, no more.

“That was not so difficult,” I said, and then the king coughed, a mouthful of blood spraying onto the fine Turkish carpet. The king’s right hand opened and he reached out suddenly to catch me by the ankle. There was a horrible, hateful look in his eye. I tried to pull free of his grip and he groaned, still holding on to me. Kicking at him put me off my balance and I tumbled forward to land on his bloody back. The king coughed again as I pushed myself away, my hand on the hilt of the dagger.

Then the king sighed, a high-pitched sound almost of satisfaction, and he was dead. I rolled off his corpse and lay on my back beside him. Men called out in the distance, fear in their voices. The air was hazy and ashen and it was difficult to breathe. I sat up.

“Father?”

It was the prince. He stood in the doorway, half dressed, his hair in a tangle. A fur cloak fell over one shoulder and he held a rapier in his left hand.

“Soren? Is that the king? Is that my father?”

He came into the room and knelt by his father’s head. His hand touched the king’s face and then his fingertips lightly followed a path down the king’s back to the handle of the dagger.

“Oh, my poor lord,” Christian said. “This is a most foul murder. Most foul.”

He raised his right hand and touched his bloody fingertips to his cheek.

“I am king now. I am king. Am I not king?”

Christian turned to me and narrowed his eyes. I noticed the smell of wine on his breath.

“How long ago did you find him?”

“Find him? It was but a moment ago, my lord.” I put a hand on the prince’s arm. “Christian, I mourn with you. This sight is miserable.”

“Was any man with him?”

“He was as you see him, my lord. Is he truly dead?”

“Aye, he is. The noble lion of Denmark hath fallen, Soren. Oh, treachery! Look you here! A knife in his back, and he unarmed. This was done by a man my father trusted, a false man.”

“Perhaps.” I moved away from father and son, getting my feet under me. Something else fell outside the chamber and I thought of escape.

“My lord, we must leave the castle. The fire will consume us, I fear.”

The prince looked down and stroked his father’s hair.

“A fell wound, this. Stabbed from behind, a cowardly murder. The man whose hand was on this knife is no man at all, but a worm, a craven snake crawling on his belly. Oh, it hath made me mad, Soren! And now I am king. My wrath is the force of law. Here he lies, he who was Denmark, and now here am I, and I am Denmark.”

Christian leaned over his father’s back and pulled the dagger free. Blood ran down the blade and for a moment I remembered how it felt to thrust it into the king’s flesh, and my vision swam as if I were swooning. The moment passed. Christian held the dagger at arm’s length.

“It were better my father had died in the fire than be given this coward’s death,” he said. “It is an insult to the man he was, to the life he lived.”

“Was it so unmanly a death, my lord?”

“It is to spit upon the king to do this! It is to deny his manhood! See you, he was putting on his armor to march forth against an enemy, and that very enemy kills him at the only moment the king will be vulnerable.”

“His yeoman, maybe?”

“Nay, his yeoman is dead. I saw his body in the corridor. This was some other foe, some coward in the castle.”

“My lord, we had best flee this castle.”

“You think me a coward? I am king.”

“My lord, the castle is burning. I am afraid, and I admit to it. Stay if you will, my lord, but prithee let Soren escape.”

“Escape to your bright future?”

“I know not what you mean.”

“I have not forgotten our last conversation.”

“Nor have I, my lord.”

“I declared you no Dane.”

“Then I beg your leave to go, my lord.”

“Are you not my friend, Soren?”

“My lord, I have ever hoped I was.”

“Then look at this dagger!”

“My lord?”

“Look you here, this is a Swiss bodkin. All of Bernardo’s officers carry such weapons. They have betrayed us! I was right not to trust them.”

Christian stood and looked down upon his father’s corpse. He let drop the dagger and cast aside his own rapier. Crossing the room, he reached into the armoire to take up his father’s great sword.

“I am king now,” he said. “I am Christian son of Christian. It is my sacred duty to revenge my father. Come, Soren. We shall find the traitors.”

“My lord, the Swiss have all left the castle.”

“Have they? You see how craven they prove themselves in a true crisis. Well, we shall find where these dogs are hid and I will play the avenger. Come.”

He pushed me into the corridor. I saw a figure coming through the smoke from the direction of the great hall. The figure came closer and called out.

“Who’s there?”

“Nay, who is there?” Christian answered, pulling at me to stand behind him. “Answer me!”

“I am Tomas, officer of General Bernardo’s,” the man said. I made out the black and yellow of his armor. Tomas had taken off his helm and carried it in his left hand.

“I am Christian the Dane.”

“Ah, I have been sent to find you, my lord. Is the king with you?”

“The king? The king is with you, but he is not with me.”

Tomas was only a few steps away now. He was a young man, no older than me, with golden blond hair and blue eyes.

“Prince, I know not what you mean,” he said.

“I think you do.”

The Switzer shrugged. Perhaps he had been told that Christian’s brain had become addled. Perhaps he had no natural curiosity. Tomas opened his mouth to say something, but before he spoke a word Christian brought his father’s sword up and swung it hard against Tomas’s neck, severing his head from his body in one blow. His head tumbled toward me and his body collapsed where he stood.

“My lord,” I said. “What bloody deed is this?”

“This dog was sent to scent me out. You heard him. And now we are sent to find this dog’s master. Come, Soren.”

Christian bent, took Tomas’s head by his golden hair, and began walking down the corridor toward the entrance hall. I followed close behind and tried not to look at the severed head dangling from the prince’s hand. We made our way through the rolling smoke into the courtyard. Christian paused at the body of Francisco the bear.

“What is this?”

“A bear, my lord. From Finland.”

“Alas, poor bear. What manner of beast would slaughter you, old Ursus? It is against the very will of God.”

“Perhaps, my lord. Who can know the will of God?”

Christian dropped Tomas’s head and took me by the collar with his bloody hand. He shook me hard and looked wildly around.

“Oh, I know you and your sciences. You would say that my thinking these thoughts is proof that God allows it.”

“My lord, we should leave the castle.”

“Your sciences lead to a world where earthly kings, and even God Himself, is of less import than a bear.”

“My lord, I am as fond of bears as any. The castle is burning. Prithee, let us away.”

“God’s wounds, Soren! I see the castle burning! It is not the end of civilization. But a world where everything is equal in being nothing but a measurable phenomenon, or a bear? I do not want that. You do not want that. No man wants that.”

“My lord, if we leave the castle immediately, I swear that I shall forever place man and God above bears.”

“Your word upon it.”

“My word upon it.”

Christian retrieved the severed head and led me through the great gate. We were out of the castle and onto the grounds within the ramparts.

“Where is my mother?” Christian took a step back toward the castle. I put a hand on his breast to stop him.

“Your father sent the queen away to town as soon as the fire was discovered,” I said. “Your mother will be safe in Elsinore. I suspect she is at the church, my lord.”

“With the treacherous Swiss murderers,” he said. He turned about and we marched along the foot of the battlement to the great portcullis. Most of the Swiss had by now ridden over the drawbridge to safety on the far side of the moat, but General Bernardo was just beyond the portcullis with half a dozen of his guards. Bernardo saw the prince and dismounted his horse. Christian pushed me to one side and ran at Bernardo, raising his father’s sword and holding Tomas’s head out before him like a lantern.