The Astrologer

{ Chapter Five }

A MORE DANGEROUS ENEMY


IN THE MORNING I CAST THE KING’S HOROSCOPE, and then my own. The Pars Fortunae looked ill for both of us and the planets were uncertain, but in any case I would not act before Torstensson’s return. There was little for me to do until then, as I had no intention of going into Elsinore, and so I left my room to seek the kitchens. My chamber was near the armory, and as I passed by it I heard the unmistakable steel-on-steel ring of swordplay. I paused at the open door and saw within Prince Christian, practicing at the rapier against the king’s master-at-arms.

Some men are said to be born with a sword in hand. Christian was one of those men, as was his father. The prince was intelligent and had been mostly mindful of his studies under my care, but he always showed the greatest diligence for his fencing lessons.

“Fencing is a dance, a felicitous glory,” he would say to me, excusing his tardiness to a lesson in Greek or mathematics. The prince’s face shone with sweat, his eyes burned bright, and he would mime a series of feints and thrusts before me as I waited with some impatience for him to sit down and pick up a book. More often than I can remember did young Christian offer to teach me fencing.

“Every nobleman wears a sword and knows at least how to heft it,” he said.

“I am no nobleman.”

“You are noble in your heart, and it is such a wondrous pastime, Soren! Come, there are blunt wooden swords and helms and gloves and I promise not to harm you ever.”

“My lord, it is presently the hour to study Hera*us.”

And so it went during Christian’s adolescence. I had not seen him fence in a long time and it gave me some pleasure to watch him that morning against the master-at-arms. Christian’s every movement was a grace no matter if he was fencing or walking or swatting at a fly. He had never drawn blood nor been injured in a real duel, for what man would dare challenge the king’s son in earnest?

Christian cut a wide arc with his sword to knock aside the master’s high thrust.

“Do not parry so wildly,” the master-at-arms barked. “Use your dagger, boy; that’s why you’re holding it. You’ll exhaust yourself and allow your enemy to cut you into a feast for his hounds.”

Christian growled at the master and circled, moving counterclockwise. The master growled back and Christian threw aside his dagger, leaping forward to seize the hilt of the master’s rapier and fighting to prise it from his grasp. The master let his own dagger fall and mirrored Christian’s attack, the men now chest-to-chest, both struggling to wrest his opponent’s sword away. With a cry the combatants wrenched and separated, each holding the other’s rapier.

“You are better at left-hand seizure than many,” the master said. “Most Danes are familiar with di Grassi, but few have read Didier’s manual.”

“Has my father read Didier, do you think?”

“Very like, my lord. Do you wish to play with more French tactics, then?”

“We have played enough this morning.” Christian wiped his brow on his sleeve. “I thank you, good master. We can discuss my footwork tomorrow.”

“Nay, my lord, by your leave. The king commands me that I shall work you tomorrow with broadsword from horseback, as you are to ride into battle with him soon.”

“Ah. Yes. Well, then I shall see you tomorrow.” Christian gave his rapier and gloves to the master and turned to leave, seeing me then standing in the doorway.

“Soren! Well met. How do you this morning?” He ran, nearly, to take my arm and propel me down the hall away from the armory.

“My lord, are you going off to war?”

“Tush, Soren. It is nothing.”

“My lord—”

“Enough, I say. Have you eaten?”

“I was even now headed to the cooks.”

“I am famished. We have battled since dawn, the master-at-arms and I. Come, I recall the pantry lies this way.”

We walked down the long hallway. Rays of pure white from the windows along the eastern wall streamed across our path and the polished marble floor reflected hard, blinding light in rectangular patches every eight paces. The air in the hallway was alternately warm and cold as we hurried along from sunglow to shadow, my face and hands heated and cooled and then heated again in a pleasant sort of way.

Christian was but half dressed in breeches, stockings, slippers, and an untucked blouse like a page roused from sleep, but everyone knew his face and all bowed low, generals and gentlemen and chambermaids, as we passed along. It was much as it had been in Copenhagen when I had tutored Christian, before we took our separate paths. During the walk the prince told a long and involved comic story with a baldly obscene climax that set us both laughing.

“That is one of Sir Tristram’s old stories,” I said.

“Oh. You have heard it.”

“My lord, you tell it excellently well and I’ve not heard that one in a decade.”

“You are too generous in your praise. Well, if I cannot feed your organ of amusement, I can at least feed your belly. Here is the kitchen.”

“At last!”

Like schoolboys, we fought to get through the door first. When the cooks saw who had come to their kitchen, they made a great fuss over Christian, preparing a massive tray of cold meat, bread, butter, and pottage with honey and almonds. I took the tray and followed Christian into the depths of the kitchen. We wove our way around large steaming vats of broth, ovens hot and primed for rising loaves of bread that I could smell but not see, a boy plucking countless chickens at a low bench, and servants chopping vegetables and roots and I know not what else. We exited the kitchens into the south corridor and followed a stair up two flights and walked down another hallway until at last we were in the castle’s map room, a square hall containing three tables as large as beds. The walls were covered with wooden cabinets in which rolled maps of all lands and seas were stored. A great mural depicting Denmark, northern Europe, the Baltic Sea, and Scandinavia was painted on one wall, between a pair of narrow windows.

Christian and I were alone there. We dragged one of the massive tables over to a window where the sun could shine down upon us as we sat on the tabletop and ate our breakfast. I shaded my eyes with a hand and looked out the window, down into the courtyard at the center of the castle. At one end of the yard was the great iron gate that led out of the keep. At the other end was a circular marble planter two yards across, in which a maple stood thirty or so feet tall, branches naked to the winter. A single leaf still clung to the tree up near the crown, a crimson and gold leaf of some beauty, startling and vivid in that season of frost, snow, and ice. Soon the king’s army would sally forth into the snow and ice, carrying Prince Christian into battle.

“Is it true, my lord, what the master-at-arms said? You will go to war soon?”

“Aye, Soren. Do you not think it would be fine to ride out alongside my father?”

“I am a philosopher, not a knight.”

“I am crown prince of Denmark.”

“Aye.”

We were silent some minutes, eating our bread and meat. A wind came up roughly and rattled the windows. I watched the maple in the courtyard pull against the wind, and then the solitary crimson leaf shook free from its branch and the wind carried it up, over the castle roofs and out of sight.

“I am not afraid, you know.”

“My lord?”

“I am not afraid to go to war. I can handle sword and horse. My father and his Swiss are terrifying on the field, and if there is an enemy, they will be mostly peasant farmers armed with hoes and kitchen knives. You need not worry over my safety.”

I thought the prince protested too much, but I only nodded. The king would certainly surround his only son with his best warriors. Still, I was fond of Christian, no matter my feelings against the king. It would grieve me were the prince to fall so young.

“If you do go out, you go with my prayers, my lord.”

“I thank you. You have ever been a good friend, Soren.”

His hands were shaking, a slight tremor I do not think he noticed.

“You will of course be victorious at your father’s side.”

“Yes. I doubt it nothing. My pity goes to the footmen, for they shall be very cold in this weather.” He laughed and looked away, at the mural of Denmark beside us. “I should not like to be cold.”

“Nay, my lord.”

“Say, my mother comes this day. You have heard this?”

“Aye, my lord.”

The queen was expected to arrive after sundown with her entourage. Sir Tristram and the chamberlain pressed the entire castle staff into heavy service to turn one wing of the fortress into something resembling a royal palace.

“She brings a great load of her own furniture, no doubt,” Christian said. “My mother will not enjoy Kronberg any better than you do. She prefers a soft bed, with fragrant herbs to sweeten the air of her closet. I dare say my father must restore order quickly to Denmark, else my mother shall become a more dangerous enemy to him than any rebellious lords. I expect she brings with her the entire kitchen staff from Copenhagen as well.”

“Then the meals will be fine while your father roots out his enemies. That, at least, I can endure.”

“Ah, yes.” He frowned.

“My lord?”

“Have you not received your new assignment from my father?”

“Not yet.”

Christian said nothing. I waited in his silence, growing ever more tense, until it became clear that he would make no move on his own to dispel the mystery.

“I am not coming with the army, my lord?”

“You? Certainly not. But you may not be so comfortably lodged as you are now. Nay, I will say no more on it. You must await your audience with my father.”

His father was a rat, a lizard in a crown. I could not think what torture the king would thoughtlessly assign to me, what meaningless task to polish the mirror of his vanity. The prince hinted that travel was involved. That would be most inconvenient to my cause. Well, the king would have to die before he sent me packing off to God knew where on God knew what mission.

I watched Christian as he ate. Born under Saturn, the prince’s humors were of the complexion of earth, which many astrologers call a flaw of character, but I do not. Saturn made the prince distrustful of the nights and he was visited by melancholy, which is troublesome in men of lower birth than the prince. He had a good memory and always did well with mathematics. He was graceful, elegant, and neat; not much like his father. I had considered how the death of the king would grieve him, how I would inflict an awful suffering upon Christian’s young heart. Yet it must be so, and the prince’s cargo of woe would be the balance of my own, and I thought that I would at least be able to condole with him honestly enough, for the loss of my master Tycho had been the loss of my spiritual father. I had worshipped at the feet of Brahe just as the prince worshipped at the king’s feet, and as I believed then that Tycho was a man who stood closer to the angels than the king could ever dream of standing, I imagined my loss to be far greater than Prince Christian’s. Thus did I console myself and eat a pleasant meal with the man whose father I planned to murder. The syllogism formed of its own accord.

We spoke no more of battle nor the mysterious task to be set before me, and returned to the subject of Kirsten, the queen. It had been only a handful of days since Christian had seen her, but he talked as if she had not kissed his cheek in a twelvemonth.

“There will be a banquet tonight in my mother’s honor.” Christian placed a hand upon my arm. “It would please me if you were to sit with the family, Soren, at my side. You know the queen is fond enough of you. She will enjoy your conversation at supper.”

Kirsten would be irritable and sharp of tongue, I thought, unhappy to join her husband in Kronberg. The queen would resent being called from court to be held, bored and lonely, at a remote fortress far from the glittering life of Copenhagen. The king did not know which of his noble courtiers and cousins he could trust and so he was besieged. It was natural that he would place his family inside defensible walls, yet his wife would not see it that way. I almost pitied the king; the queen’s wrath was a rival to his own.

“I will be honored to sit at the crown’s end of the table,” I said. The greater trust of the king would be an advantage to me.

“Excellent. Now I must join my father in his office. Lord Ulfeldt makes a report on enemies of the throne, and I ought to be present. I will see you at supper?”

“Before then, my lord. I will be in the great hall to welcome the queen when she arrives this evening.”

“Of course. Until then, Soren.”

“My lord.”

Christian hurried out, still disheveled with his untucked blouse and unruled hair. He had left it to me to return the dishes to the kitchen. I did not leave the map room right away, however. I spent some time alone there, seeking the charts of the isle of Hven, where I had once labored happily with Tycho at the Uraniborg observatory. The maps of that island were seemingly gone, or misfiled somewhere. I abandoned my search, vexed at the missing maps and troubled by some ill feeling that I could not pin down.