Sky's Dark Labyrinth (17 page)

The splintered wood pulled at the soles of Kepler's stockinged feet as he tiptoed up the stairs. In one hand, a feeble candlelight writhed in the draught from the attic rooms. In the other, he held a wooden tripod, and a most precious leather tube containing a pair of ground glass lenses.

It was the Duke of Bavaria's optical tube; he had arrived at court carrying the instrument, and for as long as the anxious political
negotiations
continued, Kepler could make use of it. The Duke's Chancellor, Hewart von Hohenburg, had brought the tube to him, carefully explaining that a Father Guldin had pointed out Kepler's need.

Father Guldin. The Jesuits again
.

They had asked for nothing in return, though they must know politeness alone would compel him to send them his observations. As much as he wanted to believe that they were motivated solely by their brotherhood in astronomy, since Grienberger's attempt to convert him in the wake of Susanna's birth he could not shake his unease at their patronage. Their fears for Susanna had been entirely unjustified, he thought with some pride. She was strong and clever, with brothers who were equally robust.

He had left his shoes at the bottom of the stairs in the hope of being quiet. Frau Bezold's footsteps often woke him when she rose early to begin her chores, and the last thing he wanted was to disturb Barbara. For once, she had quietly dropped off to sleep and was now snoring softly in the marital bed.

At the top of the landing, he used his elbow to slip the latch on the back room and crept inside. As he did so, the room filled with
movement
and an awful wailing. Kepler felt the breath rush from his lungs as the spectre rose into the view. It was a seething mass of bedsheets.

As suddenly as the terrible noise had started, so it stopped, and Kepler found himself staring at a familiar face, old and pinched, topped with a skullcap of muslin that almost hid the wiry crown of grey hair. ‘What are you doing here?' the face demanded.

‘I prefer to ask you that question, Frau Bezold. This is not your room.'

‘It's quieter in here at the back. I can sleep better.' She pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders. As she did so, a small wooden crucifix escaped the fabric of her nightwear.

Kepler stared, shocked by the Catholic symbol. The housemaid tugged the blanket harder to cover the necklace, as if to remove it from sight would erase significance.

‘Frau Bezold …' He set down the candle. It flared briefly and then settled to a steady flame again.

‘It's the only way since Gerhard died. I like to talk to him on Sundays, but when they stopped us going to church … How else could I … Don't you miss the sacrament?'

‘I've learned to live without it.'

‘Well, I can't. It's all the same God, isn't it? They make it easy for you to change, you know. Just go to the church and answer a few questions. It's not as different as you think.'

Kepler sighed. ‘You must follow your conscience. But you are wrong to think that the two Churches are in any way similar.'

She sniffed loudly, readjusting the blanket again. ‘So, what are you doing in here?'

He almost laughed at her defiance. ‘I have the new instrument from Italy.' He rolled the red leather tube in his hands, admiring its embossed feathers. It felt incongruously light for something so important.

‘Fancy,' she said. ‘What does it do?'

‘Makes far away things seem closer. They say it reveals new wonders in the heavens.'

‘What good is that? There's nothing wrong with what we've always been taught. Earth lies at the centre with seven heavenly spheres above our heads and seven of the Devil below our feet,' she recited. ‘How we behave in this life determines whether we go up or down in the next. Why change things?'

‘Because it doesn't work. Here, hold this,' he handed her the
instrument
, ‘and don't drop it.'

He busied himself with the tripod as she lifted the tube to her eye and swept it around the room. ‘I can't see a thing.'

He took it back and set it on the tripod, swinging it gingerly to test it was mounted securely. With a grunt of satisfaction, he pulled open the window, admitting gusts of cold air into the room.

Frau Bezold made a
brrrrrr
sound. ‘I'm going to bed, it's too cold.'

‘Aren't you even slightly curious?' he indicated the leather tube.

‘What good will it do me?'

‘It will show God's realm to you. How can you not want to see that?'

‘When you get to my age, you're glad of every postponement.' She shuffled from the room.

Kepler aimed the tube at the shining orb of Jupiter but when he squatted to look through, there was nothing but blackness. He nudged the tube. Still blackness. Again and again he tried, the movements becoming a little larger, a little more desperate. Occasionally
something
would dart across his line of vision, but he could not stop the tube in time to catch it.

He stood up, tight across the shoulders, and wrung his hands to warm them up, then realigned the instrument. This time Jupiter sprang out clearly. Kepler stared in amazement as four dimmer points also solidified in front of his eyes. He wanted to laugh and cry simultaneously. The last time he had felt this way was when Barbara gave birth to Ludwig.

As he looked, he noticed that Jupiter appeared bigger than the four new stars, more of a disc than a spot of light. It was said that the new stars moved around Jupiter, creating their own system of revolution, and that if he watched all night he could see them move.

Did they, too, move in ellipses? Could his laws of planetary motion be applied to them? It seemed a reasonable assumption. To prove it, he would need someone to devise a way of measuring the positions with this new device.

He felt a sudden pang. Tycho. What would he have made of all this?

A new thought chased away the old. He hurried to the children's bedroom and woke Friedrich and Susanna, shushing them to silence. ‘I have something for you to see,' he whispered, ushering them upstairs as quietly as possible.

Inside the darkened attic room, he placed a chair for Susanna to look through the tube. Friedrich traced his hands along a leg of the tripod.

‘Don't move it, son. It must be completely still or your sister will see nothing.'

The boy was a miniature version of his mother, blessed with her apple cheeks and chubby fingers. Kepler could not help but smile whenever Friedrich was near, wrapping his inquisitive nature around whatever was at hand, just as he himself had behaved as a child.

Susanna stood on the chair, holding its back, and studiously squinted into the eyepiece. She reminded Kepler in so many ways of Regina at that age: her earnest behaviour and her growing imitation of adults. She had even taken over the care of Astrid the rag doll, when her big sister left to be married.

Kepler stood poised next to her. ‘Be patient, Susanna, it's difficult to see. You must be very still.'

‘Papa, I can see them.'

‘My turn, my turn, my turn.' Friedrich rocked the chair.

‘Careful!' scolded his sister.

Kepler lifted her down and helped Friedrich clamber up. It was obvious his sister's two extra years of growth were an advantage. So Kepler held him by the chest and lifted him up, but the boy dissolved into giggles rather than making a serious attempt at astronomy.

‘That tickles.'

‘Oh, does it? I thought this was tickling.' Kepler increased the pressure of his fingers into Friedrich's soft body, imitating Frau Bezold kneading bread. His son wriggled in his arms, squealing in delight.

Susanna joined them, adding her voice to the growing cacophony. Together they tumbled to the mattress, lost in their pretend wrestling match.

‘Enough!' A sharp voice cut through their play. ‘Enough, I say!'

Barbara stood at the door, hair tousled, a smelly tallow candle in one hand; two-year-old Ludwig balanced on her hip. Panels in the side of her nightdress showed where she had adjusted it to accommodate her new bulk, as if she were still pregnant with Ludwig. His little foot dug into her midriff, pushing the soft fat into a foothold.

‘We were just playing,' said Kepler.

‘
Playing
? At this time of night? I'll never get them back to sleep now.'

‘Barbara, this is a historic occasion. The discovery of these new stars is worthy of celebration.'

‘Only in your head. It's a fantasy. It means nothing in reality because it changes nothing. Nothing is different for us. Nothing.'

‘I should have known better than to expect a simple country girl to understand.' Kepler pushed past her to stamp as heavily as he could down the stairs. ‘You think about nothing beyond your own reach. Well, there's more to this world than eating. Our minds must be
exercised
or we're no better than the beasts.'

‘That's right, walk away from us, just like you always do. Go and shut yourself away and daydream.'

The sound of the children sobbing followed him the rest of the way down to his study.

At court the next day, Kepler struggled with a fearsome headache. For an instant, he thought it might be clearing when von Wackenfels bounced up to him flapping a sheet of paper, calling excitedly, ‘My friend, I have more good news!'

Kepler shifted the charts he was carrying and took the letter.

‘It's from Galileo,' said von Wackenfels. ‘His latest discovery,
apparently
, but we need your help to tell us what it is.'

Momentarily flattered, Kepler scanned the words. Addressed to Rudolph, they were full of supplication and praise, and he felt a tremendous rage against the Italian.

Why is he not writing these things to me?
Kepler thought.
Have I not been the staunchest champion of his claims? Have I not sent him a copy of my
Astronomia Nova?
Why does he favour me with so little in return?
Galileo's one and only letter to him had been a brush-off, the words guarded if not wholly evasive.

As Kepler fought to read on, his fingers clenched the paper into creases. Then he arrived at the discovery:
Smaismrmilmepoetaleumibunenugttaurias
. Kepler fought to suppress his anger as he stared at the nonsense word, coded to protect Galileo from further attacks, yet ready to prove his priority.

‘Galileo teases us, eh? We need you're brain, Johannes, to uncover what it is he is telling us.'

Kepler's first instinct had been to refuse.
Why should Galileo treat them all like puppets?
But just as he was about to thrust the letter back to von Wackenfels, he realised that uncovering the message would be a victory.
Yes! Unmask the discovery and send it back to Galileo. Perhaps then he will treat me with more respect
.

Kepler took the note home and crept into his study, anxious to avoid Barbara after last night, and spent the rest of the day pushing the letters of the anagram around. He tried a few words of Latin, kept the good ones and returned the bad ones to the melting pot and tried again. If only Galileo's handwriting were clearer; it was difficult to tell ‘u' from ‘v'. He broke the nib on his quill jabbing it into the desk in frustration when one attempted solution ran out of letters at the last minute. He spent the next few minutes refashioning it with a desk knife. He was dimly aware of the household beyond the closed door but refused all food in order to work on undisturbed.

Then, as night fell, his excitement mounted. This time he knew he was close to the answer. In the same way that he could sense when numbers and patterns were about to fall into place, even before his conscious mind could see the solution, so the letters suddenly felt right.

Then it happened.

Salve umbistineum geminatum Martia proles
. There was something barbaric about the Latin verse but it was a solution: Hail, burning twin, offspring of Mars. The meaning was clear: Mars has moons as well.

Exhausted, he let the quill drop and made his way to the attic. It was difficult to locate Mars, but he caught it close to the chimneystack of a house on the opposite side of the road. Lining up the optical tube, he managed a long enough look to be certain of one thing: there were no moons dancing attendance to the planet's red disc. No moons. He had not solved Galileo's puzzle.

Disappointed, he drifted though the house, looking for Barbara. He found her squeezed into a chair in the front room, reading her prayer book. He edged towards her, knowing better than to share his troubles. When she did not shuffle her legs away, he settled at her feet.

‘The children missed saying good-night to you earlier,' she said softly.

‘I'll make it up to them tomorrow. Did they say their prayers?'

‘Of course.'

‘You are a good mother to them.'

After a moment, she rested her hand on his shoulder.

The crowd that gathered around the makeshift stage in the market square was rowdy, as usual. The leading actor preened in the evening sunlight, wearing a gaudy suit of orange silk that played tricks on Kepler's eyes, and a white hat with enormous plumage. The outfit was as incongruous to his role as a sea captain as it was in keeping with his status in the troupe.

Those closest hurled abuse or encouragement depending upon their mood, and it occurred to Kepler that the spectacle was only one step removed from the bear baiting that took place in some quarters of the city.

Ordinarily he would not be here, but Hewart von Hohenburg had suggested they spend the evening together, starting with the street theatre. Kepler never missed the chance to meet up, having long ago accepted his predilection for the company of those born into a higher station.

‘And what brings the Chancellor of Bavaria to Prague on this
occasion
? Apart from bringing me the optical tube, of course.' Kepler looked at his friend, hoping that his joke would register, but Hewart looked tired and unusually jumpy.