Sky's Dark Labyrinth (29 page)

Kepler was dreading the journey to come: several days in a freezing carriage skidding across muddy roads that had hardened into glass. He had tugged on two pairs of hose that morning in preparation, yet still felt cold at the thought.

Susanna secured the last few buttons on his jerkin and smoothed the material along his torso. ‘After all these years, I thought you'd have fattened up.'

‘And, after all these years, my wife, I thought you'd have stopped worrying.' He drew her close and kissed her, marvelling at the thrill in it. A thrill that fourteen years of marriage, six children – three surviving – had yet to erode.

They had celebrated the marriage with a feast at the Sign of the Lion Inn where Emperor Matthias's representatives had caused a stunned silence when they presented Kepler with an extravagant goblet as a wedding present.

After all these years, he could no longer bring to mind the dress she had worn, except to say that it had been beautiful, but he vividly remembered looking into her hazel-flecked eyes and thinking to himself,
I am reborn
.

‘I'm sure everything will be just fine,' she said, relaxing into his arms.

‘The tables are twenty-five years late,' Kepler said wearily. ‘There have been two emperors since Rudolph.'

‘So why must they be called
The Rudolphine Tables
? Why not
The Keplerian Tables
? After all the work you've put into them.'

‘It is those in power who are remembered, not the people who do the work. I wonder how Emperor Ferdinand will receive me.'

‘Your exile from Graz was almost thirty years ago; he'll have forgotten all about it. You've said it yourself: he was little more than a
boy. And no man could have worked harder than you. With all your other books you've not been idle. I'm more worried about the journey. There are soldiers everywhere.'

‘The worst of the fighting is far from here, and I have all the
necessary
travel papers. I'll be home with gingerbread before Christmas.' He released her and, peering in the hall mirror, fixed his large floppy beret. The winter light gave the polished metal plate little illumination to work with. He appeared but a shadow, with a flowing beard of grey.

Susanna held open a fur-lined coat and slid the weight of it around his shoulders. He pulled on gloves, covering the liver spots that now mingled with the pox scars on his hands.

‘The children will miss you.' She pulled him tight again. ‘I'll miss you.'

For a moment, Kepler feared he was doing the wrong thing. He suddenly doubted his own promise to return by Christmas. What was he doing marching into the Palace of the most powerful Roman Catholic after the Pope? Ferdinand knew only too well Kepler's staunch views against papal authority. He had not appointed Kepler to be his imperial mathematician but inherited him out of necessity because the astronomer was still compiling the long-promised tables. It was a task that Kepler had pursued hesitantly, allowing himself to be freely distracted by his own quests.

If he did not set off now, he never would. Kepler kissed Susanna again as he opened the door.

‘Johannes, wait.' Susanna handed him his cushion.  

‘What would I do without you?'  

At the city gate, the carriage was flagged to a halt. A scruffy guard smelling of beer cast a suspicious eye around the compartment. Kepler proffered his papers. Although he doubted the man could read, he trusted the red wax of the ducal seal would suffice.  

The crack of fracturing wood split the air. Kepler looked up to see that another city guard had smashed open a newly arrived couple's travelling chest and was rooting through their clothes. In grave triumph, he lifted a Lutheran Bible from the muddle. Swaggering to the brazier, he dropped it into the flames.  

Kepler's guard dropped the papers back inside the carriage and turned to help his colleague. Together they beat the couple, making no
distinction between the man and the woman, then pushed them on their way, bleeding and with their clothes bundled in their arms.

At night, curled into one strange bed after another as the journey continued, Kepler fought back the memory of their broken faces. And he dreamed of Ferdinand, as he had known him back in Graz; just twenty-two but puffy-faced with a drooping nose. Ferdinand used to twirl his waxed moustache in a comic affectation of boredom as he watched the Lutherans being converted one by one, but it had all changed when Kepler stepped before the panel. Now Ferdinand was glowering at him, anticipating the disobedience of his mathematician – who did not disappoint. Kepler always awoke at the moment he voiced his rejection of Rome, clammy and panting.

Susanna was right, he kept telling himself, it had all been a long time ago. But in the back of his mind, he knew that if he could still remember that day, so could Ferdinand.

Solid banks of white clouds covered Prague, as if God had blocked the city from His view. Armoured men roamed the streets, stopping people at random to check their destination and intentions. Kepler's carriage took its place in the queue of traffic on the bridge where imperial guards were searching all vehicles.

Today there were some grisly additions spiked and mounted on the balustrade. Twelve weathered skulls glittered in the frosty morning – twelve of the most infamous ‘traitors' executed by Ferdinand upon his ascendancy. On that day, twenty-seven Protestant leaders had lost their lives: most beheaded; three hanged. The heads of the most hated offenders were displayed on the bridge as a grim warning to all who held Lutheran beliefs.

Kepler had been reluctant to believe the news when he'd heard it in Linz. Now here was the ghastly confirmation. He averted his gaze whenever the halting progress of the coach brought another desiccated skull hovering alongside the window. However, one proved impossible to ignore. A rusty nail protruded from the cracked forehead, supporting a few withered fibres that had once been a tongue.

Kepler's stomach fell away. The gossip in Linz had specifically described this mutilation. That tongue had negotiated his introduction to Tycho Brahe; it had appeased the Danish astronomer when a fever
had rendered Kepler irrational; and finally it had brokered the
reconciliation
when Brahe had moved to Prague. Had it not been for that tongue, Kepler would not be here today presenting
The Rudolphine Tables
. The tongue and the skull belonged to Jan Jessenius.

Jessenius had inspired an exquisite hatred in Ferdinand because he had united the Bohemian estates into a coherent Lutheran force. After capture and execution, in a disturbing parody of his profession, the anatomist's body had been quartered and hung around the city.

Could it have escaped Ferdinand's spies that during Kepler's time in Prague he had been a close associate of Jessenius?

The carriage passed through the search without incident and rumbled on through the traffic to the market square. They passed the town clock, the mechanical Apostles silent for the time being, and approached the overwhelming spires of the Church of Our Lady Before Týn.

Kepler had the driver pull up alongside another waiting carriage. He climbed down to the pavement and straightened his cloak, then reached back inside to retrieve a large leather-bound book.

‘I won't be long,' he said to the driver.

Inside, the church was quiet. A woman sat in the back row gazing at the magnificent altar. Kepler followed her gaze and his jaw dropped.

The portrait of Utraquist leader Georg von Podiebrad that used to hang above the altar had gone, replaced by a statue of the Madonna. The Virgin Mary's tall figure was adorned with a crown and surrounded by an aureole of gold. In her arms, Jesus was blessing his mother.

Down on one knee at the base of the altar was a broad-shouldered man, dressed head to toe in black. His head was bowed in prayer. Kepler bobbed his own head at the altar and made his way into the transept, to a particular marble slab. It lay horizontally on the floor, flush with the other flagstones, and was inscribed with letters that had been painted in gold:
TYCHO BRAHE
.

Kepler kneeled before his old master and lifted the book. ‘It is done,' he whispered. ‘Your observations, my mathematics – just as you always envisaged. Your life's work will live on now and provide the most
accurate
planetary tables in all history. You helped me unlock the elliptical orbits and the movements of the planets. You may not have appreciated it at the time but perhaps now, looking down from above, you can see
them too. While our own world becomes more dissonant every day, thanks to you I have seen the greater harmony of the cosmos.'

Kepler laid the book on the gravestone, clasped his hands and prayed silently.

When he returned to the nave, the book back under his arm, the man at the altar was just getting to his feet. Something about him aroused Kepler's curiosity and he hung back, watching from the shadows. The man was even more powerful than at first sight, martial in his bearing. Kepler guessed he was in his mid forties.

The man crossed himself and strode down the aisle. As he reached the rear pews, the woman dropped to her knees before him and kissed his hand. He accepted the gesture and moved on. As he was about to leave, a bent old man shuffled through the doors and instantly came to attention. The man nodded his appreciation but did not break his stride.

‘Who was that?' Kepler asked the driver once outside, indicating the carriage that was leaving.

‘That, my friend, is General Wallenstein, saviour of Prague, defender of Catholic pride.' The driver melodramatically waved his arm.

Conqueror of vast tracts of Protestant lands
, thought Kepler. Wallenstein was a war hero here because of his military successes against the Protestant estates. By way of reward for his victories, Ferdinand had given him the Duchy of Friedland, north of Prague.

Kepler watched the carriage trundle away. As it passed, pedestrians would occasionally look up and point, or applaud.

Kepler heaved himself into his own vehicle. ‘To the palace, please.'

Turning up Hradčany Hill the palace faced them, looking more like a fortress than a palace. With guards stationed at the locked gates and on the ramparts, there were even lookouts on the astronomer's tower that rose from Rudolph's former Arts Chamber.

The soldiers were not needed for defence – the city was safe now – so this was a show of strength, a display that Prague was the iron heart of Ferdinand's Empire, united in its Catholicism.

Kepler imagined a noose slipping around his neck.

Children appeared to be running the Imperial Court now. Worse still, children pretending to be adults. The austere cut of their clothing
seemed at odds with their youthful faces and they looked more concerned with their appearance than with government.

Glancing upwards in the reception hall, Kepler expected to see those magnificent arches, but the light was so bad today that the exquisite tracery was lost in the highest vaults. Or was it his eyes?

‘Please wait here. Do you have the book?' The court official was coldly formal. Although he put Kepler on edge, it was preferable to insincerity. He handed over the
Tables
and resigned himself to a long wait.

Watching the toing and froing, Kepler despaired. The officials grimaced at each other and postured in a manner that Kepler had noticed was endemic in young men before the comfort of
accomplishment
softened their intensity. It was no wonder that war was upon them. Not a single one of them here was old enough to foresee the consequences of their actions. Every decision would be taken with
self-righteous
declarations of piety, designed to absolve them from the consideration of any suffering it might cause to others. Thus, the counter-reformation continued its bloody march.

Ironically it had been Kepler's excommunication that saved him when orders banning Lutheran services had arrived in Linz. Pastor Hitzler had been imprisoned; fines were raised on burials and marriage services for Lutherans; and, of course, the schools and churches were closed. Emigration was offered as the only option for those unwilling to convert: but to where? Catholicism had the momentum again. Only the Protestant heartlands were safe these days, or England.

Kepler had slipped through the net. He had made money by
soliciting
gifts from European nobles, sending them lavishly bound copies of his various books and, occasionally, this very Court remembered to pay him.

His mind drifted to Susanna and his cherished family; his second and surely his last: Cordula, with her six-
year-old
girlish chatter; four-year-old Fridmar and his thoughtful – if hesitant – sentences; and finally the somnolent Hildebert, who at three should have been making a lot more trouble than he was. Kepler felt a pang of homesickness and wondered what he was missing. He was becoming increasingly aware of time's passing. At fifty-six, he did not feel particularly old, but he certainly did not feel strong.

‘This way, please.' The court official interrupted his thoughts.

From inside a nearby anteroom another official opened yet another door and wafted through, announcing Johannes Kepler.

Ferdinand was jammed into a wooden throne. The tiny eyes and long nose were those of the boy Kepler remembered, but the once sandy mop of hair had dulled and thinned, and the fading ginger goatee unnaturally lengthened his face. His fleshy body was hidden beneath a gigantic robe of black and gold making his head look too small.

A pair of fawn-coloured pugs engaged in a friendly skirmish near the corner of the room. No one else paid them any attention, but Kepler found them distracting. He dragged his attention back, bowing as deeply as he could. ‘Your Majesty, you are most gracious to receive me.'