Sky's Dark Labyrinth (7 page)

The noises started early as the servants rose to light fires and begin the breakfast preparations. A little later, the sounds of the other assistants rousing themselves after too little sleep would come from the
neighbouring
rooms. What began as soft voices and footsteps on the stone would inevitably rise into the occasional shout or burst of laughter. Sooner or later, someone would drop something, and Kepler would wake up.

But on this particular day, sleep gripped him more tenaciously than usual.

‘Johannes, you've overslept.' Longomontanus was rocking his shoulder.

‘I cannot …'

‘You must get up. The Master is asking for you.'

‘What can he be thinking? I was up again all night working for him.'

‘There are strict timetables here, you know that.'

Kepler managed to hoist himself to a sitting position. He was hot and shivery, his face swollen with phlegm. Longomontanus stepped back from the stale air that escaped the bed.

‘I'm unwell,' said Kepler.

‘It makes no difference.'

Struggling for breath, Kepler pushed himself to his feet and reached for his clothes. He fumbled a few buttons shut on his jacket but left the doublet on the chair. He still wore yesterday's hose, so had only to slide his breeches up his legs. He teetered to his feet.

Tycho was waiting for him downstairs, in conversation with Tengnagel. As Kepler approached, they stopped talking.

‘It has been eight days, Johannes. You owe me an orbit of Mars.'

‘You raise me from my sickbed to mock me?'

‘It was you who made the wager.'

It took Kepler a moment to realise that Tycho was walking away. He forced his aching legs to follow. Tengnagel brought up the rear, making his presence felt only by the confident rhythm of his footsteps.

They reached Tycho's study and went inside. It was a messy place with piles of letters abandoned on the desk and burned-out candle stubs on the mantelpiece, their spent wax hanging like
stalactites
above the hearth. Tycho reached for a metal pitcher on a table and sloshed wine into three silver goblets. ‘You look dreadful, drink
something
.'

It was not until Kepler raised the goblet to his lips that he realised how thirsty he was. He drank deeply, comprehending too late that this was not the watered-down stuff usually served at breakfast.

‘Remember, I talked to you of trust.'

Kepler set down the goblet, nodded stiffly.

‘Tengnagel tells me that you met with The Bear in Prague.'

‘He accosted me.'

‘Quite.'

Kepler glanced at Tengnagel, then back at Tycho. ‘Sir, you must not confuse a chance encounter with sympathy.'

‘You have been a supporter of his in the past,' said Tycho.

‘How I regret the inane letter I once wrote. Sir, you must forgive me for my naivety.'

‘I wonder if the same thinking applies to me?'

Kepler fought a surge of annoyance. ‘There is no one I hold in higher esteem. If you are the king of astronomy, I would willingly be your knight, to stand and serve beside you.'

‘Yet you distance yourself from the work here, preferring to isolate yourself in private studies.'

‘I work on Mars, the task you set me. We both know I am the one to fashion your harvest into a feast.'

‘The task of which you speak would take any single man a decade or more to complete. I need a workforce to split the load and I expect you to be part of that.'

‘You need no workforce to craft this vision. You just need to allow me a key to the ledger room. I must have access to your measurements – all of them.'

‘Then what? You'll solve it all in another eight days?'

Kepler looked away, drumming his fingers against his thigh.

‘Did we not discuss the very observations you seek over dinner yesterday?'

‘What? When you mentioned the apogee of Mars in passing, then the position of the nodes in between mouthfuls. Am I to grab these titbits in the same way your tiny fool waits for bones? You think I'll be satisfied with that? How little you know of my intellectual providence.'

Tycho's face turned crimson. ‘From a man whose father was a mercenary and whose mother was a witch! You would do well to remember in whose house you are standing.'

‘And you would do well to remember who
you
are talking to. I am God's witness to the heavenly structure. I am the only man in Europe to unfold his design.'

‘God's witness!' Spittle flew from Tycho's mouth.

‘Without me, your observations are worthless!' shouted Kepler. ‘No more than paper and ink!'

‘Get out of my sight,' growled Tycho.

Kepler stood his ground.

‘Go, I tell you!' Tycho lurched forwards, his giant body wobbling on small feet. Kepler glowered at the Dane, but a powerful hand seized his upper arm. It was Tengnagel pulling him from the room.

That night, incapacitated by fever, Kepler dreamed that Jepp entered his room. Powerless to act, the astronomer watched from some distant shore as the sinister dwarf leafed through his papers, taking a sheet with him when he left.

The next morning Kepler awoke to the whirling clatter of a carriage in the courtyard. He lurched to the window to see who was arriving. A stout man descended from the vehicle and was ushered inside.

Thank the Lord!

It was Jessenius, doubtless sent for by Tycho to sort out this fiasco. Kepler straightened his clothing in readiness but had to wait for an hour before anyone came to get him. All this time he listened to the throb of blood in his ears and his laboured breathing.

When the thump on his door came, it made him jump. Tengnagel was waiting outside. ‘This way.'

Kepler was led to the study again. Tycho's round bulk was lodged behind the desk. Jessenius sat opposite. Both rose as Kepler entered. Jessenius greeted him stiffly, avoiding his gaze. Kepler could only guess at the version of events he had been told.

By contrast, Tycho was all smiles. ‘Johannes, please, let us solve these silly problems between us … You can go,' he said to Tengnagel, who left the room with obvious reluctance. ‘Now then …'

Kepler saw something familiar resting on top of the papers that littered the desk, a sheet of paper in his own handwriting. His stomach fell away. It was his list of demands for employment.

Tycho picked it up and started to read. ‘You want me to rent a
separate
house in the surrounding village for you.'

‘That's correct. If you insist I stay at Benátky, then I need a separate apartment, well away from your … court.'

‘You want me to provide meat, fish, wine, bread and beer, so that you do not need to eat with us. And also firewood.'

‘You provide food and warmth for your other assistants, but, in order for me to work efficiently, I need peace and quiet. I must be detached from the chaos.'

Tycho looked at Jessenius. ‘All of this I might agree to, but then we come to Herr Kepler's terms of work … He refuses to take part in the observations and states that he will only conduct research in areas of mutual benefit. He should be free to set his own timetable, rising late if he has worked far into the previous night …'

‘I need no spur to make my work, rather a brake to restrain me,' protested Kepler.

‘… and for this magnanimous service he demands that I obtain a salary from the Emperor of fifty thaler a quarter.'

‘There is nothing extravagant about my claims. I have heard, sir, that your great brass globe cost five thousand thaler. Such a sum would keep my family and me for the rest of our lives. I think my terms are modest in comparison.'

‘If it were up to me, these terms would be met and you'd be the happiest man alive. But patience is required. I cannot simply expect the Emperor to agree to this. You must show willing.'

‘How can I do that when my concentration is repeatedly broken by your unruly house? The understanding of nature cannot be shaped in the middle of a mob. Once the observations are taken, the
interpretation
is a solitary affair. My mind must be still, my thoughts free from all distraction, filled only with the numbers that represent nature. Then, with nothing but those numbers in my mind's eye I will see the
grain of truth, the gleaming gem of reality that God has placed in us all but few know how to access.'

Something in Tycho's face changed. ‘You talk of mutually beneficial research yet in reality you wish to purloin my observations for your own gain.'

‘That's not true.'

‘Really? Tell me, Herr Kepler, do you believe in my system of the planets?'

‘I do not. You have the planets going around the Sun, but the Sun continuing to go around the Earth. It is not an elegant solution.'

‘Have you no respect? I have dedicated my life to the collection of these measurements. Do you deny me the right to interpret them?'

‘Just because you have taken the measurements, does not mean that you can choose which conclusions to draw.'

‘But you yourself choose to ignore the observations that run against you.'

‘You refer to the parallax?'

Tycho gave a curt nod.

‘It is my belief that the stars are further away than we first imagined.' Kepler knew his next words would wound Tycho and uttered them with pleasure. ‘Not even you can build a sufficiently precise quadrant to see the parallax. God has beaten you.'

Tycho stood up.

Kepler rose too and set his head swimming with the sudden movement.

‘Gentlemen …' began Jessenius, also rising.

‘And you have a problem,' continued Kepler. ‘Longomontanus
calculated
the distance to Mars incorrectly. I've found the error, but it is not in the calculation, it is the observation that has been taken incorrectly.'

‘There are no errors in my observations.' Tycho said. ‘My assistants are too highly skilled for that. It is your mathematics that lets you down.'

Kepler felt himself begin to sway. ‘I would offer to show you, though I fear your own inadequacy with numbers would prevent you from seeing the truth. The Bear was right. You will squander your life's work rather than have someone else transform it. All because you want to control that final transformation, like you control your menagerie of
freaks.' His legs suddenly felt weak. The room smeared into a wash of pastel shades and his last conscious thought was of crashing to the ground.

When he came round he found himself propped in a chair near the front door. Around him, the craftsmen continued their renovations. How he got here, or how long he had been here, he did not know. He must have looked like some weird statue awaiting refurbishment, or more likely some piece of rubbish ready to be taken away.

‘You're not dead then.' Tycho peered at him with those
unfathomable
hazel eyes.

‘Forgive me, sir.'

Tycho grumbled something and waddled away. He spoke quietly to Jessenius and disappeared into the bowels of the castle.

‘Come along,' said the anatomist, arriving at Kepler's side. ‘Let us get you to Prague. Your things are already packed. Can you stand?'

With Jessenius's help, Kepler limped to the waiting carriage and slumped, exhausted, on the small bench seat. Again, he felt his mind depart from his surroundings, yet this time it never fully arrived at unconsciousness. Instead, it wheeled in black circles, seemingly immense turns of thought, yet never really straying far from what had just happened in Benátky.

What would he do now? How would he feed his family?

In the fog of his thinking, one name shone out.

His only hope was Mästlin, his old tutor. He must surely have received Kepler's letter by now.

Kepler!
Mästlin's stomach lurched as he was handed the letter and glimpsed the handwriting. Yet even before the flash of annoyance could subside, another emotion arose in its place: curiosity. It was six years since Kepler had left the university here, and in all that time he had written often but never returned. By all tallies that should have been long enough for Mästlin to rid himself of the troublesome man.

He should have simply dropped each letter, unopened, onto the kitchen fire and let its heat make broth, or crisp the skin on a hog. That would have been useful. Yet without fail he found himself teasing open the wax seal, unable to resist learning the next instalment.

Perhaps that was what annoyed him so much about Kepler; no matter where the young man was in Europe, he could still force Mästlin to ebb and flow, as if some tidal force linked their two minds.

This latest letter was another plea for help, and he read it with the usual mix of impatience and admiration. Pathetic and brilliant in equal measure, it was the long-dreaded application for a position at Tübingen and a request for the price of wine, bread and meat in the city, as his wife would not be content to live on pulses.

Sensing the tidewaters rising, Mästlin willed himself to head for the kitchen fire but found himself in the corridor. Even as he walked, he knew what the response to Kepler's application would be. It was madness even to pass on the contents of the letter.

The University's Chancellor was not in his office, but the smell of a recently snuffed candle hung in the air. Mästlin checked the
neighbouring
rooms. Those too were mostly deserted now that the
afternoon
was sliding into evening. Next, he stopped at the chapel. The boys were praying, enveloped in balloons of condensing breath that allowed the minister to check for miming. It brought back a memory of Kepler, hunched in devotion, always the last to release himself from prayer.

Mästlin entered the gardens, where the grass was heavy with dew and just beginning to sparkle as the chill evening turned it to frost.

The Chancellor was walking barefoot across the grass, eyes closed. Wearing nothing heavier than his usual gown, he was a spectre drifting aimlessly across the mortal world.

‘Sir, you will catch your death.' Mästlin trotted over.

‘On the contrary, Magister Mästlin, I find the sensation makes me feel alive. Quite something at my age.'

Mästlin regarded the shrunken man. Despite the white hair, the Chancellor was as permanent as the university's foundation stone and it was easy to forget that he was now in his eighties. Mästlin opened his mouth to broach his subject but could coax nothing at first. At last, he found the courage. ‘Sir, Johannes Kepler is upon hard circumstances. He is asking whether there is a small professorship for him here?'

The Chancellor nodded curtly and resumed his walk. ‘When it comes to Kepler, what astounds me most is that you continue your correspondence.'

‘He may be unconventional, Chancellor, but he is also brilliant. I believe he may truly have found the secret plan that God worked to when creating the heavens.'

‘By advocating the view of a Catholic?' Derision laced the Chancellor's voice.

‘Copernicus only published his ideas because the Lutheran Rheticus visited him – and no doubt improved upon his work. The canon himself was too blind to see his own achievement. The new astronomy is Lutheran to the core. Kepler's
Mysterium
was the next step.'

‘I seem to remember that you spent so much time seeing his book through the printers that you neglected your own studies. We can ill afford to lose your concentration again, especially with this
abominable
Roman calendar to fight. We will celebrate Easter when we choose to, not when the Vatican tells us. You are our sharpest voice against it.'

There was no accusation in the old voice, just a calculated
disappointment
that humbled Mästlin more than anger ever could. ‘I will oppose the introduction of Pope Gregory's new calendar in these lands to my last breath,' he said. It was a transparent attempt to chain Europe to Catholic timekeepers and had to be resisted on those grounds,
although Mästlin was secretly impressed by the quality of the Jesuit mathematicians under Rome's command.

He followed the Chancellor deep into the gardens, losing the
university
buildings behind the tall hedges. The lustre on the plants signalled the deepening freeze. They continued into the silhouettes of the
box-cut
rosemary, the old man apparently oblivious to the temperature of his bare feet crunching on the gravel path.

‘The remarkable thing about age is that you learn what's important, and what can be ignored,' he told Mästlin with a faint smile.

The only light around them was coming from the sinking yellow crescent of the Moon, its illumination rendered dimmer still by its passage through the tangle of bare branches.

‘I have nearly completed a new tract against the calendar, sir.' Mästlin thought of the two chapters and the scribbled notes in his bottom drawer, and was glad of the shadows to hide his face. What he needed was help from a mathematician as skilled as the Jesuits, and there was only one Lutheran who fitted that bill. ‘Sir, when Kepler was here, he began theology. Entering the ministry was all he cared about …'

‘Why did he not complete his studies?'

‘You made me send him to Graz when they needed a new
mathematician
.'

‘Did I? That was cunning of me. Ah, yes, I remember. I didn't trust him.'

‘He's a grown man now. Could he at least return to finish his degree? We need men in the pulpits. The Jesuits are everywhere; founding their schools and spreading their intrigues in towns that we had long since considered our own.'

The Chancellor raised an arthritic finger. ‘We need
good
men in the pulpits, Magister Mästlin. Not just any men. He was small, shuffled about a lot, used to play a woman in the university plays.'

‘He is as God made him, sir.'

Something in the Chancellor's posture stiffened. ‘Why must he insist on questioning our beliefs at every turn?'

‘It is his nature; he means no harm. He believes, as Luther did, that to question and to reform is the foundation of our faith.'

The older man huffed, sending a balloon of expanding vapour into the night. ‘Then he was born a century too late. Now is not the time for
change. Our faith is minted in the currency of Wittenberg, and we cannot risk division on the whim of interpretation. Those devils in Rome will exploit any weakness.'

‘On that we are agreed,' said Mästlin.

‘So, the question remains: could we trust him to deliver what we tell him to preach?'

‘He removed the prologue of theological justification from the
Mysterium
as requested, Chancellor. His book stands now simply as a matter of geometrical calculation, free of religious connotation and with no assertion that the Earth actually moves around the Sun.'

‘I hear that Hewart von Hohenburg's personal courier handles his letters these days. The Chancellor of Bavaria is a powerful friend to have – a powerful Catholic friend.'

The night closed in on Mästlin. He stopped, the sound of their
footfall
replaced by the surge of blood in his ears. ‘I didn't know that,' he stammered.

The moonlight sparkled in the Chancellor's eyes. ‘You're not the only one who keeps an eye on Herr Kepler. There's no place for him and his heresies here, as you well know. There may be no place for him anywhere in Lutheran lands. Quite beside his useless astronomy, his dissension over the ubiquity doctrine is enough to have him
excommunicated
. Cut from us, he would run to whoever opened their arms.'

‘Yes, Chancellor.'

‘Distance yourself from him, Magister Mästlin, and brace yourself. We are at war with the whores of Rome and the bastard hoards of Jesuits swarming across our lands. If – when – Kepler converts, you cannot afford to be associated with him.'