The Astrologer
Authors: Scott G.F. Bailey
“The Astrologer
is a marvelous story of fierce revenge and murder as staggering as the constellations above. I simply couldn’t look away. A vivid debut!”
--Michelle Davidson Argyle, author of
The Breakaway
and
Monarch
“It’s elegant, it’s sly, it’s funny as all hell, and the unreliable narrator is both heroic and heartbreaking; a poignant embodiment of the Enlightenment fairy tales our society likes to tell itself.”
--Tara Maya, author of
The Unfinished Song
and
Conmergence
“A philosophic stunner that evokes the wintry islands of Beowulf and the castles of Hamlet. Set in the predawn of the Enlightenment, Bailey’s stargazing protagonist struggles against the dark forces that forever keep us ignorant. Haunting, expansive, poetic, and it has sword fights.”
--Layne Maheu, author of
Song of the Crow
“If you, like any red-blooded human being with an unquenchable love for both the science of the cosmos and spine-crushing, gore-spewing violence, prefer to have your 17
th
century Danish astronomical historical fiction infused with swordfights, explosions, court intrigues, assassination plots, sexy adulterous affairs, psychotic nutcases, bears, midgets, and a Shakespearean flair for multifarious backstabbing murder-fests,
The Astrologer
is going to blow your mind like Tycho Brahe blew the hell out of Aristotle’s antiquated belief in an unchanging celestial realm.”
--Ben Thompson, author of
BADASS
Rhemalda Publishing, Inc. (USA)
P.O. Box 1790 Moses Lake, WA 98837 USA
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, dialogues, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
Copyright ©2013 by Scott G.F. Bailey
Edited by Diane Dalton
Text design by Rhemalda Publishing
Cover art by Melissa Williams of M. W. Cover Designs
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Author photo by Mary Metz.
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ISBN Paperback: 978-1-936850-36-5
ISBN eBook: 978-1-936850-79-2
Library of Congress Control Number: 2012956213
Scott G..F. Bailey’s author website is
www.scottgfbailey.com
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FOR MARY
S
COTT
G.F. B
AILEY
Rhemalda Publishing
{ Chapter One }
J
UPITER
D
ESCENDING
GUSTAVUS HAD LOST A GREAT DEAL OF BLOOD. THE spots and trails of crimson that stained the surface of the frozen lake all came from his wounds and he was now sluggish and dragged his left foot. Even I could see that he would not survive the contest, that his heart would soon beat its last. Gustavus’s opponent—Christian son of Rorik, king of Denmark—was unharmed. He laughed and swung his great sword as if it weighed no more than the leg of a roasted goose, as if the last hour of bashing and being bashed had taken no toll on him whatever. This was most vexing to me. I had cast the king’s horoscope the night before and the heavens had declared some great misfortune was his destiny on this day. I looked for a lucky turn for Gustavus; it was not too late for the Earl of Jutland to strike a fatal blow against the king.
I let my eyes be drawn down to the patterns formed by the blood on the ice. It is a star chart, I thought. The king stands in Orion while Gustavus drags his wounded foot through Cassiopeia and spits a mouthful of blood onto the Pleiades. I wondered if Gustavus had any regrets. If he did, he did not have time to think of them. Christian son of Rorik swung his sword in a bright, deadly arc that Gustavus could barely arrest. The king’s blade rebounded at a sharp angle and struck a glancing blow against Gustavus’s right shoulder. Something came spinning across the ice, hitting my left boot. It was one of
the buckles from Gustavus’s cuirass, fashioned from steel and brass in the shape of a rampant bear. The bear’s head had been struck off.
If that fool Gustavus was about to die, it was his own doing. A month earlier, he had sent a messenger to the royal palace, armed with a long and passionate letter that questioned King Christian’s legitimacy as ruler and made a claim to the crown of Denmark. Gustavus demanded that King Christian abdicate, abandon Copenhagen, and swear fealty to him. The messenger’s head, his mouth stuffed with the treasonous letter, was sent back to Gustavus in Aalborg. Carved into the dead man’s forehead was an answer from the king: “I come.” And so he went, with his terrifying Swiss mercenaries, an army of five thousand conscripts, and a dozen German cannon for good measure.
I rode with the royal party in the king’s ship, a carrack christened the
Odin.
We set off from the harbor at Copenhagen and sailed around the northeast coast of Zealand. I squinted into the morning sun, straining to make out the old observatory on Tycho Brahe’s island in the middle of the Sound. I could see nothing before the island passed out of sight, and soon the
Odin
turned northwest to sail across Kattegat Bay toward Aalborg. The king remained below with his generals and advisors while I stayed on deck with his son, Prince Christian. We were wrapped in furs and stood along the port deck rail below the bow castle, holding on to the rigging as the ship rode the bucking sea. By midday, the coast of Jutland, flat and dull and buried under a layer of fresh snow, lay to our left. On our right was the Bay, a kaleidoscope of grays and greens that shimmered and rolled out to the horizon beneath the uneven white of the sky. A score of warships with glistening black hulls followed the
Odin
across the water. The atmosphere was festive, like a foxhunt.
The prince was in high spirits. He was home for Yuletide from school at Wittenberg and this little war was a welcome entertainment for him. Christian was one-and-twenty years old and I had not seen him except at holidays for nearly three years. I had been his tutor before we went our separate ways, he to university in Germany and I to the island of Hven, where I had explored the heavens with Tycho Brahe.
“This is most exciting, Soren,” Christian said.
“I have been aboard ship before, my lord.”
The waters were choppy and rough. Every few minutes, a wave broke against the ship’s hull and a cloud of spray washed over us. Our furs and hats were beginning to ice over. Beneath his furs, Christian wore his finest armor.
“Nay, not the voyage,” Christian said. “The coming battle, as you know I meant. Great armies move into position, ready to butcher each other on their lord’s command. Have you ever seen a battle?”
“Nay, my lord.”
“Nor have I. It must be a wonder.”
“I do not wish to see wondrous death, or glorious death, or any other manner of death, my lord. Not today, nor on any day soon to come.”
“You fret like an old woman,” he said. “We shall not take to the field, you and I, to witness the battle close at hand. We shall stand on a high ground and watch my noble father lead the slaughter of the treacherous Gustavus.”
“As you say, my lord.”
“Do not be concerned. We shall be back in Copenhagen come Christmas.”
In the afternoon, the ships tacked into the wind and made for land. The king came up on deck, shoving sailors and soldiers aside as he made his way to the bow and climbed up onto the castle. He raised his fists and roared at the city of Aalborg, ten miles inland and invisible from the coast. The air quaked with the king’s anger. He turned about and stormed back to his cabin below.
“The lion of Zealand is aroused,” Christian said. “I am sure Gustavus could hear my father’s battle cry even from here and will sleep poorly this night.”
Our war fleet landed along the coast, well south of Aalborg’s
harbor. Waiting for us on the shore were soldiers from Jutland who remained loyal to the king. The leader of these men pointed to a great rolling mass of smoke that rose from the plain directly west of us.
“That is the town of Skorping,” he said. “The citizens refused to welcome Gustavus’s allies and their troops. It is now burning. The whole town.”
“We will cure my cousin and his friends of their reckless disloyalty,” the king said, and mounted his horse to lead the army inland over the low, snowy hills. The prince rode beside his father and I rode in a cart with the surgeon and the priest.
We arrived at the loyalists’ camp as the sun was setting. Within an hour, the king’s army had established a sprawling town of tents, fires, men, and horses on the southern shore of Madum Sø, a great oval lake that froze solid in winter. The fires of the enemy camp burned across the ice. So many armed men, I thought, gathered here to die for no purpose but the pride of their lords. It was madness, but this madness would end soon. Mars in Aries with Jupiter descending; the king’s defeat was certain.
Prince Christian went off with his father and I made my way to the soldier’s mess, a circle of rough tables surrounding a great fire pit. I ate some roast venison and drank a stoup of wine. The army of Denmark was well fed, and there was drink for every man at arms. I found the tent that was set aside for the prince, which he had offered to share with me. Christian was not there and I spent the next hour casting his father’s horoscope again. Just as I had seen the day before, the king’s synodical lunations did not favor him. Jupiter was going to be a most ill influence over the coming events. I fed my scribbled calculations into the stove and crawled under a pile of blankets to sleep.
In the morning, I accompanied the king, his generals, and his advisors out onto the frozen lake to meet with the Earl of Jutland and his band of traitors. Everything was layered in ice, snow, and frost. The sky hung low and smoke from the
campfires rose straight up like spears of ebony to pierce the heavens. My feet slipped on the ice and twice I fell during our advance across the lake. No other man stumbled, nor did even Prince Christian pause while I climbed to my feet after each fall, scuttling after to catch up.
“Will you parlay with Gustavus?” It was the king’s brother, Prince Frederik, who asked this. Frederik’s armor was ornate, beautifully wrought and entirely decorative. He wore it only during ceremonial occasions and parades when he was forced to stand with the knights of the realm.
“Words are for women,” the king said. “War is the use of arms. Talk is pointless now. I need to fight.”
Gustavus’s party met us at the center of the lake, facing us over an invisible line in the ice. My gloves were not good enough for the weather and I hoped the polite formalities of war would go quickly, so that I might soon return to camp and warm my hands over a fire.
