The Astrologer (11 page)

My own days were spent orbiting about the penumbra of the king’s routine that I might discover an opportunity to make a ghost of him. Sneaking about, I learned his habits and made a plan.

In the mornings, the king met with his advisors in the office he had commandeered from Sir Tristram. Food was delivered directly from the kitchens and I had no access to the dishes brought up by the cooks. Besides, there was no chance of my tainting the king’s portion without murdering a dozen other men. After meeting with his generals, the king took exercise in the armory, training with his master-at-arms for an hour. There was a score armed men with him and I would be a fool to attempt anything there. The king surrounded himself with advisors and guards at all times but twice each day: after his swordplay he took a bath in a great tub carried into the armory and filled from steaming copper kettles wheeled in from the kitchens, and after his bath he made his way to a chamber on the upper floor of the north wing where he would sleep for a time. Though the room was guarded by four Swiss in the corridor, I had learned that this chamber shared an inner door with the apartment Ulfeldt and his daughter occupied.

My strategy was to admit myself somehow into this sleeping chamber through Ulfeldt’s lodgings, and leave a trap for the king to discover. This would be difficult, as Ulfeldt used his rooms as an office and was in them a great deal. When he was not there, Vibeke was, except when we were all at the supper banquet. The problem vexed me for most of the week until one morning I went up to the private chamber and tried the door, finding it unlocked. I was alone in the hallway and so I opened
the door and stepped into the room. It was a small space with a narrow bed, two plain chairs, and an old wooden table. The windows faced the open sea and I supposed that the king found the tedious landscape of waves and sky to be relaxing after his exercise. There were dried herbs cast about the corners to sweeten the air and there was another scent in the room that I knew but could not identify; it tantalized me from just beyond the edge of my memory.

This door carelessly left open was my chance to hand the king his death, if I could act in time. Downstairs in the armory the king had just begun his practice and I had nearly two hours to make things ready. I hurried down to my lodgings and opened the trunk Fritz had brought from Copenhagen. I lifted out a small wooden box, the size of a loaf of peasant bread. A dry scuffling noise came from the box and I felt the vibrations of the creature stirring within. He would be ravenous and angry after being so long imprisoned and unfed.

The only venomous snake in Denmark is the northern cross adder, a rust-brown viper some two feet in length with an eggshaped head and glassy black eyes. Most of these serpents sleep through the winter in subterranean dens, but a few have been found in castles and houses, having slithered in for warmth and to hunt rats. I greatly dislike snakes.

I placed the wooden box on my table, wrapped a warm cloak about my shoulders, and undid a few buttons of my doublet. The box just fit under the garment, and I startled when the snake moved within, knocking his head against the wooden lid. If the latch failed I was surely a dead man. I crossed myself and left the room, hurrying to the castle doors and out into the frigid weather. A light snow fell, very delicate and pretty.

A snake hibernates when he is cold, like a bear. He will only rouse, even when starved, if he becomes sufficiently warm again. At least this is what I had once read, or how I remembered something I had once read. I would carry the viper out and loose him into the snow where he would coil upon himself and fall into a suspended state, as if dead. I would then
box him back up, carry him through the castle to the sleeping chamber, and place him beneath the pillows on the king’s bed. The warmth of the king’s body would attract the adder and he would slither down under the sheets to lie against the Dane’s skin. When the king awakened the snake would strike him with deadly venom in his fangs. The king’s final thoughts might bend to how even nature is treacherous; he might see that we are all betrayed by one thing or another eventually, by men or by snakes, by sons or by fathers, or by the heavens themselves.

I walked out of the castle, the air biting my lungs and skin, and I shrank into my fur cloak as I followed the narrow road down the hill and through the portcullis. Once beyond the high brick ramparts I turned right with the curve of the moat, walking to where the great ditch joined with the sea on the east edge of the island. It was a remote spot and, although a curious guard atop the battlement could have seen me, I thought that the distance and my turned back would hide what I was doing.

My hands were stiff with cold, and clumsy. I worried that I would not move quickly enough once I had opened the case, that it would be I who would know the betrayal of nature. I held the imprisoned serpent at arm’s length, fumbled with the latch, and lost my grip on the box, dropping it into a snow bank.

“Soren!”

I looked up and saw Straslund coming toward me. He moved like a plow horse in a muddy field, lifting his knees high and shaking the snow from his boots. My hands ached when I plunged them into the snow, digging for the viper in his case.

“Soren! What do you out of doors on such a morning as this?”

“Knud, well met! I am conducting an experiment on snow dissolving into saltwater. As you see, when the snow falls on the ground it accumulates, but when it falls on the moat it melts. What do you here?”

“I have come out into the weather to privately remind you of my offer regarding Brahe’s tools out on that island. You have not forgotten?”

“Nay. Nor should you forget what my answer was. So we are concluded, I think. Good day to you, Knud.”

Straslund came up and stood beside me. We were a yard or so from the bank of the moat. My arms and chest were white where I had been searching in the snow.

“I saw you drop something. What was it?”

“Nothing to concern you, Knud. An instrument to measure the density of the falling snow.”

“Indeed? It sounds a most clever device. I must see it.”

“Nay! You’ll ruin the experiment.”

He had already bent down and scooped away handfuls of snow. I leaned over and joined my efforts to his, hoping to find the box before him. His hands touched it first and he lifted the case from the snow bank. He shook it at me.

“It’s just a wooden box.” He seemed disappointed and then smiled. “You are hiding something, Soren. What can it be?”

“It is a box of snakes. Give it to me.” I held out my hand and Straslund took a step back.

“You are lying. What can little Professor Andersmann be concealing in the snow?”

Straslund undid the latch and dropped the lid to the ground. He held the box close to his face, peering in and shaking it again.

“Is that some kind of chain?”

The viper had been only momentarily dazed by the cold, and that moment passed. I reached out, intending to take the box away from Straslund but I was not swift enough. The snake uncoiled and flung himself forward out of the box, his mouth open and his long fangs yellow with drool and venom. Before Straslund could react, the viper sank its fangs into his right eye, slid entirely free of the case, and coiled over the unfortunate idiot’s face.

Straslund clutched the empty box with one hand and with his other beat at the adder clinging to his face. He cried out, a high keening like a whipped dog or a bird with a broken wing, and hopped madly from side to side, and then he spun about
and ran directly over the bank of the moat and disappeared beneath the water. All of this took no more than half a minute.

I stood at the lip of the moat flapping my arms in fear and anger, and waited for Straslund to surface. The fool. The meddlesome fool. Did he think I had a trunk full of adders, that he could waste them? I had no idea how I would explain any of this. When Straslund lost his eye, it would be richly deserved. But of course Straslund did not come to the surface, at least not where I could see him. The current through the moat washed him past the castle and his body came up to the south, in the King’s Harbor. Some fishermen pulled him out a few hours later. The snake swam off or froze or drowned, I know not which.

For a quarter of an hour I paced along the moat where Straslund had gone in. The cold grew too much and finally I made my way back to the castle, hurrying to my room where I put on dry clothes and spent the remains of the morning sitting as close as I could to the coal stove, thawing the chill from my bones. Torstensson had brought me more tools of the assassin’s trade than a snake, but I had placed my best hopes on the adder and now those hopes were dashed.

“You are failing,” I said. “You are failing, Soren, and you have barely begun.”

Perhaps the stars had been wrong for this mission. I resolved that later I would cast my own horoscope, letting the heavens show me the best day on which to try my hand against the king.

At midday the news of Straslund’s death had reached the castle. Prince Christian informed me when we dined together in the kitchen.

“You do not seem much upset by it,” he said.

“I did not like him. It is no great secret.”

“Still, Straslund is dead. It is tragic. He was a person of little use to anyone, but I’ve known him my whole life. He was my own age.”

“Was he drunk, my lord?”

“Oh, very like. Did you know he also fell into the moat the
night of our arrival? His death by drowning seems to have been fated. It is a terrible misfortune that you were not there to save him as you saved me. Poor Straslund.”

“God’s mercy on him.”

“And on us all. But here is some better news. The storm is breaking, and already it has stopped snowing. My father believes we will clear the highway and march on Jaaperson’s army tomorrow or next day.”

“Is this better news?”

“You worry for my safety, I know. You are a good friend and a loyal subject. But my place is to be—finally—at my father’s side. I have longed long for this.”

Christian sat straight and looked into my eyes, for all the world a brave prince and confident man of arms. I believed him safe, even favored by the gods of war, so poised and calm was he. These impressions seemed solid, more reliable than the chaos to be found in Christian’s stars.

“I have faith in you, my lord.”

“I have less faith in you, Soren. Promise me that you will not fall into the moat.”

“My word upon it.”

Straslund’s demise was put down to a drunken accident. He had not been well liked and so most at Kronberg lost interest in his death almost as soon as his body was identified. His corpse was laid out in the church at Elsinore, prayed over briefly, and then rolled into a barrel and set in a snow bank to keep until the weather cleared enough that he could be carted to his father’s estate for burial.

Though he was easily forgotten, Straslund’s death remained a vexation for me. The fool had cost me what was possibly the best opportunity to finish my task against the king. Chances to find him alone and vulnerable were not many. Any day the king and his Swiss mercenaries would ride out at the head of the royal army and I would be sent off to the observatory on Hven. Perhaps I had already lost the only possibility for revenge that life would ever offer me. What then?

You are failing, Soren.

When the prince left me I snuck back to the third floor and crept slowly down the hall, past the door of the sleeping chamber. The king might be found there again the next morning if the weather did not improve, and so I must plan for that as may be. The room was locked when I tried the door. Across the hall was an alcove with an enormous chair in it. I sat in this chair, an uncomfortable and ugly pile of carved oak, set my chin upon my fist, and tried to imagine a way into the king’s chamber, and to conjure a murder once I was inside. Nothing came to mind.

You are failing.

I closed my eyes and willed the spirit of inspiration to visit me. If I do have any sort of muse, she is not an assassin, and so she kept her distance. No brilliant design came to life in my mind’s eye.

“Soren? Do you sleep?”

I opened my eyes and Vibeke stood before me, her head tilted to the right. She looked past me, to a point beyond my skull, and smiled.

“How do you, sir?”

“I am well. How fares my lady?”

“Excellent well, sir. Are you Cerberus, guarding the door? I’ve seen no one sit in this chair until now. Is it a comfortable seat?”

“Nay, lady.”

“Then as you do not sit here for pleasure, you must do so to a purpose. Do you wait for Christian?”

“Christian? I dined with him an hour ago.”

Her gaze shifted from one distant point behind me to another, and she blinked.

“Did he say aught of me?”

“Of you, lady? Nay, he did not. What would he have said?”

“I do not know what he should have said.” Vibeke played with her necklace, the long string of amber beads sliding
through her fingers. “Though I may have something to tell, something touching on my lord Christian.”

“You have heard something?”

“Oh, more than heard, sir.”

“You have seen something?”

“Oh, more than seen, indeed.”

I waited for Vibeke to continue, but she only stood there, a bright-eyed dove with her head cocked, that slight smile upon her face.

“Lady, wilt thou have me guess?”

She turned her face away for a moment and color rose in her cheeks.

“Oh, thou surely canst not guess this.”

“Then I am at a loss. You have more than heard, more than seen, and what that more than is I cannot divine. It appears, dear lady, that you must tell me.”

Vibeke came closer, her hip against the grotesque arm of the chair, her lips but inches from my ear. The air filled with a faint scent I knew from somewhere, the smells of spices, maybe, and then I knew that I had encountered this scent in the air of the king’s sleeping chamber. Perhaps all the better lodgings of the castle had that scent. My own chamber smelled faintly of the stables.

“I was sewing in my closet,” Vibeke said. “It was late, after supper. Then Christian, with his doublet all unbraced, no cloak or crown or servant to announce him, came before me.”