2
The Boot and Thorn

In my first year in Basel, I was given a book. I was only thirteen, still apprehensive of my new life, an uprooted sapling fighting to grow new roots in hard soil. Master Johann was a rocky cliff that I grasped, and my roothold in his house was wholly tenuous. I was ignored or mocked in my classes. Then, what a pleasure it was to be befriended! For Daniel, who was a twenty-year-old man of note, took note of me; first with cordial greetings, next with amicable conversations, and then with the full shine of his winsome character. Finally, on a morning three months after my arrival in Basel, he’d sought me out as I was sweeping his mother’s kitchen and tossed a leather volume into my hands.

“You say you like books?” he said. “This one’s new, just from the printer. See if the ink’s dry yet!”

I didn’t know it then, but I’d been given a challenge and not just a book; it was only later that I learned that particular gleam in Daniel’s eye. On that morning I only saw the pages of Latin and symbols and equations, and my heart leaped.

“Thank you!” The ink was plenty dry and I was caught like a fish. A page describing the Mathematics of Likelihood was open before me, and I read the lines and paragraphs without hope of being able to close it. The words were astonishing.

“Hold, hold!” Daniel had laughed. “That’s terrible stuff, there. You’ll need help to understand it.”

“I’ll take any help,” I said, and meant it, but it seemed plain to me. The Latin was lucid and straight, though wordy, and in just that one page I knew the thesis. “Who wrote it?”

“It was Cousin Gottlieb who made the manuscript and bundled it off to the printer. But he’s only the scribe. The author’s someone else. Have you heard of Uncle Jacob?”

I pulled away from the text and found the title page. The title was Ars Conjectandi, the Art of Conjecturing. The author was Professor of Basel, member of the Societies of Paris and Berlin, and of my Master Johann’s family but not my Master. It was Jacob. And below the title was the explanation, Opus Posthumum, published after his death.

“I don’t know Jacob.”

“Gottlieb took his notes and made a book of them, and that was ten times the labor of a stonecutter carving Cupid from a boulder.”

“But who was he? Tell me about Jacob!”

“Father’s brother, father’s teacher, father’s Master. But don’t tell me you can read it!”

“I can,” I’d said eagerly. “Oh, thank you, Master Daniel! Is it mine?”

“It’s yours,” he said. “And if you can read it so well, then I’ll have you explain it to me!”

Even making his joke, he was still treating me as an equal. I was in awe of him then! This was a young man who’d spent a year in Heidelberg and had returned to Basel to finish his doctorate in medicine, and was the son of my revered Master Johann. And I hoped to use his good favor to gain an extra step in my climb of Master Johann’s steep ladder.

That next Saturday, five years ago, I approached my Master’s house with confidence and Uncle Jacob’s book both tucked under my arm. I was taken upstairs and through the door. I still felt very much on trial, having to be perfect in my preparation and understanding each week just to earn my next week’s session. So I sat in my chair and set my papers on the table, and then with pride and desperate hope, I placed my offering, the Ars Conjectandi, on the table for him to notice. My young heart skipped as I waited for my Master’s hard face and the severe gaze to soften.

He took one glance. He recognized the title. Then he transfixed me with the most hostile stare I’d ever experienced. I hadn’t known that such animosity existed, and I was its target! He held me on his sword point for an eternity. Then he proceeded with my lesson, never mentioning the book.

As soon as I could, I slipped the volume into my lap, out of his sight. He ignored the motion. I endured the two hours in agony. I walked home through streets of fire. I ate no dinner but only ran to my room and sobbed my heart out, and vowed never to pester Master Johann with my miserable existence again.

I didn’t keep that vow. I did return, and repaired over months the damage done in that one moment. I believed Daniel should have warned me, but he may not have thought to, or that I would be bold to show off my possession. And since then, I have wondered what became of that boulder of notes from which Gottlieb carved his Conjectandi Cupid. I never have asked Master Johann, of course. Besides stirring his anger at their mention, I was never sure he knew himself where they were.

Years later, when he was in Italy, Daniel sent me a copy of his own book, Exercitationes, Mathematical Exercises. His note with it said, “More leather for your excellent shelf, Leonhard, and more bait to anger the Bear, if you didn’t learn your lesson before.” But I had learned my lesson, and Master Johann never saw that in my hand; and I’d had my first introduction to Uncle Jacob; and most important of all, both the meticulous Conjectandi and the elegant Exercitationes were gems.

So I went forth Saturday night to meet with Daniel, setting my foot on the dark evening streets of Basel. As always the windows were shuttered. Just pins of light pricked out. There was little to fear with the Night Watch always close. I walked with one of them, he swinging his lantern and his jaw, and I listening for those moments to tales and tall tales of battle and adventure. In the Barefoot Square, the windows of the church were unshuttered and bright. The inn was lit with darker light. Through its weary door I left the overworld.

Enter the Boot and Thorn! Steifel und Stachel, Tavern primeval, vast beamed of ancient trees, smoked by the unquenchable flame, dark unyielding to light. Inside the door was a passage with no seen end, twisting into distance. Doors and stairs lived in it, and dragons. On its walls were pictures painted before there was light or color, and rails and moulds carved by gnomes. The air was soot and hay and mead. A gray cat with white eyes was named Charon and was Cerberus. I paid for my passage with a bow and crossed the hallway Styx.

On the right was a fissure, and through it the Common Room. A gaping, howling hearth lit the room, and oil lamps burned with more smoke than flame. Driven up through each table was an iron spike with a candle fixed on it. These were the best illumination in the room. As the evening would pass and each candle breathed its last, and the lamp glasses would blacken and strangle their glow, only the conflagration in the ruddy fireplace would enlighten.

The pillars that held the ceiling were not cut by human hands. They, and the ceiling they supported, were really a primordial forest of trunks and branches that grew themselves into that room with its soil floor. Shelves, eye-high, belt-high, high as good thoughts and high as foul plots ran the circuit of the walls. Tankards packed them. They were wood and clay, little gargoyles who watched in benign grotesquerie over the transacted business.

The tables were immovably heavy. They might have been filled or near empty and it would have appeared the same. The presence of men in the room was heard and sensed, not seen, and to enter the room was to be made part of it, to be made subterranean, to be lit by fire and breathe earthen air.

As I stood in the entrance, my vision was blunt but my ears were sharp, and I quickly knew where Daniel was. He would have preceded me, likely by hours. Only when I came close did I see that his brother Nicolaus was there, also.

A Master from Oxford, a Chair of Mathematics on a visit once to Master Johann, told me that in England there were coffee rooms for gentlemen in taverns, separate from the commons. Here was no division. Black and white mingled with brown. I wouldn’t know which I was meant for if I had to choose. The Room, like temptation, was common to all men. I hadn’t been noticed and I paused while Daniel spoke.

“There’s no word,” he was saying to his brother. “Not a breath of a whisper. I was sure there’d be a letter waiting.” He had a cup of dice in his hand and tossed them to the table. “Who else could have won the prize? There’s not a one who could have beat me.”

Nicolaus answered him, “It’s a hundred who could.”

“I’ll go to Paris myself and see. I’ll have them show me a better piece than what I sent them. I know I won the competition.”

“Then where’s the letter?”

“I’ll go to Paris and get it.” I could see his peeved frustration in the dark as well as I could hear it. He pulled the dice back into his cup. His words interested me, but the dice in his hand did more. The subject of Master Jacob’s Ars Conjectandi was Likelihood or Chance, what had more recently been named Probability. The Conjectandi presented the rolling of dice as a type of equation, but not one that gave a result. Instead the Mathematics gave possibilities of results. It was an odd prophecy, to say with certainty what might happen, but not what would happen. I had wondered at the role of Providence in guiding affairs: Did God know how the die would land?

“Daniel,” I said.

“Leonhard!” There was no chance to that. His greeting was certain and exactly as I’d known it would be. He pushed a bench toward me. “Still breathing? Not smothered by your hours in the Holy of Holies?”

“I’m breathing. It’s the air in here that would smother a man.”

“Then breathe it deep and listen to me.” Now, Daniel had his winning smile and friendly ways. All the ire he’d had a moment before was gone. “I’ve come back to Basel with a goal.” The hearth glare fell full on him. It made his grin fiery. “You have a part in it.”

“Tell me, then. I want to know what it is that I want nothing to do with,” I said.

“Your part’s easy enough. It’s about Uncle Jacob.”

“That’s poking bears, Daniel.”

“That’s reason enough itself.”

“I won’t help you, not for that. You know it’s a rule that he isn’t discussed in the Master’s house.”

“I just want to know how Jacob died, that’s all. There’s nothing wrong with that, is there?”

“If you want to know, just ask.”

“I am asking.”

“Ask someone who knows!” I said. “Your mother.”

“She’d tell Brutus that I asked.”

“Ask your cousins. You have plenty.”

“It’ll all get back.” He leaned into my shadow. “There are nets laid and webs spun, and I don’t want a whisper of anything to reach those ears.”

The answer to this seemed evident. “Ask your Uncle Faulkner.” This man was the Chief Magistrate of Basel, and Mistress Dorothea’s brother. “He’s part of no one’s net.”

“But I can’t hold him to confidence, either. No, you’re the only one I can ask.”

“And I’m the only one who can’t answer. I don’t know how your uncle Jacob died.”

“But you can find the answer. I know you can, Leonhard.” He’d always been this way. Daniel had made friends in every street in Basel, as he pried open the closed doors and searched their shadows. Whoever knew him was fond of him, and whoever knew him well distrusted him, as well.

“There’s something amiss,” I said.

“There is,” he said, “and I want to know what it is.”

“Amiss with you. It’s your own uncle, and your own family, and I’m the one you’re sending into a lion’s den.”

“I can’t let the lion know what I want. It has to be you.” He laughed. “You’ve nothing to fear, old friend! Just throw a few little words, an innocent question. Then listen very close.”

Nicolaus had been silent the whole time, and he’d been listening very close. “And are you a part with this?” I asked him.

“I’m no part.”

“He’s part and parcel,” Daniel said. “It’s his plan anyway.”

“It isn’t,” Nicolaus said.

“It is, all of it. Nicolaus is the cunning one, you know. I said Uncle Jacob? and Nicolaus said Leonhard! and I said Oh, that’s our man! ” And Nicolaus said nothing.

“I know Jacob’s epitaph because I’ve seen it, and I’ve heard a few other bits. He was Chair of Mathematics here and he died twenty years ago. And you know all that.”

“I know it,” Daniel said.

“And I know his Mathematics,” I said, “because of his book that you gave to me.”

“You only know what dearest cousin Gottlieb put in the book. That’s all any of us know.”

“Except Gottlieb himself,” Nicolaus said.

“There must be more,” I said.

But that was not Daniel’s interest of the moment. “There’s only one thing I want to know,” he said, “and that’s how Jacob died.”

“That’s all?”

“Nothing more. Was it in his bed, or in the river, or in between?”

In Basel, to die in the river was an evil thing. There was a history to it, of burning and drowning, and Daniel had made a poor joke. “And why do you want to know? Why did you come back to Basel?” I asked him.

“You answer my question, Leonhard,” he said, and he shook his cup. That rattle was the only sound in that room that cut through all the other sound. He tossed the dice and put his hand over the numbers, hiding them. “And I’ll answer yours.”

Daniel had always been a mule. The more he was pulled on, the less he’d move. I’d only get more perplexity from him and I’d had enough. Besides, as we had talked there in that Underworld, its Lord arrived.

This was Old Gustavus. He was an innkeeper and a blacksmith and looked both with heavy arms from pounding and a heavy brow from scowling and a black beard like a burned forest. He was old but not aged; he’d hardened like mortar. He came in with a barrel on his shoulder and set it at the counter and then nearly extinguished the lamps with his stare. He fixed on Daniel and drew heavily near.

“Good evening, Master,” he said. “An honor for you to visit here.” He spoke cavernously, when he spoke. Most often a nod of his head and glint of his eye would get done what he wanted. “Is there anything you require?”

“A Chair at the University,” Daniel answered. He had no fear of the man. He’d bought him over many times with the money he’d spent in that room. “Mathematics would do well, though I’d take nearly any of them.” He laughed and didn’t wait for any answer. “But I’d settle for less. What do you have in the stable tonight?”

“Horses, Master.”

“I thought you would. I might want one for the month.”

“There’d be one.”

“Send Willi around with it. I’ll look it in the mouth.”

Gustavus’ dark darkened. “Willi’s gone with the coach to Freiburg, Master. I’ll send Fritz.”

“With the coach?” Now Daniel was curious. “What would Knipper want with him on the coach?”

“Willi drove it, Master. There was no Knipper.”

“He never came?” I asked. I was not afraid of Gustavus, either; not much.

“No.” No Master for me. I was in brown.

“Where’d he get to?” Nicolaus asked, and it was odd he’d spent the words.

“No place I know” was the answer. “I’ll send Fritz around with the horse, Master.”

“No need,” Daniel said. “I’m sure it’s fine. I’ll want it Monday. About noon.”

“Where are you riding?” I asked. Then, as a joke, “Russia?”

“Russia?” Daniel was authentically amused. “Not in an afternoon. It would be a fast horse for that.”

“Paris, then?” I asked, still with my joke, and that brought less amusement.

“Not Paris, either.” He turned. “That’s all,” he said to Gustavus, and that was all. Daniel was ready to leave, to return to the living streets, so I was pleased to return with him. We left the eternal dark for the simple black of earthly night, and I turned our conversation toward Italy. This was my interest. I’d always been so curious about the peninsula and all the world beyond Basel and I even coaxed a few words from Nicolaus on it. He knew the land well; before he took the Chair of Law in Bern, he’d been Chair of Mathematics in Padua, the same Chair Daniel now had. Even Gottlieb had held the Galileo Chair of Astronomy there years before. I wanted to go myself to Venice and Rome and Padua. Someday I’d Knipper south. We talked awhile before they left toward their home and beds, and I watched them leave. But I stayed in the Barefoot Square.

It has always been the poor whose feet were bare. Their Square was named for the church on it, and their church was plain and very large and worth more to them than shoes. It was built in old times by barefoot friars who knew poverty. I went in. It was lit by a few candles and they brightened more than all the fires in the Boot and Thorn.

The ceiling was higher inside than the roof outside, so far above the stones of the floor that the air inside the church was pulled thin by it. It was plain timber, not like the decorated toppings that crown wealthier churches. Two central walls hung from the ceiling a short distance, then split into peaked arches. Long pillars gripped the arches, held up by their tight hold. The pillars reached down to the stone floor and pulled upward on it, so the whole church was supported and lifted by its highest steeple. The floor grasped the crypt and the crypt was bedded in the rock and soil of the earth, which meant that Basel, and the whole planet, was held up by the church and the church by the heavens. If the chains to heaven were cut, the planet would plummet. The heavens would also be freed from the earth then, and would rebound away like a tree branch pulled down and released. But the chains were too, too strong. They would never break. I sometimes feared, though, that the church might break loose from its foundation and be wrenched into the sky. If it did, I hoped to be in it.

It was important of Basel that it was caught like this, held taut between earth and heaven like a knot between ropes. It was part of each but was not either. One day the city might be pulled fully to one side, and what a sundering that would be.

That night it did not. I sat some minutes on the back bench in a corner, a place where I listened and watched. That night in the Barefoot Church I saw winged Michael in holy flame, and slue-foot Lucifer in brimstone, the two of them in dispute, and between them a slab of cold stone. I knew it must be the body of Moses they were contending over, but I couldn’t see clearly.

Finally I went back out to the Square. The church was many centuries old, and built on centuries more of foundations. But the Boot and Thorn was very old, also. These two have faced each other across the Square, contending over it. So far neither had prevailed.

Sunday morning was fine and clear as glass. I rose early; I couldn’t help it. I walked in thought through Sabbath empty streets to the Munster square. Master Johann’s house was blank and not my destination. I was going to the Cathedral itself. Erasmus was buried in the left aisle and Oecolampadius in the center, but I wanted a different grave and passed by to the cloisters.

I knew just where to go. The shaded red stone columns divided the dim walk from the bright grass square. On the white plaster walls, carved stone epitaphs divided the shaded lives of remembered men from those bright living who remember. Soon I stood at a black oval surrounded by a garland wreath of marble, and capped by a globe and two shields.

One shield was of three seven-leaved branches, which was the symbol for Master Johann’s family. The other shield was a lion. The engraving was in Latin. At the top of the oval it named Uncle Jacob. It said of him that he was Mathematicus Incomparabilis. It listed that he was Professor of Mathematics at Basel’s University for eighteen years; member of the royal academy of Paris; and had held many other honors. The Roman ranks of M’s, C’s, L’s, X’s, V’s, and I’s marched through the years of his life, from his Natus, through his Augusti Aetatis, to his Extinctus twenty years ago.

Beneath the large oval was a smaller medallion, a circle. In the circle was an Archimedean spiral of five revolutions. Around it was the inscription Resurgo Eadem Mutata, I Arise Again the Same Though Changed. It was a thoughtful statement, and I thought on it, as I had before. It had always bothered me that the spiral it circles, the Archimedean spira mundanus, did not match the thought. It was an obscure point, but Mathematicians held strong opinions on spirals and their meanings.

Finally I left the cloister, not back to the Square, but to the back of the Munster, to the river. This was where I would finish my walk through memories and meanings of lives, lives current, lives recent, and lives before.

In the age before Basel, if that age ever was, there was still the Rhine. The bank would have been a high grassy hill steep down to the water. In ancient, ancient times, one Basel was built of rough stone that Roman hands never put there. I’d seen these stones. They were found beneath and pulled from the crypt of the Munster when it was repaired many years ago.

Two thousand years ago the Romans built on the hillside and named their city Basileus, which meant Kingship. A thousand years ago, the Germans ended Rome and took her cities. The people who lived inside the walls today were those German conquerors of Roman conquerors. Of what I knew of conquest, the blood of the ancients and the Romans both still flowed in Basel’s veins.

Those stones of that first Basel were its only epitaph, but not the only memory of it. Basel’s people walked in their streets on the dust of earlier cities, and all the cities were only different ages of the one Basel, and the city had always been within its own walls and not part of the world around.

Now the Munster stood on the hill, and a paved court behind the cathedral was high above the water. The old bank was buried beneath its sheer walls.

I stood and looked out at the water. The river was high. It hadn’t rained more than other Aprils but the Rhine drained many lands; we saw it pass, but knew not whence it came or where it was going. Somewhere above Basel there’d been rain. The city had high walls and very little from outside ever passed them, but the river always had. I supposed that Uncle Jacob had died closer to his bed than the river.

Later, dressed proper, I took my grandmother’s hand and promenaded her solemnly to the Saint Leonhard’s Church. Every Sunday I’d sit and stand with her for the hymns and readings, and hear the sermon, which was always of great interest to me. I was reminded of watching my own father in his pulpit. A few times each year I would take my grandmother to Riehen, for her to visit my mother, her daughter, and we would sit under my father’s Sunday teaching. But those times were rare.

It had only been one day before that I’d been immersed in the ocean of Mathematics; now I floated in the air of Theology.

Both were unseen and undefinable. What were the rules of Mathematics? What were those of God? They both existed with or without our knowing, they were universal truths, and our lives were ruled by them absolutely. Could I say that two fish are three? Could I steal a fish and say it was right? Was it two different laws that I would be violating, or were they both one? All the princes and armies in Europe couldn’t change a point of either.

And both laws divided between right and wrong. Stealing was wrong, and a Mathematic error was wrong. The wages of sin were death, but the wages of incorrectly adding were less severe. But still, for each there was right and wrong, yes and no, good and . . . not good. And just as Mathematics was sure and a man could build a house firmly on it calculations, so he could also build his life’s house even more firmly on God’s law.

And I had a feeling now, something that had been with me since I last passed the Ash Gate, that the contention between right and wrong was nearer to the surface than it had been before. I’d never known for what king the Roman city was named. But the kingship of Basel, through all its ages, had always been contested.

Afterward, at two in the afternoon, we returned to the dining table and dined. It was the only meal of the week that could be described that way, where we were dressed well and sat with pewter plates and a platter with as much food as we wanted. Every other meal was eaten plainly, in thanks and humbleness. On Sunday, we accepted that God was bountiful.

Then, through the afternoon, I read to Grandmother; that Sunday from Job. Who could wrestle with Leviathan? And who has beheld Behemoth, with limbs like bars of iron? The Lord warned Job of them both, and not only Job. I have thought that Leviathan and Behemoth walk Basel’s streets. They came sometime long ago, even when the streets were slight paths between straw and wood huts, and the streets only hardened since then.

The Sabbath was the day of rest. We both went to bed early. We had done no work on this one day of the week. That was hard for me, but it was proper.

The circle of the week returned me to Monday, to beneath Master Johann’s roof and Mistress Dorothea’s tongue. “Leonhard!” She was, as always, in her perpetual constant motion. As I entered the kitchen door she was seated but never still. A chicken waited on her table. “A dog’s put a hole in the fence and it needs mending.” The girl who helps her in the kitchen was somewhere else that morning. I didn’t know where, and I would certainly not ask. If I did, I’d be told where, and why, and why not the next day, and because of who, and on. But without the girl, I alone remained for the Mistress’s bombardment. “My sister-in-law’s fever is back. And don’t put the wood in the settle. She worked too hard before she could become well. She has too many feathers.” This was about the chicken she was plucking.

I stood for a moment with my load of wood. “A fever?”

“It wants washing first, get a brush. She’s always digging and chewing.” This was about the wood settle, and then the dog. “My brother says to let them run.” This was likely about the fever, but might also have been about the dog, or even the chicken. “I’ll have him warn the Council.” What Mistress Dorothea would have her brother warn the Town Council of, unmanaged dogs or contagious fevers, I didn’t yet know, but surely not chickens. The threat, though, like everything else concerning her, was not idle. Magistrate Faulkner’s warnings to the City Council of Basel carried great weight.

The wood I was carrying was also a great weight. I set it on the floor beside the fireplace and started on the settle, brushing the bark and splinters into the fire and then scrubbing harder. “Are there other fevers in the city?”

“I know of some,” she answered, and I knew that I would soon also know. I finished the settle and filled it with wood, and heard the list of my Mistress’s acquaintances who had any complaint against their health. It was short enough but very detailed.

“Your own family’s been blessed with good health,” I said, remembering the story. “Your father lived long, didn’t he?”

“Seventy-two years, and hale but the last four.”

“And you returned to Basel from Holland to care for him.”

“I never wished for Holland,” she answered. “Flat as the sea, and nearly the sea. That was a hard move, with a baby and the armies.”

“You moved with armies?” I asked, taking bellows to the fire. It, and she, really needed little stoking.

“Move with armies? What would that be? We moved from them.”

And I moved from the armies, also. “And it took you long?”

“Two months. We were stopped in Strasbourg for half that, waiting for the road to be clear.”

“Clear of the armies,” I said. That would be what she was speaking of. Louis of France’s armies were fighting in that area at that time, as they had been in most areas at most times. And the baby would have been Nicolaus.

“Ten years in Groningen,” she said, “and then Master Johann accused of being a heretic Cartesian! It was scurrilously we were treated. But the Master didn’t want to leave his Chair. He was never Cartesian.” I knew Master Johann was the most orthodox of Reformed men, if not the most heartfelt. But I didn’t believe Cartesian ideas should be dismissed; that philosophy, and Monsieur Descartes himself, had been a study of mine.

“He was Chair of Mathematics there,” I said.

“A petty Chair next to Basel,” she said, “but still nothing to throw off like ashes, and the Master’s honorable above all and wouldn’t let gossip drive him from his work. Then the Dean here sent for him to come for a Chair. It was my father who wrote to us of the invitation, and also old Master Nicolaus.” This would have been Grandfather Nicolaus, Master Johann’s father. Both families were wealthy and both magisterial and none of the Deans of the four colleges of the University would have ignored their requests.

“Any University in Europe would have pleaded for Master Johann.”

“They did, they did. When we left Groningen, the Provost of Utrecht pursued us a hundred miles to lure the Master there! But Basel was grandest and kin was dearest and so he did come, even if it was for the Greek Language Chair. And so I could be here for Father’s declining years. It was the Lord’s mercy to us all, and I was at his bedside with him and his two precious grandchildren. They were his joy and his light, those two, and he was theirs.” We’d come back to the first question of her father’s health.

Thoughts of chance were still on my mind. “He would still have had to win the draw, though, to get the Chair. It would still have only been one out of three?”

Mistress Dorothea had already cocked her head and given me a shrewd glance. “The fence is waiting. Mend it, Leonhard, before the dogs make the hole worse, and I’ll be grateful to you.”

It would be time soon to dress black and white, but first while I was in brown I ran to the Barefoot Square, and the Boot and Thorn. Daniel had said he’d be collecting his horse.

Day in the Common Room was like day in heavy forest. Light found its way to the tables and walls like rain in the forest would, only after touching many distant surfaces first. The fire was low, just smolderers, because it hadn’t yet died from the night past and it must return to life for the night coming. Daytime was the fire’s purgatory and a half life for night dwellers. Charon the cat slept with one eye.

I sat for a while with two men I knew, a stonecutter and a bookprinter, eating noon lunch in the twilight. They were arguing over which had the greatest permanence.

“What tears it?” the mason said. “What burns it?” He was an old man, and strong, with gray hair streaked dark and white, and the veins in his hands stood out. “Words written in stone, they never fade.”

“But what’s said with them?” the printer answered. “You cut one word while I press a thousand.” The printer was younger but his hair was white with thin black patches like marks, and his skin was brown and leathery.

“Which of those thousand last? Paper. Here, then gone.”

“I’ll print a thousand more when they are.”

“And my one still lasts. There’s a hundred men buried in the Munster yard, and all that’s remembered of them is what I chiseled.”

“There’s a thousand men whose graves are lost, but they’re remembered for their books that I’ve printed.

“If there was anything to remember about me,” I said, “I’d want it said with both.”

“There was a man,” the printer said, “dead more than a decade, but I printed his book and he was remembered again.”

“But I cut his epitaph and he was never forgotten.”

“I print the words he said.”

“I print the words said about him.”

“I publish his soul.”

“I chisel his life.”

“Lithicus,” I said to the stonecutter, “I know of that man. Was it my Master Johann’s brother Jacob?”

“That one, yes.”

“Did you know him?”

“I knew him.”

“And Lieber,” I said to the bookbinder, “I have that book, also. The Ars Conjectandi. Did you read any of it?”

“That Latin? I don’t know any of it.”

“You carve Latin,” I said to Lithicus. “Do you remember the words you cut?”

“I don’t know that Latin, either,” he said, and he and Lieber shook their heads together, that anyone would.

When Daniel did come in, I was still thinking of languages only spoken now by men in black robes. He sat and toyed with his cup of dice and I thought of the Latin his uncle had written about the arts of chance. And I told him what his mother had told me.

“Greek?” Daniel said. “He’d take the Greek Chair? He couldn’t crawl in that language.”

“I think he could crawl,” I said of Master Johann, “and walk and run.”

“But he wouldn’t sit. He’d never take a Chair of Greek. Leave Mathematics at Groningen for Greek at Basel? It’s not believable.”

“Your Grandfather Faulkner wanted his family close.”

“I remember that,” Daniel said warmly. “He was kind and a gentle old man. I’ll long remember that.”

“That’s what brought your father back to Basel.”

“Half a Chair, and half a family wouldn’t add to a whole.”

“His own father was here.”

“That’s a subtraction, not an addition.”

“Do you remember your Grandfather Nicolaus?”

“Not any. He died the year after we were back. Brutus had fled Basel to Holland to be away from him.”

“Why?”

“I was never told.”

“Will you tell your own children why you fled from your father in Basel?” I asked.

“No!” He laughed again. “Because they’ll have fled Basel themselves to be away from me.” As he said it, Gustavus came into the room and on his back was a log for the fire; a true log near the size of a man, four feet long and from low in the tree. “And Leonhard,” Daniel said, “I’ll tell you this from my own wisdom: When any of us flee from Basel, we only come back if we have a strong reason. I don’t believe Brutus only came back because Grandpoppa Faulkner wanted him to, and not for hope of a Chair in Greek, either.” With a thump that would have broken any other stone but not that hearth, Gustavus threw the wood onto the embers. “There was only one thing that would bring him to Basel, and that was the Chair of Mathematics.”

“But your Uncle Jacob had that Chair.”

“And he died.” The log ignited. That fireplace was a firewomb; a flame would spring from anything thrown in it.

“But before, or after, or when?” I asked.

“You tell me!” Daniel answered. “That’s the task I’ve given you!”

“I never liked the task, and I like it less as I see it more.”

“What have you seen of it?”

“There’s seeing other than by sight.”

“More of that?” he said. “Still seeing what’s unseen, are you, Leonhard? Then see what I want to know, and you’ll be done with it. Brutus came here for the Chair of Mathematics and nothing less.”

“And is that why you’ve come back?” I asked.

“I’ve come back to learn the truth about Uncle Jacob. Now, who has Greek today? Desiderius still?”

“He does.”

“And who was it before? I don’t remember.”

“I don’t know. Desiderius had just taken the Chair when I came five years ago,” I said.

“Ask him who was before, and how that man took the Chair. Or more, what was it that happened twenty years ago? Greek must have been empty at the time.”

“You could ask him,” I said.

“I’m watched every minute.”

Gustavus was watching. “Your horse is ready, Master.” I’d seen him approach and wait while we spoke, but Daniel hadn’t and he was startled.

“Have Willi bring it out front to the Square,” he answered, and then to me, “He was promised Greek. And the drawing, that wasn’t a hindrance. He’d have the one chance in three, but he knew he’d be chosen in that. Yet Greek. No, he knew Mathematics would come open.” He slapped my back, very pleased. “You’ve made a good start, Leonhard. How long was Jacob alive after we came, or was he at all? How’d he die? Get that for me, Leonhard. Get that! I’m pleased. This is coming even better than I’d thought!”

But Gustavus wasn’t pleased and hadn’t moved. “It will be Fritz. Willi is away with the coach.”

“Yes, yes,” Daniel said. “I remember. Fritz, then. Whoever you have. Mare or stallion?”

“Stallion, Master. Spirited as you’ve preferred.”

“Come on and let’s see him, Leonhard. Want a ride? Come with me. They’ll have another in the stable. Did you say you wanted to see Paris? Or Russia? Those are an odd pair for you to have asked of. Have you heard something?”

“I only listen to my Master’s lectures, and I have one this afternoon, so I can’t ride with you.”

“What do you have left to hear? You should be giving lectures. Who is it you’re hearing?”

“Master Huldrych.”

“Aged Huldrych! Still here? How is he?”

“More so,” I said, and we were in the Barefoot Square with the ironshod horse, black as anything and eyeing Daniel thoughtfully. Daniel gave him the same look back.

“So Huldrych’s still alive,” Daniel said, and then to his black horse, “and the ride’s to begin. And Leonhard won’t come to moderate us. We’ll be wild and free.” The horse was satisfied.