3
The Death Dance
I returned to my room to become a student. On my dresser, beside my wig, I kept two artifacts and one marvel. Two wooden bowls, man-made, were the artifacts, but the marvel was purely God’s creation. It was a conch shell that my father had given me. I didn’t know from what far seashore it came. Sometime I would stare at it and become lost imagining how it came to be, and I would run my finger along the ridge of its top; this was the most marvelous part of it, because it formed a spiral more perfect than any which could be drawn by hand. How could it have been made? I believed that it proved that Mathematics was deep in all Creation. I even wondered, between Mathematics and the physical world, which was deeper. But Master Huldrych disagreed.
Master Huldrych held Basel’s Chair of Physics. Twenty years ago he held it, when it was the Chair of Natural Philosophy, and forty years ago he held it. Perhaps sixty years ago; no records had been kept.
He was a genial and cautious man in his narrow house on the Death Dance Street. The street floor was a single room where his lectures were held. The room above was a laboratory where various scales, quadrants, sextants and octants, lenses, and less recognizable objects were engaged in a lengthy experiment which concerned the accumulation of dust. On the highest floor, the Master himself lived in an advanced state of bachelorhood. I had been in this room on a few occasions, as the class occasionally had to select one of its members to arouse the Master from his deliberations when the lecture was to start. The basement of the house opened to the river bank. It flooded at any opportunity and was thus kept clean and empty.
Other floods had scoured the houses of Basel from time to time. Nearly three hundred years ago the Black Death came to the Rhine and passed the city walls. There’d been no count or memory of how many died or how many lived. Instead, the wall of the cemetery of the Preacher’s Church was painted with the city’s Death Dance. Many cities had these Dances of Death; the Black Death swept many, many cities. Basel’s was famous, though, for its size and artistry. It was a mural a hundred feet long on the cemetery wall, made in the plague years, just opposite the house where Master Huldrych now lived. Perhaps he lived in it then, as well.
I’d seen engravings of other Dances from other cities and they all had the same form of a line of many panels, and in each panel a man or woman danced, with a partner. Every dancer’s station in life was easily recognized from their dress despite centuries’ difference. There were kings and priests and farmers, bakers, knights; children and aged; monks and nuns; paupers, and scholars and students and knaves. But the partner was always the same. It was a sprightly cadaver, Death, grinning, spouting worms and decay, and enjoying the gavotte much more than the reluctant living. In every scene he mocked his mate, twirling the farmer’s plow or brandishing the knight’s sword or wearing lopsided the king’s crown.
These dances were drawn and carved in observation of the Black Death’s sweep and carelessness. Even now there were churches in Germany standing empty and alone in old wide fields. Their villages dead and worn away, the stones of God’s house were the only remainder.
Though drawn in that time centuries ago, the Dances’ meaning was just as painful now. Everyone would die. The dance showed that no one, no one, would escape, whatever their station, rank, or achievement. Life was only a dance with death.
That Monday afternoon I took my place in Master Huldrych’s lecture room along with the dozen other students who paid the Master for his lectures. We were all in black and white for lectures, and we jested and teased and ignored the moral lesson available to us so close by.
In my first years I was often the object of the jeering, being younger than the others. Now I was the same age as them and I still received a generous share of their torment, but I didn’t mind. I also received a share of their purses for tutoring them in their Latin and Greek. I wasn’t asked to tutor other subjects: I had gained a reputation of becoming too enthusiastic and lengthy in my sessions.
Finally, as the church bells began their noon lecture, Master Huldrych appeared to begin his. We sat on a bench built around the walls of the room and the Master stood at a podium. He was expert in the Physics current in his youth but not the Physics current in his old age. He still referred to the subject as Natural Philosophy. He was one of the few masters at the University who still lectured in Latin. I wasn’t sure that he knew that he did. His great energy had dwindled though his curiosity was unflagging. He questioned any visiting scholar on the newest discoveries and ideas, but nothing new would ever seep into his lectures.
He was aware that the atmosphere was a gas, and that it exerted pressure on surfaces. He had himself collected gases in containers and observed that the volume and pressure in the container were somehow related. But the basic principle eluded him that this relation was a simple Mathematic inverse proportion, though Mr. Boyle stated that sixty years ago. He had described to us the experiments and proposals he’d entered into the Paris Competition, though he had not competed for many years. He had never won the competition. He may not even have entered, but only remembered that he had.
His lecture that morning was on the theory of waves, and I was in misery! I was fascinated by waves. From the square behind the Munster I would watch them on the Rhine. And this was my theory, as ridiculous as Master Huldrych found it: that sound was a wave.
I believed this because I was convinced that waves could move through volumes, not just across surfaces. How could a bird in flight be heard? What was the sound? Huldrych said it couldn’t be a wave, because no surface connected the bird and the ear, and plain observation showed that waves occurred on surfaces. I believed instead that sound showed that an invisible wave might occur in a gas. There were so many invisible things!
The air itself was invisible. It had been a century since Monsieur Pascal stated he believed that we were not surrounded by a vacuum, but by a type of matter like water, that filled our world like an ocean. At the time, Monsier Descartes derided him by saying the true vacuum was between Monsieur Pascal’s ears; but later, Mr. Boyle in England was able to evacuate the air from a bell pressed firmly against a tabletop. This true vacuum had many strange properties, including the phenomenon that no sound could penetrate it: a small, jangling bell inside the vacuum couldn’t be heard outside. So, air was necessary for sound.
Daniel agreed with me; we had exchanged letters on this subject while he was in Italy. The difficulty was in the Mathematics. What were the equations that described these waves? I believed I had a solution, but there were so many difficulties. Oh, how I loved difficulties! How I loved these invisibilities! And how difficult it was to listen to Master Huldrych lecture on his simple, visible waves of water.
The lecture ended. The students exited respectfully but I lingered, and when the others were gone, Master Huldrych noticed I’d remained. “Leonhard?” he asked, and peered carefully to see that it was. There was a mass to him, a bulginess, that was both height and girth; he was like a ruin of a castle. His wide robe contributed to his indefinition.
“Master,” I answered. “How long have you lectured at the University?”
“How long? Very long. Very, very long.”
“Has anyone been longer?”
“Oh, no. No one.” He shook his head in wonder at the very thought. “How could they?”
“Even Master Balthazar? He’s had his Chair of Law for a long time.”
“He has. He has. I remember when he came.” He smiled at me. “So I must have been here before, mustn’t I! All of the other Masters, I remember them all coming.”
“Desiderius? That was only five years ago.”
“The Master before, I meant. I don’t remember who he was.”
“Master Jankovsky. He had been Chair fifteen years, but he was young when he was elected. That was very unfortunate, what happened to him. It would have been expected he’d have lived longer. I have. Or it would have been expected that I wouldn’t.”
“Twenty years ago, then,” I said.
“And Master Stuber before Jankovsky. He was old. He was very old.”
“Master Johann has been here for twenty years.”
“I remember that day very well. Johann and Jankovsky were elected the same day.”
“The same day?”
Master Huldrych nodded slowly and his thoughts seemed focused on something long ago. “When Master Jacob died.” He turned his head upward, as if he were looking toward heaven. Or perhaps just toward the ceiling. “Much has changed!” he said. “I think it’s best to not talk about that year.”
The Death Dance paintings had faded over their many years, as had Master Huldrych, though they were still clear; but one scene seemed far more live and real than the others. It was the Lawyer. Every scene had written above it Death’s pronouncement and the Living’s appeal. I knew the Lawyer’s words well: God gives all laws, as are found in books; no man may change them: hate lies, love truth. But it wasn’t the Lawyer watching me from the wall. It was Nicolaus standing in front and matching the mural’s stance.
“Old Huldrych,” he said.
“Old but durable,” I answered. “He’ll outlast us all.”
“Once it’s empty, and it isn’t.”
“He’s mortal,” Nicolaus said again; and flanked by hundreds of feet of Death Dance, he was irrefutable.
“So was your uncle. Do you remember him?”
“No.”
“Was he alive when you came to Basel, or had he already died? You were ten years old. If you tell me, I can tell Daniel, and you won’t report any of us to Master Johann.”
Nicolaus only asked my question back. “What have you learned of my Uncle Jacob?”
“I know his Mathematics,” I said. “He was Master Johann’s teacher.” Though Nicolaus had the Chair of Law in Bern, he was more a Mathematician than many who taught Mathematics.
“How do you know?”
“I’ve read the Ars Conjectandi and I’ve had my Master’s lessons. I can see what he learned from his brother.”
“I know the lion by his paw.” Nicolaus said it oddly. It was a saying in their family, with a meaning of recognizing one thing from another. “I don’t know that he was alive when we came. We had stopped a month in Strasbourg on our way.”
“A month?”
“There were armies on the Rhine, and battles. We had to wait. And no news from Basel. But Gottlieb went on. He’d been living with us.” Then he said nothing else.
It was odd how the conversation mirrored his mother’s, how the journeys had been symmetric. I asked, “What does Daniel want, do you think?”
“He bears watching.”
“He means to cause trouble, I guess.”
“He has reason.”
I was unsure if this meant he had a reason, or if he could reason. It was Nicolaus’s manner of speech, always leaving me unsure.
“Did you come to Basel to watch him?”
“I have reason, too. I am only the lion’s paw.” He smiled at me. “What reason do you have, Leonhard?”
“I don’t know. . . .”
He nodded to me and even tipped his hat, and our talk was over.
Late in the afternoon, just as the shadows of western houses were at the feet of eastern houses, I passed through the Barefoot Square on an errand. There had been many walls around Basel, of sod and wood and stone, but the oldest standing was the Old Wall, the inner wall built six hundred years ago. The New Wall was a century or two younger and enclosed three times the area. The Barefoot Square, between the church and the inn, had the inside of the Old Wall as one of its sides, and the Coal Gate as an entry; a man entering from Coal Street had the Boot and Thorn on his left and the Barefoot Church on his right. I called it the Half-Shod Gate.
The Wall and its gates, though deep inside the city now, were still maintained. On the key of the gate’s arch was a shield carved with a Bishop’s crook, which was Basel’s emblem, though there’d been no bishop since the Reformation. But the shield had cracked, sometime recently. I saw scaffolding up the side of the wall at the gate, and a workman repairing the shield. It was Lithicus. He saw me watching from below and set down his hammer. “Would you make this of paper?” he said.
“No. Nor any of the Wall.”
“Nor the houses, nor the church.”
“I’ll ask you a question,” I said. “I’ve looked at Master Jacob’s epitaph stone often, and I wonder if you remember its spiral.”
“Spiral? I remember it!” His countenance was instantly angry. “I remember it too well!”
“What do you remember?”
“That it’s a spiral and you won’t tell me it’s not.” And he was fearful, too.
“Oh, it is,” I said.
“Some say not, and they say what isn’t is.”
“What do they say is?”
“Stretched bendings that no one could carve.”
“Who says—” I began to ask, but exactly then I was knocked from my feet by a black stallion. I’d always been an inattentive fellow when I walked the streets, and I’d had practice enough picking myself up from collisions. A hand took hold of mine and pulled. It was Daniel, and his other hand still held the stallion’s rein.
“Keep an eye out,” he said, laughing.
“Or you keep an eye on me,” I said, and laughed with him. “And you had a good ride?”
“Wild and free,” he said. “And the innkeeper’s waiting for his horse, so I’ll take it to him.” In the doorway of the Boot and Thorn, Gustavus had his eye on Daniel, and I thought it was Daniel he was waiting for, and it was Daniel that he led into the inn.
Later, I was cast ashore into my grandmother’s kitchen, to a supper of fish and dark bread. I felt troubled, as I had Sunday morning before, and I asked my grandmother’s counsel. “Who is king in Basel?”
“You know that the town’s Council and its Mayor are all Basel has of a king, and the Magistrates are its judges.”
“I know those,” I said. “But who is king?” I was as unsure of the question as of the answer.
“Whose laws are followed is king,” she answered. “Whose laws do you see followed, Leonhard?”
There was a great deal to consider about laws. There were the city’s laws that lawyers read and the Magistrates judged on, and people obeyed these laws mostly, so the Council was a king. Also, there were laws of gravity that everyone obeyed, so the earth was our king; and laws of civility and custom that weren’t written but ruled us. There was an elegance that each law had its giver and its reason, wise or poor. And there were deeper laws of good and evil in which we chose our own Master. “God gives all laws, as are found in books; no man may change them: hate lies and love truth,” I said. “Grandmother, do you remember when Master Johann’s brother Master Jacob died?”
“I remember the man well.”
“Was it before or after Master Johann came back from Holland? I think it must have been close either way.”
“I don’t know. Jacob was alive and Johann was away, then Jacob was dead and Johann was here. It wasn’t told beyond that.”
“I think Knipper would remember that ride,” I said.
“Ask him when he comes with the coach tomorrow.”
“He didn’t go,” I said. “Gustavus had to send Willi with the coach. But I’d have to find him, and Gustavus couldn’t. Or maybe when Willi comes back, he can tell me if Knipper was still in Mistress Dorothea’s kitchen when he went for the trunk.”
Tuesday began with water: a steady rain falling and I fallen upon, fetching from the fountain rain that had fallen in the weeks before. A barrel beneath my bedroom window caught rainwater from the roof, but it wasn’t full yet.
Just as the people of Basel carried the blood of the ancients, the veins of the city were as ancient. In the inner city, the old city, the streets must have been laid sometime, some year. One evidence of this was the fountains. They were fed by pipes or tunnels beneath the streets. Every person in Basel used the fountains but no one knew when they were set, or how, or by whom.
There was a stream, the Birsig Flow, that entered the city from the southwest. Before it came into the city, it split in three parts. One fed the moat and another passed between houses inside the city, then disappeared. That was a foul course of water and no one would drink from it. But the third split dove beneath the wall into an ancient tunnel. It must once have been unfettered on its journey to the Rhine, but very long ago it was covered over by the streets and houses of Basel. Now even its path was unknown. I believed it fed the fountain in the Barefoot Square. That one always had a sharp taste.
I sheltered for a moment from the rain inside the door of the Boot and Thorn, and caught Old Gustavus as he passed, like the stream, toward some hidden place. “Master Daniel’s made himself well at home here,” I said. “He likes what he finds in the Common Room.”
“He finds what’s Common to all men.”
And with that wet answer, I took my buckets and carried home water through the rain.
The heavens were not yet emptied when I sailed forth to Master Johann’s house. I cleaned my boots and took them off inside the kitchen door. By the faintness of the sound waves, I calculated that Mistress Dorothea was about two floors away. I knew my jobs without being told, though. There was dry wood aplenty in the shed, but I still had to keep the fire high enough to swallow wet logs.
I wasn’t alone anyway. Little Johann was at the table with his dough, and I knew when he needed a listening ear. “What’s it like now?” I asked. “They’ve been here a few days and settled in.”
“Just as bad.”
“How are they with you?”
“Daniel’s either hot or cold, and Nicolaus is lukewarm.”
“How are you to them?”
“Not better. I don’t care.”
“I think you care, Johann,” I said. “You’re brothers.”
“I won’t do anything for them. They won’t for me.”
I took a guess on what he was wanting to be asked. “Have you told Daniel about the letters you saw on your father’s desk?”
“I can’t! I’d be hated by Poppa if I did.”
“I could tell him.”
“I don’t care if he ever gets them. Poppa’s burned them anyway.”
“Burned them? I doubt he has. And they’re from Paris and Russia. I think he’d want them. I’ll tell Daniel, and no one will know you saw them. He can ask for them himself.”
“Poppa doesn’t want him to have them. What if Daniel asks for them? There’ll be a fight.”
That was true. “I’ll think on it,” I said. “And I won’t let you be hated for it.”
“I know you won’t, Leonhard.”
So I’d made a promise and Johann’s dough was given rest. Mistress Dorothea arrived and was quickly praising her son, and worrying for him, and pressing him with questions, kneading him with her words.
On Tuesday I was lectured to on Greek, in Greek. I would go to Saint Alban’s street where Saint Alban’s church stands within Saint Alban’s cloister, and just beyond was Saint Alban’s Gate beside the Rhine. This was the city’s easternmost gate, the closest of the gates to Greece. Standing on the wall beside the gate, I sometimes watched the river flowing in from closer eastern lands: from Wurttemberg, and Zurich, and the Bodensee where the Rhine is born. I’d never seen those places. Beyond them were Austria and Russia and Greece. And farther beyond were the Indies and China, and finally Basel again. Disciples of Natural Philosophy knew that the planet was round, and that a straight path was finally a circle. A day circles the planet and returns as a different day. I wondered what Basel would be like to return to.
The gate wasn’t immediately beside the river. There was a space, with the gate and Saint Alban’s street on one side, and the river on the other. In the space was the paper factory. This far corner of the city was Switzerland’s greatest center for the manufacture of paper; it produced much of the country’s supply. I liked to watch the workers shred and pound the rags and feed them into the stamps. These powerful presses were the reason the factory was here at the river: they were driven by water wheels and had been for nearly three centuries. The canal for the wheels was even older, dug long earlier by monks for Saint Alban’s flour mills.
The pulp was soaked and crushed in another press into sheets that were then dried, first between layers of felt, and then by hanging. Paper for writing was bathed in lime and dried again. I learned this especially when I tried to use the cheap un-limed stuff for writing and it drank ink from the pen like a thirsty horse at a trough, and made my equations into veined black spots and wriggles. The paper looked like the muddy road the horse trampled on its way to the trough!
All the paper I had in my room was from these mills, and I had so much paper! I’d known many geese, and if someday I could visit the place the ink was made, I’d have a good knowledge of my precious tools: paper, pen, and ink. I knew less about the ink except that it was made from ashes. I’d looked closely at it as it dried on the page, trying to see the flecks, but it was pure black. It seemed a worthy use of ash. A man would write, and what he’d written outlasted him: It was his ashes.
But the paper was dearest to me because it was what I started with. It was the promise and the potential and it was so pretty, just white.
Saint Alban’s street wasn’t only for paper. In the large houses facing the factory were the printers. What a greatness they were! Lieber had apprenticed in Frankfurt but was of a very old Basel family with generations of ink in his veins, and I thought his books to be the highest quality. He only printed books, not broadsides and flyers. But I wouldn’t have cared even if they were printed on burlap; it was the words written. I wrote because I read, and I needed to think when I read, and I needed to write when I thought. What others have written, though, was far more excellent.
And among the printers were the booksellers! I needed complete discipline to not peer into those shops. It was a very dangerous street for me.
But I had to go to Saint Alban’s Street on Tuesdays, despite the peril. Among the papers and books and words was the home of Master Desiderius, who held the University’s Chair of Greek.
Desiderius was a man not yet forty, and he held a special place in my admiration: He was the greatest read man I knew. Where my reading had covered an acre, his had covered a continent. Even the densest Mathematics I had on my shelves he had also read. I might have understood more of what I’d read than he did, but he had read more of what I understood than I had. And Mathematics, of course, was just a particle of his reading. He had read the Ancients and the Classics and the Moderns, he had read Philosophy and Theology, Anatomy and Botany, History and Logic, Rhetoric and Dialectic; he had read Virgil to make the mind tremble, and Homer to make the heart race, and Provencal romances to make the cheek blush. He was a very quiet man with a peaceful wife and studious children. They all read. He would read to each child in a different language depending on their age: first in German, then in Latin, then Greek, Italian, English, and I suppose in obscure Hebrew and Persian and Chinese! When they did speak, the family was hushed Babel.
His lecture room was small, for only a dozen students at most. His larger lectures were given at the University building in the Old Lecture Hall and were attended by the larger mass of beginning students who all were required to take Greek, and from whom I earned my pocket money tutoring. Those who came to his house were we who craved the language. The dozen seats were seldom full.
The Master himself entered and greeted us and we immersed ourselves in Homer, Hesiod, Aeschylus, and Aristotle. Every classic writer was fair game in our hunt, all save one. Plato was considered too vast and deep to even consider except on his own, and he was given his own special days.
The double thickness of Greek was the speaking and what was spoken. It seemed impossible to me to ride the wine dark Aegean with Odysseus, or visit bloody dark Thebes with Sophocles, in awkward thudding German. Even Latin was hollow. No, it must be Greek for the Greeks! And on other days, when Master Vanitas wasn’t looking, we discussed the New Testament. Vanitas held the Chair of Theology. He was a dismal man, very unlike Desiderius, and I’d sat under only one semester of his lectures, and though I respected his thoughtfulness, I would take my Theology in a sunlit church on a Sunday instead of under Vanitas’ clouds. But within the billowing cloak of a Greek lecture, there was ample room for almost anything, and I was especially glad that the Fathers wrote in the language that Desiderius taught.
When the lecture concluded, I stayed behind. Master Desiderius was not to be bothered with a wig, so his red and brown curls were like autumn leaves among his students’ snowy white headdresses.
“Master Desiderius,” I said. Unlike with Master Huldrych, I often stayed behind in this class. “May I borrow a book?” This was my usual reason.
“Only if you’ll read it, Leonhard.” This was his usual answer, and it was humorous. He knew I wouldn’t be able to walk home without my nose between the pages. “What book do you want?”
“Any.”
“Come and we’ll choose one.”
Few words stirred a deeper joy in me.
Minutes later, many minutes, I stood at his door, my feet toward the street, my heart still among the shelves of his library, my fingers firm on Boccaccio, and my eyes on the Master’s face.
“And next, after that one,” he was saying, “I have a Faustbook for you. It’s a new telling, and when you read it I’ll lend you Paracelsus with it. And there’s also a new Homer. It’s an Englishman named Pope. Do you read English?”
“No,” I said, and I must have sounded less than enthusiastic.
“It would be a good text to learn it. There’s more than just Greek and Latin, Leonhard.”
“Yes, sir. There’s French that I hardly know, and Italian even less.” I held up the book in my hand. “And I think my brain is more than full already!”
“Then make some room. You could empty some of your numbers and Mathematics.”
“Oh, no, sir!”
“No, no, I wouldn’t, that, either. You have a gift for them, Leonhard, and I think there’s a purpose in that.”
“I hope there is,” I said. “Anyway, I think they’re stuck.”
“I’ve plenty wedged too tight myself. And there’s more to put in! With every lecture I give I find more I need to learn.”
“You’ve many more years of lecturing still.”
“I’ve already had five here and five in Strasbourg.”
Surely I’d known before he’d come from Strasbourg. “Why did you come here?”
“I was elected to the Chair.”
“How were you, though?” I asked. “Had you been asked? Did they know you’d come if it was offered?”
“Master Vanitas wrote me to say his committee would nominate me if I was willing. They prefer to have candidates from other universities as well as from Basel. I agreed that I was. And then, of the three candidates, it was my name drawn.”
“Had you known Master Vanitas, then?”
“By reputation and by correspondence. And I’d known Master Jankovsky.”
“Oh! Master Huldrych mentioned him. He said it was unfortunate what had happened to him.”
Master Desiderius looked away, as if something unpleasant had been thrust before him. “But that was five years ago. And I was in Strasbourg.”
That seemed a better subject. “What is the University in Strasbourg like?”
“It was once significant.”
“Basel is significant.”
“Very much. Strasbourg was worth leaving. When the city surrendered its independence and became part of France, many things declined.” He glanced about the room. “Such as books and printing. There are more books here in Basel! I remember asking the coachman to tell me about the city.”
“The coachman? Knipper?”
“Yes, it was. He brought me the letter from Master Vanitas, and I rode back with him on his return to give my nomination lecture.”
“Did Master Johann ever have the Chair of Greek?”
“Johann?” This surprised him. “But he has Mathematics! Why would he have Greek?”
“I was told he was considered for it, long ago. But then Mathematics came open.”
“He has never had the Greek Chair. His name is not on the list.” He seemed very surprised at the possibility, and even alarmed. So I asked about the Faustbook then, and perhaps I drove the memory of Master Johann from the Master’s thoughts.
It seemed worth finding Daniel to tell him a few things I’d learned, and as it was Tuesday afternoon, Willi would be back from Freiburg and Strasbourg, and that would also be worth attending. So I opened my eyes for Daniel and wandered toward the north, facing Saint John Gate. And when Daniel was in Basel he was hard to hide.
I went walking the Rhine Leap, the street which ran from the Munster Square at one end to Saint Martin’s Church and the Rhine Bridge at the other. The University Building itself faced the river beside the bridge, in front of Saint Martin’s. Centered between these pillars, Cousin Gottlieb lived in a house of the same quality as Master Johann’s and only somewhat less quantity. Daniel was there to be found, occupied with glaring at it. I tugged his sleeve.
“What?” Daniel said. “Who? Oh, is it you, Leonhard?”
“It is,” I laughed. “Are you calling on Gottlieb?”
He said blackly, “I’ll call on him, and see how he likes it.”
“No you won’t. Come with me. I see what you’re doing, you’re sulking.”
“Well, I am.” He brightened. He’d hold a grudge forever, but not tightly. “I was only strolling and I forgot where I was. It’s not fair for his house to stand in my path.”
“Ignore him,” I said.
“That I won’t. Not ever.” He said it with a smile. Lest I think he wasn’t part serious, though, he said, “It’s only logical that I wouldn’t.”
Two years before, when I was sixteen and beginning to understand the ways of the University, the Chair of Logic came open. It was an interesting Chair, tasked to lecture on Dialectic, Rhetoric, Logic, and Geometry. It had for many years been held by Master Grimm, whose lessons had so solidified over his tenure that I doubted they varied even by a word from one year to another. Of course, logic didn’t change.
But then he left. It may have been that he went to visit a sister in Leipzig. His absence became prolonged, and finally, undeniable. An Inquiry was held, which was a serious undertaking, and a request for information was sent to the Court in Leipzig. In the end his Chair had been declared vacant and an Election was held to fill it.
A University Election in Basel was the city’s most complex and obscure ritual.
The design was this: Three committees of professors and high University officials would be formed, with six in each committee. Each committee would then nominate a candidate to the empty Chair, and a stone, or lot, for each candidate was then placed in an iron box, to which only the Provost had a key. Each candidate then gave a lecture on the Chair’s subject; Anatomy, Physics, Law, Theology, or whatever. The lecture was only final proof of the candidate’s expertise. It had no bearing on the Election itself, except that a very poor lecture might disqualify a candidate. The lectures might take place in just the few days after the nominations, or over a longer period if a candidate wasn’t in Basel and must be notified, and travel to the city. Finally, after the lectures, the box would be opened and the Provost would blindly choose one lot from the three.
It would seem a reasonable and elegant procedure. Three qualified men, and one chosen at random. No bribes, no secretive bargains, no personal prejudices or nepotism could influence the selection of the Chair. Even if the winner wasn’t the most qualified man, he’d be one of the three-most.
In practice, factions did prevail within the committees, with each party advancing its own favorite. So, the random choice was meant to stymie those improper influences.
However, it was not certain that it did.
Three candidates were nominated that year for the Logic Election. Daniel was one, chosen by professors enamored of his charming ways. The thought of an invigorated, lively Chair of Logic was beguiling. I, of course, as lowly a student as I was, was all for his Election. It seemed so grand a picture, to have him pacing the streets in his black robe, his students tripping to keep up with him. But it wasn’t to be.
The two other candidates were an odd Polish gentleman from Cracow, as it has been customary to nominate at least one candidate from outside the city, and Cousin Gottlieb. Gottlieb was nominated by Master Johann. The committees’ deliberations were in secret, so it would never be known what was discussed. Gottlieb was a respectable and dry lecturer in Law, and generally avoided. I attended his lectures and considered them perfect specimens, competent and parched, as Gottlieb himself was. Actually, his real competence was Mathematics. Though his only book was his uncle’s Ars Conjectandi, he’d managed correspondence with most of Europe’s great Mathematicians: Hermann, de Moivre, Montmort, and Leibniz himself. He finished his Doctorate in Mathematics under his uncle Master Johann before he took his Chair in Padua. But Gottlieb returned to Basel years ago, before I started at the University, and he made a poor comparison to his cousin Daniel.
When the lot was chosen, though, it was his.
I remembered very well the next few days. My Master’s house was like an armory of swords and maces, all at hand and often used. Then Daniel decided that a Basel with Cousin Gottlieb was worth less than an exile without Cousin Gottlieb. In only two weeks, Daniel announced his own Election to the Chair of Mathematics in Padua that had been vacated by his brother Nicolaus, and he was gone.
And now he was back, glowering at Gottlieb’s house. “It was by chance,” I said.
“The chance of the draw.”
“That is your conjecture, your Conjectandi. He wrote his book about chance, didn’t he? But I don’t believe in chance. Not when there’s a Chair at stake. Chance wouldn’t be given a chance.”
“The final choice for a Chair is meant to come from God’s hand,” I said.
“Sometimes His choice is predestined.”
“Then that makes it even more sure.”
“Predestined, but not by God. There were letters, Leonhard, there were whispers, there were glances, and it wasn’t the first Election that there were.”
“But the Provost’s blind hand chose the stone, Daniel. How could a whisper put one indistinguishable square in his fingers over another? It couldn’t even be done if he was trying to choose a specific one.”
“There’s seeing other than by sight.”
I shook my head at him. “Look, Daniel, I’ve learned more about Jacob.”
“Oh? Jacob?” He was uninterested. “Are you still on him?” He started walking with me, toward the river.
“It isn’t three days since you put me on him!”
“Well, don’t give it mind. Not anymore.”
“Daniel,” I said. “Is that your plan? That’s the only one thing you could say to make me want to give it my mind.”
“I hardly even know what you’re saying. A plan? There’s no plan. Old Jacob, let him rest in peace.”
“And keeping it all from your father’s ears?”
“Let him rest in peace, too.”
“He’s not dead, Daniel.”
“No, not at the moment. He’s still in his chair. But Italy’s fine, Leonhard! You should go sometime. It’s a fanciful place, all ruins and art and idiots. Not a whit of hard work. The streets are full of strolling and time-wasting and sweet life.”
“But your Chair in Padua . . .”
He frowned at that. “Blast it! What’s Padua? A Chair in Basel only comes once in years, a worthwhile one.” We’d reached the Rhine Bridge. He wasn’t crossing it, and I was, so he turned to resume whatever wandering had brought him out. “And it comes open by chance, the same chance that it’s filled by, and the same chance that keeps all the University ordered to Brutus’ liking.”
“Those are evil words, Daniel.”
“Then pay them no mind, Leonhard.” He clenched his fist, then let it loose. “Let them be the breeze, here, then gone, then forgotten.”
We parted and I went on my way, across the river.
There were two Basels, and the Rhine was the reason. The beginning of the city was on the west bank and it survived through its different ages well enough. But it was only one city of many on a very long river. Five hundred years ago Prince-Bishop Heinrich, who ruled the city, decided the city would be greatly strengthened and made distinct if it built a bridge.
There were no other bridges across the Rhine. Trade would be increased if Basel became the single road from east to west. Tolls would enrich the city. River trade would be controlled, as well, as boats could only pass the bridge at Basel’s pleasure.
The Rhine was hundreds of feet wide, yet the city had already leapt the water and a straggling of houses perched on the far bank. The bridge was built and the two became one Basel; or actually, the one Basel became two. The settlement on the right bank has grown to be one fourth of the city, of proper streets and houses and churches, but the river still was wide, and it cut as deep; and Small Basel on the east, and Large Basel on the west, remained each suspicious of the other. The Town Hall was in Large Basel, and the Munster, and the larger houses and the market; and the University, all prospering from the trade the bridge brought. Across the bridge in Small Basel were none of those. Both Basels were ruled by the same laws and Council, yet even after five hundred years the bridge still isolated them as separate people.
Even the bridge itself was two bridges. Large Basel and Small Basel each built and have kept their own half-bridge, and each crossed just their half of the Rhine and met in the river middle. The Small Basel bridge was on five stone piers. The east half-river was shallow and slow. The Large Basel bridge was on seven wood pilings, crossing a deeper and faster west river half.
In the center where the two Basels’ bridges joined was a small, spired room built into the rail. This was the Yoke Chapel, where the two sides were yoked together. It was used for prayer and executions. For centuries criminals were thrown into the river from the chapel to be drowned. The method wasn’t reliable, though. Too many could swim, even weighted. More trustworthy methods were now used. Still, though, in Basel, it was an insult to say of a man that he died in the river.
Another insult the bridge delivered was the River Gate. Where the bridge crossed the Rhine, Large Basel had a tower as strong as any other, but Small Basel had only a guardhouse. This meant that an enemy who broke into Small Basel could still be kept out of the Large city, which lessened the need to defend the homes and churches of the Small city. The gate could also defend the Large from the Small itself, if there was ever strife between the two. There has been strife. At times in its past, Large Basel has charged a toll at the gate for any citizen of Small Basel entering, but no toll for any citizen of Large Basel returning.
So the bridge divided as much as it connected. But it still realized its first purpose. That afternoon, on my way to the North German Road where Willi and his coach would soon be returning, I did what could only be done in Basel and not for all the hundreds of miles to the sea: I crossed the Rhine by foot. I came to Small Basel, and to my eyes the streets on that side of the river, though fewer, looked just like the streets on the other. I ran through them, not because I was hurrying, but because I hadn’t had enough running. I even ran some extra streets because the direct path wasn’t long enough.
There were two gates in the Small Basel Walls. The Riehen Gate pointed northeast to my home village. Sadly, that wasn’t my destination. I ran to the Saint Blaise Gate.
Blaise faced north toward Baden and all of Germany. The road from it led up the Rhine’s right bank to Freiburg, a day’s ride north. I went through the gate and walked a short distance beyond. I wanted to climb onto the coach as it passed and ride in with Willi, and have a minute with him before he reached the inn. The road bent out of sight some ways ahead; above the bend, in the air, after a wait, was dust. Of dust men were made, and by carriage did they arrive.
The horses and their burden came into view and I saw that I would not ride with Willi. The seat beside him in the driver’s box was already filled. The place was taken by a uniformed gendarme. An extra passenger might ride with the driver on his box seat if the coach is very full, but a gendarme would be the last one to suffer this discomfort. Then I saw that it wasn’t Willi anyway, but a yellow-haired slovenly equal from some northern stable.
I stood and watched instead of waving or running beside, yet the driver pulled his reins and slowed the horses and stopped. The man leaned down. “Where’s there an inn, the Boot and Thorn?”
“I’ll take you,” I said.
“Boy,” the gendarme said to me. “Not that inn. We’re for the Town Hall.”
“The inn, and that’s all I’m for,” the driver said petulantly. From the look of them, it wasn’t the first disagreement the two had had.
“The Hall’s on the way to the inn,” I said. “Come on.” I didn’t want to squeeze into the box and be a part of their dispute. Instead I set out on a good pace running ahead and the driver whipped the horses after me. The animals could have taken the coach to the inn themselves. I was some winded as we finally reached the bridge and River Gate. But just up the hill was the end.
As the Munster commanded its Square, and the Barefoot Church attended its Square, Basel’s Town Hall ruled its Square, the Market Square. The Town Hall of Basel was red with towers, windows, gold and clocks, pillared balconies and paintings and statues, and sharp-peaked roofs.
“But where to the inn?” the driver said when he was stopped beside me. “I’m not stopping and waiting. I didn’t want this ride and I’ll be done with it.”
“It’s just up there by that church,” I said. The tower of the Bare Feet was easily seen over the houses. But before they could argue more, the argument was ended. The door of the coach had opened from inside. A leg was planted on the step, not stockinged but black leather booted. A polished ebony black walking stick was planted beside it. Then followed a glossy black tricorne and a very long and tightly curled wig and a glistening and very black silk frock coat.
Then, a face, black with anger. The man was out, and stood, and blasted Basel with his stare.
The gendarme stiffened into silence and the driver slouched into subservience.
“This is Basel?” the man questioned, as if it was so much less than he’d thought it would be that it might not really be at all, in a German that was slippery and French-bent. Onlookers had begun to collect, but distantly. I was the only native close at hand.
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you know where your town hall is?”
It was difficult to not notice it. “Yes, sir. It’s this building here.”
“Oh, really.” He peered at it. “Find a magistrate and bring him to me. And be quick.” He looked up to the partners in the box. “Sergeant, bring it down.”
I looked to the gendarme, who seemed more likely to answer a question. “Where are you from, sir?”
“Strasbourg.” That was the far end of the coach’s route, beyond Freiburg.
“Where’s Willi? The driver from here?”
“He is arrested in prison. Bring the magistrate, boy.”
Magistrates would not be fetched, not easily; and Willi imprisoned was worth staying to ask more questions. But I’d become ambassador of Basel to this Strasbourg invasion, and I tried to think what to do. A magistrate was the greatest of a city’s citizens. A magistrate was a judge; the Chief Magistrate advised the town council. In most cities no one was his equal, and in Basel even a Professor of the University or a Dean of the Cathedral was only the peer of a standard magistrate; the University Provost alone stood on the same peak as Chief Magistrate Faulkner. “I don’t know if there’s a magistrate to be brought,” I said.
He looked at me as if I was quite stupid, and for his purpose I was. “I said to be quick.”
I ran to the main door of the Town Hall. Whoever might be inside would be more help than me. The first I saw was a captain of the Day Watch, one that I knew. “Simeon!” I said. “There’s a man out there. He’s from Strasbourg and he wants a magistrate.”
“A magistrate?” The captain was even more skeptical than I. He was gray-bearded and a fountain of good sense; he’d led a life of seasoned authority. “And who is this man?”
“Well, he looks to be about a magistrate himself.”
Together we returned to the court, where a very large crowd was stepping forward from the market stalls. They had a scene to gawk at, as marvelous as an acting troupe’s play, or a fire. The coach was still stopped direct in front of the town hall. The driver was just climbing back to his box, with little of the dexterity that Knipper would have shown. The gendarme was at rigid attention. The personage of Strasbourg was now obviously a magistrate: He had put on a black judgment robe. At his feet was a large trunk, freshly lowered from the luggage rack. I knew the trunk. I’d seen it before in Master Johann’s house on the kitchen floor.
The Strasbourger’s annoyance was increasing, from an already high level. He saw us and decided that Simeon was sufficient authority. “Open it,” he said to his gendarme.
The man stooped to the trunk and unlatched the clasp. As he did, he grimaced; he expected something unpleasant. In one motion he lifted the lid and rolled the trunk forward to spill it out. It did spill, and what it spilled was Knipper.
Poor Knipper! He was mottled purple and blue, and tangled, dumped on the paving stones. I fell back from him, and everyone did, as the black robe and hostile frown of the visitor gave a visible shape to the sudden fear we all felt. Then the crowd began to step forward again toward the stranger, hostile in return. But the man was unflinching and his stare judged and condemned the whole Market Square of unspoken crime. “I am Caiaphas, Magistrate of Strasbourg,” he spoke, scarring the air with his prophet voice, “and I charge you, Basel, with sending this murdered corpse to my city.”
The mob was both cowed and enraged by that stare and that proclamation, and Simeon knew a riot coming when he saw one. “Back away,” he shouted. A few more of the Day Watch had been in the crowd and they stepped forward to show themselves to the people. There was muttering and dark looks, but Simeon’s command had had effect. He said to me, quietly, “Go for Magistrate Faulkner, Leonhard, be quick and tell him what you’ve seen.”
I took a last look at Knipper. Even dead, he seemed so uncomfortable tumbled on hard ground. It was a bad end for him. And Basel, made of stone and brick, had a tear made in what it was, the soft fabric of living inside its hard parts.
I spoke to Magistrate Faulkner. His house was large, outside the tight spaces of the old city, with a garden and trees. He came to the door after I spoke to the maid who answered my knock, and he listened carefully to my tale. Magistrate Faulkner was an austere and severe man, very humble despite his high station, generous as his sister Mistress Dorothea but far quieter, and he could hurl thunderbolts if one was at hand. He’d been Councilor, Mayor, and most fearfully, an Inquisitor; but that was long before I’d known him. He asked me whether the Day Watch had the crowd in check, and then dismissed me. He has his own servants and messengers.
Then I walked slowly home; I didn’t want to return to the tragic stage in the Market Square. I wanted to mourn Knipper. As I was walking, Faulkner on his horse galloped past me, his magistrate’s robe flying from his shoulders as black as Caiaphas’.
My grandmother set a somber table and we ate without the conversation we usually have of the day’s happenings. Instead, we both thought on death. Everyone in Basel knew death, and not because the Death Dance reminded them. They’d seen it. No family did not have at least an aged parent they’d buried, and most had a child, a mother, a brother. Babies were born to great uncertainty, except that they would die, and many made a quick job of it. Illness like fire swept the city time to time, and fire like illness would take a dozen lives in a moment. Basel lived on as each of its parts died, always being torn and always slowly mended.
I visited the Boot and Thorn that evening, with all Basel, every craftsman, tradesman, scholar, knave, lord, and priest: every dancer. Calamity was always profitable for Old Gustavus. Daniel was in the center and Nicolaus at the edge. I found an inch of bench and listened.
“What killed Knipper?” was the question I heard first.
A Day Watch, just off duty, let everything he knew boil out his mouth. “He’s taken to the Watch barracks. He’s purple mess. Five days in a trunk, and he’s no Lazarus. Rough riding on the top of a coach. But that wasn’t what killed him; it’s his head’s half flat. A good heavy battering that was.”
“But who would have?” Knipper was no one’s friend but no one’s enemy. There wouldn’t be love or hate for the man who leveled that blow, only disapproval for evilly disturbing Basel, and veiled admiration for whoever could crack such a tough nut.
Then a fishmonger who was cousin to a baker who was husband to a sister of a town clerk’s housekeeper had stronger news. “A Grand Inquiry’s set. The Council will hear it in two days. Noon on Thursday.” This was disbelieved, very strongly.
“So quickly?” and “The Council?” The questions were the essence of the commons’ incredulity. Two days was swift even for Basel, but even more that the Town Council itself would hold the Inquiry for a low coach driver. Then a sergeant of the Night Watch arrived to say it was so and he had one answer to both questions.
“Caiaphas.”
“He’s here.” Fritz the stable lout said it from the fire where he sat as an oracle. “He wouldn’t take an invitation from Faulkner. He’ll stay at the Inn while the coach goes to Bern, then he’ll ride it back north on Friday morning.”
“The Inquiry’s not for Knipper,” Daniel said, interpreting the oracle’s riddles. “It’s Caiaphas who demands it.”
“Why does he?” and “Why did he come?” and other questions became a broad wave of discontent against the Magistrate of Strasbourg. There were some in the room who’d seen him in the Market Square and they fed the resentment with their descriptions of his harsh words and evil stare. The speculation ran wilder, the offense deeper. Then the rare sound of Nicolaus’ voice asked through the smoke and sounds, “Who is Inquisitor?” And that caused silence.
I knew little about Inquisitors: Their selection and actions were shrouded. The Inquiry into the disappearance of Master Grimm of the Logic Chair was the only appointment in my five years in Basel. That man, a lawyer named Reichen, had since died.
I knew more concerning the power of the Inquisitor. Inquisition was an ancient right of the Town Council. They would place all their authority onto the person of the Inquisitor. He would have the prerogative to search, imprison, and torture summarily and was only limited by his short tenure. Reichen was given three days, then four more, later, once the reply from Leipzig was received. He reported to the Council in secret and no one but the Council and his clerk ever knew what he found. That was unusual. An Inquisition would normally be concluded in a public meeting of the Council.
“Who’s Inquisitor? Well, what lawyers are there?” Daniel answered. “It will be one of them, but a low one. It’s an Inquiry for a coach driver, that’s all.”
“It’s an Inquiry for a magistrate,” Nicolaus said. “That’s who demanded it. Those were his first words to Uncle Faulkner. And I remember this Caiaphas. I’ve seen him before.”
At home I told Grandmother what I’d heard. “What is the man Caiaphas like?” was her only question.
“He’s like crows,” I said, “and like wolves,” and I went upstairs to my room and books.