6
The Holbein Chamber

The painter Holbein came to Basel two hundred years ago. It has been said that he saw deep and drew deep. His pictures were very real but filled with symbols and hidden powers; I’d looked at them for many hours and I believed he could see invisible things. His most profound work in Basel was ordered by the Town Council, which didn’t realize its consequence: He was charged with the painting of their meeting chamber. His murals covered its walls.

In two centuries they have darkened and strengthened from great age. Dozens of scenes from classical and ancient ages brooded over the council. Saul was berated by Samuel, Croesus was burning on the stake, and Achilles was sulking in his tent. They were scenes of folly. Their purpose was to instruct the councilors on the importance of wise governance, and to remind them of the consequences otherwise. They accomplished this with a powerful elegance beyond words. There were invisible laws not made by man which governed man, and Holbein drew them into his pictures; they were still seen and unseen now. It was in this room and under these stares that the Council and citizens of Basel gathered to hold their Inquiry.

The citizens entered first. Wealth and lineage were the criteria for their seats, and there were both men and a few women. They sat on three rising rows of benches which followed the room’s back and sides. As noon approached, these filled. Curiosity was really the only reason to attend. The great citizens were as fascinated as anyone else.

At one end of the side benches, near the front, was a row set apart by a surrounding rail. This served different purposes: to seat the accused, or petitioners, or men called to answer to the Council. It seated four witnesses for the Inquiry. Daniel wore his defiant wine red coat, just as I’d seen him at sunrise. Beside him was Old Gustavus in brown coat and breeches and heavy boots; the only brown worn in that room. Master Huldrych was in his University gown which should have been black but was only dust. Nicolaus alone wore the black suit that every other gentleman wore. Of the few women present, Mistress Dorothea sat in the audience seat closest to her sons, with only the rail separating her from Nicolaus, and Little Johann sat in her shadow.

The center of the room was empty.

Then the council entered. These were seven men cut of the same black and white cloth as the audience. They were all merchants, sons of the councilor merchants who’d ruled the city from before the Reformation. They sat behind the Council Table.

That table was as heavy as the deliberations that had taken place around it, as old and wise as the walls, and worn dark and smooth. Wars had been made; fortunes had been awarded or destroyed by the grant of a single trade tolerance; men had been condemned or released, allowed back into the streets or taken direct to the bridge and thrown to the river. The table had never been moved from its place across the front of the room. Behind it, built into the wall, were the Councilors’ seven seats. The high-backed center was for the mayor. He wore a gold chain with a medallion of office, and velvet robe, and the heaviest wig. Great above the table was Holbein’s largest mural, of captive Valerian, the Roman Emperor, stooped on the ground as Persian king Sapor used him as a footstool to mount his horse. This was to remind the Council that the consequences of their actions would be brought back onto them.

Another high chair was placed to the right of the table, against the wall, for a Magistrate, when he attended. He wouldn’t sit on the council but beside it as judge, parallel, and advisor. This occasion was unusual, though. Three magisterial chairs were evenly spaced against the right wall, and above them was another mural, of the triumvirs Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus, with their right hands held in peace and their left hands hiding daggers.

Opposite these chairs, on the left of the council, was another chair. Gottlieb sat in this place, behind a desk table, and below another trio, of Bildad, Eliphaz, and Zophar. Aside from them was one last single chair, the most exposed and humbling of all in the council room.

Magistrate Faulkner entered. There were many hues of black in Basel: sober black, arrogant black, studious black, respectful black, intimidating black, imperious black. All of these would be seen in the streets every day. Magisterial black was particular among them all. His robe had a strange billowing weight that lifted with his movement and settled slowly. Blacker, but not as black, Caiaphas entered just behind him, and his robe seemed rigid like armor. The gendarme, Foucault, came in at his side, and took his position standing in the corner behind them.

He was in uniform and armed with a short sword, which was very unusual. The Sergeant of the Watch, in the other corner behind Gottlieb, usually held the only weapons in the council room. This was a noticeable concession by Basel to the prerogative of Strasbourg.

The empty chair between them, beneath the Roman Triumvirate, now received its occupant, and this was Master Johann. He entered in his academic gown, black with scarlet chevrons, and every other black was reduced to gray. Only Faulkner held his own. Master Johann wasn’t a magistrate, though he had served as one temporarily in the past.

But he dominated. By position, Chair of Mathematics was high but not highest. Instead, he took his place as center of the ritual by a deeper and ineffable power. Everything about his attendance was extraordinary, that he sat between two Chief Magistrates, that he exhibited an authority over the Inquiry so openly, and that no one questioned his right. He was Master Johann of Basel.

He leaned first to his right, murmuring to Magistrate Faulkner, then to his left, with an undisguised familiarity, to Magistrate Caiaphas, with whom he had a longer whispering. Neither seemed pleased, and this might have been the first resumption of their interrupted meeting in the dark morning. Then Master Johann turned back to his right, caught the eye of the Mayor, and nodded. He, a visitor to the council, was giving it instruction to start the proceedings.

But perhaps I was the only one who saw the glance. I was in the other chair, the chair behind Gottlieb, most exposed and alone, and from my angle I could see what most others in the room couldn’t. And I was in black, also, tremulous, uncertain black: black coat and breeches and boots, with my tricorne complacent beneath my chair. At that moment I would have easily given up all pretense of a black and white future for the safety and un-remarkability of brown.

I sat beneath Icarus, and Daedalus wept at my side.

There were a few quiet words at the Council’s table and I surveyed the room, especially the Holbein murals, which I’d always appreciated. On the side wall was King Rehoboam wagging his finger as he boasted to the Israelites, and beside that was Esau eating Jacob’s stew. The edge between these was also the line of the witness box, where Daniel yawned in ease and boredom, and Nicolaus saw me watching him and smiled. Between them Old Gustavus was still as a cold hearth, and Master Huldrych very pale, and his hands were shaking. I’d never before seen him so agitated. The next mural, just outside that box, above Dorothea and Little Johann, was Oedipus and Jocasta.

Gottlieb stood from his chair. A heavy blanket fell on all sound except the clap of his heels on the wood floor. With fate and doom he took the podium. He spared no glance at anyone but the council and prepared to speak. The Mayor lifted his hand, palm up, which was the signal to begin.

“Humble before Mighty God,” Gottlieb said, “I come to state truth.” Every Inquisitor began their case with these words. “Those who deceive shall be exposed and set to the left. Those who are blameless shall be known and set to the right. Then may God have mercy and be just.”

The mayor answered. His name was Burckhardt, and his family had been cloth merchants for generations. “Master Inquisitor. We measure you to the standard that you measure others, and to twice their reward, whatever we judge it will be. Begin your Inquiry.” And so, it began.

“You have charged me,” Gottlieb said, “to inquire into the murder of Knipper the coachman. I have done as I was charged, and so I warn the Council that there is a danger to Basel.” The audience and Council all took note of what he said.

It was then that I noticed for the first time that Master Desiderius was also an observer among the townspeople, beneath a mural of Ephialtes of Trachis bowing to Xerxes. Desiderius had always seemed to me more interested in past or distant than in present, yet he was very alert to the proceedings, and to the expressions and glances of all the actors.

Gottlieb pronounced, “I first summon Gustavus, who keeps the Boot and Thorn.”

The man stood and came to the center of the room where he settled, feet apart, arms crossed, and beard bristling, just as he would in his own kitchen, and a whiff of his fires was with him. “I am Gustavus.”

“Gustavus employed Knipper, he and fellow innkeepers in the four cities, and he knew Knipper as well as any man.”

“I don’t know who killed him,” Gustavus said. It would have been a fearless man to challenge him. And Gottlieb had no fear, but also no need to challenge.

“Gustavus met Knipper and his coach, and no one saw Knipper after that,” Gottlieb said. “On the next morning Knipper wasn’t found to drive his coach. Gustavus sent the coach to Freiburg with the boy Willi driving it. The corpse of Knipper was packed in a trunk among the luggage. Is this all true?”

“I know nothing of it to be false,” Gustavus said.

“And Willi put the trunk on the coach?”

“Ask him.”

“Ask him.” Gottlieb said more in long silence than words would have. “He can’t be asked. You’re finished. Sit down.”

Gustavus returned as heavily as he’d come, and his boots sounded like axes against a tree. Huldrych was trembling, very visibly. Gustavus stood for a moment in front of the Physics Master watching him, then sat between the brothers Daniel and Nicolaus.

“Yes,” Gottlieb said once more. “Willi must be asked, but he is in Strasbourg.”

“He was arrested,” Caiaphas said, like a rasp on the wood of the room. “He brought a corpse into the city, which is against our law.”

“And you have brought a corpse into Basel,” Gottlieb answered. “Which is against our law.”

“I was returning it!”

“Returning. So you have proof that the coachman was a corpse when he left here.” Before there could be an answer, Gottlieb said, “I summon next Masters Daniel and Nicolaus, who were passengers on Knipper’s last drive.”

Nicolaus was always averse to public attention. In Daniel’s company, he was never the center of it. He was hardly noticed beside Daniel’s jaunty brilliance. “Go ahead, Cousin,” Daniel said. “Have at it.”

“Have care,” he was answered.

“Have it over with.”

“These two were also last to see Knipper,” Gottlieb said. “Their arrival in Basel was well anticipated.”

“As is our departure, by some.”

“The date of your arrival was known. The date of your departure is only imagined.” That, for a moment, left Daniel without a reply.

“But why is this important?” Caiaphas said, interrupting again. “It isn’t important.”

“You’re a poor judge of importance,” Nicolaus said. As always when he chose to speak, it was unexpected, and far more in that heavy and formal room. “In particular your own.”

That affront was a lightning bolt. It was as if the air had been pulled from everyone’s lips, and a soundless vacuum had been created. That made the next words even greater.

“My sons’ arrival in Basel was very important.” Master Johann’s voice was like the Rhine: broad, deep, unstoppable, and difficult to cross. No one could say anything beyond that statement, least the sons themselves.

“These two,” Gottlieb said, “returned to Basel, well-known in advance. Upon their arrival the coachman was murdered, and the stable boy who could tell more of it has been withheld from us. For what reason did you return?”

“What reason?” Daniel said, and he may have been daunted. The question was pointed, the tip of the spear that Gottlieb was holding toward him. Or he may not have been daunted. “I hadn’t seen my family in two years. Why wouldn’t I have returned to my family and city?”

Nicolaus was silent.

“I think there was another reason,” Gottlieb said.

“Think what you wish.”

“I want to know the reason.”

“It’s not important!” Caiaphas said. “Go on to something else.”

“And I want to know, as well, why the reason is important to you, sir,” Gottlieb said to Caiaphas, “that you don’t want it known.” He waited a few moments. Daniel and Nicolaus waited, one patient and one not. Caiaphas didn’t answer. Then Gottlieb said, evenly and plainly, “Then I summon Magistrate Caiaphas before this Inquiry to answer my questions.”

“Me?!” Caiaphas did stand, but in his own authority and anger. “Me? I will never answer to you! What insolence!”

“I am Inquisitor,” Gottlieb said, still very evenly. “For my term, I have every authority in Basel. And this is Basel.”

“I will not answer to you.” Caiaphas slowly sat back into his chair, and leaned farther back into it. “I will not answer to you. Foucault.”

“Yes, sir?” The gendarme could hardly breathe, but he understood threat, and he knew to answer with threat. His hand was on his sword. The Sergeant-at-arms of the Day Watch answered with a hand on his pistol.

“You saw Knipper that last hour, just as Gustavus did.” All attention was drawn from the Magistrate of Strasbourg to the one of Basel as Faulkner spoke, to Daniel. It was another profound assertion of right. Faulkner didn’t ignore the conflict that had erupted in the Council chamber; he overrode it. “What did you see of the coach driver?”

“He opened the coach door,” Daniel answered, and respectfully. “But I wasn’t concerned with him after.”

“Knipper was seen nowhere besides the inn?”

“All the testimony on this is agreed,” Gottlieb said, leaving Caiaphas aside for the moment. But with his glance, he showed that the battle would soon be rejoined. Then suddenly, he turned to me. “Clerk, please refer to your notes. Tell us whether Knipper was seen anywhere else. Anywhere else besides the Inn. Was he? When? By whom?”

I was still unrecoverd from my fear of swords and pistols, and this question muddled me much more. I looked in my notes, which told me just what I’d written in them. I’d been asked a question and I could only answer truthfully. I coughed to clear my voice. “The testimony—”

But Master Huldrych had stood. Everyone could see now how tremulous he was, how anxious and fearful. His hands and arms were shaking. His face was white and drained and sagging. “Help him,” Gottlieb said. Daniel and Nicolaus were closest and they took him at either side and replaced him into his chair and then moved to give room. The chamber leaned toward him, all quiet. Dorothea was behind him, loosening the collar of his shirt. And Old Gustavus having stepped out to face him, knelt, and stared into his eyes.

Huldrych stared back. He whispered, very quietly but I heard, “Is it? I’d thought it wasn’t.”

“It is,” Gustavus answered. He’d heard also.

I heard because I was beside him. I can run quickly and I had. When I heard him sigh, I knew what he knew. I put my arm around his shoulder and laid my head on his robes, above his heart, holding him dearly. Old Gustavus said, to him and Gottlieb and the Council and magistrates and audience, and to me, “Black Death.”

“This is what I feared,” Gottlieb said, with anger, and staring at Caiaphas.

And I heard Huldrych’s heart’s last beat.