17
The Iron Casket

On the day that I knew would bring great changes, the rise and fall of many, I rose so early that even my grandmother wasn’t out of her room yet. It may have been that I hadn’t even ended the evening and night before, but was just continuing them. I dressed quickly, in brown for the last time.

I went out into the early morning night, through the short alleys, to Master Johann’s back gate and opened it. Only one obstacle, the locked cellar door, was between me and my first object. But I knew that door very well: I’d repaired it a half dozen times. I quickly had its hinges off.

Then, in the cellar, I pulled the potato bin away from the wall, and the stone out from the wall. Behind it was a wooden box a foot long and six inches square at its ends. It was very heavy for its size. I took it, closed the space and repaired the door, and left.

There should have been a beginning of light by then, but Basel was dark. The shadows of houses and churches covered the streets like the Flood, and the air was so dry! There was dust in it. I paced the cobblestones to the white University. It glowed like lightning behind clouds. The door opened to my touch, and no one was there. I hadn’t seen anyone in any street.

The lecture hall was empty, not just of men but of time, of everything that made a place that place. But it had one black, iron casket on the lectern in its center. I went to it and set my wooden box, which was the same size, beside it. I put my hand on the cold black iron and felt the lid and sides, the corners, the keyhole. At that I drew back my hand to my pocket, and felt another iron, but this was warm from the heat of my own blood. I took that key and held it steady to the hole it was meant for, and inserted it, and turned it, and heard and felt, more than anything else I had that dark morning, the tumblers rise and fall, and the clasp give way. My hand left the key, still turned, in the lock, and lifted the casket lid. Inside were three stones.

I opened the wooden box. It seemed at first to hold a single carved square stone. But I ran my fingers over that, and the single stone was in truth many smaller stones all perfectly fit together. I set some of them out onto the lectern to see what they all were.

In all, there were thirty-six pieces. Thirty were half cubes, fifteen in the bottom of the box, carved with symbols, and fifteen set blank on top of those. The other six were sealed cubes. The symbols were three each of raindrop, tree, sun, fish, and lamb. Three of the sealed cubes were at the left of the box, replacing the candles, and three were at the right, replacing the thrones. Those three I took and put back into the casket. The three I’d taken from the casket I put into the box.

The transaction was made. I closed the iron lid and turned the key back.

It had been easy in opening but was reluctant now, and required effort. I mastered it and withdrew the key. Then I set it in the wooden box and closed its lid, and turned to leave. Light escaped in around the edges of the closed door. When I opened it the street was in brilliant morning, though for a moment I was still in the shadow. When I was finally seen, by Simeon of the Day Watch, I was enough away that no proximity could be guessed. He greeted me, and I answered. He didn’t remark on the wooden box under my arm.

It was only a few steps from the University to the bridge. I walked out to the middle, to the Yoke Chapel. I could still see, in the dust on the railing, the mark of my hands and shoe.

The bridge was high above the water. I leaned out to see it below. And I hardly heard the splash as the wooden box broke the surface of the Rhine and sank below it.

Then everyone I saw walking home gave me the cheery good morning a Chair would expect in Basel.

But I was no Chair. Instead my first task was water, as always, and I went to a fountain in a street away from the Barefoot Square. When I came home my grandmother was in the kitchen, but I only set the buckets on the back step and went on. She heard me. I heard her open the door and take them in.

The door I did open was to my Master’s kitchen. Mistress Dorothea, like my grandmother, was well started on her kitchen chores. But she acknowledged that a day of changes would begin with changes. “I thought you might or might not come,” she said, and I told her that I would have said so if I would not have. I worked hard and very quick, as fast as I could, and also in this Mistress Dorothea accepted me. She and her servant girl talked all the time about the thief of the day before but I closed my ears to it.

I carried and stoked and burnished, and I finished nearly in half the time. She didn’t load me with extra work.

“Good morning and good day,” I said, and the Mistress stopped her own scrubbing.

“Good to you, as well,” she said. “Leonhard.”

“Yes?”

“I don’t know what will pass today.”

“It will be in God’s hand and in his will.”

“That is where it should be,” she answered. “May it be.”

The sky was thorough blue without spot or blemish, and the sun already high and lifted up. It was hot, too. Heat like a close fire made the stones warm. The sun and heat and drought of this last week were reaching a pinnacle.

I reached my own kitchen.

“Leonhard!” Grandmother was very intent on me. “What have you been doing?”

“What I’ve needed to be,” I answered. “I’ve done everything.”

“What have you needed to be?” Her look wasn’t distress, or disquiet, or belief, or assurance. It was just intent.

“I’ve needed to be obedient.”

“You’ve always been. Your clothes are clean and ready.”

“I’ll be done quick.” I left for my room and my blacks and whites. They were set out for me on the bed, washed, ironed, and perfect. The brass would have reflected starlight. I pulled them all on with the most deliberate hurry, or the most hurried deliberation. But then I paused. My wood block head, always patient, was waiting, perched on my dresser, for my attention. I gave it that. Without eyes or ears or mouth, it was watching and listening and ready to speak. I waited. I knew it must be important.

The wooden block did nothing. That was its counsel and it was very wise. Now it was my time to just wait and allow. I studied the conch and its Logarithmic spiral and the meaning of it. I traced the curve of the brachistochrone bowl and the tautochrone bowl. I left my room and my house.

The black and white gathered in the University Assembly Hall was blinding in my eyes, that while the two colors were stark and more dominating than ever, they seemed more to blur and blend and make gray. I’d never seen them do that before. When I let my attention sit on this gray cloud, my own thoughts were the same gray, and indistinct.

But as had been earlier, one point was focused sharp, the casket. I saw it easily.

The three candidates were given special seating at the front of the hall. I sat in the middle, with Daniel on my right, and Staehelin on my left. In the row to our sides, and in the row behind us, were the committees who had chosen us. At the front wall the deans and provost sat facing us. I set my attention on Daniel.

He was like the Birsig. His intentions and plans were sometimes babbling and clear, sometimes deep and obscure. I couldn’t fathom anything from his face, which was, for the first time I ever thought so, very much like his father’s. And beside him was his father, and his face showed more care and even fear than also I’d ever seen. It seemed very little like Master Johann.

Many others were in the room: of course Nicolaus, and Gottlieb, and Little Johann. Magistrate Faulkner was at the end of the front row. Next to him, but not easily seen, was a magistrate of a different city.

The Provost spoke and I listened, but heard very little. Daniel beside me was a taut coil.

The key was suspended on its chain which still circled the Provost’s neck. The whole weight of the room seemed to be in it. The Provost finished his words and there was light applause, and I had no memory of what he’d said, any single word even. I clapped. I was only watching the key; its moment had finally come. I thought of the life a Chair would have: it could be everything noble.

The Provost took the key in his hand, and leaned forward, and put it into the lock. I could feel with my fingers’ memory the twist and pull. He removed the key.

Then the Dean of Arts, standing beside him, placed a kerchief of black silk over the Provost’s eyes and tied it behind his head. The Provost spoke to the Dean, and both laughed, and many in the room smiled. I felt them. I was now only watching the black iron casket.

The Dean opened the casket, and held it out to us to see the three stones inside. Then he offered it to the Provost, and guided that man’s right hand to the open top. The Provost felt inside.

This was the moment that Master Jacob had written about, whose result the Ars Conjectandi said could only be described as three equal chances. But the results weren’t equal. With one result I would be Chair, and with two others I would not. The Chance of the Election was meant to put the result in God’s hand. This was the moment that His hand would move the Provost’s hand.

It was over before I could comprehend it. The Provost had a stone, one of three. Now there was no chance. There was just one result, and it was only left to make the choice known.

With the stone tight in his right hand, the Provost waited as the blindfold was removed. Then, seeing, he grasped the stone also with his left hand and with a twist broke the seal. He looked at it, frowned, puzzled, showed it to the Dean, who pursed his lips, perplexed, then turned to us with a gentle smile. “It is the tree. Master Staehelin. You are now our Chair of Physics.”

I had an impression at that moment that a man was behind me, who I would have recognized, and who loved me, but as I turned, he was gone.

There were many other impressions I had. The sound was first, of clapping and a hard burst of many people talking. Then motion. People standing and moving, some a stream forward and some back toward the doors. The room seemed to deflate of a sudden. Then, close by, Master Johann’s face, his stare fixed on the stone broken open, and thoughtful.

Then I perceived Staehelin beside me, and Daniel beside him, and both were astounded.

Staehelin was simply immobile. His mouth was gaping open, his eyes the same. But Daniel was the full comprehension of astonishment, disappointment, and fury. He stood and moved toward his father, but then away, and into the black and white throng.

I shook Staehelin’s hand, most to shake him from his catatonia. I nodded to the Provost and the other men at the front, and they nodded sympathetically back to me. Then Master Johann turned to me and studied me.

But I couldn’t bring myself to speak. I nodded to him as I had to the others, and I turned, and returned to the plain crowd.

The Election was done. Finally I could grieve alone.

I left the University for the dry streets. Basel’s wide, busiest roads were paved with black, gray, and white stones, but all the rest, the alleys and byways, were brown soil, and it was all hard and dry. Every motion, every footstep, raised dust. The city was full of dust. I walked slowly and found that I came to Master Huldrych’s house and the Death Dance. I met another wanderer there.

“Master Desiderius,” I said.

“Leonhard.” He was anxious, or bewildered.

“So, Staehelin wins the Chair.”

He shook his head. “It is a mystery to me. Of the three, how was it that he was chosen?”

“Just by the chance of the stones,” I said.

“No. Of all the answers, I know that is not the answer.”

“But I know it is, surely.”

“Then you know more than me.”

I shrugged. “But what will it mean?” I said. “I don’t know that.”

“And I don’t. It will not be well, though. I’m very sure Staehelin was not meant to win the Chair, and there will be consequences.”

“For whom?”

“For Master Johann.”

“What would threaten Master Johann? All Basel is with him.”

“If a tree is rooted deep in a field, then to uproot the tree, the whole field must be torn out. Oh, Leonhard, I fear for your Master, I fear for the University, and for Basel. And I fear for myself and for you. Basel has been its own and separate, but the world outside its Walls isn’t dormant. And cities have been brought to ruin from within.”

We were only feet from the Death Dance. “It’s been four weeks since Master Huldrych died of plague,” I said.

“That’s only dormant, too, Leonhard.”

“Staehelin won by chance, as the Election was meant to be.”

“I believe you, that he did.”

“But chance . . . I don’t know what that is. I’ve read Master Jacob’s book, and I know what the Mathematics of chance is. But I know there are laws that are even greater than Mathematics.”

“I’ve never known how it was done, but other elections have been ruled by someone stronger than chance.”

“This Election was, also.”

“I mean,” he said, “by man’s hand.”

“I know. And this Election was in God’s hand.”

“He took it?”

“I put it there.”

“That’s a bold statement, Leonhard. And it might be arrogant. How could you give this Election to God?”

“Because it had been given to me. That was why I could give it to Him.”

He frowned, and slowly understood. “It was yours?”

“Yes.”

“And you gave it up.”

“Yes.”

He was troubled by that. “I was given an Election five years ago, and I kept it for myself.”

“I think you were meant to have it.”

“That’s kind. I’ll think on it.” He smiled a moment. “But Magistrate Caiaphas considers all the elections to be his own, not to be given without his permission.”

“There are laws that are greater than him,” I said.

I crossed the city to the southwest, to the Barefoot Square, but through it without stopping or looking, through the old Wall and then by the Birsig Flow where it flowed in its canal between houses and under bridges, to the Stone Gate. I climbed the steps there up the Wall and took a place looking out, over the Birsig and the fields, the trees and hills in the distance. Very far I could see mountains still cutting the sky. The sky was enormous, limitless and immeasurable, featureless but for the sun. Then I waited.

The sun was to my right, but looking out I still had to shield my eyes with the brim of my hand. Nothing freckled that sky, as nothing had in the week since the candidates had been announced. I waited. Minutes passed, and more. An hour passed and the sun far past its height; three o’clock outside and four o’clock inside the Wall I waited more.

Watching the sky, I began to see horses crossing it, passing the sun and pulling it. I saw ships sailing in the high winds. I saw strongholds high in the blueness, which were castles and towers with pennants. I saw armies marching. They had cavalry in ranks, and phalanxes of soldiers. And as I held my arm out at length, and my fist clenched, I saw one small cloud.

I ran, as fast as I could then, down into the city toward the Barefoot Square and the Boot and Thorn.