Sky's Dark Labyrinth

by Stuart Clark

  Bellarmine watched the flash of the bird’s feathers high above the city.

  ‘It is time for Rome to spread her wings again,’ said Acquaviva.

  13

  Prague, Bohemia

  Kepler ran his finger along the shelves and drew out one of the Mars ledgers. As he did so, something quickened inside him. Longomontanus was right; he would never be able to leave Mars alone until he had cracked the orbit.

  Tycho was out, summoned to court for a reading of the imperial stars, and then to supper with an imperial councillor. The rest of the household seemed content to spend their evening in the bar room with the servant girls. Kepler would have hours to indulge himself.

  The book was stiff to open, as if it had not been handled in a long time. He sat down with it and scanned the figures. In his mind’s eye he could trace the journey they were describing. Mars was in Leo, gliding towards conjunction with the bright star Regulus, so that both could shine their red light down on Earth.

  He began copying some figures onto a rough sheet of paper, savouring the curve of each character. It was the best way he knew to become acquainted with them. By writing the numbers, he brought them closer to him. Each number was an individual. There were the ordinary and the eccentric, the important and the seemingly worthless. Each one related to the others as every man could be traced back to Adam. He would tease out the relationships. He would look for patterns. Which numbers were doubles or triples of another? Which were fractions? Soon he would glimpse the furtive look that passes between lovers at a party and betrays the secret of what is really going on.

  The enormity of his task confronted him. How he regretted having once boasted about solving Mars’s orbit in eight days. How could he have been so stupid? If he was going to achieve his goal of looking down on the orbit of Mars from God’s own viewpoint, to actually watch the planet following its path around the Sun then he would first have to take into account that Earth was moving as well. As Earth travelled on its own journey, so it changed the perspective from one observation to the next. To deal with this, he would have to compute the movement of Earth and subtract it from Mars. And he would have to do it for each and every one of the observations he wanted to use. Otherwise the numbers he had in front of him were meaningless.

  It was a step that no one had to take in either Ptolemy’s or Tycho’s vision because their Earth stayed fixed in the centre of the cosmos. Only in the Copernican view of a moving Earth did the correction have to be made and it more than doubled the workload.

  Once he had the true Martian motion, then he could begin searching for a curved shape that would fit through all the points. All shapes – triangles, squares, circles, everything – could be described mathematically; this was the basis of geometry. But in God’s Heaven, the only reasonable shape was the perfect circle because a planet on the circular track would always stay the same distance from the centre of the universe. Yet Copernicus had not been able to fit a circle to his observations. Why not?

  It had driven Copernicus’s student temporarily insane. Rheticus – so the story went – became so confused that he appealed to his guardian angel, beseeching the divine creature to appear as an Oracle and reveal the answer. However, the spirit grasped Rheticus by the hair and slammed him into the walls and ceilings of his workroom, shouting, ‘These are the motions of Mars.’

  The last thing Kepler wanted to feel was that he was banging his own head against a stone wall. It would have to be a delicate analysis. His concentration was broken by an almighty commotion from the bar.

  Jepp was squealing, ‘The Master! The Master is coming!’

  So early. Kepler hastily closed the book and returned it to the shelf. Something must be wrong.

  Kepler left the room and crossed the short distance to the hall. People were milling around but there was no sign of Tycho. He approached someone whose face he could dimly remember from Benátky. ‘Where’s the Master?’

  ‘He’s not here yet, but we’ve learned to trust Jepp’s powers.’

  Kepler rolled his eyes and turned back for the ledger room, but the sound of a carriage stopped him. It grew louder and then drew to a stop. Jepp flashed past and ran out into the dark. When he returned, it was at Tycho’s side, the Master’s hand resting on Jepp’s closely cropped hair as if favouring a pet.

  Tycho was walking with more difficulty than usual, sweat running down his face. ‘Fetch me a piss pot,’ he bellowed. ‘And hurry, or I’ll choose a hat.’

  A servant returned with a chamber pot. Jepp disentangled himself.

  Tycho turned from the crowd and dropped the metal bowl onto a nearby chair. Grunting with exertion he loosened his belt and thrust down his breeches. He took deep breaths and placed a hand on the wall to steady himself. He took aim and waited.

  Behind him, the crowd stayed rooted and silent, collectively unsure what to do for the best. As they lingered, Tengnagel arrived from upstairs, buttoning up his jacket.

  Tycho took more deep breaths. Then yowled in pain as a small stream set the bowl ringing. An acrid smell filled the room. He tried several more times before giving up. He tucked himself away and buckled up roughly. ‘What? Are you all just going to stand there?’ he roared at their gawping faces.

  The paralysis broken, the members of the household scurried here and there, looking for the quickest way to leave.

  ‘Johannes,’ barked Tycho.

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘You have left the ledger room unlocked.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Tycho lurched into motion, heading for the interior of the house. ‘Where’s my wife?’

  The next morning the household was still at breakfast when Kepler returned to the Golden Griffin. He looked into the room hopefully but Tycho was not at the table, and there was a grey pallor over the proceedings.

  He walked to Tycho’s study and found him there, sitting behind his desk, lost in thought and still dressed in the same clothes as the night before. Kepler hovered. Tycho looked up and waved him over.

  ‘How do you feel?’ asked Kepler.

  ‘Hungry, if you must know. My wife in her feminine wisdom has forbidden me to eat until I have cleared myself out. So, I sit waiting for my body to rouse itself.’

  He took a small cup from the table and swirled its contents. ‘It’s supposed to do me good. Brandy would do me more good.’ He shouted at someone unseen, then knocked back the drink with a grimace and wiped his mouth along the sleeve of his doublet. ‘How soon before we have the first pages ready for the printer?’ he asked, clattering the pewter cup back onto the table.

  The question took Kepler by surprise. ‘It is the earliest of days yet.’

  ‘I should at least buy the paper though, do you not think?’

  ‘If it pleases you.’

  Tycho’s study was too tidy, not at all as it had been at Benátky. There were too few papers and they were too neatly stacked. His most precious books were resting in a bookcase, rather than strewn across the desk. He poured himself some wine and drank it straight down. ‘When did you know that you were an astronomer?’ he said.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘It’s an easy enough question: when did you know that you were an astronomer?’

  ‘You mean, when did I realise that I wanted to be an astronomer?’

  ‘No.’ Tycho banged his palm upon the table. ‘Men like us don’t want to be astronomers. You and me, we were born to it. The stars implant themselves at our birth, and wait to be triggered. When was it for you?’

  Kepler smiled at the notion, Tycho’s words sparking a memory as pure as the stars on a frosty night. ‘I was six. My mother took me to a hill just outside town and showed me a comet; she taught me not to be afraid of them.’

  ‘The bright comet of 1577?’

  ‘The very same.’

  ‘I saw it too, tracked it across the sky.’

  ‘That’s when I became interested in the stars. At university, I would defend Copernicus in any debate that blew up, bu
t my original inclination was for the ministry.’

  Tycho tutted. ‘Who taught you Copernicus?’

  ‘Magister Mästlin.’

  ‘He should know better.’

  ‘He refused to teach it in class because it went against Holy Writ but he showed me the ideas late one afternoon, when most students were outside catching the last of the sunshine. From the moment I heard the idea, I knew it was right. The Sun is too powerful to be anywhere but at the centre of creation.’

  ‘It’s unseasonably hot, don’t you find?’

  Kepler was finding it hard not to shiver in the draughty room.

  Tycho downed another goblet and ran his hands over his face. ‘I was sixteen – used to sleep with a cross-staff under my pillow so that I could observe when my tutor was asleep. He didn’t approve of astronomy, thought it unfitting for a noble, but the thrill I felt when I pointed that simple instrument at the stars … I would spend half the night sliding the crossbeam to and fro along the staff, making it fit between pairs of stars and then reading the angles off the carved scale. One night I was taken by surprise at how close to each other Jupiter and Saturn were in the sky. When I checked Copernicus’s book for his prediction of the conjunction, he was wrong. Ptolemy was more accurate – still wrong, but more accurate than Copernicus. It told me that neither was right, and I set out to correct things once and for all. Why is it so damned hot in here?’

  He rose unsteadily to his feet and headed for the window. As he fought with the catch, a tiny breath escaped him. It was all the warning he gave before collapsing. As he fell, he knocked a tall candelabrum to the floor.

  Kepler was at his side at once, rolling the great bulk over. There was a bloody bruise on Tycho’s forehead where he had collided with the windowsill on the way down. His eyes remained open for a moment, locking with Kepler’s, then flickered shut.

  One by one, guests packed and departed, taking with them the lifeblood of Tycho’s household. As the days went by, members of the family within reasonable travelling distance replaced them. Initially Jepp had taken to wailing outside the Master’s bedchamber, but a well-placed boot from Tengnagel had stopped the dwarf from trying that again. With just the family and the assistants, and Jepp now keeping a mercifully low profile, the place began to feel ghostly.

  Kepler worked on as best he could. Desperate for any news, he relived the scene over and over, wondering what more he could have done. That pitiful last look in Tycho’s eyes haunted him, as did the dead weight of his Master’s body when he had tried to move him and his strangled voice when he had cried for help.

  Tengnagel had appeared almost at once, muscling Kepler aside with sword drawn and sending him crashing into the plaster wall. ‘What have you done to my father-in-law?’

  Kepler could not speak for fear, his eyes transfixed on the point of Tengnagel’s blade. In his peripheral vision, he had been aware of Tycho’s head lolling on the floor, the great man’s legs twisted under that mighty body. He had to do something but what?

  Thankfully Tycho’s wife had arrived. Her scream drove away the murderous look in Tengnagel’s eyes, and he had sheathed his sword and immediately attended to his father-in-law. Yet not even he could lift the unconscious form. He struggled for a moment, growing red as a beet, before grabbing the armpits and heaving. When Kepler made for the feet, Tengnagel had growled at him. Kepler’s last view of Tycho had been of him being dragged away like a sack of firewood.

  Occasionally snippets of information would come from upstairs; none were ever good. By all accounts, Tycho was in the grip of delirium.

  ‘It’s all he says, over and over in Latin: ne frustra vixisse videar,’ came one report.

  ‘Let me not seem to have lived in vain,’ translated Kepler, a dark hole of foreboding opening within him.

  One day, Tengnagel came to find him. ‘He’s asking for you.’

  Kepler was fearful as he entered Tycho’s private chamber. Before going in, he brushed the flecks from his jerkin and smoothed his hair.

  The room was shuttered. Only the odd shaft of daylight found its way through a knothole or a split in the wood. Tycho’s family were gathered around the bed. As Kepler’s eyes adjusted to the dark, so he made out their haggard expressions and suspicious eyes. The room stank, and Elisabeth held a nosegay of dried lavender. Someone had placed a picture of the Lord on the mantelpiece at the foot of the bed. Tengnagel bent to his father-in-law’s ear. ‘It’s Kepler.’

  Tycho’s eyes opened a crack, releasing beads of sticky moisture. The dying man beckoned Kepler to come closer.

  ‘Tengnagel will take charge of my observatory equipment and observations. He is the only one of my family who has any idea what do with it. But you must promise me that you will complete my task, and publish the tables according to my system of the planets. Promise me.’

  ‘Sir, I promise you that I will act only in the most noble of ways with your legacy. I will find only the most elegant solution.’

  ‘Then you will follow my system.’

  ‘I will follow the observations.’

  Tycho’s eyes filled with pleading but his mouth twitched. Kepler knew he had made him angry. Then the spasms stopped.

  ‘Tyge?’ His wife rose from her seat to lean over him. ‘Tyge!’

  Tengnagel pulled Kepler out of the way. ‘Fetch the doctor.’

  ‘It’s too late for that,’ said Tycho’s widow.

  Twelve imperial guards flanked Tycho’s great coffin on its final journey to Prague’s Old Town. Preceded by Tycho’s coat of arms and his favourite horse, they led the long cortège of mourners across the city bridge, under the astronomical clock and across the market square to the Church of Our Lady Before T´yn. The building’s two gigantic towers reached up to Heaven.

  Onlookers crowded the streets in silent tribute, brought out by the spectacle, even though many of them had never heard of the man.

  Immediately behind the coffin was Tycho’s weeping widow, supported by their eldest son. Then, of course, there was Tengnagel. Walking with his chin thrust upwards, he was glorying in the weight that was now upon his shoulders. At his side walked his wife, Elisabeth, quiet and composed.

  Next came the nobles and gentry. Von Wackenfels was there, representing the Emperor. Kepler walked along behind them, in among the ranks of colleagues and collaborators, who included Jessenius. Bringing up the rear were the assistants.

  The mourners packed the church shoulder-to-shoulder and listened to a torrent of unending praise for the astronomer. Everyone, it seemed, wanted to pay their respects. Jessenius spoke last, concluding the eulogies. He reminded the congregation that, while money and power die, art and science endure.

  Afterwards at the Golden Griffin a feast of appropriately Tychonic proportions had been laid on. As the eating and drinking progressed, so the level of conversation rose, the odd laugh was heard, and soon it resembled any other party.

  Kepler was seated at a table with Jessenius and von Wackenfels, content just to listen and observe.

  ‘Thank heavens for the Utraquists and their liberal Catholicism,’ von Wackenfels was saying, draining his goblet. ‘Who here thought we’d say that?’

  Jessenius nodded. ‘It must have been difficult to decide how to send him off.’

  ‘He hadn’t been to church for twenty years. He wasn’t a Catholic,’ said von Wackenfels.

  ‘Indeed not, especially as he spent some of his student days at Wittenberg.’

  ‘He certainly couldn’t be buried a Lutheran while being afforded the pomp that the Emperor demanded. And especially not with the ban coming.’

  Kepler looked up. ‘What ban?’

  An embarrassed silence fell over the table.

  ‘What ban?’

  Von Wackenfels squirmed. He put his elbows on the table and spoke into his clasped hands. ‘The Emperor is coming under increasing pressure from Rome. He must be seen to act. A decree is being drawn up to ban Lutheran practices.’

  ‘Why did you not tell
me before? I will be forced out.’

  ‘Calm, stay your panic.’ Von Wackenfels held up a palm. ‘To be Lutheran is not outlawed, only the services.’

  ‘And you of all people will be safe,’ said Jessenius. ‘It is widely known that you have your own issues with Lutheran doctrine: the Formula of Concord …’

  ‘How do you know of that?’

  ‘Father Grienberger, the Jesuit, has been visiting Prague. You know each other, I believe.’

  ‘We have corresponded, yes. It was he who put me in contact with Hewart von Hohenburg.’

  ‘He spoke very highly of you.’

  But Kepler was no longer listening. All of a sudden there was a pain in his stomach. It was as though something in the meal had disagreed with him.

  Back in his study in the little house on Karlova Street, Kepler found it hard to keep his thoughts on Mars. A fuzz of panicky questions constantly demanded his attention. Where could he escape to, if things became fraught here? Who needed a mathematician? Even if he could find another job, how could Barbara move in her condition? Maybe once the baby had been safely delivered he could think again.

  The estuarine smell of boiled turtles coiled under the study door, threatening to make him retch. It reminded him of the hateful day he had screamed at Barbara.

  They had still been in Graz. It was after a snowstorm, the very night that Heinrich, their first child together, had been born. The concern on the faces of the women in the delivery party should have told him something was wrong, but the baby’s cries persuaded him that his worries were unfounded.

  ‘A son!’ he shouted as loudly as he could.

  With the words ringing in his head, he rushed to his study to consult the planetary tables and chart his son’s nativity. It was the second of February, 1598, and the constellations were promising something propitious indeed. Kepler noted with growing excitement that the moon was in quadrature with Saturn.