An Elegant Solution

by Paul Robertson

  Grandmother met me at my door and I knew at once I had a visitor. Her palms were pressed together as they had been when Daniel had come, but her expression was very different. Instead of that knot of disapproval, the cord was more a tangle of impropriety and aversion and surprise, all of them mild and polite as befitting her.

  I entered the parlor and found a rotund guest, hat not on bald head but clenched in hand, a hand that usually clenched reins. Rupert the coach driver stood in the middle of the room, nodded his head, aware and unbothered that he was in a house above his own station. “Master Leonhard,” he said, “good evening,” and I nodded, too.

  “Good evening, Rupert,” I said. “Welcome.”

  “Thank you, sir. I do feel so. I’ll only take a short minute of your time, if you don’t mind.”

  “Not at all. Go ahead.”

  “I’ve only just taken the coach,” he said. “I’m not accustomed to your city yet, and its ways. I hope you’ll forgive my familiarity.” He didn’t seem at all uncertain.

  “Of course.”

  “Yes, sir. And as I’ve taken the coach, I’ve looked through it to know it, and what I’ve found I’m not sure what’s to be done with.”

  “What have you found?”

  “This, sir. It was in the post box.”

  He handed me a letter which I had seen before. Daniel’s name was in the most beautiful script, covering much of the front, and the wax seal covering much of the back of the envelope had the Tsar’s own double Eagle. “And I’m not sure how long it’s been there.” I knew it couldn’t have been long, as I’d last seen it in Master Johann’s office only a week before.

  “It was in the postbox?” I asked.

  “There’s an edge to the box, you see, and a bit of a place a letter could be caught and hid.”

  I handed it back to him. “Why did you bring it to me?”

  “I asked Gustavus, the keeper at the inn, if the man was known in the city here, and he said he was.”

  “He’s at the Inn under Gustavus’s own nose near every day.”

  “Yes, sir, he has been shown to me. But there’s a saying, I’m told, to treat all that family with great care, and it might even go ill with the one who brings him a letter that’s been delayed such. It seems an important letter.”

  “I think it is,” I said.

  “And there’s another saying, that you’re a friend to most, sir, and you might hand it to him on my behalf and with my regrets.” And he held the letter back to me.

  I stared at it. The story was implausible in every detail, but most of all in this last statement. If Rupert were to walk direct back to the Inn, Daniel would surely be there even at that moment, and Gustavus could hand the letter to him without any fear.

  “All right,” I said. I took the letter. He bowed and smiled and I let him out.

  I went to the kitchen where my grandmother was waiting. “He’s gone away,” I said.

  “Was there anything he wanted?”

  “He had a question for Daniel, but was told to be cautious of all Master Johann’s family, so he wanted some counsel first.”

  “It’s not well to speak of a man behind his back to a stranger.”

  “I only told him he had nothing to fear.” I thought that to tell her about the letter would only be a confusion should Nicolaus stop in again with questions. “And Grandmother. Master Johann said he’d write a letter to Paris for me. He’s accepted my proof. And now, I must write a letter to the Academy myself, to explain the proof.”

  She was astonished as I’d been. I told her everything about it, and even Mistress Dorothea couldn’t have spoken as much in an hour.

  I sat at my desk and took my pen and ink and poised myself for the words to come. For the moment, though, they did not. This would happen, though rarely, and I’d never found a solution for it but to wait.

  So I stood and went to my dresser. I felt the curve of my bowls, and ran my finger through the conch’s spiral, and finally took my hat and tried a little to soothe it again into better shape, and to smooth out the marks of its crushing.

  It seemed evident that the hat had been lodged in the arch after escaping Little Johann’s hand. The peculiarity of its return to me was remarkable, greatly.

  I looked more closely at the marks on it. They made most of a square. The square was just the size of the stone I’d held that day in the Barefoot Square.

  I held it to different angles, and close to my candle light. Then I saw that my hat’s journey had been even more astonishing than I’d realized.

  It had been crushed between two arch stones, and not just in the falling of the arch. It had been placed between the stones.

  And if it had only been the hat between the stone, and not any mortar, then the arch would have been weakened. When Lithicus had loosened some other stone close by, there would have been no friction where this hat had been.

  The arch would have fallen because my hat had been set in it.

  I still believed Little Johann’s word of how the hat had been accidentally lost. So the peculiarity remained, but it was not only remarkable. It was wicked. And it was a challenge. And there was an enemy.

  I was staggered by it.

  Though a restless sleep on my bed intervened, the next morning found me again in the door of the Barefoot Church. Willi didn’t know I was watching as he led the horses and carriage out into the Square and put piled baggage that had two black trunks into the rack, and neither did Rupert even know me at all as he came out of the inn with his face bright with firelight and conspired with Gustavus, who also knew nothing of my observing.

  But Caiaphas knew I was there as the coach door was held for him and he climbed in, pausing and knowing and staring straight into the shadow that hid me. He seemed satisfied that I was there.

  The carriage crossed the Square to the Coal Gate and I felt pulled after it. When it was gone I was somehow out in the middle of the Square. I crossed on to the Boot and Thorn and looked in. There was a yellow light from a lantern down the hall and from the Common Room the red fire glare was both intense and dim. I stood looking in. It was empty, I thought, but then on a near table was a bundle, the size of a footstool. I looked at it closely. It was rectangular like a small trunk, wrapped in heavy cloth, and tied with string.

  “That is for you,” Gustavus said. Of course he was there, also.

  “What is it?”

  “Take it.”

  “Is it to be returned?”

  “Tomorrow evening it is to be returned.”

  The parcel was heavy as wood for its size but not solid. Its shape shifted in my hands as I struggled home with it. So I knew what it was, and I feared what it might be. I left it on my desk as I did my grandmother’s chores, then Mistress Dorothea’s chores.

  I finished in Mistress Dorothea’s kitchen, under the eye of Little Johann with his bread dough. “This is a big house,” I said. “How well do you know it?”

  “I know it,” he said.

  “Do you know its hiding places?”

  “I know them.”

  “There’s one I want to see, if I can. It would hold a good-sized box, so big.” I measured for him with my hands, that size of a footstool.

  “I only know where they are. I don’t know what’s in them or how big they are.”

  “Could you see if any are empty?”

  “I never look in them. I only know where they are.”

  “I think one has been newly emptied,” I said.

  “I’ll find which one,” he said.

  And back in my room, the package was still there as I dressed, and when I left at nine thirty for the University.

  Several hundreds could sit in the University lecture hall. It was filled, and more. The Professors and Deans and Officials I’d called on the day before were seated uncrowded in the front, attending each other as peers and familiars. Upward and back the lesser in rank grew greater in density. It was all very black, with wigs and collars of white, and the scarlet, azure, an
d other brilliant stripes on the robes of the chief birds were brighter for their contrast.

  And the room was mighty. It wasn’t somber and accusatory, as the Town Council Chamber was; Master Holbein never set foot here. It wasn’t similar to any church, lofty and plain like the Barefoot Church, or grand and heavy like the Munster, or beautiful like close-by Saint Martins; no friars or almsgivers had ordained it. It was secular to itself and holy to itself, not of the Boot and Thorny earth or the Barefoot heaven. It was something in between.

  Beside me was Daniel, and beside him was Nicolaus, and even Little Johann was crowded in. But not Mistress Dorothea, of course, for no woman has ever passed the portal of learning into that room. Daniel was in a froth, gibbering, then stony, then mopping sweat. It seemed hardly a reasonable time to mention to him the letter for him I now had.

  “I know the nomination will come,” he said. “It’s certain. Certain, at least.”

  “You’re certain?” Nicolaus asked. It might have meant that Daniel was certain of the conclusion, or that the conclusion was certain for Daniel.

  “I’m certain,” Daniel said.

  The Provost was seated at the front, between Deans, talking with Theology and Law. He noticed me, in the midreaches, and nodded. It was my payment for being his courier. The three committees were also represented by their leaders. Master Johann alone wasn’t leaning to his neighbor and whispering, and nodding. The bell in the Munster rang and it was time to begin.

  Some things were ritual and some were not. The convening of the University was. The announcement of its candidates was not. The dignity of so many Chairs in one room made the occasion momentous, but the moment was brief. “Gentlemen!” the Provost said and the room quickly was silent. “The report of the committees appointed to nominate candidates for the vacant Chair of Physics. Master Gottlieb?”

  Daniel went rigid. But I heard words escaping from his clenched teeth.

  “The Brute’s outdone this time. He’ll have a taste of what it’s like. There’s no chance he’s got around me now. If only I could see his face . . .”

  Gottlieb said, “We nominate Master Staehelin.”

  Daniel shuddered. “What? No. Not him!” A quiet storm of murmurings rose immediately, approving and unexcited. Master Staehelin had been the lecturer in Physics for a decade and was a very competent scientist. He seemed an obvious candidate. Daniel’s reaction was mixed of contempt and suspicion. “That’s no surprise. He’s a plain choice.”

  “He’s a good choice,” I said. “I’ve heard him lecture. He’s able and he’s diligent.”

  “He’s a distraction, a trick. Brutus has higher plans for Physics than a plain, diligent lecturer.” Daniel was speaking to himself. “He needs two other nominees besides the man he’s picked for the Chair. That’s all Staehelin is.”

  Staehelin himself had turned white. He was across the room from us in about the same row. He was a plain man, as Daniel said, about forty and probably not with the ambition to expect a Chair. But he’d take it, of course. His white turned to red and his dropped open mouth turned to a grin, and hands near him reached, discretely, to shake his. Daniel might have been right, that his candidature was only a ploy, but seeing his surprise and gratitude, I hoped for him that he’d be successful.

  He made his way to the front of the room, and it was a slow journey across his row to the aisle and down the steps. He was obviously still surprised, even to stumbling as he reached the front. Then he waited, for the Provost was unlocking the casket.

  Around his neck, on a long and thin but sturdy chain, the Provost had the key. The casket, resting quietly on the lectern, was a foot long, and less wide and tall, and pure black. The keyhole was the only mark on it; even the hinges were inside and unseen. The key was small, about an inch, and solid. I could tell from its weight on the chain, and how the Provost held it, that it was heavy for being small. It went into the hole and turned with effort. The lid was opened.

  From the casket, the Provost lifted a wood tray.

  “Master Staehelin?” the Provost said. “Please choose a stone.”

  He looked at the offered tray. On it were the seven stones, each with its emblem. It didn’t seem that there was anything important to him in his choice, which the Ars Conjectandi, of course, said there was not. Each would be equal. He took the center.

  “This one,” he said, hoarsely.

  “Master Staehelin has chosen the Tree,” the Provost said. Also on the tray were three blank stones of the same sizes. He took one of these in one hand and the chosen stone from Staehelin in his other hand. Heidelmann, the Provost’s student clerk, had a bar of sealing wax and a candle, and he held them over the two stones, dripping wax on them both. The Provost pushed them together and they became a sealed cube. The wax was held entirely within the carving of the emblem and none extruded to the outside, so the cube was perfect and without blemish.

  The Provost set the cube into the black casket. Staehelin clambered back to his seat. The Provost waited. Then he said, “Master Desiderius?”

  “Maybe it’s Desiderius you’re waiting for,” Nicolaus said.

  “No,” Daniel said. “It must be the Brute himself! Oh, that’ll be everything!”

  We only saw Master Desiderius’s back. Master Johann’s face was also forward and unseen to us. Desiderius stood and just said, in a voice that was dry and carved in stone, “We have nominated Master Daniel.”

  Too much happened at that for me to see it all. Of course Daniel popped like a squeezed melon. I felt him beside me. But I also tried to see any expression from his father, any motion from his shoulders or back. He did react, with a slight but sudden lean and twist of his head, like he was having trouble hearing. Or maybe it was something else. But he didn’t turn.

  “So that’s what? That’s what!” Daniel said.

  Then Desiderius did turn to look up at us. There was something in his expression as he looked to Daniel that seemed resignation, or worse. I don’t think Daniel even noticed, as his eyes at that moment were fixed on his father. Nicolaus stared quietly at his brother for a few seconds, then looked away. And Little Johann seemed pleased and proud.

  The rest of the room reacted far more wildly than it had for Staehelin. Daniel was spice to any dish he was mixed with. Especially the older students who knew him better knew that. I shook his hand. “I know you deserve it,” I said. “You’d be an honor to the Chair.” I meant it strongly. Despite his machinations and cunning, he would be. “Go on, go choose your lot.”

  He almost couldn’t stand. All his anticipation and anxiety had finally met their goal, and it was as if he had nothing left. But he did stand, and as he descended the steps his spirit ascended until he was at the front, toe to toe with his father.

  Master Johann’s back was still to me. Daniel looked down on his father, and the most unfathomable expression crossed his face, between triumph and longing, and joy and grief. For an instant Johann looked back, also impenetrably, but there was at least no defeat or regret that I could see.

  “If you please, Master Daniel,” the Provost said peaceably.

  Daniel glanced over the stones, then delicately lifted one and handed it to the Provost. He seemed to have considered the meaning of the emblem.

  “Master Daniel has chosen the Throne.”

  For the second time Heidelmann performed his duty. Daniel was transfixed watching his chosen stone merge into the indiscernible cube. After one more glance at his father, and this glance also had suspicion in it, and doubt, he returned to his place beside me.

  “It’s there,” Daniel said.

  “And it was there for Logic two years ago,” Nicolaus said.

  “But there’s a difference,” Daniel answered.

  “Master Johann,” the Provost said.

  “Thank you.” He stood. This was really his first motion since he’d sat, and his first words.

  “This is the clever part, now,” Daniel said. “So Brutus isn’t worried? We’ll see him play his
hand now. This will be the foreign candidate. What’s the trick going to be?”

  And Master Johann said, gravely, “The committee nominates Master Leonhard.”

  I didn’t know who it was. I’d have thought I would have heard of the man.

  “It’s you,” Nicolaus said. I felt something at my hand, and I saw he was shaking it.

  I looked down at the stage at Master Johann, and saw that he was also intent on me, and also the Provost and Deans. And then I knew it.

  It seemed someone else, not me, who walked the steps down to the lectern. That person was greeted by the esteemed men there and returned their nods and handshakes. It was even that man who graciously and sincerely thanked Master Johann. But then, when the tray of five stones was offered, then, it was me. My question of Lithicus was answered as I saw the emblems he’d carved. The five that remained were a sun, a candle, a lamb, a raindrop, and a fish. It was my hand and no one else’s that chose the symbol and handed it to the Provost.

  “Master Leonhard has chosen the Candle.” He accepted my choice pleasantly, and the wax was melted and the stone was placed into the casket with the other two.

  Then the casket was locked and set on the lectern, where it was to remain until it was opened again.

  14

  The Sealed Stones

  I was hauled off to the Boot and Thorn. I’d meant to leave quiet and get home but the forces were too great. The mass of my fellows, students I knew and had lectures with, manhandled me through the streets and into the Common Room. I’d have sooner settled in at the other side of the Square. Staehelin was brought, too. He wasn’t pulled as hard by the students but he was a bachelor with no family at home, so he didn’t resist, either. And Daniel took no pulling or hauling at all; he was the motive force.

  The room was uncommon raucous. I was toasted and celebrated, though Daniel was given far more acclaim. And I was a leaf in the wind, in a narrow street of hard walls. I couldn’t tell if I or anyone was surprised. Only the tankards on the shelves seemed to be thoughtful at it, staring in every direction to see what it might all mean. And the oddest was that Charon the cat settled into my lap and purred. His weight alone was too great for me to stand or leave.