The Astronomer

by Lawrence Goldstone

  He tried to remember how it felt to be . . . happy. But he couldn’t. It was like reaching for a fish in a stream. When you put your hand in the water, the fish was somewhere else.

  Where was she now? Beautiful, vain, clever Hélène. Living in a grand château, no doubt. Surrounded by finery.

  To love. To be able to love. Oh, Lord, what must that be like?

  As morning ripened, Amaury grew sore from the bouncing of the wagon. And the godforsaken horse was moving slower than a snail. He flicked the reins at the beast’s rump, but the creature ignored both the leather and the driver’s unpleasant thoughts.

  Vivienne continued to ride in silence. She had been subdued since they had met at the stables inside the Saint-Germain gate. Odd, considering how forceful she had been in his room. How grateful when he agreed to accompany her.

  “By nightfall, we must reach Pithiviers,” he said finally, to fill the silence.

  Vivienne merely nodded.

  “We are to stay in a manor just outside of the city,” Amaury went on. “Care must be taken, as Pithiviers is fiercely Catholic. The lord who will put us up is a Lutheran in secret. In fact, he’s a member of the local parlement. Something of a difficulty for him, I suppose, being forced to pass judgment on heresy when he is regularly committing it himself.”

  The statement, strangely, seemed to arouse her interest. “You still consider the teachings of Luther heretical?” she asked him.

  “I did, but now I’m not sure,” Amaury replied. “But I assure you, this lord’s fellows on the parlement share no such doubts.”

  They rode for a bit, then she spoke again. “It must be glorious to be able to learn. To be smart.”

  “You are smart. And you can learn whenever you want.”

  Vivienne pulled herself up straight. “Madame Chouchou is teaching me to read. Then I’ll be able to learn.”

  “You can learn now.”

  She turned slowly. Even under the threadbare shawl and grimy bonnet, her beauty struck Amaury. “No. You need to read to learn.”

  “Vivienne, I spent nine years among some of the most ignorant people I know. And they read all the time. Wisdom does not come from words printed on a page. It comes from . . . a person’s heart.”

  “Surely a person’s head as well.”

  “Yes. That too. You do not seem deficient in either capacity.”

  She looped her arm through his. Amaury felt a smile spread across his face.

  “Will you teach me?”

  “What do you want to learn?”

  “Everything.”

  “I’m not sure I can teach you everything.”

  “Well, then, can you teach me about the heavens?”

  “That perhaps I can manage a little.”

  “Tonight?”

  “If we can.”

  “Thank you, Amaury.”

  “Vivienne . . . ”

  “Yes?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Ah,” she said, “I understand. You want to know how I could have fallen so far as to be a common whore.”

  “No,” Amaury protested. “That’s not what—”

  “It’s quite simple, actually. I come from a peasant family near Arras. Six girls, no boys. My parents had no option but to try to marry us all off as soon as possible. My choice then was to spend the rest of my life with a sweaty, foul-breathed farmer, prematurely age, and die before I was forty, or fornicate with a variety of sweaty, foul-breathed men, save a bit of money, and wait for an opportunity to try to live a more decent life. Tell me. Which would you have chosen?”

  “I can’t say, Vivienne. One cannot choose for another.”

  “Yet you spent nine years at Montaigu to please a father who would not acknowledge you.”

  “How—”

  “Giles told me. We all make our pacts, Amaury. But we need to know when to break them.”

  “Yes. I suppose we do.”

  They lapsed once more into silence. While the horse continued to resist an increase in pace, the beast proved indefatigable. He plodded along for hours without seeming to need rest. Inexorably, he chewed up mile after mile of road. They arrived on the outskirts of Pithiviers as the sun began to reach for the western horizon. Amaury had put on the broad-brimmed straw hat that had been placed with his ironmonger’s garb, but Vivienne was forced to raise a hand to keep the sun from her eyes. Their instructions were to search for a road on the right between two stone pillars topped by owls.

  The sun descended further. The brim of maury’s hat could no longer block it. They traveled on, the old horse now finally fatigued after a full day on the road. Amaury wondered if the poor creature would hold up all the way to Nérac. He looked carefully as they clomped on, but could see no pillars. He even looked left, in case he had heard his instructions incorrectly.

  The wagon entered a wood, which gave relief from the sun but exacerbated the feeling that he and Vivienne were lost. As the forest grew thicker, the road bent to the left, and soon there was no sight of open land before or behind them. The wagon plunged deeper and deeper into the wood, the canopy of leaves creating an artificial twilight. The road narrowed. Amaury felt as if the tree branches were about to reach out and pluck him from his seat. Another bend to the right was just ahead of them. On the other side lay the unknown. Suddenly, the vision of Henri Routbourg sinking to the ground forced its way into Amaury’s thoughts. And Giles, lying among the oubliettes, gaping sightlessly at the ceiling. The eyes of the dead.

  Amaury pulled sharply at the reins. The horse was pleased to stop. Amaury felt his heart pounding in his chest. His stomach went taut. He leaned forward. Strained his ears. Yet no sound came from around the bend, not even a squirrel foraging in the underbrush. But murderers would wait in silence. The reins were moist in his hands.

  “We passed it,” he said. His voice was raspy. Parched. “We must have missed the pillars in the glare.”

  “No,” Vivienne said. “I was watching.”

  “You’re wrong.” Amaury did not take his eyes from the turn. “It’s behind us.”

  “No,” Vivienne insisted. “We must keep on.”

  “I tell you it’s behind us,” Amaury repeated, half yelling, half whispering. “Either that or, God forbid, we’ve taken the wrong road.”

  “This is the right road and we have not passed it,” Vivienne said, calmly and with total assurance. “We will come to the pillars very soon.”

  Amaury pulled on the reins once more, this time to turn the wagon around, but Vivienne placed her hand on his to stop him. Her small fingers felt cool against the perspiration on his skin. “God will protect us,” she said.

  He felt himself nod and urge the horse forward. The wagon started up and was soon at the same plodding speed as before. Amaury bit at his lip as the road began to turn.

  The bend was longer than he thought and for a time he could see only a short distance ahead or behind. No sound, no movement. Just menacing trees and low, overhanging branches. Amaury leaned forward, his chin almost between his knees, holding the reins, his eyes fixed ahead. The horse clomped on.

  Finally, the road straightened and grew wider. The trees parted sufficiently overhead to allow in light from the fading day. After a small stretch, the road jogged to the left. As soon as the wagon reached the crest of the turn, the wood abruptly ended. The sun was about to reach the horizon on their right and the open fields that lay ahead had turned the muted ocher and dull green of sunset. Just after the break from the wood, also on the right, was a side road, guarded by two pillars, each topped by a stone owl.

  Amaury glanced at Vivienne, mortified by his weakness. There had been nothing to fear. Vivienne smiled back without judgment. Amaury thought of their masquerade. If he had been what he pretended to be, a simple tradesman traveling with his wife, he would not have thought life had treated him cruelly to have been given such a woman for a spouse.

  The wagon drew up to the pillars. Fields extended on either side. A small caretaker’s house lay
just inside the entrance. The road disappeared over a rise in the distance and no other building was in sight. A grayhaired man in stained breeches and a leather doublet was raking the soil next to the entrance; when Amaury began to turn in, the man waved for them to stop. He strolled to the wagon, swiveling his head to look in either direction even though there was no one else in eyeshot.

  “Meaning to stay here tonight?” the man asked, leaning on his rake and looking past them to the road, backlit by the setting sun. His hands were thick, his face dark and wizened from decades of work outdoors.

  “We are expected,” Amaury replied.

  The man shook his head. “Not anymore. The bishop decided to come for dinner.” Pithiviers was famous for its charity hospital, l’Hôtel-Dieu de Pithiviers, administered by the local bishop rather than a specific religious order, a rarity in France. The post was prestigious, as the king had visited the hospital on more than one occasion, and thus the bishop wielded great power.

  “Not just that,” the man confided. “The bishop’s ordered a crackdown on Lutherans and my lord can’t chance having you on the grounds. You’re to go into the town to a rooming house just off place du Martroi. The proprietor is named St. Jean. You are expected.”

  “What sort of crackdown?” Amaury was not afraid for himself. He was confident that, if arrested, he had merely to have his captors contact Ory. But Vivienne enjoyed no such immunity.

  “Not so bad,” the man said. “We’ve certainly seen worse. A ban on preaching. Some arrests. Inquisition trials maybe. No burnings though. A few floggings and short prison sentences will be the sum of it. Mostly warnings to return to the faith. Seems pretty much for show. The bishop must want something from the pope.”

  Amaury expressed his relief, but the man shook his head. “You two will need to be careful, though. Being not from here. If the bishop needs to make an example, a couple from Paris would suit him perfectly. My lord couldn’t help you in the parlement either. He’d have to go along with whatever sentence was passed. But just keep your mouths shut, be on your way tomorrow as soon as you can, and you should be all right.” The man cocked his head to the side. “Which way are you headed?”

  Amaury shrugged.

  “Well, stay away from Amboise if you can. The king’s there.”

  Amaury thanked him for the information. Their route would indeed take them down the Loire. No need to cross the river at Amboise. They could keep to the north bank until Tours.

  “One more thing,” the workman added. “The innkeeper isn’t one of us. As far as he knows, you’re just a tradesman who’s done some work for my lord. Got all that?”

  Amaury assured him that the instructions were not too complicated, then he and Vivienne set off. The light was beginning to fade and Pithiviers was still a half hour away.

  “I was hoping to avoid the town,” Amaury grumbled. “Its walls and moat are not yet fifty years old. If we are trapped inside, there will be no escape.”

  “Then we must not be trapped. Who would want to accost an honest and pious ironmonger and his wife? When we get to the rooming house, the first thing to do is ask this St. Jean the location of the nearest church.”

  Amaury was once again surprised at Vivienne’s resourcefulness. She seemed a good deal better at this business than he. No matter what transpired, he would find a way to protect her from Liebfreund, Ory, or anyone else. Betrayal of Vivienne had become a price he was unwilling to pay.

  The road was straight, easy, and smooth. Candles flickering in the windows of Pithiviers illuminated their destination. The walls of the town were indeed new and impressive, although the moat was simply a dry ditch about fifteen yards across. On the crest of a hill in the center, rising above all else, was an enormous steeple.

  Amaury expected to pass the bishop’s caravan en route, but they encountered no one. Was there another road or had the caretaker been lying about the bishop’s dinner visit? Had they been betrayed? There was no choice but to push forward.

  When they arrived at the gate, a guard emerged with a candle lantern to ask them their business. He was a filthy, unshaven man in a soiled tunic. When Amaury told him of their destination, he nodded brusquely and walked to the other side of the wagon. He moved his lantern close to Vivienne’s face and held it there for some time. He began to leer, exposing a set of yellowed, rotting teeth. Vivienne did not flinch, which seemed to arouse the guard all the more. He began to reach out to touch her face, but Amaury snapped the ends of the reins at him.

  The guard pulled back, and his hand went to his scabbard.

  “We must pass now,” Amaury said with irritation. “I have been engaged for important repair work at the hospital. The bishop will be displeased if we are delayed.”

  The guard held his hand at the scabbard but did not grasp the hilt of his sword. He considered his options for a moment, and then, with a jerk of his head, commanded them to proceed.

  “Now it is I who am in your debt,” Vivienne whispered when they were clear.

  “Not at all,” Amaury replied. But he was proud all the same. “But I think tomorrow we should leave by a different gate.”

  Place du Martroi was in the center of town, on the crest of the hill they had seen from the road. The steeple belonged to l’église Saint Salomon-Saint Grégoire, a beautiful Gothic church just across the square. The rooming house was easy to find.

  St. Jean was indeed expecting them. He was much younger than Amaury expected, not yet twenty-five, with sandy hair and a large mole on his left cheek.

  “Surprised?” he said, although Amaury had said nothing. “I took over for my father when he died three years ago.” St. Jean called a boy to see to the horse and wagon, and then offered them wine, bread, sausage, and cheese.

  They had not eaten since midday and so accepted gratefully. There seemed to be no need to inquire about a church, since St. Jean had accepted them with such alacrity. And the question would also have been a bit silly with the massive Saint Salomon-Saint Grégoire less than a minute away.

  “I’m sorry there’s nothing else,” St. Jean apologized with an outsized shrug when they had finished. “If you had only arrived earlier, I could have had something better prepared.”

  Amaury assured the young innkeeper that he had provided for them amply. Vivienne agreed.

  “Do you really think so?” St. Jean replied happily. “You are probably just being kind, but I appreciate it all the same.”

  Amaury did, in truth, feel quite sated, the food, and especially the wine, providing a warm feeling of well-being.

  After still more pleasantries back and forth, St. Jean called for the table to be cleared and led Amaury and Vivienne up the stairs to their room. He threw open the first door off the landing. The room was large, furnished sparely but with taste.

  “How long will you be staying with me?” he asked.

  “Only overnight.”

  The innkeeper looked crestfallen. “I was hoping to have you with me longer. I noticed your tools. I thought you might have business in the town.”

  “I’m sorry, no,” Amaury said. His answer felt stiff, perfunctory, but it would be a mistake to elaborate.

  “Ah, well,” St. Jean replied with a shrug. “One night is better than none at all. Please call me if you need anything. If not, ГП see you at breakfast. You want to be on your way early, I suppose.”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “Until breakfast then.” St. Jean left them, closing the door behind him.

  XIII

  AMAURY DROPPED THE LATCH on the door and drummed his fingers on the wood. “That was too many questions. I don’t know why, but he suspects us. There is a reward for turning in Lutherans.”

  “I don’t trust him either,” Vivienne said. “We should leave as soon as possible in the morning.” She stood in the center of the room for a moment, looking at the bed. “I will sleep on the floor.”

  “The floor? But why? After all, we have already . . . ”

  “That was differe
nt, Amaury. I was . . . you know. Now we are traveling as . . . something else.”

  “But I thought you . . . cared for me.”

  “I do care for you. But I told you. I’m finished with all that. If you didn’t know you were with a whore, would you still expect to simply fornicate with someone you had just met?”

  “No, of course not. It’s just . . . ”

  “Then you cannot simply fornicate with me now.” She reached up and touched him on the cheek. “I’m sorry, Amaury. Truly.”

  She was completely correct, of course, but Amaury had no use for logic at that moment. After nine years of studying and disputing the nature of temptation, he was at last experiencing it in full flower. He wanted her, wanted her desperately. His ache to have her was so strong that it caused actual pain in his stomach. He felt as if demons had possessed him and would propel him across the room at her. At Montaigu, the doctors claimed prayer could deter such feelings, but now, in the grip of desire, Amaury knew that was absurd.

  Vivienne had been in her profession long enough to recognize a man possessed by lust. “Please, Amaury. Respect my wishes.”

  Not having her was unendurable. But taking her against her will would be as enormous a sin as he could imagine. He merely nodded, in miserable acquiescence. But nor would he allow her to sleep on the floor. He promised they would share a bed but nothing else. Sometimes, Amaury thought glumly, free will was a heavy burden indeed.

  “You will still teach me, wont you?” she asked when they were next to one another, almost rigid in their mutual avoidance. “About the stars? Even though I won’t . . . ”

  “Of course. But not tonight. I think we’d best stay indoors.”

  He lay awake for hours. He did not touch her, but he luxuriated in her smell, the heat off her body, the sound of her rhythmic breathing. He began once to pray for strength, but then stopped, knowing God would want him to find strength on his own. More than once he sensed that Vivienne was awake as well, but neither of them spoke. They awoke side by side just after dawn. It had been among the most blissful and most agonizing nights of his life.