by David Elias
The exercise consisted of the following: The young men stood in a line to one side facing Captain Hume, and when ready he would call upon one of them to step forward with sword and shield to engage in an exchange of blows with him. In between bouts the Captain’s page would hold out a cloth that he might wipe the sweat from his eyes, and perhaps offer some drink from a chalice. The young men would discuss amongst each other the strategies he had instructed them to employ, while the Captain pointed out the weaknesses he’d spotted that invariably gave him the advantage over his adversary.
He signalled now that he was ready and a young man stepped forward, curly of hair, wearing only a breastplate and greaves, who circled the Captain warily, transferring his weight nimbly from one foot to another, eyes fixed upon his opponent, that stood before him with neither malice nor concern in his bearing. Now the young man brought his sword to an overhead position, at which the Captain adjusted his stance, turned a little to one side, and set one foot slightly behind the other. The challenger attacked, bringing his sword down with a slashing motion, but even as he did so the Captain, rather than retreating or raising his shield to fend off the blow, stepped toward his opponent with startling quickness and with the hilt of his sword struck the young man across the back as he went by and sent him stumbling to the ground. He lay on his back looking up at the Captain, who stood over him, one foot resting on the vanquished opponent’s chest, sword ready to deal the death blow.
The Captain looked at the assembled hopefuls. “And what may we gain from observing the particular method of combat I have just demonstrated?”
They looked at each other, uncertain, not daring to speak for fear they should be mistaken.
“May I?” I stepped forward, and they all turned to look at me.
“Your Highness.” The Captain gave his sheepish attacker a hand up. “We are heartened by your interest in these crude manoeuvres, and would by all means hear your judgment.”
“I am no soldier, but could it be that sometimes the best strategy in combat is to step forward rather than fall back?”
He turned back to the men. “There you have your answer in finer words than I might have mustered. The technique is meant to put a man down fast. In this case my attacker thought to strike a blow for show, and I made him pay for his mistake. His objective was to damage but his approach was clumsy. Remember, waste no time nor any unneeded effort.” He turned to me. “Your Highness, would you see some more of this?”
“Perhaps another time, thank you. I wondered if I might have a word with you when you have finished.”
“Gentlemen, let’s have no more today. We shall resume tomorrow.”
With that the men disbanded into smaller groups and went on their way while the Captain composed himself, took a drink from the chalice held out to him, then dismissed the page as well.
“Your Highness, I am at your service.”
“Tell me about this weapon you carry.” I indicated the sword still in the Captain’s hand.
He held it up before him and I took a closer look.
“I see that you keep only the tip of the blade sharpened,” I said.
“For easy entry.” He made a short thrusting motion. “The rest I leave with a dull edge to keep it sturdy and better able to withstand a blow when I use it to block a strike.”
“Some will say there is hardly the need for skill with such a weapon when the battles now are fought with more advanced instruments of war.”
“It is all very impressive to blast away at each other from a safe distance and make a lot of noise, but the contest that begins with the musket and pistol still ends with the sword and dagger.”
“And failing that, hand-to-hand combat, I suppose.”
“It is one thing to shoot a man with an harquebus, but to kill him with your bare hands is something altogether different.”
“And which do you prefer?”
“I prefer not to kill a man at all if I don’t have to or even to fight him, but the battlefield insists I must, and I prefer to do it with a sword. I think it is the most civilized. When two men are aiming pistols at each other where is the parry, the block, the thrust?”
“And which of these manoeuvres would you recommend for someone like Preacher Scultetus?”
The Captain glanced over at me with a quizzical expression, then broke into a knowing smile before he answered, “Well, I should think the most likely way to bring a man like that to ground would be none of those, rather one I have not yet mentioned.”
“And would you see fit to instruct me upon it?”
“It would be my privilege, but not before offering up an old adage.”
“I would hear it.”
“Those who choose to live by the sword are as apt to die by it.”
“I mean not to bring harm to the man, only to bring him around to my way of thinking. What do you know of him?”
“Enough to forgo his company, though your husband is eager enough for it, as you well know, and receives counsel from him daily.”
“Even at that it should not concern me but that Frederick sees fit to heed it at the expense of my own. He has convinced Frederick that only one chosen by God can accept the crown of Bohemia, and waits for a sign. He believes divine providence is dictated by the stars.”
“I have seen him oft at study,” said the Captain, “book in hand, there in the garden, looking to the heavens that its machinations inform his piety and self-proclaimed authority. He considers the stars and the alignment of the planets to be integrated into the writings of the Bible, which together serve to augur the events of our present life, speaks of the disciples in relation to the symbols of the zodiac, of the Saviour’s birth within the winter’s solstice and such.”
“My husband will hardly deign to question a single word from his mouth.”
“You say he waits for a sign. What say we give him one? Since much of his theology is founded upon study of celestial bodies and the heavens generally, he should take it as most prescient if something unexpected were to occur there that you, Your Highness, had preordained.”
“He would not take me for a witch?”
“So long as he fears you. Your Highness, I have made the acquaintance of a woman who lives up the mountain upon a promontory where very few venture. Though she dwells there in solitude, she is neither hermit nor pauper.”
“And she is not a madwoman?”
“Far from it, though I will say I have never met anyone like her. There’s a hard line runs through her few men can lay claim to. She resists where a man will yield, triumphs where a man will fail, and yet she can muster charms to render him clay should the need arise. Her courage is of another sort, her cunning more ruthless. She can defeat you in ways you never imagined, wield triumph without mercy and yet relinquish her victory of an instant if it suit not her purpose. She is not afraid of sacrifice. Where a man allows himself to be counselled, she shuts out all considerations but total victory. Beware when she has made up her mind. I fear no man on the battlefield, and he may kill me if he can, only save me from a war of wills if she should want my blood, for she should be sure to draw it from a place no sword or shield can defend. The place where she lives is no shack, but well-appointed, and holds within it objects of art and science most astonishing. She has in her possession an instrument to observe the heavens, the existence of which is known to but a few.”
“I know of such an apparatus,” I said. “My brother Henry acquired one shortly before his death. It came to him by way of a Florentine who called it a telescope. I remember the first time he bade me look through it at the heavens. What a marvel I saw! There in the blackened sky a sea of stars such as I had never imagined, the heavens full to bursting with twinkles and pricks of light.”
“Indeed. Upon my last visit she gave me to do as much.”
“I should like to meet this woman,” I said. “What
did you say her name was?”
“Sophia. It is an arduous journey.”
“I am no stranger to the trails along the mountainside.”
“But to my point. Upon fixing the instrument to a particular region of the sky by means of a chart she had before her, she gave me to spy through the eyepiece such a celestial body as is rarely seen to visit itself upon the earth — a comet, Your Highness, growing brighter even as I gazed upon it.”
“I remember one from my childhood. I was no more than eleven or twelve when Lord Harrington took us out to the lawn one summer evening, and there in the heavens a comet with a great glowing tail streaked across the sky.”
Captain Hume stood listening, a most peculiar smile upon his face. “No doubt the talk thereafter was of celestial harbingers, and what its appearance might augur.”
“So it has ever been upon their arrival.”
“A man’s imagination will make a formidable adversary,” said the Captain.
“My father saw it as a sign that he should soon be king,” I said. It was then the full import of Captain Hume’s comment struck me. “By Heaven,” I turned to him, “Scultetus will lap it up like a dog.”
I hope you seek not to look upon me with judgment. We all of us engage in calculation, learn to scheme and connive almost from our first mewling. It is in our nature to grasp. There’s hardly a woman born who would not choose, had she the means, to bend the world to her will, nor a man who would not bring all of nature to its knees if he had the power to make it so. Day in and day out we seek to discover the lengths to which we can go.
Chapter Eleven
Captain Hume had agreed to take me up the mountain that I might meet the solitary Sophia and see for myself the comet he had spoken of. The opportunity presented itself when one morning Frederick announced that he had arranged for us to travel to Juliana’s estate in the countryside to see little Henry. I insisted it would better if he went alone this first time, to judge for himself how things were getting along. It was a transparent ruse, and needless to say he could not disguise his disappointment, but I assured him I should be eager to accompany him upon the next visit and insisted he should make his travel plans without me. It was a significant moment for both of us, one that would inform much of what was yet to come, but if I thought I saw an accusatory look come into his eyes it was only for a moment before he seemed to resign himself to the implications of my decision.
And so it was that only a few days hence I found myself following Captain Hume along a trail that led up the side of the mountain. We had started out in the late afternoon and should, he assured me, arrive before sundown, thereafter to stay until well after dark and make our way back by lantern light. Failing that, we should be prepared to stay the night. I was adamant that we should not, and didn’t relish the thought of sleeping in such a strange place, but had prepared myself for the possibility by packing a light sack of clothing and other articles. Amalia had been instructed that upon my failure to return she should raise no alarm but rather keep it in strictest confidence. I had also taken the trouble to strap a small dagger to my leg, something I had never done before, and which I found surprisingly invigorating. To feel it there upon my inner thigh brought a small quiver of arousal, a tingling of being alive. Merely to have such a weapon secretly within my grasp amounted to an illicit pleasure. What must it be like then, I thought, to gird oneself for combat in full armour, with sword and dagger, shield and spear?
For his part the Captain, who walked before me, had as always a sword hanging at his side, which seemed a lot of weight to lug up the mountain. I felt the dagger rub against my leg with every step and this reassured me somehow. I had ambled along those familiar trails many times and never encountered anyone I felt fearful of, but his talk of this strange and powerful woman gave me to feel as though I might want to be wary of her, or that I could not trust the situation completely.
At first the trails were known to me but soon grew narrower and the undergrowth thicker, after which we encountered an outcropping of rock unfamiliar to me, then a stand of birch I did not remember, with holly and ivy thick along their trunks. The forest had darkened against the setting sun when before me the Captain turned of a sudden to one side, lifted away some leafy branches, and took us along a hidden trail where I should surely have continued straight on. I stayed close behind as we followed a path seldom trodden upon, ascending sharply then doubling back along the side of a steep rise. Still the woods grew thicker, and it was impossible to tell where upon the mountain we might be. Then we were standing in a clearing, surrounded on all sides by thick growth and tall trees, and there, in its midst, a dwelling rose up that sat on wooden stilts skirted on all sides by a terrace running along its length and breadth. The construction was crude, of rough-hewn planks and timbers. I could discern no visible means to ascend to the living quarters above, and we had only taken a few steps out into the clearing when a voice called out.
“Who walks there below?”
I looked up but saw no one.
“Captain Hume, Madam, and I have brought a visitor.”
“Say who it is.”
“That same personage I spoke of who resides in the castle below.”
“Very well, come up,” said the voice. “I’ve been expecting you.”
At this a wooden ladder descended from the deck above, which the Captain proceeded to climb and I followed. When I had made the ascent and got my feet under me again, there before me stood a woman of perhaps forty or fifty, who eyed me with an expression neither welcoming nor suspicious. She raised the lantern in her hand higher and I saw there a face whose features were not those I had envisioned. Here was no gaunt and wrinkled visage but the slender and handsome face of a woman who might just as well have dwelt in the town below and gone quite unnoticed as she walked along its streets, save for the fact that she was dressed in pantaloons and shirt.
Captain Hume took a step forward and gestured in my direction. “Sophia, may I present Elizabeth.” He had warned me beforehand that he would not introduce me by my title, as Sophia neither recognized nor acknowledged such forms of address. I had told him it should be a relief to be freed from that formality for a change, and now hearing my name so simply spoken, I welcomed the brief liberation from the tyranny of my entitlement but also felt a little vulnerable, knowing that I had entered an arena where I should be forced to assert my identity in a fashion almost entirely unfamiliar to me.
“Sophia.” I put out my hand. “I am honoured to make your acquaintance.”
“Honour is for fools. I possess none, neither do I seek any. The Captain here says he has fought for it upon the battlefield, though I suspect he did so more for the reward of those who paid him than his own. In either case it amounts to little more than self-importance. Why fight to preserve a chimera? You, for instance, are a sovereign I am told, raised from infancy to consider your worth above that of all but a few. Yet of what value is such in the absence of those accoutrements that lend it credence?”
“I welcome the chance to be free of them, if only for a short while.”
“I am glad to hear it. And yet, I doubt you can say in all honesty that you consider me your equal.”
“You are almost certainly my better in some respects.”
“The Captain warned me that you would try to be humble, but I tell you there is no need for it. I am not in the habit of welcoming strangers into my home, and friends have I few, though this Captain may think of himself as such. I prefer to be as much as possible in my own company, as I find most anyone else’s either tedious or annoying. Still, in your case I’m willing make an exception. Come, you must be tired after your journey. We will sit and you will take some refreshment, and then we shall carry on with that which has brought you here.”
Sophia led us through the doorway into the interior of the dwelling, which was all of one room, with a high ceiling of timbers and beams, the walls
of plain wooden planks and covered almost entirely over with drawings, charts, diagrams, sketches, and such. The furniture, though sparse, had also upon it wherever space was available books and papers, instruments and curiosities, and in some ways it reminded me of Henry’s study back in London, though this had more clutter and disarray than his. It had that same air about it, the certainty that all of the various material at hand had not been strewn about casually, but that each article had arrived at the place where it now resided for a particular and important reason, held a place there to provide access to one exploration or another, and in its totality represented a great deal of knowledge and learning.
“I see you inspect the place, but consider it not an idle conglomeration of gratuitous artefacts, rather an elaborate and careful arrangement of necessities. You come from a world where keeping up appearances is paramount, a world I have renounced. Propriety and decorum are of little value when their underpinnings have been removed. Here things appear to be in chaos when they are in fact orderly.”