A Clash of Spheres

by P. F. Chisholm

  They all rode home down the road from Leith, with the King talking animatedly in the middle about what he would do with the hart’s antlers and then the Earl of Huntly started up an old song in his astonishing bass. Carey knew another version of it in English and answered him and then all the other nobles and attendants and foresters came in on the chorus. The sound of the powerful deep voices singing as they rode back through the snowy fields with the crows starting from their rookeries made the hairs on Dodd’s neck stand up.

  And the next day it froze hard again, but the day after that it was a little warmer and the icicles were lengthening and by that time the snow had become a nuisance, with great piles of it beside the main streets and all the alleys and wynds turned to deathtraps of ice and slush.

  By then, true to his word, Wee Colin Elliot had taken Widow Ridley and Janet Armstrong across the naked hills and onto the main road from Hawick again. They stayed the night in Hawick where the innkeeper wouldn’t take her money and then he and twenty of his men accompanied them all the way to Edinburgh, so they could see the walls and the great lump of rock that was Arthur’s Seat, still cloaked with nearly virgin snow.

  Wee Colin nodded to Janet then and rode back down the way to Hawick, leaving her with Widow Ridley and the cart and all of the horses, including Shilling, whom Janet was riding. It took them the rest of the day to get to Hollyrood House since the road was slippery and dangerous and they went at a slow walk, and even when they came to the abbey gate, there was a long argument to be had with the men there about who they were and where they had come from. They had to send someone to fetch Henry Dodd in the end.

  Edinburgh, New Year’s Eve 1592

  Young Hutchin Graham was talking to one of the hobbies while he got the knots out of the hobby’s mane. Partly because he was bored with all the high doings at Court and now bored with the snow in which he had built a snowman, secretly because he wasn’t a wean anymore, but also because he was feeling worried and upset and the stables were warm and dry and smellt nice of horses and hay and a little bit of horseshit. He didn’t know where Sergeant Dodd was, which was just as well.

  That was the problem. He had been in the small storeroom with the leaden tanks in it, the night before, despite the foul smell because he liked to imagine himself as the man he had seen swiving his woman there. Then he had heard voices in the passageway, and dived behind the tanks to hide, peeked out and seen the same man with the curly hair, but this time with Sergeant Dodd. They stood by the door and talked in low voices, and Dodd’s face was sullen and bad-tempered as usual.

  He thought he had heard the name Carey mentioned, at which Dodd’s face darkened even more, and then, clear as a bell. “Kill him after New Year’s Day.”

  “Not tomorrow?”

  “He has a job to do for me on New Year’s morning. Kill him if you can in the afternoon.”

  “Ay, I can.”

  “It may not be up to you. New Year’s Day, in the afternoon? Understand?”

  “Ay.”

  And then the man with the curly hair counted twenty gold angels into Dodd’s hand, and the Sergeant tinkled them into a leather purse and put it in the pocket of his jerkin. Then they both went out, leaving Young Hutchin stunned and fearful.

  “So, Sorrel,” he said, “whit do ye make of that? Should Ah tell the Courtier or no’? Cos Dodd’ll get another fifteen pounds from Ritchie Graham intae the bargain and…well, ye see ma trouble?”

  The hobby sidestepped and swung his tail.

  “Ye know the Courtier best,” Hutchin said. “Whit should I do? If I dinna tell him, my family will ay be happy and if I do…there’ll be mither wi’ Sergeant Dodd and the mood he’s in, that could be the end o’ me.”

  Sorrel snorted and shook his head.

  “Och…” Hutchin began and then stopped for there was a commotion outside in the yard.

  ***

  Carey stood at the door of the King’s audience chamber, an addition to the abbey built by the King’s grandfather, James V, and nearly as large as the hall. He was receiving the guests to the Disputation, many of them respectable merchants and ministers, some with their wives. After the Disputation, there would be a Masque by the Queen’s ladies and the King’s gentlemen, and the point of it was to give the Queen’s ladies a chance to wear very pretty diaphonous semi-classical robes and to give the gentlemen a chance to show off their dancing and leaping and their outlandish and expensive costumes.

  Anricks was standing on the other side of the door in his cramoisie brocade suit, looking very philosophical. Carey was happy because his own new suit fitted him well and looked magnificent, being of dark green damask and black velvet in the Scottish style with a peascod stomach and a ruff, trimmed with narrow gold lace, the canions daringly the same fabric as the doublet, with a set of wonderful buttons in gold which Anricks had also paid for without complaint. His new high-crowned beaver hat completed the look and gave him even more height. He thought that he alone of the entire Scottish Court had bothered to bathe early that morning after breaking the ice in the Lough, since there were no baths nor stews that he knew of in Edinburgh, thanks to the ministers closing them all down on the grounds of sin. But he could not contemplate the New Year without washing himself beforehand; that was what ten years of serving at the Court of the very nasally sensitive Queen did to you.

  At one end of the audience chamber, on a dais, were the King and Queen’s thrones, the King’s of gilded wood with arms, the Queen’s of whitepainted wood without arms, both of them with a cloth of estate over them, both empty at the moment. The King would take part in the Dispute in the audience chamber but then everyone would process into the hall for a banket and to watch the Masque. The Queen would take part in the Masque with her ladies and then join her husband on the dais in the audience chamber to say goodbye to the guests.

  At last everybody was there, including Maitland of Thirlstane, the Lord Chancellor, and the Catholic earls as well, who were to play a prominent part in the Masque. The Queen and her women wouldn’t come until the Masque so everyone could gasp at their costumes. Women couldn’t be expected to take an interest in the planets or even know what they were. They were having a New Year’s Eve party in the Queen’s chambers.

  At last King James, in his purple suit, now with a greasy stain down one side of the doublet, stepped down from the dais and paced into the middle of the audience chamber, smiling and his eyes gleaming.

  “Guid evening, my lords and gentlemen,” he said to the crowd. “I am here not merely as a King but in the guise of a Philosopher King as in Plato, to dispute a matter of true and vital importance—what do the planets or spheres do? Is it true that they dance around the Sun or is it true that they dance around the Earth, the centre of the Universe and the world created by Almighty God? We shall try this matter a little, important as it is, for do not the planets affect us and our lives through their influences in astrology?”

  Carey leaned over to Anricks and whispered, “I hope you are prepared?”

  “No,” said Anricks, “I am not. I have struggled to write a speech and find I cannot do it without mathematics and so I have put the whole into the hands of the Almighty and rest content with whatever He decides to inspire me with.”

  Carey looked at Anricks with his eyebrows up. “Are you joking?”

  Anricks smiled. “No. All is in the hands of the Almighty as it always is.”

  “Jesus Christ.” Carey thought for a moment and then shook Anricks by the hand. “Well, you have more balls than I have ever had. Good luck.”

  King James had been making a few jokes about people who had found the planets thwarting them. Now he lifted his tones. “And to oppose me with his own plan for the Universe, I call upon Mr John Napier and to oppose me with the Copernican plan for the Universe, I call upon Mr Simon Anricks.”

  There was a sprinkle of ironic clapping as Napier stepped forward, c
lutching a sheaf of papers, wearing a new suit of tawny and a tight ruff. He bowed to the King and the assembled company, looked about and blinked.

  Anricks waited for half a minute and then stepped forward himself, bowed to the company and genuflected neatly to the King. His face was looking interested and contented and not at all nervous.

  “Now,” said the King, “what order shall we follow, gentlemen?”

  Napier seemed struck dumb by this, opened his mouth a couple of times and then shut it.

  “Mr Anricks?”

  “Your Majesty, my opinion is that as the King, the representative of the accepted order and, as it were, the reigning champion…” some people laughed at the pun “…you should begin and state the situation as it currently obtains among the planets. Mr Napier should follow you because he is Scottish and I should come last of all because I am only English and speaking for a revolutionary…yes, gentlefolks, a revolutionary theory.” There was another light tittering. “And then Your Majesty should sum up all the arguments in the manner of a judge and make your decision.”

  James smiled gently at him. “You will not become nervous, waiting so long to speak?”

  Anricks paused and then smiled back. “Possibly. But then I might gain some inspiration from your speech and Mr Napier’s. Perhaps you may even convert me back to Ptolemy again.”

  Some more people clapped and the King stepped into the centre and began to speak. He spoke well, in his pleasant canny Scotch, describing the world as everyone knew it to be, immoveable and solid, in the centre of the Universe with the Sun and planets whirling round it in their complicated patterns. He quoted many authorities, including Lucretius, he dealt with the unfortunate epicycles and epi-epicycles as examples of the wonderful complexity of God’s Mind, and in an hour he brought himself round to the conclusion that all is exactly as Ptolemy and Aristotle before him described—the crystal spheres in their appointed places and the Earth at the centre as the home of mankind and the Saviour, Jesus Christ.

  It was a good speech, little touches of humour here and there, and quite short at only an hour. Everyone cheered and the King knocked back a cup of wine in one.

  Napier stepped forward next, shining with sweat, his sheaf of papers visibly trembling in his hand. He began speaking in a mumble, got louder every so often and then softer and Carey soon lost track because Napier was doing exactly what he had warned Anricks against and speaking mathematics to an audience of mathematical virgins. The King drank more wine, stopped pretending to be interested and started gossiping with Lord Huntly and then, when he arrived at the King’s elbow, with Lord Spynie.

  The incomprehensible mumble continued until Napier turned a page, suddenly looked wildly at it, glanced up bewildered and said, “Alas, I have forgot the rest of my speech, which I think I may have left at home…”

  “Our thanks to Mr Napier for his very learned explanation of how the planets all go around the Sun and then the Sun goes around the Earth,” said the King and hiccupped. “Now Mr Anricks, what have you to add?”

  Anricks stepped forward. “I am not a learned man, unlike the King or Mr Napier, I am only, as they say in France, an amateur of astrology,” he began. “I would like to conduct an experiment here in this chamber and for it I will need six men. First, to dismiss Mr Napier’s rather ugly Universe?” He brought forward the nobles who would take part in the Masque, some already wearing their costumes, disposed them with Earth at the centre, who happened to be the Maxwell, because he was wearing a lime green doublet and hose, the Moon and the Sun (or Lord Huntly) circling the Earth and then the other planets circling the Sun. He commanded them to begin and within minutes all the planets had bumped into each other and the Earth, to Maxwell’s annoyance. Before a fight could begin between Maxwell and Mars, he stopped them, disposed them with Maxwell in the middle and Moon and Sun going around first, and the other planets in orderly pattern after. This began circling quite well and then Anricks spoiled it all by calling out “Mercury, go backwards” and “Venus, go backwards” which caused chaos. Again he stopped the experiment. “I am very sorry, Ptolemy,” he shouted, “but your Universe will not answer.” Everyone laughed, thoroughly enjoying the whole thing and especially that they weren’t listening to a learned disquisition but watching drunken nobles falling over each other.

  The King was watching with interest. Anricks, went to him, bent the knee and then spoke quietly to him which made him laugh.

  Anricks brought the King into the centre. “Firstly, I should explain something. In this our play of the planets, for the real, the true Universe, we cannot use anyone other than the real, true King, even my Lord Huntly will not do. For the real Sun is much much bigger than the planets and it is a long way away. The fire of its heat is immense, it flames day and night, it IS day and night for when the Earth turns to it there is day and when the Earth turns away, there is night. The Sun is not really a planet, gentlemen, but it is most clearly a King.”

  He pointed at the King. “Here, gentlemen, we have the Sun, the King, whose light shines on all of us. We place him in the centre because the centre is the place from which all things flow. Now we put Mercury here, and Venus. The Earth comes next, with her partner, the Moon.” He had Maxwell hold hands with the young man in silver tissue which made both of them uncomfortable since neither was a bugger. Then he placed Mars, then Jupiter and Saturn. “Pray begin my lords, begin your circles. Circle around the King, the Sun, as your lord and master and perceive the beauty and fitness of Copernicus his Universe!”

  Despite all of them being drunk, the nobles did a very creditable job of circling the Sun; there were no collisions and even Maxwell and his Moon circled without incident.

  “But Mr Anricks,” said the King, his fists on his hips, enjoying himself immensely, “this would work just as well around the Earth, and does.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty, if we forget that the Sun is huge and at a great distance. It is, according to Arab calculation, millions and millions of miles away and millions of miles across. How can so great a celestial body circle something that is smaller and not made of flame? The Earth would be burned to a crisp. Here we have not only the solution to the problem of the retrogrades but also to the fact that the Sun is made of fire and enormous. I say that the Sun is naturally the King of the Planets and that naturally the planets dance attendance upon him.”

  He went on one knee to the King again. “My tale is done, Your Majesty.”

  Very prettily, because they were after all courtiers, the other nobles ceased circling and each knelt on one knee to the King in the centre who clapped his hands and laughed.

  Anricks stood and backed, leaving the King to find for tradition and commonsense and say that the Earth was naturally the centre, as the Masque in the hall would shortly display.

  Carey clapped him on the shoulder. “Mr Anricks, wonderfully done! If they had not set the whole Masque up to circle the Earth, you would be the victor.”

  Anricks was flushed with exhilaration and triumph. “I know,” he said, “I think His Highness wishes he did not have to find perforce for tradition. But never mind. I have done right by dead Copernicus and that is all I ask.”

  Carey shook his head in wonder. “I have never seen a scholarly argument done in such a way before.”

  “This is what happens when you put all in the hands of the Almighty, I find,” said Anricks, a little complacently. “I am afraid I can’t take the credit.”

  Carey took his hat off and bowed to the philosopher. “Truly marvellous. Now all we need to do is find the assassin, arrest the Earl of Huntly for treason and our triumph will be complete.”

  Anricks looked concerned. “I suppose we need to leave that too in the hands of the Almighty,” he said, “although that is always a risky thing to do. I could have stood mumbling like Napier, after all.”

  “You’re right,” said Carey.

  In the bedlam of
the hall at New Year’s Eve, with everyone shouting once the drink had got to them and laying into the first remove of venison, boar, and a forest’s offering of creatures harvested by the King’s hunting, Carey concentrated on the wine rather than the food. He found himself surrounded by Danish girls who wanted to tell him something and couldn’t say it in Scots, possibly because all of them were helplessly drunk.

  He was just trying French on the youngest and juiciest of them when his sleeve was pulled from behind and he saw a wild-eyed Young Hutchin Graham, hatless and sweaty.

  “Sir, sir,” said Young Hutchin, and then Carey couldn’t hear the rest because the girl next to him squealed loudly and started play-fighting the girl next to her until they both fell off the bench. He wasn’t entirely clear how he had gotten himself surrounded by the girls. Their mistress the Queen was now sitting next to James and pretending not to notice as Lord Spynie sat himself down on His Highness of Scotland’s royal knee.”Ye’ve got to come wi’ me,” bellowed young Hutchin. “It’s important, Sergeant Dodd says ye’ve got tae come.”

  Carey was suddenly no longer drunk. Sergeant Dodd had not made himself scarce, he wasn’t needed to attend on Carey at a civic banket nor a Masque, but did this mean that Sergeant Dodd was about to earn his cash?

  “Tell him to come here,” he said, reaching out with his eating knife for the leg of a duck. “Why should I traipse off…?”

  “Nay sir, it’s important and Janet Armstrong wants ye too.”

  “Oh.” Carey had great respect for Janet. “What’s she doing here and not in Gilsland?”

  “She came to tell ye stuff ye need tae know, will ye come?”

  Carey looked across the roaring crowd. The King was lecturing both Anricks and Napier on something, there was the upraised finger.

  “Oh, all right,” he said, turned to bow to the juiciest Danish girl, kissed her hand and was rewarded by a clutch at him and alcohol-fuelled giggling. Disentangling himself from the other girl, he sidled across the floor between the benches full of people, bowed elaborately to the King who waved his finger and moved to the door where Red Sandy was waiting, an utterly alien presence in his plain jack and plainer helmet.