It was growing colder as the sun descended. The weather had worked its way into my boots and I began to shiver. Straslund took my arm and tried to pull me closer and I shook his hand away.
“You are the only man I know who can tell me the real value of Tycho’s instruments,” he said. “I suspect that you could do with some extra coin, and I am prepared to pay for your assistance in selling off these goods. How does that plan like you?”
“It likes me not,” I said. “The armillae, sextants, and quadrants on Hven all belong to the king, do they not?”
“The king will neither look for nor miss these items, my friend.”
“We are not friends, Knud. I tell you it is unwise to steal from the king. I also tell you that I am not in want of coin, especially yours.”
“I care not what you find unwise, sir.” He turned up the collar of his cloak against the rising wind. “But you ought to consider that the Devil fell for the sin of pride, forgetting his proper place.”
Straslund turned on his heel and took a step toward the guardhouse. The flagstones along the moat were slick and Straslund’s foot skidded out from under him and he went down, sliding half over the lip of the moat. I rushed to lean down and seize his hand, but Straslund was a large man and I could barely hold him. I strained to hoist him up and he scrabbled at the stone embankment, his eyes huge with fear.
“Pull, you stupid peasant!”
I opened my hand and Straslund fell into the freezing waters, his surprised face disappearing beneath the surface. He bobbed up, gasping like a fish, and one of the men from the guardhouse shoved the butt end of a pike at him, which he caught. Two soldiers managed to wrestle him up onto solid ground.
“You let me fall,” Straslund accused, his teeth chattering.
“Nay,” I said. “I could not hold you, that is all.”
“You let me fall,” he said. “I shall see you charged with attempted murder. You men, you saw it all!” He looked up at Captain Helmuth, who only shrugged.
“Your pardon, sir. We were not looking in this direction.”
“I shall speak to the king himself about this,” Straslund said. He hurried away, crossing the drawbridge over the moat and disappearing through the portcullis on the far end.
“He hath not the king’s ear,” Helmuth said.
“I know.”
I warmed myself at the fire a few moments and then walked over the drawbridge. Before me the castle sprawled within the battlements, the keep and towers red in the sunset like stacked wood burning on immense firedogs. Lamplight flickered in the windows and smoke from the many chimneys twined upward into the gathering night. I made my way past the pickets and the guards at the gate and finally, my fingers and feet painful with the cold, I was inside the fortress.
A great bustle of activity was underway all around me as men ran to prepare rooms for the king and his merry band of warriors and hangers-on. Servants were sent into Elsinore to raid shops for whatever food could be found that his Majesty might feast upon. Fires were lit in the great halls and kindled in the stoves of bedchambers. The place smelled of dust, mold, and saltwater. As I made my way through the frantic servants and knots of soldiers who had already found the wine stores, in search of anyone I knew and a warm place to sit by a fire, I stumbled across Straslund. He was wrapped in a dry wool cloak and drinking from a pewter cup, in conversation with Ulfeldt. Straslund and I exchanged silent looks of malevolence and I walked on, wondering if the king knew that Tycho’s astronomical machines were still out on Hven in the abandoned observatory. I had not seen the instruments in several years, but I had the sudden idea that perhaps I might restore the observatory for my own uses once King Christian was out of the way. Certainly I was not going to aid Straslund. Tycho’s armillae and quadrants ought to be used to further advance knowledge, not be sold off to collectors of automata, mechanical clocks, and other such fantastic trinkets. I should rather the whole of Denmark sank into the Sound than Straslund profit off Tycho’s murder.
In a corridor outside the great hall, the quartermaster