with his untucked blouse and unruled hair. He had left it to me to return the dishes to the kitchen. I did not leave the map room right away, however. I spent some time alone there, seeking the charts of the isle of Hven, where I had once labored happily with Tycho at the Uraniborg observatory. The maps of that island were seemingly gone, or misfiled somewhere. I abandoned my search, vexed at the missing maps and troubled by some ill feeling that I could not pin down.
{ Chapter Six }
THE LEAST DOG IN DENMARK
THE QUEEN AND HER PARTY ARRIVED WELL BEFORE sundown, her majesty worse out of temper than ever I had seen her. Kirsten moved like a storm, bursting into the great hall and calling for the king. She was wrapped from her ears to the floor in a cloak of red fox pelts with a black wolf hat on her head. Only her eyes were visible between her furs, glittering sapphire blue and not resting on any face as she swept past the shivering courtiers hastily lined up just within the castle doors to greet her.
“Where is my husband?” she cried. “Someone bring me to the king this instant.” Her voice rang through the hall, a hammer beaten against iron.
Kirsten had forbidden her advance riders to precede her to the castle, and so we were caught off guard by her appearance, several hours earlier than expected. Servants and sycophants ran this way and that in her wake. I heard someone say that the king was in his chambers, having a bath. Prince Christian appeared and the queen threw herself at him, and then they were gone from the hall, the storm of angry queen blowing down the eastern corridor, her ladies-in-waiting running to keep up.
“Did you mark her majesty?” Straslund said to none in particular. “How she gave me an especial nod?”
The queen had brought a great many trunks, cabinets, and servants from Copenhagen and these poured into the fort, Kirsten’s possessions carried in a seemingly endless caravan down corridors, up flights of stairs, and delivered to her suite of rooms. There were boxes of clothing and jewelry, chairs and tapestries, a bedstead with a thick mattress, a rolling cabinet apparently filled with shoes, a dressmaker’s dummy and a dressmaker with her implements, and much more besides. Kirsten’s train from the palace must have stretched out for a mile as they traveled north along the highway.
A young woman drifted through the flood of furniture, clothing, and attendants. She was covered by a black bear cape worn over a simple white dress and a long necklace made up of amber beads strung together with fine gold wire. This was Vibeke, daughter of Lord Ulfeldt.
Vibeke moved slowly across the great hall, seemingly unaware of the bustle all around her, staying out of the path of rushing servants even while ignoring them, just as a cat moves through a crowded room without acknowledging the crowd. She walked directly toward me though she did not look into my eyes.
“Good Soren,” she said, and gave me her hand. I bowed. She curtsied and smiled, looking over my left shoulder.
“Lady Vibeke. I did not know you were coming to Kronberg.”
“I did know it. I have known all the day and now here I am. Is this Kronberg? It is a dark place.”
“Kronberg is not so dark during the morning, lady. You shall so observe tomorrow.”
“If it is day tomorrow.”
“Indeed, and I dare say it will be.”
“Well, you are the astronomer, so you would know this.”
“Aye, lady.”
Vibeke continued to hold my hand and to gaze beyond me into the distance. She had ever been thus, looking past those to whom she spoke and not holding directly to the purpose of any conversation. Her mother had died giving birth to her and it was said that Vibeke had been damaged in some way. The nurses fed her hellebore for many years before Lord Ulfeldt finally accepted that his daughter was to be forever strange. Yet Vibeke was clever and fine company if one did not require the discourse to follow a well-defined path.
“Will you cast horoscopes while we are here in Kronberg, Soren?”
“If any here desire it.”
“For the queen, then?”
“If she so desires.”
“And for me?”
“If such is your desire, my lady.”
“Oh, I have not that desire, sir. Though I may ask you to gaze into the heavens and foretell of my brother.”
“Is your brother still in Paris?”
“My brother traffics with Huguenots while he should traffic