tedious landscape of waves and sky to be relaxing after his exercise. There were dried herbs cast about the corners to sweeten the air and there was another scent in the room that I knew but could not identify; it tantalized me from just beyond the edge of my memory.
This door carelessly left open was my chance to hand the king his death, if I could act in time. Downstairs in the armory the king had just begun his practice and I had nearly two hours to make things ready. I hurried down to my lodgings and opened the trunk Fritz had brought from Copenhagen. I lifted out a small wooden box, the size of a loaf of peasant bread. A dry scuffling noise came from the box and I felt the vibrations of the creature stirring within. He would be ravenous and angry after being so long imprisoned and unfed.
The only venomous snake in Denmark is the northern cross adder, a rust-brown viper some two feet in length with an eggshaped head and glassy black eyes. Most of these serpents sleep through the winter in subterranean dens, but a few have been found in castles and houses, having slithered in for warmth and to hunt rats. I greatly dislike snakes.
I placed the wooden box on my table, wrapped a warm cloak about my shoulders, and undid a few buttons of my doublet. The box just fit under the garment, and I startled when the snake moved within, knocking his head against the wooden lid. If the latch failed I was surely a dead man. I crossed myself and left the room, hurrying to the castle doors and out into the frigid weather. A light snow fell, very delicate and pretty.
A snake hibernates when he is cold, like a bear. He will only rouse, even when starved, if he becomes sufficiently warm again. At least this is what I had once read, or how I remembered something I had once read. I would carry the viper out and loose him into the snow where he would coil upon himself and fall into a suspended state, as if dead. I would then box him back up, carry him through the castle to the sleeping chamber, and place him beneath the pillows on the king’s bed. The warmth of the king’s body would attract the adder and he would slither down under the sheets to lie against the Dane’s skin. When the king awakened the snake would strike him with deadly venom in his fangs. The king’s final thoughts might bend to how even nature is treacherous; he might see that we are all betrayed by one thing or another eventually, by men or by snakes, by sons or by fathers, or by the heavens themselves.
I walked out of the castle, the air biting my lungs and skin, and I shrank into my fur cloak as I followed the narrow road down the hill and through the portcullis. Once beyond the high brick ramparts I turned right with the curve of the moat, walking to where the great ditch joined with the sea on the east edge of the island. It was a remote spot and, although a curious guard atop the battlement could have seen me, I thought that the distance and my turned back would hide what I was doing.
My hands were stiff with cold, and clumsy. I worried that I would not move quickly enough once I had opened the case, that it would be I who would know the betrayal of nature. I held the imprisoned serpent at arm’s length, fumbled with the latch, and lost my grip on the box, dropping it into a snow bank.
“Soren!”
I looked up and saw Straslund coming toward me. He moved like a plow horse in a muddy field, lifting his knees high and shaking the snow from his boots. My hands ached when I plunged them into the snow, digging for the viper in his case.
“Soren! What do you out of doors on such a morning as this?”
“Knud, well met! I am conducting an experiment on snow dissolving into saltwater. As you see, when the snow falls on the ground it accumulates, but when it falls on the moat it melts. What do you here?”
“I have come out into the weather to privately remind you of my offer regarding Brahe’s tools out on that island. You have not forgotten?”
“Nay. Nor should you forget what my answer was. So we are concluded,