Over the last week I had not had a full night’s sleep and I was exhausted, almost a sleepwalker. The sun lowered into the west, taking with it the colors out of the sky, and as night fell over Denmark a darkness fell over my weary mind and I slept, fully dressed at the table by my window.
There was a hallway. The tiled floors and mustard yellow walls were familiar and I knew that I was in Uraniborg and I knew it was a dream. I heard Tycho’s voice behind me, echoing along the hallway, but Tycho was dead and Uraniborg was abandoned.
“Andersmann!”
Tycho had a massive voice; words boomed out from deep in his chest like cannon shots. In wintertime, when Tycho was angry or excited the glass would rattle in the windowpanes. Even his compliments were rough, like sand and sawdust mixed with honey, and that metal false nose he wore lent to his speech something of a hollowness, like a man with a head cold every day of his life. But no matter his mood, he was always loud. A few times Tycho had stepped beyond the limits of his patience with me and he leaned close and bellowed. It was like being struck with a plank across the face.
“Andersmann!”
Sand, sawdust, and honey behind me, and I stopped, turned about, and faced him. Tycho was just as I had last seen him: tall, broad through the shoulders and thick through the waist, a middle-aged dandy with brocade over every inch of his breeches, doublet, and sleeves. His great blond beard and mustaches were lovingly combed out and fell down to his chest. He was topped with the ridiculous maroon turban he affected in his last years, looking like a Moghul wizard or, as he called it, one of the Wise Men of the East. Behind Tycho slunk Jeppo, the dwarf he had adopted as something of a pet. Jeppo was dressed in a red and green robe with a white madcap on his head, the bells dangling by his crooked ears.
“Andersmann!”
“Aye, my lord Tycho.” My voice was small and thin, lost in the echo of his thunder.
“Hast thou completed the computations on the orbit of Venus?” He produced from out of the air a vast collection of pages, astronomical observations and rolls of charts and figures written in my hand. “How do you expect me to publish the Ruldophine tables when you are not even here to work? You run off to Copenhagen with that idiot prince, or gallivant over to Jutland on a boat to watch a war. Is this what service you render to me?”
“My lord, I beg your pardon. But you are dead and I must eat and—”
“Ah, you always were disappointing.”
“Nay, I loved you and your work.”
“You loved watching us work, you mean.”
“I worked, my lord. Four years with you on Hven, all night every night, the whole year ’round.”
“Your observations were never very good. Never so reliable as the others’.”
“Nay, I was as good as any.”
“Were you? Which one were you?”
“Soren Andersmann, my lord. I was your favorite. I was your favorite, Tycho. Do you not remember?”
“Ah, you were all my favorites.”
“Nay, just I, my lord. None but I.”
“Have you finished the calculations?”
I am slow at mathematics and I do not well comprehend complex formulae. Better leave me to draw up charts of the stars. I looked at my feet.
“Have you finished the calculations?”
“Nay.”
“What?” Tycho threw his armload of papers and charts at me. “Not done? Not done? Damn you, boy. Damn you. So lazy, so happy to eat at my table, but too lazy to work on my tables.”
His words cut into me and my blouse ripped open. I felt blood welling up through wounds on my arms and chest.
“Not finished, Andersmann? Can I not trust you, even now?”
“He will know not who his master is,” the dwarf said. “I have seen it!”
Tycho arched an eye at this. He had ever lent too much credence to Jeppo’s babbling, waving all to silence when the little beast had anything to say, even from under the table where he always skulked during supper.
I raised a hand in protest, coughing up gouts of black blood. My knees gave way and I toppled to the floor. Tycho stood above me, his mustaches shaking with rage.
“Still not done? Such a simple task I give you, boy: remember me and avenge my foul murder.”