the cliffs. Visitors to Hven are obliged to climb hundreds of feet up this road to the peasant village of Tuna. Standing, finally, on the rolling plain above the cliffs one can turn and look northward to see Kronberg, seven miles distant. On the faraway shore the castle is a brick red and coppery green smudge. Hven is likewise visible from Kronberg. The cliffs form a hazy white line which seems to float on the Sound, and the bell tower of the church of St. Ibb is a dark obelisk, a black speck.
It was not snowing on the morning that I crossed the Sound from Elsinore Harbor to the landing at Hven’s north shore, but nor was it a pleasant day. A low mass of gray cloud filled the heavens and the Sound was a seething, undulating serpent of gray wave upon gray wave. The coastlines of Denmark and Sweden were buried under three feet of snow. The world looked hewn from ice, frost, and granite.
The crossing took two hours in our small boat. I was accompanied by a pair of Danish soldiers who Marcellus had assigned to me as assistants. During the voyage Cornelius and Voltemont played dice, drank mulled wine, and complained of the cold and wet. They complained when we landed at Hven because there was no one at hand to unload our supplies at the wharf. Their complaints as we dragged our trunks, sacks, and boxes up the road from the wharf to the town were doubtless audible as far away as the moon.
“There is no inn on this island,” Cornelius said.
“Nor a tavern, neither,” Voltemont said.
“We must carry our trunks two miles, over hills buried in snow, and then build our own fire at Brahe’s ruin,” Cornelius said.
“There will be no dry wood.”
“There will be no dry bed.”
“There will be nothing but a hole in the ground, and we three freezing in it.”
“You men,” I said. “Have either of you been to Uraniborg since Tycho left it?”
“Nay,” they answered. Neither man had stepped foot on the island in his life.
“Go to the church and borrow a cart and oxen,” I said. “We will light a fire in Tycho’s kitchen by noon, I tell you.”
Voltemont hurried to the church while Cornelius and I stood at the edge of town, stamping our feet and rubbing our arms beneath our cloaks. Tuna was a village of a few score houses built from stone and wood with roofs of thatch. There were no people about, but smoke rose from the roof vent of every house and we smelled pottage and bread cooking.
“Voltemont takes his time,” Cornelius said. “Belike he joins the priest for a meal at the fireside. He will forget his friends, who turn to ice outside.”
“Nay, here he comes.”
St. Ibb’s is a small stone chapel that is centuries old with a bell tower the height of eight men. Voltemont hurried from the church, coming forth in a cloud of steam from a narrow side door. Before the door closed I saw the great bulk of Father Maltar. He was not smiling. I had almost forgotten Father Maltar.
“That ancient priest refuses us,” Voltemont said. “His cart, oxen, and driver are not at the beck of every slave from Elsinore, he says.”
“Says he?” Cornelius put a hand upon the hilt of his sword. “Well, we ought at least claim right of sanctuary in the chapel and go inside.”
“Aye,” Voltemont said. “It is warm in the church. We have missed Matins, but we may be in time for dinner.”
“Enough.” I picked up my cases and walked toward the church. With each step I sank past my ankles into the snow and I tried to remember Hven during the summer, when the hillsides flowed under carpets of long grass where sheep and cattle grazed, when crops rippled in a gentle breeze and fish schooled in the sixty linked ponds Tycho had dug west of the observatory. I tried to recall the good smell of the earth beneath the maples where I had read Copernicus in the hours after dining. These memories refused me and I had nothing but the air filled with ice and wind, a low gray sky, the noise of waves all around, and deep snow lying over the whole of the island. My ears and nose felt brittle in the cold.
“Bring over your packs and trunks,” I called to my assistants. “We will speak to Father Maltar.”
It was dark inside St. Ibb’s, and humid, but it was warm.