a fire, nor can I dig my way through drifting snow should a blizzard lay itself against the observatory doors. I smiled at the men and we drank, and I wondered that I did not feel as if I had come home again. Perhaps when I saw the great instruments or the laboratories, my heart would be content.
After we had declared ourselves friends and drank half a jug of wine, we began to explore the cellars. The kitchens led to the alchemical laboratories through a heavy oaken door against which Cornelius and Voltemont struggled for nearly an hour without success.
“Shall I take the axe to it?” Voltemont asked.
“Nay,” I said. “On the morrow we will find the stairs down from the main hall.”
“If that part of the building is passable.”
“Aye.”
The daylight was fading, the kitchen windows shifting from gray to blue. Darkness filled the corners of the room. Cornelius peered into the gathering blackness beyond the oven’s glow.
“Where are the bed chambers?”
“Upstairs, above the main hall.”
“Shall we see if the staircase will hold a man’s weight?”
“As you like,” I said.
The stair led up into a large, round terrace surrounded by a brick parapet. I was surprised to find the space filled with waist-deep snow. Tycho had designed the terrace roof with care, having it fashioned from triangular wooden panels that could each be opened or closed as desired to allow observation of any portion of the night sky. Most of those panels were gone and the terrace had lain open to the elements for I knew not how long. It was half an hour’s work clearing away enough snow that the three of us could climb up the stairs and onto the landing. The door from the terrace into the second floor of the main building was behind a tall drift. We had not put on our cloaks for this work and I could not labor much longer. The air was very cold.
“Shall we leave off this heavy task and go make up our pallets by the oven downstairs?” I asked. Cornelius and Voltemont thought this a better plan than digging through more snow and ice. I let them descend the stairs first, as they had done most of the work to clear the snow. The blizzard had stopped while we had been eating and patches of starry black showed though gaps in the clouds. I had stood on that very spot under that very roof with Tycho, measuring the ascension and declination of Mars. Now Tycho’s clever roof was broken. The great brass sextant that Tycho had placed in the terrace to stand proudly above us was no longer there. Likely it had been beaten into plows or melted down into spoons.
I followed Cornelius and Voltemont down the spiral stair into the kitchen. Voltemont had some cured mutton and potatoes, out of which he cooked a sort of stew.
“Our food will not outlast the week,” he said. “How shall we get more provisions? Will Marcellus send supplies from Kronberg?”
“We will need no more provisions,” I said. “We sail to Kronberg when the king returns in a day or so from Copenhagen. You shall have Christmas Mass at your own church in Elsinore.”
“I am most glad to hear it,” Cornelius said.
“Mark me: home by Christmas. Now let us get to our pallets. There will be much work on the morrow.”
We laid ourselves down on rough pallets made from our furs and woolen blankets, on the floor before the mouth of the oven. The fire burned down to glowing coals and soon my assistants slept. I lay awake listening to the men’s heavy breathing, the moaning of the wind, and the creaking of the upper floors. After an hour I sat up and stirred the coals, unable to sleep. For some time I sat looking into the fire and then I pulled on my boots, gloves, and cloak. Cornelius and Voltemont snored loudly, huddling against each other for warmth like puppies in a barn.
I climbed the stairs to the storeroom and slipped outside through the cook’s door as quietly as I could. It was not so cold as I thought it would be and it was not snowing. The sky was full of clouds, but they were high up and thin enough that moonlight broke through in ragged shafts of pale yellow.
The snow was deep and fought against me, but I wanted to see the building. As I circled around Uraniborg I could make out that the western towers were gone,