“My lord, you have put Cornelius and Voltemont to death? Why would you do this?”
“They are spies, of course.”
“My lord, they are not spies. They are lazy in mind and body, but they are harmless men. You cannot do this.”
Christian’s eyes opened wide and he bared his teeth.
“I am no longer a school boy,” he said. “I am no longer your ignorant pupil. My actions are not yours to judge. I am a ruler now, a warrior, prince of the realm.”
A prince? A warrior? Indeed I knew better than that.
“My lord, this seems madness.”
“Ah, but you do not know all.” He closed on me and snatched at my sleeve with his fingers. “You do not know all. Some things do I now know. I have had dreams.”
“Dreams?”
“Do not ask me, Soren. I forbid it. Voltemont and Cornelius go to it. There is naught you can do, nor should you. Only one of us is crown prince of Denmark, and that one of us is myself. Do you have me?”
“I do.” I took a breath to steady myself. “Have you lost all your wits, my lord?”
“Another jest, Soren? I am not amused. Your jibes grow stale; they tire me. Yes, I am sick with exhaustion. Leave me to sleep. You may stay in the kitchens below.”
He pushed me roughly into the hall. I turned to face him, my mouth open to make some kind of protest. Christian heaved himself at the door and shut it against me with a violence that shook the floor beneath my feet.
Was this shame? Had the prince ordered Cornelius and Voltemont murdered because they had witnessed him hiding on the island and could speak of the outward showings of his cowardice?
I did not much like my hypothesis. Surely Christian guessed what Bernardo had told me, no matter that I denied it. If such indifferent men as Cornelius and Voltemont could be so easily disposed of, my life was no safer than theirs. When he was a boy, the prince trusted me. I believed his heart had still called me a friend before his sudden appearance on Hven, but what was I to him now? A danger? An embarrassment to be silenced?
I went downstairs. The kitchen was growing dark as evening came rapidly on. I tried to start a fire in the oven. Voltemont could build a fire within fifteen minutes of setting to it, but I labored with my flint and steel an hour with nothing to show but cut fingers and mighty frustration. I knelt by the cold oven in the half dark, exhaling heavily and watching clouds of breath dissolve before me.
The air seemed full of ghosts. As the last dregs of sunlight drained away, a wind rose up from the north and blew through the broken castle, rattling sheaves of loose plaster and howling down cracks in the brick walls. Sometimes it sounded like a chorus of voices calling my name. I was hungry, unhappy, and cold. I wrapped myself in my cloak and took shelter under a wooden bench against a wall. I chewed on a bit of stale bread, drank some of the wine Cornelius had brought from Kronberg, and wondered if the prince would murder me in my sleep.
It had been a strange day. My argument with Father Maltar came to mind, putting me into a worse mood. I had been subject to the most outrageous falsehoods regarding my old master since I arrived on Hven. Were all the islanders blind, that they could not see the majesty of the house Tycho had built? Could they not see the perfect form and beauty of the armillaries, quadrants, and sextants Tycho had put into his clever observatory? Once there was a celestial globe, five feet across and skinned with brass, on a gilt stand in the main hall of Uraniborg. With his own hand, my master had marked the globe with the thousand stars of both hemispheres. Only one or two other men could hope to match Tycho and chart the sky in such a manner. Yet these peasants dared call Tycho a monster and a heretic. What are a few slates missing from an old church roof when there stands above us all the whole roof of Heaven, its mysteries to be deciphered and writ down? A great man walked among these farmers and fishers, and they despised and resented him, but they did not ever know him.
Men petition princes and popes to beseech two minutes in which to beg