I saw there was no arguing with him. I shrugged and pulled my hat down as far as I could, over my ears and all but covering my eyes, affecting indifference.
“Can you see me, Soren?”
“Aye, my lord. You still point a blade at me.”
“Very well.”
Christian lowered the sword and took a few steps past the snow and onto the wet sand of the beach. He drew himself up to his full height and jutted out his chin proudly.
“My son,” he declaimed in an irritating nasal voice much like Bernardo’s. “I am no longer trusted by the bishop, for you have made me a liar. I am no longer respected by my lords, for you have shown me weak as a father. I am laughed at by my neighbors, alone in this house with naught but the resentment and lies you leave with me. Your line here is, ‘I am my own man.’”
“I am my own man.”
“That had conviction, Soren. Well done. Now I continue as before. You return to Elsinore with your precious German degrees, to seek a living. Though you gall my patience and spurn my paternal love, I will take you back into my home until your employment is secured.”
“This is an amusing fantasy, my lord.”
“Ah, but is it not true?” Christian raised his index finger. “Did you not return to Elsinore eight years ago, after having defied and humiliated your father?”
I looked out into the Sound. Merchant ships sailed past us, bound for England, Brittany, the Mediterranean, or returning south to the shores of the Baltic.
“I stayed with my father no more than two months upon my return from Germany. These are not happy memories, my lord. Do you throw your darts at any target?”
“We move to the next scene. Here, I place this poor crown upon my head and play my father. Attend me, sir. Our son the prince requires a tutor in Latin, Greek, history, and mathematics. You have been recommended to us.”
“I recall the interview with your father,” I said. The king, with his advisors and the bishop of Copenhagen, were on one end of the royal office and I was bowed low, my eyes on the magnificent carpet, thirty feet away from them. I mumbled my credentials and strove to keep my sweating palms from touching my clothes and staining them. I had never known such humiliation and fear.
“Do recall that we appointed you to this illustrious post. Do recall that we had letters on your behalf writ by Sir Tristram, by Father Olaf, and most persuasively, one writ by your own father.”
“He wrote no such letter.”
“He did. I have seen it. And so we brought you to our court at Copenhagen. Your successes from that day to this are all part of your father’s glory, Soren.”
“No.”
“And yet when he died here,” Christian pointed behind me with the rapier, to the ruined mill. “When Brahe’s badly wrought factory collapsed, killing your father and four other good men, you did not so much as come to claim his corpse.” “Nay! I was aiding Tycho on the road to Prague. I could not leave him.”
Christian was wrong, about so much, but I felt blood rushing to my head and did not like what thoughts came to me. The prince sought an ally in his cowardice and fear, but I was not the man for it.
“Soren, be even and direct with me.”
“My lord is mistaken. There was no shame in my heart that kept me from my father. Not a drop of my blood feared him.”
“Aha.” Christian leaped at me and I jumped aside, stumbling and falling backward into the tracks we had made earlier. Christian stood over me and put the point of his rapier to the base of my throat.
“So now you fly your true colors, eh?”
“I know not what you mean, my lord. Pray let me rise.” I made to sit, but Christian put his left foot onto my chest, keeping me down on my back in the snow. I felt the cold tip of his rapier against the skin below my chin. Bernardo’s dagger, hidden in my doublet, was half beneath me and dug into my ribs.
“You think my blood swims with cowardice. You think, ‘Why, the prince confesses his fear himself.’ Is that not so?”
“No, my lord.”
“You lie. But it is no matter. This battle showed me afeared, yes, but I shall in future make Death himself tremble before me! Who dares to