call me a coward shall taste my new boldness. I will show the world that I have the heart of a lion, like my father. Aye, though he be ashamed of me today, I will make him proud. I shall be king one day, no matter else. I shall be king, do you hear?”
He looked down at me and moved the rapier’s tip from beneath my chin to a point a few inches from my left eye. Bitter cold as it was, I broke into a sweat. Christian’s voice had grown calm and quiet, yet he stood on my chest and waved his sword in my face. He had ordered two harmless men put to death, and his mood was stranger now than it had been yesterday. I have ever feared my own death, and I felt it close at hand there on the beach. There was a smear of wet gray sand across the toe of Christian’s boot, and a glint of ice in his beard, where a single drop of water had frozen.
“My lord, I beg of you, leave off.”
“Is there not many a man who has disappointed his father, but has lost all chance to redeem himself before that goodly sire? Oh, I pity you, Soren.”
“My lord, I beg you.”
“I at least do not kneel before my father’s enemy.”
“My father had no enemies,” I said. My skin was everywhere slick with sweat. Bernardo’s dagger was slowly tearing a hole in my blouse, along my left side. “My father was no king. My father was a backward man, a villager, a laborer with some skill, that is all.”
“You are better than your father?”
“I am,” I cried. My voice was high, shrill and womanish. “And I served a better man than he.”
Christian pushed hard on my chest with the heel of his boot.
“Brahe was no hero.”
“Aye, he was. A hero to the ages, to the future.”
“Brahe loved his dwarf and his pet elk more than he loved any of his assistants.”
“That is not true. Tycho brought me here to Uraniborg.”
“At the king’s bidding.”
“Nay, my lord. I entreated Tycho by letters for a year, since I first learned that you would go away to school in Saxony. My list of academic accomplishments and my ideas did buy my admittance to Tycho’s employ.”
Christian sighed and moved the tip of his rapier away from my face. He spoke slowly, in the singsong rhythm one uses with dogs and children.
“My father has ever been fond of you. You tutored me well, but when I left to Wittenberg, you no longer had a pupil or employment. I put a word in the king’s ear that the stars did fascinate you, and he then shipped you here to Brahe, who had protested against it. He gave in to my father’s command, being short of hands at the time. But it was my father’s favor, not your epistles to Brahe, that delivered you to Uraniborg.”
“This is not true. No, this is not true, my lord. It cannot be true.”
Christian took his foot from my chest and stepped back. I sat up and felt a flood of protestations in my chest, all demanding to be spoken. But I said nothing more. I looked away from the prince, at my hands.
“We must be as heroes,” Christian said. “No matter what say any. I shall return to my father’s fortress and rise above my shame. I shall be heroic. My father is a hero, and worthy of respect. Your father too, Soren, was worthy of respect. He died on a mission to repair Brahe’s mistake, there in the mill. Brahe failed the king and was exiled for it. Brahe failed himself and your own father died for it. And finally, Brahe did fail you. He abandoned you and all his other assistants when he left this island. Is it true that he did not pay your final wages before he ran to Prague?”
“Aye.”
“There you have him, in a nutshell. He would have you think him the noblest king of infinite space, while he buys new traveling clothes with the money he owes you.”
I had forgotten that Tycho was yet in my debt. I wondered if he had purchased butter and milk on credit.
“Your father was a good man,” Christian said. “You’d do well to visit his grave and pray for his forgiveness. It would be heroic.”
I nodded. Christian sheathed his sword and gave me his hands, pulling me to my feet. He brushed the snow from my back and