John Banville - Doctor Copernicus

And yet, paradoxically, he was happy, if that was the word. Despite the pain and the repeated disappointments, despite the emptiness of his grey life, there was not happiness anywhere in the world to compare with his rapturous grief.

But there was more to his post at Heilsberg than tending to the Bishop’s boils and bowels and fallen arches: there was politics also. At sixty, and despite his numerous ailments, Bishop Lucas was more vigorous far than the nephew nearly half his age. A hard cold prince, a major man, he devoted the main part of his prodigious energies to the task of extricating Ermland from the monstrous web of European political intrigue. The Canon was not long at the castle before he discovered that, along with physician, secretary and general factotum, he was to be his uncle’s co-conspirator as well. He was appalled. Politics baffled him. The ceaseless warring of states and princes seemed to him insane. He wanted no part in that raucous public world, and yet, aghast, like one falling, he watched himself being drawn into the arena.

He began to be noticed, at Prussian Diets, or on the autumn circuit of the Ermland cities, hanging back at the Bishop’s side. He cultivated anonymity, yet his pale unsmiling face and drab black cloak, his silence, his very diffidence, served only to surround him with an aura of significance. Toadies and leeches sought him out, hung on his heels, waylaid him in corridors, grinning their grins, baring their sharp little teeth, imagining that they had in him a sure channel to the Bishop’s favour. He took the petitions that they thrust at him on screwed-up bits of paper, and bent his ear intently to their whisperings, feeling a fool and a fraud. He could do nothing, he assured them, in a voice that even to him sounded entirely false, and realised with a sinking heart that he was making enemies across half of Europe. Pressures from all sides were brought to bear on him. His brother-in-law Bartholemew Gertner, that fervent patriot, stopped speaking to him after the Canon one day during his stay at Torun had refused to declare himself, by inclination if not strictly by birth, a true German. Suddenly he was being called upon to question his very nationality! and he discovered that he did not know what it was. Bishop Lucas, however, resolved that difficulty straightway. “You are not German, nephew, no, nor are you a Pole, nor even a Prussian. You are an Ermlander, simple. Remember it.”

And so, meekly, he became what he was told to be. But it was only one more mask. Behind it he was that which no name nor nation could claim. He was Doctor Copernicus.

*

Bishop Lucas knew nothing of that separate existence — or if he did, for there was little that went on at the castle without his knowledge, he chose to ignore it. He had lofty plans for his nephew. These he never spoke of openly, however, believing seemingly that they were best left to become apparent of themselves in the fullness of time, of which there was ample, he knew, for he had yet to be convinced that one day he would, like lesser men, be compelled to die. He was torn between his innate obsession with secrecy on one hand, and on the other the paramount necessity of dinning into the Canon’s wilfully dull-witted skull, by main force if that would do it, the niceties of political intrigue. Diplomacy and public government were all right, any fool could conduct himself with skill and even elegance there, but the scheming and conniving by which the world was really run, these were a different matter, requiring intensive and expert coaching. But the trouble was that he did not entirely trust his nephew. The Canon sometimes had a look, hard to identify, but worrying. It was not simple stupidity, surely, that made his jaw hang thus, that misted over his rather ratty eyes with that peculiar greyish film?

“—Your head is in the clouds, nephew. Come back to earth!” The Canon started, hastily covering up the papers he had been working on, and peered over his shoulder with a wan apprehensive smile. Bishop Lucas looked at him balefully. I’ll tell the dolt nothing; let him flounder! “I said: there is a guest expected. Are you going deaf?”

“No, my lord, I heard you well enough. I shall be down presently. I have some. . some letters to finish.”

The Bishop had turned to go, but now he came back, glowering menacingly. A born bully, he was well aware that his power over others depended on his determination to let pass no challenge, however fainthearted. “Letters? What letters?” He was decked out all in purple, with purple gloves, and carried the mitre and staff tucked negligently under a fat arm. He was at once alarming and faintly comic. The Canon wondered uneasily why he had found it necessary personally to climb to this high room atop a windy tower merely to summon his nephew to dinner: it must be an important guest indeed. “ Now , man — come!”

They hurried down dark stairways and rank damp passages. A storm was bellowing about the castle like a demented bull. The great entrance doors stood wide open, and in the porch a muffled faceless crowd of clerics and petty officials huddled by flickering torchlight, muttering. The night outside was a huge black spinning cylinder of wind and rain. Faintly between gusts there came the noise of riders approaching and the shrill blast of a trumpet. A ripple of excitement passed through the porch. Hoofbeats clattered across the courtyard, and suddenly dark mounted figures loomed up in the swirling darkness. Then there were many voices at once, and one that rang above all others, saying:

“Sennets and tuckets, by Christ! — and look here, a damned army awaiting us.”

The Canon heard his uncle beside him moan faintly in anger and dismay, and then they were both confronted abruptly by a stone-grey face with staring eyes and a beard streaming rain.

“Well Bishop, now that you have announced our coming to every German spy in Prussia, I suppose we can leave off this blasted disguise, eh?”

“Your majesty, forgive me, I thought—”

“Yes yes yes, enough.”

There was a scuffling in the porch, and the Canon glanced behind him to see the welcoming party with difficulty sinking to its knees in homage. Some few fell over in the crush, clutching wildly, amid stifled hilarity. Bishop Lucas juggled with the mitre and staff and proffered awkwardly the episcopal ring to be kissed. His Majesty looked at it. The Bishop whirled on his nephew and snarled:

“Bend your knee, churl, before the King of Poland!”

*

In the Hall of Knights above the nine great tables a thousand candles burned. First came hounds and torch-bearers and gaudy minstrels, and then the Bishop with his royal guest, followed by the Polish nobles, those hard-eyed horsemen, and at last the common household herd, pushing and squabbling and yelping for its dinner. A sort of silence fell as grace was offered. At the amen the Bishop sketched a hasty blessing on the air and ascended the dais to the mensa princeps , where he seated himself with the King on his right hand and the Canon on his left, and with heavy jowls sunk on his breast cast a cold eye upon the antics of the throng. He was still brooding on his humiliation in the porch. Jugglers and mountebanks pranced and leaped, spurred on by the shrieks of Toad the jester, a malignant stunted creature with a crazed fixed grin. Sandalled servants darted to and fro with fingerbowls and towels, and serving maids carried platters of smoking viands from the fire, where an uproar of cooks was toiling. A ragged cheer went up: one of the tumblers had fallen, and was being dragged away, writhing. Toad made a droll joke out of the fellow’s misfortune. Then an ancient rhymester with a white beard tottered forth and launched into an epic in praise of Ermland. He was pelted with crusts of bread. Come, Toad, a song!