John Banville - Doctor Copernicus

The Bishop began pacing again, a bell-like bundle of fear and frustration in his long voluminous purple robe, banging and booming angrily. He halted at the narrow mullioned window and stood staring out with his fists clasped behind him. Hoarfrost was on the glass, and a pale moon like a fat cheesy skull gleamed above a snowbound land.

“I might have him murdered,” he mused. “Can you find me an assassin that we can trust?” He turned, glowering. “Can you?”

Canon Nicolas closed his eyes wearily. “My lord, your letter to King Sigismund—”

“Damn King Sigismund! I have asked you a question.”

“You are not in earnest, surely.”

“Why not? Would he not be better off dead? He is dead already, except that his black heart out of spite persists in beating.”

“Yes,” the Canon murmured, “yes, he is dead already.”

“Just so. Therefore—”

“He is my brother!”

“—Yes, and he is my nephew, my sister’s son, my blood, and I would happily see his throat cut if I knew it could be quietly done.”

“I cannot believe—”

“What? What can you not believe? He is anathema, and I will be rid of him. ”

The Canon frowned. “Then, Bishop, you will be rid of me also.”

His uncle slowly approached and stood over him, peering at him with interest. He seemed gratified, as if he derived a certain grim satisfaction from the thought that the long list of injuries done him by a filthy world were here being neatly rounded off.

“So you will betray me also, will you?” he said briskly. “Well well, so it has come to this. After all I have done for you. Well. And where, pray, will you go?”

“To Frauenburg.”

“Ha! And rot there, among the cathedral mice? You are a fool, nephew.”

But the Canon was hardly listening, engrossed as he was in contemplation of this new unrecognisable self that had suddenly from nowhere risen up, waving fists in defiance and demanding an apocalypse. Yet he was calm, quite, quite calm. It was of course the logical thing to do; yes, he would leave Heilsberg, there was no avoiding that command, it sang in the wires of his blood, a great black chord. He would embrace exile, would give it all up, for Andreas. It would be the final irrefutable proof of his regard for his brother. And there would be no need for words. Yes. Yes. He looked about him, blinking, bemused by the joy and dismay warring in his confused heart. It was all so simple, after all. The Bishop threw up his hands and lumbered off.

“ Fool! ”

*

Andreas laughed. “Fool you are, brother. Think you can escape me by hiding among the holy canons?”

“He is talking of assassination, Andreas.”

“What of it! A dagger in the throat is not the worst thing that can befall me. O go away, you. Your false concern is sickening. You would like nothing better than to see me dead. I know you, brother, I know you.” The Canon said nothing. What there was to say could not be said. No need for words? Ah! He turned to go, but Andreas plucked him slyly by the sleeve. “Our nuncle will be interested to know how you have occupied yourself all these years under his patronage, do you not think?”

“I ask you, say nothing to him of this work of mine. You should not have read my papers. It is all foolery, a pastime merely.”

“O, but you are too modest. I feel it is my duty to acquaint him with these very interesting theories which you have formulated. A heliocentric universe! He will be impressed. Well, what do you say?”

“I cannot prevent you from betraying me. It hardly matters now. Heed me, Andreas, and leave Heilsberg, or he will surely do you grievous injury.”

Andreas grinned, grinding his teeth.

“You do not understand,” he said. “ I want to die! ”

“Nonsense. It is revenge that you want.”

They were startled by that, the Canon no less than Andreas, who stepped back with an offended look.

“What do you know of it?” he muttered sulkily. “Go on, scuttle off to your pious friends at Frauenburg.” But as the Canon went down the stairs the door flew open behind him and Andreas appeared, framed against the candlelight like a dangling black spider, crying: “Yes! Yes! I will be revenged!”

*

Canon Koppernigk set out for Frauenburg by night, a cloaked black figure slumped astride a drooping mare. He was alone. Max had elected to stay and serve Andreas. That was all right. They might try, but they would not take everything from him, no. If the sentry were to accost him now he would announce himself fiercely, would bellow his name and impress it like a seal upon the waxen darkness for all Heilsberg to hear: Doctor Copernicus! But the sentry was asleep.

* * *

Day up there on the Baltic broke in storms of petrified fire. He had never seen such dawns. They were excessive, faintly alarming, not at all to his taste. He had come to detest extremes. The sky here was altogether too vast, too high, and too much given to empty tempestuous displays. It was all surface. He preferred the sea, whose hidden deeps communicated a sense of enormous grey calm. But sometimes the sea too disturbed him, when by a trick of tide or light it rose up in his window, humped, slate-blue, like the back of some waterborne brute, menacing and ineluctable.

He had asked for the tower at the north-west corner of the cathedral wall. The Frauenburg Chapter thought him mad. It was a grim bare place, certainly, but it suited him. There were three whitewashed rooms set squarely one above the other. From the second floor a door led out to a kind of platform atop the wall. This would do for an observatory, affording as it did an open view of the great plain to the south, and north and west across the narrow freshwater lake called the Frisches Haff to the Baltic beyond, and of the stars by night. For furniture he had a couch to sleep on, a table, two chairs, a lectern. That second chair troubled him in its suggestion of the possibility of a guest, but he allowed it stay, knowing that perfection is not of this world. Anyway, the desk far outweighted in garishness any number of chairs. It was his father’s desk from Torun, which he had asked Katharina to let him have, as a keepsake. A big solid affair of oak, with drawers and brass fittings and a top inlaid with worn green leather, it fitted ill in that stark cell, but it was a part of the past, and in time he grew accustomed to it. He felt that to have left the rooms entirely bare would have been preferable, but he was not a fanatic. It was only that he had perceived in this grey stone tower, this least place, an image of his deepest self that furniture, possessions, comforts, only served to blur. He was after the thing itself now, the unadorned, the stony thing.

The Chapter demanded little of him. His fifteen fellow canons considered him a dull dog. They lived in the grand style, with servants and horses and estates outside the walls. His tower to them was a mark of incomprehensible and suspect humility. Yet they treated him with studied deference. He supposed they were afraid of him, of what he represented: he was, after all, the Bishop’s nephew. He had not the interest to reassure them on that score. Anyway, their fright kept them at a welcome distance — the last thing he wanted was companionship. On his arrival at Frauenburg he was immediately, with indecent haste almost, appointed Visitator, a largely honorary title thrust on him in the hope apparently of mollifying for the moment the hunger for advancement that the canons imagined must be gnawing at this stark alarming newcomer. He compelled himself to attend all Chapter meetings, and sat, without ever uttering a word, listening diligently to endless talk of tithes and taxes and Church politics. Easier to bear were the daily services at the cathedral. As a canon without Holy Orders he was called on to be present, but not of course to officiate. Unlike the Chapter sessions, where his mute brooding presence was patently resented, in church his reticence was ideally matched, was absorbed even, by God’s huge stony silence.