The Astronomer

by Lawrence Goldstone

  Ah, his, sweet, beloved, hopelessly naïve sister. He did adore her. It was unfair to Marguerite to make her a pawn in this game, but, after all, what were women for? She had even entered into not one but two marriages to help her brother, the king, consolidate power. If he ultimately allowed both religions to coexist, she would be happy; if he chose one over the other, he would find a way to make it up to her.

  Yes, let them play off one another, each offering more and more in turn, bidding up the price for the favor of the king. He could—and would— swing this way and that, relying on his reputation as a capricious child to render his vacillation convincing. François laughed softly to himself, realizing that the crowds would think he was pleased with them. But François was laughing at the irony—not ten men in Europe would have thought the French king a master of diplomacy. He might be able to play this game indefinitely.

  François’ attention was suddenly drawn away from royal virtue to the other of his great interests. She was just ahead to his right, small and olive skinned, with large eyes. Quite lovely. Virginal almost. Well, perhaps not completely virginal, as she was standing with a man who seemed to be her husband. The king gave the young wench his most alluring gaze.

  What? Was she looking back? Usually, the women he ogled on the route dropped their gaze out of modesty or intimidation. Looking the king in the eye was, after all, technically a crime. But this one met his eyes straight on. There was nothing sexual in her response. Or was there? Her look was even, without fear. Unafraid of the king? François felt a response in his loins.

  Then François noticed the husband noticing the king’s attention. Oh, he was trying not to let on that he noticed, trying not to let his anger show. But François was far too experienced with men whose women were about to share his bed not to know the look. This one was a tradesman, some sort of laborer perhaps. It would be an easy matter to have the soldiers slit his throat and deliver the girl to him in Amboise. Yes. The thought gained appeal. Let her try to stare him down in the royal bedchamber, stripped of her rags and thrown across his bed.

  François was about to signal to the captain of the guard, but then stopped. He felt himself sigh. Perhaps not. The king was feeling generous today. What’s more, the scene after his last dalliance three days ago had been particularly energetic. He had barely had time to move his head out of the way of the flying vase.

  Ah, well. Let the laborer have her. She would be quite something for a tradesman to satisfy. François rode on. In ten years she would be a hag anyway.

  Chance. Accident of birth. One man capricious, juvenile, yet omnipotent on Earth; another pious, questing, and an outcast. What had the magisters to say about that? About blind fortune? Where was luck covered in Scripture? Only in admonitions to bear any injustice, to accept that bad luck was not luck at all but part of God’s plan. Like Job. Yet whom did that interpretation serve? Only the powerful. The powerful did not need to question luck, only revel in it.

  Amaury had stood at the front of the crowd and watched as the king approached. He had never seen François before, although images of the king graced coins, buildings, and churches all over Paris. The king was as large as his legend, more than six feet high, and thick of chest. Although he was now past forty, François had not in the least gone to fat. The beard for which he was famous was flecked with gray, but his small, darting eyes, the set of his large jaw, and even the protracted, Valois nose exuded the energy of youth. He was Broussard expanded by an order of magnitude.

  The first line of foot soldiers passed and François had almost come even to where he and Vivienne stood. He and his putative wife were cheering and waving with the rest as the king surveyed his subjects, basking in affection he did not seem to know was coerced. Amaury noticed when the king’s gaze settled on Vivienne. He kept cheering but felt a rush of anger and possessiveness, as if Vivienne really was his wife. The king kept his eyes on her, his brow slightly furrowed, as if trying to decide something. Finally, François seemed to smile to himself and his gaze left Vivienne, which infuriated Amaury all the more.

  Amaury wanted to grab her by the wrist, turn, and force his way back through the crowd. But that, he knew, was not possible until the remainder of the procession had passed. And there would be two miles of it.

  Once François had moved on, the soldiers lining the route relaxed. The cheering also stopped and, in turn, participants in the procession felt neither the need nor the inclination to glance toward the crowd. Members of the retinue would pass in order of protocol: first the king’s guard, then barons, then minor nobles, then churchmen—all Catholic, of course—and finally, bourgeoisie who served the royal household. Trailing the luminaries were foot soldiers and an immense train of wagons and carts.

  As the endless parade trudged along, Amaury peered at the sky, trying to estimate how much of the day would remain when he and Vivienne could finally leave. He had become almost totally distracted until, glimpsing the churchmen, he noticed a familiar face. Amaury was noticed as well.

  Ory held his glance for only a second, but Amaury knew, even in that brief time, that the Inquisitor wanted something. He either had information to transmit or a question to ask. But how could Ory have known Amaury would be here? He had sent no reports to the Inquisitor.

  Amaury turned to Vivienne to discern if the eye contact had been noticed. She was looking at him, her face placid. She seemed oblivious to the exchange. “How much longer do we have to remain?” she asked.

  “When the wagons appear, we can probably slip away,” he replied.

  Eventually, the wagons approached. Amaury glanced about at the soldiers guarding the route. They seemed to have begun to drift away as well. Amaury decided they could now safely make their escape. But, just he turned to lead Vivienne through the crowd, he bumped into a soldier.

  Amaury began to blurt out an excuse for their early departure, a claim that his wife was ill, but the soldier tottered into him before he could speak. The man was drunk.

  “Pardon, monsieur,” he muttered, grasping Amaury by the arms for support. Trying to right himself, his hands slipped down.

  But the soldier was not drunk. As his hand reached Amaury’s side, he quickly passed a fragment of paper. When Amaury had secured it in his hand, the soldier, still tottering, plunged on through the crowd.

  The message was from Ory—that was certain. And, judging from the size of the paper in his hand, it was also brief. He must read it quickly and Vivienne could not know. Once they had passed through the crowd, there would be scant opportunity to be unobserved.

  Vivienne was behind him, so Amaury chanced unfolding the note and, placing his hand in front of him, shielded by his body, he looked down.

  The message was indeed brief. On the paper was simply the notation “1:1.” Amaury quickly crumpled it and let it fall at his feet to be trod over by the spectators. When he and Vivienne emerged from the throng, they walked quickly to retrieve their wagon and leave Tours.

  Ory’s message may have been brief, but it was hardly cryptic. The Inquisitor was telling him that the object of whatever conspiracy the radical Lutherans were hatching had been narrowed down from the book of Genesis to its first passage, 1:1, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”

  How, Amaury wondered, astounded, could anyone disprove that?

  XVI

  AMAURY AND VIVIENNE did not clear the city walls until midafternoon. No possibility of reaching their appointed destination in Poitiers.

  They traveled south, moving deeper into spring. Even just five days from Paris, a caressing warmth was in the air that had been absent from the capital. Rabbits scurried across the road and deer stood vigil in the fields as they passed. Amaury and Vivienne came upon a number of hamlets early in the journey, but they agreed it foolish to stop so soon after they had begun. As the sun plunged to the horizon, however, they found themselves journeying through an unbroken series of open fields, with only an occasional farmhouse dotting the landscape. They consid
ered asking for shelter at one of them, but the risk of exposure, small though it might have been, made the notion untenable.

  Wooded areas were a likely refuge for highwaymen. They decided to sleep in the open, perhaps behind a hillock or haystack. Eventually, Vivienne noticed a small barn, away from the road. Amaury guided the horse to the entrance, two unfastened swinging doors.

  A storage area for tools lined one wall, and two stalls were along the other. The back wall contained bridles and a plow. A ladder at the rear led to a hayloft. The area in the center was insufficient for the horse and wagon, so Amaury, after situating the wagon on the far side of the shed from the road, released the beast from his bindings and led him inside. There was ample hay and a bucket filled with water for an evening meal.

  Vivienne removed some bread, cheese, and wine from the back of the wagon, and she and Amaury sat on the grass. Color drained from the landscape. Vivienne took on a ghostly hue.

  Neither spoke, but rather allowed night to come upon them in silence, the ever-brightening stars forming a heavenly canopy over their heads. This was what God had created in the beginning. No one would ever dissuade Amaury of that.

  “Can you teach me now?” Vivienne asked suddenly.

  “What?”

  “About the heavens. You promised you would.”

  “Oh, yes. Of course.” He looked up at the sky. How to describe Ptolemy’s Celestial Pearl to a farm girl who could not read?

  “The heavens are wondrous, Vivienne. All the stars you see before you . . . a long time ago a Greek named Aristotle said they were fixed in the heavens. We know now that not only do they move, but that they move in regular patterns as they circle the Earth. We know because a man named Ptolemy, an Egyptian who lived two centuries after the birth of Our Lord Jesus Christ, ventured out, night after night, year after year, to observe the stars and measure where they were in the sky. The movements were so tiny from night to night that he was forced to invent a special instrument to measure the changes. That instrument—it is called a triquetrum—is still in use today. I have used one often.”

  “How does it work?” Vivienne had sat up, arms pulled around her knees. She was listening to every word with wide, unblinking eyes.

  “It’s very simple. And very ingenious. Ptolemy took three lengths of wood. He placed one end of the shortest piece on a support, standing straight up. The other two, he attached to the standing piece, one at the top, the other at the bottom. The two longer pieces moved and could cross. Do you understand?”

  “I think so. So the two attached pieces made a triangle?”

  “Yes. Exactly. By sighting along the top piece to a star and measuring the angles, Ptolemy could use something called geometry to decipher exactly where it was. Each night that measurement changed, and, over time, he deduced how the stars moved in the sky.”

  Vivienne was agog. “And he did this for every star?”

  “Almost. Quite a task. Others have come along and refined some of the measurements, but no one has shaken the basic theory. Ptolemy described the entire universe, multiple spheres that circle the Earth. The stars are only one of the spheres. He called the whole construction a Celestial Pearl.”

  “Celestial Pearl. What a wonderful name.” Still holding her knees, Vivienne rocked back and forth on the ground, never taking her eyes from the sky. “Thank you so much, Amaury. You’re a wonderful teacher.”

  “Nonsense. It is you who are the wonderful student.”

  She shook her head, but her pleasure at hearing the words was palpable.

  “How did you meet Giles?” he asked.

  She turned to look off into the distance. “The way I met you. At a meeting. About six months ago. He arrived with Monsieur Routbourg.”

  “Did you know Routbourg well?”

  “I saw him infrequently. Usually with Monsieur Hoess. But Giles didn’t like him. He didn’t like Monsieur Hoess either. He called them . . . unctuous. But he seemed to cultivate their society. I was never certain why.”

  “Did he feel the same way about Geoffrey Broussard?”

  “Oh, no. He liked Geoffrey a great deal. He told me once that he could not understand why Geoffrey would associate with such men. ‘He will come to no good end because of it,’ he told me.”

  A thought struck Amaury. “Vivienne, did you ever talk like this with Giles? About the heavens?”

  “Only about how much he loved looking at the stars and how we could never understand ourselves unless we understood the glories around us.”

  “And the diagram you showed me . . . he never discussed it with you? Told you what it meant?”

  She shook her head. “No. Will you tell me? Does it have something to do with the Celestial Pearl?”

  “Yes. It explains the eccentric orbits of some of the bodies in the heavens.”

  She shifted closer to him. “I don’t understand. Please tell me.”

  “Some stars and planets appear on occasion to be moving backward in the sky. It’s called retrograde motion. It’s an illusion, of course. Planets don’t move backward. Ptolemy figured out the explanation. They’re called epicycles.” Amaury leaned forward and traced a large circle on the ground. “Imagine this is an orbit . . . ”

  “The way a planet moves around the Earth?”

  “Yes. Exactly. Except the planet is not directly on the orbit.” He traced a smaller circle on the circumference of the large one. “The planet’s orbit is the small circle, riding on the large one. So you see, some of the time the planet will appear to us to be moving backward when it is merely following its orbit. That’s an epicycle.”

  “I think I understand.” The exultation in her voice made Amaury grin widely. “Is that what Giles’ diagram showed?”

  “Not exactly. Giles’ diagram was similar to the way Ptolemy described epicycles, but Giles had added a second layer of data. I can’t decide why.” “What is ‘a layer of data’?”

  “Another piece of information. I’ll explain it to you next time. I promise. But Giles said nothing about Genesis?”

  “Genesis? No, nothing at all.” She paused. “You loved Giles, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. One does not often meet another who is a reflection of one’s soul. Giles reflected mine.”

  Amaury thought back to all those days, drowning at Montaigu, when he had been sustained by knowing that at least one other person in that place believed as he did, had passion for learning that wasn’t shoveled down one’s gullet, the way one would feed a goose.

  “I was at Montaigu to try to claim a birthright,” he continued, looking up at the stars, partly in memory, partly in tribute. “Giles was there to create one. His father is a tanner, you know. Tanners have been pariahs for centuries. The odor of rotting animal flesh and the human wastes used to loosen the hair on the hides is so powerful that, by royal decree, they are required to live outside the city walls.

  “Giles was the oldest of six. Ordinarily, he would have been compelled to follow his father into the profession. But when he was but five, he came to the attention of a local priest who was stunned by his intellect. The priest took him in, allowed him to live in the rectory, and tutored him until Giles was old enough to be sent to university. He did brilliantly, of course, particularly in science. When he was offered a place at Mont aigu, a chance to become a theology doctor, how could he say no? But he never lost his love of science. As I never lost mine. He was nine years my junior, but we found each other instantly. He was my oasis as, I hope, I was his.”

  “You were, Amaury. He told me so.”

  “Really? I’m so pleased to know it was true . . . although I suppose it doesn’t really matter anymore.”

  “Of course it does.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I want to tell you something.”

  “What?”

  “I wasn’t telling the truth when I told you why I became a prostitute. I was forced to choose this path because I was rendered unfit for any other by my uncle. When I was twelve, I stayed with him because my fathe
r had no room for me. He began to visit my bedroom. Forced himself on me. I can still feel his hand pressing on my mouth and the filthy smell of him. When my father learned of his brother’s perfidy, he was furious. But his fury was with me, not his brother. No man would marry me, soiled as I then was, so he accepted money from others to allow me to be used similarly. After two years of horror, I escaped. Eventually, I found my way to Madame Chouchou. She is a kind and decent woman also forced by circumstance into a life of sin. I hope you can understand why I would risk even death to be free of such a miserable existence.”

  They sat for some moments. A chill had begun to settle in the air.

  “We should take shelter now,” Amaury said.

  They slipped into the barn, trod softly past their sleeping horse, and made their way up the ladder to the loft. They each cleared a spot in the hay. They lay still for some moments. Even the horse was completely silent in the stall below. Finally, an owl hooted in the distance.

  “Good night, Amaury,” Vivienne said softly.

  “Good night, Vivienne.”

  XVII

  AMAURY’S EYES OPENED. He could not place where he was. Only that he could not breathe. A hand. A hand was over his mouth and nose. He began to struggle, when he realized it was her. Vivienne. Of course. The barn.

  His senses began to focus. When he ceased to squirm, she bent and placed her mouth near his ear. He felt her warm breath against him.

  “I hear noise outside,” she whispered.

  Amaury was still not fully awake. “Animals?” he whispered in return.

  “No. Men.”

  “How many? Can you tell?”

  “Two, I think. They’ve only been there for a minute or two. I was awake when I heard them.”