An Elegant Solution(114)

I was weary as I approached my Master’s house. But that was no excuse. I had work to do.

Mistress Dorothea’s most amazing quality of her speech, even more than its quantity, was that she never spoke ill of anyone. She spoke truth, which was a close neighbor, but never spite. And there was wisdom in what she said, if a listener was willing to pick through the wide field for the single blade among the grass.

Her words were spilling out the kitchen door when I reached it. She was discoursing to her girl about the morning’s eggs and the dry weather and cabbages in the market and her cousin’s gout. It took effort to open the door against the stream. But when she saw me she paused a long pause. And then she just said, “You’ll still do kitchen work, Leonhard?”

“I will,” I said. “And I hope to always.” It wasn’t only kitchen work, though, that I had to do.

“I’ve no allowance to spare for a man who’s a Chair,” she answered. “There’s one already in this house.” But she said it graciously.

“I want no allowance, and I’m not yet a Chair. It’s twice as like as not that I’ll still be a poor student a week from now.”

She approved. “You’re a credit to your father and mother, and to your grandmother.” And that was more praise than I deserved.

I set to work as hard as I could and kept my jaw as firm as I could against yawning. And when I finished, as I’d known he would be, Little Johann was waiting.

“You’re near to be a Chair,” he said.

“Near’s not in,” I said. “And I’d rather Daniel had it. I have a question.”

He knew, and he nodded. “Come and I’ll show you,” he said. But reluctantly.



He led me out the back door, which seemed strange; but then he went immediately to the cellar door, and I understood. The top of this door was set against the back of the house, and its base, though angled up and out, was still beneath the level of the ground. Two steps led down to it. It was kept locked, and the key was in on Mistress Dorothea’s key ring, but Little Johann had already asked for it and had it in his hand. So, like mice, down we went into the foundation of the house.

It was dark and cool and moist, which was its purpose. We took no candle, as the morning light came plenty in the door. It wasn’t a large room, only the space beneath the kitchen. I’d been there many times. There were old tools and kitchen ware, useless enough that they wouldn’t be missed, but useful enough to not yet discard. Some meat was kept, though not much. Mostly the room was piled with root vegetables in wood bins. And even in the dark, I could see what Little Johann had to show me: one of the bins had been pulled out and pushed back in place. The tracks in the earth floor were obvious.

“I’ll pull it out,” I said. Little Johann said nothing.

I moved the bin forward. It wasn’t heavy. Behind it was the foundation wall. It was easy enough to find that one large stone was loose, and was only a thin flagstone fit in place. It would have been hard to find if I hadn’t been led to it.

“Have you ever looked in it?” I asked. He shook his head, no.

I lifted the stone away and behind it was a niche, about sixteen inches high and deep, by twenty-four wide. I put the stone back in place. It was shaped perfectly and showed no sign of the space behind it.

It was skilled stonemasonry that had made that hiding place.



Back in the kitchen, just us two, Little Johann was still anxious.

“Are you bothered that you’ve shown a secret?” I asked, and he nodded. “I’m sorry. But I think I know what was in that place. I’ll never tell anyone what I’ve seen, ever.”



I was still weary but there was no use to sleep. The mountain on my desk was not nearly climbed.

What I’d read, hundreds of pages and scores of letters, had all been of Mathematics. Most I knew. Most I recognized, and of most I knew how they had travelled from those pages to others’ book and articles. A few pages were new, though not profound.

Before I started again, I tried a different sieve. On a page of my own, I began a catalog of my own Master’s writing that was not just a reflection of his brother’s. It was a long list. Master Johann’s discoveries were at least as great and numerous as Master Jacob’s. Oh, what would their sum have been if they had partnered, not just in Johann’s early years, but on, into his tenure in Holland! Yet they’d been enemies by then. And if Jacob had lived longer; if he’d still held the Chair of Mathematics while Johann had been Greek. That would have taken a humble man, but the two together in Basel, cooperating, sharpening, consorting . . .