“You’re the same as you’ve always been,” I said. “And you always will be.”
“Constant in my inconstancy. Now, where’s that keeper? I think I want my horse.”
“I’ll bring your horse.” Daniel started at the deep voice, nearly at his elbow. He hadn’t seen Gustavus in the shadows, but I’d seen him. Him, and more.
“He was nervy this morning. He nearly ran down poor Leonhard.”
“He’s been rested now,” Gustavus said.
“I’ll wait in the Square,” Daniel said. He wanted out of the dark. But I stayed in the room. The fire was drowsy but watchful, and the hundreds of eyes looking out from the shelves all seemed satisfied.
“Do you see?” I asked.
Caiaphas came out of the shadows where he’d been with Gustavus.
“I heard you,” he said.
“He won’t stay. He’s not here for the Chair or for Basel. He’s only wanting to tweak his father. Once he has the Chair he’ll leave it for something else. He’s already resigned his Chair in Padua.”
He studied me. “And you would stay?”
“This is my home. This is all I want.”
“This city is Daniel’s home, also.”
“If he wins the Chair,” I said, “I’ll convince him to leave it. The father and son are already set against each other. I’d know how to drive them so hard apart to break the University in halves.”
“You would ruin your own University?”
“You’ll lose everything you have here. Give me the Chair.”
I was searched. Like a wolf tears a fence to get the rabbits inside, I was torn and opened.
“Then I will give it to you,” he said. “But be careful with your treachery.” He still stared at me. “I think it more likely you’ll be thrown to the river than hold a Chair.”
I went out that night as I’d done four nights before. I waited in the alley behind Master Johann’s kitchen. It was a longer wait but the time came, and the door opened, and Master Johann came out with his candle. This time he didn’t leave it and return to the house. He descended into the cellar and closed its door behind him.
He was there for some ten minutes. I might have heard the box pulled out from the wall and the wall itself opened; or I might only have heard the noises of any night in Basel’s streets. Through slits in the door, the light from the candle moved, then was still, then moved again, back and around, and was held up and lowered.
Then the door was opened and the candle extinguished. He came out through the yard to the gate, and passed through it, just feet from me. He might have felt someone was there; or he might have felt the presences of any night in Basel’s streets.
Then he was silent and gone. His direction was toward the river, away from the Barefoot Square. I stayed.
The night was mainly timeless. Clocks sounded eleven but I had no measure of when he’d passed the gate. I’d left my house before ten.
But finally, in the quieter and quieter dark, I heard him returning, though only when he was already near. He opened and closed the gate, then his own door. Through the window I saw a candle lit in the kitchen and then taken on to the hall.
And then I went home.
A jitter vibrated the streets that Tuesday morning as I left my house toward Master Johann’s. Something unsettled, something jubilant, something uncontrolled was walking with me. Something anticipatory. I reached the back fence and gate at the usual time and found the usual activity inside: Mistress Dorothea pouring words, and her maid barely keeping her head above the tide of them, and still adding her own to the flood. And if one or two of the streams might have been pots or chickens or sheets, the majority was people. Then, given that they only used pronouns, the sentences become like a stew: “They told her mother to wash it himself, but he had his hat on her head and they boiled it, and she wanted them both, but she didn’t want either . . .” she was saying as I opened the door. I would rather have calculated a determinant of seven rows than calculate the meaning of those sentences! But when she saw me, she acknowledged me.
“You’re diligent, Leonhard. Diligent for a young man who might be made a Chair on the morrow.” It should have been a simple compliment or simpler statement. I couldn’t tell if there was some other meaning, perhaps suspicion.
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“Please do all you have time for. You’ve other duties today that are more important.” And that was certainly the first she’d ever said such.
“I’ll finish everything.”
“Thank you.”
Then later, when she was upstairs, Little Johann had more to say. “Daniel has the Russia letter, and you gave it to him.”