An Elegant Solution(129)

This quiet place was just then undisturbed and empty.

I thought that I hadn’t been recognized and there was a chance that I could throw off the black robe and pretend to join the chase. Yet before I could, the Watch was after me. But I knew a way.

From the Cloister a path led, by a small alley behind the church, to the Augustine Street, close by the River. If the Watch had been quick, they’d have blocked it, but I was quicker. Only by a few steps, though, and they were just behind me.

Everyone was behind me. Beside the Watch, there was now a mob of men and boys out for the adventure of the chase. So far I was ahead of their shouts and the road ahead was clear.

The Augustine Street narrowed to become the Rhine Leap, the road passing the University and coming to the Bridge. As it did, the Martin Street turned left from it, away from the River, up toward Saint Martin’s Church. I took the turn.

I’d been on this street only an hour earlier, wandering between my lecture and Daniel’s. I remembered fenced, hidden gardens.

The road turned again in just a few steps and I was out of sight of the pursuit. This was a very narrow street with tall, quiet houses and a few thin gates into private yards. I pushed a gate open and closed it, and I was hidden in a small, empty courtyard. Immediately the street outside was filled and noisy, but I had an instant to think.

There was a crack between planks in the fence. I looked out and saw a Watch with a sword and a pistol, and two tradesmen with clubs, pass the entrance. It seemed that now would be the time to throw off the robe and become myself. The gate would surely open very soon. I looked away from it to see where I might hide or escape through.

There facing me, five feet away or less, was a man. He was in black as I was, but his was terribly black: a cloak, boots, a mask.

I often see invisible things.

All of his body that was not covered was his two hands holding an axe, and his eyes. He lifted his axe and he stepped toward me.

He had been waiting there for me. He moved quickly, the blade raised higher.

Some hands had torn my hat from Little Johann; and some hands had guided my hat into the stones of the arch to weaken them; and some hands had flung my hat back at me from the ruin of Lithicus’s death; some invisible hands whose malice was concentrated against me; and now I saw them.

Before I could move he let the axe fall.

The invisible was still real. More real than the visible.

The axe would have cloven me except an angel stayed his arm. The white and gold hand grasped the black wrist. I had seen that angel in the Barefoot Church, and I knew that hand as well. That hand had brought one paper, and the words on it, from years of dust to my dresser-top.

The black arm was very strong and broke the angel’s grip that had only held for seconds. Yet that was enough. I threw myself out of the axe’s arc.

The angel was tall as the assassin, which was very tall, and strong as, which was very, very strong.

I broke back out the gate into the street. And then I ran but I felt flame behind me, just as fast. And the street was empty. I didn’t know what angel was still with me but I knew my nemesis was on my heels.

“He’s here, thief!” I shouted. “He’s here!”

And like a match struck and thrown into straw, the street filled as the men returned from where they’d run past me. They were quick behind me, but they were all. No one else was with them.

So the chase was on again and I ran.

I could only think of one direction to run, to leave Basel. And all the gates would be warned that the chase was on. Or only in Large Basel. The word may not have yet been sent to Small Basel. So I ran toward the bridge.

Around a corner, and the bridge was before me. The Bridge Gate guarded Large Basel against attacks from across the bridge, but also the bridge itself against escapees from Large Basel. I’d have to get through it. Strange as it was, though, no Watch stopped me as I sprinted through the gate. I was out on the bridge.

The wood planks bounced under my slamming feet. I dodged a cart and a few walkers. Shouts from behind me told the people on the bridge to hold me, but I was too fast. I saw the far end: and the Watch there had already seen me. They were pulling their barricade closed, and two came onto the bridge toward me.

Then I saw why I’d been let through the gate so easily. That barricade was also closing. I was trapped.

I’d reached the Yoke Chapel and stopped. I was caught between the two ends. Watch from both were approaching.

I stood and the moment stood, also, still. I was the center, the zero of numbers, and the bridge like stopped time on either side from beginning to end. But the Watch and the distance to them were finite and their advance like time compressed from future and past to now, like numbers descending toward their origin.