She was in the front parlor with the curtains open. I sat beside her. She took my hand and held it, which she had never done.
“Daniel is going to Russia,” I said. “Nicolaus with him.”
I saw what she was watching, a rainbow.
“When will you go, Leonhard?”
“Next year.” The sunlight diffracted through the rain was bright as jewels. “I believe I’m finished with Basel.”
“What you did was very dangerous.”
“When I read Master Jacob’s papers,” I said, “I knew what had to be done. On his last day he repented of his disputes and his break with his brother. His last wisdom was that malice and dispute and betrayal were the greatest danger to a family, and by that to everything else. And he proposed a solution.”
“A Mathematic solution?”
“It is. A law of creation. That evil is defeated through sacrifice.”
“And all of this,” she said, of the storm, and of all the past, “was the defeat.”
“It was slow, and terrible, and grievous,” I said. “But the end is sure. It’s the greatest law of any.”