An Elegant Solution(25)

He looked at me as if I was quite stupid, and for his purpose I was. “I said to be quick.”

I ran to the main door of the Town Hall. Whoever might be inside would be more help than me. The first I saw was a captain of the Day Watch, one that I knew. “Simeon!” I said. “There’s a man out there. He’s from Strasbourg and he wants a magistrate.”

“A magistrate?” The captain was even more skeptical than I. He was gray-bearded and a fountain of good sense; he’d led a life of seasoned authority. “And who is this man?”

“Well, he looks to be about a magistrate himself.”

Together we returned to the court, where a very large crowd was stepping forward from the market stalls. They had a scene to gawk at, as marvelous as an acting troupe’s play, or a fire. The coach was still stopped direct in front of the town hall. The driver was just climbing back to his box, with little of the dexterity that Knipper would have shown. The gendarme was at rigid attention. The personage of Strasbourg was now obviously a magistrate: He had put on a black judgment robe. At his feet was a large trunk, freshly lowered from the luggage rack. I knew the trunk. I’d seen it before in Master Johann’s house on the kitchen floor.

The Strasbourger’s annoyance was increasing, from an already high level. He saw us and decided that Simeon was sufficient authority. “Open it,” he said to his gendarme.

The man stooped to the trunk and unlatched the clasp. As he did, he grimaced; he expected something unpleasant. In one motion he lifted the lid and rolled the trunk forward to spill it out. It did spill, and what it spilled was Knipper.

Poor Knipper! He was mottled purple and blue, and tangled, dumped on the paving stones. I fell back from him, and everyone did, as the black robe and hostile frown of the visitor gave a visible shape to the sudden fear we all felt. Then the crowd began to step forward again toward the stranger, hostile in return. But the man was unflinching and his stare judged and condemned the whole Market Square of unspoken crime. “I am Caiaphas, Magistrate of Strasbourg,” he spoke, scarring the air with his prophet voice, “and I charge you, Basel, with sending this murdered corpse to my city.”

The mob was both cowed and enraged by that stare and that proclamation, and Simeon knew a riot coming when he saw one. “Back away,” he shouted. A few more of the Day Watch had been in the crowd and they stepped forward to show themselves to the people. There was muttering and dark looks, but Simeon’s command had had effect. He said to me, quietly, “Go for Magistrate Faulkner, Leonhard, be quick and tell him what you’ve seen.”

I took a last look at Knipper. Even dead, he seemed so uncomfortable tumbled on hard ground. It was a bad end for him. And Basel, made of stone and brick, had a tear made in what it was, the soft fabric of living inside its hard parts.



I spoke to Magistrate Faulkner. His house was large, outside the tight spaces of the old city, with a garden and trees. He came to the door after I spoke to the maid who answered my knock, and he listened carefully to my tale. Magistrate Faulkner was an austere and severe man, very humble despite his high station, generous as his sister Mistress Dorothea but far quieter, and he could hurl thunderbolts if one was at hand. He’d been Councilor, Mayor, and most fearfully, an Inquisitor; but that was long before I’d known him. He asked me whether the Day Watch had the crowd in check, and then dismissed me. He has his own servants and messengers.

Then I walked slowly home; I didn’t want to return to the tragic stage in the Market Square. I wanted to mourn Knipper. As I was walking, Faulkner on his horse galloped past me, his magistrate’s robe flying from his shoulders as black as Caiaphas’.

My grandmother set a somber table and we ate without the conversation we usually have of the day’s happenings. Instead, we both thought on death. Everyone in Basel knew death, and not because the Death Dance reminded them. They’d seen it. No family did not have at least an aged parent they’d buried, and most had a child, a mother, a brother. Babies were born to great uncertainty, except that they would die, and many made a quick job of it. Illness like fire swept the city time to time, and fire like illness would take a dozen lives in a moment. Basel lived on as each of its parts died, always being torn and always slowly mended.



I visited the Boot and Thorn that evening, with all Basel, every craftsman, tradesman, scholar, knave, lord, and priest: every dancer. Calamity was always profitable for Old Gustavus. Daniel was in the center and Nicolaus at the edge. I found an inch of bench and listened.

“What killed Knipper?” was the question I heard first.