“You’ll have whipping. The Masters you have are easily displeased. You won’t have Caiaphas on your trip to Bern, though. He’ll stay for the Inquiry.”
“Ask him your questions. I won’t answer any.”
“Tomorrow I’ll ask him.”
We traced our path backward to the kitchen, which was empty of life now but for its fires. Gottlieb stopped there to think. “Is Daniel still here?”
“I heard his voice when we came in.”
“I want him next.”
I followed up the corridor to the Common Room. Daniel’s voice cut through the room, as it always did. A near hour had passed from Gottlieb’s knock on my door. It was already late enough that the candles were yawning. The fire was intense but withdrawn into its hearth. I felt Cousin Gottlieb was uneasy beneath the weight of the beams.
Dice were rolled from a cup onto a table, and that sound turned my eyes toward Daniel, still there, and Nicolaus, and I saw them for the second time that evening. They hadn’t moved but most other of the men had left. Daniel looked up to see Gottlieb, and me with him, and smiled his most mischievous smile; he’d been waiting.
“Leonhard,” he said. “What’s this I see? Are you being tainted? Beware, beware!”
Gottlieb answered for me. “You’ll beware.”
“If you don’t corrupt me,” I answered Daniel myself, “nobody can.”
“That’s a challenge, then. But what’s the purpose of this? I’m placid and smug, and I’ve no use for an interruption.”
“You’ll make use,” Gottlieb said. “I’ll want answers from you.”
“You? You! Brutus has made you his Inquisitor, and you’ll use the weight of that to bother me? Isn’t there a better use for Olympian authority?”
“The Council appointed me.”
“At his wink and nod. So, cousin, what will you pretend you need to know from me?”
“It’s an odd chance that the driver dies after he drives you.”
“Inference and induction, and that’s not Logic. Shouldn’t you know that?” There was an energy in Daniel’s voice that meant more than just wheedling and sparring. “Beside, you’d have reason to murder the driver who brought me home. I wouldn’t.”
“I would have done it then before he brought you, not after; and after he had I’d have every reason to keep him alive to take you back away.”
I had heard plenty of Gottlieb’s speech, in the lecture hall and in the parlor, and I heard a note I hadn’t before. But Daniel knew it, and he approved.
“That’s clever, cousin. I like an answer with wit. There was a time when you were known more for it.”
“There aren’t many who know it.”
Daniel nodded to that. “It’s a street of dunces we walk.” He leaned back and put space between them. “But it’s time, Cousin. What are you after?”
Gottlieb leaned forward and closed the space. “Why did you come back to Basel?”
“It’s my family here.” He answered it quickly, with a shrug, “That’s why you left. I want to know why you came back.”
“And that’s what Brutus wants,” Daniel said. “To know why I’ve returned, and he’ll use the Inquisition to find out.”
“That’s not an answer to my question.”
“It’s an answer to mine. If I don’t answer yours, will you torture me?” He laughed. “Brutus wouldn’t let that.”
“You fully deserve it.”
“We shouldn’t any of us get what we deserve, should we? What would you get, Cousin? Not a Chair, I think.” It was very difficult to tell how these words were spoken; but it seemed something like a horse race, with the riders each straining to pull ahead of the other. With this last word, though, the race ended.
Gottlieb only said, “Who murdered the coachman Knipper?”
“Is that how you’ll do your inquisition?” Daniel said, and now with contempt. “What’s the logic in asking bald questions? If I knew, wouldn’t I have said already? That doesn’t need an Inquisitor.”
“Unless you knew and wouldn’t say.”
“Then I’d have a reason to not say it, and I wouldn’t answer you. Two premises, opposite, that both lead to the same end, and so it might be either.” He rolled his dice. “That’s logic. Are you learning from him, Leonhard? Is that why you’re here?”
“I’m just to hold the red hot irons for him,” I said.
“He’d do it,” Daniel said to me. “He would but for Brutus telling him not to.”