An Elegant Solution(31)

“Yes, sir,” I said. “I’ll have it all.”

“Just the first. The innkeeper and the driver. Not the last.”



I stumbled home. Night in Basel was the dwelling of soft sounds and faint smells, and gentle brushings in the dark, all unseen. I unlocked my own door and saw a light in the kitchen. My grandmother was at the table in her nightdress.

“I’m back,” I said.

“I saw your bedroom open and empty.”

“Cousin Gottlieb came for me. He’s Inquisitor and he has me for his clerk.”

This was a stark statement of news that was important to both our home and our city. Grandmother breathed a sigh. “Then you’ll be part of the Inquiry.”

“I’ll only be secretary. I have to write what I heard tonight.”

“What did you hear, Leonhard?”

“I’ve heard about Knipper and his driving, and I’ve seen his room in the Boot and Thorn, and I’ve heard that the last anyone saw of him was at the inn that evening unloading the coach.”

“That was after he came to Master Johann’s kitchen?”

“No, Grandmother. The last he was seen at the inn was before that.”

“You saw him, Leonhard. You told me you had. And you told me also that a black trunk was on the floor there, which is the trunk he was brought back in.”

“I told you truthfully,” I said.

“Tell Master Gottlieb.”

“Then Master Johann’s family would be accused.”

“Master Gottlieb is part of that family. He’ll use wisdom in it.”

“It wasn’t any of them.”

“It’s Master Gottlieb’s task to find who did.”

“It won’t be him or Daniel who’s first to solve it,” I said. “Nicolaus told them that. And that’s not Master Gottlieb’s true task. His questions were for something else. I don’t know what.”

And then I went upstairs and started writing as Gottlieb had told me to do. I had a good memory, though I was very tired of the day.



I’d wanted to wake early on Wednesday but my bed was very comfortable. It was nearly sunrise before I pulled myself from my covers. I endured my grandmother’s disapprobation and hurried to get her water, and I made sure to get it from the Barefoot Square. The coach was there in the morning light, but no light shone on glowering Abel already in the box, and Fritz from the inn was pushing luggage onto the rack. None of the bags and trunks was larger than a hound.

Nothing withstood Abel’s whip and the thunder of those hooves; yet he’d have to return. Less than nothing could withstand the immutable rhythm of those roads from Basel south and north. Knipper was everlasting but finally died. Yet even death wouldn’t stop the ancient law that the coach would leave for Bern on Wednesday and then come back, and that the coach would leave for Freiburg and Strasbourg on Friday and then come back. The coach was a pendulum, hung from history and swung unending through its path. Even the Magistrates of two cities only planned their Inquiry within pendulum swings.

Like Basel, Strasbourg was also a University city. Yet as Master Desiderius said, its University was much less prestigious. Not always, though: The school was planted with Martin Luther himself as one of its founders when he took refuge there. The city also joined the Reformation and became one of its centers, like Basel. It had the first printing presses in France, sent by Gutenberg. And it had its own great reformer, Martin Bucer, as great a man as Basel’s Oecolampadius. It was a rival to Basel and a mirror.

But forty years ago the city, having for centuries been a free city, as Basel still was, was annexed by Louis the Fourteenth, and Strassburg became Strasbourg. The Protestants weren’t persecuted and exiled as the Huguenots had been, but the Cathedral was given back to the Pope and now the city was known as Catholic. The University was carefully un-reformed and lost what luster it still had. It was certainly an advance for Desiderius when he left Strasbourg for Basel. And though the annexation was military and by force, it was the great Reformed University, unlikely as it seemed then, that pushed and convinced the city into giving up its independence. Certainly in Basel, only the University would have the prestige and force to bring about such a transition.

Though Wars of Religion had ended, the Wars of Philosophy now raged, less violent and more literate. Strasbourg was Cartesian, while Basel was not. Strasbourg was also a Rhine city, but not on the Rhine. It was a mile from the bank on a small tributary river. And if a man in Strasbourg wished to cross the Rhine by carriage, with his horses’ hooves on a dry road, he would need to come the eighty miles to Basel.