An Elegant Solution(35)

“That has nothing to do with you.”

“What if it does?”

Gottlieb asked, slowly, “Is that why you’ve come?”

Caiaphas said, slowly, “It is one of my reasons.”

“The Inquisitor can only serve his own city. Not anyone else.”

“A servant doesn’t choose his Master!”

“The Inquisitor has only one Master, which is the Town Council of Basel.” He turned from the threshold border between cities and disappeared from our sight.

His repatriation had been too sudden, and I was still in the room. I realized I’d been abandoned, or I had abandoned my superior by not moving quickly with him, and I jumped to follow. But the border closed.

“Stop him,” Caiaphas said, and the gendarme blocked my way. I turned back.

“Yes, sir?”

“What are you writing?”

“I’m Master Gottlieb’s clerk,” I said. “I’m instructed to write his inquiries.”

“Where have I seen you before?”

“Yesterday evening, sir. You sent me to fetch a magistrate.”

“That was you?”

I’d been in brown. Now I was in black and white. It was as if a stone had become bread; neither could be trusted afterward. “Yes, sir.”

“What is your position?”

“I’m a student, sir.”

“In what?”

“Mathematics.”

The bread had become something else, I couldn’t tell what.

“I see. What is your name?”

“Leonhard, sir.”

I might have hoped that his questioning was only his habit and not for a reason. But my answer and my name were significant to him. “You are the one?”

“Sir?”

“You ordered the stablehand to put the trunk on the coach.”

“Not me, sir—”

“I am now aware of you, Master Leonhard.” He nodded to Gendarme Foucault. “Release him.”

So I did go. But I didn’t feel that I’d been released.



I made my labyrinthine way to the light of the front door. Gottlieb was there in silhouette. “What took you?” he asked me.

I’d only been a few words behind him in leaving the room, and I’d hurried to catch up, so I didn’t know how I could have more than seconds later reaching the Common Room. But it seemed that he’d been waiting a longer time. “Magistrate Caiaphas held me back.”

“Oh, he did?”

We came out into the sun of the Barefoot Square. The face of the Barefoot Church was whiter than paper. “He asked what I was writing in my notes.”

“And anything else?”

“What I was studying, and then who I was.”

“Now he knows who you are.”

“He had heard my name. What did you mean, that you’d met him twenty years ago?”

“On our return to Basel. We stopped in Strasbourg. How old are you, Leonhard?”

“Eighteen,” I answered.

“I was eighteen then.”

“You said he had the better of your meeting.”

“Just as he’s had the better of his meeting with you. That was how it started.”

“And he never answered any questions of yours.”

“He only wanted to see that I was who he thought, and I the same.” Then, without a pause, he said, “Next we will question Master Huldrych.”

“Daniel wasn’t genuine when he accused Master Huldrych. He was only mocking.”

“He might not have been.”



Master Huldrych did not have a housekeeper, and so his house was not kept. At other Masters’ houses, the students knocked and waited to be admitted. Students quickly learned to enter the house of Physics on their own. That was not for Master Gottlieb, however; we knocked, and with all the authority of the City of Basel. Repeated knockings and minutes were required until the Chair opened the door.

He tried to make sense of what he saw. First of me. “It isn’t class, is it? It isn’t Monday. I know it isn’t. Or Thursday. No.” Then of Cousin Gottlieb. “Gottlieb? A meeting of the faculty? But I don’t remember that one was scheduled. No.” Then of my hat. “Another Black Death? But no, that was you, Gottlieb, when Jacob died.” And then he nodded. “Another trunk, then?”

“No, no!” Cousin Gottlieb answered, suddenly very, very annoyed at Huldrych’s wandering. “I am here to inquire.”

“Oh? Inquire? About what?”

“Knipper.”

“Oh! Oh? Oh. ” He said each as its own full meaning. “Knipper?”

“Knipper.”

“You’re the Inquisitor, then, Gottlieb?”

“I am.”

“That’s an odd turn.” Huldrych stepped aside to allow us in. “What questions?” We passed with him through the tiny entry and into his lecture room. I’d sat there many times, but now it was upside down as Cousin Gottlieb stood while Huldrych sat. At least I was taking notes as I always did there. The room had a small window to the front. Windows in Basel were not meant to be seen through, only to allow in light, and that to a people who preferred dimness. There was another small window in the back, which must have looked out onto the river. I’d never seen it unshuttered.