An Elegant Solution(4)

“I’ll go,” I said, and it was even better reason to miss Master Johann’s grand entrance. I could ask the next morning if there’d been warm greetings or hot words. Knipper nearly thanked me to death, he was so relieved.

I left Knipper there, with Master Johann’s family, and quick tracked back to the inn. The innkeeper pointed me to the stables without a word when I told him what Knipper was wanting Willi for. The tavern-boy was there, hammering some horseshoes into shape, and I rousted him. I asked if he wanted my help, but he didn’t. He was ox strong. That was as well, as by that time the firewood in my Master’s house was aflame, or already ashes. Ashes to ashes. I was ready to be home, glad to have seen Daniel and Nicolaus, and hungry for supper.



It was only a few steps from the Boot and Thorn, and the Barefoot Square, to my own home. I lived with my mother’s mother. She had a tidy house very near Saint Leonhard’s church, where she was revered. Her husband was pastor there until his death. My father was also, until he left for the village of Riehen soon after my birth. It was hoped that I would follow them to the pulpit, and I would never have regretted if I had. But for good or ill, I’ve had an even deeper love. So I was here in Grandmother’s care. Riehen was only five miles from Basel, but too far to travel daily, so for these last five years this house has become my home. I have left my father’s house to walk among men, placed by him in my grandmother’s and Master Johann’s care.

At supper, after I told Grandmother my day and all the doings at my Master’s house, she gave me a warning. “A family should be for peace, Leonhard. There’s trouble enough outside the door. Keep a watch on yourself for all you have to do with them.”

“They’ve always been this way,” I said.

“Every kettle only holds its own measure and no more. Someday they’ll reach that and overflow.”

And then late, as I laid my head on my pillow, thinking about the day and my Master’s family, I could hear an overflowing. Not a kettle, but a river. Not the Rhine, but something else, something rising and disturbed. I heard it murmuring, and felt its pull, and was pulled by it to sleep.



That had been Thursday. The next morning, Friday, I was out early to fetch water. There were three fountains equally near and I chose the one in the Barefoot Square so I might see Knipper before he was off to Freiburg. The coach was in front of the inn and the passengers were impatient beside it and the horses restless in their harnesses, but the whole was Knipper-less. I was careful to fill the buckets only to their measure and not overflow them; and there was still no driver. I set the buckets on the paving stones, not too close to the horses’ edgy hooves, and asked. I had an earful back. “Where is he? I’d like to know where is he! I’m told to be up at dawn and the driver’s still sleeping!”

I was sure he’d soon be by. Knipper kept a schedule as ancient and immutable as the planets: Thursday from Bern to Basel, Friday Basel to Freiburg, and Saturday Freiburg to Strasbourg. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday he turned his horses back. Inns in the four cities owned his coach and paid him to drive it and deliver his passengers to their front doors. He linked Basel to the French, German, and Swiss lands that surround it. Basel was properly a part of Switzerland, but to its own people it has been a land separate to itself.

The keeper of the Boot and Thorn was Old Gustavus, and he would be closest of anybody to knowing anything of Knipper. He was standing at the door smoldering. He came out to look close at the coach to see, I thought, that it really had no Knipper. Of course I was as curious as all the rest, but it was time for me to be on to more chores and I turned away from the inn. Right at my elbow I found Daniel.

“What’s the rumpus?” he said.

“Knipper’s been lost.”

“Knipper? Oh, the driver? Then where is he?”

“Lost means not knowing where he is.”

“Well, it’s you I want anyway, and you’re found.”

“I’ll be to your kitchen in an hour,” I said.

Daniel had put his hand on my shoulder in pity. “You still labor for him, Leonhard? It’s brutes that labor, and not you for the Brute.”

“But I do and I’m glad to. What are you wanting with me? And did you have peaceable words with him last night?”

“Words, not peace. Supper was tolerable though. But you were lost before I could talk to you, and I want your help with an idea I’ve been hatching.”

“If it’s your idea, then it’s cracked.”

“There’ll be cracking.” Daniel’s other hand took hold of my other shoulder, and we were face to face between his arms. “It’s why I came back to Basel,” he said, and there was a hard passion behind his soft smile. “It’s to do with Uncle Jacob.”