An Elegant Solution(5)

Uncle Jacob: that was a scorpion’s egg he was hatching. I’d heard very little about my Master’s oldest brother, and he was very firmly not discussed in my Master’s house. “What about him?”

“He’s dead.”

I knew that. “I’ve seen his epitaph.”

“But why is he dead?”

I had thought much about mortality and so answered, “For his sins.” I didn’t mean it uniquely to old Jacob, as he died before I was born and I never met him, but I had always been firm on this point. And Daniel would benefit from a reminder. “And for a fever, too, most likely, and with every hope for resurrection. Your father is the youngest of ten children, and he’s nearly sixty. You should expect to have dead uncles. And you know Master Johann is touchy on Jacob.”

“Because he has reason to be, and that’s why I’m back in Basel, Leonhard. I’m going to look into Uncle Jacob, and the more Brutus doesn’t like it, the more I will.”

“I won’t be part of it.”

“Sure you will. I need your help.”

“I won’t have time this morning.”

“Tonight?”

“Tomorrow night,” I said. “After my lesson.”

“That’ll do. If you can still talk or think after that bruising you go through.” He nodded toward the Boot. “I’ll be at the inn tomorrow night.” And today’s night, I was sure, and many another. I took my leave and my buckets.



Away from the Barefoot Square, I came into the Wages Street. Paving stones and packed soils carried Basel’s traffic, its wheels and shoes; houses, churches, and structures constrained it. I would often stand at a corner or in a doorway and watch the motion. I would see the good citizens and their horses and carts. I watched University scholars with books under their arms. I saw grand merchants and councilors, the Day Watch and the Night Watch. And I would also see Reformers in vast robes contending for their faith. In the open squares I saw Romans with swords and barbarians with pikes, and marching through the gates I saw knights in chain mail with Crusader crosses on their shoulders. In narrow alleys I saw long corteges, cart after cart on misty mornings, filled by the plague’s harvest. In the church cloisters I saw monks chanting and druids moaning, and Irish friars storytelling, returning the faith of the Roman city to the city of Goths and Vandals. And in archways I would see angels, and in stairways, saints, and in shadows, shadows. It had always been that I would see invisible things.

Then I was to the Hay Street and my grandmother’s house. Even on the most clouded days the sun always shone on her door. There had always been an anchor that held her firm, and none of the ages in the street outside would ever shake her.

So I brought in my water and took in as much of her calm as I could hold, and readied myself for the rest of the day.



Next in the mornings, Monday through Friday, after my chores at home I would present myself at Master Johann’s back door. Mistress Dorothea would scoop me into the kitchen. The Mistress was the wife of a very great man besides being the sister of the present Chief Magistrate and the daughter of a previous, but she was no idlewoman; no one in Basel, no matter how great, didn’t work. A wealthy family would hire labor, though, and this Mistress did. She had a girl, a seamstress’s daughter, who helped her with washing and cooking. I did the heavy work. I would stoke the fire and empty the grate and chop wood and fetch water, and most days there would be a floorboard to hammer back or a pot to undent; I’ve been apprentice carpenter and tinker and smith and cooper. It was mostly the same that I did for my grandmother, but for a grander house and household. I would never see Master Johann these mornings. I would see the others of the family, and it was in years past that in these hours I met the sons and made my friendship with Daniel.

The seamstress’s daughter was fourteen years old, a good laundress and passable cook, but she was flawed: she chattered continually. Worse, she and the Mistress together were deafening. The clatter and slap of dishes and ironing and kneading and all else would be bearable; the gossip and pure inanity that congested the air were not, but I bore them anyway. The ridicule I endured from my friends was as hard: working with women made me a laughingstock with them.

And I wasn’t paid a copper for any of it! Every morning but Saturday and Sunday I did this. I stopped my ears against Babel, I submitted to the common labor lot of man, passed from Adam to Noah to Greece to Rome to my Mistress’s kitchen, and I toiled. Yet, yet, like Jacob’s for Rachel, my labor seemed fleeting, for my wages were worth so much more than anything I could have been paid in money. Though Daniel scoffed, he knew well what great value I received for my chopping.