An Elegant Solution(59)

The black bristling center of the smoke said, “I’ve seen plague.” We hadn’t seen Gustavus but he was there, with us. “And so it was.”

The room was deadened by that. Innkeepers had special responsibilities concerning Black Death, as listed in Basel’s laws, so they were expert at recognizing it. They were responsible to send carts for corpses and collect clothing for burning.

“Jankovsky died of plague, didn’t he?” That was another voice in the dark.

“Just a chill,” another voice answered. “It’s easy to die in a winter.”

“If he did, then Desiderius has his Chair by honest death,” Nicolaus said quietly, beside me.

“Desiderius?” I asked him. “How else would he have it?”

But Nicolaus only said to Daniel, “Then what were Huldrych’s reasons for dying?”

“All the reasons that being ancient had for him. What were any reasons he had to keep living? That’s the question.”

“I’d keep living.” That was Lieber, the bookbinder. “No matter if I was ancient.”

“And you are ancient!” Daniel said. “But not as Huldrych. And you’re not in a Chair. That’s another reason Huldrych had, to be out of the way.”

“Out of your way.” That was Nicolaus. And Daniel, in his black humor, laughed at it.



They talked on, Daniel jesting and coarse, more than I thought him usually to be. It might have been that he was unsettled as the rest, or more, and that the doubt and confusion from his talk with me was still there. But he wasn’t asking for my counsel anymore. I edged back from him and his throng, into a darker place, and somehow had Nicolaus beside me. He was quiet as always. I knew he had something to say, though.

“Was it plague?” I asked.

“It’s a plague.”

“But that he died of?”

“Not Knipper.”

“What killed Knipper?” I’d never been told.

“A pan, I’d say.”

The knot around Daniel laughed at something he’d said, and himself the loudest. I wasn’t following either brother well. “A kitchen pan?”

“A heavy one brought down hard.”

“He was killed in a kitchen, then?” I wasn’t sure if he was leading me, either.

“You know that, Leonhard, and the kitchen, very well.”

“Well, I do.”

“And dust, too.”

“Dust? Oh, Huldrych’s laboratory?”

He just nodded. Smoke from the fire, like dust, swirled lightly around and suddenly I choked on it.

“Huldrych breathed the dust,” I said.

“It’s not often disturbed.”

“I breathed it, also. And Gottlieb did. Or, no, we didn’t. I tried not to. Was something in it?”

“It was dust.”

“And I don’t know which pan in Mistress Dorothea’s kitchen, either,” I said.

“You don’t?”

“No,” I said and I said it firmly. But Nicolaus was hard to read in broad light and it was narrow dark in the Boot and Thorn.

“But the imperative,” Daniel said loudly across the room, “is that now there’s a Chair open. Let the bidding begin!”



Returned to my bedroom, I chose Mr. MacLaurin’s volume from my shelf. Finally, though, I put it aside.

I opened the Faustbook from Master Desiderius. The title was The World of the Black Artist and Magician Doctor Johann Faust. There might have been truth in the tale.

It had been two hundred years ago that Paracelsus held the chair of Medicine, and he held it only one year before he was thrown out for obnoxiety. He must have been exemplary in his ill-will and bad-temper. It was very rare for a man to be ejected from his Chair. I didn’t know of any other besides him, and he was very famous for it. Theophrastus Bombastus must have been an apt name.

There might have been truth of history, that a man like Paracelsus would have had pride and blindness enough to think he might get the better of bargaining with a nemesis angel. Then there might be truth of Theology, that a Mephisto would take on the bargaining. If Paracelsus had made that bargain, though, he must also have come to Faust’s end, as he lived no longer than any other man. What a terrible game it was to try, and what a fool to have tried it. I thought through all the possible outcomes, and all seemed that they would be tragic.

And finally I put my candle out.





8

THE EADEM MEDALLION





Sunday morning I escorted my grandmother to Saint Leonhard’s, and I had to do it as a gentleman and not as a humble grandchild; I still only had one hat. The service calmed and comforted us both greatly. Three days after the Inquiry there had been no other indications of plague, and the city was whispering what Daniel had announced, that Huldrych had died of a common cause. Yet there were those who still held with Gustavus. That morning on our benches we were reminded that the truth was that we were in God’s hands. If there was judgment, we would not escape it; if there was mercy, we would receive it. That was an essence of the Reformation.