An Elegant Solution(68)

“There’s no need for him to know. Nor you. Now, I’m in a hurry.”

But into the already scalding pot, I poured another cup of boiling water. “One other thing. It’s a small thing. It was one week ago that I was serving as your scribe, and you were very kind to allow me the use of this hat.” I took it off my head and we both looked at it. “But I realized I should return it and retrieve my own.”

“What? The hat? Keep it. I have no use for it.” He seemed more surprised than angry.

“Thank you,” I said, and very sincerely. That was very generous. It was a bit old, but it would have cost more than a few florins. “Thank you. I’ve been very proud to wear it but I was concerned as it was only borrowed.”

“No, keep it.” He was off guard and done with the discussion but I had one other small part.

“I hope it isn’t poor of me to ask, though, for my old hat?”

“Why would you ask me?” Now he was suspicious and back on guard.

“I think you may still have it,” I said. “When you put this on my head, you took the other that I’d had.”

“Did I?” It seemed odd that he wouldn’t remember. Gottlieb was very detailed and particular. But it was also a very inconsequential detail.

“Yes, sir.”

“Then it’s not here now. I’d know if it was. And I’m in a hurry. I have an appointment.”

“Do you know where the hat might be? I’m sorry to annoy you with it.”

“My appointment is to discuss the punishment of an annoying student.”

“He is being punished for being annoying?”

“The student has shown disrespect to a Chair. I won’t discuss it with you, Leonhard.”

“Anyway, the hat,” I said. “It was a hat given me by my father. I should have come sooner or spoken before.”

“Your father. No, it’s not here and I don’t know where it is.” And that was a very final statement and the end of all sympathy. “Good day.”

His door closed. Above it, set in the timber, was a stone square with his family’s emblem, the triple seven leaves. It might be odd that he had it made and set there, considering the many hostilities he and the other members of the family had with each other. Yet there were other bonds that held them together, nearly invisible, but which I sometimes could see.



As I had a week before, I crossed the bridge to Small Basel out the Blaise Gate. It was like the other gates: a tall, thin tower directly over the opening in the Wall. It held a portcullis and also the gears and ropes to draw the bridge up from the moat. But as always, it was no impediment to me as I left the city.

To the left, just across a field, was the Rhine. The river was broad, strong, and usually peaceful. As a child I had walked often beside the Rhine, beside my father. When I would now stand beside the water, on a sunny grass or in knoll shade, I might still feel small, and his hand on my shoulder. And he still walked a path on its bank many days, though it’s a distance from Riehen.

I went out from Small Basel at the Saint Blaise Gate as I’d done a week earlier, and I ran for a while along the road with its narrow field between me and the bank. Then I crossed the field to the water’s edge and slowed because rivers were walked beside, not run past. But I didn’t saunter. I kept a brisk pace.

It wasn’t only that the riverside path was an old friend that I chose it over the main road. The main road had gawkers and I wanted to meet the coach before the rest of the city did. It took a mile to be the first and farthest. Then I went back onto the road, and after another mile to the edge of Basel Canton, where the tariff crossing to the Landgrave of Roteln and Saussenberg marked the end of Switzerland and the beginning of the Empire, and I waited there.



It was uncertain who might be driving the coach. But when the coach was still just dust in the far distance, I knew it was Willi. There was a uniqueness to a driver who was coming home, and that driver was.

I saw him sure when he was closer. He was alone in his box, shoulders hunched forward. A lout was always a mess but this one looked to have been in prison for a week and all in the same clothes. He came to the customs booth and stopped to pay his toll and argue his way through. Knipper had been a match for any customs guard, but Willi was new to the job, unfamiliar to the official, and weary.

“No crossings,” the guard said. “There’s plague.”

“I’m not wanting out!” Willi shouted. “I want in!”

“I’m from Basel,” I said to the guard. “I’m come to see that the driver doesn’t make trouble for you.”