“So he heard it from the crowds instead.”
“He must have,” I said.
“What does it mean that the trunk was sent to Magistrate Caiaphas?”
“I don’t know. There must have been a label.”
“Does Willi read?”
“No. He must have had it read it him. Maybe in Freiburg.”
“And are you done with this day, Leonhard? Are you getting your writing done?”
“I am, but not tonight. I’m back over to the Inn. I’d like to hear what Willi’s saying.”
The Inn was crowded. Willi was toward the back corner but not too close into it, so there was room all around him. His head was down and he looked to be displeased at the attention, but anyone knew he couldn’t escape it. And maybe he didn’t hate it so much anyway, because he looked up to answer the questions as they came, and he answered them full, or even overfull. Then I saw Gustavus at the counter, and I could see that he’d ordered Willi to keep the room full and occupied. Strife and gossip both put silver in Gustavus’s pockets.
The men asked about the cell he was kept in: “Foul and evil, that we’d never put a man in Basel, vermin’ed straw and mealy bread that might crawl on its own.” The town itself: “Rats in every street and every house, and stinking water for drinking, and more stinking air to breathe.” And the inn: “The Broken Shield’s a swine pen of mud and filth, close and narrow and tight and food no better than the pigs would eat.” And in return, the throng told him over and over of Knipper, “what a stir that was, cursing, and rabble threatening. Opening the trunk and Knipper bundled in it like rags, and Caiaphas like a wolf at bay with the crowd like he’d blast them, then Faulkner arriving like lightning.”
I had more that I’d have asked him, that I very dearly wanted to, but there would be no quiet moment with him that night. And it was common knowledge that he’d be away in the morning to Bern, as much as he was making it known that that would be his last drive and he’d never even look out the Blaise Gate toward Strasbourg.
And I noticed of course that Daniel wasn’t in the room; he was as noticeable absent as present. It must have been that he knew he’d have no chance for anyone’s attention on that night. Nicolaus was there for a while. I remained after he left, watching. There seemed to be many more than should have fit in the room, and more speaking, until the air itself, which was all smoke, seemed to be just faces and voices. The fire was the source of it. The smoke filled the room with mumbling. Something was burning in the fire more than plain logs. I edged close to it.
In the ashes of wood consumed and forever lost, I saw one small piece on the edge of the embers, charred but resistant to burning, at least to that fire. It wasn’t rough timber but a finished flat surface, the remnant of a planed plank. And that one part that the fire couldn’t chew had the Logarithmic spiral etched into it just as I’d seen it before in the Watch’s barracks. I took that remnant from the hearth and left.
My grandmother was still in her kitchen when I came home. It was a smaller room than Mistress Dorothea’s and was only used to cook for us two. I liked it better. Usually we had our meals at its table, where the larger kitchen in my Master’s house was never used for that. The fireplace was just large enough for a nice fire and two pots. There was a niche in the stones for baking bread. Four good cupboards held all the pots and pans, and plates and cups, and knives and forks and spoons. The table was as sturdy as the trees it was made from, by my great grandfather who was pastor in Saint Leonhard’s before my grandfather and father. That table would be used for generations more, for kneading, for chopping, for washing, for all the uses my grandmother put it to. It was also where my grandmother read her Bible, so it was sanctified and holy, and that was irrevocable.
When I set the charred spiral on the table to show her, my grandmother looked at it long and hard but didn’t touch it.
“Why would the trunk have been burned?” she asked.
“It must have been better burned than not for someone.”
“Who would have taken it from the barracks to the inn?”
“Only Gustavus would dare burn it in that hearth. Someone hired him to.”
“Who would have?”
“Master Gottlieb says there’s no need for me to know.”
Then, in my room later, I put the spiral on my dresser beside the conch shell.
As I collected water the next morning, I watched the slipshod departure of the coach for Bern. Willi was groggy and staggering, the passengers complained at his slapdash treatment of their luggage, and the horses hadn’t settled to the succession of new drivers. Rolling and reeling like a ship, the carriage heaved away from the inn and square. It would have been well served by Daniel’s hourglass.