Doctor Copernicus Page 25

  “We shall surrender, I suppose,” he said.

  “For God’s sake—!”

  “Herr Provost—!”

  But Canon Koppernigk seemed strangely detached from these urgent matters. He stood up from the table slowly and walked away with a look of infinite weary sadness. At the door, however, he halted, and turning to Snellenburg said:

  “By the way, Canon, you owe me a hundred marks.”

  “What?”

  “Some years ago I loaned you a hundred marks—you have not forgotten, I trust? I mention it only because I thought that, if we are all to be destroyed in the morning, we should make haste to set our affairs in order, pay off old scores—I mean debts—and so forth. But do not let it trouble you, please. Captain, good night, I must sleep now.”

  *

  The Knights did not attack, but instead marched south-west and razed the town of Neumark. Two thousand three hundred and forty-one souls perished in that onslaught. In the first days of the new year Land Provost Koppernigk sat in what remained of Neumark’s town hall, recording in his ledger, in his small precise hand, the names of the dead. It was his duty. An icy wind through a shattered casement at his back brought with it a sharp tang of smoke from the smouldering wreckage of the town. He was cold; he had never known such cold.

  * * *

  Frau Anna Schillings had that kind of beauty which seems to find relief in poor dress; a tall, fine-boned woman with delicate wrists and the high cheekbones typical of a Danziger, she appeared most at ease, and at her most handsome, in a plain grey gown with a laced bodice, and, perhaps, a scrap of French lace at the throat. Not for her the frills and flounces, the jewelled slippers and horned capuchons of the day. This attribute, this essential modesty of figure as well as of spirit, was now more than ever apparent, when circumstances had reduced a once lavish wardrobe to just one such gown as we have described. And it was in this very gown, with a dark cape wrapped about her shoulders against the cold, and her raven-black hair hidden under an old scarf, that she arrived in Frauenburg with her two poor mites, Heinrich and little Carla, at the beginning of that fateful year (how fateful it was to be she could not guess!), 1524.

  As the physical woman prospered in misfortune, so too the spiritual found enhancement in adversity. Not for Frau Schillings the tears and tantrums with which troubles are most commonly greeted by the weaker sex. It is life, and one must make the best of it: such was her motto. This stoical fortitude had not always been easy to maintain: her dear Papa’s early death had awakened her rudely from the happy dreaming of early girlhood; then there had been Mama’s illness in the head. Nor was marriage the escape into security and happiness that she had imagined it would be. Georg … poor, irresponsible Georg! She could not, even now, after he had gone off with those ruffians and left her and the little ones to fend for themselves as best they might—even now she could not find it in her heart to hate him for his wanton ways. There was this to be said for him, that he had never struck her, as some husbands were only too prone to do; or at least he had never beaten her, not badly, at any rate. Yes, she said, with that gentle smile that all who knew her knew so well, yes, there are many worse than my Georg in the world! And how dashing and gay he could be, and even, yes, how loving, when he was sober. Well, he was gone now, most likely for good and ever, and she must not brood upon the past; she must make a new life for herself, and for the children.

  War is a thing invented by men, and yet perhaps it is the women who suffer most in times of strife among nations. Frau Schillings had lost almost everything in the dreadful war that was supposed to have ended—her home, her happiness, even her husband. Georg was a tailor, a real craftsman, with a good sound trade among the better Danzig families. Everything had been splendid: they had nice rooms above the shop, and money enough to satisfy their modest needs, and then the babies had come, first Heinrich and, not long after, little Carla—O yes, it was, it was, splendid! But then the war broke out, and Georg got that mad notion into his head that there was a fortune to be made in tailoring for the mercenaries. She had to admit, of course, that he might be right, but it was not long before he began to talk wildly of the need to follow the trade, as he put it, meaning, as she realised with dismay, that they should become some kind of camp-followers, trailing along in the wake of that dreadful gang of ragamuffins that the Prussians called an army. Well she would have none of that, no indeed! She was a spirited woman, and there was more than one clash between herself and Georg on the matter; but although she was spirited, she was also a woman, and Georg, of course, had his way in the end. He shut up shop, procured a wagon and a pair of horses, and before she knew it they were all four of them on the road.

  It was a disaster, naturally. Georg, poor dreamer that he was, had imagined war as a kind of stately dance in which two gorgeously (and expensively!) caparisoned armies made ritual feints at each other on crisp mornings before breakfast. The reality—grotesque, absurd, and hideously cruel—was a terrible shock. His visions of brocaded and beribboned uniforms faded rapidly. He spent his days patching breeches and bloodstained tunics. He even took to cobbling—he, a master tailor!—for the few pennies that were in it. He grew ever more morose, and began drinking again, despite all his promises. He struck Carla once, and frequently shook poor Heinrich, who was not strong, until his teeth rattled. It could not continue thus, and one morning (it was the birthday of the Prince of Peace) Frau Schillings awoke in the filthy hovel of an inn where they had lodged for the night to find that her husband had fled, taking with him the wagon and the horses, the purse with their few remaining marks, and even hers and the children’s clothes—everything! The innkeeper, a venal rough brute, told her that Georg had gone off with a band a deserters led by one Krock, or Krack, some awful brutish name like that, and would she be so good now as to pay him what was owed for herself and the brats? She had no money? Well then, she would have to think of a way of paying him in kind then, wouldn’t she? It is a measure of the woman’s—we do not hesitate to say it—of the woman’s saintliness that at first she did not understand what the beastly fellow was suggesting; and when he had told her precisely what he meant, she gave vent to a low scream and burst immediately into tears. Never!

  As she lay upon that bed of shame, for she was forced in the end to allow that animal to have his evil way with her, she reflected bitterly that all this misfortune that had befallen her was due not to Georg’s frailty, not really, but to a silly dispute between the King of Poland and that dreadful Albrecht person. How she despised them, princes and politicians, despised them all! And was she not perhaps justified? Are not our leaders sometimes open to accusations of irresponsibility on a scale far greater than ever the poor Georg Schillingses of this world may aspire to? And you may not say that this contempt was merely the bitter reaction of an empty-headed woman searching blindly for some symbol of the world of men which she might blame for wrongs partly wrought by her own lack of character, for Anna Schillings had been educated (her father had wanted a son), she could read and write, she knew something of the world of books, and could hold her own in logical debate with any man of her class. O yes, Anna Schillings had opinions of her own, and firm ones at that.

  Those weeks following Georg’s departure constituted the worst time that she was ever to know. How she survived that awful period we shall not describe; we draw a veil over that subject, and shall confine ourselves to saying that in those weeks she learned that there are abroad far greater and crueller scoundrels than that concupiscent innkeeper we have spoken of already.

  She did survive, she did manage somehow to feed herself and the little ones, and after that terrible journey across Royal Prussia into northern Ermland, after that via dolorosa, she arrived, as we have said, at Frauenburg in January of 1524.

  *

  The best and truest friend of her youth, Hermina Hesse, was housekeeper to one of the canons of the Cathedral Chapter there. Hermina had been a high-spirited, self-willed girl, and although the years had smoothed
away much of her abrasiveness, she was still a lively person, full of well-intentioned gaiety and given to gales of laughter at the slightest provocation. She had never been a beauty, it is true: her charms were rather of the homely, reassuring kind; but it was certainly not true to say, as some had said, that she looked and spoke like a beer waitress, that her life was a scandal and her eternal soul irretrievably lost. That kind of thing was put about by the “stuffed shirts”, as she called them (with a defiant toss of the head that was so familiar) among the Frauenburg clergy; as if their lives were free of taint, besotted gang of sodomites that they were! Was she to blame if the good Lord had blessed her with an abundant fruitfulness? Did they expect her to disown her twelve children? Disown them! why, she loved them just as much and more than any so-called respectable married matron could love her lawful offspring, and would have fought for them like a wildcat if anyone had dared (which no one did!) to try to take them away from her. Scandal, indeed—pah!

  The two friends greeted each other with touching affection and tenderness. They had not met for … well, for longer than they cared to remember.

  “Anna! Why Anna, what has happened?”

  “O my dear,” said Frau Schillings, “my dear, it has been so awful, I cannot tell you—!”

  Hermina lived in a pleasant old white stone house on a hectacre of land some three leagues south of Frauenburg’s walls. Certainly it was a well-appointed nest, but was it not somewhat isolated, Frau Schillings wondered aloud, when they had sat down in the pantry to a glass of mulled wine and fresh-baked poppyseed cake? The wine was wonderfully cheering, and the warmth of the stove, and the sight of her friend’s familiar beaming countenance, comforted her greatly, so that already she had begun to feel that her agony of poverty and exile might be at an end. (And indeed it was soon to end, though not at all in the manner she expected!) Her little ones were making overtures in their shy tentative way to the children of the house. O dear! She felt suddenly near to tears: it was all so—so nice.

  “Isolated, aye,” Hermina said darkly, breaking in upon Frau Schillings’s tender reverie. “I am as good as banished here, and that’s the truth. The Canon has rooms up in the town, but I am kept from there—not by him, of course, you understand (he would not dare attempt to impose such a restriction on me!), but by, well, others. However, Anna dear, my troubles are nothing compared with yours, I think. You must tell me all. That swine Schillings left you, did he?”

  Frau Schillings then related her sorry tale, in all its awful starkness, neither suppressing that which might shock, nor embellishing those details that indicated the quality of her character: in a word, she was brutally frank. She spoke in a low voice, with eyes downcast, her fine brow furrowed by a frown of concentration; and Hermina Hesse, that good, kind, plump, stout-hearted, ruddy-cheeked woman, that pillar of fortitude, that light in the darkness of a naughty world, smiled fondly to herself and thought: Dear Anna! scrupulous to a fault, as ever. And when she had heard it all, all that heart-breaking tale, she took Frau Schillings’s hands in hers, and sighed and said:

  “Well, my dear, I am distressed indeed to hear of your misfortune, and I only wish that there was some way that I could ease your burden—”

  “O but there is, Hermina, there is!”

  “O?”

  Frau Schillings looked up then, with her underlip held fast in her perfectly formed small white teeth, obviously struggling to hold back the tears that were, despite her valiant efforts, welling in her dark eyes.

  “Hermina,” said she, in a wonderfully steady voice, “Hermina, I am a proud person, as you well know from the happy days of our youth, as all will know who know anything at all of me; yet now I am brought low, and I must swallow that pride. I ask you, I beg of you, please—”

  “Wait,” said Hermina, patting the hands that still lay like weary turtle doves in her own, “dear Anna, wait: I think I know what you are about to say.”

  “Do you, Hermina, do you?”

  “Yes, my poor child, I know. Let me spare you, therefore; let me say it: you want a loan.”

  Frau Schillings frowned.

  “O no,” she said, “no. Why, what can you think of me, to imagine such a thing? No, actually, Hermina, dearest Hermina, I was wondering if you could spare a room for myself and the children for a week or two, just to tide us over until—”

  Hermina turned away with a pained look, and began to shake her head slowly, but at just that awkward moment they were interrupted by the sound of hoofbeats outside, and presently there entered by the rickety back door Canon Alexander Sculteti, a low-sized man in black, blowing on his chilled fists and swearing softly under his breath. He was thin, and had a red nose and small watchful eyes. He caught sight of Frau Schillings and halted, glancing from her to Hermina with a look of deep suspicion.

  “Who’s this?” he growled, but when Hermina began to explain her friend’s presence, he waved his arms impatiently and stamped away into the next room, thrusting a toddler roughly out of his path with a swipe of his boot. He was not a pleasant person, Frau Schillings decided, and certainly she had no intention of begging him for a place to stay. And yet, what was she to do if Hermina could not help her? Grey January weather loomed in the window. O dear! Hermina winked at her encouragingly, however, and followed the Canon into the next room, where an argument began immediately. Despite the noise that the children made (who now, having become thoroughly acquainted, seemed from the sounds to be endeavouring to push each other down the stairs, the dear little rascals), and even though she went so far as to cover her ears, she could not help hearing some of what was said. Hermina, although no doubt fighting hard on her friend’s behalf, spoke in a low voice, while Canon Sculteti on the other hand seemed not to care who heard his unkind remarks.

  “Let her stay here?” he yelled, “so that the Bishop can be told that I have installed another tart?” (O! Frau Schillings’s hands flew to her mouth to prevent her from crying out in shame and distress.) “Woman, are you mad? I am in trouble enough with you and these damned brats. Do you realise that I am in danger not only of losing my prebend, but of being excommunicated? Listen, here is a plan—” He interrupted himself with a high-pitched whinny of laughter. “—Here is what to do: send her to Koppernigk—” (What was that name? Frau Schillings frowned thoughtfully …) “—He’s in bad need of a woman, God knows. Ha!”

  Summoning up all her courage, Anna Schillings rose and went straight into the room where they were arguing, and in a cold, dignified voice asked:

  “Is this Nicolas Koppernigk that you speak of?”

  Canon Sculteti, standing in the middle of the floor with his hands on his hips, turned to her with an unpleasant, sardonic grin. “What’s that, woman?”

  “I could not help overhearing—you mention the name Koppernigk: is this Canon Nicolas Koppernigk? For if so, then I must tell you that he is my cousin!”

  *

  Yes, she was a cousin to the famous Canon Koppernigk, or Doctor Copernicus, as the world called him now. Theirs was a tenuous connection, it is true, on the distaff side, but yet it was to be the saving of Anna Schillings. She had never met the man, although she had heard talk of him in the family; there had been some scandal, she vaguely remembered, or was that to do with his brother . . ? Well, it was no matter, for who was she to baulk at a whiff of scandal?

  Their first meeting was unpromising. Canon Sculteti took her that very night to Frauenburg (and was knave enough to make a certain suggestion on the way, which of course she spurned with the contempt it deserved); she left the children in the care of Hermina, for, as Sculteti in his coarse way put it, they did not want to frighten.“old Kopper-nigk” to death with the prospect of a readymade family. The town was dark and menacing, bearing still the marks of war, burnt-out houses and crippled beggars and the smell of death. Canon Koppernigk lived in a kind of squat square fortress in the cathedral wall, a cold forbidding place, at the sight of which, in the slime of starlight, Frau Schillings’s heart sank. Scult
eti rapped upon the stout oak door, and presently a window above opened stealthily and a head appeared.

  “Evening, Koppernigk,” Sculteti shouted. “There is one here that would speak with you urgently.” He sniggered under his breath, and despite the excited beating of her heart, Frau Schillings noted again what a lewd unpleasant man this Canon was. “Kin of yours!” he added, and laughed again.

  The figure above spoke not a word, but withdrew silently, and after some long time they heard the sound of slow footsteps within, and the door opened slowly, and Canon Nicolas Koppernigk lifted a lighted candle at them as if he were fending off a pair of demons.

  “Here we are!” said Sculteti, with false joviality. “Frau Anna Schillings, your cousin, come to pay you a visit. Frau Schillings—Herr Canon Koppernigk!” And so saying he took himself off into the night, laughing as he went.

  *

  Canon Koppernigk, then in his fifty-first year, was at that time laden heavily with the responsibilities of affairs of state. On the outbreak of war between the Poles and the Teutonic Knights, the Frauenburg Chapter almost in its entirety had fled to the safety of the cities of Royal Prussia, notably Danzig and Torun; he, however, had gone into the very midst of the battlefield, so to speak, to the castle of Allenstein, where he held the post of Land Provost. Then, after the armistice of 1521, he had in April of that year returned to Frauenburg as Chancellor, charged by Bishop von Lossainen (rumours of whose death in the siege of Heilsberg had happily proved unfounded) with the task of reorganising the administration of the province of Ermland, a task that at first had seemed an impossibility, since under the terms of the armistice the Knights retained those parts of the princedom which their troops were occupying at the close of hostilities. There was also the added difficulty of the presence in the land of all manner of deserter and renegade, who spread lawlessness and disorder through the countryside. However, by the following year the Land Provost had succeeded to such a degree in restoring normalcy that his faint-hearted colleagues could consider it safe enough for them to creep out of hiding and return to their duties.