Doctor Copernicus (23 page)

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 Koppernigk” 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. Sculteti 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.

Even yet the demands of public life did not slacken, for with the death at last, in January of 1523, of Bishop von Lossainen, the Chapter was compelled to take up the reins of government of the
turbulent and war-torn bishopric; once again the Chapter turned to Canon Koppernigk, and he was elected Administrator General, which post he held until October, when a new Bishop was installed. In
all this time he had been working on a detailed report of the damage wrought by the war in Ermland, which he was to present as a vital document in the peace talks at Torun. Also he had drawn up an
elaborate and complex treatise setting forth means whereby the debased monetary system of Prussia might be reformed, which had been requested of him by the King of Poland. Nor was he spared
personal sorrow: shortly after hearing of the death at Kulm of his sister Barbara, he received news from Italy that his brother Andreas had succumbed finally to that terrible disease which for many
years had afflicted him. Small wonder then, with all this, that Canon Koppernigk appeared to Frau Schillings a reserved and distracted, cold, strange, solitary soul.

On that first night, when Sculteti abandoned her as he would some ridiculous and tasteless practical joke on his doorstep, the Canon stared at her, with a mixture of horror and bafflement, as if
she were an apparition out of a nightmare. He backed away from her up the dark narrow stairs, still holding the candle at arm’s length like a talisman brandished in the face of a demon. In
the observatory he put his desk between himself and her. For the second time that day, Frau Schillings related her tale of woe, haltingly, with many omissions this time, holding her hands clasped
upon her bodice. He watched her with a kind of horrified fascination, but she could plainly see that he was not taking in the half of what she said. He seemed to her a kindly man, for all his
reserve.