Doctor Copernicus (22 page)

The Canon had turned somewhat pale. Giese was watching him expectantly. Now this insolent knight would receive the kind of answer he deserved! But, in a voice so low it could be hardly heard,
Canon Koppernigk said only:

“There is nothing more to say.”

Albrecht bowed his head, smiling thinly. “I meant, of course, Herr Canon, when I said what you have just echoed, that there is nothing more to say in these—ha—negotiations. On
other, more congenial topics there is surely much we can discuss. Come, my dear Doctor, let us take a glass of wine together, like civilised men.”

Then followed that curious exchange that Precentor Giese was to remember ever afterwards with puzzlement and grave misgiving. Canon Koppernigk grimaced. He seemed in some pain.

“Grand Master,” he said, “you are contemplating waging war for the sake of sport. What is Ermland to you, or Royal Prussia? What is Poland even?”

Albrecht had been expecting something of the sort, for he answered at once:

“They are glory, Herr Doctor, they are posterity!”

“I do not understand that.”

“But you do, I think.”

“No. Glory, posterity, these are abstract concepts. I do not understand such things.”

“You, Doctor?—you do not understand abstract concepts, you who have expressed the eternal truths of the world in just such terms? Come sir!”

“I will not engage in empty discussion. We have come to Königsberg to ask you to consider the suffering that you are visiting upon the people, the greater suffering that war with
Poland will bring.”

“The people?” Albrecht said, frowning. “What people?”

“The common people.”

“Ah. The common people. But they have suffered always, and always will. It is in a way what they are for. You flinch. Herr Doctor, I am disappointed in you. The common people?—pah.
What are they to us? You and I,
mein Freund
, we are lords of the earth, the great ones, the major men, the makers of supreme fictions. Look here at these poor dull brutes—” His
thin dark hand took in the silent crowd behind him, the flunkeys, Precentor Giese, the painted army. “—They do not even understand what we are talking about. But
you
understand,
yes, yes. The people will suffer as they have always suffered, meanly, mewling for pity and mercy, but only you and I know what true suffering is, the lofty suffering of the hero. Do not speak to
me of the people! They are the brutish mask of war, but war itself is that which they in the ritual of their suffering express but can never comprehend, for their eyes are ever on the ground, while
you and I look up, ever upward, into the blue! The people—peasants, soldiers, generals—they are my tool, as mathematics is yours, by which I come directly at the true, the eternal, the
real. Ah yes, Doctor Copernicus, you and I—you and I! The generations may execrate us for what we do to their world, but we and those rare ones like us shall have made them what they are . .
!” He broke off then and dabbed with a silk kerchief at the corners of his thin mouth. He had a smug drained sated look about him, that the troubled Precentor found himself comparing to that
of a trooper fastening up his breeches after a particularly brutal and gratifying rape. Canon Koppernigk, his face ashen, rose in silence and turned to go. Albrecht, in the tone he might have used
to remark upon the weather, said: “I had your uncle the Bishop poisoned, you know.” The crowd behind him stirred, and Giese, halfway up from his chair, sat down again abruptly. Canon
Koppernigk faltered, but would not turn. Albrecht said lightly, almost skittishly, to his hunched black back: “See, Doctor, how shocked they are? But
you
are not shocked, are you? Well
then, say nothing. It is no matter. Farewell. We shall meet again, perhaps, when the times are better.”

As they went down the hill from the castle, borne through the gleaming darkness on a river of swaying torches, Precentor Giese, confused and pained, tried to speak to his friend, but the Doctor
would not hear, and answered nothing.

*

At dead of night to the castle of Allenstein they came, a hundred men and horse, Poland’s finest, bearing the standard of their king before them, thundered over the
drawbridge, under the portcullis, past the drowsing sentry into the courtyard and there dismounted amidst a great clamour of hoofs and rattling sabres and the roars of Sergeant Tod, a
battle-scarred tough old soldier with a heart of stoutest oak. “Right lads!” he boomed, “no rest for you tonight!” and dispatched them at once to the walls. “Aw for
fuck’s sake, Sarge!” they groaned, but jumped to their post with alacrity, for each man knew in his simple way that they were here not only to protect a lousy castle and a pack of
cringing bloody Prussians, but that the honour of Poland herself was at stake. Their Captain, a gallant young fellow, scion of one of the leading Polish families, covered with his cloak the proud
glowing smile that played upon his lips as he watched them scramble by torchlight to the battlements, and then, pausing only to pinch the rosy cheek of a shy serving wench curtseying in the
doorway, he hurried up the great main staircase with long-legged haste to the Crystal Hall where Land Provost Koppernigk was deep in urgent conference with his beleaguered household. He halted on
the threshold, and bringing his heels together smartly delivered a salute that his commanding officer would have been proud to witness.

The Canon looked up irritably. “Yes? What is it now? Who are you?”

“Captain Chopin, Herr Provost, at your service!”

“Captain
what?
”

“I am an officer of His Gracious Majesty King Sigismund’s First Royal Cavalry, come this night from Mehlsack with one hundred of His Highness’s finest troops. My orders are to
defend to the last man this castle of Allenstein and all within the walls.” (“O God be praised!” cried several voices at once.) “Our army is on the march westward and
expects to engage the foe by morning. The Teutonic Knights are at Heilsberg, and are bombarding the walls of the fortress there. As you are aware, Herr Provost, they have already taken the towns of
Guttstadt and Wormditt to the north. A flanking assault on Allenstein is expected hourly. These devils and their arch fiend Grand Master Albrecht must be stopped—and they shall be stopped, by
God’s blood! (Forgive a soldier’s language, sire.) You will recall the siege of Frauenburg, how they fired the town and slaughtered the people without mercy. Only the bravery of your
Prussian mercenaries prevented them from breaching the cathedral wall. Your Chapter fled to the safety of Danzig, leaving to you, Herr Provost, the defence of Allenstein and Mehlsack. However, in
that regard, I must regretfully inform you now that Mehlsack has been sacked, sire, and—”

But here he was interrupted by the hasty entrance of a large dark burly man attired in the robes of a canon.

“Koppernigk!” cried Canon Snellenburg (for it is he), “they are bombarding Heilsberg and it’s said the Bishop is dead—” He stopped, catching sight of the
proud young fellow standing to attention in his path. “Who are you?”

“Captain Chopin, sire, at your—”

“Captain
who?
”

Zounds! the Captain thought, are they all deaf? “I am an officer of His Gracious—”

“Yes yes,” said Snellenburg, waving his large hands. “Another damned Pole, I know. Listen, Koppernigk, the bastards are at Heilsberg. They’ll be here by morning. What are
you going to do?”

The Land Provost looked mildly from the Canon to the Captain, at his household crouched about the table, the secretaries, whey-faced clergy, minor administrators, and then to the frightened
gaggle of servants ranged expectantly behind him. He shrugged.

“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.

*     *     *

F
rau 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!