The Astrologer Read Online Free PDF

will not call my departed cousin brilliant, though.”
    “No?”
    “A brilliant man does not turn his back upon power, property, and wealth to make a common marriage with a common woman. Tycho’s common children did not inherit his lands or title. They live in common poverty and I cannot call that brilliant. Nor call I it brilliant for a man to turn his back upon his king and find himself exiled.”
    Straslund had not brains enough to judge the brilliance of a dog. Were I a different sort of man, I would have struck a hard blow against his thick head.
    “Tycho was not exiled. He left Denmark at the invitation of the Emperor.”
    “Had he not fled to Prague, my esteemed and brilliant cousin would have found his brainy head impaled on a spear, Soren. And he would have deserved it.”
    There was no point to my argument with Straslund except that I disliked him. It was true that Tycho had been exiled, after all. We had been chased from the island, and then Tycho had been murdered by a paid assassin in Prague. But it was important that I not display too great a passion over Tycho’s fate, and so I changed the subject.
    “What do you here at Kronberg, Straslund?”
    We faced each other over the fire. My hands, which I had been warming near the brazier, were balled into fists. I shoved them into my cloak. Straslund laughed.
    “I came to see you, as it happens.”
    “Indeed.”
    “Aye. Come, walk with me for a moment.” He beckoned me to follow him away from Captain Helmuth and his men at the guardhouse. A wind was picking up, bringing with it the smell of the sea and a coming storm, which promised more snowfall. I joined Straslund on the flagstone lip of the moat, above the dark lapping waters.
    Zealand is the largest of Denmark’s four hundred islands, and Kronberg castle was built on the easternmost point of the island, on an angle of rocky hills known as the Spit. From this castle jutting out into the sea have Danish kings long controlled the Baltic trade. Kronberg was a solid old fort, protected behind thick battlements of brick laid over earthwork, and the Spit itself was divided from the rest of Zealand by the great moat. This deep trench cut a long arc around the castle, all the way across the Spit from the northeast to the southwest where it opened into the King’s Harbor. Behind its moat, Kronberg was an island unto itself, surrounded on all sides by water. No man could touch Kronberg’s habitants from the landward side with the deep moat laying in his way, and the cannon along the battlements would sink any enemy who came by sea. From the trumpeter’s tower, a lookout could spy far out over the Sound, to the edge of the Earth on a clear day.
    “Well, Straslund? What is your business with me?”
    “Will you visit your father now you’ve come back?”
    “You care not about my family. Let us stipulate to all the polite forms and pretend you have something of interest to say to me.”
    “I have no interest in your family, it is true.” Straslund leaned close to whisper, the smell of wine and sausages billowing out of him. “But I have, of course, a particular interest in my own family.”
    “Of course.”
    “When my cousin Tycho fled to Prague, he left behind a large number of valuable instruments on his island.”
    “They are still there?”
    “They are, Soren. The king has not moved them. I thought you knew.”
    “I assumed them all gone to Prague.”
    “They are worth something, do you not agree?”
    “They are worth a considerable amount, to the right man.”
    “So. There you are, and here you are.”
    “I do not understand you, Straslund.”
    It was growing colder as the sun descended. The weather had worked its way into my boots and I began to shiver. Straslund took my arm and tried to pull me closer and I shook his hand away.
    “You are the only man I know who can tell me the real value of Tycho’s instruments,” he said. “I suspect that you could do with some extra coin, and I am