The Cabinet of Curiosities (12 page)

Celestina blushed, but her shame was mixed with indignation. Her father was a difficult man to fathom – unlike Lukas, whom she could read like a book.

‘Now, you must tell me more of the contents of the Cabinet,’ said Dorantes. ‘I need to know in what the Emperor takes delight, so I may use this intelligence to influence him and his courtiers. If I can speak to him face to face, I am convinced I will be able to persuade him to support our work to suppress the heretics.’

‘The Cabinet is a bewildering collection of religious relics, magical talismans and extraordinary natural objects,’ said Celestina, and reeled off as many items as she could remember.

As he listened Dorantes felt a flash of hatred for the custodians of this bizarre repository. It was men like Anselmus Declercq and his portly friend Grunewald, with their lax orthodoxies and wanton curiosity, who fed the madness of the Emperor and corrupted his proper understanding of the world.

‘And there is a section of the Cabinet,’ she said with a flash of inspiration, ‘full of treasures from the New World. There are paintings of the flora and fauna, preserved bodies of animals and the ornaments and trinkets of the savages.’

‘Now I know how to obtain an audience,’ he said. His hand rested on her shoulder. ‘Well done, my child. You have the makings of a fine diplomat, and you have done me a great service. It is a pity you were not born a boy. Now I must away, but let me remind you of Proverbs twenty-five, fifteen:
By long forbearing is a prince persuaded, and a soft tongue breaketh the bone.
’

Celestina envied her father’s ability to always find a suitable quote from the Bible. It was a skill many a cleric would admire. But she shuddered a little at the violence implied in his words.

She also shuddered at the terrible risk he had asked her to take. She had not told him she had glimpsed the Emperor. It was a moment that would give her sleepless nights, and she did not want her father to know how close they had been to disaster. But she had enjoyed this little task he had set her. Perhaps he would ask her to do more for him now. It was certainly more interesting than whiling away her days with Perpetua, reading or working at making lace in their dreary quarters.

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Chapter Twenty-One

‘Señor,’ said Rudolph, and held out a hand for Dorantes to kiss, ‘we thank you for your extraordinary gift. It will take pride of place in our collection of treasures from the New World. It is indeed an exquisite piece.’

On the table in front of them lay Dorantes’s Inca sacrificial knife, which had been the key to this long-awaited meeting.

Dorantes was surprised to hear the Emperor speaking so eloquently. From the reports of his colleagues he had assumed Rudolph would have the character of a surly, monosyllabic youth.

‘And what news is there of our uncle Philip? We were educated at his court as a young man,’ said Rudolph. ‘We hold your sovereign in great esteem.’

To Dorantes, this seemed a perfect opportunity to mention the purpose of his visit.

‘His Majesty is well, Your Excellency,’ he said, ‘and sends his fondest affection . . .’ He paused. ‘. . . but he is also distressed. He hears that in your great realm there are many troubles. And that Christians live side by side with Jews and heretics, even in the greatest city of the Empire. He commands me to tell you, and I in turn humbly beseech you, to put the authority of your crown to the service of the Inquisition and the Jesuit colleges recently established in Prague.’

Dorantes searched Rudolph’s face for a reaction to his words, but the Emperor remained inscrutable. The only emotion the ambassador detected was faint boredom. He carried on with his much-rehearsed script.

‘His Majesty hears that sorcery and deviation sweep the land . . .’

Rudolph cut him off. ‘Your Eminence,’ he said impatiently, ‘these are not issues that interest us.’

He turned his back on Dorantes and stared out of the window, breathing deeply, trying to control his anger.

Dorantes stood there feeling foolish. Although he was desperate to leave, he had waited too long for this moment. He searched his mind, wondering what else he could say to prolong this audience and further his mission.

Rudolph came to his rescue. ‘Let us talk no more of these matters,’ he said, turning back to his visitor. ‘Come, we shall take you to our Cabinet. You may be able to tell us more about the articles we possess from the wondrous region from which you have so recently returned.’

Dorantes remembered the words he had spoken to his daughter about soft tongues breaking bones, and nodded graciously. ‘You do me a great honour, Your Excellency.’

During that afternoon Rudolph showed him many of his cherished possessions, including the luminous white vase Anselmus had brought him with a depiction of a dragon with fur. ‘Our good Doktor Declercq is a man of great learning, both ancient and modern.’ The Emperor beamed. ‘His mind is open to all the wonders of the world. He does not let dogmatism and zealotry cloud his perception.’

Dorantes ignored the implied criticism. Instead he tried to impress Rudolph with his own knowledge.

‘These are coca leaves, Your Majesty,’ he said, pointing to a skilfully executed watercolour of Peruvian plant life. ‘The natives chew on them when they are tired, and the leaf gives them energy. I too have tried the leaves. They have a bitter taste, but the effect is similar to imbibing the crushed and stewed seed of the Ottoman coffee bush.’

The Emperor seemed fascinated by these observations. But whenever Dorantes tried again to raise the concerns of his uncle Philip of Spain, Rudolph would divert him by pointing to yet another marvellous artefact in his magnificent collection.

.

Dorantes returned to his quarters feeling overwhelmed by the burden of the task before him. His fellow courtiers were waiting for him. He breathed deeply and thought carefully about what he had to say.

‘His Majesty has the vestiges of a good Christian soul,’ he said dismissively, ‘but I can find not a glimmer of interest in our mission.’

‘Your Eminence,’ said Elias Aguilar, Dorantes’s second in command, ‘how can he be a good Christian, if he will not support our work? Impeding the spread of heresy is our monarch’s greatest desire and has the blessing and full support of the Holy Father. Can it be that he is not a believer in the one true faith?’

‘He is a believer,’ said Dorantes wearily. ‘Of that I am sure. But his mind has been disordered by the heresy that surrounds him. He does not consider it important that all his subjects are true to the Church of Rome.

‘Besides, he has left himself foolishly dependent on the Protestant nobles of this land for arms and money in his battle against the Turks. He is held to ransom by this obligation.’

‘It is a shame that his brother Maximilian does not rule in his stead,’ said Aguilar. ‘He would be far more sympathetic to the wishes of our crown and the Holy See. I hear he gives three hours a day to his devotions. The Emperor in this realm is elected by his peers. I wonder if we should advise our own Majesty to redirect our efforts towards usurping this ridiculous buffoon?’

Rudolph’s habit of not seeing diplomats for months on end had instilled in the Spanish party a deep-seated loathing of their host. Spending their days among the heretics and the natural philosophers of the Castle had not improved their mood. They were proud men with an inborn sense of their own importance, and they did not take kindly to being kept waiting like minor functionaries at a town-hall assembly. Now they could see that Dorantes’s mission had no hope of success, their anger was unrestrained.

‘His Majesty has achieved little in his war against the Turks,’ said Aguilar. ‘Even now, they menace Vienna and civil war simmers between his Balkan allies. Heretics and Jews, even Muslims, live freely in many of his lands, with no fear of the Inquisition. The foul sin of alchemy is practised even within the palace walls. And still this man professes his love for our King! He has done everything a ruler should not do to keep the love and respect of his court and people.’

Such treasonous talk would warrant execution if overheard by any courtier with a scintilla of loyalty to the Emperor, yet Dorantes noticed how every man in the room snorted and harrumphed their approval and support. He sat for a while before responding in a quiet, measured tone.

‘I will send word to our Majesty. I will suggest that we change the purpose of our mission and begin to build support for one of the other archdukes. I understand that there is little love between the Emperor and his brothers, which can only aid our cause.’

‘We must chose our candidate well,’ said Aguilar. ‘The Archduke Matthias is his natural successor, but he too has proven to be open to an understanding with the Protestant nobles. Maximilian would be a worthy heir to the Holy Roman Empire. He will have the will to crush the heretics and infidels that swamp these lands. And the Archduke Ferdinand may also serve our purpose.’

Dorantes thought Aguilar was overreaching himself and tried to re-establish his authority with a bold proposal. ‘And while we wait,’ he declared, ‘we must try to undermine those servants of Satan who besmirch the judgement of the Emperor. I can think of no finer place to start than his heretic physicians.’

Aguilar volunteered, considering them an easy target. ‘We must strike at them by any means, oblique or direct. Perhaps we might enlist the Inquisition in our task. They still have jurisdiction in matters of witchcraft. Accusations could be made. I have contacts in the city,’ he said. ‘I will see to it at once.’

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Chapter Twenty-Two

As he hurried from his uncle’s quarters on another visit to the apothecary, Lukas looked up at the rear of the great Cathedral looming before him. The pillars rose to sharp points on the columns supporting the chancel walls and he was struck for a moment by their resemblance to the pointed hoods of the Inquisition. The gargoyles looked down on him with their cold stone eyes.

Lukas’s trip to the Cabinet with Celestina had not brought the reward he expected. She was avoiding him again. But that was the least of his worries. It had been five days now since their visit, and he had begun to bitterly regret stealing the timepiece. His guilt was like a demon squatting on his shoulders – an almost physical presence weighing him down. He could no longer understand what had made him do it.

He had hidden the timepiece behind some books in his bedroom. Otka tidied his room every day, but he was sure she would not find it there. Any pleasure he got from taking it out of its hiding place and looking at it had quickly evaporated.

He had swiftly rejected the idea of selling it. The piece was so exquisite he could imagine wearing it next to his heart for the rest of his life. He wanted to keep it. Then he wondered if he should give it to Celestina. That would win her heart, no doubt. But did she deserve such a prize? And how could he be sure she would not betray him? Or show it to someone else?

That afternoon Lukas could not settle to his studies. Neither could he do anything right for his uncle. Each medicine he made was too sweet or too bitter; the ingredients he fetched were wrong. Anselmus grew so vexed with him, he sent him to bed with stale bread and cold bratwurst.

Otka could do nothing to please Anselmus either. He had invited Grunewald and some other friends for that evening and had instructed her to bake them a pie. But early in the preparation she had noticed the flour had spoiled and had had to throw a whole jar of it away. Anselmus had accused her of keeping it carelessly. She had been most affronted and, although she had cooked a stew instead, she left that evening without saying goodbye.

Lukas spent a fitful night drifting in and out of restless sleep as he listened to the laughter and excited conversation of Anselmus’s guests. Some time in the night he began to dream. He was alone in a great laboratory, standing in front of a long mirror, dressed in the black gown of the condemned at a heretic burning. Torches were flickering on high stone walls. Alembics and stills and cauldrons and phials bubbled and steamed, and there was a choking stench of sulphur.

But the smell did not come from the smouldering matter thickening in the crucibles. Behind him, in the mirror, he could see a pair of glowing red eyes in the darkness. Too terrified to move, he watched a shape take form in the gloom. He saw two horns atop a goat-like head on the scarlet body of a great brute of a man. It was the Evil One, come to claim him.

The apparition raised a hand and from the open palm flowed a ray of swirling light. In an instant Lukas found himself unable to move. The figure faded into a haze of smoke. Now he was looking out at the room from the exact spot where the mirror stood. He was caught between glass and mercury. Trapped inside the mirror until Judgement Day, when the Devil would return to gather his soul.

In the morning Lukas felt groggy and in ill humour. ‘What is up with you, boy?’ said Anselmus. ‘I shall have to bleed you if your temper remains so bilious.’

‘I’m sorry, Uncle,’ snapped Lukas. ‘I was, as you observed last night, very tired. Now I have slept badly.’

‘Bleeding,’ Anselmus said sharply. ‘The perfect remedy for imbalanced humours, by cutting or by leeches.’ A while later he said, ‘Perhaps we have been feeding you the wrong victuals. Salad followed by fruit . . . that’s what’s caused your sourness. Moistness and coldness can ruin the digestion and set the humours out of kilter.’

They passed the rest of the day in sulky silence. Otka’s arrival did not help. She was still angry with Anselmus, and a poisonous atmosphere hung over the whole apartment. That evening Anselmus went to see Grunewald and Lukas hoped that would put him in a better mood. But his uncle returned immediately. That very hour Grunewald had been taken violently ill and was in no state to receive visitors.

Next morning Anselmus sent Lukas to the apothecary to fetch supplies. It was a relief to get away from the stifling atmosphere of their chambers.

As he walked down to the Stone Bridge he began to fret again about the watch. It was too unusual, would be too easily recognised. Now his every waking hour was entangled, like brambles around a tree, with the thought of what would happen to him when he was discovered.

Stealing from a market stall got you a whipping or even a branding. Stealing from the Emperor would mean death. And who would make a more infamous thief than the apprentice of one of Rudolph’s most trusted physicians? They would make an example of him. If he was lucky he would have his head cut off. That was quick, at least. But being broken on the wheel was hideous and it could take several days to die.

Then there was the matter of Anselmus. He would be disgusted with his protégé. And he would be ruined too. His reputation would not survive such a disgrace.

‘Think straight, Lukas,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Let us look at this in the scientific manner.’ That’s what his uncle would encourage him to do. Examine the known facts and then act upon them.

He could destroy it.

He could cast it to the floor and smash it to pieces beneath his boot heel. Bury it in the garden. Throw it into the Vltava. But how could he do that to something so beautiful? He thought of the hundreds of hours the instrument makers had laboured, fashioning the tiny cogs, flywheels, springs and screws, and the thousands of hours the goldsmiths had put into the intricate design. To destroy it would be a worse sin than stealing it.

Sell it?

Perhaps this was the best idea after all. Etienne would help. There was a good chance he would get a handsome price for it and, even if Lukas only got half of it, he would be left with more money than he could earn in several years of his apprenticeship. What a temptation that was. He would even be able to rent his own apartment.

But how could he explain his newfound wealth to his uncle?

Or he could just put it back.

Why didn’t he think of that before?

The donkey and his cart would have come and gone. He would have to wait until tomorrow.

Lukas returned to his uncle’s quarters feeling a great sense of relief. His problem was solved. Anselmus was not home and Lukas began to feel impatient for his midday meal.

Then there was a commotion at the door. Anselmus burst in. ‘Lukas – Lukas, are you home? Come quickly! Something terrible has happened . . .’

Lukas felt so sick with fear he almost retched. He had been found out. He rose unsteadily to his feet and opened the door. Trying to arrange his features in an approximation of surprise he said, ‘Why, Uncle, what has happened?’

‘It’s my poor sister,’ he said. ‘They have arrested her – accused her of witchcraft. She is held in the New Town jail. She was in the market and she collapsed, muttering something about flying. And then she started to talk about how she was burning. I have just been to see her. I tried to persuade the jailer to let her go. It’s just the imaginings of a lonely old woman, I told him. She is doing no harm. I even offered him five crowns, but he told me that the Inquisition had already been summoned. “She said she was flying,” he said. “Flying and then tormented by the fires of hell. She must be a witch. The burning is a foretaste of what is to come.”

‘They are to take her to Daliborka Tower . . .’ He could speak no more and let out a great desperate wail.

Lukas felt sad. As much as he disliked his aunt, she did not deserve the attention of the Inquisition. He wondered how someone as frail as her would stand up to them.

There was a loud knock at the door.

‘Go and see who it is,’ said Anselmus. ‘Tell them I’m not in.’

An imperial herald stood at the door holding a small scroll. ‘A message for Anselmus Declercq,’ he announced to Lukas, ‘from His Imperial Highness.’

‘Thank you,’ said Lukas. ‘I will give it to him.’

The man looked affronted. ‘Messages from the Emperor are to be delivered straight to their intended recipient,’ he said sternly. ‘I must see him in person.’

‘Please come in,’ said Lukas, feeling silly.

Anselmus looked up from the table where he had buried his face in his hands. Lukas could see tears streaming down his cheeks.

‘A message from His Imperial Highness,’ announced the herald, taking no account of Anselmus’s condition.

Anselmus pulled himself together. ‘And does His Majesty require an immediate response?’ he said.

‘I am to wait,’ said the man.

Anselmus took the parchment and hurriedly broke the red wax seal that held it as a scroll. Lukas searched his face for clues, but all his uncle did was give a little nod.

‘Return shortly,’ he said to the herald, who left the chambers without another word.

Lukas looked at his uncle in silence.

‘You may return to your studies,’ he said. ‘We shall have to discuss Aunt Elfriede later.’

Lukas went back to his room and opened his herbal encyclopedia. He was consumed with curiosity about what was going on. He could hear scuttling and scratching and wondered if Anselmus was looking for the keys to the Cabinet. He hoped he had put them back in exactly the right place and, in a sudden moment of panic, prayed that his uncle had not left a hair or some other indicator in place over the keys, so he could tell if anyone had moved them.

Anselmus was gone fifteen minutes and returned, his face drawn and white with anxiety.

‘Uncle, whatever is the matter?’ said Lukas.

‘The Emperor has gone to his country estate and has sent for his pendant watch, which he left in the Cabinet. But I’ve just been there and it’s gone.’

Lukas’s stomach lurched and he feigned disbelief. ‘How can that be?’

Anselmus ignored him. ‘He left it there the last time he visited. He was admiring a set of amber beads on the table. It is well known that amber has great healing properties when worn next to the skin.’

Lukas pictured the gemstones with a queasy jolt of recognition. They had been right next to the timepiece when he had taken it.

‘Now he tells me he took off his pendant watch there. It was probably knocking against the table as it hung from his neck – I’ve seen it happen before. And then he forgot it. His letter instructs me to collect it and give it to the herald. It is his favourite timepiece. I have gone and looked in exactly the spot he describes. I have found the beads – and the tortoiseshell he said was also there – but there is no timepiece. It has gone.’

‘But surely he could be mistaken,’ said Lukas. ‘Perhaps the watch is somewhere else.’

Anselmus wiped his eyes. ‘The Emperor lacks much in the working of his mind, but he has an excellent memory and is rarely wrong in such matters.’

Lukas couldn’t believe his ill fortune. It was not even part of the collection, something that might be forgotten among ten thousand other trinkets and baubles. It was the Emperor’s favourite timepiece. How could he return it now? He cursed himself bitterly for having taken it.

Anselmus demanded they both return immediately to the Cabinet. ‘You may see what I have overlooked,’ he said desperately. Lukas was trying to think of an excuse, something that would allow him to go to his room and retrieve the watch in order to slip it back on to a table in there, but his mind had gone completely blank.

As he hesitated, his uncle grabbed his arm and hurried him to the Cabinet. They searched, Anselmus fretting pitifully all the while. ‘If the watch has gone, then the Emperor will blame me. For no one else among his curators has been into the Cabinet since his departure to his summer lodge. Fischer and Tesarik are both there with him. Vrzala is in Hradec and Grunewald has not been there for months. No one else has the keys to the Cabinet. All fingers will point at me. I shall be ruined.’

Lukas felt terrible. It hadn’t even occurred to his uncle to accuse him.

‘And there are worse things than ruin. If the Emperor decides I have betrayed his trust, then I shall be taken to Daliborka Tower and tortured. They may execute me. I can’t face the thought of being broken on the wheel. I would rather kill myself.’

‘Uncle, you mustn’t say such things. You will imperil your soul.’

They searched for an hour in the gathering gloom, Lukas still trying to think of how he could spirit the watch back to the Cabinet. The herald came and rapped on the door, demanding that he be given what he had come for. Anselmus begged him to wait another hour. The overcast day shed little light on the vast array of treasures before them.

Anselmus, in his frantic searching, was muttering desperately: ‘I shall be ruined, tortured and ruined.’

Lukas had begun to think of the words he would use to explain what he had done. When he could bear it no longer he said, ‘Uncle, I have something to tell you, but please let me tell you away from here, in our rooms.’

Anselmus looked at him with a piercing glare. He understood at once what Lukas was going to say. ‘The Devil is a great seducer,’ he spat. ‘Satan has leaped on you as hunger does on a hot loaf.’ Then he took several deep breaths.