Traitor Angels (7 page)

“I am, but the natural world fascinates me, too.” His tone was easy. Obviously, our proximity wasn’t affecting
him
. At least only one of us was addle-brained tonight.

Irritated with myself, I peered through the eyepiece. Then I gasped aloud. The moon looked as white and lustrous as a pearl, its curved shape blurred as though it were wrapped in fog. Dark shadows dotted its surface.

“What are those specks on the moon?” I asked.

“Valleys and craters. The moon’s surface isn’t smooth, as many believe, but pockmarked with valleys and mountains. By daylight I can show you something even more shocking. Have you heard of the phenomenon of sunspots?”

I shook my head and, loath to blink, I continued staring at the moon. The dark specks were tinged with blue. From this distance, I couldn’t discern which were valleys and which mountains. It little mattered—this was still the most beautiful, awe-inspiring vision I’d ever beheld.

“Sunspots are dark fumes or vapors that travel across the sun’s surface.” Viviani’s breath fluttered warmly on my neck. “They are proof that the sun rotates, stationary, on its axis.”

I pulled away from the telescope so I could turn to look at him. “If the sun is stationary, how can it rise and set?”

Viviani’s eyes held mine. There was something in his face I couldn’t make out—it might have been a challenge. “Because the earth moves around the sun.”

I stared at him, my heart throbbing against my ribs. “That’s blasphemy! The Bible says all heavenly bodies revolve around the earth.”

“You are holding the telescope of the man who discovered the sun’s true movements,” Viviani said fiercely. “Fifty years ago he published the work
Letters on Sunspots
, and instead of being hailed as the visionary he truly was, he was accused of heresy by the Inquisitors in Rome. We should be brave enough to seek the truth, even when it contradicts our beliefs! Yet everywhere I look, I see people wrapping themselves in darkness because they’d rather not upset the balance of their lives.”

I hesitated, unsure what to say. Willful blindness was something I was all too familiar with. For years, I had heard others hurl insults at Father and Anne, saying their physical afflictions were God’s punishment for their sins. Deep in my bones, I had known they were wrong—I’d known that Father was a good person and Anne was the best, kindest girl I would ever meet. His blindness and her deformed limbs and simple mind must spring from another source, I was convinced. Yet Psalm 104 stated that the earth stands still and the Book of Joshua told us that the sun revolved around our motionless planet, unless it was paused in its journey by God’s hand. And I’d always been taught that the Bible contained unassailable truths.

“You must be mistaken,” I said at last.

“I’m not.” Viviani took the telescope from my limp fingers. “Some truths are inescapable, Miss Milton, whether or not you choose to believe them. Every night the stars will shine and rotate in their constellations, and continually our planet will revolve in its journey around the sun.”

Pointedly, I looked at the ground. “The earth seems motionless to me.”

“It’s an illusion. Our planet is in perpetual motion, and other forces keep us anchored to the ground.” Viviani stalked to our campsite. “The earth turns toward the east at a high rate of speed.”

That was impossible! I raced after him.

“If Earth moves in such a fashion, then wouldn’t falling leaves scatter to the west of trees?” I demanded. “And birds lose their way in midair?”

Viviani spun around and stared at me. “How do you know to ask such questions? You’re a girl—”

“Yes, and therefore I ought to be sitting at home, embroidering and pining for a husband,” I retorted. “Tell me how such things are possible!”

He didn’t take his eyes from my face. “Because the earth imparts motion to all objects. Therefore, we don’t fight the movement but become part of it. Like people walking along the deck of a ship at sea.”

I thought of the times I had ridden on the small, flat-bottomed boats that traveled up and down the Thames, ferrying passengers who didn’t want to traverse the clogged London streets. If I closed my eyes, I could still feel my body rocking with the motion of the current and hear the water slapping the sides of the boat. Viviani was correct: I had absorbed the boat’s movement, rather than struggling against it.

Then . . . what he had said was possible. The earth
could
rotate on its axis. And we could move with it, unaware that at every single instant we were in motion.

I dropped my head into my hands. If Viviani was right, then the Bible was wrong. And the ground was no longer hard and strong but made of shifting sand.

“Many are afraid of the laws of nature because they seem to contradict divine scripture,” Viviani said quietly. “My master, like his master before him, thinks the universe is a giant puzzle, laid out by God, and it’s our task to assemble the pieces and make sense of them.”

“I don’t want to believe that,” I said in a choked voice.

“No matter what you want to believe, the truth remains the same.” His hand brushed my shoulder—a touch as soft as gossamer. “But my master’s master dared to write what he saw in the stars. He recanted before the Inquisitors during his trial; this kept him alive, but he was sentenced to house arrest for the remainder of his life. If I’m ever called upon to defend my beliefs, I hope I can suffer the consequences as unflinchingly as Galileo Galilei did.”

At the name, my head snapped up.

“You speak of Galileo,” I breathed.

“Galileo?” Viviani’s forehead wrinkled. “Maybe that’s how he’s known in your country, but that’s his Christian name, and we refer to him as Signor Galilei.”

I barely heard him. “My father met him nearly thirty years ago. He visited him secretly when Galileo was under house arrest.”

In two quick strides, Viviani had closed the distance between us and gripped my hands in his. The telescope was pressed between our palms, the leather rod keeping our fingers from tangling together. “My master became apprenticed to Signor Galilei
when he was seventeen and lived with him during the last years of his life, from sixteen thirty-nine to forty-two. Could he have met your father?”

I shook my head. “He visited Galileo in thirty-eight.”

Viviani released me and paced around the campsite, his boots kicking up eddies of dust from the water-hungry ground. “Nevertheless,
something
must have happened all those years ago to link the three men together. The secret could be rooted in politics, as you thought. Before he was arrested, Signor Galilei was friends with the pope and dozens of important people. He could have learned something incriminating about the king’s father—something the king is frantic to hide—and told your father about it.”

I held myself still, trying to quiet my whirling thoughts and arrange them in some semblance of order. Shortly after my father had met Galileo, my country plunged into civil war, and Father revised his Italian third sonnet. In 1649, King Charles the First was executed, his family banished, and my father was invited to join the fledgling revolutionary government. Sometime after my birth the next year, when I was so young I can’t now remember the beginning of my training, my father gave me my first dagger. Within ten years, the government had fallen, and by 1660 the beheaded king’s son had been crowned and my family had begun our new life of quiet poverty. And now, in 1666, according to Father’s letter, his increasingly frail health had prompted him to send for Viviani. Were all these events links in the same chain? And how could we possibly find out?

“The timeline fits our political secret theory,” I said. “But why did Buckingham plant a spy among our London neighbors
in the first place? And why was he so worried by news of your arrival in London that he sent men to our cottage in Chalfont? No,” I corrected myself. “He wasn’t worried about
your
arrival, but about the fact that you’re a Florentine. Somehow he must have known that Italians were involved with my father’s secret.”

“And now we’re left chasing after an old sonnet.” Viviani sounded frustrated. He dropped down onto his bedroll.

For a long time, we didn’t talk. I lay on my back, gazing at the sky, trying to empty my mind so answers could stream in. The stars looked like a scattering of coins tossed by a reckless hand—yet I knew they rotated with clockwork regularity. Overhead, the moon once again looked like its usual blank self, its mysteries of mountains and valleys concealed from me.

But I remembered what I had seen through the telescope’s glass. My eyes hadn’t lied to me.

Perhaps
, said a small voice in my mind,
he’s right, and we should be brave enough to look for the truth, even when it goes against what we’ve been taught
.

I shied away from the thought like a skittish horse. This was heresy, and people had been burned for less.

I turned my head a fraction, just enough so I could see Viviani’s profile. He was staring at the stars, his jaw set, his eyes unblinking. His hands were crossed over his chest, rising and falling with the steadiness of his breaths. How strange the stars must look to him, hanging in different locations in the sky than he was accustomed to. Yet he remained here, in this foreign place, because he wanted to keep his word to his master. And he had told me what he believed to be the truth about the earth’s movements, when it would have been easier to lie.

My mouth opened. “Signor Viviani,” I heard myself saying, “you may call me Elizabeth. If you like.”

Heat flooded my cheeks. From the corner of my eye, I saw him smile.

“Then you must call me Antonio,” he said.

Antonio
. I repeated the name silently, listening to the way its syllables rose and fell before stretching out. Such a foreign-sounding name, strange to my ears, but pleasing.

“Good night, Antonio.” I rolled onto my side, away from him.

There was a pause. “Good night, Elizabeth.”

He said nothing else. We lay in silence, silvered by starlight, surrounded by darkness.

IN THE MORNING WE WASHED IN A NEARBY
stream before breaking our fast. I plunged my hands into the icy water, letting it sluice down my arms. Antonio had removed his doublet, and he cupped water in his hands, then combed it through his hair. Water splashed the front of his shirt, turning the fabric translucent and plastering it to his skin. Through the thin silk, I could see the muscles of his chest.

The sight should have been indecent—it was too much like seeing someone straight from the bath—but I couldn’t rip my gaze away. What a marvel the human form was: a frame made of bone, covered by flesh, and a thousand mysteries in between. As I watched Antonio wash his face, I wondered for the hundredth time how our bodies responded to the commands our minds uttered. How did Antonio’s hands know to cup themselves into a bowl and capture the stream’s water? How did my eyes know
to redirect their gaze because I wanted to look at him? Truly, our bodies and brains contained so many secrets. And I yearned to find out all of them.

“If you keep looking at me in that manner, my virtue may be in danger,” Antonio said.

My face went hot. “You’re an idiot,” I muttered, busying myself with setting out bread and cheese. Whether I spoke to him or to myself, I couldn’t be sure.

He laughed. Was there
nothing
that shook this boy’s composure?

I stuffed a wad of bread into my mouth so I wouldn’t be tempted to speak. But I couldn’t help remembering Antonio’s allusion to his virtue—which, judging by what he had said, was untouched. There might not be a girl in Florence holding a string to his heart.

I hated myself for the warmth that filled my chest at the thought. Truly, who was the idiot now?

Still, he’s a decent sort
, I told myself, chewing and studiously not looking at him. He could have mocked my father for his blindness or my sister for her mismade legs. Perhaps he’d been raised not to assume that physical ailments had been caused by God’s wrath, for his master had served a blind man.

The bread turned to ash in my mouth. Galileo had been blind.
Like my father
.

I jumped to my feet. “Galileo was definitely blind, wasn’t he?”

Antonio’s forehead creased in surprise. “Yes. He slowly went blind in one eye, then the other. Why?”

I could barely breathe. Father had lost his vision in his left eye, then his right.

“When did he lose his sight?”

“I think he was completely blind by sixteen thirty-six or thirty-seven,” Antonio said, “so he was sightless for the last five or six years of his life. My master said Signor Galilei damaged his eyes by looking through telescopes so often, but of course many said it was God’s punishment for his heretical beliefs about the planets’ movements. What does it matter?”

Knives of worry stabbed my stomach. Both men gradually going blind, one eye at a time, ostracized, then imprisoned for their political or philosophical beliefs. They had lost their vision for different reasons: Father for reading so much by candlelight, Galileo for using his telescopes—

I gasped aloud. Galileo had used
telescopes
. And he had been living in Tuscany when my father met him. In some respects, he could be considered an “artist,” for he had used his creativity and imagination to attempt to solve the riddles of the skies.

In my mind, I saw lines from Father’s poem, the ones we had been working on during our last session together:
Through Optic Glass the Tuscan Artist views / At Ev’ning from the top of Fesole
. . .

Galileo was the Tuscan Artist! I knew my father too well to pretend Galileo’s inclusion in his masterpiece was a twist of chance or an homage to a natural philosopher he admired.

It was a clue.

“Elizabeth?” Antonio tapped my knee. “What’s wrong?”

I shook my head, as if to clear it. “My father turned Galileo into a character in
Paradise Lost
. He’s the only contemporary person in the entire poem. It’s a message, I’m sure of it!”

Antonio’s eyebrows rose. “What happens in
Paradise Lost
when Signor Galilei appears?”

“Galileo is mentioned just as Satan escapes from a lake of
fire,” I said. “It’s the moment when evil frees itself from a prison and prepares to unleash itself onto the world. The timing can’t be a coincidence.”

“Perhaps Galileo accomplished something that, like Satan, could change Earth forever.”

Wordlessly, we stared at each other. How could we ever piece together all these separate pieces so they made one cohesive picture? And if Galileo
had
committed a momentous act years ago in his native Tuscany, then what bearing could that possibly have on the king now, decades later, in another part of the world? It made no sense.

“The answers must be waiting for us in Oxford,” I said urgently.

Without speaking again, we packed the remaining food and swung ourselves onto our horses. Antonio took off at once. I slouched low in my saddle and followed.

We pushed our horses to the limit. By the time the sun had reached its noonday zenith, all of us, humans and beasts alike, were hot and flushed. On the edge of a wooded thicket, we sat with our backs braced against the trees, eating a simple meal of bread and dried fruit. When we had finished, I excused myself. Upon returning to our temporary camp, I found Antonio had gone, presumably to complete the same errand, and I took advantage of the momentary break to lie on the ground. I closed my throbbing eyes.

Pine needles sighed under approaching feet. “I beg your pardon,” said a boy’s voice that was definitely not Antonio’s, “but have you seen a boy of about eighteen or nineteen, black-haired, who
speaks with a foreign accent, and a girl of the same age, dressed in Puritan clothes? They should have passed this way recently.”

My insides hardened to ice. Someone was already after us. My eyes flew open and I found myself staring into a stranger’s face. His was so close to mine our noses nearly touched. He crouched next to my supine body, leaning over me. In the shadows cast by the trees, he was made up of white and dark: pale cheeks, the twin orbs of his eyes, a tumble of brown hair.

“No,” I said slowly. “I haven’t seen them.”

“A pity.” He said the words lightly, but I saw the way his mouth twisted: he was disappointed. “I would have paid you handsomely for any information you could have given me. Oh, well. Here’s a guinea for your trouble.”

He sat back on his haunches, digging through a small leather pouch strung onto his belt. Eyes narrowed, I pushed myself to a sitting position. My braid coiled heavily on my neck; my hat lay a few feet away. Apparently this stranger hadn’t noticed my hair yet, but it couldn’t be long before he did. I rotated my wrists, feeling my knives’ leather bindings bite into my forearms. An instant’s work and my blade could be at this stranger’s throat. But there was no need to attack him and arouse his suspicions. Not yet.

I darted a glance behind me. The horses stood near the stream, but Antonio was still gone.

“You have my apologies for waking you,” the stranger said. He spoke with a highborn London accent, his syllables crisp and precise.

He had gotten to his feet, and he flicked a guinea in my direction. It hit the dirt next to me, but I made no move to pick
it up, watching him instead. This boy looked to be about my age, and his brown hair fell to his shoulders in curling waves. He was uncommonly tall, at least six feet, and wore a doublet and breeches of yellow silk.

“Who are you?” I asked, taking care to pitch my voice low.

He didn’t seem to hear me; he was staring at some point on my chest. I followed the line of his gaze: my braid had slipped over my shoulder and hung over my bust.

“A girl—” he started to gasp, but I didn’t give him the chance to finish. I pulled a knife free from its sheath, then launched myself at him. He fell hard, landing on his back in the dirt. Before he could even blink, I had my weapon at his throat.

“Who are you?” I snapped.

He hissed out an impatient breath. “It’s clear who
you
are. Miss Milton, correct?”

“Your name or you’ll feel the point of my blade.”

“Robert Crofts!” he shouted. “I’ve come from London—”

“Elizabeth!” Antonio’s voice cracked through the air like a rifle shot. I looked up to see him running toward me, weaving through the fringe of trees—a blur of black and white. He drew his sword free from its scabbard, the blade flashing silver with reflected sunlight.

“This boy has been looking for us,” I called to him. “He says he goes by the name Robert Crofts.”

Antonio dropped to his knees beside me. “Are you all right?” he asked in a low voice. “This fellow didn’t hurt you?”

Why did boys always imagine they had to play the savior? I rolled my eyes. “I’m well enough, but I can’t guarantee how much longer Mr. Crofts can say the same—unless he answers my questions.”

“I mean neither of you harm, I swear it,” Crofts said. All the color had leached from his face, leaving it deathly pale. “I’ve been seeking both of you to warn you that you’re in terrible danger.”

“An aristocrat like you wants to help the daughter of a supposed regicide like me?” I asked. “If you think I’ll believe this hearth tale, then either you have too high an opinion of your storytelling abilities or too low an opinion of my intellect.”

Beside me, Antonio snorted out a laugh. Crofts shot him a startled look. “Is she always this bold?”

Antonio grinned. “I only made her acquaintance two days ago, but based on what I’ve seen so far—yes.”

“Instead of discussing my character, perhaps we could return to more important matters.” I moved back slightly, keeping my weapon a few inches distant from Crofts’s neck. “How do you know about us?”

He sat up. “A few days ago at court, we received word that a Florentine had come to London seeking John Milton. Buckingham left at once for Chalfont St. Giles, and I followed on my own. Unfortunately, by the time I arrived Mr. Milton’s household had disappeared. The villagers thought they had tired of country life and returned to London.”

Crofts hesitated. “They all seemed so inclined to believe the lie, I myself was tempted to. Until I spoke to Mr. Francis Sutton. Once I parted with some coins, he was happy to tell me your destination, and to draw me a map of the route he had advised you to take.”

“A pretty story,” Antonio said. “You still haven’t told us why the king would care that I came to London in search of Mr. Milton.”

“I don’t know.”

Antonio and I looked at each other. As one, we moved closer to Crofts, our faces hard. His eyes darted back and forth between the two of us, and he held up his hands in surrender.

“I swear it, I don’t know!” A faint sheen of sweat gleamed on Crofts’s forehead. “The king became wild with fear when we were told a Florentine had been looking for Mr. Milton.”

The skin on the back of my neck prickled. The king’s fear had to be tied into the secret my father had hidden thirty years ago. But how had the king found out about it in the first place? And how had he learned of my father’s connection to any Italians?

“So why did
you
journey to Chalfont?” Antonio asked, touching the hilt of his sword, his ring clinking against the metal.

“After the old king was executed, the present king languished in exile for eleven years. Ever since he claimed the throne, he’s been desperate to keep it.” Crofts’s face was grim, his voice steady. “Such men are too dangerous. Only a few slippery steps and they become tyrants. It wasn’t too long ago that the king’s dead father tried to assume absolute control over England, and all we got was a civil war and thousands of dead. I care too much about this country to let our rulers bully their subjects again. Even though I don’t know you, I’ll help you, if it means stopping the king. England can’t survive another despot.”

He held out his hands in a placating gesture. “As you see, I came alone at considerable expense and trouble to myself. Let me help you.”

“Just a moment.” I jerked my head at Antonio, then walked a short distance away. Even with my back turned to Crofts, I felt his eyes digging into my spine. “What do you think?” I whispered.

Antonio, looking thoughtful, rubbed the back of his neck. “If
Crofts was on the king’s side, he would have ridden to Chalfont with Buckingham. As he’s come all this way on his own, he must believe the king’s intentions are wrong.”

I glanced over my shoulder at Crofts. He had gotten to his feet. Even as I watched, he rested his hand on the hilt of his sword.

“His weapon!” I whispered.

But he didn’t draw it. He stood waiting, his head bowed. Antonio and I exchanged a swift look.

“He easily could have crept up behind us and stabbed us,” I said.

Antonio nodded, laying a hand on my shoulder. “I think he’s just proved his trustworthiness.”

I nodded. Dropping his hand from my shoulder, Antonio walked back to where Crofts stood. As I followed him, I could have sworn I still felt the weight of his hand and the heat of his skin burning through the thin fabric of my shirt.