Viviani raised his eyebrows, clearly unimpressed. “Your father uncovered sensitive information about the king thirty years ago? That’s when this partnership with my master started, and your king would have been in swaddling clothes.”
“Then not the current king.” My mind spun. “The king’s father, Charles the First, who was beheaded after the civil war. Thirty years ago, he sat on the throne. Suppose my father found out something about him—something that convinced him to oppose the royalists during the war? Something that could disqualify the entire line of Stuarts—which would include the current king—from the throne?”
For a moment, Viviani was silent. “It would explain the king’s determination to hide your father—and why Buckingham burned the poem.”
“We have to find the Italian sonnet as quickly as we can. If we can figure out what my father concealed within it, then we may have a bargaining tool to use to secure his freedom.”
“He didn’t ask you to arrange for his release.” Viviani set his wineglass down. “You would defy him, Miss Milton?”
I looked at him steadily. “To save him, I would defy God himself.”
His laugh rolled out. “I didn’t think Puritans were a bold people. You’re nothing like what I imagined.”
“Aren’t you the lucky one,” I retorted, picking up the soup bowls.
When I’d finished the washing up, I led him to the loft bedrooms, insisting he climb the ladder first, remembering that otherwise he’d be able to glimpse up my skirts. As we clambered into the darkness, I could hear the silk and velvet of his clothes rustling together. Somehow the sound seemed terribly intimate. As though it served only to remind me that those same fabrics touched his bare skin. Be quiet, I ordered my brain.
On the landing, I opened Anne’s door, gesturing for Viviani to go in. I felt him watching me, but I couldn’t bring myself to look at him.
“There’s fresh water in the basin,” I said.
From the edge of my vision, I caught a blur of movement—he was bowing to me. “Thank you. Good night.”
“Good night.” I rushed into my chamber next door. Leaning against the bedroom wall, I exhaled a shaky breath. Somewhere on the other side of the wall I rested against was Viviani. Mere feet from me. I heard the splash of water in the basin as he washed his face, then the whisper of straw as he lay down. Lying on the same mattress where I had lain when the agony in Anne’s legs chased sleep away and I rested next to her, rubbing her back in slow circles.
Heat rushed into my cheeks. What a child I was, every particle of my being attuned to the stranger in the room next door.
Determinedly shoving thoughts of him out of my head, I opened the window shutters. The black sky unfurled above me. There was Cassiopeia, easily recognizable from the W it formed from the points of five stars. They pulsed with a steady brilliance, as beautiful as they were undecipherable. I wondered how far away they were from England. A hundred leagues? More? And how they could shine so brightly when they hung in the heavens at such a great distance from my planet? Perhaps these were the same sorts of questions the Tuscan Artist in Father’s poem is asking himself when he peers through his telescope.
Again I frowned at the bizarre image. Why had Father alluded to an Italian natural philosopher in a poem whose only characters should have been biblical? Maybe it had been a mistake, a slip he eventually would have caught on one of the mornings I read his verses back to him.
Or maybe it had been another hidden message.
Stupid, I decided, resting my arms on the windowsill and filling my eyes with the sight of the stars. Father’s final words had been about a familiar young shepherdess, and I should follow his instructions and find the poem containing this character. Not concentrate on Paradise Lost.
Nodding hard, I left the shutters open and readied myself for bed: rubbing rosemary blossoms over my teeth to clean them, washing my face, tying my nightcap strings under my chin. Studying the sky had scrubbed the inside of my mind, leaving it resolute and determined.
I had always understood how Father had maintained his reason when darkness encroached on his sight; why he had dared to remain in England when his old colleagues were beheaded or had managed to flee to Europe or the colonies in the New World. It was for love of something greater than himself. Writing sustained him, feeding his thoughts and cheering his heart. He could live through any tragedy, for tragedy only deepened his understanding of the human soul and turned him into a better writer.
But I couldn’t understand his decision to stay silent today.
By refusing to tell his secret to Buckingham, he had chosen death. He would disapprove of my plan to save him by bargaining with the king, I knew, but I didn’t care. As long as I managed to keep him alive, it didn’t matter if I flouted his wishes.
And if he died . . . I bit back a sob. His death would rip out all the stars in the sky, leaving me in darkness. There would be no more poetry, no more shared laughter in the early morning. Just endless black.
What would happen to us if he died? Mary, Deborah, and I could read and write—hardly useful talents for girls who hadn’t been trained for a trade and had no dowries. We might be able to find work as scullery maids—but what about Anne? I thought of her twisted legs and childish grin, and my heart squeezed painfully in my chest. It’d be the almshouse for her, where she’d be forced to live off others’ charity. She would hate feeling like a burden.
Or . . . there was one more possibility. One other option for females without dowries or useful skills: we’d end up walking the streets.
No. I pressed my hand to my mouth so Viviani wouldn’t hear me moan. I wouldn’t let that happen. No matter what, I’d keep my sisters safe from such an awful fate. I had to save Father, not only for his sake but for all of ours.
Viviani and I departed the next morning. Night still covered the land when we emerged from the cottage and saddled the horses. Even darkness couldn’t lessen the heat pulsing from the ground in waves, drawing a line of sweat along my spine.
Our provisions were simple: full water skins, dried fruit, bread, and cheese; spare clothes (we had found Viviani’s stuffed inside Mary and Deborah’s mattress); and sacks of oats for the horses. I opened my sumpters, the bags behind the saddles, checking to make sure I had packed everything I needed. Inside them there was food and water, and also a stack of clean pages, a bottle of ink, and two fresh quills. Father’s poem might have been burned, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t be rewritten. Every time I had a chance, I would copy out as much of Paradise Lost as I could remember. With luck, I might save his masterpiece.
While I buckled the straps, I let the first lines rush into my mind: Of Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit / Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal tast / Brought Death into the World . . . Tears blurred my sight. I could almost hear Father’s gentle voice reciting the words and imagine he was with me again—not tied to a horse, galloping through the countryside toward his death.
Viviani swung onto his saddle. “Are you ready?”
I looked at the cottage, an irregular black hump in the predawn darkness. Its interior was still crowded with rented furniture, its bookcase still holding remnants of Father’s cherished collection. But there was nothing in there for me anymore. Not with my family ripped apart.
“I’m ready,” I said.
I climbed onto my saddle, my movements unencumbered by my usual skirts. Today I had donned black breeches, a shirt of white linen, a doublet of black wool, and riding boots. The clothes had belonged to one of Father’s students, from the time when he was a tutor and boarded pupils in his home, before my sisters and I were born. With my braid coiled beneath a broad-brimmed felt hat and the flowing lines of the shirt concealing the swell of my bosom, I made a passable impression of a boy. I hoped.
This was the first time I would test my disguise by daylight. For years I had crept at night from our row house in London, praying no one would see me as I darted across the road into Bunhill Fields to meet with
Mr. Hade, one of Father’s former students and my fencing instructor. As far as I knew, no one ever had.
During the year we had lived in Chalfont, I had continued my weapons training, slipping into the thicket of trees along the village outskirts where I strung sacks of straw from the branches and then attacked them. A pitiful substitute for combat with a flesh-and-blood person, but it couldn’t be helped; there was no one in Chalfont whom I trusted to fight me and maintain his silence, and Father insisted on absolute secrecy.
“Lead the way,” Viviani said, taking his horse’s reins. “You said Oxford was a distance of fourteen leagues?”
“Yes, a day’s hard riding at least, but since we’ll have to travel across the open countryside, the trip will probably take two days.” I had never been to Oxford, although my mother’s family hailed from the area. Indeed, I wouldn’t have ventured there of my own volition. During the civil war, Oxford had been a royalist stronghold, and my father’s name was one that its residents had cursed.
“Come,” I said to him, pulling on the reins so my horse turned west. As our animals galloped across the fields, we left the rising sun behind us and raced toward a sky still black with night. I didn’t look back.
Part
Two
THE TYRANNY OF HEAVEN
Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav’n.
—John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book I
Eight
OUR ROUTE WAS ROUGH AND MONOTONOUS, TAKING us across fields enclosed by hedges or avenues of trees. Of other travelers, we saw few: a handful of men on horseback, a couple of farmers driving a cart packed with chickens, and a stage-wagon crammed with poor riders who couldn’t afford their own carriages.
When the noon sun beat mercilessly on our heads, we stopped in the shade of a tree to eat. Viviani fed the horses. Sitting cross-legged, I watched him through eyes slitted against the sun’s glare, puzzling over this stranger whom I had tied myself to.
“Tell me about yourself.” The words whipped out like a command, and I blushed at how hard I sounded. How the devil was I supposed to talk to a boy? Mary would have known how, but I couldn’t stomach the thought of copying the way she laughed behind her hand or looked through her eyelashes.
Viviani sat down beside me. “And what would you like to know, my lady?”
“I’m not a lady.” Surely he was mocking me. I looked up, expecting to see a teasing smirk on his lips. But his face was calm as he picked up a linen-wrapped package of bread and cheese. “Tell me about your life in Florence.”
“It’s a city that inflames your mind and bombards your senses as soon as you enter it.” Half-smiling, he rested his back against the tree. “Noise everywhere: street vendors shouting their wares of fruit and fish, carriage wheels rattling over paving stones, bells ringing from the dozens of churches. Wherever you look, there is bright color—red-tile roofs, olive-green shutters, the sumptuous clothing of fine ladies and gentlemen strolling past. I like to walk the Corso dei Tintori—the avenue of the cloth dyers,” he clarified, evidently forgetting I was well versed in his tongue. “They hang lengths of wool and silk from their windows, and when you walk beneath them, you can see them snapping in the breeze above your head, such an array of colors that your eyes are dazzled. And the smells! A combination of rich scents you can find nowhere else: cinnamon and clove, ginger and pepper, goat, pork, poultry and fish, the beeswax of candles.”
Despite myself, I inched closer to him, eager to learn more about the city my father had said was the most learned he had ever seen. “But isn’t it such a large and magnificent city that you find yourself overwhelmed?”
He laughed. “Of course! That’s the best part of Florence. Regardless of how long I live there, I’ll never feel as though I’ve unlocked all of her secrets. But it’s impossible to get overwhelmed to the point that you become lost,” he added. “Florence has three tall landmarks that act as guideposts—the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore, Giotto’s bell tower, and the tower of the Palazzo Vecchio, which can be seen from any point in the city. When I was a small boy and came to Florence, my master often sent me on errands throughout the city, and I was always able to trace my route home by looking for the Palazzo Vecchio tower. I was seven when I joined my master, more than half of my life ago, as I’m now eighteen, and I still feel as though I’m getting to know Florence.”
“A city of wonders,” I murmured to myself, recalling London’s twisting alleys and narrow wooden houses, its aristocrats in bold colors and its religious freethinkers in black. His Florence sounded like an oil painting, pulsing with reds and golds, while my London was a charcoal sketch, plain and dark.
At my traitorous thoughts, warmth flooded my cheeks. Like all good Puritans, I had been raised to distrust color and pageantry . . . and yet a part of me yearned to see this city that Viviani spoke of with such love.
His voice broke into my thoughts. “My master’s a good man.” In between words, he munched, and I had to smother a smile: He had already eaten all of his bread and cheese and started on another packet. Mary often accused me of having an unladylike appetite, but this boy could eat as much as two of me could. “Vincenzo’s both brilliant and kind,” he continued. “He lets me assist him in many of his experiments—but those wouldn’t interest you,” he interrupted himself.
“I’d like to hear about your experiments.” Even to my own ears, I sounded breathless.
So as we sat in the slanting shade, he told me about the experiments he and his master carried out. Their geometrical equations to demonstrate that an earlier natural philosopher had been correct when he hypothesized that the motion of light occurs in time, not instantaneously. At that, I set the bread in my lap again, my food forgotten. I listened to Viviani talk about his master’s tests on the newest theory of water motion, which postulated that flowing water presses downward on a riverbed, not outward against its banks, and I could barely breathe. He and Signor Vincenzo Viviani had studied the tiny discs on the side of Jupiter, too, watching as they changed position relative to one another during the course of an evening—proof they weren’t stars but moons, as the same natural philosopher had discovered fifty years ago.
Viviani’s existence sounded like a hearth tale. A life colored silver by stars and black with ink: beautiful and useful. Listening to it had frozen me in place, as though his words had cast a spell on me. I found I didn’t want to move, didn’t want to take a deep breath, as if the slightest movement would break this magical feeling.
He grinned at me. “You woke with shadows under your eyes, but they’re gone now. It’s good to see you smile, Miss Milton. Joy sits easily on your face, and you ought to wear it more often. Now I think we’ve given the horses a long-enough rest, don’t you?”
He had brushed the crumbs from his breeches and swung himself onto his saddle before I had time to form a proper response. Even if he had waited, I doubted I could have strung a sentence together; his fine words had pushed all my wits out of my head, leaving me with only a warm flicker beneath my breastbone.
Foolishness, I decided, climbing onto my horse. Joy as an ornament for my face, indeed! But I couldn’t banish the smile that insisted on remaining on my lips.
At dusk we made camp beneath a string of trees. Viviani was incredulous. “This is where you propose spending the night?”
I unbuckled the sumpters. Though I chafed at the prospect of halting our journey, we had to conceal ourselves for the night or risk being found by wandering highwaymen, and we would exhaust the horses if we didn’t let them rest. As for myself, my legs ached from riding and pain stabbed behind my eyes, thanks to squinting in harsh sunlight for hours.
“Did you see any inns today?” I snapped. “Or perhaps any homes whose owners would be willing to take in a foreigner and a peculiar-looking boy?” I threw two bedrolls onto the ground. “This is the best we can manage.”
Viviani, looking thoughtful, rubbed his horse’s sweaty flanks. “A strange country, your England. No highways, no inns
set up at regular intervals along the road, and no color. Everything here is brown and gray.” He brushed down the horse, his movements unhurried and methodical. With his back to me, he added, “You shouldn’t call yourself peculiar.”
“Indeed? And what would you call a girl dressed as a boy?” I snorted. “Handsome?”
Viviani glanced over his shoulder at me. “Brave, to conceal her identity so she can help her father. Handsome, no—you’re too pretty to be described as such.”
Surprise stole my voice. Pretty. No one had called me that before.
“This sort of talk is nonsense,” I muttered. I handed him the water skin, taking care our fingers did not touch.
His now-familiar laugh rolled out, but he said nothing more. As darkness closed in, we ate our simple supper in silence. When we had put away the remaining food, Viviani picked up one of his bags and ambled into the passage formed by the two rows of poplar trees. At our campsite I took out paper and ink and set to work copying the opening of Paradise Lost’s Book One from memory. Father had revised the beginning so many times that the words felt as though they had been embroidered on my brain, but eventually I would venture into less-traveled territory, and I knew I’d make mistakes and unwittingly substitute my own phrases for Father’s. Still, it was better than leaving his masterpiece in ashes. At the story’s start, Satan and his band of rebel angels have already staged a revolt against God in the Kingdom of Heaven and have been cast down to Hell, where Satan lies chained on a lake of fire.
For a short time, the only sounds were the whickers of our horses and the scratch of my quill on paper. Then I heard footsteps shuffling in dirt. Viviani dropped down next to me.
“What is it you do with such deep concentration?” he asked.