by S. W. Perry
At last Santucci brings him to a great salon where the walls are lined not with priceless work but with maps of every land in the known world. There is even one of England, so cleverly drawn that Bruno thinks that if he were to study it closely enough, he might even see cousin Bianca going about her business on Bankside.
But it is the thing that sits at the very centre of the salon that has Bruno Barrani’s jaw resting firmly on his breastbone. Twice the height of a man, a vast globe of thick golden thread seems to be floating in the air before him, an intricate weave of concentric rings that disappear into a hidden core. The glare from the windows reflects off its complex surface in dazzling rays of fire. It is the sun itself, confined in a room, or perhaps it is the burning bush from the Book of Exodus, carried by an angel of the Lord from biblical Mount Horeb and set down here in Florence. For what else can it be but miraculous?
Santucci waves a hand at a servant. The next moment the sphere begins to turn. A deep and resonant rumble reaches Bruno through the floorboards. Within the sphere, the rings begin to move as if by celestial magic. Some turn one way, others against them. Some move elliptically, before reversing their path and retreating. The whole thing seems to be alive, turning, tumbling, writhing with a secret purpose.
‘There is no armillary sphere anywhere in Christendom that is its equal,’ Santucci is telling him, as though to suggest that there might be is to challenge God’s own creation. ‘It is perfect in every measure, an exact re-creation of the cosmos as described by the great Ptolemaeus of Alexandria and understood by astronomers, astrologers, philosophers and mathematicians down the centuries since. It can show the exact movement of the sun and the planets as seen from the earth, as they move through the celestial spheres in the heavens above us. It can predict the solstices, the vernal and autumnal equinoxes, the procession of the zodiac, how the sun and the moon will rise and set on each day of the year. With this engine, there is no physician who can fail to cast an accurate horoscope before making a diagnosis; no prince who cannot gauge an auspicious day upon which to embark upon a campaign; no astronomer who need tire his eyes searching out a heavenly body to instruct his pupils.’
At Santucci’s invitation, Bruno moves closer to inspect the extraordinary device. It towers over him, its circumference beyond the limit of his sight, its innards visibly processing past his gaze, as though it would reveal its secrets to him alone, if only he could read them.
‘That is the equatorial ring,’ Santucci tells him as a gilded band engraved with the signs of the zodiac swings merrily past him, through Cancer and Leo and on to Gemini, ‘passing through the vernal equinox to the summer and winter solstices… and there is the planetary motion of Saturn, one of the six planetary spheres moving according to the way God has designed them… There the equatorial ring… and there the northern celestial pole…’
‘But where is the earth itself?’ Bruno asks, transfixed by the slowly turning bands.
‘Look deeper into the engine, Master Barrani,’ Santucci tells him.
And Bruno does, though he has to peer past the swirling vortex that is Santucci’s miraculous contrivance in order to see, deep within, a perfect little globe painted with the lands of the known world.
‘You are seeing what God sees, when he looks down upon the cosmos from heaven, Master Barrani. How many men can say they have done that?’
Bruno has no answer for him. For the first time in his life, he is lost for words.
While Bruno Barrani looks down upon the world from God’s own vantage point, at the same time Ned Monkton is sitting in the lodgings by the Paris Garden on Bankside, wishing he’d had the same advantage. He has visited every water-stairs between Lambeth and Bermondsey, every tavern, every dice-house and stew he can think of that a wherryman or an oarsman from a tilt-boat might frequent. But although he knows by name many of the men who work upon the water, calls many of them friend, it has proved impossible to find the one who brought the stranger across the Thames to Bankside.
Until today. Today everything has changed.
Sitting before him is one Giles Hunte, part owner of a wherry that usually operates from the Falcon stairs. Hunte with an e, the strong-armed, broad-backed young man is eager to put on record, in case there might be a lesser Hunt working the river.
‘I’d have come earlier, Master Monkton,’ he says, savouring the hot spiced wine that Rose has brought him for his troubles, ‘but I’ve been up at Richmond, running timber across the river for my cousin. I hear you was asking after a certain body I brought across from the north bank a while ago.’
‘How did you know that was the fellow I was seeking?’
‘I was drinking last night with Jack Tomblin in the Good Husband. He mentioned you’d been asking around. This fellow fitted the description you put out. I recall him clearly. He asked me how he might find his way to the Jackdaw – he didn’t seem to know it had burned down last summer. When I told him, he still wanted to know where it was. That raised my suspicions. I wondered if he might be one of the Bishop of London’s fellows, come over with his snout twitching, to root out sin. You know how they sometimes like to do that in Southwark.’
‘Aye,’ says Ned with a grin, ‘and take their time doing it. You’d think the number of times they come, Bankside would be the most sinless place in Christendom.’
Hunte gives a knowing laugh. ‘I did ask him if he wanted the address of a clean bawdy-house. He got on his high horse about that. Told me I was a saucy churl. So I made sure he got his arse soaked, getting out of my wherry.’
Ned slaps his knee with one huge palm. The sound makes Rose turn her head. ‘I was right, Wife!’ he says joyfully. ‘I knew that little rogue with the wet arse ’ad come from across the river.’ To Giles Hunte, he asks, ‘Did he have a name?’
The wherryman returns an apologetic shake of his head. ‘He didn’t give one, and I didn’t ask. But I can tell you where I picked him up, if it’s of any help. It was from the Blackfriars water-stairs, and he came from the direction of St Andrew’s Hill.’
Bruno Barrani raps his gloved hand imperiously against the little wooden window of the buchetta. When it opens, he hands in the empty bottle and waits while an indistinct figure within refills it.
He approves of these little counters where they sell rich Tuscan wine. He thinks he might set up a few in Padua – cheaper to run than a shop or a tavern. That means a more profitable margin. And good for his social standing, too. Who wouldn’t want to be on first-name terms with a fellow who owned a magic window?
He carries the bottle to the stools set beneath a shady overhang. Luca and Alonso, his servants, are covetously guarding their empty cups and making obscene comments about the fashion sense of the Fiorentini from behind their hands.
‘The price these robbers charge for a bottle of Artimino!’ he growls as he puts the wine down on the bench and resumes his place. ‘Is there no one in this town who isn’t either a thief or a whore?’
‘Perhaps you should have offered more money, Master,’ Luca says, sensing Bruno’s anger.
‘More money? For this stuff? It would still be extortion if it was half the price.’
‘I didn’t mean the wine-seller, Master. I meant Signor Santucci. You should have upped the offer. It is the doge’s scudi anyway – His Serene Highness can afford it.’
Bruno grunts contemptuously as he refills the glasses. He sticks his little black-hosed legs out onto the cobbles. ‘Who needs a creep like Santucci anyway? Master of the Spheres! Pompous Florentine ass, more like it. Santucci isn’t even master of his own sphincter. I told him so to his face.’
‘Maybe that’s why he won’t play,’ Alonso suggests.
‘I only told him that after he’d turned me down. I’m not stupid, Alonso.’ Bruno sips at his Artimino. He runs a hand through his black ringlets. He scowls, which on such a small face gives him the looks of a slapped child. ‘All this way, and he turns me down just so that his master, the fucking Grand Duke of fucking Tuscany �
� Ferdinando de’ fucking Medici – can thumb his nose at Venice!’ He spits onto the cobbles in disgust. ‘They hate us. A pox on them all!’
Alonso looks horrified. ‘Hush, Master. Keep your voice down. You’ll get us a hard floor in the Bargello – or worse. A brand on my forehead is not the sort of souvenir I’d planned on taking home from Florence, if it’s all the same to you.’
‘I still don’t understand what’s so important about this great sphere of his, anyway,’ says Luca.
Bruno favours his servants with a condescending smile. ‘It’s a wondrous engine of science. The cosmos, laid out in brass and gold leaf. You have to hand it to Santucci: it’s more than clever. I’d wager even the great Leonardo would have struggled to contrive such a thing. More important, it was going to open the door to the doge’s treasury and a hefty commission!’
‘Yes, but what does it do?’ Luca asks. ‘I still don’t understand.’
‘That’s because you Veronese have dust for brains.’
‘Alright, Master – explain it in terms that a Veronese dust-forbrains can understand.’
‘Well, I’m not versed in natural philosophy,’ Bruno begins, ‘so I cannot rightly explain how he’s done it, but somehow Santucci has contrived to construct a moving model of the cosmos – one that enables a man to see where the heavenly bodies will lie at any given hour of any day. It’s twice the height of a man and, when you look at it turning, you see what God sees when he looks down from heaven. At least, that’s what Santucci claims.’
‘Trust a Florentine to think he has the same viewpoint as God,’ says Alonso, belching a mist of wine into the air.
‘But what use is it?’ asks Luca.
‘It can tell you things before they happen.’
‘What, like if Alonso gets drunk, they’ll ban him from Signora Volante’s whorehouse? Who needs a giant golden sphere to tell you that?’
‘It’s the new science, Luca,’ Bruno says airily. ‘I wouldn’t expect a pair of numbskulls like you two to understand.’
‘You don’t really know what it does any more than we do,’ Alonso says under his breath.
Bruno puffs up his little chest in indignation. ‘It’s the latest thing in astronomical calculation – an engine that can see into the future,’ he says laboriously, as though reading a set of instructions. ‘It can tell you where the stars and the moon and the planets will be on any given night or day, in any given latitude. It can tell a mariner where the north star will be; allow the astrologer to cast more accurate charts so that he can advise his prince when to start a war, or when to sire an heir. That’s what Santucci says. For all I care, it can predict the Day of Judgement. What sticks in my gut is that the Doge of Venice was going to shower us in ducats to build him one of his own.’
‘This engine – can it predict when you’re going to pay us, Master?’ Luca says with an air of fragile innocence.
Bruno nails his servant to his stool with the eyes of death. ‘Only after it tells me when you two are finally going to get off your lazy backsides and clean my trunk-hose and polish my boots like proper servants.’
Alonso frowns. ‘But that’s blasphemy.’
‘What? You doing an hour’s honest work? I should say so.’
‘I mean, putting yourself in God’s place, Master.’
Bruno licks the wine off his lips. ‘Maybe. But Antonio Santucci doesn’t mind making these engines for the King of Spain and these Medici bastards. But Venice… Where Venice is concerned, apparently the Master of the Spheres is not for sale.’
‘Must be the only Florentine who isn’t,’ Luca growls softly.
The little Paduan cockerel slowly lowers his cup. He leans forward towards Luca. ‘Say that again.’
For a moment, Luca thinks he might have overstepped the mark. Bruno Barrani is a small enough cockerel, but he can deliver a mighty peck when he’s roused. ‘I meant that Santucci must be the only Florentine you can’t buy – that’s all, Master.’
Bruno jumps from his stool, sending his glass tottering across the table. ‘Luca,’ he says, ‘if you weren’t so pig-ugly, I’d kiss you!’
‘Why, what have I said?’
Bruno reaches forward and waggles the lobe of Luca’s left ear. ‘When I said “The Master of the Spheres is not for sale”, you answered, “Must be the only Florentine who isn’t”.’
‘So, Master?’
“Well, Santucci didn’t make that thing on his own, did he?’
‘I don’t know, Master. I didn’t see it, did I?’
‘Take it from me, he had help: carpenters, clocksmiths, any number of artisans. They must have drawings, plans… And just as you said, friend Luca, they can be bought.’
Luca puts out his cup for a refill – the way only a servant who knows all of his master’s foibles and indiscretions may do. ‘You mean you intend to make one of these things yourself, Master? Saving your pardon, you can’t even fit a door hinge straight.’
Bruno seems quite untroubled by this insult. He sits down again, without his eyes ever leaving Luca’s. ‘Florence isn’t the only place with its own tame genius, my lad,’ he says knowingly.
‘Do you have someone in mind, Master?’ Alonso asks.
‘As a matter of fact, I do.’
‘Who?’ Luca demands to know, leaning inwards as he catches a sniff of conspiracy.
‘I was thinking of the new professor of mathematics at Padua University. He’d be the very man to oversee the project.’
‘How can you be sure he’ll do it?’ Luca enquires.
‘Because we’re friends, and I happen to know he gets paid half of what the other professors get paid, on account of the Palazzo Bo esteeming mathematicians well below physicians and lawyers, and only just above the night-shit removers. I also happen to know he’s in need of coin. If we can get a plan and show it to him, and he agrees, then the professor gets to pay off his debts, His Serene Highness gets his toy, we get our commission and Master of the Spheres Santucci gets a length of good Venetian sopressa up his backside.’
Luca and Alonso digest this in much the same way they digest any other of their master’s get-rich-quick plans.
‘But if the mathematician isn’t to eat up most of the profit, what exactly do you intend to offer him?’ Luca asks.
Bruno grins. ‘I’d have thought that was obvious. You know how jealous those professors are of their reputation. My good friend Signor Galileo Galilei will get to have his name lauded down the ages as the man who built the doge’s great golden sphere.’
14
The Duchy of Brabant, between Antwerp and Brussels, 10th July 1594
In the light of a blood-red dawn, Hella Maas stops at the crest of the little wooden bridge and turns in a slow circle, looking out over the barren, empty polder. Apart from Nicholas and Bianca, there is not another living soul to be seen. All that breaks the horizon is a single skeletal tree shattered by lightning, and a windmill, its sails motionless in the early-morning stillness, pulling the eye towards it like a distant crucifixion. Nicholas cannot help but remember the right-hand panel of the Den Bosch triptych, with its hellish fires glowing in a darkened, satanic landscape. He can see by the look on the maid’s face that she is seeing it, too. Her words confirm it.
‘Do you not smell what I smell?’ she asks, a slight smile of superiority on her lips.
‘Smell what?’ asks Bianca, wondering if she means the marshy odour of the polder.
‘The smell of the flames.’
‘There’s nothing here to burn,’ Nicholas says quickly.
‘I speak of the flames of eternal judgement,’ Hella announces. ‘And it is we who have opened the door to let them enter.’
In the four days since leaving Den Bosch they have grown used to these sudden doom-laden pronouncements. They seem to come out of nowhere. Usually Hella does not even pause when delivering one, as she has now, but keeps up her relentless pace, jabbing at the path with a length of willow held in her right hand, as though every step for
ward must be won in battle. But they leave Bianca with a sense of foreboding. In her life till now she has had her own moments of uncanny foresight – usually not for the better. Precognition is not something she takes lightly.
‘Is this about the painting, Hella – the painting in the Den Bosch cathedral?’ she asks gently.
Nicholas closes his eyes in resignation. By now he knows not to ask such a question.
‘I tried to warn them,’ the maid answers, stabbing at the planks of the bridge with the tip of the willow cane. ‘I told Father Vermeiren that he was inviting those same horrors to come to pass, if he let it remain on public view. But he said it was just a painting, and that praying hard would ensure such things were never visited upon us. Now he’s dead, and the Spanish will treat the people of his town harshly.’ She gives the bridge a final, sharp jab with the willow, as if to put it out of its misery. ‘Why won’t people listen to me?’
Without waiting for an answer, she resumes her determined march.
Bianca can see only her back, but she knows that on the maid’s face will be that sad, ethereal look of almost-tearful foreboding she has become accustomed to. She whispers to Nicholas, ‘We’re not even in France yet, and it is a very long way to the St Bernard Pass.’
‘Give her time,’ he says quietly, his mouth close to her ear. ‘She’s witnessed two brutal murders at close hand, and you saw what the townspeople were capable of doing to her.’
‘You are right, of course. I should be more charitable,’ Bianca says, hoisting her pack into a more comfortable position to ease the blisters forming on her shoulders. She sets off again after the figure pacing so determinedly ahead, leaving Nicholas to follow.
She would prefer to put Hella Maas out of her thoughts, but in the empty polder there is little to distract her. If even half of what Hella claims is true, then she is a most unusual young woman. When Nicholas had asked again how she came to speak such good English, this time she had answered him: Leiden University.
