Santucci leads him up the broad stone steps, past snow-white statues of ancient heroes and on into the depths of the palace. As they walk, the soles of their shoes clacking on the marble, the Florentine drops names every time they pass a painting or a piece of sculpture: Botticelli… Donatello… Michelangelo … Bruno feigns an air of boredom. He has long ago stopped kneeling before an altar painting or a chapel fresco without wondering how much he could sell it for.
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?’