‘What will be required of my Ned?’ Rose asks doubtfully.
‘All he has to do is appear before the ecclesiastical court and recite the opening verses of the fifty-first Psalm, in Latin.’
Expecting her face to lighten, all Lumley sees in her brimming eyes is more misery. Her chest heaves. She says, in a tortured voice, ‘But… but Ned cannot read, my lord. He ’as not the letters in his ’ead.’
Lumley covers his nose and chin with one palm as he digests the news. ‘Can you read, Rose?’ he asks, looking at her over the tip of his fingers.
‘Yes, my lord – and write, too. Mistress Bianca gave me the skills.’
‘Do you possess a Bible, Rose?’
‘Of course, my lord,’ Rose snorts tearfully.
‘Then we had better pray that your Ned’s memory is as sharp as his temper.’
34
On the day of his meeting with Hella Maas, Nicholas leaves Bruno’s house on the Borgo dei Argentieri after breakfast. He has told Bianca that he is going to the Palazzo Bo, to attend another of Professor Fabrici’s lectures. A lie told in order to protect, he convinces himself, is hardly a lie at all. Bianca, suffering the indignities of the tailor who has come to check the measurements for the new gown that Bruno has insisted she have for the Feast of the Holy Rosary, seems barely interested in his explanation.
He arrives at Galileo’s lodgings in the Borgo dei Vignali just as the bell in the nearby church tolls eight. The street door is open. Under the gaze of the pretty young woman watching from the first-floor window opposite, he enters.
Professor Galileo is sitting in the courtyard, one knee providing support to a heavy leather-bound book on Euclid’s theorems by Benedetti, the other stuck out at a jaunty angle, the foot tucked round a leg of the chair. With his free hand, the mathematician is munching a peach.
‘Fortunate she’s a Beguine,’ he says, spitting out the stone, ‘or else the university’s rector might accuse me of running a bordello and rescind my appointment.’
‘Where is she?’ Nicholas asks, wondering if he dares ask Galileo for a cup of wine to fortify his resolve.
‘Inside, with Matteo. They’re working on something for Signor Purse. We think the Corio brothers might have erred: they’ve produced some cogs for the orbit of Saturn that will have it colliding with Jupiter after three revolutions, and that will never do.’
‘I will need privacy.’
‘You shall have it, Niccolò, never fear.’ He lays the book aside. ‘You’re lucky she’s here, mind.’
‘Why?’
‘Yesterday Matteo took her to the Palazzo Bo, to show her the work on the anatomy theatre that old Fabrici is spending all the university’s money on. I was beginning to wonder if they were coming back. I think Matteo is smitten. Odd choice, if you ask me. She’s too serious for my liking. A woman who can count is all well and good, but only if she smiles occasionally.’
Galileo leads him up a flight of stairs to a plainly furnished chamber set back from the first-storey loggia. Matteo and Hella are stooped over a table on which Nicholas can see papers bearing calculations and diagrams. When the maid looks up, he thinks he detects a faint glint of satisfaction in her eyes, though her face remains still.
‘Matteo, I need some papers I left at the Palazzo Bo,’ Galileo says.
The pupil begins to protest. ‘But, Maestro, I–’
‘I haven’t notated the other side of the equation yet. “Matteo, I need some papers” equals “Do as I command, or I’ll recommend to your father that you study theology instead of mathematics.” How would a chaste life in holy orders suit you?’
When the professor and his pupil have gone, Nicholas says, ‘Walk with me awhile, Hella. I wish to speak plainly with you.’ He beckons her to follow him out onto the loggia that runs along all four sides of the house, a shady colonnade encompassing the courtyard below. He puts a hand to his mouth and gives a fast double cough, as though he has a diagnosis to deliver that might not be what the patient wishes to hear.
But before he can start, Hella says, ‘I knew that eventually you would come after me, Nicholas.’
‘Come after you? What do you mean?’
‘It was inevitable.’ She gives him another of her mirthless smiles. ‘We are but opposite sides of the same card, you and I. And you want to know what is on its face: the Lovers or the Hangman.’
‘This is not a game, Hella. Not to me. Not now that you have hurt Bianca so.’
‘I am not responsible for your wife’s jealousy, Nicholas.’
He manages to calm a sudden surge of anger. ‘She isn’t jealous – she’s frightened. And I want to know why.’
‘I have told you both: once something is known, it cannot then be unknown. In consequence, all that then befalls the discoverer is theirs to own.’
He stops. ‘Listen to me, Hella. I’ve come here to try and help you.’
‘I do not need your help, Nicholas. I am not sickly.’
‘I think you are, in your heart. I believe the grief you have suffered – the loss of your sister and the others in your family – has brought a great melancholy upon you. I understand that. I, too, have chosen in the past to live in darkness rather than in light. But you were not to blame for what happened, whatever you have told yourself. You did not see the future any more than I did. You didn’t foresee what was going to befall those you loved. I didn’t foresee what was going to happen to my first wife and the child she was carrying, but in the pain that came afterwards, I too convinced myself that it was my fault, that there were signs I should have seen: warnings. But I was wrong. If there is a Purgatory, Hella, Bianca led me out of it. You, too, must seek the way out of the Purgatory you have built inside your mind. I can help you – if you let me.’
Her eyes have been locked on his throughout. They have not faltered for a moment. ‘Why were you hiding in that chamber in the cathedral at Den Bosch, Nicholas?’
Surprised, he asks, ‘What does it matter now?’
‘What was it you really feared?’ she persists. ‘Being discovered somewhere you shouldn’t have been? Or had sight of that painting driven you into the darkness?’
‘It is of no consequence now,’ he says, realizing that she is stealing the resolve from him.
‘I think you hid because, in your heart, you had gone into that chamber to seek knowledge of what lay within. I’ve told you before how dangerous that can be. Do not blame me for the consequences.’
‘And my coming here now – I suppose you could divine that, by the patterns of the arches in the arcades around the Palazzo Bo, in the lines of geese flying overhead or in the fall of the numbers you hold such store by?’
‘Don’t mock me, Nicholas.’
‘If you had any foreknowledge of why I have come here, it is only because you knew that eventually I would learn what it was you said to Bianca on the Via Francigena.’
‘She has told you?’
‘No. That is why I am here.’
‘Then you should look to your wife for the answer,’ she says airily. ‘Do not seek it from me.’
He cannot stop himself reaching out to seize her arm. ‘What did you tell her? She thinks you have cursed her.’
Hella pulls herself free. She stares back at him defiantly.