Galileo's Revenge: or, A Cure for the Itch

Livia

Book 1

The noble art of venery

And whilst Cardinal Ferdinand brother to Duke Francesco opposed this her design, it happened that he came to Florence to pass some days merrily with the Duke, and they being to go out hunting early in a morning....

(Fynes Moryson, An Itinerary)

1.1 The hand of him that betrayeth me

Suddenly the Duke pushed his chair back from the table and lurched to his feet. His face had drained of colour. The sun was not hot this late in the year, but here, outside in the woods, the cool, bright light caught beads of sweat upon His Highness’ forehead. As the Duke straightened up unsteadily, Cardinal Ferdinand put out a solicitous hand to offer support. Irritably the Duke brushed the proffered arm aside, and the loose sleeve of the Cardinal’s jacket knocked over the Duke’s beaker of wine. A red stain spread rapidly over the white linen tablecloth.

Galileo watched the Duke walk away towards the nearest clump of trees. There was a hint of caution in his gait, as though testing the ground for pitfalls with each step. Dovara the major-domo followed the Duke at a discreet distance and disappeared after him into the wood. It did not need an acute ear to detect the sound of repeated retching. All the guests resumed their seats and struck up conversation anew with exaggerated enthusiasm.

A minute or so later the Duke re-emerged from the bushes adjusting his dress and strode more briskly back to the Family table. He grabbed his beaker, which had been promptly righted and refilled, and poured the contents down his throat in one long gurgling draught. He turned abruptly and embraced his surprised brother the Cardinal, who had again risen from his seat upon the Duke’s return. For a moment they swayed together like tired wrestlers, before the Duke released his hold and, turning to the other side, stooped to gently kiss his Duchess Bianca upon the mouth. Straightening up again, he seemed to be struck by some sudden thought or remembered duty. His hand reached out towards the table but faltered in mid-air, and he crumpled in a heap upon the ground.

The scene put Galileo much in mind of one of those old-fashioned frescoes of ‘The Last Supper’ – especially if you allowed yourself to imagine that Our Lord, after one-too-many toasts of blood-heavy red wine, had slid off his chair and disappeared under the table. All the guests at the Duke’s high table were frozen in strange poses of surprise and dismay, the Cardinal still half out of his seat, staring open-mouthed at Francesco’s empty place. The similarity to ‘The Last Supper’ was more than merely pictorial: the Duke might well have just announced that ‘One of you that eateth with me has betrayed me.’

A scream from the Duchess jolted Galileo out of his transfixed speculation, as she slid or fell off her own chair to crouch by the Duke’s side. At once everybody sprang up like a battery of Jack-in-a-Boxes, and rushed to His Highness’ assistance – or, at least, to get a better view. For some moments all was confusion and shouting. Galileo had never seen the Duchess in such a state before. She seemed as much angry as alarmed. As the Family and their attendants clustered around the Duke’s body, she vehemently pushed away the Cardinal as he struggled to loosen his brother’s collar to help his breathing. The Cardinal seemed to be genuinely put out – but then he had lived in Rome for many years, where it was said: ‘If a man would prosper, he must have two faces’.

But order was rapidly restored. The major-domo – Lieutenant Luigi Dovara to give him his full title – was a man of extensive military experience. Very soon the Duke had been lifted onto a makeshift litter. The Duchess had been helped back to her seat, where she was physically restrained by her daughter and their ladies.

Whilst the Duke’s physician fussed over his master’s unresponsive body Dovara picked up the Duke’s goblet and put his tongue to the rim. He sniffed the empty flagon, and grimaced. Oh, for Heaven’s sake, not the wine, thought Galileo. No one would be that obvious. Lieutenant Dovara looked around the milling company. Galileo could almost hear him thinking. None of the ordinary servants had approached the Duke. The Lieutenant’s frowning gaze flicked from the Cardinal, wringing his hands, to the Cardinal’s secretary dal Pozzo poised at his elbow, to.... He looked further. You really could hear the cogs turning. Any moment now a bell would strike! Young Don Antonio had played the page for a few minutes when... when they had a song from the young astrologer or whatever he was. They said Dovara had lost one eye at the siege of Siena. His remaining eye swung like the point of a lance until it found Galileo, and settled upon him with penetrating precision.

Galileo smiled weakly.

At which moment the Duke’s inert body suddenly came back to life in a manner which, given a slightly longer delay, might have been accounted miraculous. With a groan his body arched and twisted and retched forth a further helping of capon and bread and mushrooms and sweetmeats in a pungent sauce of wine and gastric liquor. The Duke sat up straight and stared around with wild, vacant eyes. The Duchess fainted. Dovara was distracted by duty, but Galileo knew that he had the scent.

Eventually the Duke was calmed and secured to the litter, which rapidly departed the scene carried by half-a-dozen courtiers and grooms. The remaining guests began to follow uncertainly, separating into pensive groups: there was much muttering and nodding of heads and stroking of sage beards. The Duchess had been lifted into her carriage. Galileo watched it trundle off down the valley in pursuit of her husband.

At first sight it did rather look as though somebody might have poisoned the Duke – the Grand Duke, to give him his full title, bestowed by an especially fanatical pope in exchange for some harmless heretic.

‘Well, that’s a bit of a nuisance,’ Galileo said, to nobody in particular. And the day had started so well.

1.2 The slot-hound

They had been up long before dawn, the Huntsman and he. Two draughts of wine – one for each foot, Giovanni said, to make sure they did not stumble – had set them on their way. The clear sky promised another fine, dry day. The overfull Moon was lowering herself over the Western horizon, like a fat matron keen to take the weight off her feet. Venus sparkled frostily in the East, rising and fading. Venus togata, thought Galileo, Venus the whore, slipping out through the antechamber of the Sun. Then, come sunrise, a first vigilant prime bell had clanged across the valley, like a pebble thrown into a still pool. Galileo had half looked for ripples in the low-lying mist.

And now the hound had led them to the edge of this small wood. Galileo had dropped on one knee and run his fingers around the slot, the better in the half-light to take its length and depth. Only here, in the damp earth at the edge of the wood, had the hart finally left clear hoof-prints. Beside him the slot-hound, all nose and no cry, strained and quivered delightedly on the leash. Galileo looked up at the Huntsman standing over them, who smiled, almost leered, with satisfaction.

The Huntsman and his hound beat twice around the wood, once by smell and once by sight, to check the hart had not left again. They marked the point of entry with broken branches. As they loped back towards the villa, Giovanni sang ‘I am a jolly for’ster’, on through endless verses. Galileo joined in on the chorus as best his wind allowed. At the villa Giovanni had gone to make his huntsman’s report to the Duke and their lordships. Galileo headed for the stables and his worst nightmare.

1.3 A query of our dear friend Dionysio Font, worthy knight.

The autumn sun was still barely a few fingers above the horizon, but already the stable-yard of the Duke’s villa at Poggio a Caiano, ten miles to the West of Florence, was filled with equerries, grooms and pages preparing some of the finest horses in the Duke’s famous stables for another day’s hunting. Galileo took a deep breath: yes, despite his misgivings, it was exciting – the warm, sweaty smell of the horses, the tang of the polish upon their harness, even the pungent, Ammoniacal pools of urine that drained in their own interesting geographies across the paving stones. Actually, it had its uses, horse urine: definitely the best thing to lift a wax seal off a letter without marking the paper.

Still, careful where you trod. You needed to keep an eye out for….

‘What’s the astrologer doing here, for fuck’s sake?’

Galileo flinched. Deliberately or otherwise, the disdainful query had cut across the hubbub of the stable-yard to reach his ears where he was skulking anxiously on the opposite side. It was probably deliberate.

The Cavaliere Dionysio Font, Knight of St Stephen, had posed the question in his customary loud, clear voice. Perhaps his long and successful military career – well, at least he was still alive – had depended upon just such clear and forceful enunciation? There was an old scar upon the Cavaliere’s right temple. The scar plucked at the eyebrow and gave his query an almost playful air, which the curl of his lip however belied. So, all in all, probably deliberate.

But the Cavaliere Font was not the primary cause of the alleged astrologer’s anxiety.

There were some more pedestrian mounts provided for the less prestigious guests and hangers-on – this little ambling hobby, for example, one of a light and wiry breed, excellent for long steady journeys but also possessed of a surprising turn of speed. Galileo, whose presence and purpose qua astrologer had just been called into question, was eyeing the said horse suspiciously. This, rather than the Cavaliere Font, was his most urgent source of anxiety. He intensified his ignorant examination of the harness, and made as though to make some small, important adjustment to the reins.

He could not afford to hear the Cavaliere’s jibes.

Well, ‘astrologer’ he should let pass. For most people – those who didn’t really understand such things – astrologer, astronomer, mathematicus, it was all the same. None of them much better than ‘magician’. And none of them, not all of them together, he assured himself, even began to do justice to the breadth of his talents. More to the point, however, Galileo was not a man to pick a fight unnecessarily – and he was certainly not a man to pick a fight that he was unlikely to win.

Ostensibly, in any case, Font’s question had been addressed to Lieutenant Dovara. As major-domo to His Serene Highness Francesco de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, it was the Lieutenant’s business to know such things, after all. Out the corner of his eye Galileo could see that Dovara had been engrossed in a quarter-masterly survey of the ant-heap busy preparations for the day’s hunting. Now Dovara turned reluctantly to glance across the yard towards the object of the Cavaliere’s contempt. Galileo ducked his head down behind his nag’s neck.

‘The astrologer is here at the invitation of Her Highness the Duchess Bianca,’ Dovara announced crisply, and also loudly enough to carry across the yard in a sudden lull in the hubbub. Everyone else, Galileo realized, was also now listening.

Galileo heard Font snort dismissively.

‘Or maybe by invitation of the Countess Pellegrina,’ Dovara added. ‘I forget.’ This addition – that might have been mischievous on anyone else’s lips – evidently took the Cavaliere Font by surprise. Unwelcome surprise. ‘And besides,’ Dovara continued primly, ‘the Galilei are an old and honourable family. The great-grandfather was elected Gonfalonier of the Commune.’

‘Great-grandfather?’ said Font with a harsh but gleeful laugh. ‘Great-great-great, I should say! That must have been a hundred years ago. Great-great-great-great-great-great-GREAT!’ he crowed.

Right! That was it! Enough! Galileo straightened up from behind his patient horse and cleared his throat to speak. So it was fortunate that, at that very moment, a shadow fell across him, and the Cavaliere was blocked from view by a wall of horse.

Hairy Mary, full of grease! just look at the size of that thing!

A huge horse of service, a war horse of the high Almain breed, had been led fidgeting and stamping out of the stables, barely controlled by a couple of grooms hanging on to its bridle. The horse had been washed and rubbed and combed until its dark coat gleamed in the bright, white sunshine. But that was only the half of it: its mane and tail had been dyed turquoise and elaborately plaited; the saddle was intricately tooled and gilded; the harness was embroidered with silk, the pattern picked out in pearls. Few brides on their wedding day were more luxuriously groomed. Of course, a bride wouldn’t need a saddle for the ride that lay ahead of her, but you take my point. In any case, it seemed to Galileo, speaking as a needy – very needy – young astrologer, sell the Almain and you could probably buy a couple of slave girls in the market in Venice – nice ones, too, maybe one fair the other dark, say, or maybe even twins. They’d be a lot cheaper to run. And that saddle, the decoration would do credit to a folio Bible in a bishop’s study: sell that and you could get a Russian redhead to complete the set. Besides, even Galileo knew that such a horse was too heavy for the hunt. But that wasn’t the point, was it? This was a horse to impress.

This was the Cavaliere Font’s horse.

Everybody knew who he was hoping to impress, of course. And everybody also knew that the horse was borrowed for the occasion.

Font favoured Lieutenant Dovara with a quick bow, and bounded over to where the horse now awaited him. For a moment Galileo thought Font was going to vault into the saddle. But then the cavaliere beckoned one of the grooms, who promptly crouched beside the horse to give him a step up. As soon as he was securely in the stirrups, Font urged the horse into an extravagant pirouette. The groom had to jump out of the way and fell over a bucket as the Cavaliere clattered ostentatiously out of the yard.

Definitely hoping to impress the Countess, then.

One of the Duke’s pages ran past playfully struggling to restrain the Duchess’ favourite pair of deerhounds, with their silken leashes and gilded collars.

Galileo had no one to help him into the saddle. The mounting block was the other side of the yard. With a sigh Galileo grasped the pommel and, at the second attempt, got his foot into the stirrup. He braced to heave himself up.

‘Stop!’ Lieutenant Dovara had materialized beside him. ‘Look at your girth, man.’

The Lieutenant pushed Galileo aside and promptly kneed the hobby in the belly to make it breathe out, tightening the girth strap an extra notch as he did so. Galileo smiled weakly and with a shove from Dovara, hauled himself into the saddle. The hobby set off purposefully, like a good servant that knows what is best for its master.

Half a mile up the road Galileo and his nag fell into line behind the train of carts from the kitchen, laden with provisions for the hunt feast, as they trundled up the valley and into the forest. Galileo tried to make himself comfortable in the saddle, with very limited success.

To be fair, he reflected, it was actually a very good question. What was he doing here, for fuck’s sake?

That is to say, he knew why he’d been summoned to Poggio – well, he thought he did – but why had he been invited to join the hunt? Why had he not been left to get on with work in the Duke’s laboratorio back in the basement of the villa? Galileo hadn’t been born in the saddle, like Font and his cronies. His family didn’t even own a horse. Apart from the cost, living in town there was no real need; for trips to Pisa a mule could be hired. In all his twenty-three years he’d never been hunting, not properly. Beyond his outing with the Huntsman that very morning, Galileo, of the respectable (but destitute) house of Galilei, really knew bugger all about hunting. And he had no wish to get involved with the sticky end of proceedings now.

Dear God, he only hoped the summons hadn’t originated with the Duke himself. If it had, then His Highness’ young assistant was probably destined to be the butt of some elaborate buffoonery for the entertainment of the Cardinal and all the other guests. With any luck, though, the request had indeed come from the Duchess Bianca, as Dovara had told Font. Maybe she just wanted some music at the hunt feast? Despite his youth Galileo’s skill upon the lute was often in demand. Most likely he was standing in for Pietro Strozzi. He’d heard that Strozzi, bless him, had managed to fall off his horse and break a wrist. So that might be it. As well to be prepared, and Galileo had stowed his lute in one of the kitchen carts. He didn’t want to be seen carrying it on his back as though he were some jobbing musician. Much too close to the truth. Fucking Font. Nobody would have queried Strozzi’s presence at the hunt. Strozzi was of impeccable family. Indeed, he had once been a suitor for the hand of the Countess Pellegrina, the Duchess’ daughter.

Ah, and there was a thought. The Countess Pellegrina. Pellegrina, ‘the pilgrim girl’. He’d light a candle at her shrine any day. Yes, there was a thought indeed. Maybe the Cavaliere Font had actually answered his own question.

1.4 The mort o’ the deer

Galileo had given the nag its head and, lost in thought, he soon lost track of the kitchen carts as well. Eventually he had dismounted at a bend in the river. There was a tall overhanging rock on the far bank, a clear, deep pool beneath it, through which the water ran sinewy and serene. On the near side of the river there was this small, grassy meadow. He’d lain down in the shade of a pine tree, and promptly fallen asleep. Now Galileo awoke with a start, as a shadow fell across his face. His grazing horse moved on again, and he had to screw up his eyes in the bright sunlight. He held up his palm to the sun: an hour or more before noon. Still, it wouldn’t do to sleep through the entire morning’s hunting.

Struggling to his feet, he picked up his father’s old cloak, an out-of-fashion purple mantle all splotched with oil stains like a convent scullion’s, so worn and slick at the collar that a louse would slide off it. Galileo scowled, and gave the cloak a vindictive shake. But then he smiled and took a deep breath of the fragrant forest air: the fresh, medicinal smell of the pine warmed in the sun, the underlying earthy mouldiness that meant mushrooms. He dug his hand into his satchel for another handful of sweet raisins. Salviati had given them to him. My uncle’s agent in Smyrna sends them, his friend had said, as though everyone’s uncle had an agent in Smyrna. They were really delicious. Galileo breathed in deeply again. It was so peaceful.

Actually, it was a bit dull. Still, it made a change.

Galileo took another deep breath of the aromatic forest air and exhaled with a sigh. Should’ve brought a book. Maybe one of those fat tomes on ‘The Noble Art of Venery’ so beloved of aspiring courtiers? Actually, no. Galileo could summon no interest in hunting. But maybe his presence at the hunt feast would remind the Duke why he had summoned his brilliant young assistant to his country retreat?

At least it was an opportunity to watch the manoeuvrings of the Duke Francesco and his brother the Cardinal Ferdinand at closer quarters. This whole merry interlude had been engineered by Francesco’s wife the Duchess Bianca in an effort to reconcile the brothers. Which was ironic, since she was also the main cause of their unseemly antagonism. But the Duchess, everyone down in the basement agreed, had been working very hard to mend the rift between the brothers, showering Ferdinand with compliments and sweetmeats and organizing ostentatiously Family entertainments. The Cardinal was being gracious and accommodating in return, it seemed.

The horns of the huntsmen and the baying of the hounds could still be heard intermittently in the middle distance. So we’re not too far off track, Galileo thought. In fact, the cry was much closer than before. Galileo’s tethered nag stopped browsing and raised her head. A crashing of branches among the trees materialized into the hunted hart, heavily labouring, its antlers thrown back.

Galileo watched aghast and entranced. For God’s sake, the last thing he wanted was to be caught up in the death.

The beast stumbled forwards into the clearing, head hanging down, its mouth black, dry and open, its fur bedraggled and torn. It stood swaying on the bank of the river. Then, as the chorus of the hounds and the horns and the shouts of the hunters grew louder, it plunged into the pool. Within a minute, the lead hounds rushed out of the surrounding woods, with Giovanni the Huntsman at their heels. The Duke Francesco followed close behind, with his brother the Cardinal hard upon his shoulder, and the rest of their guests and retinues trailing after. An older man, arriving out-of-breath and angry to be so, threw the reins of his horse to Galileo and strode off to join the throng of courtiers on the river-bank. The man clapped the Duke upon the shoulder in familiar fashion; Galileo had not recognized the Archbishop of Florence in his hunting gear.

Now in the deepest pool, beneath the tall rock, revived by the cool water, the hart had taken his stand. Galileo saw that the hounds could now only attack from the front, and swimming. The leading hounds bayed in a semicircle around their quarry, the music of their cry reverberating within the confines of the valley. Giovanni’s two sons had forded the river downwind and warily circled round behind the hart. From the rock above the pool they threw a rope that tangled around its antlers and then they hauled back its head. Their father, now in the water with the hounds, drew his short sword and deftly slit the hart’s unprotected throat and the slow-moving water turned red like the evening sky. Those who carried horns sounded ‘the mort o’ the deer’.

Galileo felt that he had held his breath since the hart’s first appearance, and exhaled harshly.

The hart sank into the stream, the hounds were beaten back. From the top of the rock Giovanni’s sons jumped into the water with cries of triumph and helped their father pull the twitching carcass to the bank. A few of the younger huntsmen plunged in too, careless of their fine clothes, eager even to bloody themselves. The Duke himself was amongst them. The Cardinal watched his brother’s antics with an affectionate smile, and reached a hand to help the Duke back out onto the bank.

Once dragged up onto the meadow, the deer was rolled onto its back. Its hind legs, splayed apart in the air, suddenly started to thrash desperately. It reminded Galileo of watching, that evening, out with his brigade of cronies, when he was still a student at Pisa.... He swallowed stiffly, his throat dry. Ah, the pleasures of the chase.

‘Nice horse,’ murmured a voice at his shoulder. ‘You are become the Archbishop’s hitching post?’

Startled out of his unchaste recollections, Galileo glanced sideways sharply. A fair young man, slight of build, stood at his side, watching the frolicking courtiers with the faintly contemptuous indulgence of an older brother watching his infant siblings.

‘My Lord Salviati.’ Galileo bowed and received a cursory nod in return.

Excellent, thought Galileo, the day was turning out better than he had feared. His elegantly dressed new companion was Filippo Salviati, scion of one of the most illustrious – and one of the richest – families in Florence. The Salviati, like most of the most illustrious families in Florence, had tried on several occasions to ruin, exile or assassinate the de’ Medici, but never with any enduring success. In the end they had settled for marrying them. The Duke’s grand-mother had been a Salviati; now Filippo’s uncle and cousins devoted themselves to nurturing the family’s interests at court. They had a villa nearby. Galileo liked Filippo, he was astute and entertaining company – and his passion for philosophy made him a very promising patron.

‘Now for the assay,’ Salviati continued. ‘You should stand well back.’

Galileo watched Giovanni the Huntsman drop to one knee and take hold of the finally motionless deer by a forefoot, presenting the assay knife to the Duke. Like an acolyte to the priest. Galileo had read about this stuff. Duke Francesco licked his dry lips and, standing astride the carcase, thrust down to carve a precise, shallow slit from the brisket through the skin of the belly to the groin. The careful incision revealed a good thick layer of venison, and was greeted with a murmur of satisfaction from the clustered courtiers. Jesus, this was more suited to some confraternity of butchers! Though oddly engrossing.

The knife passed to Lieutenant Dovara, who proceeded slickly to develop the dissection – to be fair, ‘butchery’ would have been far too coarse a word. Dovara’s particular target was certain dainty morsels – the caul, the tongue, the ears, the sweetbreads, the doucets (and Galileo could not deny a certain sympathetic constriction in his own scrotum) – all of which were gathered into a fine handkerchief for the Duke’s table.

Throughout this ceremonial a large crow had strutted and flapped impatiently upon a nearby branch, croaking in counterpoint to the continuo baying and whining of the now tethered hounds.

‘Let’s have a reward for Giovanni’s familiar,’ called the Duke merrily.

Galileo was surprised to see Dovara flick a sizeable chunk of gristle in the crow’s direction, which the bird deftly caught and swallowed in a gulp. The crow then fell silent, but continued to watch the assembly, turning its head from side to side, to observe first through one eye and then the other. For some moments it stared intently at the Duke. Then it stretched out its neck and, well, it laughed, harshly, Caw, haw, haw, haw, and performed a little dance of glee, hopping from foot to foot upon its branch. Then it resumed its silent, beady scrutiny of the assembled hunters.

Under the eye of this small black inquisitor, the courtly company fell silent and uneasy, suddenly embarrassed. Like grown men, thought Galileo, discovered playing some childhood game. The Duke turned away from the carcass and gestured for his horse; but without waiting he walked away, seeming pensive and puzzled. His brother the Cardinal Ferdinand and the rest of their entourages followed, in dribs and drabs, like mourners leaving a graveside.

The Archbishop came to collect his horse. He looked from Galileo to Salviati with an irritable frown.

‘Your man has lost his livery, my lord?’

‘Not at all, Your Grace,’ Salviati replied with a bow. ‘But I have been unable to find a hat big enough for his head.’

Galileo struggled not to laugh. The furrows on the Archbishop’s forehead deepened. He took his leading rein and stalked off before he could become more perplexed.

As Galileo walked away in company with Salviati, he looked back over his shoulder. The silence of the hounds had been bought with a glistening heap of entrails. Giovanni the Huntsman and his sons had moved in to continue breaking up the deer. How old was Giovanni? His two sons were grown men, for sure, but country people bred quickly, whilst they could. He had a younger daughter too, but that was another story. Anyhow, young or old, the hunter and his slot-hound had been up before dawn harbouring the deer – which Galileo knew because he had been with them – and he had run with his hounds all that morning, outpacing his masters on their fine horses. He was closer, Galileo thought, to his hounds (and indeed the wild hart) than he was to other men. To some he was Giovanni the Forest. Giovanni had taken half a loaf from his satchel and cut a thick slice against his chest. He glanced about him, before dipping the bread into the blood pooled in the chest cavity of the hart.

1.5 The hunt feast

A few minutes later they emerged blinking into full sunlight. The tables had been laid further up the valley, on another much broader meadow by the river, surrounded by forest but open to the sky. Baskets of roasted capon and duck sat waiting in the kitchen carts, and Galileo quickly noted the flagons of wine cooling at the edge of the stream. A small charcoal stove had been lit downwind, upon which were to be cooked the delicacies reserved for the Duke, that is, the sweetmeats from the hart and probably some forest mushrooms, which the Duke might well have collected for himself.

But it was the long Family table that drew Galileo’s attention like a lodestone. The Duke was already seated in the middle, with the Duchess Bianca on his left, his brother the Cardinal Ferdinand to the right. There was little resemblance between the brothers, it seemed to Galileo. If the Duke was swarthy, brooding, melancholic – Saturnine, you might say – then the Cardinal was more solidly built, ruddy in complexion. Jovial, by all accounts. And there behind the Duke was Lieutenant Dovara, trusting none but himself to wait on their Highnesses. For his part the Cardinal was attended by his secretary Monsignor dal Pozzo. From a good Roman family, that one. Somehow he put Galileo in mind of a hunting trophy over-stuffed by a zealous apprentice, the cheeks too tight, the eyes peering out as if from behind a stiff mask. He had not been with the Cardinal at the death; no doubt there had been preparations to make for his master’s table.

Other lesser dignitaries occupied seats further along the table in both directions. On the Cardinal’s right sat the Countess Pellegrina, Bianca’s daughter by her first husband – if that’s what he’d really been. Beside the Duchess sat the Archbishop of Florence, Alessandro de’ Medici – whom Galileo had already encountered at the death – a keen hunter and a member of the Family, obviously, albeit not from the same line as the Duke. And so it went on, down to the young Don Antonio, the Duke’s son and heir – according to Duke Francesco, at least – seated at the end of the table.

Galileo’s gaze returned to Duke Francesco and Cardinal Ferdinand. You have to be careful, thought Galileo. Look at Lieutenant Dovara, for example: devoted servant of the Duke for twenty years or more. And if anything should happen to the Duke? What then? He’d be lucky to walk away with the clothes he stood up in. Probably get blamed into the bargain. No, you needed to look ahead, spread your bets. True, Galileo was quite well-placed with the Duke at the moment, assisting his Serene Highness in his natural philosophical quests and alchemical projections. And he was quite well in with the Duchess too, which in some ways was even more important. Even so, it didn’t do to be complacent. Little favours