Traitor Angels by Anne Blankman
“I’m copying Paradise Lost.”
He stretched out his legs, crossing them at the ankle. “Perhaps,” he said, “since this poem figures in our mission, I ought to know more about its contents.”
I hesitated. He was right, of course. But . . . these were my father’s words, labored over for years, meant to be the culmination of his career. Sharing them with someone I barely knew felt wrong.
Still, I could hear Father’s voice in my head, begging me not to let his poem vanish forever. He had intended it to be read by the people, and Viviani certainly numbered among them.
“Very well,” I said at last. “It’s a ten-book poem in blank verse, detailing the story of Adam and Eve and their expulsion from Eden, but from a different perspective—in many of the scenes, Satan’s the central character. The story begins after he has already fought God and lost. While he’s in the depths of Hell, he consults with his army of angels about how to recapture Heaven and overthrow the Lord once and for all. He decides to journey to Earth and poison it with evil by tempting its two humans to disobey God’s commands.”
Viviani held out his hand. “May I see it?”
“Be careful. The pages are still wet.” I gave him the stack, and he began to read.
Overhead, the heavens were painted blue and purple, permitting just enough illumination to write by, but it wouldn’t be long before the sky surrendered to night and I would have to put away my work. I increased my pace, working now on Book Two. I was remembering the words wrongly: even in my head, I could hear how awkward the lines sounded. But the plot, at least, was the same; that I recalled with absolute clarity.
At this point, Satan gathers his followers for “the great consult” and they debate whether or not they should fight another battle to gain control of Heaven. Finally Satan suggests they should go to Earth. When none of the angels volunteer for the task, Satan decides to make the journey on his own. It was odd, I thought as I scribbled the lines as best as I could remember them, but my father’s Satan was almost always alone. Perhaps Father was saying something significant about evil—that it divides us from our souls, keeping us eternally distant from ourselves and one another. As though Hell was solitude itself.
“Your father’s poetry is beautiful,” Viviani said at last. “I’ve never read anything like it. His version of Satan . . .” He trailed off, giving me a wary look.
I took pity on him and decided to say what he clearly was reluctant to, out of respect for my feelings. “My father’s Satan appears blasphemous,” I said, wiping my ink-stained quill on a spare scrap of linen. “He’s brave and charismatic; he rails against what he sees as God’s tyrannical rule in Heaven. He’s a leader,” I added, “exhorting his followers to rebellion. A revolutionary, you could even say.”
I looked up from my task to find Viviani watching me carefully. “It’s a trick,” I explained. “My father presents Satan in such a manner so readers will fall with him—they know he’s the villain and yet he appears so heroic that they can’t help rooting for him, at least in the beginning.”
“Then your father’s epic is meant to manipulate its readers.” He sounded impressed. “It’s a game played on our minds.”
“Precisely.” Mysterious or not, at least this boy was clever—he had latched onto my father’s intentions immediately. “From the start, we know the story’s outcome, and yet we still succumb to temptation and find Satan the most admirable character. Everything he says has multiple meanings, but we don’t understand what he’s truly saying until the story’s end, when he tempts Eve.”
For a moment, Viviani was silent. “It sounds like a literary marvel,” he finally said. “But nothing you’ve told me explains why your father summoned me to England.”
He jumped to his feet, then picked up an object from the ground on the other side of him. Gold flashed on its surface and my thoughts about Father’s secrets scattered like leaves in a windstorm. The object was the mysterious instrument I had seen in Viviani’s chamber at the inn.
“What is that?” I asked.
“A telescope. I was using it earlier.” He opened his hands to let me see it more clearly: it was a cylindrical device, its leather covering stamped with a design in gold filigree. My heart beat faster. I had heard the term “telescope” before but until yesterday I had never seen one. I had imagined them to be massive, bulky contraptions made out of wood and brass, not like this slender instrument fashioned out of leather.
“These are used to study the stars, aren’t they?” My hand itched to grab it, but I forced myself to speak calmly. I couldn’t let anyone guess how fascinated I was by astronomy or I’d be branded as an aberration. “May I try it?”
He looked surprised. “Yes, of course.”
We walked into the clearing. He stood behind me, reaching around my body to place his hands over mine on the telescope and direct its lenses at the full moon hanging low in the sky.
“There will be some discoloration around the edges of the moon,” he said, sounding calm, as though he held girls’ hands every day. Maybe he did. “I suspect this telescope’s concave lenses gather and diffuse light improperly. Longer telescopes lessen the distortion. Someday I hope to build a telescope that permits us to see the heavens plainly.”
I glanced over my shoulder at him. His face was inches from mine, so close I could smell his scent of spiced wine and sandalwood. In the silvery darkness, I saw a vein pulsing in his throat, where he had undone his cravat. Hastily, I looked into the telescope, fumbling for something to say. “I thought you were a mathematician, not an astronomer.”
“I am, but the natural world fascinates me, too.” His tone was easy. Obviously, our proximity wasn’t affecting him. At least only one of us was addle-brained tonight.
Irritated with myself, I peered through the eyepiece. Then I gasped aloud. The moon looked as white and lustrous as a pearl, its curved shape blurred as though it were wrapped in fog. Dark shadows dotted its surface.
“What are those specks on the moon?” I asked.
“Valleys and craters. The moon’s surface isn’t smooth, as many believe, but pockmarked with valleys and mountains. By daylight I can show you something even more shocking. Have you heard of the phenomenon of sunspots?”
I shook my head and, loath to blink, I continued staring at the moon. The dark specks were tinged with blue. From this distance, I couldn’t discern which were valleys and which mountains. It little mattered—this was still the most beautiful, awe-inspiring vision I’d ever beheld.
“Sunspots are dark fumes or vapors that travel across the sun’s surface.” Viviani’s breath fluttered warmly on my neck. “They are proof that the sun rotates, stationary, on its axis.”
I pulled away from the telescope so I could turn to look at him. “If the sun is stationary, how can it rise and set?”
Viviani’s eyes held mine. There was something in his face I couldn’t make out—it might have been a challenge. “Because the earth moves around the sun.”
I stared at him, my heart throbbing against my ribs. “That’s blasphemy! The Bible says all heavenly bodies revolve around the earth.”
“You are holding the telescope of the man who discovered the sun’s true movements,” Viviani said fiercely. “Fifty years ago he published the work Letters on Sunspots, and instead of being hailed as the visionary he truly was, he was accused of heresy by the Inquisitors in Rome. We should be brave enough to seek the truth, even when it contradicts our beliefs! Yet everywhere I look, I see people wrapping themselves in darkness because they’d rather not upset the balance of their lives.”
I hesitated, unsure what to say. Willful blindness was something I was all too familiar with. For years, I had heard others hurl insults at Father and Anne, saying their physical afflictions were God’s punishment for their sins. Deep in my bones, I had known they were wrong—I’d known that Father was a good person and Anne was the best, kindest girl I would ever meet. His blindness and her deformed limbs and simple mind
“You must be mistaken,” I said at last.
“I’m not.” Viviani took the telescope from my limp fingers. “Some truths are inescapable, Miss Milton, whether or not you choose to believe them. Every night the stars will shine and rotate in their constellations, and continually our planet will revolve in its journey around the sun.”
Pointedly, I looked at the ground. “The earth seems motionless to me.”
“It’s an illusion. Our planet is in perpetual motion, and other forces keep us anchored to the ground.” Viviani stalked to our campsite. “The earth turns toward the east at a high rate of speed.”
That was impossible! I raced after him.
“If Earth moves in such a fashion, then wouldn’t falling leaves scatter to the west of trees?” I demanded. “And birds lose their way in midair?”
Viviani spun around and stared at me. “How do you know to ask such questions? You’re a girl—”
“Yes, and therefore I ought to be sitting at home, embroidering and pining for a husband,” I retorted. “Tell me how such things are possible!”
He didn’t take his eyes from my face. “Because the earth imparts motion to all objects. Therefore, we don’t fight the movement but become part of it. Like people walking along the deck of a ship at sea.”
I thought of the times I had ridden on the small, flat-bottomed boats that traveled up and down the Thames, ferrying passengers who didn’t want to traverse the clogged London streets. If I closed my eyes, I could still feel my body rocking with the motion of the current and hear the water slapping the sides of the boat. Viviani was correct: I had absorbed the boat’s movement, rather than struggling against it.
Then . . . what he had said was possible. The earth could rotate on its axis. And we could move with it, unaware that at every single instant we were in motion.
I dropped my head into my hands. If Viviani was right, then the Bible was wrong. And the ground was no longer hard and strong but made of shifting sand.
“Many are afraid of the laws of nature because they seem to contradict divine scripture,” Viviani said quietly. “My master, like his master before him, thinks the universe is a giant puzzle, laid out by God, and it’s our task to assemble the pieces and make sense of them.”
“I don’t want to believe that,” I said in a choked voice.
“No matter what you want to believe, the truth remains the same.” His hand brushed my shoulder—a touch as soft as gossamer. “But my master’s master dared to write what he saw in the stars. He recanted before the Inquisitors during his trial; this kept him alive, but he was sentenced to house arrest for the remainder of his life. If I’m ever called upon to defend my beliefs, I hope I can suffer the consequences as unflinchingly as Galileo Galilei did.”
At the name, my head snapped up.
“You speak of Galileo,” I breathed.
“Galileo?” Viviani’s forehead wrinkled. “Maybe that’s how he’s known in your country, but that’s his Christian name, and we refer to him as Signor Galilei.”
I barely heard him. “My father met him nearly thirty years ago. He visited him secretly when Galileo was under house arrest.”
In two quick strides, Viviani had closed the distance between us and gripped my hands in his. The telescope was pressed between our palms, the leather rod keeping our fingers from tangling together. “My master became apprenticed to Signor Galilei when he was seventeen and lived with him during the last years of his life, from sixteen thirty-nine to forty-two. Could he have met your father?”
I shook my head. “He visited Galileo in thirty-eight.”
Viviani released me and paced around the campsite, his boots kicking up eddies of dust from the water-hungry ground. “Nevertheless, something must have happened all those years ago to link the three men together. The secret could be rooted in politics, as you thought. Before he was arrested, Signor Galilei was friends with the pope and dozens of important people. He could have learned something incriminating about the king’s father—something the king is frantic to hide—and told your father about it.”
I held myself still, trying to quiet my whirling thoughts and arrange them in some semblance of order. Shortly after my father had met Galileo, my country plunged into civil war, and Father revised his Italian third sonnet. In 1649, King Charles the First was executed, his family banished, and my father was invited to join the fledgling revolutionary government. Sometime after my birth the next year, when I was so young I can’t now remember the beginning of my training, my father gave me my first dagger. Within ten years, the government had fallen, and by 1660 the beheaded king’s son had been crowned and my family had begun our new life of quiet poverty. And now, in 1666, according to Father’s letter, his increasingly frail health had prompted him to send for Viviani. Were all these events links in the same chain? And how could we possibly find out?
“The timeline fits our political secret theory,” I said. “But why did Buckingham plant a spy among our London neighbors in the first place? And why was he so worried by news of your arrival in London that he sent men to our cottage in Chalfont? No,” I corrected myself. “He wasn’t worried about your arrival, but about the fact that you’re a Florentine. Somehow he must have known that Italians were involved with my father’s secret.”
“And now we’re left chasing after an old sonnet.” Viviani sounded frustrated. He dropped down onto his bedroll.
For a long time, we didn’t talk. I lay on my back, gazing at the sky, trying to empty my mind so answers could stream in. The stars looked like a scattering of coins tossed by a reckless hand—yet I knew they rotated with clockwork regularity. Overhead, the moon once again looked like its usual blank self, its mysteries of mountains and valleys concealed from me.
But I remembered what I had seen through the telescope’s glass. My eyes hadn’t lied to me.
Perhaps, said a small voice in my mind, he’s right, and we should be brave enough to look for the truth, even when it goes against what we’ve been taught.
I shied away from the thought like a skittish horse. This was heresy, and people had been burned for less.
I turned my head a fraction, just enough so I could see Viviani’s profile. He was staring at the stars, his jaw set, his eyes unblinking. His hands were crossed over his chest, rising and falling with the steadiness of his breaths. How strange the stars must look to him, hanging in different locations in the sky than he was accustomed to. Yet he remained here, in this foreign place, because he wanted to keep his word to his master. And he had told me what he believed to be the truth about the earth’s movements, when it would have been easier to lie.
My mouth opened. “Signor Viviani,” I heard myself saying, “you may call me Elizabeth. If you like.”
Heat flooded my cheeks. From the corner of my eye, I saw him smile.
“Then you must call me Antonio,” he said.
Antonio. I repeated the name silently, listening to the way its syllables rose and fell before stretching out. Such a foreign-sounding name, strange to my ears, but pleasing.
“Good night, Antonio.” I rolled onto my side, away from him.
There was a pause. “Good night, Elizabeth.”
He said nothing else. We lay in silence, silvered by starlight, surrounded by darkness.
Nine
IN THE MORNING WE WASHED IN A NEARBY stream before breaking our fast. I plunged my hands into the icy water, letting it sluice down my arms. Antonio had removed his doublet, and he cupped water in his hands, then combed it through his hair. Water splashed the front of his shirt, turning the fabric translucent and plastering it to his skin. Through the thin silk, I could see the muscles of his chest.
The sight sho
“If you keep looking at me in that manner, my virtue may be in danger,” Antonio said.
My face went hot. “You’re an idiot,” I muttered, busying myself with setting out bread and cheese. Whether I spoke to him or to myself, I couldn’t be sure.
He laughed. Was there nothing that shook this boy’s composure?
I stuffed a wad of bread into my mouth so I wouldn’t be tempted to speak. But I couldn’t help remembering Antonio’s allusion to his virtue—which, judging by what he had said, was untouched. There might not be a girl in Florence holding a string to his heart.
I hated myself for the warmth that filled my chest at the thought. Truly, who was the idiot now?
Still, he’s a decent sort, I told myself, chewing and studiously not looking at him. He could have mocked my father for his blindness or my sister for her mismade legs. Perhaps he’d been raised not to assume that physical ailments had been caused by God’s wrath, for his master had served a blind man.
The bread turned to ash in my mouth. Galileo had been blind. Like my father.
I jumped to my feet. “Galileo was definitely blind, wasn’t he?”
Antonio’s forehead creased in surprise. “Yes. He slowly went blind in one eye, then the other. Why?”
I could barely breathe. Father had lost his vision in his left eye, then his right.
“When did he lose his sight?”
“I think he was completely blind by sixteen thirty-six or thirty-seven,” Antonio said, “so he was sightless for the last five or six years of his life. My master said Signor Galilei damaged his eyes by looking through telescopes so often, but of course many said it was God’s punishment for his heretical beliefs about the planets’ movements. What does it matter?”