CHAPTER ­ONE
the ­tower

26 August 1682 / Cremona, ­Italy

“Omero, awake!”

Towards the east, Mercury, Saturn, Jupiter and Mars climbed one by one from the horizon, forming a straight line across the sky. The moon was not yet half full and Orion the Hunter came leaping over the walls of the city, the three stars of his belt throwing spears of light. Padre Fabrizio Cambiati leaned over the parapet high atop the tower to see the clock on the tower’s face. He read it upside down – 4:45 ­a.m.

And then he saw what he had been waiting for. The comet. Out the corner of his eye – almost behind him. He ­turned.

“Omero, awake!”

A small man with an enormous head which barely reached as high as the priest’s elbow, Omero clambered to his feet and stumbled to the parapet, his mouth hanging open in awe. “Dio mio,” he breathed as he cringed in fear of being doused with the comet’s ethereal vapours. “I see the face of the ­goat-­footed one! Save me, Don Fabrizio!”

“Calm yourself.”

Low on the horizon, the head of the comet shone silvery white, its tail a haze of glowing feathers, as if someone had set fire to a dove and tossed it over the city ­wall.

Together they watched and wondered as the comet coursed up and across the heavens – a ­slow-­moving acolyte, lit taper in hand, passing down a row of candles, lighting them one by one. The light of a great comet would nor­mally have weakened the brilliance of the stars, but this was not a normal comet. Far from it. The comet ignited the firmament. It refreshed the constellations, brightening the stars as it went, irradiating the hard diamonds of Orion’s belt, the glints from the surface of the water in the Water Bearer’s bucket, the shards of light in the eyes of the Lion, the sparks from the hooves of the Bull, from the horns of the ­Ram.

Late that afternoon, the priest and his manservant had begun their ascent of the torrazzo that stood on the main square of Cremona, the tallest tower in a city of a hundred ­towers.

Omero, who had been sleeping at the tower’s entrance while he waited for the priest, had struggled to his feet as his master arrived out of breath. Fabrizio Cambiati’s rich hair, as black and shiny as if it had been dipped in ink, was combed straight back. Oddly, his brown eyes, set in a face of weathered skin, didn’t seem to match – one was happy, the other sad. With his black cassock to his ankles, Cambiati looked taller than he actually was. While he could not be called handsome, when he smiled he displayed a warmth that made him appear more youthful than his middling years would ­warrant.

The priest glanced back the way he had come. “I have been all afternoon with a patient. Amazing, the efficacy of castor beans and ground senna pods in dealing with a serious blockage. Come quickly now, Omero.” Fabrizio stepped into the shadows. “I believe his wife was about to thrust a basket of bread and cheese upon me as payment–a gift she can hardly afford to deny her family. I saw her coming after me down the street. Hurry.”

They mounted the worn stone stairs within the tower, the staircase turning ninety degrees at each ­corner.

Omero lugged a basket of food. Chunks of ham, a fresh loaf of bread, Nebbiolo grapes, a brick of hard white cheese, a bottle of lively red wine and a green melon the size of a man’s head. The servant stopped often to catch his breath, putting the basket down at his feet, leaning against the cool brick ­wall.

Fabrizio carried a sheaf of papers in one hand, and in the other a long, thin object wrapped in ­cloth.

“Come a little more quickly, Omero. At this pace, she will catch us with ease.” The priest glanced back down the stairs, turned and started to climb again, but noticed a window cut in the wall. “No, wait.” He looked out the window, scanning the piazza below. A number of stone buildings surrounded the rectangular square – the tower in which they stood, the massive cathedral next to it, an ­eight-­sided baptistery at the far end, the town hall across from the tower, a small ­fortress-­like armoury next to that and a row of small shops at the other end, including a baker’s and the workshop of Niccolò the violinmaker. A few people conversed in the piazza but there was no sign of the wife of his ­patient.

They climbed again and soon Omero was puffing. “It’s heavy, this basket.”

“If you hadn’t insisted on that huge melon, and the largest bottle of wine you could find, it would be easier. You have only yourself to blame.”

Omero grumbled, and climbed ever more slowly. He halted, thinking to steal a rest by making conversation. “Why are we climbing this tower? This day’s too hot for climbing.”

“You know perfectly well. I told you yesterday. Do you not remember?”

“I wasn’t listening.”

Fabrizio sighed. Omero stared at him. The priest’s eyes were watering, as they always did, day and night. “What guarantee do I have, Omero, if I waste my breath telling you again, that you will listen this time?”

“You are indeed a cruel master. Can we not stop here and eat?”

“No. Cease your whining. We must mount to the highest point for the best view.”

“If you could take a turn with the basket . . .”

“All right. Give it to me.” Don Fabrizio took the basket from him. “First you fill it to the brim, then you get me to carry it. Here, take the sky maps.” Before lifting the basket, he placed the long object on top of the ­foodstuffs.

They trudged upward through the tower, its walls and ceiling of ­reddish-­brown ­brickwork.

“Well, are you going to tell me what we are going to see, or am I to remain in ignorance for this entire . . . ascension?” He said the last word with his finger pointing in the air, as if he had just discovered something ­new.

“Yes, yes. We are going to look upon a comet high in the heavens. Rodolfo told me there would be a great comet coming tonight. Do you recall him? I saved his life, remember? An altogether strange fellow – people call him the Man of the Reeds.” The priest paused. “Are you even listening?”

“What’s that? Oh, I was thinking – do you suppose we could stop by the taverna later, after we are done with all this?”

Fabrizio halted and stared at his servant. “Usually a capacious forehead is a sign of intelligence . . .” The priest continued, “We will view the comet through this instrument called a telescopio. With it we will bring the stars close to earth. The Englishman, the scientist of the heavens who was here last year, recently sent it to me as a gift.”

“I remember him well. The two of you spent many a night talking of mad things about which I know nothing.” Omero gave him a blank look. “Tell me, which is it that moves through the tube – the distant object or the eye itself?”

Fabrizio laughed. “That is a question I cannot fully answer. While I am sure that neither eye nor object moves through the tube, my understanding of the science involved is severely limited. I know there are mirrors inside, and somehow . . . but come, look.”

The priest paused and, with care, placed the telescope on a wide, ­waist-­high stone ledge before a window. He unfolded the indigo cloth and revealed an instrument about three feet long, constructed of pearwood and bearing three rings of ­brass.

It looked to Omero like a musical instrument – a pipe or woodwind. He stared at it, and as he did so it seemed that a ray of sunlight shot through the nearby window and sparked off the middle brass ring. He imagined the object filled with stars and tiny comets bouncing off the interior walls of the tube. He wondered it did not explode before his ­eyes.