Traitor Angels

by Anne Blankman

  He paused, as if bracing himself for what he had to say. “Seventeen years ago, my twin brother and I were born in the Netherlands to our father and his mistress. We would have been born in England if Fortune’s wheel had spun in a different direction—or perhaps we wouldn’t have been born at all. We spent our first dozen years in exile, slinking from one country to the next. When our father finally returned to these shores, we followed him.”

  He gave us a thin-lipped smile. “My brother James and I have been granted impressive titles—he’s the Duke of Monmouth and I’m the Duke of Lockton—but the circumstances of our birth ensure that we will never truly belong in our family.”

  He took a deep breath, like a swimmer preparing to plunge into icy waters. “We’re the king’s eldest illegitimate children. All my life I’ve grown up beneath his hand. For this reason I slipped away and traveled to Mr. Milton’s home as quickly as I could when Buckingham left London in search of him. I understand, better than anyone, what my father’s capable of. He’s a tyrant.”

  Crofts paused, the muscles in his throat rippling as he swallowed hard. “I hate to think what terrible secret must be buried in my family’s past, but it is only right and just that the public should know what it is. Kings are permitted no secrets. If my father tries to deceive his people, then he no longer deserves to wear the crown. When we learned about the Florentine’s arrival, my father swore he would stop at nothing to silence Mr. Milton. We must do everything in our power to learn why.”

  Eleven

  IN THE END, THE LIBRARIAN PERMITTED US TO unchain the book and bring it to an empty room nearby. It was a small, plain chamber, unfurnished except for a table and a handful of chairs. Its long windows overlooked a courtyard that was slowly turning gold in the afternoon sunlight. The sudden privacy was a relief: our whispered conversations in the library had caught several students’ attention, and they had glared at us, irritation plain in their features. I had feared it wouldn’t be long before some of the highborn students recognized the king’s son.

  Antonio placed the book on a table. Crofts leaned against the door, watching us with agonized eyes. “I—I didn’t know if I should tell you the truth earlier, when I met you in the woods,” he faltered. “I was afraid you wouldn’t trust me if you knew who I really am.”

  “And why should we trust you now?” Antonio shot back. “So far, all you’ve proven to us is you’re a liar.”

  “Antonio!” I grabbed his sleeve, tugging on it until he reluctantly followed me to the far side of the room. “You can’t speak so boldly to the king’s son,” I said in Italian, hoping Crofts was unversed in the language. “He may have been born out of wedlock, but it’s well known that the king dearly loves him and his brother. The duke is one of the most powerful people in my country—no doors are barred to him; he can go wherever he wishes, do whatever he wants.”

  “He can lay no claim to me,” Antonio muttered. “I have no king.”

  This, I knew, was true. Tuscany was ruled by dukes, and Antonio’s master served the grand duke, the most elevated personage in his city-state. If Antonio ran afoul of our king’s son, it was possible Grand Duke Ferdinand would intercede on his behalf. But it was a risk we couldn’t take.

  Crofts’s boots rang on the floor as he walked toward us. His face was pale and strained. “I see I must speak plainly with you. Then perhaps you’ll understand why I wish to help.” For a moment, he was silent, a muscle twitching in his cheek. “Kings must uphold the laws of their land. If they don’t, anarchy ensues. We only have to look back twenty years to see the proof—my grandfather dissolved Parliament and attempted to assume absolute power, and all he got for his troubles was a bloody war and his head severed from his neck.”

  He rubbed his own, shivering slightly, as if he could feel the steel of the executioner’s ax. “I may be an illegitimate duke, but I consider the English to be my people, and I would battle my father to protect them. My coming after you may have been easy—I told my servants I was joining friends on a hunting excursion to Yorkshire—but if my involvement became known, I would be seen as a traitor. Nothing would keep me alive.”

  Emotion cracked his final word in two. Antonio and I looked at each other and nodded in silent agreement.

  I turned to Crofts, who was staring at the floor. His breath shuddered between his lips.

  “Let’s read the sonnet,” I said. “Together.”

  Crofts’s head snapped up. “Then you’re willing to let me join you?” At my nod, he clasped my hand, the leather of his gloves warm on my skin. “Thank you,” he said softly.

  We returned to the table. Crofts sank into a chair, resting his chin on his hand. “I don’t know a word of Italian. Can you translate it for me?”

  I bent over the volume, its scent of old paper and ink assailing my nose. The edges of the pages had already begun to yellow with age, and some of the words had faded to gray. “It’s a sonnet written from the perspective of an Englishman spying on a young shepherdess at twilight. The plant she’s watering isn’t native to the area but flourishes under her touch, just as the writer says his love for her makes his tongue ‘flower.’”

  Crofts raised his eyebrows. “Begging your pardon, Miss Milton, but this poem hardly sounds like the great literature I expect from your father.”

  I frowned. Crofts was correct: the subject matter was unusual for my father, who often focused on weighty topics like politics or biblical stories. This flimsy love poem sounded utterly unlike him.

  Antonio looked up. “It’s clearly not written by a native speaker. Mr. Milton’s grasp of Italian is admirable, but several of his phrases sound discordant to my ear. The last two lines are particularly awkward.” He translated aloud. “‘Ah! I wish my heart was slow and my chest hard toward she who sows such fertile terrain from the heavens.’ ‘Heavens’ could also mean ‘from above,’” he added.

  “That’s a strange image,” I said. “What exactly is this ‘fertile terrain from the heavens’? And what is this familiar young shepherdess planting? It must be important, since my father focuses on it for three whole lines.”

  “I would interpret avezza as ‘expert,’ not as ‘familiar,’” Antonio said. “Someone who is experienced in her tasks.”

  “So we have an expert shepherdess tending a non-native flowering plant at twilight.” Crofts heaved a sigh. “Miss Milton, are you certain your father was referring to this poem when you were bidding farewell to each other?”

  I barely heard him, but latched onto the sonnet instead. A shepherdess watering a non-native plant—the sonnet began with this picture, and therefore I knew my father must have considered it important, for he had always told me that a writer’s most crucial line was his first one.

  “What’s significant about this plant or the ground she tends?” I wondered aloud. “Why did my father identify this terrain as coming from the heavens?”

  Antonio glanced at me, his face suddenly tense. “Signor Galilei’s area of knowledge was the heavens—the skies, that is—”

  “Who’s Signor Galilei?” Crofts looked from Antonio to me. Before either of us could reply, he continued, “You needn’t seek any heavenly ground in Oxford. The only special land around here is the Physic Garden.”

  I whirled on Crofts. “A garden?”

  Beside me, Antonio sucked in a deep breath. He must have made the same leap I had: in Paradise Lost, as in the Bible, the Garden of Eden contains a multitude of plants and flowers—and the Tree of Knowledge. Beneath its apples’ shiny red skin lie the intertwined blessing and curse of illumination and death. A single taste will make you wise, but mortal.

  Crofts looked startled. “Yes, a garden. Why does that matter?”

  “Something’s hidden there.” My pulse threaded unevenly with excitement. “Just like the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden.”

  Crofts tilted his head to the side, considering. “It’s a clever hiding place. Gardeners tend it, so anything your father concealed there won’t have
been lost to lands turning wild.”

  “We have to find it immediately!”

  Crofts shoved his chair back from the table and surged to his feet. “We can’t risk others seeing us poking around in the garden—they’ll be sure to ask questions or send a message to my father about my behavior. We should wait until night has fallen. There’s an inn nearby with decent beds and a discreet proprietor. Once the sun has set, we can return.”

  He hurried from the room.

  Although my legs burned to run to the Physic Garden, I knew Crofts was right. Father’s secret had remained buried for who knew how many years, and a few hours more wouldn’t make a difference. I made to follow him but Antonio caught my wrist.

  “What do you think about him?” he whispered in Italian, nodding at the door through which Crofts had gone. “He’s put himself in grave danger by helping us. My master would say he’s proved himself to be a true nobleman, by showing us his noble heart.”

  I snorted. “An elevated lineage is no guarantee of a noble heart. Most nobles are immoral charlatans.”

  Antonio winced. “That seems unfair. I’ve known many good-hearted aristocrats. Florence’s grand duke has always treated me and my master well and supported our experiments.”

  “You haven’t had cause to hate nobles as I have.” I thought of how Father had looked when he’d returned from prison six years ago: painfully thin, his chest and arms stringy, his hands shaking so uncontrollably that I had had to spoon soup into his mouth. Bitterness made my tone hard. “They presume to rule because of their lineage, not because they wish to take care of their countrymen. They punished my father because he wanted to build a land in which men are equal. So if you find me unfair to them, I don’t care. I’ll never regret my feelings.”

  I ripped myself out of his grasp and stalked from the room. Without a word, Antonio followed me. His face was as dark as a storm cloud, and he kept his gaze trained straight ahead. The only sound was the tramping of our boots on the floor.

  At the end of the corridor, Crofts waited. If he noticed the fury seething between us, he ignored it, saying, “Come, let’s go to the inn.”

  Wordlessly we fell in step alongside him and walked outside into the oppressive heat of another afternoon unrelieved by rain.

  The inn that Crofts had chosen for us to stay at was a short, squat building of yellow stone. As I had no money to pay for my lodgings, I offered to stay in a room on the ground level, where servants and travelers too poor to afford a bed paid for the privilege of slumping over a rope to keep themselves off the floor. Crofts smiled at my suggestion, saying we couldn’t take the chance of one of my room companions noticing the ladylike way I used a chamber pot. With flaming cheeks, I stammered out my agreement—which was how I’d found myself ensconced in a fine chamber on the second story, paid for with Crofts’s coins.

  Crofts had ordered baths drawn for three of us—a dreadful extravagance in this drought, but his sack of guineas silenced the innkeeper’s protests. Maidservants had hauled a wooden tub to my room and filled it from ewers of fragrant, steaming water. After I had washed, I dressed again in my travel-stained clothes. They were the only boy’s garments I had, so it couldn’t be helped.

  The gleam of silver on the wall caught my attention. Rising, I felt as drawn to it as a river’s current to its banks, moved by forces greater than itself.

  I had never seen myself in a glass. The ministers of my faith said true value came from within, which was why we wore no color next to our skin and hung no mirrors in our houses. When I was a child, I’d often wondered what I looked like, and had tried to catch my reflection in shop windows or the reflecting pools in city parks, but all I’d been able to see was a pale oval framed with dark hair. I had reasoned I must resemble my sisters, for they looked remarkably like one another, but I didn’t know.

  Barely daring to breathe, I raised my head and stared at myself in the mirror. A stranger looked back.

  My face was long and narrow, ending in the strong curve of my jaw. The eyes I had always assumed I’d inherited from my father were his shade of pale blue, but clearer, unmarked by whitish film. Chestnut-brown hair cascaded down my back—the replica of my sisters’ tresses. My skin wasn’t the plain white I had expected but tinged with gold, doubtless colored by the last few days spent riding in the sun.

  Suddenly I was smiling at my reflection. Looking at myself in the glass hadn’t felt wrong or wicked. It had felt . . . right, I decided.

  A knock sounded on the chamber door. Clapping on my hat and stuffing my hair under it, I hurried to open the door.

  Antonio stood in the corridor. His face was scrubbed clean, his cheeks flushed pink. The tips of his hair were still wet from his bath. Even from a few feet away, I could smell lavender soap on his skin. He held a serving tray. Pewter domes covered the plates.

  “I took the liberty of bringing you supper,” he said. “I hope that’s all right.”

  “Yes. Please. Bring it in.” I was so startled to see him at my door that I stumbled over the words. Waving him inside, I slipped off my hat. I closed the door behind him and leaned against it, watching him set the tray on the writing table by the window. Beyond the glass, the sky blazed with its final strains of sunlight, rimming Antonio’s form with gold.

  He bowed. “Enjoy your meal, Elizabeth. I’ll call for you again at dusk.”

  “Stay.” The word was out of my mouth before I could snatch it back.

  He froze. “You would invite me to remain when I wronged you in the library?” he asked quietly. “Your heart is more forgiving than I deserve.”

  “It’s how I was taught by my faith,” I said.

  For a heartbeat, he was silent. “Then perhaps religion isn’t as useless as I thought. Thank you for the invitation,” he added, drawing a chair back from the table and looking at me, clearly waiting for me to sit.

  “Not yet,” I said. “You haven’t apologized.”

  He threw his head back and laughed. “You’re right, I haven’t.” Closing the distance between us, he took my hands in his. In the growing darkness, his eyes held a liquid sheen, as though they were made of brown glass. “I shouldn’t have accused you of being unfair. Your feelings about the nobility are understandable. I ask your forgiveness, Elizabeth.”

  I smiled. “You have it.” Together we sat down.

  “I have four brothers,” Antonio said. He removed the domes covering the plates, revealing dishes piled with mutton and potatoes. Although his tone was casual, the look he sent me was hesitant, as though he were forcing himself to speak when he would rather not. “I haven’t seen them in years. They work with my parents in vineyards and olive orchards outside Florence.”

  I cut a slice of mutton. “Their profession sounds quite different from yours.”

  “I hear the question in your voice, although you’re too polite to ask it.” He didn’t look at me but gazed instead at his plate. “I’m lowborn. By all rights, I should still be working in the vineyards with my brothers.”

  His tone became brisk. “Vincenzo Viviani isn’t my cousin—that’s a story he made up to explain my sudden appearance in his home. My true name is Antonio Galletti. When I was seven, I was traveling with my family, seeking new work, at the end of the harvest season. We came to a village inn. In these places, everyone sits at the same table, and I wound up next to a gentleman who was entertaining others by doing sums in his head with lightning speed. It was like magic.

  “I begged him to teach me. By the time the dishes were cleared, I had mastered the two times table. He asked me my name and age, and then he said if my parents gave their consent I could become his apprentice. They were grieved to give me up, but they knew we couldn’t refuse such an opportunity. I haven’t seen them since. But I’m afraid if we met again, they wouldn’t know me because I’m so greatly changed from the farmhand they knew. Or they would feel ashamed,” he added, his voice cracking, “and imagine I no longer care for them because of the differences in our stations. And
that is my secret, Elizabeth.”

  At once I understood what he had done: he’d given me a piece of himself, the part he hid from everyone else, because I had shown him my private pain about the nobility.

  “You’ve given me a gift,” I said. “Thank you.”

  He made a restless gesture with his hand. “I think it’s time we left for the garden, don’t you?” He strode to the door, then turned to look back at me, the white of his teeth flashing in an unexpected grin. “Why are you still sitting? Come! Where’s your sense of adventure?”

  Perhaps this was how he could push away fear and sadness so easily. He treated life as an adventure. This wasn’t foolishness, then, as I would have thought only a few days ago. This was bravery.

  I unbuttoned my cuffs and raised my arms, letting the fabric fall from my wrists to reveal my strapped knives. “I’m ready.”

  He laughed again. And I couldn’t help wondering why he had sounded so bitter when he’d mentioned religion—and wishing I had the courage to ask him.

  Twelve

  THE PHYSIC GARDEN HAD BEEN BUILT ON TOP OF the old Jewish cemetery, Crofts told us as we slipped, as quiet as wraiths, through Oxford’s dusk-painted streets. The sun was setting behind the stone houses, burnishing their roofs orange-red. Lanterns hanging beside front doors swung in the breeze, throwing alternating lines of black and gold across the cobblestones. Except for the creaking of lantern chains or the occasional rattle of carriage wheels, a blanket of silence seemed to have laid itself across the city in preparation for the coming night.

  “Didn’t the Jews object to the desecration of their burial ground?” Antonio asked Crofts. I kept my hand at my side, my fingers curled tight around the wooden handle of a spade. Antonio carried another. We had borrowed the tools from the innkeeper, who had hastily proffered them when Crofts asked if he had any shovels he could spare.