The Secret of the Glass

by Morin, Donna Russo

  Pasquale felt a lurch of adrenaline; there were few things that ignited his interest as much as science, at least not many that could be discussed in public. Galileo spread his sheaves, shuffling them about, arranging them in a particular order known only to him, but Pasquale had no wish to rush him. The professor nodded his head in greeting, continuing on as before.

  “Where are you in the case, my friend?” This question Galileo directed back to Paolo Sarpi.

  The reserved man raised his thin shoulders.

  “What can I say, it is the Vatican against Venice, and it grows more poisonous every day. The first thing the new Pope did was to issue his edict of excommunication and I must formulate a reply, not knowing whom I can and cannot trust. There are spies everywhere…Rome has her spies here, we have ours there. Meanwhile the senate grows more divided and antagonistic every day. If I thought Rome would deal with these…these degenerates forthrightly, I would send them to His Holiness happily, but I cannot allow a rapist and a molesting murderer to go unpunished, clerics or no.”

  The Servite friar, and one-time court theologian, had served as Official Counselor to the Venetian senate for many years, but the case of the two clerics, and the debate concerning who had jurisdiction over them, the church or the state, had plunged him into a vortex of espionage and evil he had never known or imagined.

  “We are behind you, as we will be at the gates of Hell.” Sagredo laughed smoothly at his own acerbic wit.

  “Rome wants them so they can do nothing, hide it under their opulent rugs. To them sexual molestation by a man of the church isn’t a crime, it is a right, merely one kept behind closed doors. The men who proclaim themselves as the keepers of God’s word consider themselves above the law.” Pasquale’s voice quivered with his conviction.

  “Don’t let your father hear you talk this way,” Sarpi told Pasquale with raised, thin brows.

  Father and son were both part of the Grand Council, the largest governing body in Venice; they stood firmly and clearly on opposite sides of this contentious issue.

  Pasquale sniffed cynically. “There is little my father could hear me say that would make him dislike me more than he already does.”

  Sarpi nodded sagaciously, a respectful glint in his eyes for this man who showed no fear in the face of such condemnation.

  The monk waved a hand in the air as if to dispel an aggravating insect.

  “Enough of this talk, of this case, I live and breathe it every hour of every day. I come here to be distracted…distract me, Galileo. How are Marina and the children?”

  Galileo Galilei rubbed his stubby salt-and-pepper hair, creating more chaos than before. The short wiry threads stuck out from his temples and up from his high forehead.

  “She is home with the children. The girls are wonderful, little young ladies. Vincenzio is a handful, a typical troublesome toddler. He keeps Marina quite busy.”

  The scientist did not refer to the mother of his children as his wife; she was not. Why she was not served as fodder for great speculation among the gossiping circles all through the peninsula.

  Pasquale wanted to hear nothing of women and children.

  “What are we looking at, professore?”

  All four men turned their attention to the papers fanned out before them. Galileo’s small mouth stretched into a wide grin.

  “It is a device for seeing far into the distance. A German-born Dutchman, Lipperhey…no, mi scusi, Lippershey, a spectacle maker, has made a crude one but has not seen its potential. I have. His construction is miraculous, but crude, and can be improved upon. Thanks to my friend Sarpi and his astute suggestion, I believe the answer lies in the strength of the adverse polarity of the lenses and their sizes relative to each other.” He glanced up from the complicated drawings and notes. “With this…I will see the stars and planets and will, once and for all, prove Copernicus correct.”

  Sarpi and Sagredo said nothing, but an occupied, meaningful look passed between them.

  Pasquale didn’t see it, being far too intrigued with the topic at hand.

  “Who was Copernicus? What is he correct about?”

  “He was a genius, a man far ahead of his time, though gone now for over sixty years.” Galileo warmed to his subject and his captive audience and he became the animated and energetic lecturer who had become famous in the classrooms of the University of Padua. “His theories, unlike Aristotle’s theories, which the church has based its teachings on, postulate that the Earth is not the center of the planets. Rather, the sun is.”

  “‘O Lord my God…Thou fixed the Earth upon its foundation, that it shall not be moved forever,’” Father Sarpi intoned. “Psalm 104.”

  Sarpi directed this last to Sagredo in answer to the man’s quizzically raised brows.

  “Precisely, that is their defense. But think of it this way.” Galileo grabbed parchment and quill, drawing more scribbled lines upon its surface. “Yes, the planets’ orbits are circles, one inside the other, hoop after hoop, but it is the immense energy of the sun, the enormous sphere of golden fire which serves as the focal point of the vast and deep universe, drawing the other planets in as the fire lures in the moth.”

  “But haven’t Aristotle’s theories comprised all teachings on the matter for hundreds of years?”

  “Only because no one has offered them the truth, a truth based on fact, not philosophy.”

  Galileo banged his fist upon the table, incensed. He had complained to his friends about philosophers for years, labeling them as men who simply followed what they had been taught and therefore gave confident, but incorrect, answers to any probing questions of life and its origins.

  “Aristotle was nothing more than a philosopher. His theories were a crutch that all the supposed great thinkers used to lean on. What is it about some men’s egos that forces them to say anything when they should say nothing at all?”

  Father Sarpi saw the color rise on his old friend’s face, saw the agitation in Galileo’s choppy hand motions and led him over to a grouping of chairs and forced him to sit in one. Murmuring voices and the gurgling of liquid as men filled their glasses carried over from the other side of the room. The monk filled a large pewter tankard with deep puce wine and shoved it into his friend’s hand. Galileo took a gulp, wiped a drip off the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand, and continued his tirade seamlessly to the men who took seats around him.

  “It was the lecture notes from one of my University of Pisa professors, Moletti was his name, which led to my first questions. I felt torn myself by my own beliefs, those of science juxtaposed with those of my faith. The science appeared blasphemous. At first I believed in Aristotle’s theories. To do otherwise was to deny belief in God, as the church has fervently insisted his theories are those of God and Heaven. But I wondered why science and faith could not co-exist. Why the words of the Bible might not be symbolic of the science they represent and not be taken with the literal maturity of a two-year-old child.”

  “That was a long time ago,” Pasquale said, taking the seat beside Galileo, sitting on its edge, and leaning toward the learned man with the eagerness of a small boy about to open gifts. “Why did your studies not continue?”

  Galileo shrugged; the wide white shirt collar that hovered above his black academic robes rose toward his gray, beard-covered jaw line.

  “My father forced me to discontinue my studies at Pisa. He could no longer afford my tuition.” He laughed cynically. “Of course, having me home was not to his liking either. We argued constantly over my experimentations and though I worked many hours in his drapery, apparently I did not perform to his expectations. He fired me after four weeks.”

  “Fired you?” a deep voice guffawed from behind Pasquale. A few of the younger men had joined their conversation, drawn by the controversy of the topic and the power of Galileo’s delivery. The tall young man elbowed his fair-haired friend beside him playfully. “Your own father fired you?”

  Everyone laughed now—with Gali
leo, not at him—and the other men in the room joined the spirited group, wrangling their chairs close to the circle, bringing their own vessels of wine and ale with them. The heavy wooden furniture legs bumped noisily against the hard tile floor as each man found a place within the lively assembly.

  “Sì, Gradenigo, it’s true. From then on, I had to hide to study, steal to drink. It took a while for me to afford my indulgent research.” Galileo’s gaze wandered away for the moment, staring past the men in the room, past the room itself as if to another place and time. He returned with a shake of his head and a finger pointing to his designs. “With this device I will see it all. I will prove the Sun is the center of the universe conclusively.”

  Father Sarpi’s thin mouth frowned as he stared down into his cup.

  “Rome will not like this…it stinks of heresy.”

  “Nonsense,” Galileo fired back, the warmth of annoyance splotching his apple-cheeked face. “I am a devout Catholic. I love God, but who is to say where his genius begins? Why can I not marvel at the heavens and their miraculous workings and love the God who created them at the same time? Was it not a cardinal, Cesare Baronio, if I’m not mistaken, who said that the Bible is a book about how to make it to heaven, not how heaven is made?”

  “You are sweetly naïve, my friend,” Sarpi said with a warm chuckle. “Consider Bruno—surely he thought the same as you do.”

  Giordano Bruno, an Italian philosopher and cosmologist, was convicted of heresy and burned at the stake after serving seven years in prison in the Castel Sant’ Angelo, the Vatican jail. He was taken to the Campo de’ Fiori, gagged, lashed to a pole naked, and set afire. His screams echoed far down the cobbled lanes of the Roman square; some say they echo there still.

  “But Bruno was not convicted for his beliefs in the Copernican theory but for his theological errors. What would you expect when a man proclaims Christ was not God but no more than a skillful magician or that the devil himself will one day be saved?” Galileo thrust his hairy chin forward. “My theology remains true to the teachings of the Church.”

  “You have accepted their rhetoric, my friend.” Sarpi referred again to Rome with the same snideness as before. “Their allegations are nothing but sophistry, camouflage they used, and continue to use, to commit the atrocities of the Inquisition.”

  “And what of Veronese?” Sagredo lowered his glass long enough to offer this thought into the conversation.

  “Veronese?” Galileo quizzed his younger friend.

  “Sì, Paolo Caliari, Veronese he is called, he was summoned before the Inquisition for his altarpiece painting in the Santi Giovanni e Paolo right here in Venice.”

  “What was wrong with it?”

  Sagredo laughed coarsely. “In my eyes, nothing, in fact I found it rather amusing. In one corner there is a fool sitting among the apostles playing with a parrot and in another there is one apostle, belly swollen with what must have been a sumptuous meal, picking his teeth with a fork.”

  Galileo laughed with the other men, the room filling with the low rumbles of the male species at their ease.

  “For that he was sent before the Inquisition?”

  “Indeed,” Sarpi assured with a determined nod and a grin set askew with amusement.

  “What happened to him? Surely he was not burned at the stake as Bruno was?”

  “No.” Sarpi put his slim silver goblet down on the mahogany pedestal beside him. “If I remember correctly he was ordered to fix the painting, though I don’t believe he ever did.”

  “Aha!” Galileo exclaimed. “You see, I have nothing to fear.”

  “His offense was a painting. Yours would be changing the whole foundations of our world, the very core beliefs of the majority of people on the face of the earth.”

  “But if it is the correct belief, then truth shall be on my side.”

  Sarpi and Sagredo shared another worried glance.

  Galileo waved a hand in the air.

  “Aristotle did not even belong to the church. The priests and monks were the only people who could read, and they read Aristotle. They cultivated not just theology but all knowledge. For centuries, they have taught the theories of Aristotle, not because they are correct, but because they had nothing else. To say he is wrong is to say they are wrong.”

  “Is it not the most magnanimous and truthful among us who can openly admit when they are wrong?” An older member of the group, a serious thoughtful man of few words, offered the idea.

  “Of course,” da Fuligna answered the question posed to no one in particular, “but when has the church been magnanimous?”

  Sarpi nodded, a dismissive grudging gesture. “I am already being watched, thanks to the Papal Nuncio. He has denounced me for not wearing my sandals at home, as is the rule of my order.”

  “What do you wear?” Sagredo asked with a sidelong and sardonic glance.

  Fra Paolo gave a sheepish grin to the room and all the men within it who waited eagerly for his answer, offering a guilty glance to the heavens before answering. “Slippers.”

  The deep male laughter rang out strong and sure, a concert of bass and kettle drums.

  “So you see,” Sarpi said to Galileo, “you are already under scrutiny for keeping such poor company.”

  Galileo smiled with fondness at his dear friend.

  “I will take my chances…with you, and my work.”

  Seven

  Galileo’s teeth chattered in his mouth. He sat up on the settee and searched about, confused and unsure of where he was, his limbs trembling from the cold. The opulent room appeared golden and nebulous, suffused in the early evening by sun streaming in straight shafts through the western windows. In the haze he saw his three friends, sleeping on divans and cushions scattered about the room.

  Remembrance dawned as he came more awake. They had come to the home of Count Camillo Trento when the heat of the day had become too potent. The Count was not in residence but the maggiordomo had shown them great hospitality, leading the group, weary from their walking tour about the countryside, to this extraordinary room. Such magnificent respite waited for them within, and each felt sure he had passed through the gates of heaven as the cold air hit them like a deluge of drenching cool water. It tingled upon their moisture-filmed skin. The servant had shown them the pipe that summoned the frigid air through the ground from the Caves of Costozza and the underground, ice-cold spring. He had warned them not to fall asleep with the pipe valve open. Evidently, they had not heeded his advice.

  Galileo rubbed his goose-pimpled arms, creating friction he hoped would warm his freezing skin. They needed to get out of this room and back into summer’s stirring heat.

  He slid off the divan, approaching Malipiero where he lay on a cushioned chaise beneath the windows. The young man reclined on his side, his face to the wall.

  “Giusieppe? Wake up, Giusieppe,” Galileo beckoned, but the man did not rouse.

  Galileo reached out a shaking hand, took his friend’s shoulder, and pulled.

  The body fell limply in his direction and Galileo screamed.

  He shrieked at the skeleton’s horrific glance—screeching in panic and shock as he ran from body to body, only to have the round empty sockets of the skulls stare at him in accusation. He screamed until…

  …he woke up. The cold sweat dripped off his rigid body. His chest heaved with his ragged breath. His eyes bulged from his head as he saw the green walls of his room at the Venetian inn, saw the small sitting room beyond the bed in its alcove. Slowly, like the ebbing tide, the terrifying nightmare began to recede.

  How many times must he relive that awful day? He needed no nightmare to remind him of that bleakest of moments, of the days and weeks of illness that followed, the headaches and the coughing and the fever. He remembered vividly their withering bodies, their moans of pain, and the smell of their sickened flesh as he watched his friends die, one by one, until he remained the sole survivor. The guilt of his endurance remained with him like a scar branded ont
o his skin.

  Galileo turned in bed, and hung his spindly legs over the edge, rubbing his hands over his face and through his short, disheveled hair. There would be no more sleep for him tonight. With a few tender steps of his aching feet, he began to cross the small room, the smooth, worn wooden planks cool beneath his bare, gnarled feet. Like the nightmare, the distinct twinge of pain that often began in his feet, in the ball joints that seared with each step, marked the first wave of another cycle of sickness. His life had been spared on that fateful day when the strange fumes from the caves had killed his friends, but he had not come away unscathed.

  The ague would overcome him at irregular intervals, spurred on by any number of things, some tangible, some not—anxiety, excitement, overwork, or lack of rest. It crept up on him like the slow change of seasons; the low hum of pain like a bee buzzing off in a distant meadow, thrumming through his bones until it enveloped him and lay him low. It struck at him without rhyme or reason, lasting a few days or a few months. There were times when it forced him to bed, when the pain and fatigue became too powerful a combatant, but he did not succumb easily.

  It was the fight that was his to fight; the pain his penance for being the last to remain. His life had been spared and Galileo would not let it be for naught. He believed he had survived for a purpose; that his life, among all the others, had been saved for a reason. With the illness, God had pointed the way, for if it had not been for that first attack and the long, slow months of recovery, he never would have read Copernicus’s book, would never have found the path chosen for him as if the stars themselves lighted the way. He would fight against the illness, against the pain and the weakness. He would raise his fists to it and curse its name.

  Galileo hobbled across the room from bed to table. Beneath his thin nightshirt, his body curved into a question-mark shape, the pain curling the joints in upon themselves in defense. He rubbed at the low ache at the base of his neck, a foreshadowing of the coming fever. Galileo felt his dry, hot eyes squinting in the dark, the meager wick of the lone oil lamp casting but a thin smidgen of light. He turned the diffuser higher, and the brighter flame illuminated the jumble of vellum strewn upon the buried surface.