Sky's Dark Labyrinth (32 page)

‘Galileo has his faults, but I can't think of him as anything other than a basically honest Catholic,' said Grienberger. ‘If he'd truly been intent on harming the Church, he would have stolen to France or Germany and published his book there. He didn't do that. Instead, he seems to have a personal desire for us to embrace Copernicanism.'

‘He's a liar, nothing more,' said Pippe. ‘If Galileo continues down this path, we'll have no choice but to burn him.'

Despite the summer heat, Galileo felt cold, even shivery. Confined to the apartment, he was transparent to the warmth in which Rome basked. He pulled on a fur-trimmed cloak and stood at the window. The sunlight glinted from the gold of the statues, mocking him to come outside. He was surrounded by comfort, but there was nothing to occupy his mind. So he stood and stared at the sculpted figures. As
the hours crept by, so each shadow inched around revealing the
rotation
of the Earth.

He watched the people on the approach to the Vatican, each tiny figure dragging around its own shadow. They were the closest he came to human contact on most days.

There was a soft knock on the door. Galileo was not expecting Maculano to be standing in the corridor, yet it was the Father's pointed features that greeted him when he pulled open the heavy door.

The visitor looked uncomfortable and hurried into the room, urging Galileo to shut the door quickly. He took a seat but refused a drink. ‘Galileo, I am here to reason with you.'

‘Reason with me?'

‘Yes, to persuade you to change your course.'

‘But I'm the victim here. I'm persecuted because of my enemies' vicious plots against me.'

‘There is no one who will defend your position. Even those who applaud your efforts state the book is pro-Copernican.'

‘In truth, Father,' Galileo shifted some pleading into his voice, ‘I have done nothing to defend Coper—'

Maculano's hand sliced the air. His voice rose in volume. ‘Drop this fiction! Each time I send the book out for review, I hope for some small nugget of doubt in your intentions, and each time the condemnations come back stronger than before. If you'd attacked an individual thinker over the inadequacy of a personal argument in favour of a stationary Earth, we might have been able to put some favourable aspect on this work. But, no, you declared war on everyone who was not a Copernican. Your position is indefensible.'

Galileo sat down, resting his hands on his lap. They were pale and bony, with swollen joints. And they trembled.

Maculano spoke again, his voice quiet. ‘I'm not insensitive to the virtues of Copernican astronomy. Really I would prefer that matters of astronomy be separated from holy law, but that is not how it is, or perhaps how it will ever be.'

Galileo looked up at Maculano. Those blue eyes, which had looked so icy in the courtroom, were pleading with him now. ‘Signor, I am to question you again tomorrow. I pray you reconsider your position. If you do so, the tribunal can retain its reputation and deal with you
benignly. I need not tell you what could lie in store if you persist in your denials. The evidence against you is overwhelming.'

Galileo's throat tightened. He swallowed but found no relief. That night, he dreamed of flames.

Galileo found it difficult to stand in the hearing room the next day. The tremors that had begun in his hands invaded his legs. On the walk over, the Swiss Guards had supported him. Now they had withdrawn, he felt vulnerable. His beard caught in the fur of his cloak as he looked around. The movement brought on a fit of giddiness. Rubbing his temples, he felt the blood pounding through his head.

‘Signor Galileo, is there anything you would like to say?' Maculano's voice sounded distant, and the room was too bright.

Galileo ran his tongue around his lips, moved his fingers to smear the dampness around, then forced himself to speak. ‘For several days I have been thinking about the previous interrogation. In particular, about the question of whether – sixteen years ago – I had been
prohibited
by the Holy Office from holding, defending, and teaching in any way whatsoever the opinion, then condemned, of the Earth's motion and Sun's stability.'

Galileo sensed a different version of himself speaking, divorced from his true self. The situation proved both unnerving and curiously liberating. Inside, the true Galileo clung to the truth. Surrounding this kernel was the altered Galileo that everyone else saw.

‘It dawned on me to reread my printed
Dialogue
, which I have not looked at for three years. I wanted to check very carefully whether, against my purest intention, there might have fallen from my pen not only something enabling readers – or superiors – to infer disobedience on my part, but also other details through which one might think of me as a transgressor of the orders of Holy Church.'

It occurred to Galileo that there was something truly wicked at large in the universe. Until yesterday he had only dimly perceived it, and thought that the problem lay in man's perception of the heavens. He had fully believed that he would be able to fix it. Now, he understood that the maleficence was so strong that he had been a fool to attempt its excision.

The altered Galileo spoke again. ‘Not having seen it for so long, I found it almost a new book by another author. Now, I freely confess
that it appeared to me in several places to be written in such a way that the arguments for the false side were stated too strongly. In particular, two arguments, one based on sunspots and the other on the tides, are presented as being more powerful than would seem proper for someone who deemed them to be inconclusive and wanted to refute them – as indeed I inwardly and truly did. Having fallen into an error so foreign to my intention, to use Cicero's words, “I am more desirous of glory than is suitable.” If I had to write out the same arguments now, there is no doubt I would weaken them. My error then was, and I confess it, one of vain ambition, pure ignorance and inadvertence.'

A wave of exhaustion overwhelmed him. He felt himself sway and tried to lock his muscles in an attempt to stay upright. ‘This is as much as I need to say on this occasion.'

Maculano was nodding. ‘Thank you, Galileo. I see no reason to detain you at the palace. You are free to return to the Tuscan embassy but not yet to leave Rome.'

As he turned, Galileo caught sight of the other cardinal, the
flat-faced
one, scowling. It perturbed him, even as he was ushered away down the corridor, resting on the guards again. The cardinal should have been happy with what he had said. It was what they wanted him to say, was it not?

Confusion crowded his brain. Why was Pippe – yes, Pippe, that was his name – scowling? Was the confession not good enough? Perhaps he should have said more.

Galileo turned. The guards caught him by the shoulder as he began to fall.

‘Please, I must speak again,' said Galileo, planting his feet.

Without a word, the guards took him back to the room, where Maculano and Pippe were preparing to leave.

‘I could write another one or two days in the book, so that the speakers agree to meet again. I promise to reconsider the arguments already presented in favour of the condemned opinion and refute them in the most effective way that the blessed God will enable me. I beg this Holy Tribunal to grant me the permission to put it into practice.'

‘The last thing we need is you writing another book, Galileo,' said Maculano. ‘Go and rest.'

‘Sir, sir, there's a letter for you.'

Galileo peered into the gloom. He pushed himself upright, his shoulders stiff and cold as ice.

The man thrust the letter in front of him. ‘I believe it's the one you've been waiting for. From Florence. Shall I read it for you, sir?'

Galileo shook his head. ‘No, that will be all. Thank you, Tito.'

When the door closed, Galileo fumbled open the letter. He
recognised
the handwriting instantly, though it was smaller and tighter than usual. He skimmed the letter so fast, he only picked up the basic themes: Arcangela in trouble, a request for money, the plague raging and finally a plea for him to drink less.

Hmm. So what if he drank in the evenings? It had been a mistake writing to Maria Celeste with an enthusiastic description of the vintages held in the Embassy's cellar. But what else was there to tell her about? There was nothing else to do.

He was forbidden social visitors. While the Embassy was indeed comfortable, he might just as well be in prison. No one had time for him here, apart from Tito. They were all so busy with their jobs that Galileo was nothing but a ghost, haunting the corridors. Since
submitting
his written defence, he had done nothing.

As he reread the letter more slowly, he realised that his return to Florence was not going to happen soon. The city was being ravaged by the plague, so much so that the Grand Duke had ordered the sacred painting of the Madonna to be taken from the church in the nearby village of Impruneta and paraded through the Florentine streets to drive out the evil of the plague.

How Galileo wished he could have seen the giant portrait being carried aloft. Each night the icon was being sheltered in a different
religious
building. The nuns at San Matteo had broken down a wall because their unobtrusive doorway was too small to grant it passage. Galileo could imagine Maria Celeste's hands clearing the rubble to offer the painting sanctuary. Thankfully the plague was still clear of the convent, but it gripped the city so tightly it would be madness to return until the autumn, months away, when it would naturally abate in the cooler weather.

He read on. Arcangela was in debt. She had overspent on the
provisions
for the convent and needed funds. He would have to write at
once to organise a release of money. Ordinarily Galileo would have bristled at his younger daughter's incompetence; today he relished having something to do.

Maria Celeste next recounted that she had successfully exchanged Arcangela's spell of looking after the wine cellar to looking after the convent drapery. Apparently Maria Celeste worried that Arcangela might drink too much if she were appointed Cellarer. And that led her neatly into nagging her father about his own wine consumption. He read her soft admonishment with the whisper of a smile on his lips.

He rose from the bed and went in search of pen and paper. For the next hour he could be busy and feel worthwhile again. All too soon he would return to the endless waiting for the verdict. Why was it taking so long? They had what they wanted from him. Why not just publish his humiliating retraction and let him go? No one would take him
seriously
any more. What more harm could he do?

The cardinals took their seats in the traditional horseshoe formation around Urban. It crossed Pippe's mind that the Pope was looking
beleaguered
these days. Like so many of them now, Urban's hair had turned to snow, as had his beard and moustache. Only his eyebrows retained their dark colour and, together with Urban's dark eyes, they radiated gentility.

Perhaps a little too much gentility
, thought Pippe.
We need a strong Pope, especially at times like this
.

Urban's forehead was riven with worry lines. As the cardinals debated, he would frequently massage the bridge of his nose, or press at the tight knots of flesh just above. He would look out at them with a pained expression, then drop his gaze to the floor.

‘What are we if we destroy this man?' Barberini, the Pope's nephew, was saying. ‘What purpose will it serve?'

‘We must be strong in our defence of Catholicism,' answered another.

‘You were a student of Galileo's, were you not?' Pippe asked Barberini.

‘My education does not enter into this.'

Pippe held his gaze.

‘Yes, I was tutored by Galileo,' admitted Barberini. ‘I knew him well and continue to regard him highly.'

A frisson rippled around the chamber.

‘That does not mean I believe Galileo is innocent of all charges,' said Barberini.

‘He is a heretic and there is only one punishment for heretics,' said Pippe.

‘Careful.' Urban wagged his finger at Pippe. ‘The 1616 decree does not include the word heresy. In fact, I remember that the word was specifically removed. Whatever Galileo is guilty of, it is not heresy.'

‘Then he is vehemently suspected of it,' said Pippe, registering the ripple of agreement around the table. ‘Suspicion hangs around him like the smell of drains in summer. Your Eminence, this is no time for leniency. He persists in the lie that he never held a belief in Copernicus.'

Urban turned his head. ‘Is this true, Father Maculano?'

Maculano shot Pippe a look. ‘It is true that Galileo claims not to have believed in the Sun's stability following 1616, and that he claims his
Dialogue
was designed to falsify Copernicus, not prove it.'

Urban pinched his nose and closed his eyes.

Pippe spoke again. ‘Lying to the Inquisition is a most serious affair. We cannot be lenient.'

‘I will not make a martyr out of Galileo,' said Urban.

‘He makes fools of us all.'

Urban pressed his palms together, raised his fingers to touch his lips. ‘There is no doubt in my mind that Galileo is lying about his belief in Copernicus. He must therefore be severely punished and may God forgive him for being so deluded as to involve himself in such matters in the first place. But before Galileo's punishment, he must be given one last chance to confess the true motive for writing the book. He is to be questioned under threat of torture but he is not to be taken to the dungeons, nor shown the instruments. Do you understand?'

Pippe was on the verge of protesting when Maculano spoke. ‘Perfectly, Your Holiness.'