Free Traitor Angels by Anne Blankman Page A

clove, ginger and pepper, goat, pork, poultry and fish, the beeswax of candles.”
    Despite myself, I inched closer to him, eager to learn more about the city my father had said was the most learned he had ever seen. “But isn’t it such a large and magnificent city that you find yourself overwhelmed?”
    He laughed. “Of course! That’s the best part of Florence. Regardless of how long I live there, I’ll never feel as though I’ve unlocked all of her secrets. But it’s impossible to get overwhelmed to the point that you become lost,” he added. “Florence has threetall landmarks that act as guideposts—the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore, Giotto’s bell tower, and the tower of the Palazzo Vecchio, which can be seen from any point in the city. When I was a small boy and came to Florence, my master often sent me on errands throughout the city, and I was always able to trace my route home by looking for the Palazzo Vecchio tower. I was seven when I joined my master, more than half of my life ago, as I’m now eighteen, and I still feel as though I’m getting to know Florence.”
    “A city of wonders,” I murmured to myself, recalling London’s twisting alleys and narrow wooden houses, its aristocrats in bold colors and its religious freethinkers in black. His Florence sounded like an oil painting, pulsing with reds and golds, while my London was a charcoal sketch, plain and dark.
    At my traitorous thoughts, warmth flooded my cheeks. Like all good Puritans, I had been raised to distrust color and pageantry . . . and yet a part of me yearned to see this city that Viviani spoke of with such love.
    His voice broke into my thoughts. “My master’s a good man.” In between words, he munched, and I had to smother a smile: He had already eaten all of his bread and cheese and started on another packet. Mary often accused me of having an unladylike appetite, but this boy could eat as much as two of me could. “Vincenzo’s both brilliant and kind,” he continued. “He lets me assist him in many of his experiments—but those wouldn’t interest you,” he interrupted himself.
    “I’d like to hear about your experiments.” Even to my own ears, I sounded breathless.
    So as we sat in the slanting shade, he told me about the experiments he and his master carried out. Their geometricalequations to demonstrate that an earlier natural philosopher had been correct when he hypothesized that the motion of light occurs in time, not instantaneously. At that, I set the bread in my lap again, my food forgotten. I listened to Viviani talk about his master’s tests on the newest theory of water motion, which postulated that flowing water presses downward on a riverbed, not outward against its banks, and I could barely breathe. He and Signor Vincenzo Viviani had studied the tiny discs on the side of Jupiter, too, watching as they changed position relative to one another during the course of an evening—proof they weren’t stars but moons, as the same natural philosopher had discovered fifty years ago.
    Viviani’s existence sounded like a hearth tale. A life colored silver by stars and black with ink: beautiful and useful. Listening to it had frozen me in place, as though his words had cast a spell on me. I found I didn’t want to move, didn’t want to take a deep breath, as if the slightest movement would break this magical feeling.
    He grinned at me. “You woke with shadows under your eyes, but they’re gone now. It’s good to see you smile, Miss Milton. Joy sits easily on your face, and you ought to wear it more often. Now I think we’ve given the horses a long-enough rest, don’t you?”
    He had brushed the crumbs from his breeches and swung himself onto his saddle before I had time to form a proper response. Even if he had waited, I doubted I could have strung a sentence together; his fine words had pushed all my wits out of my head, leaving me with only a warm flicker beneath my breastbone.
    Foolishness , I decided,