Traitor Angels (31 page)

Antonio laid his arm across my shoulders, drawing me near to him. Linked by his touch, we crossed the ruined churchyard.

“At night, when I try to sleep,” I said in a low voice, “I see Lady Katherine in my mind. She was such a kindhearted person, the first thoroughly decent aristocrat I ever met . . . and Robert killed her as though she were
nothing
.”

“Perhaps to him she was,” Antonio said.

“She will matter to me for the rest of my life,” I said. “It’s comforting to believe her soul is out there somewhere. In the heavens in the sky, maybe, or woven into the firmament of this earth for all time.”

Only a few weeks ago, my comments would have terrified me. Now they no longer felt blasphemous, but good and right.

Antonio halted our progress, nodding at the sky. It was colored gray by the dome of smoke that continued to hover over the city. “The sun has risen again. The earth has continued to rotate on its axis. We’re still spinning through the galaxy.”

“The world hasn’t stopped.” I managed to smile.

“And we’re alive and we’re here together.” His eyes were intent on mine. “I must know—what do you wish to do now that you’re
free? Whatever road you take, do you plan to travel it alone?”

My heart began pounding. I understood what he was asking me. “Whoever decides to walk with me must understand I’ve chosen a hard path.”

He didn’t drop his gaze. “I’ve never wanted an easy life, either. You might like Florence. It’s a beautiful, learned city. My master is receptive to new ideas, whether they are philosophical or social. And if others can’t accept you, we’ll move on to the next place.”

Would we be forced to wander as Adam and Eve had? Or would we someday be able to find a home? I looked at Antonio, and gladness welled in my heart until I imagined it would burst out of my chest. Whether we wandered or not, it didn’t matter, for we would be together and studying the subjects that gave our lives meaning. “Antwerp grants freedom to all of its citizens,” I said. “That might be a good city for us to try.”

“We have a half-dozen languages between us and no Flemish,” he said. “Oh, well. I’ve always liked a challenge.”

I grinned at him. “And you still haven’t shown me sunspots.”

He threw his head back and laughed. “An oversight I will correct at the first opportunity.”

Smiling, I stood on tiptoe to press my lips to his. We kissed again and again in the abandoned churchyard, while overhead the smoke hung like clouds. But when I closed my eyes and let darkness press against my lids, I could almost imagine Antonio and I stood beneath a sky full of stars.

Although
Traitor Angels
is a work of fiction, many of the characters and events in this book are factual. Please note that this section contains several spoilers, so read no further if you haven’t finished the book!

Elizabeth, Antonio, Robert, Lady Katherine, Thomasine, Francis, Luce, Mr. Hade, and all of Robert’s associates are fictional characters. Although everyone else was a real person and this story is woven around several real events,
Traitor Angels
is very much a work of fiction.

Today John Milton is generally regarded as one of the most influential political writers in English history. He was born in London in 1608 and attended the University of Cambridge, where he earned both bachelor’s and master’s degrees. In 1638, like many members of the gentleman class, he embarked on a “grand tour” of Europe. While in Florence, he managed to
procure a meeting with Galileo Galilei, who had been sentenced to house arrest for life by the Italian Inquisitors. To this day, no one knows what the two men discussed. It’s clear, however, that Milton admired Galileo, because he later commemorated the scientist in
Paradise Lost
and in his famous anticensorship tract,
Areopagitica
.

The popular image of Milton is that of a dour-faced Puritan, but in reality he was a complicated man who was far ahead of his time. He smoked and drank; when he was sighted, he carried a sword; and, unlike many Puritans, he didn’t think entertainment was inherently sinful but considered it an essential part of life. He really did believe that religion had no place in government. The revolutionary ideas he expresses in this book are based on his writings.

By 1666, when
Traitor Angels
takes place, Milton was a political outcast. A staunch antimonarchist, he had served as Oliver Cromwell’s Latin Secretary when England operated as a commonwealth and a protectorate. During this time, Milton went completely blind, a condition that provided plenty of fodder for his numerous political enemies throughout Europe. He became known as “the notorious Milton” and was castigated for his political ideals and his four divorce tracts.

When the government collapsed and Parliament invited Charles II to return to England in 1660, Milton’s life hung in the balance. He placed his three daughters, Anne, Mary, and Deborah, in the care of their maternal grandmother and went into hiding.

Some members of Parliament wanted Milton to be hanged as a traitor, but he was spared—no one now knows why, though
many suspect that the intervention of influential friends, including the poet Andrew Marvell, kept Milton alive. After he came out of hiding, he was arrested and briefly imprisoned. Upon his release, he moved to new lodgings with his daughters. Three years later, he married his third wife, the much younger Elizabeth “Betty” Minshull.

When the plague struck London in 1665, Milton’s family fled to a nearby village, Chalfont St. Giles. It’s unknown when they returned to London; many scholars guess it was sometime in February–March 1666. Since the exact date is unclear, I decided to let the Miltons remain in Chalfont for a few months longer.

During this time, Milton was completing the work that would become his most famous: the epic poem
Paradise Lost
. The version of
Paradise Lost
that appears in
Traitor Angels
is the original ten-book 1667 edition. A later edition, published in 1674 and divided into twelve books, is the one commonly studied today. The poem itself is generally considered a masterpiece, both for its beautiful language and for its portrayal of Satan as a charismatic, brave, but ultimately evil character. Intriguingly, the poem’s only contemporary personage is Galileo, whom Milton refers to as “the Tuscan Artist.” In this book, when Milton dictates the “Tuscan Artist” section to Elizabeth, she forms her own interpretation of the passage. Although
Paradise Lost
is rich in allegories, there’s no indication that Milton hid a secret scientific message within its lines. The poem that directs Elizabeth, Antonio, and Robert to St. Paul’s is not Milton’s; I wrote it myself.

Milton dictated all of
Paradise Lost—
some say to his nephews and family friends; others say to his daughters Mary and Deborah. The two women were uncommonly well educated for
females of their time. Both could read and write, and some historians believe they also knew foreign languages. (Milton himself was fluent in Latin, Greek, Italian, and Hebrew.) There’s conflicting evidence, however, that says Milton only taught them how to write foreign words phonetically, so he could dictate to them without their having any idea what he was saying. I decided to adhere to this latter theory, as I believe it’s in keeping with Milton’s character. The classroom lessons Milton teaches Elizabeth are based on the instruction he provided for his male students when he was a young teacher.

Anne, his eldest daughter, was illiterate. Although her exact medical condition has never been identified, we know she was lame, had a severe speech impediment, and apparently was mentally disabled.

Sometime during 1669–1670, Milton’s three daughters left home to become apprentices in the lace-making industry. Deborah didn’t last long in the profession; she became a lady’s companion in Ireland. She later married a weaver and had a daughter named Elizabeth. Mary remained single, while Anne married a master builder and died young, in childbirth. As for Betty Minshull Milton, she eventually sold off many of her late husband’s copyrights and died in 1727.

Charles II probably lived a life filled with more highs and lows than any other English monarch. As a teenager, he fought in the Civil War but was eventually ordered to leave England by his father, who feared that the tide of the war was turning against them and was concerned for his eldest son’s safety. Charles then spent over a decade in exile in Europe. At nineteen, he had a child, his first, with his mistress Lucy Barlow, who was also known as
Lucy Walter. Although rumors of their marriage dogged Charles II for years, there’s no proof the two were ever wed. Lucy died in Paris in 1658. Their son, James, adopted a guardian’s surname. After his father was crowned, this James Crofts was made the Duke of Monmouth. He later married a Scottish noblewoman and took on her surname, becoming James Scott.

Charles II really was fascinated by “natural philosophy”—the seventeenth-century term for science. He maintained a private laboratory at his palace and carried out numerous experiments. After he died in 1685, his younger brother, James, the Duke of York, became king. Monmouth, who had been trying to prove his parents had been married and he was his father’s legitimate heir, openly opposed his uncle’s ascension to the throne. He staged an unsuccessful rebellion and was beheaded for treason less than six months after his father’s death. Per the etiquette of the time, Monmouth tipped his executioner six guineas before baring his neck for the blade. Aspects of Monmouth’s personality, and of Satan himself in
Paradise Lost
, inspired me to create Robert, who burns to rule just as fiercely as they did.

George Villiers, the second Duke of Buckingham, was raised alongside the young man who would become King Charles II after his father, the best friend—and, some say, the lover—of Charles I was assassinated. Buckingham fought on the royalist side during the Civil War and lived in exile in Europe with the future king for several years. After the Restoration, he was involved with a number of political intrigues, and was imprisoned in the Tower for various charges on a few occasions. He really did bring in a supposed unicorn’s horn to a Royal Society meeting. He died in 1687.

Samuel Pepys, who after this story’s timeframe became the secretary of naval affairs, is one of the most famous diarists of all time. His journal offers a fascinating glimpse into seventeenth-century life in London. A member of the Royal Society, he was also instrumental in carrying out naval reforms. At the king’s request, he stayed in London throughout the plague. When the Great Fire of 1666 occurred, he personally brought news of the blaze to the king. He really did bury a wheel of Parmesan cheese in his garden to keep it safe from the encroaching fire. He died in 1703.

The Royal Society, a pioneering scientific organization, was founded in 1660. Its original patron was Charles II. The Royal Society was the first of its kind; previously, scientists had jealously guarded their own discoveries. This group, however, encouraged the open sharing of ideas. The members met weekly to discuss scientific advances and their own individual experiments. Any mention of religion or politics was forbidden. The Royal Society still exists today.

Robert Hooke, who demonstrates his experiments on Galileo’s theory of gravity in this book, was the Royal Society’s curator. In real life, during the summer of 1664 he dropped objects from the roof of St. Paul’s Cathedral to test Galileo’s postulations. He was a gifted engineer and originated the physics principle known as Hooke’s law, which states that when expanding or compressing a spring a certain distance, the force needed is proportional to distance.

Robert Boyle, who shows Elizabeth, Antonio, and Robert around the Royal Society meeting room, is considered the father of modern chemistry. He conducted a series of experiments with
air pumps Hooke constructed that led to the creation of Boyle’s law—namely, that the volume of a confined gas varies inversely with the pressure applied to it.

Galileo Galilei is often called the father of modern science. His work in astronomy, physics, and science methodology and his trial before the Italian Inquisition have become legendary. While a young mathematics professor at the University of Padua, he really did take a
riposo
in an underground room with two of his friends. This room, as was common with country villas during this time, was ventilated and cooled by a conduit that supplied wind from a waterfall in a nearby mountain cave. When the three men woke from their nap two hours later, they experienced cramps, chills, intense headaches, hearing loss, and muscle lethargy. Within days, both of Galileo’s friends died. Although Galileo survived, his health was affected for the remainder of his life.

During Galileo’s time, people believed that meteors, or falling stars, were atmospheric disturbances, similar to lightning. Apart from his discovery of the meteorite, Galileo’s inventions and scientific theories presented in this book are real.

Vincenzo Viviani was a brilliant mathematician who became Galileo’s assistant and secretary in 1639 when he was seventeen. He lived with Galileo until the latter’s death. Later he became the court mathematician to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Ferdinand II, and was one of the first members of the duke’s experimental academy, the Accademia del Cimento. He tirelessly tried to repair Galileo’s reputation and convince the Catholic Church to pardon the scientist but was unsuccessful. He died childless in 1703 at the age of eighty-one and was buried with his beloved
teacher, in accordance with his wishes.

Antonio’s telescope is based on one Galileo himself built and gave to Cosimo II de’ Medici, the Grand Duke of Tuscany from 1609 to 1621.

The Great Fire of London began in the early hours of Sunday, September 2, 1666. Although no one knows exactly what caused the blaze, it’s commonly believed that a stray ember from baker Thomas Farriner’s ovens started it. Farriner provided biscuits for the Royal Navy, and therefore he really did know Samuel Pepys.

London, which hadn’t had rain for nearly a year, was a powder keg waiting to explode. When the fire overtook London Bridge, a number of its residents escaped by jumping into the Thames, just as Elizabeth and Antonio do.

When the fire was finally extinguished by Thursday morning, the city was a ruin—a hundred thousand people were left homeless and four-fifths of all of the property in London had been destroyed. The country’s largest church, St. Paul’s, was decimated. Christopher Wren, who served on the real-life commission to renovate the church, became extensively involved in rebuilding the city, and designed another St. Paul’s, which still stands today.

Like London, Milton’s and Galileo’s reputations have undergone a rebirth of sorts, too. Milton, the one-time “notorious” political pariah who died in genteel poverty, is now widely considered one of the most important writers in English history. Galileo’s name was blackened for centuries. It wasn’t until 1992, after a thirteen-year-long investigation into the Italian Inquisition’s case against Galileo, that Pope John Paul II formally acknowledged that the Church had erred in condemning Galileo
for asserting the earth revolves around the sun. Although the Church has reversed its standing in Galileo’s case, struggles such as those Galileo encountered hundreds of years ago in attempting to reconcile science and religion continue to confront all of us to this very day.