He focused on practical matters. Merely boxing up the contents of the big house took weeks, and just at a time when his astronomical work was at a crucial point. Happily that was night work, so that no matter the loud and dusty tumble of days, he could always wake up after an evening meal and a nap, settle down on his stool, and make his observations through the long cool nights. This meant forgoing sleep, but as he had never been much of a sleeper anyway, often existing for months at a time on mere snatches, it did not really matter. And it was all too interesting to stop. “What must be done can be done,” he would say hoarsely to Mazzoleni as he flogged them through the afternoons. “We can sleep when we’re dead.” In the meantime, he slept whenever it was cloudy.

The household therefore avoided him in the morning, when he was often abusive, and even at the best of times a bit befuddled and melancholy. He would throw things at anyone foolish enough to bother him in the couple of hours it took to pull himself together, and out of what looked like deep sleep he could kick with vicious accuracy.

Once up, groaning and yawning on his bed, he broke his fast on leftovers, then took a walk in his garden. Pulled a few weeds, plucked a lemon or a cluster of grapes, then went back in to face the day: the move, the correspondence, the students, the accounts, the catering. A long dinner or supper usually included sugared ravioli, veal, great pies filled with pork, chicken, onions, garlic, dates, almonds, saffron and other spices, then also salads and pasta, all washed down with wine and ending with chocolate or cinnamon. At night, everyone else would collapse into bed while he went out to the terrazzo alone and made his observations, using spyglasses they had constructed back in the spring; there would be no more improvements made until he was settled in Florence.

But before that, of course, there was Marina to attend to. Ever since she had gotten pregnant, Galileo had provided her with the funds to rent and keep a little house on the Ponte Corvo, around the corner from his place, so that he could sometimes drop off the girls on the way to his lectures at Il Bo. Now Virginia was ten, Livia nine, and Vincenzio four. They had spent their whole lives between the two houses, although the girls were mostly in Galileo’s big place, being taken care of by the servants. Now decisions had to be made.

Galileo stumped down to the Ponte Corvo unhappily, readying himself for the inevitable tongue-lashing. He was a barrel of a man with a red beard and wild hair, but now he looked small. At moments like these, he could not help remembering his poor father. Vincenzio Galilei had been the most henpecked, pussy-whipped pancake of a husband in the history of mankind. He had felt the lash daily; Galileo had seen it with his own eyes. Marina was nothing compared to the old dragon, who was an educated woman and knew just where to stick the knives. Indeed, Giulia was even now a more fearful presence to Galileo than Marina, no matter Marina’s black gaze, her cobalt-edged tongue and thick right arm. He had heard so many harangues in his life he was an expert at them, a connoisseur, and there was no doubt the old rolling pin was champion of the world. His father’s hung head, the tightness at the corners of his mouth—the way he would pick up his lute and hit its strings, playing tunes double time and fortissimo, even though this only served as accompaniment to Giulia’s dread arias, which were louder by far than the lute—these scenes were all too clear in Galileo’s mind, if he did not avoid them.

And yet here he had gone and done the same thing as his dad. Probably it was a mistake to couple with a younger woman, as they both had; no doubt it led to some fundamental imbalance, or just the natural contempt of youth for age. In any case, here he was, another Galilei standing at the door about to get thrashed, hesitating to knock. Fearful to knock.

He knocked. She answered with a shout, knowing by the rap who it was.

He entered. She kept the place clean, there was no doubt of that. Perhaps she did it to emphasize the paucity of furniture, or the confusion and squalor of his place. In any case there she stood in the kitchen doorway wiping her hands, as beautiful as ever, even though the years had been hard on her. Black hair, black eyes, a face that still caught Galileo’s breath; the body he loved, her hand on her hip, washcloth flung over her shoulder.

“I heard,” she told him.

“I figured you would.”

“So—what now?”

She watched him, expecting nothing. It wasn’t like the time he had explained what their arrangement would be, sitting on the fondamenta in Venice with her five months pregnant. That had been hard. This was merely awkward and tedious. They hadn’t been in love for many years. She was seeing a man out near the docks on the canal—a butcher, he thought it was. He had what he wanted. Still, that look, that time in Venice—it shot through into this time too, it was still there between them. He had a particular sensitivity to looks, no doubt the result of growing up with Medusa for a mother.

“The girls will come with me,” he said. “Vincenzio is too young. He still needs you.”

“They all need me.”

“I’m taking the girls to Florence.”

“Livia won’t like it. She hates your place. It’s too loud for her, there are too many people.”

Galileo sighed. “It will be a bigger place. And I won’t be taking in students anymore.”

“So now you’re a court creature.”

“I am the prince’s philosopher.”

She laughed. “No more compasses.”

“That’s right.”

They both went silent, thinking perhaps about how his compass had been an ongoing joke between them.

“All right then,” she said. “We’ll be in touch.”

“Yes, of course. I’ll keep paying for this place. And I’ll need to see Vincenzio. In a few years he’ll move to Florence too. Maybe you can move to Florence then too, if you want.”

She stared at him. She could still flay him with a look. The tightness at the corners of her mouth reminded him of his father, and he felt a stab of remorse, thinking that maybe now he was the Giulia. A horrible thought—but there was nothing for it but to nod and take his leave, the back of his neck crawling under the heat of that fiery gaze.

All during this time he continued to make his nightly observations, and to spread the word concerning the usefulness of his glass. Occhialino, visorio, perspicillum—different people called it different things, and he did, too. He sent excellent glasses to the Duke of Bavaria, the Elector of Cologne, and Cardinal del Monte, among other nobles of court and church. He was now in the service of the Medici, of course, but the Medici would want the capabilities of his glass advertised to as many of the powers in Europe as possible. And it was important to establish the legitimacy of what Galileo had reported in his book by having it confirmed in other places by influential figures. He had heard there were people like Cremonini refusing to look through a glass, and others claiming his new discoveries were merely optical illusions, artifacts of the instrument itself. Indeed, he had suffered an unfortunate demonstration in Bologna, when he had tried to show the famous astronomer Giovanni Magini the Medicean Stars, and only been able to see one himself—which may have been because three were behind Jupiter, but it was a hard case to make, especially with the odious Bohemian climber Martin Horky there smirking at every word, obviously delighted that things weren’t going as planned. Afterward he heard that Horky had written to Kepler telling him that the visorio was a fraud, useless for astronomy.

Kepler was experienced enough to ignore backstabbing by such a loathsome toad, but his characteristically long and incoherent letter in support of Galileo’s discoveries, published as a book for the world to read under the title Dissertatio cum Nuncio Sidereo, was in some ways as bad as the Horky nonsense. Confusions from Kepler were nothing new—although up until this point they had always made Galileo laugh. One time for the sake of his artisans he had translated into Tuscan Kepler’s claim that the music of the spheres was a literal sound made by the planets, a six-note chord that moved from major to minor depending on whether Mars was at perihelia or aphelia. This idea made Galileo laugh so hard he could barely read. “The chapter’s title is ‘Which Planet Sings Soprano, Which Alto, Which Tenor, and Which Bass!’ I swear to God! The greatest astronomer of our time! He admits he has no basis for this stuff except his own desire for it, and then concludes that Jupiter and Saturn must sing bass, Mars tenor, Earth and Venus alto, and Mercury soprano.”