Very new and unheard, he insisted.

He also reminded the commission that he had handed the manuscript of his book over to the censors of the Inquisition and gotten it approved. Therefore, I think I can firmly hope that the idea of my having knowingly and willingly disobeyed the orders given me will not be believed by the Most Eminent and Most Prudent Lord Judges.

Most Prudent, he reminded them.

Then he ended his written defense with the following:

Finally, I am left with asking you to consider the pitiable state of ill health to which I am reduced, due to ten months of constant mental distress, and the discomforts of a long and tiresome journey in the most awful season and at the age of seventy. I feel I have lost the greater part of the years that my previous state of health promised me. I am encouraged to do this by the faith I have in the clemency and kindness of heart of the Most Eminent Lordships, my judges; and I hope that if their sense of justice perceives anything lacking among so many ailments as adequate punishment for my crimes, they will, I beg them, condone it out of regard for my declining old age, which I humbly also ask them to consider. Equally, I want them to consider my honor and reputation against the slanders of those who hate me, and I hope that when the latter insist on disparaging my reputation, the Most Eminent Lordships will take it as evidence why it became necessary for me to obtain from the Most Eminent Lord Cardinal Bellarmino the certificate attached herewith.

Despite the pathos of old age stuff, it was on the whole a robust, one might even say defiant, defense. All he had confessed to was the vain ambition and satisfaction of appearing clever beyond the average popular writers. To the attentive eye it even seemed he had obliquely alluded to the possibly fraudulent nature of some of the evidence brought against him.

Perhaps it was this defiance that did it; perhaps it was something else. In any case, for whatever reason, the trial did not proceed. A judgment did not arrive.

Weeks passed, and more weeks. No word came from the Holy Office of the Inquisition. Galileo spent his days walking the paths of the Villa Medici gardens, in its layout so much like the legal maze in which he now found himself.

It was late spring by now, and everything was bursting with new life. The white clouds pouring in from the Mediterranean were full of rain. At the Vatican, the Inquisition was presumably preparing its final report to Pope Urban. Or perhaps they were done, and waiting for the Sanctissimus to return from Castel Gondolfo. Around the city, so full of agents and observers, any judgment on Galileo seemed possible.

Meanwhile here he stood, in a big green garden. The vegetable patches were located out against the back wall, used by the cook to help feed the villa’s big household, which numbered over a hundred. Galileo strolled down and sat on a stool in the rows of tomato plants, weeding. When hands are dirty the soul is clean. There was nothing he could do but wait. His rheumatism bothered him, as did his hernia. And at night, his insomnia. He had not even brought a telescope on this trip, and if there was one there that he had given an ambassador in earlier visits, no one told him, and he did not ask. Occasionally, despite the garden, he would be overcome with melancholy, or fear, or even terror. The sleepless nights and the days after were especially hard. All day in the garden was sometimes scarcely enough to pull him out of his black apprehension.

May ran out of days. Then in early June, the pope returned to his residence in the Vatican.

Niccolini met with him as soon as permitted, and asked for a speedy end to the trial, and for a merciful judgment. Urban explained he had been merciful already, but that the judgment had to be a condemnation. He promised it would come soon.

“There is no way of avoiding some personal punishment,” he told Niccolini brusquely.

Niccolini came home worried. Something had changed, he could tell. Things no longer seemed to be going so well.

He wrote to Cioli:

So far to Signor Galileo I have only mentioned the imminent conclusion of the trial and the prohibition of the book. However, I told him nothing about the personal punishment, in order not to afflict him by telling him everything at once; furthermore, His Holiness ordered me not to tell him in order not to torment him yet, and because things will perhaps change through deliberations. Thus I also think it proper that no one there at your end inform him of anything.

Day followed day followed day.

Then, halfway through June, word came: he was to prepare for a fourth deposition.

This was a surprise—a new and unwelcome development, in that it extended beyond the proscribed form for a heresy trial; also beyond the deal that Maculano had outlined in their private meeting. It seemed something had gone awry. Everyone in the villa could feel it.

That night, when all the people of the Villa Medici were asleep, Cartophilus slipped out the back gate, and made his way toward the Vatican.

THE STREETS OF ROME were never entirely empty, even between midnight and dawn. People and animals made their solitary ways. Partly this was frightening, as the possibility of footpads or assassins was all too real; partly it was reassuring, as most of those out were simply doing the night business of the city, like removing the offal and dung, or bringing in the food and supplies for the day to come. It was possible to follow carts, drays, mule trains, donkeys that were apparently working on their own recognizance, and by doing so, and staying at the verge of the illumination coming from various scattered torchlights, to move unseen and unmolested. The wild cats of the streets were doing the same thing, picking their way from scent to scent, and one had to avoid kicking them as one darted from one shadow to the next.

In the flickering shadows down near the Vatican’s river gate, Cartophilus met with his friend Giovanfrancesco Buonamici, who was now sometimes acting as a bodyguard for Cardinal Francesco Barberini.

“Something’s changed,” Buonamici said.

“Yes,” Cartophilus replied shortly. “But what?”

“I don’t know. Ganymede, I suppose.”

“But where is it coming from? The Jesuits?”

“Of course. But it’s more than them. The chiusura d’istruzione has been sent up to the Congregation and to His Holiness, and the thing is, it wasn’t written by Maculano. It was written by the assistant, Sinceri.”

“Oh no.”

“Oh yes. And none of the depositions or supporting documents were sent up with it. Only a little stiletto in prose from ‘the magnificent Carlo Sinceri, Doctor of Both Laws, Proctor Fiscal of this Holy Office,’ as he styled himself in his signature.” Buonamici snorted and spat on the ground beside him.

“And what did he report?” Cartophilus said, mouth tight.

“It was all the same old shit, all the way back to Lorini and Colombe. How he said the Bible is full of falsehoods, and God is an accident who laughs and weeps, and the saints’ miracles didn’t happen, and so on.”

“But that isn’t even what the trial has been about!”

“Of course not. As to that, it puts all the prohibitions in the injunction they forged as being in his certificate from Bellarmino, so the distinction he was trying to make there has been destroyed.”

“Jesus. So—the whole Sarpi defense is knocked aside just like that.”

“Yes. They’re going for heresy.”

Cartophilus thought it over. “And Sinceri sent it up where?”

“To Monsignor Paolo Bebei, of Orvieto. He’s just replaced Mon-signor Boccabella as the Assessor of the Holy Office. Boccabella who was friendly to us.”

“So, yet another change, then. I mean, we already knew about Sinceri.”

“Yes, but I thought he wouldn’t matter. Obviously I was wrong.”