Home Sweet Rome by Marissa Moss

Author:Marissa Moss [Moss, Marissa]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc
Published: 2013-02-26T08:00:00+00:00

The boy stared slack-jawed as I climbed the stairs, searching first for Giovanni, then for Caravaggio, but the room that last time had held those impressive paintings was now dusty and empty except for some trunks and baskets, clearly a place for storage, not an artist’s studio. My heart sank. I didn’t need to find Giovanni or Caravaggio, but I wanted to. Giovanni, with his shades of Claude, was the only friend I had in this strange time and place. If he was still my friend. A pretty big “if.”

I knocked on the door to Del Monte’s study and was relieved when his familiar deep voice called out, “Enter!”

Four years had aged the cardinal even more, drawing new lines onto his face. He peered at me intently for a long moment while I waited to see if he would recognize me.

“Marco?” he said finally. “Is that you?” His eyebrows shot up to the top of his forehead in surprise.

“It is, Monsignore! You must forgive me my sudden disappearance.”

“We thought you must have been killed, thrown into the river.”

“Something like that.” I decided to go with the kidnap story. “I was dragged from St. Peter’s, knocked out, and found myself on a boat, conscripted into a crusade. It took me a while to find my way back.” I was becoming a master of the on-the-spot lame excuse. “I know I didn’t work for you very long last time, but I’m hoping to do a better job this time, if you’ll have me.”

“A crusade? Tell me something you learned during your adventure that will amaze me.” Del Monte leaned forward eagerly.

What could I safely say? I didn’t know anything about Bruno, but maybe I could use something Galileo had done. I remembered that he’d done some experiment where he dropped two things, one heavy, one light, from the Tower of Pisa, to see which would land first. And of course, he was famous for insisting that Copernicus was right—that the earth orbited the sun rather than the other way around.

“Well,” I began, worried I was saying the absolute wrong thing to a cardinal. “There was a lot of talk about the theory that the earth moves around the sun. Some crusaders said that didn’t change their belief in God, just changed the way they understood the seasons, the way the constellations change over the year.”

“And you, what do you believe?” Del Monte leaned forward, staring so intently at me that I had to turn away. I couldn’t hold his gaze.

“It’s true,” I mumbled, fear gripping my stomach. Was I committing heresy? Was it a crime to think this way?

“Amazing you should say that. It sounds like something written by my friend, Giordano Bruno.” The cardinal’s face lit up at the memory. “You know Bruno too! He wrote the Italian book you were copying when you worked here. Perhaps you found his theories interesting.”

“I don’t remember anything about the earth orbiting the sun,” I admitted. “But I was impressed by what he said about everything being made of the same small particles mixed together in different combinations.

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