"But I was going to ship them home, as presents."

"You can still do that. Just give them to relatives you detest."

William directed the servants to start putting the cla.s.sical menagerie in some kind of order. By the time he was done, I had remembered the question I had meant to ask him. "What progress did you make on your journal entries?"

William proudly presented his work. "The River Tiber runs through the town," I read. And, a bit later, "Here, also is the great amphitheater, which they call the Coliseum because of its size." Clearly, William was not destined for a literary career.

Naples March, 1633 For our excursion toNaples , I hired avetturino . The man had been recommended to me by the Tuscan amba.s.sador toRome , Francesco Niccolini. I paid him a fee, in return for which he arranged the coach, our lodging, and one meal a day, for a fifteen-day round trip.

"Not allvetturini are as honest as this fellow," I warned William. "You will expect a private room and then find other guests in the same chamber, or even the same bed. Complain to the innkeeper, and he says that it was all that thevetturin o had contracted for. Complain to thevetturino and he insists that the innkeeper is responsible, and you must take the matter up with him. Round and round you go, and are never satisfied."

We went inside the coach; the other servants had to ride on the outside. Our fellow pa.s.sengers looked up and then ignored us.

To pa.s.s the time, I told William a bit about what we expected to cover inNaples : Virgil"s Tomb, the House of Cicero, and the many volcanic sites. The latter included the Phlegraean Fields, whose fumaroles led many a visitor to think of h.e.l.l; the Grotto of the Dog, whose vapors brought death; and of courseMount Vesuvius itself.

After a while, I urged William to poke his head out the window. The road here was paved with smooth stone, and, in the distance, it gleamed like a thread of silver. "The Queen of Roads, the Via Appia," I explained. "This is where six thousand of Spartacus" followers were crucified by Marcus Licinius Cra.s.sus."

William noticed that there were many crosses alongside the road, and asked me about them. "Surely those aren"t the ones erected by the legionaires?"

"No, those are modern. Each cross marks the place where a traveler was murdered," I explained.

"Now, look there." I pointed to a skull on a post. "That marks where a bandit was executed."

William thought about this. "The crosses greatly outnumber the skulls."

The most important of our Neapolitan excursions was toMount Vesuvius . We intended, like many tourists before us, to climb to the rim of the great crater, but this was not without risk. Only a little more than a year before, Vesuvius erupted with great force, killing over three thousand people.

Napleswas ruled, through a viceroy, by the king ofSpain . After the recent devastation, the viceroy had posted a warning to tourists and residents alike.

"Let"s see how dutifully you have been studying your Italian, William. Read the sign aloud for me."

""As soon as an eruption begins, you must escape as quickly as you can,"" William recited. ""If you worry about your property, your greed and folly will be punished. Listen to the voice of this marble; flee without hesitation.""

I clapped my hands. "Bravo!"

The volcano was still active; smoke rose from the crater high above us. Since Vesuvius was not presently spewing out ashes and lava, we nonetheless began our climb. It was difficult going in places; we occasionally had to walk through ash, which sometimes reached almost up to our knees.

At first William walked side-by-side with me. This gave me the opportunity to explain the theories concerning volcanic eruption. Strabo said that the rock was ignited by friction with compressed air, while Seneca urged that the heat came from the combustion of sulfur.

Now, I am usually a great walker. Still, I am almost forty-five years old, and I tired more quickly than William. I gradually slowed my pace. William, on the other hand, seemed more and more anxious to reach the top the closer we got. He would edge ahead of me, first by feet, then by yards. He would start running; I would call him back.

After a while, we reached amodus vivendi . William would run to the next turning, and then wait for me to catch up. I found walking in the ash very awkward, I fear. The servants stayed behind to help me, two in front, whom I held on to, and the third pushing me from behind. In this manner we progressed perhaps three-quarters of the way up.

Then I noticed a gleam to one side of the path. "Come, William!" I cried, and went off to have a look.

It was, as I thought, a little pocket of crystals. "Lord Devonshire, get out your magnifying lens," I said, without looking up. "William?"

"He went up, Mister Hobbes," said Samuel.

"What! After him, Samuel! You, too, Patrick! Find him, and then don"t let him out of your sight.

Geoffrey, a.s.sist me."

Samuel and Patrick ran up the trail, with Geoffrey and me following. Patrick, being a trained footman, quickly took the lead and was soon out of sight himself. Samuel followed, running steadily.

I was pleased when I finally caught up and saw William standing by the lip of the famous crater, flanked by Samuel and Patrick. I was less pleased when I saw what William held in his hand. A rope.

"Where did that rope come from? And what is it for?" I demanded.

William clearly didn"t think he had done anything amiss. "I bought it from an Italian. I was thinking about Galileo, sir. About what he said about the importance of observation. I thought I could see how the volcano is formed better, if Samuel and Patrick lower me in with this rope. I could become famous, sir."

"It would be simpler just to hang me with the rope," I said. "Because your family would see me hung if I eventhought about letting you do such a thing."

Central Italy Spring, 1633 We returned toRome byvetturino , and then left theHolyCity almost immediately afterward. I was anxious to be outside thePapal States before Holy Week, when the Inquisition was at its most zealous.

We returned toFlorence , then crossed the Appennines, the mountain chain which formed the spine ofItaly . The mountain road was poorly maintained and we had to choose our way carefully, lest a horse break a leg. When we camped, the wind howled all night.

After a brief stop inBologna we pressed on, following the trade road toPadua . This highway crossed the Po, the longest river inItaly , about thirty miles downstream fromMantua . The Po was the border between the Papal States and theVenetianRepublic .

Unfortunately, we couldn"t cross it at first. Our first warning of trouble was the ringing of the church bells ofFerrara .

"What does that mean, Mister Hobbes?"

"It could be anything, Milord. Plague. Fire. Invasion. Rioting. Flood."

As we came closer to the city, the problem became apparent-thePo had flooded.

Ferrarahad grown up beside an ancient ford of thePo . Once, it lay above the Po Delta. However, in the twelfth century thePo had broken its left bank, near Ficarolo, carving out a new channel. Thus,Ferrara was now cradled between two distributaries, the Sa Roma to the north and the Po de Ferrara to the south.

The Po de Ferrara blocked our progress and, at the moment, it looked more like a lake than a river.

"Why do you suppose it flooded?"

I had no idea. But you do not get a degree fromOxford if you cannot come up with an explanation extempore. "Rivers usually run high in the spring, when the snow melts. But it seems a little early still for that. Perhaps there was a spell of unseasonably warm weather up in the mountains. Or there was a lot of rain."

"But it hasn"t been raining that hard."

"What matters isn"t necessarily how much it rains here, but how much it rains at the river"s source," I explained.

"So what do we do now?"

"We had best retrace our steps, find higher ground."

"And where will we spend the night?"

"If we are fortunate, in a barn."

We found one. After an uncomfortable night spent listening to the farm animals complain about their visitors, we made another attempt to cross thePo , this time by boat. It took some doing to find a native who was willing to chance the waters, which were still high. It didn"t help matters that we needed to transport the horses, not just the people. That meant several trips back and forth, but at last we all stood on the far bank of the Po de Ferrara.

We continued north, reaching the ford of the Sa Roma.

"Do we find another ferryman, or do we chance a crossing?" William asked.

I would have preferred to wait. But there were no boats within sight and no shelter, either. And what if the waters rose again? We could be trapped.

At least the extensive traveling I had done-this was my third trip inEurope -had taught me all the tricks of fording a river. I threw a twig in the water, and watched it move downstream.

"The water isn"t moving fast here; that"s good. Walk the horses and mules across. Keep them on the upstream side; they"ll break the current. We"ll cross in line abreast. Samuel on the upstream side. Then myself, Lord Devonshire, Patrick, and Geoffrey. Face upstream, and crabwalk across. Keep one hand on your mount. Carry a walking stick in your free hand."

"Shouldn"t we rope ourselves together?" William asked.

"No. If you slip, you can get entangled and drowned."

We started across. Geoffrey, of course, had only listened to half of what I said. "Geoffrey, you fool!

Shuffle your feet along the bottom. Leave the capering to the Morris dancers!"

We made it to the halfway mark. The water was now at hip level. Samuel yelled "Halt!"

"What"s the matter, Samuel?"

"Don"t like the way the water be swirling ahead of us." He poked ahead with his walking stick. "I think there is some sort of hole there."

"All right. We"ll edge a bit upstream. Samuel will tell us when he thinks we"re past the bad spot." We followed this instruction. Soon, the water was just at our knees. At last we clambered up the far bank, and collapsed.

After resting a bit I shook myself, and stood up. "Let"s get some distance between us and the water, just in case."

William was shivering. I pondered what could be done to help him. "My Lord, bide a moment. We will get your pack off the horse, hopefully the clothes in there are dry." They weren"t, not exactly, but at least they weren"t soggy wet.

"I"d rather wait until we"ve got a fire, Mister Hobbes."

"On your head be it, William. That"s the best we can do for now. I have my tinder box, but it doesn"t do us any good without something dry to burn." We rode on, and eventually found enough good wood to build a fire.

By this point, William was sneezing violently. We got him changed and situated close to the fire.

"Thang you very much, MisterHa-a-a-shoo! Hobbes."

Venice April, 1633 I was delighted. As I expected, this Venetian bookseller had a copy of Galileo"sDialogo Sopra i Due Ma.s.simi Sistemi del Mondo . William"s Uncle Charles had been most anxious to read it, and it wasn"t available inLondon .

It wasn"t surprising that theDialogueConcerning Two New World Systems was available inVenice , even though the Catholic Church had banned it. TheVenetianRepublic had a long history of ignoring papal p.r.o.nouncements-the Interdict of 16067, for example. The Venetians were hardly going to be fazed by theLibrorum Prohibitorum . If anything, the Venetian printers probably thought of it as a marketing device.

Of course, I wasn"t going to risk carrying the book through, say, Milanese territory. I would find an English merchant to ship it back toLondon . Together with William"s Italian souvenirs.

Then I noticed that William, too, had found something of interest to read. A history ofVenice , perhaps?

I walked up, softly, and looked over his shoulder.

The book William was so engrossed in wasThe Catalogue of the Chief and Most Renowned Courtesans of Venice , complete with over two hundred miniature portraits. And rates of hire.

Presumably a later edition than the one presented to Henry III ofValois in 1574.

I was painfully reminded that William would be sixteen years old in October. Clearly, Cupid was getting ready to tyrannize, right on schedule.

Venice Ascension Day (Thursday, May 5, 1633, Gregorian) Venice. The Most Serene One. The Queen of theAdriatic . The Bride of the Sea. The last epithet was particularly apt today, because it was Ascension Day, the day thatVenice , with great pomp and circ.u.mstance, renewed its marriage to the sea.

TheGrand Ca.n.a.l was filled with thousands of boats: private gondolas like our own; fantastically decorated barges hired by the guilds of the city; war galleys from the famous a.r.s.enal of Venice. So many boats were present, and so closely were they packed together, that you could walk from one to the other.

Some of the gondolas carried families; others, loud parties of young blades from the n.o.ble houses, and here and there one could see an especially ornate one. These usually carried one of the great courtesans ofVenice , dressed to the hilt. The infamous wantons knew that the young n.o.blemen, as well as distinguished foreigners, would be attracted by these displays, like moths to a flame. I think the up-time term is "advertising."

Like many of the people ofVenice , we wore carnival dress. In William"s case, it was abauta , a white mask and a black cape. His blond curls stubbornly thrust out beyond the mask, like flowers seeking the sunlight.

"Ah, we are ready to get underway," I said. The doge"s ceremonial galley, thebucintoro , had taken its place at the head of the aquatic parade. "Study the bucintoro; there is much symbolism in its construction." I pa.s.sed the telescope to William.

The bucintoro was double-decked, with the rowers on the lower deck, and the doge and his entourage on the upper one. The flanks of the upper deck bore depictions of sirens riding seahorses, leaping dolphins, and the like. The prow of the bucintoro carried a golden woman, with a sword in one hand, and scales in another.

"The sword and scales are symbols of justice, I a.s.sume."

"Yes, and the woman,Just.i.tia , is a maiden, a virgin. She implies that the government ofVenice has not been taken by force."

The prow had a decorative double beak. The upper beak showed waves. The lower beak featured bushes and stones. "And the two beaks, they represent the sea and the earth," said William.

"That"s right."

"Where is the doge? He isn"t on his throne."

"Look for a golden parasol, near the front."

"Ah, I see him now."

The nautical procession reached the convent of Sant" Elena, and waited there expectantly. After some minutes of suspense, the murmur of the crowd rose in volume. Through the telescope, I could see the flat boat of the patriarch of Castello. It approached the bucintoro and halted. I pa.s.sed the instrument to William, who took a long look.

"What"s happening now?" he asked.

"Thebenedictio ," I answered. "The patriarch says three times, "We beseech Thee, O Lord, to grant that these waters be calm for our men and all others who sail upon it." Now watch."

The patriarchalpiatto was in motion again, circling the bucintoro. The patriarch touched the doge"s ship with an olive branch.

"What"s that all about?"