As the summer intensified, Mamma Lucrezia decreed that the oven not be lit, so hot was the temperature outside. Bread was bought from the bakery rather than made and the flour store lay idle. They ate salted fish and fruit and cured meats, sometimes even taking their food outdoors in the garden where Mamma Lucrezia felt more comfortable, because she could see the sky and smell the rose-scented air and pretend for a little that they were in the hills of Careggi.

The girls slept long in the morn. Mamma Lucrezia had a new complacency. Many of her friends had already left for the cool and space of their summer retreats so there were few social gatherings for her to plan. Luna noticed how she no longer walked with the nervous energy of one who has a never-ending list of things to do. She let them stay abed and allowed them more freedoms within the house. She spoke of Maria’s match with Guido Palagio as though it had already been finalised.

‘Margherita was most impressed by you,’ Mamma Lucrezia told Maria. ‘She will relay as much to her husband, and I will speak to Papa on his return. You see, we women have a plan; we may yet have a betrothal to celebrate.’

Mamma Lucrezia went so far as to insist Maria begin to learn the arts of her kitchen in preparation for running her own household. Luna thought this ridiculous—Maria was still only a child—but it occupied her sister’s time. She took Maria into the garden and showed her which fruit to pick for stewing and which for pickling, and which herbs to add to her tonics. The girls helped their mamma gather rosemary for treating nausea and the yellow flowers of the rue plant for adding to Papa’s wine to help ease his headaches.

Once the household was abed, Luna took herself into the garden to watch the night sky, resting a lighted taper on the low wall of the pond beside her small pigskin notebook into which she’d copied parts of the tables from the Sacrobosco. She began to feel a degree of competency with the calculations required to predict the movement of the planets. A pot of ink and a quill lay at the ready so she could write her own notes based on what she observed. It was the best that she could do as she didn’t have a specialised instrument to use for measuring the distance of planets or stars and did not know how to use one anyway.