She sat back and shook her head, then bent to the page to read the sentence again. She’d been correct: the Earth revolved around the Sun in the circumference of a circle whilst the Moon orbited the Earth, which in turn spun on its axis. She looked about, expecting someone to grab the book away, or at least condemn her for reading it, but the aisles were clear and only distant footsteps broke the peace and quiet. Archimedes must have agreed with Aristarchus of Samos if he’d used the Pythagorean’s theory to furnish his own calculations, which meant that the Greeks thought the Earth turned. The idea was as ridiculous as a talking dog, Luna thought, as she closed the book and rested it atop the Sacrobosco.

She took up her stick and headed down the aisle to where her father’s books sat on a table, curious to see which of her father’s collection were to be moved.

She felt protected in the shadow of the tall bookshelves. Despite what Friar Bartolomeo had told her, there were still many books ranged across them. Luna breathed in the clean, distinct smell of ink on paper. She used to enjoy watching the monks bent over manuscripts at these tables and was encouraged by their craft to spend time on her own lettering skills. The slow, deliberate movement of their hands as they copied the words was easy to replicate but these monks made every word perfectly uniform. Their skilled artistry and precision extended to drawing the tiniest details of facial expressions and mythical beasts entwined in branches of ivy and acanthus on graceful curved stems in ink and liquid gold. It was satisfying to see the coloured ink mark the page and bleed out to fill the body of a letter, the brilliant blue of lapis lazuli, the red crystals of cinnabar.