Elisabetta asked Luna to pray with her each day, for she felt distanced from her faith whilst abed. From then on, Luna said her prayers with Elisabetta rather than in the chapel and the time felt precious and intimate, something a mother and daughter might do. Sometimes they were quiet and hung their heads piously as she read. If they had been close in conversation, Luna would open the book and with a knowing nod climb onto the bed and together they would follow the line of the prayer on the page. Mamma Lucrezia had never shown Luna such closeness and trust. Other times it came upon them to watch the sunlight cross the floor and Luna matched the rhythm of her voice to the twinkling flashes. She liked doing this for it stirred their spirits and Luna felt something different in herself, a sense of comfort.

*

The last days of February brought a burst of warmer weather and the first signs of spring. The servants opened the outer shutters and they creaked from months of rain and ice-locked hinges. The winter tapestries were pulled down and packed away, the hearths were swept clean of ash and dust. Each morning the curtains were drawn a little earlier as the daylight hours grew longer. The changing season was another reminder that it had become time for Luna to move on.

Beyond the yard, the fields were washed in a freshness that challenged the last of winter’s cold with signs of new life. A verdant green now filled the canvas entirely. Tight buds clung steadfastly to the branches of the fruit trees and tiny spiked horns of green thrust from the soil in glorious, massed disorder. Soon the ground would be thawed enough for ploughing. A few times, Luna spied Nicolaus trudging across the distant hills in the late afternoon and heard him return before the cock had crowed the following morn. She supposed he was doing final preparations for the lunar eclipse.

‘I see that lately I am graced with two visitors,’ Elisabetta commented one afternoon upon waking as she looked from Luna to Nicolaus and back again. Nicolaus had brought a book of his own and when Luna finished reading from the prayer book, he opened the small volume.

‘May I read?’

She could hear the gentle breath of sleep coming from the bed. ‘If it pleases you.’

Luna settled herself comfortably. She’d come to accept his presence and had to admit that she enjoyed the melody of his voice.

Nicolaus placed his hand upon the page and furrowed his brow. ‘I know that I am mortal and living but a day. But when I search for the numerous turning spirals of the stars, I no longer have my feet on the Earth but am beside Zeus himself, filling myself with god-nurturing ambrosia.’

Luna had expected poetry, or philosophy even, not these words from the Almagest. Even from her limited reading, she remembered the allegorical introduction.