‘You must be,’ she said passionately, reaching for his hands. ‘For no one else will speak for you. It seems to me that nature sets us these challenges to astound and disrupt our thinking. You are justified in your statement and cannot stop there. What of Aristarchus’s work? What if he was right and the errors in the predictions about the heavens could be attributed to a displacement of the Earth from its central position?’ Luna stopped to breathe. She was still holding Nicolaus’s hands and dropped them. The burning in her belly started again. It fired her heart as well as her mind. ‘I see the logic in investigating this and I know you do too, so fortify yourself against the judgement of your critics. That is the only way you can free your mind to consider all the possibilities.’

‘You astonish me!’ He laughed and grasped her hand. ‘As I returned this afternoon, I stopped to rest beneath the same fruit trees where we first met and thought how wild you seemed that day, with your skirts billowing and hair loose. How beautiful …’ Then he reached out and stroked her cheek, and it was Luna’s turn to be surprised but she lifted her face towards him, pulled by the same inexorable force as the motion of a heavenly sphere. She rested her hand upon his that held her face, and felt in that moment more connected to this man than any other person in her life.

*

When the daylight began to ebb, the professor, Nicolaus and Luna set off on the same goat trail where the three had first met. In the distance, the lilac sunset deepened. A rabbit skittered across their path and then another. Luna walked more carefully, though she was keen to keep up. The air smelt damp and earthy. Nicolaus was a few steps ahead, carrying wooden rods in the pack on his back. He turned to her and, as on that first day’s meeting, broke into a smile that drew her to him.

An owl swooped over them, leaving the touch of its winged soaring upon Luna’s cheek. It was near dark.

‘We will stop here.’ The professor dropped his satchel and started unpacking.

Luna turned her face upwards. ‘It’s extraordinary to think what is about to happen.’

‘A brilliant view, isn’t it?’ Nicolaus came and stood beside her.

‘It’s amazing. I can still see the red eye of Taurus; that much is the same.’

‘It’s all the same, just where you’re standing has changed.’

Turning full circle, Luna saw the Milky Way spread east in a shimmering mist. She followed Nicolaus to a spot where they sat upon a thin rug.

‘We still have some time to wait,’ he said and handed her a flagon of wine. She drank.