‘Let’s start back to the house and a warm fire,’ the professor said after some time, his voice as stark a sound in the dead of night as the snap of a twig underfoot. It brought Luna back to her senses and she turned to see that the pair had their satchels ready and were waiting to depart.

The walk back was slower and Luna was numbed with cold but she didn’t notice her discomfort. A burning need had started in her stomach.

The next morning her walking stick was propped against the wall with mud still stuck to it. Luna lay in bed and thought about the night-time expedition and the extraordinary sight they’d witnessed. Her neck flushed hot as she remembered Nicolaus sitting so close. She pressed her palms into her eyes until bright spots flashed behind her closed lids. Then the image of the blood-red Moon appeared, so wondrous, and she felt Nicolaus reaching for her hand. Her mind had fired too, just as the Moon turned red; she’d not been able to stop it.

When she was dressed, she took a cup of wine and sat by the fireplace in the main hall, thinking about the idea that had come to her last night about replicating Ptolemy’s method of studying three eclipses. The moment she thought of suggesting it to Nicolaus, her whole body flushed hot. She listened to the crackle of the logs, calming herself, lost in a reverie.

Nicolaus found her there before much time had passed. ‘Did you enjoy watching your first eclipse?’ he asked.

She nodded, thinking how well the smile on his lips matched the glint of pleasure in his eyes.

‘In another few weeks we will observe the Moon passing in front of the star Aldebaran. When it is a star in the Moon’s shadow, we call it an occult. This one will be intriguing.’

‘How so?’ Luna asked.

‘Watch it with me and you will see,’ he answered. ‘From the top of the professor’s tower.’

This time when she felt the fire in her belly, Luna didn’t hesitate. ‘I would very much like that.’

Chapter Twenty-Five

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

March 1497

Luna would look back on that first night when she’d witnessed a lunar eclipse with Nicolaus as the most precious of all her star-gazing encounters. As the Moon reappeared whole from behind the Earth’s shadow, in the hushed silence of the night’s last hours, she’d determined never again to turn away from her own passion for the science of what she’d seen and resolved to be brave and outspoken.