The Empire of Glass - Andy Lane [11]
He sighed. "I am Galileo," he confirmed, glancing up. "What of it?"
The group of noble ruffians had moved to stand before him. One of them, a youth with long black hair and a sparse beard, was smiling cruelly. "Do you not repeat at Padua," he sneered, "the heresy taught by Giordano Bruno that our world revolves around the sun?"
"It is no heresy, but simple fact," Galileo growled. The youths were obviously spoiling for a fight, but he couldn't help himself. He had to respond. "God has arranged his heavens such that the sun provides light and warmth to all its children and, like a hearth fire, it is the centre around which everything is arranged."
"But that is plainly foolish," the young man replied, gazing around at his companions, who nodded their heads in agreement, "as everyone knows that all celestial bodies circle us. No other star is pre-eminent."
"Foolishness," Galileo snapped, "lies in denying the evidence of one's senses. If you saw a tortoise would you call it a rabbit? If you saw a ship, would you call it a cart? Why then should I see what I plainly see and call it something else?"
Some part of him noticed that the smiles on the faces of the youths had soured somewhat, and that their hands were hovering around the hilts of their swords, but he felt a wave of black anger pass across his thoughts, clouding him to all but the fact that he had been publicly doubted. "And are you an astronomer then," he continued, "that you can question my observations? If so you disguise your experience well under the mantle of a callow youth.
Or better yet, are you a bishop that you can talk to me of heresy?
Where are your robes and your cross?"
"Do you know who I am?" the youth snapped, his face suffused with blood.
"But that you are arrogant beyond good sense, I neither know nor care who you are," Galileo rejoined.
"I am Baldassarre Nicolotti!"
He said the name as if he expected Galileo to recognize it, and unfortunately Galileo did. He gritted his teeth. The Nicolottis were one of the more illustrious and widespread families in Venice.
Their name appeared in the Golden Book - the list of Venetian aristocracy who were eligible for election to the various councils that ran the Serene Republic. He seemed to remember that they were involved in a long-running feud with the Castellani family. If the Doge got to hear that he was brawling in a tavern with one of them, Galileo's chances of gaining an audience would be about the same as his ever becoming Pope. He couldn't back down, though.
Not once his professional expertise had been questioned.
"Strange," he growled, "you look more to me like the arse of a horse, and your words match its excrement for consistency and usefulness." It wasn't elegant, but then again neither was cannon fire against a fortification, and that worked well enough.
"I'll have your liver on a plate!" Baldassarre hissed through clenched teeth. He pulled his sword from its scabbard. His friends cleared a space for the fight, pushing back the other patrons and knocking benches away to form a rough circle. The noise in the tavern dimmed slightly, then rose again to its previous level. Fights were nothing if not frequent in Venice.
Galileo stood slowly, tankard clenched in his hand. He'd been in situations like this too often not to know what the best course of action was. "Did your mother never wean you from her milk?' he said. 'You don't appear to be able to handle your drink like a man."
The tip of Baldassarre's sword waved back and forth in front of Galileo's nose. "I can handle any drink you throw at me," he sneered.
"Then let's put that to the test." Galileo suddenly threw the contents of his tankard at Baldassarre. The crimson liquid caught the youth full in the face. Spluttering, he tried to wipe his eyes with his sleeve, almost skewering one of his companions with his sword as he did so. The rest of the youths rushed forward to help.
Galileo took advantage of the distraction to take a couple of steps backwards,