Prologue

They darken. In the sky over Florence, the oblong clouds swell and darken. And hailstones lift back through the updrafts, thickening, darkening, until, swollen as bird eggs, they drop to the cobbled streets. Horses! the child Galileo thinks, then peeks through the doorway to the shock of ten thousand icy hooves. At his back, his father is tuning violins, and because there is nothing sharper at hand Galileo saws through a captured hailstone with a length of E-string, the white globe opening slowly, and the pattern inside already bleeding its frail borders. Layers and layers of ice— Like what? Onion pulp? Cypress rings? If only the room were colder, and the eye finer. If only the hand were faster, and the blade sharper, and firmer, and without a hint of song . . .