PROLOGUE
LITTLE GIUGLIO AND THE CODED BOOK OF WONDER
Within that awful volume lies the mysteries of mysteries!
—Sir Walter Scott
There was no snow in Prague in February 1599—only freezing rains and a heartless cold that crawled into the marrow, chilling the bones of all Bohemia. From the dense Saxon forests bordering Dresden to the dark mountains of Sumava north of Vienna, to the curing waters of Karlovy Vary in the west and the wet, pine-studded mountains of the eastern Polish frontier, the cold winter rains lodged in aching joints and spawned melancholy humors, making the weary, mud-splattered Bohemians yearn for a blanket of fresh white snow.
Icy raindrops clung to the windows of Prazsky Hrad, the royal castle towering over the ancient city. Meandering silver fingers of water ran slowly down the glass, distorted by the warp of the thick, uneven crystal.
A boy, not more than thirteen, sat with his head propped in his hands, his elbows resting on either side of an open book. The beige vellum, soft and fragile, was illuminated by a smoking tallow candle on the mahogany table. Even in the early afternoon, the thin gruel of midwinter light entering the windows did not offer enough illumination for the boy to read.
As if anyone could ever read this book.
The boy who gazed so hungrily at the book had honey-toned hair that grew in unruly waves. He pushed his hair out of his blue-green eyes, eyes the color of the North Adriatic Sea.
Giuglio studied his precious book in his mother’s apartments, for the royal nursery was far too noisy for a boy of such an intense nature. That morning he had begged and wheedled his grandfather, Jacopo Strada, curator of the king’s vast collection of curiosities, into lending him this priceless book of indecipherable code and mysterious origins. He pushed his disobedient hair back again and bent low over the strange, colorful illustrations.
Giuglio particularly liked the pictures of bathmaids, the na**d women in tubs of green water. His mother teased him that he was becoming a man and their white br**sts were what attracted him.
“It is only natural, Giuglio,” she would say, stroking his hair tenderly. Mistress to King Rudolf II, she understood such things well. “Soon you will find your way to the bathhouses of Prague and see the bathmaids for yourself.”
But Giuglio frowned, shaking her off. His mother did not really understand. It was the secret he was searching for. He was certain the laughing women understood, particularly one slim-hipped maiden who stared at him from the pages. She held the secret to the mysteries, he was sure. If only she could speak to him.
He struggled to concentrate. Was it the bathmaids’ voices that filled his head? No, what he felt was a lightning bolt that rattled his spine, making his face shake with palsy, his cheek quivering like a raw egg in hot grease.
And after the lightning in his spine came the thunder in his head. It wasn’t a voice.
Not yet.
It was an overwhelming urge, a passion to do horrid things, things that would make his beautiful mother cry. He longed to call his mother a whore. There! Now that he’d thought it, the word filled his mouth, bulged his lips, and almost burst out into the room. Had Giuglio been born to a legitimate wife of King Rudolf, the entire Hapsburg Empire would one day be his, and his alone.
Whore!
His left eye began to twitch, and he pressed his fingertips against it to stop the spasm.
Giuglio watched the silhouette of the beating rain, the heavy drops of water licking the glass. The shadows painted trembling patterns against the bare plaster between the tapestries, as if the veins of water were boiling instead of near freezing.
Suddenly, the winter light illuminated his mother on her bed, a radiant spear of sunshine lancing through the window, piercing the heavy gray clouds, if only for a few seconds. Giuglio studied her profile, the perfect white skin and rounded bosom that had enchanted a king, filling the nursery with bawling children. Her eyes looked like aquamarines set in wet glass. She inclined her neck to study her glossy black hair, which was hooked around an ivory comb.
A servant entered with a message from the king. Giuglio bent his head once more over the fantastic illustrations, his hand over his eye to still its spasm. He traced the green cascade of water as it ran through cylinders—just like the maidens’ bathing barrels, only bottomless—and then splashed into a pool where the na**d women frolicked.
Or did the barrels look like the segments of a telescope, Galileo’s device for studying the heavens? He must write down that idea. He started to reach for the stack of parchment across the table.
“Ah, benissimo!” cried Anna Maria, scanning the note in her hand. “Your father is going to pay a visit.”
Giuglio’s hand froze in midair.
“The king is coming? Now?”
The skin around his eye began to jump even more. He quickly gathered up his papers.
“Yes, dear! Now behave and make me proud. You know he dotes on you. Try not to act—so odd, tesoro.”
“Mother! He is ill-tempered with me.”
“No, no, Giuglio. He boasts of your future by his side! You will one day help him govern as Lord of Transylvania; he has told me so. You must indulge his humors. His melancholy too often colors his vision. You are his treasure, figlio mio.”
There was a sharp rap on the door.
“The king,” the servant said, stepping aside.
Rudolf II entered with a sweep of his long cape, a feather jauntily stuck in his velvet hat. He smiled slowly at his beautiful mistress, reclined on the bed, combing her long black hair, her jewel-green eyes beckoning him.
“You look ravishing, Anna Maria,” he growled. “Leave us!” he snapped to the servant.
The man bowed and backed out the door, the heavy latch clicking into place.
“Now,” said Rudolf, striding to the bed and throwing her ivory comb to the floor with a clatter, “I will tangle your hair in such passion, no comb’s teeth will chew through the knots!”
Rudolf began to unlace his breeches with eager hands, his eyes never leaving his mistress.
“Wait, Your Majesty! Please! Did you not see our Giuglio at the table?”
Rudolf turned. He saw Giuglio with a quill, an ink pot, and blotter. And quires of parchment.
The king stifled his lust with an exasperated sigh. He lay back against the silk cushions and studied his son from his mistress’s bed. He waited for his passion to cool.
Even a king should not disgrace himself in front of his children.
Giuglio, his first-born and most beloved son. The child had inherited the handsome looks and passion of his Italian mother. Rudolf had doted on young Giuglio and spoiled him with a generous allowance, the best tutors, horses, expensive clothes—and a collection of valuable clocks.
The king had noted with satisfaction Giuglio’s fascination with the clocks’ intricate workings, spilling their metal guts onto the parquet floors of the palace nursery. Part of his genius—so similar to mine, thought Rudolf—was this facility with mechanical reasoning. The king had spent hours watching his little boy play, puzzling over countless tiny parts, deeply absorbed as he dismantled and reconstructed the clocks.
But Giuglio was hunched over something on the writing desk. It was not a clock.
“Boy, what do you have there? A book?”
Giuglio swallowed hard. He swatted at the voices—no, no, the urges!—in his head.
Not now!
“The Coded Book of Wonder,” he answered, clenching and unclenching his fist.
Rudolf’s eyes narrowed. “I told Jacopo to keep that book under lock and key and to supervise you personally when you are looking at it. Where is my antiquarian?” the king roared.
Anna Maria crawled hurriedly off the bed and laid a soothing hand on the king’s shoulder as he rose and approached their son.
“You forget that I am Signor Strada’s daughter. I am supervising his grandson’s work, Your Majesty.”
The king’s shoulders softened as he felt her touch, and his flesh tingled. But the book was one of his most treasured possessions.
“Work? What work?”
“Giuglio, show the king your tables and graphs.”
Giuglio ducked his head in a nod of acquiescence, took a deep breath to still his tremors, and began reluctantly unrolling the sheaf of parchments he had so recently put away.
“Oh, Your Majesty! Giuglio is decoding the book,” said his mother. “Such a clever boy!”
The king dismissed this with a snort.
“I have had every linguist, mathematician, and alchemist try to break the code, and in thirteen years no one has succeeded. This boy will not unlock its secrets!”
Still the king was curious. He looked at his son’s work. He saw mathematical tables, series of quadrangles, graphs with segmented lines, and foreign words scribbled in the margins of the notes. He saw with pride that they reminded him of his alchemists’ annotations, the work of sages three and four times the boy’s age.
“What is this?”
“I have been comparing the usage of symbols with all the languages of Europe,” said Giuglio, his green eyes glittering feverishly, his mouth dry and moving mechanically like one of Rudolf’s windup toys. There was nothing he loved more than talking about the Coded Book of Wonder. But he also showed the side of himself that his mother feared most—the peculiar side that was haunted by the specter of Hapsburg lunacy.
“Blocks of meaning,” he continued, his hands gesturing wildly. “Recurring combinations of letters. Some only at the beginning of the word, some only at the end, and others exclusively in the middle. The royal chess maker, the Saracen, says it is a characteristic of Arabic. He said it may also be true in Hebrew, but I will have to consult a literate Jew to confirm this. I thought the next time you meet Rabbi Lowe to discuss the Kabbalah, I could—”
“What!” roared the king. Giuglio’s head shrunk into his shoulders, and he put an arm up, shielding himself. “My son conversing with a Jew? Do you know what damage you could wreak with such stupidity? If a Hapsburg is seen asking advice from a Jew, both the Catholics and the Protestants will want my blood!”