TEN
Galileo gripped the rail of the barge as tightly as he could, the aches in his finger and wrist joints allowing no more than a gentle pressure. The tremors had started, as they so often did when the fugue fell upon him, and his appendages had become like fragile fall leaves at the mercy of a gusting November wind. The fever made him light-headed and he needed to anchor himself, to brace against the rolling of the sea. Even upon the gentle Laguna Veneta, the lilting and confined stretch of ocean that flowed from the Molo of San Marco to the shore of Murano, Galileo felt as if he would lose his balance and tumble out of control to the deck of the wherry that ferried them to the smaller island.
In the shallow sea rushing past—its lack of depth never more pronounced than at these times o
