Tom Foran Clark

Emery looked straight ahead, riding steadily. He focused on the pain in his knee, the revolutions of the wheels, and every rock, pebble, or stone on the road. This calmed his nerves. Whatever else was right or wrong with this world, Pike and Emery were going apace; moving ahead.

They rode strong. All around them were jig-saw-pieced marshlands, golden brown. Chiogga came into view across a vast lagoon as blue and beautiful as the clear sky. Then clouds tolled up on the horizon, looking like a snowy mountain range. They crossed a wide river -- the great, wide, still, marsh-banked Po. Dusk approached. Pike pointed to an obviously abandoned house and barn out in the middle of a cornfield. There they camped.

Pike volunteered to ride into Mesola, just a kilometer away, to get some wine, peaches, breadrolls, and so on.

"And how do you propose to do that?" Emery inquired ironically.

"What?"

"Buy wine, peaches, breadrolls, and so on?"

"Same as before," Pike said.

"And how was that?"

"Our wants collide, but God provides."

"And what is that supposed to mean?"

"Where there is a will there is a way?"

With no further ado, Pike departed. Sundown came, gold and orange and rose along the horizon of flat fields. Emery stood in the barn’s doorway and surveyed the scene. He was still standing there, in darkness now, when Pike came back. He had two bottles of mineral water, four bottles of Chianti, fourteen bread rolls, six cans of peaches, two bricks of cheese, eighteen tomatoes, eight different brands of cookies, and five new candles.

Neither Emery's sneaking suspicions nor his outraged self-righteousness obstructed his appetite at all. He stuffed myself. Though it must have got to freezing that night, the two slept deeply. The sunrise, framed in the open doorway, was even lovelier than the sunset had been. With military discipline, Pike and Emery emerged from their warm cocoons and packed and hit the road.

They rode straight through Pomposa, crossed two small rivers, and got on a wide three-lane road with abundant traffic. The middle lane was for passing – an invitation to disaster, especially in Italy. Cars passed trucks. Cars passed cars passing trucks. In both directions. Braced for anything, they passed dozens of roadside graves marking the spots where motorists had been catapulted headlong into eternity. The two felt they'd really reached the edge of things.

They were grateful when dusk came again. They took a dirt road off that main highway into flat brushlands and arrived at an oasis of beach sand. There were seashells in the sand. The two pitched their tent. The sun, going down, was a ball of fire. The magnificent blue sky paled into white, then gold, then orange, then crimson, then purple, then blah-gray. The sun fell into the blah-gray. Then came the richest, purest starry night. Pike remarked the two might as well have landed in Wyoming or Montana -- "It's no wonder they made so many cowboy movies here."

Pike’s last comment for that day, prior to his drifting off to sleep, were prescient of the forthcoming -- the first sounds they heard the following morning were rifle shots. Pom! Pom! Pom! Now what?

They heard no rush of horse’s hooves. Peeking out of the tent, Emery saw no dust cloud. I saw no approaching posse, organized to find them. It was just a couple of slobbering, brown-spotted dogs and a pair of duck hunters in marine fatigues. They did not bother the invaders -- except for all that shooting. Pom! Pom! Pom!

There was a glaze of ice across the flatlands. It looked like they were on the moon. Pike was greatly exhilarated, getting off some quick snapshots of that moonscape. The rising sun very quickly burned off the frosting. Pike and Emery packed quickly and set out. They pulled their skicaps low over their ears, across their eyebrows. They were shivering.

They were maybe a half mile out of Ravenna when Emery's front tire went flat. It was an easy thing to fix. There was no accompanying drama. Of this he was glad. This was the life. Emery simply fixed the flat tire, and the two continued on.

Once they reached Ravenna, the last great capital of the old Roman Empire, they went right to the Chiesa di Mario in Porto, followed by hot cappuccino coffee, with rolls and fresh oranges, at a café. After, Pike walked up to an old man who had been staring at him the whole time and demanded to know just what was he looking at. All around, people looked away. A waiter came up and was very apologetic. Pike then got mellow, saying, "Just don’t let it happen again." This was a diversion, of course. While Pike railed, driving home his point, Emery slipped away. Then Pike slipped away, too, without paying.

At the Abbey of Sant’ Apollinare Nuovo, the two studied the remnants of the walls of the Teodoric Palace and the palm fronds circling the campanile tower, then entered the nig shoebox to enjoy the mosaics, which took their breath away. But the two were even more astonished when they got to the Abbey of San Vitale, with its enormous cupola and painted illusions. Presiding over the false garlands of flowers, cotton-candy clouds, staircases, and balconies, was Justinian the Great, looming over it all, God’s "vice-regent" on earth, flanked by kowtowing court officials. To the right of Justinian was the military. To the left of him were priests. On the facing wall was Theodora, who’d been elevated from courtesan to queen. Here was Byzantine luxury exemplified: beyond being clearly stern and bored, she was obviously richly pleased.

Pike and Emery went to the Duomo, an enormous hulking thing. Pike said he wished it was a Bank of America-- which of course it did resemble -- so he could rob it. Instead, the two rolled out of there and left Ravenna proper in search of S. Apollinaire in Classe, which turned out to be a larger version of S. Apollinaire Nuovo -- vast, long chamber rafters on stilts. Out front of the basilica was a statue -- Ceasar Augustus, who’d founded the town of Apollinaire -- and a two story farmhouse. Behind the farmhouse, alone in a vast field, was a two-winged Palladian brick manse by a barn. Over these, the moon rose.

Pike and Emery rode into Ravenna’s outskirts, following the signs for the "Ostello Dante." These signs led every which way -- except to a hostel. They zigged first this way, then zagged that way, and still arrived at empty plains. But they did not give up. In the dark of night, they finally did arrive at the Ostello Dante. It was, beyond being merely closed, completely deserted and boarded-up -- as dead as the author of The Divine Comedy.

It started to rain. Pike and Emery pitched their tent right there. Luckily, the night was not as cold as the harsh, preceding nights and, although they pitched their tent next to what appeared to be very much a haunted house, they were cozy and slept deeply.

A crisp wind fluttering at the tent flaps woke them the next morning. They were in no hurry to get up. There was no sign of sun. An enormous gray flannel blanket had pulled in over the sky. The old Ostello looked like a pile of dead driftwood in an Oklahoma dustbowl. Barren fields stretched for many miles in all directions. On the gravel road in front of the tent, an old woman all in black pedaled by on a bicycle. She did not turn her head to look at them. Pike took her photograph. They did not know where she'd come from, and didn't have a clue where she could be going -- they studied their maps -- perhaps Forli?

They broke camp and got on the road to Forli. Behind Forli, in a long line across the horizon, were the Appenines -- actual mountains. Fruit trees lined the road -- Cachi fruits, not unlike a tomatoes, and Diosperis, delicious little melons with a dry, mouth-puckering aftertaste.

At about 2:00 in the afternoon, clouds rushed over like Antarctic ice-masses, the sky cracked open in ten or a dozen different places. The sun beamed through the cracks lighting luminous white rainshower tubes across the valleys and foothills. Pike couldn’t get enough of this, taking pictures. The two were soaked.

They pedaled up the hills with renewed stamina. "What goes up, must come down," Pike sang out. Rolling down the hills, Pike’s refrain was, "Newton, Newton, Newton, Newton." Going up one particularly steep rise, Pike suddenly got off his bike and let it fall. He began kicking it. "Goddamned piece of crap," he shouted. "Utter worthless piece of junk; no-good Goddamned metal-heap! I will go no more today! The next potential site we see, that’s where we camp."

Emery helped Pike pick up his bike, and on they went. They took ever narrowing roads that finally led them to an abandoned casa bearing graffiti dating back only to 1916. It had a fireplace. The two got a fire going, and opened up a bottle of Frescobaldi Castiglione wine. Again, rain fell, but they had a good roof over their heads. In the night, lightning cracked the sky. Roaring winds lashed and spewed all around them. This weather raged and wheezed right up to the dawn’s early light, then ceased. The sun came up slowly.

Pike and Emery got up, packed, stretched, and got back on their bikes. They left the plains and entered plunging canyons filled with fern-lined streams and waterfalls -- little tinkling spills along the cliff walls. At half past noon they reached the tiny mountain village of S. Benedetto in Alpe, on a ledge overlooking a brook winding through a craggy basin. By an old stone abbey, they came to a bridge -- high up. The view was spectacular. They paused a while.

Here, Emery got to daydreaming again. Time passed. The next thing Emery knew, Pike was grabbing on to him, but he thought Pike was pushing him. Pike stayed on the bridge, but Emery fell off -- but not into the deep ravine. Just under where he tumbled over, there was a tiny ledge. Emery landed there, and also reached out for a wooden beam projecting from the bridge. That saved his life.

"Are you all right?" Pike called down to him.

"Who wants to know?" Emery called back. He knew the honeymoon was over. The two didn’t say a word to each other all the rest of that day. It was probably unreasonable of Emery, but he couldn’t help but feel it should have been Pike who'd taken that fall, not him. Pike had initiated it -- clumsy oaf! The pain in Emery's knee had lifted; now all the rest of him was bruised and sore. And it was all up hill from there. The road just went up and up.

At last the mountaintop came near. There was nothing like a mountaintop to calm the nerves. Emery's anger was assuaged. He felt pity, compassion, wonder. He did not mention this to Pike, however.

The two rolled down, soaring like eagles -- until Pike insisted they stop so he could get some good pictures. It was stop and go from there on out. Somewhere in those mountains, the two stopped at a tiny village that was not on any of their maps. They only knew they weren't very far from Florence. Wherever they were, a butcher’s shop was there. In the window hung the huge flanks of a calf split in half, dangling from hooks in the ceiling --– a great-ribbed, raw flesh hulk. The head of the animal had been lopped off. Emery studied the dead meat in that window for what must have been ten or twenty minutes, then the two riders pressed on.

They made their camp that night along a tributary of the River Arno. Pike got out a map and a highlighter pen and drew a line along the route he supposed they’d been on. Because Pike and Emery were not talking to one another, they sulkily endured the long evening. In the morning, they began to share light banter. They knew it was going to be a good day, for today they'd be entering Florence.

They took down the tent, packed, and got back on the ancient road, which soon widened into a street. This street led into cramped, crowded, corroded narrows of city shops and buildings that ultimately opened onto broad lawns, and parks filled with lovely statuary, gardens, and fountains – where Pike and Emery caught up on letter writing. Around noon, the two went over to the Piazza di Santa Croce and sat on the steps a while. A sculpted Dante frowned down on them: him with his silly, ever present wreath of leaves upon his head.

They waited until very late in the day, until they couldn’t stand it any longer. "Are you ready?" Pike spoke softly. Emery knew exactly what he meant.

"Ready," Emery said, and they did it. They rolled to the Duomo, to the Cathedral of Florence, to Giotto’s Belltower, to Brunellischi’s dome, and to the Baptistery and Ghiberti’s bronze doors! Florence proper! Turn which way you would in Florence, you were in paradise. In the Duomo, even the sound of just scuffling shoes and whispering voices was rich -- magical.

They didn’t stay long in the Duomo. They knew it would be dark soon. They got back on their bikes and went the wrong way down one-way streets in search of the youth hostel. They entered woods and went up a narrow road at nightfall. The hostel was a Renaissance palace – a whole estate, gardens and all. There was a fence all around the whole thing, and they could not find a gate to pass in through. Dogs were barking at them all the while they were circling the palace, puzzling out how the heck they were supposed to get in. Finally a cranky old man appeared, hollering at the dogs. "Go to the front!" he yelled at them. "To the front!"

What front? Again the two circled, looking for a way in -- to the front. Finally, they found an open gate. Once inside the palace, they felt they’d escaped a labyrinth and the hounds of hell only to enter a crushed Russia after the assassination of a czar. A people’s revolution had transpired here. The once ornate palatial walls were now scarred and ruined with carved initials, messages, romantic confessions, much jibberish.

In the congested, noisy common room, the two downed the macaroni and cheese Pike had lifted from a mercado in the unnamed village where the hefty butchered calf had so impressed Emery. Wine was being passed around freely, hosteler to hosteler, across the expansive, gouged, graffiti painted tables.

It was numbing. How could it happen? The assembled wanderers were arrogant, haughty, and glib. The compelling frivolity and good conversation Pike and Emery had enjoyed at the Venice hostel was whooly absent here. The situation soon went from bad to worse. The bunks in this Ostello held mattresses drooping in the middle -- nearly to the floor. Pike and Emery got up early the next morning, eager to get out of the Ostello, back into the open air.

Their shared displeasure re-cemented their bond of friendship. Emery's anger toward Pike dissolved. As traveling companions go, Emery figured, Pike really was all right. Even something of a rare bird. In some ways, he now seemed to Emery to be even princely: Pike's long brown hair and lavish tan fur trapper’s coat, one hand in a pocket, one foot forward -- the stance of a gentleman. This recognition so warmed Emery's heart, he took Pike to breakfast. First they visited a pestatore su pegno (a pawnbroker) in his monte m’ di pieta (pawnshop) to hock Emery's Swiss watch. He rose to the occasion -- sinking so low. But it got the two oranges, cheese, wine, and three different kinds of cookies, as well as half a dozen candles.

They ate, then went to Santa Maria Novella, where the absence of Emery's watch was quickly erased from his memory. There, before his eyes, was Masaccio’s masterpiece, Christ on the Cross, situated in a perfectly geometric architectural space -- all done using only paint. It was the skeleton painted at the bottom of the marvelous picture with which Emery connected -- it really got to him. There were foreign words in an inscription beneath the skeleton that he knew to mean, "What you are, I once was; what I am, you will become." Emery felt not only elevated, ennobled, he felt like he was rising in the air. Emery bowed, said, "Thank you, Masaccio," and went out.

After that, nothing was as it had been. That whole afternoon, Emery strolled along in a very pleasant lateral contemplative space. When he and Pike got to the Medici Chapel, Emery looked at Michelangelo’s gemlike statues with their resplendent supersaturated powers, and took them in his stride. He was actually glad when they got out of there. All that polished mausoleum marble left him cold. Emery felt much better back out in the fresh air, swept along by the swarms of people going in among the neighboring stalls, a kaleidoscope of woolens, cotton goods, clean socks, silks, scarves, shirts, pants, belts, hats, keyboards, shingles, boots, weights, mousetraps, fish tanks, pumps, crowbars, cutting boards, and on and on.

How peculiar then, that Emery's knee should again give out just then, when he was so delighting in everything! He suddenly dropped down on his one good knee, right there. As for the other knee, it felt like railroad spikes were being hammered into the patella. The people around him were laughing. Little children were pointing their fingers at him. Pike grasped his shoulders. He said, "Look. What’s that?" Emery's good knee had landed on a leather pouch of some kind. He stood up as best he could, using Pike for leverage, and had a look at the pouch. It was filled with coins and paper money.

"Run!" Pike cried out, grabbing the pouch right out of Emery's hands. Emery could only shamble after. "Wait up!" he cried. Pike turned, scratching and rubbing himself all over, like he was lousy with fleas, and came back to where Emery stood. Emery took the pouch back. "Let’s do the right thing," he insisted. Emery walked over to a poliziotto inspecting women’s garments, and explained the situation as best he could. It took some doing, but the officer finally got the point.

Pike and Emery went with him to the Commissariato, where Pike tried to talk the clerk on duty into letting the finders have an advance on the reward money that surely would be coming to them in the end. The officer took their names and address -- the hostel -- and explained that, as there were no cards or identifying papers in the pouch, the two would have to wait five days. If no one claimed the money by then, it would be theirs.

Five days!

Of course they could afford to wait. In the course of his mad dash, Pike had apparently stuffed thousands of lire into his pants pockets, shirt pockets, coat pockets, socks, and shoes.

The two drifted back to the Duomo, discussing their good luck and their bad luck, trying to keep things in perspective. One of Donatello’s sculptures peered down at them from a hig place on the church: Habakkuk, the melonhead. He looked like he knew what was going on, and was thoroughly enjoying things. A prayerful little ritual seemed like a good idea just then. Emery put his hands together, bowed, and said, "Thank you, Habakkuk."

Pike got Emery's watch out of hock and the two rode back to the Ostello to get their things. Pike asked me how my knee was doing and, strange to say, it didn’t hurt at all now. I figured this was now just something I was going to have to live with, the pain coming and going whimsically like that.

They rode back to Florence center and got a cheap room at a nice pensione not far from the Accademia, where Michelangelo’s David, a copy, stood casual guard out front – very casual. In a ristorante by the square, the two enjoyed pesce et pesche -- fish and peaches -- and red table wine. The next day, they went into the Accademia to see the real David.

Emery said he thought he saw in David’s face as much artificial bravado and plain puzzlement as self-assurance or courage. David's simple dignity and humilty had served him so much better than elaborate and dense armor. He looked like he wahad s happy with what happened, but he hadn’t really digested the enormity of it. He seemed to be thinking, Oh, they’re gonna just love me for this.

After seeing David, it seemed to the two of them that they'd been handed the key to the city -- the red carpet was rolled out for them. They went straight to the Uffizzi Gallery to see Botticelli’s Venus in a Half-Shell, which was wonderful, of course, but it wasTitian’s Venus of Urbino that had them reeling with appreciation. The Italian sky, when they got out, was an awesome blank expanse. It was going to rain, they could see. They made a dash for the hotel. Sheet lightning flashed, followed by low, ominous rumbling. Florence seemed to have come under siege, teetering on the verge of implosion. The rain fell hard and, in the space of only a few moments, they were drenched to the skin.

They ducked into a ristorante -- the Habakkuk Taverna it was called. The front windows were filled with an elegant display of not only wines, but also assorted melons. Two or three tables had been pulled together in the middle of the place, and an uproarious group of young people were merrily eating, drinking, talking, proposing toasts, passing plates, spilling wine, etc -- a boisterous, anarchical display. They had all come here from the hostel, of course. One of them stood up amid the clamor and commotion. Her piercing blue eyes went right through Emery, to the deepest recesses of his excitable cerebrum. He knew he did not want this. She joyously waved to the two of them, signalling Pike and Emery to come join them at their tables. Emery turned to go out. Pike grabbed his arm and he would not let go of him.

"Hello, friends!" Pike sang merrily to the crowd. "Mind if we join you?"

Among the revelers was a loud, six-foot-two, gangly blonde with a Nordic accent that reminded Emery of Frida’s. He was reading from a portion of the Old Testament, which a waiter had provided to him. There were, in fact, Bible texts posted all over the ristorante, wrapped in cellophane -- to protect them from flying food, I imagined. These hung from the walls on nails, in six different languages, throughout the place. "I am reading from Habakkuk," the Norwegian, Swede, or Dane began.

" ‘I am doing a voork in your days dat you vood not believe if I told you’," he orated. " ‘Voe to him who says to a vooden ting, "Avake!" To a dumb stone, "Arise!" can dis give revelation?’" Then the Dane moved his hand over the page, in search of some more captivating line, which he found quickly: " ‘Der is no breach at all in it,’ " he continued. " ‘I hear, but my body trembles. My lips quiver at da sound’."

Everybody clapped their hands at this. Emery noticed the black-haired, jubilant girl who’d originally waved to them to come in and join the group had now linked her arm in mine. Her blue eyes looked like the ocean. She smiled right into Emery's eyes and said she just loved these people -- didn’t he? And Habakkuk -- she said she just loved that statue of the melonhead standing in the corner of the ristorante -- Habakkuk.

Emery admitted he liked Habakkuk, too, and the girl seemed to just love that. She moved closer to Emery, even moving her chair up closer to his, so that these now touched. She said she’d come to Florence from Tasmania, Australia. Emery said he'd heard of it -- Tasmania -- formerly Van Diemen's Land, to which, in olden times, convicts had been banished. She -- her name was Irene -- was certainly not (she said) descended from such convicts. Emery told her he loved her name. And her black hair, cut short in an impish pixie style. And her very long, thin, straight nose -- aquiline and noble. Her lips were full, and she had applied bright red lipstick to them. Her chin was small and almost pointed. Her neck, like her nose, was extended and narrow. The whole effect of her suggested she’d been brought into the world by a spare, attenuating mannerist painter, say Parmigianino or Bronzino, with fervent, almost contrary input from the robust paint-flinger, Rubens.

Emery was quickly taken in by her lovely blue eyes. He knew this was dangerous for him, but what could he do? Irene kept tugging on his arm, saying how she loved the way Emery's two ears were placed on his head, also insisting he too had very nice eyes -- and wasn’t he quite the character -- a rascal, she insisted -- and so on. She was very purposefully dropping her ample bosom onto Emery's arm, and he liked it, but he could hardly get any air. Emery knew he had to stay in control and take it easy on the wine, remembering his blackout in Venice. He sipped lightly, in marked contrast to the swilling then going on all around. Emery saw that Pike, clearly sodden already, was fully in that mode. He had his arms around the fellows to the left and right of him, and was singing a song Emery had never heard before. Things got increasingly ribald and uncomfortable, so when Irene suggested she and Emery should step out for some fresh air, despite the rainshower, he was all for that.

She put her hand in his. They went around to where Pike was. Emery whispered in Pike's ear his intention, and asked him to be sure to pick up both Irene's tab and his, then the two, Irene and Emery, went out.

They dashed out from under the awning of the Habakkuk and ran to the hotel, where Irene took off her wet clothes. Emery offered her some of his clothes, but she declined and bid him do as she had done. Which Emery did do. The two laid down on the bed and talked. Irene picked Emery's brains. She was thrilled to hear he kept a diary. She said she wrote, too -- she was going to write a book someday. She said she hoped Emery would write a book someday, too -- he could put her in it.

Irene took his hands in hers. She told him she’d written an important paper for one of her favorite teachers many years before, when she’d been in seventh grade. It had been about Giordano Bruno, a 16th century Italian astronomer who’d been a Dominican monk who’d abandoned his monastery and walked to Paris, Marburg, Wittenberg, and Prague, and who’d kept right on walking. He’d been something of a loner, going from town to town telling people the universe was infinite: “Infinite worlds exist besides this, our earth,” he'd told them. In Rome, in the course of the Inquisition, Jesuits had caught up with him and burned him at the stake. Irene said Emery looked like Giordano Bruno. She said he’d probably end up alone like him someday, brought low, if he didn’t open up more.

"What you need," Irene proposed, "is a good muse." And, of course, she then offered she would be that muse for him. She turned those two lights, her luxurious eyes, on him. "Emery, do you know anything about astronomy?" she asked.

"Nothing," he whispered, touching her lips gently with his fingertips. "‘The starry skies above; the moral law within.’ Kant."

"Can’t what?"

"No. I mean Emmanuel Kant. He said that."

"What do you think about technology?"

Emery couldn’t think of anything to say.

"You can’t write a book if you don’t address these things," Irene insisted, taking his heated cheeks into her soft hands. "What makes us who we are -- nature or nurture?"

He couldn’t guess.

"Emery, you really need more views on things!" Irene exclaimed, provocatively. "Do doctoral programs have any real inherent value? What is the right way to educate a child? You must have an opinion about that."

In fact, Emery didn’t.

"What about moral education? What about character?"

"A man’s character is his destiny," he said, quoting Heraclites. "A woman’s character is hers."

"What of Music? Drama? Decadence? Debasement? Degradation? Rebuke?"

"These have all been addressed by others."

"Yes, but what do you think, Emery?" Irene said imploringly.

"What do you think?" Emery inquired, turning the tables. He turned her over bodily and sat on the beautiful backs of Irene’s long legs. "What do you think of being assailed by a barrage of questions? Exhorted? Analyzed? What is it with analysis of everybody all the time nowadays, anyway?" Emery asked plaintively, slowly rubbing her neck and back and buttocks.

"You can’t write anything if you don’t have opinions," Irene said, burying her face in a pillow.

"What do you think about beauty?" Emery asked Irene. "Bodies? The mysterious bounty of nature? The thinking mind? The feeling heart? The soul? Holy ground?"

"Mmm," Irene murmured. "You obviously like my body. Everybody does. People are always telling me what an especially beautiful nose I have."

"You do have a beautiful nose,” he agreed. Emery rolled her back over, to face him. "I do think you’re beautiful. You are a miracle. I believe in the sacredness of women -- human and divine -- goddesses and female persons. I think there is not a part of you that is not beautiful -- a miracle."

"’Men and women: each completes the other.’ John Ruskin said that. I have a friend in Melbourne who’s a carpenter and a socialist. He can talk about William Morris and John Ruskin all day long, and all night, too. They started the Arts and Crafts Movement. Have you heard of them?"

Clasping Irene’s hips, resting his chin in the nest between her legs, Emery silently nodded affirmation and approval.

"Ruskin! Can you imagine? He married a sweet young thing and then rebuffed her in bed! When he learned she had hair there, down under, he would not go near her."

This from a Tasmanian! "Down under." Emery had to laugh. John Ruskin had missed a boat, as far as Emery could see. He was just about delirious with comfort and delight.

"Zenobia -- lover of Goths, Persians, rebels -- Queen of Palmyra, crossed the River Orontes in golden chains,” Irene said breathlessly. “Copernicus was overcautious. Bruno was bold!"