A Bolt from the Blue, page 29
But most compelling was his pose. Legs crossed as if seated upon the ground, he instead appeared to float several feet above it, eyes shut and head bent in prayerful attitude.
Not surprisingly, a crowd had gathered around him to observe this miracle. Men and women, boy and girls, dark-skinned and light, they appeared to have come from many lands. Some knelt, and others stood . . . while a few had prostrated themselves, hands over their heads lest their unworthy eyes glimpse such glory. All were united, however, in the looks of joyful awe upon their faces as they bore witness to this marvelous sight.
“It is beautiful,” I breathed, swept by awe of my own as I took in every detail.
Appearing gratified by my compliments, the Master smiled. “It is a minor piece,” he said with a casual wave of his hand, “though I am pleased with it, nonetheless. But I did not bring you here to admire what I have done. Rather, I intend to put my apprentice Dino to work.”
When I gave him a puzzled look, he pointed to a section of blank plaster not far from the painted image of the young Christ. Perhaps half the size of a giornata—the traditional amount of wall space that could be painted in a single day before the fresh plaster dried—the empty space was strangely out of place amid this finished work. Even the plaster appeared recently applied . . . as I suspected that it had been, from the telltale flecks of white I noticed on the Master’s left sleeve.
“You will recall that, before all this sad business happened, I told you it was time for you to put aside the plaster blade and pick up a brush. And so, I have saved this spot for you,” he said, pointing to the unblemished square.
I was aware that my mouth had dropped open in a most unseemly manner. “You—you wish me to finish a portion of your fresco?” I finally managed, hardly daring to believe this could be so. When he nodded, I could only shake my head in return.
“But what shall I paint?”
“Whatever you wish. The spot is yours to do with as you will. Everything you need is already here.”
He gestured to a small table, upon which had been laid out jars of fi nely ground pigment, along with a jug of water and a bowl of fresh egg yolks. Combined, those simple ingredients would make the soft shades of tempera that would seep into the plaster and bring it to life. A row of shells, shallow with pearllike inner bellies, waited to be used as dishes for each color. Beside them, a short vase held brushes of all sizes.
“Do not tarry,” he went on, idly picking up a jar of pigment and then putting it aside. You have but a few hours before the plaster dries.” Before I could make a reply to that, he turned and strode out the chapel door, leaving me alone with the fresco.
I stood transfixed for several long moments, staring at the blank plaster and wondering again how I could possibly fill it. But as I gnawed at my lip in frustration, fearful lest I disappoint the Master in this final task, a familiar voice seemed to speak in my head.
It’s easy, Dino, I heard Constantin’s soothing words, sounding as real as if he were standing beside me. Just paint what you know . . . Paint from your heart.
And suddenly I knew what I was meant to depict upon that pristine square of plaster. Smiling, I pulled my tunic over my gown and reached for the bowl of egg yolks. Piercing each yellow globe, I poured their contents into the various shells. Carefully, I added water and pigment, until each new mixture of tempera was the shade and consistency that I sought. Then, taking up a soft brush, I began to paint.
It was well into the afternoon when I put down the brush a final time. Stripping off my tunic, I stepped back to survey my work. Though my hands and arms ached with the hours of effort, and my injured leg throbbed from standing upon the cold stone floor, I felt a swell of excited satisfaction. Surely the Master would be pleased, I told myself . . . but if not, somehow it mattered little. I had accomplished what I had set out to do, and I could point with no little pride to this small bit of fresco as being my finest work.
Still, I spared a final critical eye for my painting. I had taken care to blend my background to the surrounding fresco, so that it joined seamlessly with the rest of the scene. Each color had been applied with care, layered one atop another with painstaking precision. But most important was the trio of male figures I had painted within that small landscape. They had sprung from my brushes with a skill I’d not realized I possessed, glowing with life upon what had once been but a blank square of plaster.
Blinking back sudden tears, I studied the image of a young man—thin but wiry and possessed of a calm smile—who sat upon a grassy knoll. His hands casually wrapped around one knee, he watched with happy amazement the miraculous scene before him. Behind the youth stood a man old enough to be his father. Though his hair was gray and his features and body thicker, he bore a striking resemblance to the young man upon whose shoulder his strong hand rested. His air was respectful, in keeping with the wonders nearby, but his look of paternal pride was reserved for his son.
A short distance behind the pair, a second young man was poised in mid-run, as if rushing to see the miracle before it was too late. Indeed, such was his hurry that his cap had tumbled from his tangled mane of black hair. He did not look back, however, but kept single-mindedly to his pace. A smile danced upon his pockmarked face, and his expression was that of a true believer whose faith had at last been confirmed.
I was still studying my work when the chapel door creaked open behind me. I sensed the Master’s presence almost before I heard his soft footsteps upon the stone floor. Wordlessly, he paused beside me and for a long while studied the portion of fresco into which I had poured my heart. At last, he turned back to me.
“Well-done, young apprentice,” he said, the warmth of his smile soothing all of my aches. “I had expected much of you, and yet you surpassed those expectations. This is a work worthy of a master.”
Before I could reply, his smile broadened into a grin. “And I see you have taken a master’s liberty by putting yourself into the scene, as well, if perhaps symbolically.”
He pointed to the painted image of a hawk perched upon a tree behind the figures of Constantin and his father. Dark of feather and green of eye, the small raptor lifted a single wing, as if about to take flight.
I felt myself blush as I returned his grin. “I could not help myself . . . though, of course, I would never have dared to paint my face among the worshippers.”
“Ah, but that is half the fun,” the Master countered, his grin taking on a sly edge. “Surely you saw that I did not hesitate to give myself a most prominent role in the scene.”
Staring at the fresco, I frowned for a moment as I tried to pick him out from the painted crowd. It was then that I noticed what I had missed before, that the Christ figure bore more than a passing resemblance to the Master as he must have looked a decade earlier.
“But what if the duke notices?” I gasped out, torn between being scandalized and amused by this subtle bit of blasphemy.
Leonardo merely shrugged. “I suspect he will be more likely to believe that the resemblance is to himself, if he notices anything at all.”
The soft chime that was his wrist clock sounding the hour put a halt to that moment of amusement.
“It is finished,” he softly said, a shadow stealing over his handsome features. “You have done what you were meant to do here, and it is time for you to leave us. Your father is waiting outside the chapel gates to take you back to the city, so that you can start for your home on the morrow. And so, I fear that nothing more remains than to say good-bye to my dearest Dino.”
You cannot say good-bye, I wanted to cry out, for I cannot bear to leave the castle, to leave you! But a painful lump had lodged in my throat so that the words remained unspoken.
Swiping away a few errant tears that had slipped down my cheeks, I took a steadying breath and asked instead, “Will you make my farewells to Signor Luigi? He was a true friend to me, and I shall miss him despite his sharp tongue.”
“I will tell him,” he agreed with a hint of a smile, “no matter that the good tailor will be loud in his protests before he ever admits his fondness for you.”
“And Vittorio, do not let him pine too long for Novella,” I rushed on. “He thinks himself in love with her, you know.”
“I know, and I shall counsel him to patience, for I suspect the washerwoman and her daughter may one day return.”
“And don’t forget Pio. He must have his game of wrestling with a bit of blanket each day.”
“The hound will have his amusements, I assure you.”
Unable to think of any further excuses for delay, I lapsed into silent misery. I knew I should flee before I made a fool of myself, and yet I yearned to draw out this last moment for as long as I could. I cared not that each passing second deepened the wound in my heart, if it meant I could spend a few heartbeats longer in his presence.
Leonardo met my anguished gaze with a look of regret and spread his hands in a helpless gesture. “Delfina,” he said softly, “you must leave now, no matter that it breaks my heart to see you go.”
“It breaks my heart, too,” I whispered so quietly that I wondered if he heard the words.
And then, choking back a sob, I fled the tiny chapel as if the devil himself were at my heels.
EPILOGUE
For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return.
—Delfina della Fazia, The Notebooks of Delfina della Fazia
It was several days after I had returned to our small town that I found the courage to unpack the bag containing the apprentice Dino’s worldly possessions. The rough sack held far more upon its return journey than it had when I had started out . . . just as I had brought back with me far more knowledge of the world than had been mine when I left. And so, gently, I poured the bag’s contents out onto my bed.
To be sure, one part of me had been tempted to consign it all to the fire, to put that small portion of my life behind me, but in the end I could not. For among the items were the three notebooks that I had kept in emulation of Leonardo.
More than books of sketches, the tiny volumes had become a chronicle of my life during those months when I had lived at Castle Sforza. The memories they held burned with both passion and pain . . . memories far too raw, most of them, to be held up for examination in the light of day. But one day, I would want to relive those moments of love and fear and laughter.
Just not yet.
Two of my three notebooks I had already tied shut, for the secrets they held had threatened to spill from them in careless disregard for my own feelings. I found another piece of cord and secured the third book, as well. Many of its pages were still blank, but that was as it should be. Should I ever be tempted to keep such a notebook again, I would fi nd a fresh new volume in which to begin.
For good measure, I wrapped all three volumes together in a heavy silk veil and tied it into a neat bundle. That bundle, in turn, I carefully hid atop my wardrobe, out of sight of anyone else but where I could retrieve it whenever I wished. That accomplished, I began sorting the rest of Dino’s possessions.
My bowl and spoon were there, as was much of the coin that my father had given me to pay for my apprenticeship, and which I had hidden in the toe of my spare boots. A change of linen and a cloth with which to scrub my teeth added to the pile. I’d also accumulated a few small trinkets from the occasional market day. The tunics and trunk hose in which I’d first disguised myself had belonged to my younger brothers, but they had long since outgrown those clothes. I shook that boyish garb free of its wrinkles and folded it into a neat pile. While I no longer had a use for the clothing, I was loath simply to toss it away.
Along with that simple garb, I found that my father had also packed away the page’s outfit that Luigi the tailor had made for me at Leonardo’s request. I felt a twinge of guilt at seeing it there, for it was far more costly than any clothing I had ever owned. Had I packed my own bag, I would have left it behind so that another youth might wear it should Leonardo find himself in need of an apprentice disguised as a servant.
With the same care I might have used with a fragile bit of old lace, I folded the silk and velvet garb into a second pile upon my bed and then eyed both stacks of male clothing. Sooner or later, my mother would guess that I’d fled the house in my brothers’ borrowed garb, and so would come looking for it. No doubt she would burn the offending garments if she found them, seeing them as flagrant reminders of my transgressions. But the page’s costume, she would have no cause to know ever existed.
I grabbed up those clothes and, wrapping them in another veil, carefully hid them atop the wardrobe alongside my notebooks. Then, not allowing myself to examine my motives for that impulsive act, I looked to see what remained.
I had sorted through everything, and yet here was something that I did not recognize . . . That was, not entirely. For whatever the flat, rectangular object was, it was secured in what appeared to be the same scrap of green silk that Leonardo had used to conceal his model of the flying machine. Curious, I untied the cord that held it.
The silk slipped from a small wooden panel perhaps half the size of those that my fellow apprentices and I spent hours sanding for the Master’s use when a commissioned portrait came his way. And, indeed, it was a portrait that I held, the soft oils glowing as if lit by a candle, though my room was dim. I immediately recognized it as Leonardo’s work, for his gifted hand was evident in every delicate brushstroke.
But what took my breath from me was the subject of the painting itself.
It was an unusual composition, to say the least . . . the head and shoulders of a dark-haired youth, cloth cap upon his head and garbed in a simple brown tunic. I could not see his face, for he was turned away, his gaze fi xed upon a large mirror whose silvered surface he’d reached out a hand to touch. Reflected back at him was not his youthful face, however; rather, it was that of a young woman with green eyes and a luxuriant braid of dark hair.
Her be-ringed hand stretched out in mirror image of his, so that their fi ngers seemed to touch despite the glass that separated them. But the woman in the mirror was not looking at the youth whose reflection she was. Instead, she gazed out with just a hint of a smile past his shoulder, her attention fi xed on the world beyond.
I stared a long while at the painting, torn between laughter and tears at this amusing yet poignant image of me that Leonardo, in his brilliance, had somehow captured. When he had painted it, I could not guess, for I had never sat for this likeness. The oils were long dry, however, so he must have finished it before the truth of my identity had been revealed.
Had he thought the completed portrait but a witty trick of his brush that I would appreciate, or had he poured his heart into it in the same way I had poured mine into my fresco?
I sighed a little and shook my head, for I knew Leonardo da Vinci well enough by now to guess at that answer.
Still, I would cherish the painting always, though I would never dare hang it for all to see. Instead, with a final admiring look, I wrapped the portrait of Dino reflected as Delfina in the green silk once more and retied the cord. I left my room a few moments later, carrying the rest of Dino’s worldly goods to give to my mother, to do with as she would.
As for the portrait, by then it was safely hidden atop my wardrobe along with my page’s outfit and my notebooks, waiting for the day when I would have cause to look upon it again.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
More than 400 years before the brothers Wilbur and Orville made history at Kitty Hawk, a man named Leonardo da Vinci was busy documenting the anatomy of birds and the vagaries of the wind. His ultimate goal: to build a craft that would allow a man to fly like his feathered brethren. This was no passing fancy on the part of Leonardo. Over a period of years, he dissected, observed, and sketched every movement of a bird’s flight so that he might understand what allowed them to gain the clouds, while Man was relegated to the earth. His writings culminated in the detailed Treatise on the Flight of Birds compiled sometime around 1505.
As for his drawings, they progressed over the years from scholarly studies of birds and their wings to fledgling designs that resemble today’s parachute and helicopter. He went on to sketch numerous detailed variations on winged crafts that incorporated the principles he had documented in his writings. Some, like a pair of immense wings strapped to a man’s back, were admittedly fanciful; others were amazingly reminiscent of modern gliders. History does not record Leonardo ever making a successful flight in one of these contraptions . . . but then, I suspect that history did not record quite a bit of the Master’s more outrageous doings.
Further notes. For those who have been following the action with a historical atlas in hand, you’ve likely noticed that the tiny province of Pontalba is not to be found within the Duchy of Milan . . . or anywhere else, for that matter. Both it and the unpleasant Nicodemo, Duke of Pontalba, are my own creations. As for the spunky Marianna, she is one of several fictional relatives that, purely for story purposes, I’ve given Il Moro in the course of this and past books.
Finally, the quote in the epilogue attributed to Delfina della Fazia is actually a well-known citation that has long been credited to Leonardo da Vinci . . . though likely it was never written or said by him at all. But while no Leonardo expert has discovered those words among the Master’s volumes of work, neither has anyone yet identified the actual writer of this lofty sentiment. And so, with greatest apologies to that unknown author, I’ve taken the liberty of putting those words into Delfina’s mouth. For I have no doubt that, following her dramatic flight around Castle Pontalba, she must have recorded a similarly memorable affirmation in her own notebook!
Diane A. S. Stuckart, A Bolt from the Blue
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