by Jean Rabe
Genevieve gently took her fingers from her sleeve and patted them with her other hand. “Later, darling. We’ll talk more at dinner.”
But dinner provided no time for private conversation. The son of the duke of Padua was present in the place of honor at the head of the long table, along with his wife and young sons, who waited on their parents. The other seats were filled by several prosperous merchants of the town. Most of the conversation was about trade, but in the middle of a fish course, a pike served with leeks and tarragon, it turned to Leonardo’s work.
“So, I hear you are building a machine that flies?” the nobleman asked.
“Alas, it does not fly, except in my dreams,” Leonardo said, with a smile.
“What is the problem?”
“Mainly that no means of driving its wings exists, at least at present. It is a problem I cannot yet solve, but rest assured I continue to try.”
“You have created nothing that can press the air into it, as a bird’s wing?” the man asked. “I have seen your drawings of anatomy. Something that would cause it to flap and rise from the ground? A gigantic bellows, perhaps?”
Marguerite, an aeronautical engineer, hastily swallowed a bite. “This is not a machine that flaps, your grace, but that spins, like a child’s top, and can lift that way. Or should.”
“Ah.” The young lord’s shining dark eyes lit on her in amusement. “So, are you a woman of science? Where did you learn the terms? They come easily to you, I see.”
Lorraine, beside her, was horrified. They were supposed to be noblewomen, visiting their mother for the first time. They were not to speak out in this very masculine society. The unique niche that their mother had carved with care over these last few years was not theirs to occupy.
“Forgive my sister,” Lorraine said, hastily. “My mother writes to us of these things. I feel we know them as well as we know scripture. Ser Leonardo is so well regarded, even in our faraway homes.” She punctuated the sentence with a stomp on her sister’s foot. Marguerite gasped.
“Oh, and where do you live?” the lordling asked.
“Spain,” Lorraine said, falling back upon the cover story prepared for them by Timeshares. “My husband is a merchant in Barcelona.”
“You have not fallen prey to their ghastly accent,” he said. “I compliment you. And you, madonna?”
After one angry glare at Lorraine, Marguerite collected herself. “England, sir. My husband has estates in the Midlands.”
“And have you children?” asked the wife.
“Two sons. One is in college. Oxford.”
“Only two children, but one to the priesthood?” the lady at his left asked.
Damn! Both of them had forgotten that the universities were founded mainly to train priests.
“He has a calling,” Marguerite said simply.
Such things evidently did not interest the son of the duke of Padua. “When you make your whirlybird fly, Ser Leonardo, I wish to be present.”
“You shall be notified, my lord,” the inventor promised.
Leonardo and Genevieve exchanged amused glances. Lorraine noticed it, and felt herself flush. So now she understood why there had always been books about Leonardo all over Mother’s apartment. The oil portrait in profile of her on the wall Mother said had been done for her by a friend was in his style. Now Lorraine was sure it was an original painted by Leonardo.
The party retired to a room hung with rich, incense-scented tapestries where Leonardo played tunes for them upon a lyre of his own design. Mother hung on his every word like a lovestruck teenager. Lorraine resented not being able to talk with her privately or even make eye contact. All her attention was on that man.
Lorraine was horrified to realize she was jealous of Leonardo da Vinci. She was appalled at her overwhelming gall. It was ridiculous but it was true. She glanced at Marguerite. Her sister was just as jealous. She obtained some small satisfaction from that.
She felt eyes upon her. She looked up to see the deep-set blue gaze meeting hers frankly. She blushed. Thank goodness he could not read her thoughts.
Genevieve permitted the sisters to stay with her in the atelier, as she called it in the French style, but only if they sat quietly in a corner or if they helped with the day’s work. If not, they could go out and see the city of Milan with Iskander. They tried, but since even the smallest apprentice knew more than they did, and the heavy skirts of their mother’s formal court dresses got underneath everyone’s feet, Lorraine and Marguerite had no choice but to sit silently side by side.
“You can go out on a tour if you wish,” Marguerite said, peering out of the corner of her eye at Lorraine.
“You’re interested in fashion. Except Fashion Week won’t be invented for five hundred more years.”
“Ha ha,” Lorraine said. “Why don’t you go out for a walk? Those men in the market certainly found you attractive enough to follow around.”
“Shut up,” Marguerite snapped.
The easels had been pushed aside for the sake of the gun commissioned by Duke Ludovico, and the metalworking equipment brought into the center of the workshop. Leonardo consulted with his workers over the plans. Prototype barrels made of soft brass were cast then cut in half to measure thickness and tolerance. From what glimpses Lorraine could catch, the internal workings of the weapon were complex. It was meant to shoot several balls in succession, like the Gatling gun, still centuries in the future. Big, swarthy blacksmiths huddled shoulder to shoulder with goldsmiths and clockmakers, who would create the fine mechanism that would operate the gun. Mother took rejected design documents to the office and returned with “updated” plans that Leonardo claimed he had waiting. The ink stains on her fingers told the sisters that she was making the changes on the plans herself, something the master guildsmen must not know, or pretended they did not. The look of concentration on Genevieve’s face was so familiar to Lorraine that she almost felt as though she was a little girl again, watching her mother work at home.
“Mother,” Lorraine whispered as she went by with rolls of paper in her arms. “Can we talk alone? Please?”
“Not now, darlings,” Genevieve said, impatiently.
“Stop it,” Marguerite hissed. “She said we had to sit and be quiet. Can’t you even do that? You’re trying to take up her time right in front of me!”
Lorraine fumed. She was growing bored, and the wooden stool was uncomfortable under her less than well padded bottom. Why had she traveled back over six hundred years and across an ocean to sit and watch her mother work? If she wanted that, she would have stayed home and looked at all the videos she had of her mother in the classroom and the lab. She was wasting the opportunity of a lifetime. She ought to feel appreciative of her situation, to take advantage of it, but she could not bring herself to go out to explore Milan and leave her sister triumphantly alone on the field. And now there was that man.
Time crawled by until the one- handed clock touched twelve. They dined with the masters at a trestle table set up in the workshop. The workmen were polite, but their minds were focused on the project at hand. Their attempts at small talk dropped away as they recalled details they needed to draw to their employer’s attention. Lorraine, who had made an effort not to sit next to her sister, ended up among a group of men who talked across her as if she was not there. Beseeching glances she sent to her mother went unmet, let alone unacknowledged.
The afternoon seemed to stretch out endlessly. Lorraine was not a physicist, but she came to understand the dilation of time at the point of perception. No hours could have passed more slowly. Marguerite snapped every time she moved a foot or shifted on the stool.
“Stop fidgeting!”
“I’m not a statue!” Lorraine said, raising her voice so it was audible over the grinding and pounding of the machines. “Don’t pick on me! I don’t like this anymore than you do!”
Suddenly, all the noise stopped. Lorraine looked up guiltily to see that everyone in the room was looking at them, es
pecially Leonardo himself. His brows were drawn down like a ruddy thundercloud over his prominent nose. Mother’s face had paled. From their childhood, the sisters knew that she was really angry. She glided over to them and stood, her back rigid, her hands hidden inside her sleeves, giving nothing away.
“Go up and change into your own clothes. You leave tonight. I will call Iskander to escort you back.”
“Mother, I’m so sorry,” Lorraine said.
“Not another word,” Genevieve snapped. “Go. I refuse to act as if I am dead so you two can learn to get along. Go away.”
She turned her back on them. Lorraine was too stricken to protest. She had gone back six centuries to Milan to see her mother, and she was being sent home. Marguerite shot her a look of mixed anger and smugness.
It took only a moment for the workers to go back to their tasks and forget about the sisters as if they were not there. Lorraine rose and gathered her skirts with what dignity she could muster, and swept out of the room. Marguerite came behind her like the Roman slave with the laurel wreath to remind her she was mortal.
Undoing all the laces and ties took more time than it should have, but her fingers fumbled on them. Frustrated, Lorraine sank down on the small bed and had a good cry, but not for sorrow. She only cried that hard when she was furious. She hated Marguerite, but she almost felt as if she hated her mother, too.
A soft tap came at the door. Lorraine wiped her face with her linen undersleeve before she answered it.
The maidservant stood there. “Signora, will you come with me now? You are summoned to the dining room.”
Probably Mother wanted to give her one more solid drubbing down before she left. Marguerite was already waiting in the hall.
“What is this about?” Lorraine asked.
“I don’t know.”
The girl stood by the door to usher them into the painted chamber.
Mother was not there. Leonardo sat at the head of the long table. They began automatically to back out of the room, but he beckoned them forward.
“Come, we must talk,” he said, gesturing to the chairs on either side of him. “Please, sit. Would you like wine?”
“No.” Lorraine stood at the foot of the table, keeping as great a distance between her and Leonardo as possible. Marguerite slid into one of the straight-backed chairs and yanked Lorraine’s arm.
“Sit down,” she hissed. “Do you want Mother angrier than she is?”
With ill grace, Lorraine seated herself. The inventor placed his long hands on the table and leaned forward over them.
“Now, what is all this about? I see how unhappy you are. You dislike each other, you dislike even me, and I am a stranger.”
“Not really,” Marguerite said. “I feel almost as though I know you. Mother always had books about you, copies of your work, around our house.”
His face lit up. Lorraine felt her heart twist. She did not want to be attracted to him. “Did she? Then she knows how dearly I missed her as well. As you do. Tell me. Signora Lorraine?”
Lorraine pressed her lips together. She didn’t want to talk to him, but he and her sister were looking at her. She shook her head.
“Then let me interpret. I am an artist. I see tableaux. You feel that I am what keeps your mother from you. It is not a logical thought. You act as if she is not free to behave as she chooses.”
“How could she be?” Lorraine burst out. “Anyone would fall all over herself to be your lover!” She stopped, feeling her cheeks burn.
He tilted his head, the blue eyes twinkling. “You don’t find it an honor that I have chosen her? Ah, no. You are truly women of a different age. Then tell me the names of some of the men of science who have superseded me, from whom you would find his attention an honor. I would be glad to know.”
“None, really,” Lorraine admitted. “I don’t know what we can tell you, without skewing history.”
“Your mother fears temporal paradox as well. Your faces tell me enough. I am honored by history’s regard, then. It is most humbling. But I am not the one who is unhappy, signoras. Tell me your troubles. I will not judge, only listen.”
“She always went away . . .”
“She never spent time with just me . . .”
She and Marguerite burst out with all of the anger and disappointment that was inside them. Expressing herself in Renaissance Italian only rendered the litany of her woes into a poetic cadence, but it didn’t lessen the hurt of feeling abandoned by Genevieve, again and again, until this last utter disappointment. By the time her voice died away, she was feeling absolutely ashamed of herself, but Leonardo’s kindly expression did not change.
“Your feelings are most understandable,” he said. “You find her an attractive personality. So many others do, too. She is a song in a world of cacophony. She is trying to show you her new world. You do not accept her as she is or what choices she has made. You are possessive of her. Can you accept perhaps that she was only lent to you by history for a time?”
“Of course not,” Lorraine said. “She is our mother. But she won’t let us have what we want from her.”
“But what is it you want? She is here. She has made you welcome.”
“Under certain circumstances,” Marguerite said, bitterly.
“But why are those so hard to accept? She wishes that you would love each other. You do, when she is not there, I think.”
They glanced at one another. Lorraine saw an expression in Marguerite’s eyes that made her take a mental step back. Her sister was actually afraid she would say she didn’t love her. It forced her to be honest.
“We do,” she said, and made the assertion more firm. “We really do love each other.” Marguerite reached out to squeeze her hand in both of hers. Lorraine squeezed back.
Leonardo nodded. “I believe that is all she wants, for you two to cooperate, and to share what there is to enjoy together. Life is not long; even when you can jump back and forth between events, it does not increase the days you have to spend. Otherwise, I would want to live forever, leaping from year to year, seeing what marvels that men have dreamed. Do not waste the days.”
“But she is sending us away, Ser Leonardo,” Lorraine said, sadly. “If all we had was two weeks . . . she’s making us go before it’s up.”
He touched his chest with two fingers. “I will advocate for you. I am good at presenting my case before courts nearly as difficult and tough- minded as your mother.” He gave them a playful smile. Lorraine understood even more how her mother had fallen in love with him. She found herself halfway there, too. “You have a rare and marvelous opportunity that I can only dream of. I implore you to cooperate, if not for your own sake . . .”
“For hers?” Lorraine asked. She was surprised at how eager she felt. Leonardo smiled.
“No, for mine. Genevieve wants you to return to us once a year. I would hear of the marvels of your time. Will you do that for me, share with me the wonders that will come after this?” He looked from one woman to the other. “You are troubled that she has involved me in her work. But I keep many secrets. Yes, you think that writing mirror-fashion is a poor form of security. Most of that which I do not want known by anyone else I keep up here.” He tapped his broad forehead. “I know of the great inventions of the future. I wish I could see them, but it is forbidden to me. I must not be influenced. I understand secrets. This will be a gift to me that I think she was hoping to make. But only with your cooperation. She is so disappointed that you may not return.” He looked hopeful, and Lorraine realized that she could make a gift to Leonardo da Vinci. The thought made her feel humble.
She smiled at him. “How can we say no? I know I’d be honored.”
“Me too,” Marguerite said.
He sprang to his feet and came to take each of them by the arm.
“Genevieve will be so happy,” he said, as he led them back through the corridor toward the squawk of voices and twang of music. “Now, come back to the workshop with me. How brave your mother is to
sacrifice all her future life for our ideal. I consider our studio is a place where we transform thought into reality, answerable only to our patrons. Genevieve has explained the modern system to me, and though my way requires bowing and scraping to rich men who do not understand, it is better than shouting at the wall of what she calls faceless corporations. Here, the loss of dignity is temporary, but the science and art we reveal lasts forever. I believe it is better.”
Lorraine peered around him to meet Marguerite’s eyes. Her sister beamed at her, and she beamed back. It was better here.
The rest of the time they spent in Milan was wonderful, in every way. Lorraine had the breathless feeling that they were watching history being made. Leonardo tasked his apprentices to create marvels of contemporary science, tweaking his inventions forward a bit at a time until they worked. When the workmen got the barrel of Leonardo’s model gun to spin freely on its axis, they all embraced one another for joy, Lorraine and Marguerite in the midst of a group hug.
With their mother, they visited the court of the duke of Moro. Though they weren’t important enough to gain more than a moment of his attention, they were thrilled to see the pageantry of a ducal court in session. And in the evening, when the guests left and they were in private around a fire, Lorraine and Marguerite kept their word, and told stories of the future. Leonardo was as good a listener as a small child, hanging on every word. Beside him, her lap full of needlework, her mother smiled at them all. For the first time since they were small, the girls felt as if they were a whole family. It made Lorraine feel warm and loved. She was satisfied.
Before she knew it, the appointed time was over. Leonardo and his workers heaped them with gifts to take home. Side by side, the sisters packed the fans and hats and scale models into new cases bought for them in the market.
Lorraine was silent through the process, though not out of spite. She had had to come to terms with having a mother who was a part of history, all of it. She must share her, not just with one sister but with the entire world and future generations. The hope for an ideal mother-daughter relationship was gone, but she never really had it. She would have to settle for the one that she had, with which she had grown up, like it or not.
