The Medici Seal

by Theresa Breslin

  Despite having a contract with the city of Florence to work on the fresco, my master spent little time now in the Palazzo Vecchio and became more occupied with his study of birds and their flight. His drawings on this subject numbered in the hundreds, and he pored over these with Zoroastro, making models of wire and cane and stretched linen. As these models became larger he sent Zoroastro to work in a different monastery, where he had friends who would give him space that could be private, for he wished this project kept secret.

  Along with this he continued with his botanical excursions, his work in the mortuary and his visits to the house of Donna Lisa.

  There he continued with her portrait. Her husband did not mind that this had been ongoing for so long, and that my master appeared sporadically, to paint or not, on his own personal whim. Francesco del Giocondo was happy that the company of such an intelligent and knowledgeable man as my master had pulled his wife back from the abyss of her grief.

  The painting was kept at her house, for a few days after the death of her child she became so prostrate with grief that she was not well enough to walk any distance. Her husband had told us this when he had begged my master to come to her.

  ‘I fear for her life. And if she dies, I think I may die too.’

  ‘In the presence of such love, how could I refuse?’ my master said to me.

  The merchant agreed that he would make a small studio for my master within his house and that my master would work on the portrait as and when he pleased. To begin with he went quite reluctantly, though Donna Lisa won him over with her intellect and demeanour. And in the end, with his great fresco work spoiled, he found as much solace there as he gave.

  From the first he treated her with respect and did not press her to sit too long or to chat. But one day, when he thought she had grown a little stronger, he asked me to wait and then commanded me to tell them a story.

  ‘Matteo’s stories are very diverting,’ he told her. ‘He has a fund of them in his mind.’ He indicated for me to begin.

  ‘What tale shall I tell?’ I asked him.

  ‘One of your own choosing,’ he replied. ‘Perhaps one of the myths as given to you by your grandmother?’

  I looked around the room in which I stood. This had been carefully prepared as a painting studio by his own hand and the lady was placed by the open casement to the courtyard with the light falling exactly as he wished. He had also chosen what she was to wear. In addition to a selection of magnificent dresses, her servants had brought glittering necklaces and other expensive jewellery, but he had rejected these, settling on a plain dress to which he would add his own design round the neckline. I think Donna Lisa’s husband would have liked her to be attired in a more ornate fashion to show that he was successful and wealthy, but my master had persuaded him by saying, ‘It is sufficient. Such grace needs no added gilt.’

  The clothes and jewellery had been removed but a box of other decorations remained in the far reaches of the room. The lid was open and I could see, among the scarves and ribbons, one or two feathers – ostrich, partridge and peacock.

  I placed myself out of her vision so that she would not be distracted and affect the Maestro’s composition.

  ‘So now,’ I began, ‘I will relate to you the story of the being whom the gods called Panoptes, which means all-seeing, but who is also known to us as Argus, the giant with one hundred eyes.

  ‘One day, Jupiter, supreme of all the gods, was visiting the king of a certain island and he espied the daughter of this king walking in the garden. Her name was Io.

  ‘Jupiter saw that she was very beautiful and he fell in love with the princess Io. And he stayed with her for a long time.

  ‘In the kingdom of the gods his absence was noted. And when he returned the goddess Juno, to whom he had contracted to be faithful, asked him what had delayed him in the world of men. Jupiter told her that he had much business to attend to, but she did not believe him. She too went to the island of the king and discovered why Jupiter had dallied there.

  ‘Juno became very angry. She was jealous of Io and thought of what she might do to harm the princess. Jupiter discovered Juno’s intentions and he hastened to think of some way to protect the princess Io. He decided to turn Io into a beautiful heifer and appointed the mighty giant Argus with his one hundred eyes to watch over Io as she grazed quietly in the fields.

  ‘But Juno was clever and she found out what Jupiter had done. Juno summoned Mercury, the messenger of the gods, and gave him instructions as to what she wanted him to do. Mercury sped swiftly to where Io gambolled in the fields. He waited through the heat of the day until evening came and Io stopped playing and lay down to rest. The giant Argus then also sat down to watch over her.

  ‘Mercury put his flute to his lips and began to play. At the sound of this music Argus started to fall asleep. One by one each of his hundred eyelids drooped, until finally only one eye was left open. But then it too slipped down. The great giant slept. When he was sure that Argus was in a deep sleep Mercury put aside his flute. He drew out his sword, and made to cut off the head of Argus. But then Argus woke up with a terrifying roar. Each one of his eyes opened and he struggled to rise up. But he was too late. Mercury struck hard and the giant fell dead.

  Io was forced to flee and to roam the earth through many lands without rest.

  ‘Mercury went to tell Juno that her task had been accomplished and Juno hurried to the place. Argus lay there dead upon the earth, with all his eyes staring up at the sky.

  ‘Then Juno plucked each of the hundred eyes from the head of Argus and, carrying them with her, placed them in the feathers of her favourite bird.

  ‘And that is how’ – I picked up the peacock feather and flourished it in the air – ‘the peacock has a tail with an eye in each feather, for the wonderment of all the world.’

  Donna Lisa clapped her hands.

  I glanced from her to my master. He nodded at me. And I, in delight at their approval of my performance, grinned at both of them.

  After that the Maestro would frequently ask me to wait and relate a story to them: an adventure of Ulysses during his wanderings after the siege of Troy, or some legend I knew, or a fable or folktale of my own choosing.

  We kept to this custom when he recommenced her portrait in the spring. She still did not speak very much and he, concentrating intensely on his work, sometimes spent his time staring at the painting in front of him without lifting his brush. The silence in the room was never oppressive. But, if it needed to be filled, then I would root about in my head until I found one of the story seeds my grandmother had planted there and, nourishing it with my own hyperbole and metaphor, I let it flow out of me as water cascades from a fountain.

  One day, near Easter, before she settled in her chair she handed me a small object. ‘This is a little pamphlet from one of the new presses that print books in our Tuscan language. It has a story in it that my mother used to tell me when I was a child. I’d love to hear it again. Would you care to read to us from it this morning, Matteo?’ she asked me.

  I dropped my head in confusion.

  My master interrupted smoothly. ‘Matteo prefers to tell his stories from memory.’

  Having rescued me from embarrassment, he sent a severe look in my direction, as if to say, ‘See! Now you have disappointed the lady. She would have loved to hear you read.’

  I told my own story that day, and when it was time for me to leave I made to return her book to her.

  ‘Why, Matteo, I gave it to you to keep,’ she said. ‘I would like you to have it. I hope you find as much pleasure in the pages as I did.’

  I stumbled back still holding the book in my hand. I looked at my master for permission to accept the gift. He inclined his head. Then he raised one eyebrow. ‘Thank the lady,’ he said quietly.

  ‘I thank you,’ I said. As I made a bow to her I felt tears start up behind my eyes.

  She may have noticed for she turned her head away and made some talk with my maste
r. She was a great lady, this Donna Lisa. Not high born, like princesses or queens who reign over subjects, but with her own innate nobility and the natural refinements of a woman who is good.

  That night as I lay on my mattress I took the book out to examine it in more detail. I could make out some words: ‘the’, ‘and’, ‘of’.

  I held my finger under each one I could recognize and said them hesitantly out loud. Suddenly they blurred before my eyes. I realized I was crying.

  And I wept. I wept for the mother I could not remember, the father I never had, and my grandmother who was dead. I wept for the loss of Rossana, my first love. Rossana, her parents and her baby brother. I wept for being separated from Elisabetta and Paolo. And I wept for what had been mine and had been taken from me, and I wept for those things I’d never had. I wept for all my miseries.

  The next day I took the little pamphlet book to the Sinistro Scribe. He examined it. ‘From where did you obtain this?’ he asked me.

  ‘I was given it as a gift by a lady.’

  ‘What lady would give a boy such a gift?’

  ‘I will not say who gave it to me,’ I told him. ‘But I did not steal it.’

  ‘I believe you,’ he replied, ‘and thus its origin is more intriguing.’

  ‘Show me what it says.’

  He began to read aloud.

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘not like that. Show me what it says, and where it says it.’

  He pointed with his finger and read: ‘“In a land far away there lived a dragon—”’

  ‘Are you certain those are the words on the page as they are written?’

  ‘Of course I am.’ He spoke indignantly. ‘I was trained by Brother Anselm at—’

  ‘– the renowned monastery of Saint Bernard at Monte Cassino,’ I finished for him. ‘I recall your fine pedigree. So’ – I leaned over his shoulder – ‘how is it that you know the sound each word makes?’

  ‘Because of the letters contained therein,’ he said. ‘Each letter has its own sound. Placed together in variable orders they come together to make a word.’

  ‘Is that all it is?’ I laughed. ‘Then it cannot be such a difficult thing to do.’

  ‘Oh really?’ he said softly.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Now go on please.’

  ‘There is a charge for this,’ he said.

  ‘I will pay you.’ I took out one of the pennies that my master had gifted me at Epiphany. ‘Here is the fee you charged when I brought you the letters I received.’

  ‘Oh no,’ he replied. ‘In this case it is not a matter of my reading out some lines. That’s not what you’re asking here at all.’

  ‘What am I asking?’

  ‘You are asking me to teach you to read. For that tuition the charge will be one penny per half-hour.’

  I withdrew a little to count my money. ‘How long will it take for me to know all the words there are to know?’ I asked him.

  The scribe smiled at me, and then said: ‘Matteo, how long is your life?’

  Chapter Forty-One

  THE SECRET PROJECT began to take shape.

  Hidden from public view and under the Maestro’s specific instructions there arose a magnificent, elegant construction of wooden rods and sheeting. My spare moments I spent with the Sinistro Scribe receiving reading tuition, but most of the rest of my time I was helping Zoroastro put together this most amazing conception of my master’s mind. We worked together from first light, and as spring fastened a firmer hold upon the earth and the days stretched out longer, we worked late into the evenings.

  It was decided that I would bring my mattress and the rest of my things to this new location. And it was while I was doing this that Felipe noticed the tiny scraps of paper covered with the letters and simple words that the Sinistro Scribe had written out for me to memorize.

  ‘What are these, Matteo?’ he asked me, taking several into his hands and examining them.

  I glanced around. Salai had gone with Graziano to the Palazzo Vecchio to do some work there and my master and Zoroastro were conferring at the other end of the room.

  ‘Those are my letters to learn,’ I told Felipe in a quiet voice. ‘You may remember me telling you about the Sinistro Scribe? The person who wrote the reply to my friend at the beginning of Winter? I am paying him to teach me to read so that when you have time to arrange a tutor for me I will already have some skill in this.’

  Felipe regarded me solemnly. ‘I am very pleased that you are doing this, Matteo.’

  That was all he said, but the next day I found, lying on my mattress, some sheets of paper and a letter board of the type used to teach students their alphabet.

  The Sinistro Scribe was not the most patient of tutors and I found this learning to be tedious and dull and not open to explanation. How had it come about that these particular designs were chosen as our letters? Who decreed what sound would accompany each shape? And how was it decided the manner they would come together to form a word?

  ‘Why is this so?’ I demanded to know.

  Whereupon the scribe would rap his knuckles hard upon my head. ‘Do not seek to distract me with unanswerable questions,’ he growled. ‘Only let the learning penetrate that thick skull. Go on with it, before I throw you in the Arno.’

  But I think he may perhaps have enjoyed a little the struggle to educate me. And, as the weather became warmer, I did manage to distract him on occasions, and he would leave off from our studies and relate to me parts of his life story, and we grew closer. Thus I was lulled into becoming less watchful and more careless in my talk, revealing things from my own past. So that when the scribe casually asked the origin of the letters I received I chatted to him about Elisabetta and who she was and how I had met her.

  It did not occur to me that it might be more than idle conversation on his part, that he garnered information as a squirrel hoards nuts against the winter famine. I did not think that the Sinistro Scribe might also be a spy.

  The old man’s gentle prying was concerned mainly with my master’s business, but I was wise enough not to mention any of the things my master would not have wished discussed outwith his household.

  From time to time the Maestro carried out dissections at the hospital, and his notes and drawings now contained a vast amount of work on all aspects of the human body. Working with him on these did not fill me with the terror and revulsion I had first experienced at the mortuary in Averno, and I began to take more interest in what he was doing. But I said nothing of this to the scribe, nor anything about the mysterious machine we were making, nor where it was kept.

  Zoroastro was delighted to be working at a job that taxed his skills as an engineer. He was much happier doing this than grinding and preparing the mixtures for the fresco. But as the summer approached he became more and more impatient to test it out, and I came upon him one day in late spring, pleading with the Maestro.

  ‘It will fly. This bird will fly! I tell you!’

  ‘But not yet, Zoroastro,’ said my master.

  Although these two men had been friends for more than twenty-five years it did not stop them arguing. Zoroastro’s face flushed with blood when excited and took on a curious blotched appearance. This was due in part to the many accidents he had when mixing his chemicals, and also his carelessness at his forge, when sparks would fly and land, still hot, about his person. His dark, wizened face showed powder burns and one of his hands had the tips of two fingers missing. Yet his eyes were quick and bright and his manner often nervous and impulsive, like now, as he tried to persuade my master it was time to test his flying machine.

  ‘Look at it!’ said Zoroastro. He stretched out his hand to where it hung like a great bird suspended from the ceiling by an iron hook. Under his touch the framework stirred and the sheeting trembled. ‘It is restless. It wants to leave its nest and take to the air.’

  ‘It’s not ready, Zoroastro,’ my master replied. He was standing underneath, studying the part of the internal framework where a man would sit. �
�We must ensure that the person who is in command of the wings is positioned so as to be upright. It needs more work.’

  ‘You are so stubborn!’ exclaimed Zoroastro.

  ‘I’m not being stubborn, Zoroastro. I’m being cautious.’ The Maestro laid his hand on Zoroastro’s shoulder and said: ‘Remember that Giovan Battista Danti, attempting this same experiment last year, fell from his bell tower onto the church roof.’

  ‘Then we should make our experiment from a hilltop,’ said Zoroastro, adding slyly, ‘Monte Ceceri is close to Fiesole.’

  We knew that Fiesole was a place where the Maestro liked go to keep the company of his step-uncle, the canon. As my master hesitated Zoroastro pressed his case:

  ‘You have always said that with the right equipment man can fly. And we have made the best flying machine imaginable.’

  ‘I believe this too, but the engineering on the wings of birds is much more intricate than I can emulate.’

  ‘Birds’ wings are made of many feathers,’ I said. ‘Individual, and yet pieced together they make the unit that enables them to stay up.’

  ‘Matteo’s mind moves towards understanding the concept of air resistance,’ said my master.

  Encouraged by this I continued. ‘I watch the birds and see that it is by the beating of their wings that they travel through the sky . . .’ I hesitated. ‘I see that they use the upward draughts of the wind to glide. But I do not truly understand how it is they fly when they are heavier than air and they have nothing underneath to support them.’

  ‘The force of the air lifts them up,’ said my master. ‘It resists against them, inasmuch as they push against it. See how an eagle carrying a rabbit or a young lamb can still stay aloft and fly high enough to return to its eyrie clutching its prey in its talons.’

  I looked at the machine. Could it really fly? It didn’t seem possible that air could bear that amount of weight.

  I had a sudden recollection of Perela, where a tall sycamore tree grew inside the wall of the keep. The autumn winds were stripping the trees of their greenery as we were playing in the courtyard. Paolo and I had been appointed by Rossana and Elisabetta to toss handfuls of leaves and seeds into the air and send them spinning for them to catch. Baby Dario was toddling around on his sturdy legs screaming in delight at the rain of leaves upon his head. My master, coming across us in our play, had stood and watched the corkscrewing sycamore seeds. He had picked one up and, gathering us about him, had explained how it was that the shape of the wings on the seed made it spin in such a manner. He had gone inside and then returned and called us to him. Under his guidance we made little stick men from twigs bound together with wool. Then he had attached each of these to a square of cloth by fine thread tied at the four corners. We had climbed to the window in the tallest part of the tower. And we had stood there and taken turns to throw down our twig figures and watch them float in the air for the longest time before coming to rest far below. But we had only laughed when he said that a man might also do that and fall from a higher height with no bones broken. I recalled that when it was Dario’s turn to throw out his stick man he was so excited that Paolo had to hold fast to his wriggling little body lest he fall into the gorge.