To the end of his life he was never parted from it again.
Chapter Forty-Four
WE WAITED UNTIL the middle of the night.
Felipe had arranged for a large cart and two heavy horses. By the light of the moon and shaded lanterns we carefully loaded the flying machine, and before dawn we were trundling out of the city, past the sleepy watchmen at the gate, onto the winding road to Fiesole.
Felipe, worried about the household income, was in favour of the move. The City Council had stopped payments and was now suggesting that money already paid to us should be returned to them. Having been made aware of this by Zoroastro, my master’s step-uncle insisted that we spend some time with him. As canon of a church he had space enough for all of us.
The horses’ breath plumed from their nostrils as they began the climb on the hillside. I stood in the cart with Zoroastro, each of us holding onto the frame of the great bird so that no harm would come to it as we jolted along the track. As the sun’s light started to edge up along the lip of the hills to the east Zoroastro began to sing.
‘Hush,’ Felipe said at once from his place at the front of the wagon. ‘The purpose of leaving in the dark was not to attract attention. Your caterwauling can be heard miles away.’
‘You are jealous of my prowess in singing.’ I could see Zoroastro’s teeth gleam white as he laughed. But he fell silent at Felipe’s order and the only sound that accompanied us that night was the noise of the horses’ laboured breathing and the clop of their hooves on the road.
My master’s step-uncle was called Canon Don Alessandro Amadori. He was the sort of uncle that every child should have. Generous, good-natured and kindly, he made us welcome and had prepared rooms for us as well as a special place for the flying machine. It was placed in a barn a little distance from the house, out of sight of any visitors or servants. This was where I set down my mattress and where I would stay to watch over it.
That evening we sat down to eat together. As I helped set out the plates and wine cups I saw the canon looking at me. What is it about priests that they can fix you with their eye and you feel your soul shake? As we ate I was aware of him glancing in my direction.
‘Isabella d’Este.’
I had just taken a piece of bread from the common plate when he mentioned the name of the Marchioness of Mantua, Isabella d’Este. The same Isabella who was the sister of Alfonso of Ferrara, the man who had married Lucrezia Borgia.
‘The woman is so persistent in her supplications,’ the canon said to my master. ‘She knows that I have a connection to you and has asked me to beg you to complete a painting for her.’ He laughed. ‘Any painting will do, it seems. She will not leave off pestering me. I’m beginning to think that it was my misfortune to make her acquaintance in Ferrara at the time of her brother’s wedding.’
‘Matteo was in Ferrara at that time too,’ observed my master.
The bread was in my mouth. It saved me from the obligation of a reply. I made a small nod of my head.
‘Why, yes,’ said Felipe. ‘Matteo told us a great story of how, during her triumphal entrance to the city, the fair Lucrezia tumbled from her horse. He even described her dress of cloth of gold edged in purple satin.’
Salai leaned forward and whispered in my ear, ‘Now we will discover what a liar you are.’
‘You have marvellous recall of mind, Matteo,’ said the canon. ‘That is exactly how she was dressed. And indeed her horse did rear up when the cannon went off, just as you said. And she recovered herself and climbed back on and the people cheered her for it.’
Salai glowered at me.
‘How came you to be in Ferrara at that time?’ The canon addressed the question to me. I felt the bread lodge itself in my windpipe. ‘Who were you with?’
I swallowed. ‘My grandmother,’ I managed to say.
My master’s gaze rested on my face.
Too late I remembered that I had told him that my grandmother had died before I’d reached Ferrara.
‘So I might have seen you there in the crowd,’ the canon went on. ‘Perhaps that is why I thought I recognized you, for I do find your face familiar.’
My heart gulped. He had been looking at me earlier. How much did he know? It was from the hands of a priest that I had received the Medici Seal. It was not this canon, but perhaps he had been somewhere near when I had first met Father Albieri and I had not seen him. I concentrated hard to avoid touching the bag around my neck.
But the canon seemed to lose interest in me as the conversation moved on.
‘Ferrara has opted to defy the Pope. It will go hard with them if he conquers their state,’ said Felipe.
‘Except that Francesco Gonzaga of Mantua, gonfaloniere of the pope’s armies, is supposed to be enamoured of Lucrezia. Perhaps she hopes she can manipulate him to her advantage,’ said my master.
‘A more pleasant way to operate than the methods employed by her brother.’
‘Cesare Borgia was an effective ruler,’ stated Felipe.
His remark startled me.
‘These petty princelings with their feuds allow their avarice to divide us so that Italy is open to any conqueror,’ Felipe went on. ‘Their main concern is filling their castles with gold while having no care to how their estates are managed. When Il Valentino established his rule he appointed magistrates and lawmakers, and businessmen could expect fair dealings.’
As I walked to the barn that night the sun was setting on the valley below me. The ochre walls and red roofs of Fiesole vied with Nature’s palette of colours. From the terrace I could see the river, the fields and trees, and the distant towers and steeples of Florence, and above the city the dome of all the world. Like copper fire the ball atop the lantern glowed in the last rays of the sun.
The beauty of the view began to dispel my agitation.
But one last blow was to strike me that night.
Graziano, who had waited behind to attend to matters at the monastery, arrived late in Fiesole carrying packages. One of these was a letter for me.
He sought me out in the barn and said, ‘Matteo, I am the bearer of bad news. A grave misfortune has befallen the old scribe who sat at the Ponte Vecchio.’
‘What misfortune?’ I asked. ‘What has happened?’
‘I am sorry to tell you this, Matteo, for I know he was a friend to you. He is dead.’
Ahh. I felt pain again, like the pain I had felt when my grandmother died.
‘He was old and frail,’ I said.
‘They found him floating in the Arno,’ Graziano said gently.
‘He liked to drink more wine than was good for him.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘And the river is running fast,’ I went on, not allowing Graziano to speak, ‘with spring storms bringing the water down from the mountains. He would have fallen in because, although it is light in the evenings now, it is gloomy where he has to walk to reach his home. There are few torches on that stretch of bank. In the dark he would have slipped and fallen in the water.’
‘He may not have died by drowning.’
I did not see the pit opening before me. ‘He must have drowned,’ I said.
‘Matteo, the night police believe he became involved in a vendetta. They think he refused to pass on information and was killed for this. Whatever happened to him, it was most strange. When they recovered his body his eyes had been gouged out.’
Chapter Forty-Five
HIS EYES GOUGED out.
A monstrous way to die.
And all because the scribe would not give up information. What information? At his pitch, he saw everything, heard everything. He had shown me one day as he sat in his corner of the tower: how the sound made a natural acoustic circle around him just where people had to walk closer to each other as they left the street and entered the narrower passage onto the bridge.
Knowledge can be dangerous.
This is what Father Benedict, the mortuary monk in Averno, had said many years ago.
&
nbsp; Who had pursued and murdered the Sinistro Scribe? And why?
I still held the letter that Graziano had given me. It must be from Elisabetta. No one else wrote to me. But it did not have her writing on the outside, yet it was a script I recognized. And then I saw whose hand it was.
It was a message from beyond the grave, written in the hand of the Sinistro Scribe.
Matteo, if that is indeed your name, I write to warn you that you are in grave danger.
You must leave Florence at once, and go as far from here as you possibly can. Do not tell me where, or try to communicate with me again. I myself intend to go away too. A man has recently come to Florence asking about a boy who bears your description. In the past when I had need of food I passed any information I garnered in the street to a spy who paid me to do this for him. This spy has told me that a certain man wishes to question me about you. I am to meet the man by the river this evening. But I will not go. For I saw the man standing by the bridge yesterday and he has a wicked appearance, a man who has his thumbnails grown like two curved claws.
Best that we do not know or speak to each other again. I wish you well. You have an astute mind, Matteo, and should not waste it.
Be careful.
The Sinistro Scribe
A spasm of terror went through me.
A man who has his thumbnails grown like two curved claws.
Sandino!
It could only be he.
I thought of Elisabetta’s letters. Their contents were in the mind of the scribe. I struck my fist against my forehead. And the reason the scribe knew what they contained was due to my pride and obstinacy in refusing to learn to read when first asked by the Maestro. The scribe was – had been – an intelligent man. He would have remembered the names, the places she’d written of, the things that would enable Sandino to track me. I took Elisabetta’s letters from my belt pouch and looked at them. She had mentioned Melte and Perela. My hands shook. Had the scribe told him where I was employed. How much had he revealed before being assassinated?
It was dawn and I had not slept. But I did not have time to think about what I would do. There was a commotion outside. Zoroastro burst into the barn.
‘He has agreed! He has agreed!’ He swung me up by my arms and lifted me off my feet. ‘Today we will do it! The bird will rise into the sky! We will fly, Matteo. We will fly!’
Between us we carried the flying machine to a spot above the woods and the stone quarries.
‘You must run to launch yourself,’ said my master.
Zoroastro nodded as he buckled himself into the frame harness. With his brawny blacksmith’s arms he took hold of the supports, his veins corded with tension.
Zoroastro readied himself, and then began to run.
We ran with him.
For such a short man he made good speed. The edge of the cliff appeared.
Suddenly I realized I could not stop.
I would be carried over. A hand grasped my tunic. Felipe. I heard the cloth rip as I lost my footing. But another hand – hands – gripped my belt and my master dragged me back to safety.
With a rush and a swoop Zoroastro and the machine disappeared. We flung ourselves on the grass and crawled forward to see. He soared on the winds below us. We heard him cry out in wonder and delight.
He did fly.
It should be recorded that Zoroastro did fly.
But the wind that had lifted him high brought scowling clouds scudding from the mountains. Lightning flickered in their depth. The sky itself shuddered. A freakish gust buffeted the hillside.
And we could do nothing.
Only watch as the white flying bird was caught in the air currents and tossed like the frail plaything of an immense superior force.
Zoroastro crashed to earth.
It took him five days to die.
Five long days of utmost agony.
My master strode through the barn scattering everything in his path. ‘Destroy these things! Hide them away from my face! I never want to see anything of this again!’
He must have wept.
He would have wept for the loss of his friend. For him to know so much about the human body, to have made so many drawings, to understand engineering, yet to watch, helpless, and witness his friend’s broken bones and be unable to repair them must have caused the most profound grief. But we did not see him do this.
The canon administered the last rites and spent hours upon his knees in the church begging God to bestow the peace of death.
We gave Zoroastro a leather strap. He bit down upon it, his face running in sweat, stark against the white of the pillow on which he lay.
We had to put him in an outbuilding. The servants were so terrified at his screams of agony.
‘Get me a dagger that I may slit my wrists!’ he cried out. ‘Bring me my axe! I implore you!’ He called us by our names individually.
‘Matteo,’ said Graziano, ‘is there nothing that you know of, some herb or potion that might ease his suffering?’
‘If you can find me poppies . . .’ I did not finish the sentence.
‘This would help him?’
‘I can make an infusion,’ I said. ‘But . . .’
‘But?’ The Maestro regarded me seriously.
‘It is very dangerous.’
He waited. Then he said, ‘You mean it could kill him?’
‘Yes.’
‘We will find these ingredients that you need.’ And he went from the room.
It is not given to us to take away life.
This is what I believed. My conviction – a mixture of those of the Church and an older kind of belief – was that Nature bestowed life, and Nature decided when to call it back.
I said this.
‘Make the potion, Matteo,’ my master told me. ‘We seek only to give relief of pain. Make it and I will administer it.’
As I prepared the mixture I wished that I could have my grandmother’s recipe book beside me. Now that I could read I would be able to follow the instructions. Although this poison I did not forget.
And suddenly a recollection came to me of my grandmother making this same brew. One evening not long before she died a stranger had come to our fireside.
At the sound of the horse’s hooves she had got to her feet and told me to hide inside the wagon. There was a murmur of conversation and I, having the curiosity of any child, peeked out of the canvas opening. I heard her say, ‘I want no trouble.’
‘Then give me what I have requested.’
He had a knife. She was calm, but then they both caught sight of me.
‘Child,’ she said, her voice sharp with anxiety, ‘go back to sleep.’
‘Who is that?’ he asked.
‘One of my own.’
‘You are too old to have borne a child of that age.’
‘A foundling boy.’
‘Named?’
‘Carlo.’
‘A gypsy brat?’
She nodded. But Carlo was not my name. My name was Janek, so why had my grandmother lied to this man? She came quickly to the wagon, bundled me inside and gave me a sweetmeat to stop my mouth. ‘In the name of all that’s holy,’ she whispered, ‘do not speak another word. I beg you.’
The man had taken the mixture and left.
He had barely gone out of sight when my grandmother made preparations to move on. And while she was packing up I heard her muttering to herself.
‘It’s time anyway. We must go back.’
She had set off on a trail leading high into the mountains, a track where no one would have thought that a wagon might go. We were upon stony ground where the horse did not leave hoof prints. Yet she bound the horse’s hooves with thick wads of cloth and chose the rockiest paths. We did not stop to eat or wash and carried our waste with us. Through the night I slept, awakening now and then to hear the horse scrambling as she urged it on, never stopping. By day she hid the wagon in a forest. Even though ‘the weather was cold she did not light a fire until we were sa
fely on the other side of the pass, near a place called Castel Barta. And it was there that she became unwell with her last illness.
Such a distinct memory, yet it was only now as I watched the poppy juice bubble that I recalled it. It was poppy juice that the stranger had demanded that she make for him.
Poppy juice, which brought relief from pain. And sleep. And silent death.
After we had buried Zoroastro my master spoke to Felipe. ‘I am decided. The fresco is lost. Donna Lisa no longer requires me. I will ask the French to persuade the Florentine Council to release me from my contract and I will go to Milan.’
Salai was to be sent ahead with letters of introduction and to secure accommodation.
‘What about you, Matteo?’ Salai enquired of me innocently as he was making preparations to leave. ‘What will you do?’
‘I do not know what you mean.’ It had not occurred to me that I would not accompany them to Milan.
‘I don’t think that our master will need an untutored servant to accompany him.’
‘I am not so untutored as once I was,’ I retorted hotly.
‘You can neither read nor write,’ mocked Salai. ‘You think it such a big secret but everyone knows about your ignorance. We have been laughing at you as you pretend to read those letters and write replies to them.’
‘Then laugh now at some other stupid joke,’ I said, ‘for I can read.’ I snatched out my book from my purse. ‘See now, here is the story of Saint George and the Dragon. It begins thus: “In a faraway land there lived a dragon” . . .’
Salai laughed scornfully. ‘We know how clever you are that you can memorize even the longest passage with the most difficult words. I heard the Maestro tell Felipe this one day when he thought no one was listening. The stories that you can recount without hesitation having heard them only once. He marvelled at your memory. I marvel at your stupidity.’
‘I do not need to prove what I say to you,’ I cried.
‘But I would like you to prove it to me,’ said a quiet voice from the door.
Salai whirled round. How long had the Maestro been standing there? How much had he heard?
The Maestro ignored Salai and went to the desk. He picked up a pen. ‘Now, Matteo, let me see what you can write.’
The Medici Seal Page 23
