Leonardo’s Shadow

by Christopher Grey

  Satisfied with the surface of the wall and the platform on which he would stand to paint it, the Master set to work planning the composition. With the use of a plumb line hung from the wall at various points along the upper edge of what was to be the painting, the Master marked straight lines from top to bottom. Then, with a set of large compasses and sticks of charcoal, he drew many intersecting arcs, until the wall was covered with half circles, lines, and crosses.

  What was he doing? It was clear that the Master was dividing up the space for the composition of the painting, but it was only when he started to draw some rough outlines in charcoal on the surface of the wall that I saw what he was working towards.

  In the very center of the painting was to be the head of Jesus. On either side of him would be six Disciples. And the more lines the Master drew, the more I began to understand: he was not merely going to paint Jesus and the Disciples sitting at a table—he was going to paint them sitting at a table in a room that would look as if it was joined on to the dining room! Jesus, His Disciples, and the monks would be sitting and eating—together!—in one huge refectory. Had another painter ever thought—ever dared to think—of something as novel as this?

  It was midsummer, and the Master was ready to begin painting. Now, I imagined, when I heard the plasterers Guido and Guilio tell the Master to call for them when he was ready, that he was planning to paint a fresco. That is, every day the Master would select an area to which a fresh coat of plaster would be applied, and on this he would paint while the plaster was still wet, using colors mixed only with water, because when the plaster dries and hardens, it seals the paint and needs no addition.

  But the Master never called again for Guido and Guilio.

  That was a big surprise.

  He was going to paint the wall secco—dry.

  Most artists avoid painting on a dry wall. Fresco is acknowledged as the better way, being a method that actually improves with time, permitting the wall to retain the original colors, while resisting impurities and dampness in the air.

  But my master had other ideas.

  He was going to paint it dry, and he would therefore need to mix the paint with something, egg yolk or oil, to hold it on the wall.

  He chose oil.

  Since the wall was made ready for painting, I’ve accompanied the Master many times to the refectory, the wooden box Maggio made to hold his brushes, powders, and oils hanging from its leather strap on my shoulder. The streets are empty but for the beggars half asleep and the drunks half awake, and at this early hour there is a gray mist in the air.

  And there I leave him standing before the wall, his hand already raised to begin painting. And, more often than not, I find him in exactly that position at the end of the day. Which is all very well, except that, more often than not, his arm has not moved since I last saw him. Or, if it has, it has painted a space no bigger than a nutshell.

  Still, that is something. But then, then—Saint Peter, preserve us!—nothing. Days will pass and the Master is nowhere to be found within sight of the church. No sign of him anywhere, in truth, and he never tells me where he is going. Or he may indeed be at the refectory, but not painting, merely examining the wall. Hour upon hour. Staring at it.

  What is going on in his head? Great thoughts, of course, stupendous visions, sublime constructions. (I hope so, anyway.) But on the wall? Nothing. Nothing! In the past two years my master has painted a bit of tablecloth, some of the ceiling above the Disciples, a few trees in the landscape showing through the window behind Jesus. In other words, very little. The rest of the wall is still empty except for the charcoal lines he drew in the beginning.

  At the rate he is working, I calculate he will finish the Last Supper in, oh, about twenty-three years. But we will have been put out of Milan a long time before then.

  And Michelangelo, or another one, will have been invited to finish what my master could not.

  I do not understand why, after all this time, my master still hesitates. And the more time that passes, the less courage I have to ask. Why? Because I fear above all things that he might fail in this, his greatest endeavor.

  VIII

  But when I inform him of Father Vicenzo’s threat, the Master just laughs.

  “Ha!” he says. “Ha, ha!”

  “Master, Father Vicenzo has the ear of the Duke.”

  “Let him have the whole head. I fear no priest. Now take this order to Messer Tombi.”

  But before I do, I remember to ask him if he knows the meaning of the bird on my medallion.

  “What, Giacomo? Again? I have told you a hundred times that I do not know what it signifies. Why do you persist in asking?”

  “Because this morning I saw the same design on the door of a covered chair being carried to the Castle.”

  He says nothing.

  “Does it not seem astounding to you, Master, that I should possess a medallion bearing the same image?”

  “Not at all. There are duplicating designs everywhere in the world. That is Nature’s art. Now, for the last time, take this order to Tombi.”

  “But, Master …”

  Then I see the look in his eyes. There is a storm approaching, and I had best seek cover.

  “Yes, Master.”

  He hands me the order for Bartolomeo Tombi, the apothecary, and tells me he will make his weekly visit to the public baths, it being Friday—the day reserved for men—and to have ready for him on his return two slices of the chestnut pie he has seen in the kitchen. Nobody told me about any chestnut pie.

  So off I go to Messer Tombi’s shop. I know the way, I go there almost every day. And this time I take my medallion with me. If the Master wont help me discover the meaning of the bird, maybe Messer Tombi will. He, if no one else, treats me as an equal.

  And while I am walking, I am thinking. Why, when he knows so much about so many things, does my master not recognize the design?

  But it’s a long walk from our house to Tombi’s, and I soon forget these unsettling thoughts as I pick my way through the streets that border the Cathedral.

  A mother and her daughter walk towards me, and I feel the blood rush to my limbs when I see the young girl’s face. Saint Catherine, she is a pretty creature! She gives me the swiftest glance as we pass: enough to show an interest, I think, but not enough to attract her mother’s. After our paths have crossed, I turn back to have another look—and she is doing the very same thing! We stare at each other for a moment. Then she smiles at me! But her mother pulls her by the arm, and when she turns away her lovely face, I feel myself grow cold, as if the sun had hidden itself behind clouds. Where might I meet such a beauty? Renzo would know; he’s got girls lining up to smile at him. But he’ll say anything to please them, make up any story to impress, and I want to be myself, not someone I think a girl might fall for.

  Now here I am at Tombi’s shop.

  An apothecary sells colors for painting as well as all kinds of herbs, spices, and drugs, for health and for sickness; and Messer Tombi is, according to my master, the most skilled of all the apothecaries in Milan (and this street near the New Gate on the northeast side is full of them). There is money to be made in this business, especially when the plague breaks out: that’s the time everyone rushes to the apothecary to buy wormwood, juniper, and purple rue as protection. Nothing works against the plague, everyone knows that (especially the apothecaries), but herbs and prayers are all we have when the scourge descends on our city, and at least the apothecary makes the air—which is thicker than macaroni water during such times—smell sweeter.

  Tombi’s shop is a cave of wonders. The shelves are lined with jars full of wondrous substances—crystals, liquids, semiprecious stones—which throw off blue, green, and red reflections when the sun shines through the small window high up on the wall.

  He is standing behind his counter as I enter, writing in his ledger, garbed in his heavy black robe. It is not very clean, this robe, but I try to overlook that. Apothecaries are a strange breed,
more alive to other worlds than our own. He looks up and curls his lip. That’s a smile. At least, I think it is a smile. I do not like to think what else it might be.

  “Ah, Giacomo, good day to you.”

  “And to you, Messer Tombi. A new order,” I say.

  I place it on the counter. Tombi opens the note and smoothes out the creases until the paper lies flat.

  “Your master,” he says, “is experimenting with every color in the rainbow.”

  And it’s true. Today he wants Vermilion, Ocher, Terre-verte, Azurite.

  I love the names of colors: so mysterious, so poetic, so majestic—like the names of ancient cities lost to time. There is magic in color, magic waiting to be conjured.

  “But has he started painting the wall?” Tombi says.

  “Dabs and daubs, here and there,” I reply. “But not what you’d call started, if you know what I mean.”

  Tombi shakes his head and lets out a long sigh. “What is the delay, Giacomo? Why does he not make haste?”

  “I wish I knew, sir. But he will not talk about it, and I dare not ask.”

  “The Duke will not permit your master this dallying for much longer,” Tombi says. “I must speak with him myself, or we will both be put out of business: he by the Duke—and me by him.”

  “How is that, sir?”

  “You know how much he owes me.” Tombi sighs again, scratches his beard. “And I can’t—”

  “Oh, I do, sir, and one day you will get it all back, I promise, when the painting is done. But I have something to ask you …”

  And, so saying, I take the medallion out of my purse and hold it up for the apothecary to see. Before I can say anything more, however, he has taken it from my hand.

  “Where did you get this?”

  His eyes are weak; he holds the medallion up close to his face to study it.

  “I have had it since—”

  “Do you not know the meaning of this design?”

  “No, sir. That is why I—”

  “Tell me how you came by this medallion,” Tombi says, a bit sharply now.

  “But I don’t know, sir! I had it in my bag when the Master saved me. I lost my memory—I told you, Messer Tombi, remember? Because of the fever.”

  “You have here an object of great rarity,” Tombi says. “And your master, he—”

  “Does not know its origin. I have asked him. Several times.”

  Tombi turns the medallion round and round.

  “It’s a bird,” I say. “A falcon, or an eagle—”

  “Neither. It is a phoenix?” Tombi replies. “And beneath it, see—”

  “Leaves. A leafy tree—”

  “No, boy—flames!”

  And now I look at it again—yes, those are flames!

  “See how it rises triumphantly from the fire, to be reborn. The phoenix can never be destroyed—by man or any other force. The phoenix in flames is the sign of the Brotherhood. The Brotherhood of Alchemists. You have in your possession a medallion belonging to an alchemist.”

  An alchemist?

  My master calls alchemy a fantasy born of ignorance, practiced by people who suffer from the same deficiency. (He does not soften his words, my master.) But I have heard tell that true alchemists can turn base metals to gold, read men’s minds just by looking into their eyes, and foretell the future by charting the course of the stars in the night sky. And some say that through their art they have unlocked the key to life itself—the secret of immortality.

  But Tombi is speaking again: “There was a time, many years gone by, when alchemists were made welcome in the courts of kings. However, the Church, fearing their growing power, whispered treason into the ears of the great lords and turned them against the Brotherhood, whose members were forced into exile. The lucky ones, at least. Many others were whipped, tortured, burned, or beheaded. Those who are left now live and work in secrecy, fearing for their safety, waiting for their chance to rise again. But how did you come by this medallion?”

  “Perhaps … perhaps it was given to me?”

  “The medallion of the phoenix is proof of membership in the Brotherhood. Why would someone give it to you, boy?”

  “I don’t know. But today I saw the very same design—the phoenix in flames—on the door of a chair being transported to the Castle.”

  “What? Is it true?”

  “Yes, sir!”

  For some moments he stares into the empty air. Then he says, as if to himself: “So the Duke has sent for an alchemist after all these years …” I wait for the apothecary to say more, but no further sounds issue forth—nothing save a faint rumbling, which I take to be the lingering effects of his breakfast.

  “I must return to work, sir. My master will want me. May I have my medallion?”

  Which he gives to me. I’m not letting that medallion out of my sight. Then the apothecary goes to his cabinet and opens various drawers, fills several small jars with colors, and hands them over. I place them in the sack over my shoulder. He no longer asks me for money. He knows I have none to give him.

  As I walk home, every new thing I have learned brings forth more questions, until my head is full of tangled thoughts, like a net full of eels pulled from the Ticino River.

  I have a medallion belonging to a member of the Brotherhood of Alchemists.

  And now an alchemist has come to Milan.

  He is the one who can explain everything to me.

  I must make myself known to him as soon as possible.

  IX

  When I arrive home, the front door is open. Nothing unusual in that, Caterina is often next door, and she does not waste time with the lock when she has some important gossip to tell her friend Margareta.

  But as I enter the house, something—some odd change in the air—causes me to hold my tongue, instead of loudly announcing my arrival as I am wont to do. This time I go in on tiptoe, like an inquisitive cat. And then … there are voices coming from upstairs. Low voices and the sounds of doors being opened and furniture moved. Thieves!

  I reach under my jerkin and release my dagger from its sheath. At that moment the first intruder comes out of the Master’s room and sees me below. My heart sets up a rapid twanging—he is clothed in black from head to foot. Not to tell you an untruth, he puts such a fear in me that the roots of my hair prickle my scalp like thorns.

  “What … what is your business here?” I say, as loudly as I can. It comes out as a sort of squeak, such as a tailless mouse might make.

  No answer from him except the smooth hiss of his short rapier being drawn. It is a sword rarely seen in Milan, we prefer a longer blade. He slashes the air with it, two strokes, so cleanly I expect two slices to fall to the ground like slabs of cheese.

  Now another one appears at the head of the stairs. They exchange a few whispered words. And then the pair of them fly at me from above, their cloaks rippling the air behind them.

  I was frightened at first, the more because I did not know what I was facing; but now that I do, my blood unfreezes itself, and I prepare—to run. I may be a servant, but I’m not a complete dullard!

  I turn like a top and throw myself through the front door—straight into the arms of the Master.

  “What is this? Dancing again, instead of working?”

  “M-M-Master! Behind me! Thieves!”

  But he can already see them. He lifts me as easily as if my clothes contained nothing but air and places me to one side. The two villains are almost upon him, sword arms raised and preparing to strike, when, with one swift movement, he releases the tie on his cape—a bright red satin-lined, black velvet cape (God’s oath, it must have cost ten florins)—and sends the ends swimming through the air onto the two swords lunging towards him. With a double twist of his wrist he turns the cape around and around, entwines the swords inside the folds (it all seems so easy, the way my master does it), and forces down the arms of the assailants, who, unwilling to release their weapons, are compelled to follow.

  “Now ho
ld your breath, boy!” the Master yells at me.

  And he pulls a small vial from the pouch tied to the belt around his waist, releases the stopper with his thumb, and peppers the air with the contents, a bright yellow powder.

  Thank the Saints that I followed his order!

  There is a blinding flash, and a rolling cloud of smoke obscures the scene. Suddenly, everything is covered with a yellow fog. Our two assailants, having filled their lungs with the smoke, are coughing and spitting. The tip of a rapier cuts the air to the west of us.

  The next thing I know, my master has me by the arm and is leading me away.

  When we are clear of the yellow fog, he says: “Let them see us—I want them to follow!”

  And when they do, we run down Spiders’ Alley, so called because of all the washing lines that crisscross the narrow passage and give the impression of a web. Shirts, sheets, and hose hang dripping from above.

  At the end of the alley the Master halts, tears a strip from a wet sheet above our heads, and ties it around my face, covering the lower half. Then he starts to do the same for himself.

  The yellow fog is rolling towards us—hurry, Master, hurry! And just as he has finished tying his own piece of sheet, it envelops us until we can scarce see more than an arm’s length ahead—but now, thanks to the wet cloths, we can breathe, at least.

  “We’ll meet them here, boy, where their swords will be more of a hindrance than a help.”

  What does he mean? I am too frightened to think. We are in a blind alley. We are unarmed. We can hear them running towards us. But the Master seems perfectly at ease!

  One of them advances almost clear of the fog, cutting it blindly left and right with his sword, then once more is swallowed up by the cloud.

  The Master points at the washing lines above our heads, which are falling as they are cut by the slashing swords—