My nose reacts by igniting all my other senses until I am aflame with desire. I forget about the pain in my head and concentrate instead on the pleasure of having her near me. I am so entranced that I may have forgotten my own name.
Lucrezia’s face is an inch from mine. She whispers: “You are a handsome lad, Giacomo, even with a nasty bruise.”
“Well?” the Duke says to me. “What is it?”
“What is what, my lord?”
“It! That! There!”
“Oh, the painting you wanted from my master, sire. The Lady Lucrezia.”
“Excellent, excellent. Leonardo is once again my champion of champions. Now, as for you—”
The armored guard drops to his knees on the ground with a noise like kitchen pots falling from a wall. He raises his hands in prayer. “My lord, I have been your faithful servant, have mer—”
“Take him away and lock him up in a cell so deep beneath my castle that only the rats may hear his prating,” the Duke says, “and leave him there for a month. I will not suffer any man who does offense to my Lucrezia. Or her portrait.”
The Duke’s horse snorts and raises its front leg, stamping it back down on the hard earth as if strongly agreeing with its master’s sentiments.
The Duke’s captain waves to two Castle guards, who approach the still kneeling offender, swords drawn, and lead him away, his head turned back towards the Duke, pleading for clemency. We will not hear from him again. Nobody will, I fear.
A servant assists Lucrezia back into her saddle. The Duke and his entourage prepare to pass through the gates.
“Well, boy, are you coming?”
The Duke points at the painting, and one of the men-atarms dismounts and gathers it up.
My other tormentors are standing in the shadows of the guardhouse, quaking. I just have time to give them a look that says they had better think twice before picking on the servant of Leonardo da Vinci ever again, and then the gates are opened and the Duke rides through.
I have to follow on foot? Yes, that is what I must do. My head is still ringing from the gatekeeper’s blow, but I run behind them across the Castle grounds as far as the gates to the citadel. There the Duke and his party dismount, and he bids his guests farewell. Now the Duke is waving—at me—to accompany him and Lucrezia, and we enter his private apartments, attended by a small group of guardsmen and servants. When I follow too closely behind the Duke, I am held back. I should have known to wait.
Through a maze of corridors, through endless portals of limestone, of colored marble, of ornamented and inlaid woods, we at last arrive at the tall entrance to a room. When the heavy doors have been thrown open, I can see its walls are hung with tapestries of unicorns, horses, and bears. The Duke, Lucrezia, and several servants go inside. My master’s painting is taken in and set down against a wall. I wait. Then I am told to enter. Now I see myself reflected in mirrors taller than I will ever be, enclosed in ornately carved and gilded frames. This room, unlike the others we passed through, is well heated: a fire large enough to warm a small village is blazing in the grate, and above it rises a chimney you could stand twenty men in, I swear it so.
And there—a very fine painting, round, of the Holy Family. Not by my master. Indeed, I do not recognize the hand.
The Duke sees me studying it.
“Ah, you have excellent taste, boy. This is one of my favorite works.”
“Your favorites change with the weather,” Lucrezia says.
I smile at her, my best smile, it almost touches my ears, which I hope she interprets as a great desire on my part to have her stand next to me once more and mop my brow.
“Your master has shown you many paintings, yes?” the Duke says. “Can you guess the author of this work?”
I look at it long and hard. No, it is a style new to me. The figures are almost like carvings, like sculptures, so bold and solid. I shake my head.
“A young man, not much older than you. Perhaps you have heard of—”
“Michelangelo!”
“You know his name!”
“There has been much talk of him,” I say.
“There is always much talk of genius in Milan. I encourage it.”
A long couch strewn with red and blue cushions looks soft enough to fall asleep on, which is what I fear I might do at any moment, my head is so dull and cloudy from the guardsman’s blow.
The Duke flops down on an upholstered chair near the fire. Lucrezia settles full-length on the couch I was just looking at so longingly, making it doubly attractive. Two shag-haired dogs spring forth from somewhere and demand attention. The Duke fondles their ears and they nuzzle him in return. One tries to put its head between his legs and he kicks it away, which does not stop it from renewing its attentions; it must be used to the Duke’s particular form of affection.
“Wine,” the Duke announces to no one in particular.
Nobody has told me I can sit, and I have now learned to do nothing until I am instructed. I feel weaker than wet straw. Lucrezia is looking at me. The Duke is looking at her. I try to look away, though her face draws me like the sun.
Now the dogs have abandoned their master and are showing an interest in me. Get away, you brutes! They smell as if they have been rolling in dung. Or perhaps they always smell like this.
“They like you, boy,” the Duke says, still looking at Lucrezia. “Fortunately for you.” Then, for his further amusement, he watches the beasts nudge and poke me front and back, until finally, with an abrupt “Down, Agamemno! Down, Achilleo!” he dismisses them to their beds.
The wine appears on two silver trays, carried by two servants. It is poured. The Duke points at me, and I am given a goblet, surely made of purest gold.
A lute and its owner appear and music is struck up, but softly.
“Drink, boy.”
I do so.
“Your master’s painting,” Lucrezia says, “does it become me?”
“No painter could ever hope to reproduce the beauty of Madonna Lucrezia,” I say.
“Then I will not look at it,” she replies.
“No painter save my master, Leonardo da Vinci.”
“We shall be the judge of that,” the Duke says. “Bring me the painting.”
I put down the goblet. I bring the painting. I stand, holding the painting, still bound with its cloth and rope. The Duke is now sitting next to Lucrezia and whispering something to her.
“May I sit, sire? I feel so strange….”
Before the Duke has answered, everything around me begins to melt—walls, ceilings, windows, chairs. My legs are giving way. I can see myself falling twelve times in a dozen mirrors. I just have a moment to set the painting against a table before the floor jumps at me, and I am kissing it.
When next I open my eyes, a man in a black cap and robes is standing above me. Some kind of doctor, by the look of him.
“The blood,” he is saying, “has been corrupted by the blow to his head—see here, my lord Duke, and here.”
“Oh,” I hear Lucrezia say, although I cannot see her, “you must find some remedy for it now, Master Corso, you must save him!”
Master Corso pulls out a knife and glass cup from his bag.
“Yes, my lady, we must. To save him we must bleed him without further delay!”
“No knives, I beg of you! I am feeling much better!”
But when I try to rise, I cannot.
“Untie me the painting, you,” the Duke is saying to someone.
Master Corso is floating above me with his knife. Now Lucrezia waves him away. She kneels beside me. She lifts my head from the floor and cradles it, brushing the hair from my brow. Her face is no more than a kiss away. I could raise my head a notch and graze those crimson lips with mine. But I won’t. The Duke would have my lips sliced off for such impertinence.
Such bliss in her arms, such bliss.
I close my eyes.
“By the black claw of Lucifer!”
I open my eyes.
&nbs
p; Now what?
A stream of oaths and curses flows from the Duke. Who has angered him so? Lucrezia ceases stroking my brow. She drops my head—ouch! The floor! I must try to rise, but—over there—the Fool! I want to signal to him to help me up. I have no strength. What? He is shaking his head and wagging his finger at me. What have I done wrong? Has the world gone mad? Now I see the Duke—he is holding a painting above me and pointing at it. Everything is fading, everything except—
No, take the picture away! It is ghastly, a horror—a woman’s face, no, not a woman, you cannot call that thing a woman—it is staring, madly staring—red eyes and wide-open mouth, sharp teeth, oh, monstrous!—A nightmare that has found its way into day—a face filled with horror, hatred, and hurt—around the head writhes a hellish halo of serpents—a ghostly glowing green and yellow—so real I can hear their hissing—
And now the Duke is shouting at me: “Did you not say your master had sent you with the portrait of Lucrezia Crivelli? Then why do you insult me with this abomination of a Medusa? Is this your doing, boy? Do you dare to mock me, Ludovico Sforza?”
Will he strike at me? Lucrezia has taken hold of his arm and is pleading with him: “My lord, no! Have mercy! He is just a boy!”
And then the curtain falls with a thump across my eyes, and everything turns to black: no more Duke, no more Lucrezia, no more doctors, attendants, dogs, musicians, or Fool. No more wondering, worrying, or waiting for my master to have faith in me, my parents to find me, or my life to reveal its meaning. The stage is empty. The actors have departed. What blessed relief.
No more me.
XV
When I have opened my eyes, rubbed them a few times, and touched my head (a bump as big as the dome on Santa Maria), I see that I am still in the Castle, still in the same room, and stretched out now on that couch I was admiring earlier. The Duke is standing ten paces from me, looking out of one of the high windows, hands clasped behind his back. Everybody else has departed, all save one man-at-arms stationed at the doors. It is early evening. The dying sunlight pushing through the window burnishes the Duke’s dark skin and gives him the sheen of the bronze statue of Neptune in the fountain in Arengo Square. He is humming a tune, some ballad I once heard, called “Alas for Our Love, Her Love Is His, Not Mine.”
The Duke, hearing me shift on the couch, turns as I am attempting to rise. “Stay where you are, boy. Hear me now. The Duke of Milan commands it!”
Well, in that case.
He comes towards me.
“Who bade you bring the face of the Medusa to me? Was it your master?”
“The fault is mine, lord, all mine.” Saint Stephen, my head is throbbing.
The Duke finds a chair and draws it closer. He sits down. He looks uncomfortable. His doublet and hose are so tightly threaded, embroidered, and encrusted with jewels, it is a wonder he can breathe.
“Why is the fault yours?” he says.
“There were two paintings in my master’s study. I must have taken the wrong one.”
The Duke laughs.
“I do not think so. I think your master wanted you to bring the Medusa to me.”
“No, my lord, never!”
The Duke stands up again. Clearly his doublet and hose are getting the better of him. He walks over to the vast fireplace, picks up a chunk of wood from the iron stand, and throws it on the blaze. You could cook a standing ox in that fireplace, you could.
“The q———on boy is wh——?”
“Forgive me, my lord”—I am shouting now—“I can’t hear you over there. You’re too far away.”
The Duke brushes the dirt off his hands and comes back towards me.
“The question, boy, is why? What is the purpose of the Medusa?”
That’s two questions.
“I do not know, my lord.”
“This is not the first time your master has played a trick on us.”
My master plays tricks? Yes, he played one on me, all right, when he switched those paintings.
The Duke tries to sit down again; then, thinking better of it, stands up.
“I value your master,” he says. “We have grown accustomed to each other over the years. But no contract lasts forever. Now, I want that painting finished. I have told Pope Alexander it will be finished. And I will have it finished.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“By Easter.”
“Yes, my lord!”
“Because His Holiness must see the Last Supper.”
“Yes, my lord?”
“Must see it and must pledge his support to help defend Milan. Because this great painting must never fall into their hands.”
“Whose hands, sire?”
“Why, the hands of the filthy French, of course. They have an army of fifty thousand knights and foot soldiers heading towards our borders!”
They do? Then that is why the alchemist has been summoned to Milan. To help the Duke against the French!
“Is it war, my lord?”
“It will be. We need the Pope. We need his blessing, we need his money, and we need his army. Especially his army. I do not have sufficient forces to defend us against an invasion, and there may not be enough time to raise and train a new army ourselves.”
“Will the Pope join with us against the French, my lord?”
“We hope so. But no alliance is certain until it is put to the test—and by then it may be too late. We need something else to ensure our safety, something so frightening it sends the French fops fleeing in fear! A new weapon—yes, that’s what we need!”
“Then go to my master, sire. He has many designs for weapons.”
“So he has often said. Even before he came to Milan, he wrote to me with promises of weapons never before seen. And that is just it—I have never seen any of them!”
The Duke should take a look inside the Master’s sketchbooks …
A gigantic crossbow with a bow span of five braccia that will pierce walls of thickest stone with a bolt longer than a tree trunk.
A cannon with a mouth large enough to hurl a ball the size of a cathedral bell that explodes into thousands of pieces on impact.
A horse-drawn chariot armed with four scythes that rotate at ever-increasing speeds as the chariot is pulled towards the enemy.
The Master dreams up a new one almost every day!
The Duke paces up and down, clenching and unclenching his fists.
Now he is looking at me.
“Well, boy?”
“My lord?”
“Come now, Giacomo, I know there is more. Your master is working on something, is he not?”
“I-I don’t know, my lord.” But those thieves did not come to our house to admire the cleaning. “Whatever my master is working on, it is for the Duke of Milan.”
“No, boy, I do believe that Leonardo is keeping his new creation a secret from me,” he says. “But I am a man who knows more than his own subjects. If I did not, I would not be Duke.”
“My lord, I am loyal to you, but I know nothing, therefore I can say nothing. Why not ask my master?”
“To ask him would be to quarrel with him, and I will suffer no further delay to the Last Supper. You will have to ask him for me, Giacomo, and bring me an answer, too, or by the hermit’s beard I will take my revenge on you for insulting me with that monster of a woman, the Medusa. Do you hear?”
“But, my lord, I—”
He places a hand on my shoulder. This reminds me of my master, who often does the same thing; but then the Master always removes it soon after, as if he fears to leave it there too long. The Duke, however, continues to squeeze my shoulder, harder and harder. And harder. His eyes are as black as dead suns. His thumb bites into my sinew like a knife blade. Redhot pinpricks of pain course up and down my arm. I try not to let him see how much it hurts, but soon I—
Then the doors are thrown open to reveal Lucrezia Crivelli in a white silk dress. The Duke instantly releases his grip. She enters the room with measured tread. She has t
o—the train on her dress is so long it threatens to entangle itself around her ankles. Behind her, four—no, five—maidservants follow in her wake.
“One week, Giacomo,” he whispers. “Bring me the answer in one week. And not a word to your master, or I, too, will hear of it.”
Saint Francis, the look on his face. If I don’t do his bidding he will kill me, and no mistake. My stomach clenches up—as if a gigantic snake is coiling itself in my belly. Oh, what do I do now—What?
“Are you tiring the boy, my lord?” Lucrezia says, drawing near. “He is not yet well.”
“He is well enough.”
A bell starts tolling. To judge by the fading light, it must be time for vespers. The Duke turns to Lucrezia.
“They are summoning me to prayer,” he says.
“Then go, my lord,” Lucrezia replies. “You know I have no use for it.”
“Godless woman,” the Duke says, smiling. He puts his arms around her waist. Her jeweled belt, worn low on her hips, presses further into her. Oh, to be that little belt. “It is your very disdain for prayer that I find so bewitching.”
Lucrezia strokes the Duke’s cheek.
And his wife, the Lady Beatrice, dead and buried no more than half a year. In childbirth, too, so it was put about. But with his mistress living openly in the Castle long before then, is it not more likely that the Duchess died of a broken heart?
Then he pulls away and says: “My lady, I must take my leave of you.”
“Do not, sir, take from me anything I will not freely give. Come, we go together.”
“Lucrezia.” He takes her hand and kisses it.
Then she turns to me. “I want my painting, Giacomo. No more of your master’s games. Bring it to me without further delay.”
“Yes, my lady,” I say.
“And—you can tell him that I am keeping the Medusa,” the Duke says. “It shows great skill, even if its subject is repugnant to us.”
Without further ado the Duke and Lucrezia make to leave.
When they are gone, a captain-at-arms enters the room and says roughly: “You, come with me. And leave that wine where it is!”
Leonardo’s Shadow Page 10
