And then Caterina finds an apple that had rolled under the cupboard. We eat it with great ceremony, slicing it carefully down the middle and separating the halves: one for Caterina, one for me. But two halves do not fill the hole.
XXII
The next day, early, I open the door to—“Messer Maggio! You’re back, thanks be to God! And my master?”
“At the Castle. Somehow, that night you discovered us at the Lazaretto, the Duke did, too. Fm afraid that your master blames you for it.”
“Me? But I never told the Duke anything!” Maggio gives me a questioning look. “Tell me what happened, sir. I must know!”
“We rose at dawn the day after your visit and were unlocking the Lazaretto,” Maggio says, “when a squad of horsemen rode up and, despite your master’s protests, escorted us directly to the Duke. He accused Leonardo of conspiring with the French. Your master accused the Duke of conspiring with Michelangelo. The Duke desired to know why Leonardo had not told him about his new invention. Your master asked why he should, when the Duke never pays him what he owes. Back and forth it went. ‘You have failed me!’ the Duke cries. ‘No more I you than you me!’ your master shouts back. ‘I will send you away from Milan!’ says the Duke. ‘I will willingly go!’ says Leonardo.”
“Messer Maggio, I forget myself—please come into the kitchen and have some water.”
And there, having drained three cups, Maggio continues. “I thought it was all over for us. The Duke rose from his seat and looked ready to send us to the chopping block. Instead, he breaks into laughter. He laughs! And then the Master starts laughing! And then the both of them are holding each other in an embrace, the best of friends once more!”
I can scarce believe it.
“Oh, it’s true, lad, I was there. Great men, you cannot reckon with them.”
“So—”
“So the flying machine is now installed at the Castle, inside the Rocchetta, the safest, most heavily fortified part. No spy will get in, and Leonardo will not be able to get out!”
“Then you will remain at the Castle, you and the Master?”
“That is right, boy. Until we finish the work and ready the flying machine for use against the French.”
“And why didn’t my master come to me with this news? We have been waiting so long to hear from him.”
“The Duke will not let him out of the Castle, fearing, perhaps, that Leonardo might take the opportunity to depart Milan without warning. Now I, too, must return in good time. I was given but an hour to see you.” He hands me a crumpled note. “And to pass you this message from your master.”
“Thank you, Messer Maggio. You cannot imagine how Caterina and I have worried.”
“Your master is safe, so long as we finish the work.”
“Messer Maggio, we have no money. Could you—”
“I have only these coins on me, but, look, you can have them.”
“I thank you, sir. I know my master owes you money. I do not wish to enlarge the debt.”
“Your master has promised to pay me everything he owes, as soon as we finish the flying machine and the Duke has paid him.”
Oh, then I fear you will never receive what is due to you, Messer Maggio.
When Maggio has left, I find Caterina, and together we eagerly open the message.
But all it says is that I must look after the house while he is at the Castle, tell no one where he is, and await his return, about which he has no further information to give. Not one friendly word. It would seem that what Maggio told me is true: the Master really does hold me responsible for revealing his secret.
And now what to do about the Duke? I failed to report back to him—and he found the Master’s invention himself, without my help. Does that mean that he will soon come looking for me to exact his revenge?
It seems that I am caught between the Master and his master—and I will suffer some kind of agony from either or both of them. But now I must hasten to Messer Tombi; it’s time for my next lesson, and I don’t want to miss it. Today he will teach me everything about the color that runs through all of us, the color red.
XXIII
The weeks have passed. It’s Christmas Eve.
On every corner groups of strolling musicians play the lute and recorder, raising our spirits with the songs of the season. The air is sharp and clean; and the stench of rubbish, so strong in summer, no longer assails the nose with every step. Wreaths of holly and branches of fir hang from the doors of Milan’s better houses. How can one not rejoice? Let the streets come alive with voices singing joyful songs! Tomorrow is the birthday of our Lord.
That much we can be sure of. Whether the Master will ever return is not so certain. There has been no more news from him.
We have finished the last of the cabbage soup Caterina cooked up with the money Maggio gave us, and tomorrow, while we go hungry, the good folk of Milan will be exchanging gifts and gathering around the kitchen table to feast on roast boar in pepper sauce, goose in red mustard, spicy meat sausages, fresh white figs, soft, sweet-smelling marzipan, pine nuts in melted sugar, and—stop now, Giacomo, stop before you drown in your own spittle!
Feeling lonely, I decided to take a stroll through the market. They’re lighting the lanterns for the midnight celebrations. The air is spun thick with seasonal spices—cinnamon, cloves, ginger, nutmeg, cardamom, and myrrh. Although the crowd presses on every side, nobody curses or spits; it is Christmas, after all, when we set aside our complaints and embrace one another in brotherly friendship. So the story goes.
But it pains me to see all the food on display and to have no money to buy any of it, when other folk are laden down with their packages.
I leave the market and find a stone bench in a small square behind the Cathedral. It is cold. I wrap my cloak all the more tightly around me. What if the Master has left us for good?
And then the Cathedral bells let loose their music on my head with a joyful tolling—I nearly forgot my duty! I promised to accompany Caterina to midnight Mass. She never misses it.
I run home past bands of monks, their hands in prayer, families out walking with lighted candles, vendors selling hot chestnuts. The tavern doors are open, and the friendly hubbub from within spills out onto the streets. There’ll be no fighting, not tonight, not on the eve of our Lord’s birthday.
“Caterina! Let me in! It’s Giacomo!”
The door opens, and she says: “Can’t you hear the bells? I thought you’d forgotten.”
“Me, Caterina?—never! But you look too tired to leave the house. Let us stay here in front of the fire and keep warm,”
“Not a chance, boy! And you promised, remember, and to break a promise is to put a coin in the Devil’s purse.”
But the old woman is not well enough to walk out tonight, and she knows it. She opens the front door and takes a look. It is starting to snow.
“Maybe you are right, after all. I don’t feel so steady. Will you read to me from the Scriptures, then?”
I smile and nod. I love to read to Caterina.
We mount the stairs, and soon she is tucked up in bed.
“Now then,” I say, “what will it be—one of the old stories, or the oldest story of them all, how God created the world?”
“Thank you, Giacomo,” she says, “for staying with me.”
“I will never leave,” I say. “Even if my parents come looking for me.”
And she says, almost in a whisper: “Maybe they know where you are already.”
“Caterina, what do you mean?”
She turns to the wall and falls asleep as quickly as a weary child. I will learn nothing more tonight.
So I go to my own room, undress, and jump into my cold bed.
Does the old woman know something about my parents? Sometimes I think she does. But perhaps it is just out of kindness that she raises my hopes from time to time.
Tomorrow is Christmas Day, 1497.
And I am hungry. Very, very hungry. For food, for answers, for
a new life.
We awake to the glorious sound of the Cathedral bells.
Later that morning I am making the fire in the kitchen, when there is a knock on the door—and Margareta is standing outside holding a big platter, which she sets down on the kitchen table. She pulls off the cover and reveals a half side of roast beef, still steaming from the spit!
“Our master has too much to eat,” Margareta says, “enough for ten, and there’s only him and his wife. He asked if any of our neighbors—”
“Margareta, you are an angel!”
“Well,” she says, “it is the time of year for them.”
I hug and embrace her—and as soon as I have led Caterina to the table (where she then leads me in a proper prayer of thanks), we fill our skins with food that could not have tasted better had it come directly from the Duke’s kitchen.
The rest of the day passes peacefully. I do some drawing, read to Caterina from the Bible, and we retire to our beds. But I cannot sleep. Jumbled thoughts fill my head and turn over and over like mill wheels on a racing river.
And then it comes to me.
The answer I have been looking for, which, like my own nose, has been right in front of my eyes, but unseen all this time—
A way to pay our debts, fill our stomachs, and settle the matter of who will be the models for the Disciples!
I sit up straight.
Let me think, now. I have sometimes suggested to the Master that the merchants we owe money to would be glad to cancel our debts in return for a painting. But he has always dismissed me with a wave of his hand.
“What?” he has said. “A Virgin Mary for a pound of Peroni’s cheese? A Baby Jesus for two pairs of Martino’s hose and a doublet? A Holy Family for Fazio’s horse and saddle? Never! I would rather be sent to debtors’ prison!”
Now, I know he does not mean that—my master hates the damp.
“But instead of painting a picture for each of them,” I say to the wall (standing in for my master), “why not put them all in one painting?”
He’ll look at me as if I am mad, and then I’ll say to him: “That’s right, Master, use the merchants as the models for Jesus’ Disciples in the Last Supper—and they’ll cancel all our debts, down to the last ducat!”
That’ll get his attention.
He’ll think for a moment, and then he’ll say: “Giacomo, you are ingenious!”
Better than that, Master. This is the best idea of the century.
And there are only two more years until the new one.
XXIV
Early the next day I venture forth to Benedetti, the paper merchant, to try my plan for the Last Supper. He’s the one I can speak with most comfortably. And if it pleases him, I think it might please the others.
When I arrive at his shop the shutters are drawn. Of course, it’s Saint Stephen’s Day. He will be at home next door.
I pull the bell rope. No answer. Again, then.
“Yes, yes, I hear you!” A woman’s voice from within. “Will one of you idle girls stop making mouths in the mirror and answer the door? Can’t you see my hands are full?”
A long pause, then the door swings open. One of Benedetti’s daughters stands before me.
“Hello,” I say. She starts giggling. In a moment she is joined at the door by her sisters. Soon they are all holding hands and giggling.
“Hello, girls,” I say.
“Who’s at the door?” Benedetti’s gruff voice could strip the wax from the insides of your ears.
The girls are still giggling. Two of them are bent double with it.
“It’s Giacomo, Messer Benedetti, from Master Leonardo,” I say, over their heads.
“Hello … GIACOMO!” they shout in unison. More giggling.
“Giacomo? What brings you here on Saint Stephen’s Day? Come in, my boy,” Benedetti says, holding out his hand. It is warm and dry. A good sign. He is at his ease. “What can I do for you?”
“I would like to speak with you privately, sir.”
“Of course. But permit me first to introduce my daughters to you: Chiara, Clara, Clarissa, Corinna, and Emilia, our youngest; we ran out of Cs. Every one of them a gem!”
“Father, really!” Clara (or is it Corinna?) says.
“I am honored to meet you all,” I say, bowing so low I can count the whorls in the planed wood floor. And when I rise at last, I am delighted to be wearing my new cloak, it makes an elegant flourish.
Benedetti claps his hands and rubs them together.
“You are jolly, sir.”
“Indeed I am, Giacomo, indeed I am. Christmas is my favorite time of year, and one of my girls—that one, Clarissa, give us a curtsy, my dear—just a week ago received an offer of marriage. Now she’s been snapped up, I have high hopes of handing over the lot of them within the next year!”
“Father!”
“Dont talk like that, father, or we’ll never leave you!”
“Yes, yes,” Benedetti says, “now off you go and help your mother. Emilia, wait for me outside. I have a task for you.”
The giggling girls sweep off in a cloud of perfumed velvet and lace. Benedetti ushers me into his study.
“Emilia comes to me this week and asks to work. Doesn’t want to sit around the house, wants to learn my trade! Have you heard the like?” Benedetti says.
“No, sir, but I like what I hear.”
“And her face won’t break any mirrors, eh? Make someone a fine wife.”
“Is she not too young to wed, sir?”
“They’re never too young to wed. The sooner we get these girls off the streets—where every man looks at their bosoms as if ‘Touch Me’ were written on them—and into the arms of honest husbands, the sooner I will be able to sleep peacefully again.”
It is so pleasant to be inside a warm house with a happy family that I almost forget why I came here. Oh, yes—
“Sir, to the point. My master owes you money.”
“Money! Ah, money. It always comes back to that.”
“Yes, sir.” I hope this is not the beginning of a lecture.
“Yet money has only one purpose, Giacomo: to buy things. That, in itself, does not bring happiness.”
It is a lecture.
Messer Benedetti sighs, peers out of the window. He places one hand on his heart, looks up at the sky, and recites:
“I wish that I could be a bird,
I’d fly from tree to tree,
But I’m a man and have no wings,
No man is ever free”
He takes his hand from his heart and looks at me. “What do you think, lad?” he says.
“Did you write that, sir?”
He smiles. “When I was just a young man.”
Age has not improved it!
“Ah, if I had spent my years writing, instead of becoming the biggest paper supplier in Lombardy …” He stops to adjust a small statue of Cupid on his mantel. “I would probably be living in a hut, instead of in this fine house. Now, Giacomo, what was it again?”
The artistic yearning has passed by for a second time and probably took no longer than the first, for who would choose an uncertain future over a chinking bank account? Only a true artist. Or a fool.
“Money, sir. We owe you.”
“That is correct and has been for some time now. But we both know this. Do you have it with you?”
“No, sir, but—”
“Giacomo, we are friends. I hope so, at least. Your master owes me hundreds. I’ve stopped counting. I know very well he thinks that because I am a simple merchant—”
“Never, sir! He has never called you simple!”
“—A simple merchant, he can play games with me. And, Giacomo, what is worse, I let him, because he is a great painter, and I am in awe of him. But enough is enough. If he wants to purchase more paper, let him not send you to plead with me, no, let him come here himself and do it.”
“But, Messer Benedetti, I am not here about the Master’s paper.”
“No, yo
u are here about more credit! The mother-in-law wants me to hire someone to knock him down in the street,” Benedetti says. “She’d probably do it herself, if I paid her.”
The door opens and a tall, handsome woman appears in a blue dress, cut low on the shoulder, her chest bulging against the material. Her necklace is a string of pearls, shining as if freshly plucked from the seabed. Benedetti’s money has been put to its best possible use; at least so far as his wife is concerned.
“I heard voices,” she says, smiling.
“Elizabetta, my wife,” Benedetti says. “Giacomo, the servant—”
“Of course—Giacomo. My husband speaks of you often.”
I offer a small bow at this, though I am not sure why. Perhaps because it is the end of Act I.
“Well then, Giacomo, why are you here?” Benedetti says.
At last! Act II. Time for my speech.
“Sir …”
“Yes?”
“You are a successful merchant—and your success, I think, comes from your quickness to seize on a good deal.”
“That’s part of it, of course. Then there’s attention to detail and—”
“Here’s a good deal, sir. The best you will ever be offered. How would you like to be—” and the first word that comes to mind is “—immortal”
“Now you’re mocking me, Giacomo, you’re worse than your—”
“I mean it, sir.”
“What are you getting at, eh?”
“Cancel all the Master’s debts—everything, the lot, down to the last soldo—and he will paint you into the Last Supper.”
“Come again?” He looks at his wife, but she is looking at me, her eyes large. “How’s he going to paint me into the Last Supper?”
“Your face, Messer Benedetti, your face. The Master will use your face as the model for one of the Disciples. Think of it! You could be John, or James, Peter, or Bartholomew! You could be a figure in the largest and most celebrated painting of Christ and His Disciples in all the land. Think of the fame, the glory! The whole world lining up outside the doors of Santa Maria delle Grazie—to see you!”
By degrees, Benedetti’s face begins to shine. And soon he is gleaming.
Leonardo’s Shadow Page 15
