Immortal

by Traci L. Slatton

  “Luca, your horse, want to see?” he called when I dismounted.

  “Where did you get the paper?” I asked, because paper was a costly luxury. Little drawings were scattered all over the sheet, faces and birds and insects and the shape of Monte Albano from a distance. A crude charcoal pencil had been used, but the hand guiding the pencil was extraordinarily fine and perceptive, far too advanced to be that of a twelve-year-old boy. The use of shading to show depth and minute gradations of surface, in particular, was eerily sophisticated. “Who drew these?”

  “I drew them, of course. Mama buys paper, whenever she has money. Sometimes I can coax Papa into getting me some,” he answered happily, scooping up some round gray stones and dropping them into his pocket. “I like to draw.”

  “Where’s the horse?” I asked, bemused and ogling the miniatures, each one a delicious expression of precocious and emotive draughtsmanship. Leonardo’s love for birds showed in every elegant curve of a wing; his delight in people palpitated out from the turn of a cheek or glance of an eye. It would take only minimal training to turn this boy into a master artist. I knew that what I could teach him was limited; he was intended for better teachers, better men, than me.

  “Here.” He reached up and turned the paper over, and then upside down. Underneath a sketch of a fat baby and a dog, there was a horse. “Do you like it? What’s your horse’s name? Are we riding him to Florence? When are we leaving? How long will it take? Can we go soon?”

  Only the horse’s neck, head, withers, and one leg had been finished. There were some vague strokes indicating the other three legs and its rump. “It’s beautiful, but it’s not finished,” I pointed out. Leonardo shrugged. I looked back at the paper and noticed that most of the sketches had been left incomplete. Half of a face would be superbly drawn, but the other half only suggested, or one wing of a bird would be exquisitely depicted, while the rest of it was implied by a few spare strokes on the paper. “Do you never finish what you start?”

  “There’s so much to see,” he said. Impish dimples appeared on both sides of his wide smile, so like his pretty mama’s. “Isn’t the eye wonderful, Luca, the way it takes in images?”

  I shook my head. “You must learn to complete things, it’s important.” He gave me a beatific smile, and I thought that, if nothing else, I could at least teach him perseverance, which was a quality of mine. Much later, I was to laugh at my own vanity. Whatever he learned from me, I learned well from Leonardo that teaching is a matter of drawing out from men what is already in their hearts, and that men learn only what they want to.

  “You can keep that,” he said, with a wave of his cherubic hand. I had always valued gifts, and this one was no different. I went back into the inn. This sheet of boyish drawings was precious, and I meant to preserve it. I ran up the stairs to my room and opened my leather bag. This portmanteau was only a few years old, having been bought at a bazaar in Constantinople, where goods were cheap since the fall of that city a decade ago. I pulled from it Petrarca’s notebook, which I kept with me always, just as I did the panel of Giotto’s St. John with the reddish-blond dog at his heels and Geber’s eyeglasses. I opened the leather-bound notebook carefully to its center.

  “What’s that? A notebook? Why is it blank?” said a lyrical voice at my elbow, and, of course, Leonardo the curious had followed me to my room.

  “It’s blank because I haven’t written in it yet,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You must,” he insisted. I sighed.

  “I’m waiting for something special to happen. Then I’ll write in the book.”

  “Something special like what?” he pressed me. “Something from your vision of things to come? Like the great love you told me about, by the cave, when I first met you?”

  “You are too inquisitive of matters that don’t concern you,” I said as sternly as I could muster.

  “Let me see,” he ordered, taking the notebook. He sat on the floor and looked at each fine vellum page as if it was covered with these very words, and he could read them even though they were far in his future. But then, if ever there was a man who could read the book of the future, it was Leonardo. “I’ll draw something for you. On the first page, to encourage you to write in this book.” He smiled slyly and took a worn and nubby old pencil from his pocket.

  “Wait, what will you draw?” I asked.

  “Something wonderful, especially for you,” he murmured. He stared at me with his head cocked, and then his hand moved rapidly over the page.

  “You’re left-handed,” I observed, sitting on the bed to wait.

  “Uhm,” he grunted, bending over the notebook. So I sat there, watching the boy sketch. It was a warm day in June, with a single bird warbling outside the window and the fragrance of wildflowers breathing into the room. Light reflected from peaceful hills and bright sunflowers, from the rocks of Monte Albano and from the rippling surfaces of streams, and softened into a golden mist that permeated the room. I was reminded of that long-ago day in Bosa, Sardegna, when the Wanderer had come for me with Rebecca Sforno’s letter. As on that day, the flickering shadows that were the rest of my life fell away, and all that was left was the single present moment, complete and heartfelt.

  Finally he looked up at me. “This notebook is very fine. I should like one just like it. Will you buy me one?” He asked with such a sincere air of entreaty that I found myself saying yes before I had even considered his request. He smiled radiantly. “Very good. Thank you, Luca professore. You are as generous as you are beautiful!”

  “Uh-huh,” I said, with some skepticism. I knew when I was being played. Leonardo threw back his head and laughed.

  “No, truly!” he protested. “But I’m not going to leave my notebook blank! I’m going to fill it up with magical writing. Then I will fill another one, and another one after that!”

  “Uh-huh,” I said again, but with far less skepticism. One could believe of golden Leonardo that magic was his servant. That being so, I wondered if he was someone I could trust, eventually, with the seeming magic that haunted my life: my long youth and longevity. In all my wanderings over many decades, I had only met one other person who possessed the same longevity: the Wanderer. There might have been alchemists like Geber who possessed the secret, but none had admitted to it, at least not in my presence. And I had inquired. Of Leonardo, I asked, more casually than I felt, “How are you going to make it magical?”

  He hopped up and handed me back the notebook. “I don’t know. I’ll write backward, or something.” His eyes widened suddenly and he laughed. He said, “You told me about your vision of times to come. Sometimes I see something. It’s blurry, like a foggy mirror. I just saw men who live far in the future trying to read my backward handwriting. They’ll be mystified and awed. My writing will look magical to other people, but the explanation will be simple and natural. Magic can always be explained that way, don’t you think?” I didn’t answer but stared at his sketch. It was of a handsome man in his twenties with symmetrical, fine-boned features, not delicate but certainly refined. There was something pensive and sad about his eyes and a small, ironic, almost bitter smile played about his full mouth. The man was lithe and well muscled, and he stood with two pairs of arms outstretched within a circle which was set inside a square, as if he had been moving. He also had a second set of legs that were spread outside the first set.

  “He must be a very good swordsman, with that extra set of arms.” I smiled. “But how does he get around, trotting like a horse?”

  “Silly!” He giggled. “He doesn’t have extra arms. I drew him moving from one position to the next.”

  “And why the circle and square?”

  “It shows how perfect forms are in nature, expressed by a man’s body, and how geometrical a man’s proportions are,” he said. “You’re well formed, Luca. You have excellent proportions. I’ve never before seen so clearly this geometry, but I was struck by it the first momen
t I saw you on Monte Albano. Though you’re not very tall. I hope I’m taller when I’m a man.”

  “Am I so sad?”

  “Aren’t you?” he asked innocently.

  “No.”

  “Maybe you will be.” He shrugged. “Maybe you won’t be able to have your great love and you’ll feel very sad! Then won’t you be glad you tutored me, and if you didn’t have your great love, at least you had my friendship?” I gave him a wry look. He waited while I carefully placed his sketch of animals atop the sketch of me standing within the geometrical forms, closed Petrarca’s notebook and tied a leather thong around it, and then replaced it in my portmanteau. Then he asked cheerfully, “So are we going to Florence now? What are we going to see? Can I ride in front of you on the horse, or do I have to ride in the back?”

  THE DUOMO WAS COMPLETED. I had never seen it thus. The graceful red dome itself was the largest in Christendom and towered over the city, its shadow seeming to sweep over all of Tuscany. It wasn’t necessary to stand in front of it, as we were; it was inescapable, looming above the narrow stone streets, breaking majestically into view at every corner and piazza. It was a poignant reminder to me of what I had missed by being away. If Nicolo Silvano hadn’t managed to burn me at the stake sixty-four years ago, he had managed to steal from me a lifetime of memories of Florence, my home, the city whose very streets seemed to have gestated me with my inhumanly long youthfulness, whose churches and palazzi were my kinfolk, and whose river Arno had baptized me.

  “It was built circle by circle,” Leonardo said, interrupting my thoughts, “so that the stress of the forces goes around and around and doesn’t break. The circles allow it to soar to new heights, undreamt of before this duomo!”

  “It’s octagonal.”

  “But it was built with circles inside it,” Leonardo insisted. “The cupola has two shells within which are a series of concentric circular rings, circles that decrease in circumference as they ascend. That’s how Capomaestro Brunelleschi built it without scaffolding. He relied on forces converging at the cupola’s apex, where the lantern and its weight could absorb the inward force and redirect it outward. He also used an ancient Roman herringbone pattern for the brickwork, interlocking each new course of bricks with the course below it in a way that made the structure self-supporting. So the dome rose because of the integrity of its own design!”

  “How do you know so much, bambino?” I asked, ruffling his soft hair as I stared up at the cupola. Few people were about, because of the plague, though it was a fine summer day.

  “Everyone talks about the Duomo,” he said. “I listen! And guess what else? Clever Brunelleschi invented a number of machines to help him build it, isn’t that wonderful?” Leonardo cried. “I want to invent things, too! He invented a hoist to move and carry the tremendous weights to great heights, a hoist that was driven by oxen. Can you imagine? He hoisted marble, brick, stone, and mortar into the very sky! It was a marvel, this hoist, so huge and powerful, and had a wonderful reversible gear—”

  “Enough!” I held up my hand. “I am no architect or mathematician, I know nothing of such technical matters. You need a different teacher, if you want to study those subjects!”

  “But aren’t you fascinated by them? By these problems of force and movement and weight and geometry?” He gestured toward the Duomo. “If we master them, there is nothing man can’t accomplish! We can build the flying machine you saw in your vision, and the swimming machine, and other inventions too wondrous to believe! Don’t you see the importance of it?”

  I could hardly believe that this was the same child who jingled the rocks he’d placed in his pocket after a hopping game in the grass; he sounded so mature as he spoke of the hoist. I said, “I’m more interested in the question of beauty. Notice how graceful the octagon is, delicate yet strong and massive at the same time, like a sculpture….”

  “Sculpture, bah, that’s a lesser art than painting,” the boy said. “Painting surpasses all human works because it contains so many subtle possibilities. Sculpture lacks many of painting’s natural parts, and can’t show transparent or luminous or shining bodies, as a painting can.”

  “Then let’s go to the chapels in Santa Croce to look at Giotto’s frescoes. That’s beauty!”

  THREE DAYS LATER Leonardo and I rode over together to Careggi for the dinner at the Villa Medici. My caretakers’ tall second son Neri rode with us. I’d asked Neri to accompany us, thinking it prudent to have a strong shoulder at my back during the calcio game, even if it was only an untutored peasant shoulder. My own experience had taught me that a man’s station in life did not decide his value.

  It was a brilliant June morning, cloudless, with a breeze ruffling the lavender in the Tuscan fields. We rode over the rolling hills, past orderly vineyards and groves of silver-green olive trees and fragrant cypress stands. We saw men working, but none called out to us; the plague made everyone fearful of strangers, as it always had. I brought with me a falcon I’d been given by an old condottiere with whom I’d fought in a few campaigns. The gruff old soldier was Frankish, not Florentine, but he’d retired to the Tuscan countryside after hearing me describe it. When I said I needed a gift worthy of a king, he’d almost refused to take my money. I insisted. He was, after all, retired, and he’d need the funds. So he’d sold me the finest peregrine falcon from his mews, a handsome, mannerly largewing who easily let herself be hooded. Then we were off to present the bird to Lorenzo de’ Medici.

  Leonardo rode in front of me, wearing the glove, with the jess securing the bird to his hand. He was thrilled to have this task and, between cooing at the bird and praising her, he urged me to canter the horse. I complied and he shrieked with delight. Ginori’s stride lengthened out and his shoulder flexed around a turn, and we were flying over the hills toward the Villa Medici.

  We arrived in Careggi and trotted around a massing of carriages filled with chattering women. We came to a stop in a throng of horses with plaited manes and tails and men dismounting. A tall, baleful magistrate was checking people for signs of the plague. He allowed us in with a wave, and a servant appeared to take Ginori and Neri’s horse.

  “Luca Bastardo, the guest of honor.” Lorenzo’s high, nasal voice hailed me. “Welcome!” He strode through a laughing group of men who parted respectfully for him; at fifteen, he already had an air of command to which other men deferred. He approached us with his black hair swinging and his strongly featured face lit with pleasure. Or it seemed thus, though I suspected that nothing was ever as it seemed with Lorenzo.

  “Signore,” I said, with a slight bow. Lorenzo laughed and embraced me warmly.

  “You are an old family friend, Nonno loves you, you can’t think I would let you get away with such a tepid greeting! And who is this young rascal with the fancy bird on his gauntlet?” Lorenzo said, stepping back to examine Leonardo. His face went still at the sight of Leonardo’s beauty, a typical reaction. The fear that glittered briefly in Lorenzo’s eyes was not typical, however. I wondered what the fear was about.

  Leonardo smiled serenely at Lorenzo; there was seldom fear in Leonardo, just calm acceptance. “You’re going to be very important. You will lead the world,” Leonardo said.

  Lorenzo did a double take. “Has Nonno met you, boy? I shall bring you in to the family.”

  “Certainly.” Leonardo nodded. “I am Leonardo, son of Ser Piero da Vinci,” he said, with great gravity. “This is a gift for you from my professore, Luca Bastardo.” He held the bird toward Lorenzo, whose eyes glowed. Lorenzo seemed to stop breathing as he focused on the bird. He untwisted the jess and then loosed the falcon’s hood with a quick practiced flick of his fingers. Then he took Leonardo’s hand in his and cast off the bird. She soared up into the sky. A hush fell over the crowd as men turned their faces upward to watch. She circled high above the hills, a dark speck against the sun, her form outlined in a thin line of violet radiance. I thought that’s what my spirit must have looked like, all those years ago when I travele
d to see Giotto’s paintings while I was working at Silvano’s, though I was not the predator then, but the prey. Suddenly the falcon tucked her wings and dove. Her silhouette grew larger and larger at breathtaking speed, until she slammed into something on the ground on a hill at some distance from the villa. A cheer went up and everyone raced toward the landing site.

  “A hare!” cried Lorenzo, who naturally sprinted past everyone else to be in the lead. “A hare! Bravo!” yelled several voices. Leonardo ran to Lorenzo, who took the glove from the boy and retrieved the bird. I joined them, pushing my way through the throng of spectators.

  “We need meat for this sweet beauty,” Lorenzo crooned. His hair was askew and he was breathing hard. I slipped my dagger out of its holster and held it by its tip to offer to Lorenzo. He laughed and tossed the hare to me. “Cut her a piece, then,” he said. “You’re not a man who fears blood and guts!” I shrugged and slit open the hare at its belly.

  “Now, professore, if you cut delicately, you can see the thin membrane that separates the skin from the innards,” Leonardo clucked at me, sounding like an old professore himself. “Don’t hack at it. Gently, the insides are a marvel to see, nature’s own machine!”

  I cast a jaundiced eye on him and asked sotto voce, “Who’s the teacher here, boy?” He giggled. I cut out the hare’s intestines and tossed a chunk of bloody meat to Lorenzo, who fed it to the peregrine falcon.

  “A worthy gift,” he said, bowing his head to me. “A gift fit for a king. I accept with pleasure!” But his eyes were as fierce as the falcon’s and I knew, even if I had passed the first test of responding to the saddle he’d given me, that he was not done testing me.

  “Don’t waste the hare. Give it to your servants for a stew,” I suggested. He laughed with high good spirits and indicated the Moorish man. I threw the hare to him, and he bowed.