He cut me off with a gesture. "I see you have a wound there that prevents your fighting. But you can travel, or you would not be here. So take yourself to Italy again, and find her. It would have been wiser for you to have stayed there last year and seen to the matter. She is your wife now, and I hold you responsible."
Such are the ways of kings, and the difficulties of trying as loyally as possible to serve them. We dissolve now to a shot of me galloping madly right-to-left over the Alps. No, of course in actuality it was not that quickly done. This time the king was not so eager to provide me with letters and with gold. But eventually he had to admit that if I were to go, it were best that I succeed; and if he wanted me to succeed he had better give me all the help he could; and by the time he was convinced of this my leg was better, well enough to try the mountains.
Officially, you understand, I was all this time still imprisoned in the Tower of Solomon. And in truth there were a few moments during this epoch when I might have been tempted to settle for a return to my comfortable cell. But in fact, by the early summer of 1465, I was again on my way south to Italy. This time I was traveling as an officially nameless member of a delegation from Matthias to the new Pope, Paul II. Leader of the delegation was Janus Pannonius, who was what is now called a humanist, and also a poet, of about my own age. Pannonius and his uncle Janus Vitez had long been on good terms with their ruling kinsmen, the Hunyadi family. In a few years both Januses were to be entranced by an ill-starred conspirator into a revolutionary intrigue, and Matthias was going to have them killed; but in 1465 their prospects were still bright.
By the summer of that year, Matthias had somewhat revised his earlier thinking on the subject of papal crusades. If he, the King of Hungary, was going to have to make a career out of fighting the Turks anyway, then he might as well have all the help he could scrape up, well organized or not. Pannonius and his delegation were in fact going to Rome to plead for a new Crusade.
Having gone to school in Italy as a youth, Pannonius spoke the language well, and with his help I brushed up on my own Italian during the journey. En route our leader entertained the rest of the party with songs of his own devising, verses about the difficulties of politics, the perils of dealing with the infernal Turks, and the pains of life's personal tragedies. When he warbled about a cuckolded husband, he seemed oblivious to the fact that I gave him close attention, and so I wisely restrained my reactions, judging that my own history was not known amongst my companions. All in all, Pannonius blended show business and politics in a way you might have thought startlingly modern, could you have heard and understood his yodelings. For my part, at the time I was little in sympathy with either art. And my mind was filled with affairs more personally important. When at last our little party reached Florence, I quietly dropped out.
* * *
Piero had grown a little goutier since I had seen him last, and a little older under the burden of his new responsibilities as head of Medici Enterprises. Still he welcomed me more warmly than my own liege lord had at Buda. I think it was during this second trip that I first began to fall in love with Italy. And the merchant chief listened sympathetically to my problems. Yes, he had been instructing his people to keep their eyes and ears open everywhere they went. But unfortunately he still had nothing to report of Helen's whereabouts. She had perhaps, he thought, gone very far away this time.
I had to agree, though in the past she had demonstrated an affinity for Italy. And perhaps, I thought to myself, this time the Medici were really not so very interested in trying to help me find her. Well, they could scarcely be blamed. They had done much for me already, and they certainly had plenty of other projects to keep them busy, for example trying to make a living, and keeping a complex city-state going in a difficult world. It must have been plain to them that my marriage was a lost cause, even if my bride could be found again; and that Matthias was unlikely to be pleased however the situation turned out now.
As he strolled beside me through the cavernous rooms of the palazzo Medici, Piero gripped my sleeve in a friendly way and gave it a little shake. "Have you spoken to Morsino yet, friend Ladislao? It may be that he has heard something that we have not."
"I doubt it. But I will talk to him. And one thing more, Signore Piero, if I may try your patience. Remember the painting that I had sent to you from Pisa? Would it be possible to have some of your people look at it before they depart on trading missions." I said this partly, I suppose, to impress Piero with my unflagging determination.
He nodded vigorously, as if pleased to be bothered with still one more request. Probably he had little intention of honoring it anyway. "The painting is very beautiful, and I thank you for its loan. I have kept it where my eyes can fall on it every day." And with a little beckoning gesture he led me into another room and showed me the Magdalen above a fireplace. We both regarded it for a few moments in silence.
Then Piero went on: "I will have it moved to your room, if you like . . . of course you are going to stay with us, while you are in Florence."
"Thank you, Signore Piero. Your hospitality and generosity are more than a poor soldier like myself deserves." I was about to add that I had no wish to find the painting gazing at me each morning when I awoke, when a new idea struck me, what I considered to be a really clever thought. "And yes, I would like it in my room. Though I trust that my stay will not be long."
To implement my new brainstorm, I paid a visit that very day to Verrocchio's studio. This time I went alone—Lorenzo, I should perhaps explain, was out of town on business at the time.
The studio had been transformed in the year since I had seen it last. There were at least half a dozen apprentices in sight, all of them busy shoveling sand, mixing and grinding pigments, hammering boards together into a platform, sweating and sending up a haze of dust from all the drudgery that lies behind serene fine art in metal and stone and paint. None of these youths recognized me, nor I them. But one went promptly to inform the master of my arrival, and returned in a moment to lead me to another room.
The very structure of the building had been changed considerably during the last twelve-month. A neighbor's stable had been taken over, and built into the growing complex. Raw timber walled some rooms completely new. But though the place was much enlarged, it was still crowded by its new production; business was booming tremendously.
I was conducted to where Verrocchio was at work, in one of the newly added rooms. The master, who had not changed noticeably, was not really glad to see me, though he made me welcome with effusive words. Here comes trouble, the expression on his fleshy face proclaimed. He was at work sculpting a clay figure, about half life-size, whose model, a sturdy lad wearing only a leather apron and some token bits of ancient-looking armor, stood on a small stage under the usual skylight. At a second glance I recognized this youth, altered by a year's fast growth, as the very one that I had come to see.
"Messer Verrocchio," I began, "I suppose you have seen or heard nothing of the Hungarian woman since the last time I was here?"
"Nothing. Well, that is, only that she . . ." Verrocchio broke off, looking embarrassed.
"You mean you have heard of my marital difficulties with her, and that she has run away again."
He nodded.
"Be sure and let me know if you hear more. You know where I can be reached. But it is really a painting that I have come to see you about today—a painting, and this young fellow who did it."
Verrocchio proved willing enough for me to hire away his apprentice and model for what I said would probably be a few days' work. He probably thought that his powerful patrons were still more interested in helping me than they really were, and I did not trouble to enlighten him. And so that very afternoon I was standing with Leonardo before the Magdalen in my small guest room at the palazzo Medici.
"It is only the face that I really want, you see. As many copies as you can make, drawing well, in the time that you can work for me. Here is the painting. And you must still have
the woman's face in your mind's eye, as she spent a long time posing for you."
The boy was handsome, but there was something inhuman, almost, about his eyes. If I had met him armed in the field, I should have expected him to be extremely dangerous, for reasons having nothing to do with size or training.
He said only: "Tracings could be made, if we had thin paper."
"I can get you paper, or give you money to buy some. What I must have are good likenesses of this woman. I want a man who has never seen her to be able to recognize her when he does, once he has studied one of your sketches."
Leonardo was pinning up a small sheet of paper on the small easel he had brought with him. "Yes, I think I can do that, provided the man who looks has good eyes to see."
He began to draw. I, having learned how sometimes good artisans were bothered by close observation, moved away to look out of the window into the courtyard.
"Have you ever seen the woman again in the flesh?" I asked, as casually as possible. I had not forgotten that only this young artisan's tip had enabled me to locate Helen the first time around.
"No, signore," the boy answered. But there was something in his voice that made me turn back to look at him. I found him regarding me in that calculating, almost robotic way of his. Then he added: "But I have seen Perugino since then."
"Perugino." It took me a few moments to recall where I had heard that name before. Yes, Verrocchio had spoken it, at some point during at least one of my visits to his place of business a year ago. "Perugino was the bearded apprentice, in your master's studio last summer?"
"He had shaved, the last time I saw him."
"And where was that? And when?"
"I saw him here in Florence. About six months ago. But since then I have heard that he has gone to Rome, to paint some murals in a church there. Which church I do not know." Leonardo looked at me for a moment longer, then turned back to his work.
I turned back to the window again. I found one hand, knuckles white, wrist shaking, clutching my dagger's hilt. Dolt that I was! not to have known. But still I could not believe that a king's sister could have left me for a mere artist . . .
Before my eyes in imagination, I brought the face of the bearded one, clear as my memory could focus it. Now I could remember how that countenance had looked when I first brought the rescued Helen into the studio—the very place where he had first brought her to be a model. Confused, stunned, displaying a strange mixture of emotions. Somehow I had got the impression that Perugino had first met her in some Florentine tavern. But what had Morsino said? . . . an attractive girl, of diminutive stature, recently arrived . . . in the company of a troop of traveling players, or an itinerant artist, or something of that kind . . .
And Matthias, earlier. Something about an artisan. How his sister had actually run off with one. If she could do such a thing when a Sforza wedding was in prospect, then why not as the bride of a Drakulya?
. . . and again, just after the wedding ceremony, Perugino handing her an armful of flowers. How had he looked, then? Could I trust my memory to tell me? And she...
It was still almost impossible to believe. I turned away from the window again. "Leonardo," I called softly. In my greatest angers I maintain full control of myself and my behavior. "Be plain. You are telling me that she ran off with this Perugino."
"It is nothing to me, signore. I do not wish to become involved. But yes, I think that is what happened."
"I see. And has this matter been discussed at the studio?"
He hesitated. "Not really. Not much. I think we all guessed, last year, what had happened. Perugino quit the studio a little while after you left for Pisa. But you were gone. There was no way to tell you anything. Signore Lorenzo did not come round again to the studio for a long time."
"I see." No one wanted to get involved, really. I supposed that that was natural enough.
Now I thought that the youngster was suddenly afraid of me, perhaps wishing that he had kept quiet. Still his hand sketched steadily enough. He unpinned one paper from his easel and put up another. He was working quickly, already there appeared to be several finished preliminary sketches.
I was about to speak, when I glanced down at them. To study the topmost paper better, I picked it up. It showed the essential lines of the Magdalen's face, angelically done, the key to the face captured, just as I had wished.
Again I was about to speak when the corner of another drawing, at the very bottom of the small pile, caught my eye. I pulled it out. It was every bit as well drawn, but a grotesque.
It was a male countenance, set in an expression, almost a mask, of insane rage. I needed a moment to realize that I was holding a caricature of my own face.
Chapter Fifteen
Rage augments strength, and sometimes cunning and the will as well. If one can harness it properly, and take the time to seek out tools, and improvise means, then eventually if one has eyes that see in virtual darkness, in a matter of only a few hours perhaps, the door of even a heavy wall safe can be seen swung back, with its great lock reduced to hanging wreckage. Success had been greatly aided by the ability to work on both sides of the door alternately. And now the cans of films and containers of tapes could be brought out. It was something to do, somewhere to start; and it had become necessary now to make a start at once.
Electric power to the Seabright mansion had recently been shut off, a difficulty overcome by some attention to the main. Dorlan and his wife had also departed by the morning after the bombing, which was a help.
The laboratory tucked away in the mansion's lowest level was equipped with projection devices of all kinds, and these when sworn at properly in medieval tongues were at last persuaded to function properly. The private show, sans titles, soundtrack, or any other frills, began.
At first glance the star of the show, an enormous fat man who cavorted naked with adolescents of both sexes, as in some gross parody of more conventional porn, appeared to be Ellison Seabright himself. At a second look it did not appear to be him. The monumental man in the film looked as big as Ellison and resembled him facially but was even older, with a fringe of white hair round his massive head. Now and then he could be seen casting a look toward the hidden camera that must have done the filming through one of the concealed ports in the playroom wall. It was recognizably the playroom-lounge of this very house where the action was going on. The huge old man knew without a doubt that the camera was there. He was intending to watch himself in action later, evidently thus doubling his enjoyment of these acts. Here we did not have your common garden variety of senior citizen. Mr. Thorn, no stereotype of the golden years himself, had no doubt at all that he was beholding the image of Delaunay Seabright.
The broken safe had yielded up perhaps a dozen cans of film in all, with an equal number of videotape cartridges. A sampling of three, four, five, six of these containers showed no essential variation in content, though the supporting cast appeared to be always different. With one exception. Several times the same lean, dark man of thirty or thereabouts appeared—otherwise the players were all quite young and interchangeable, coming and going like seasonal flowers in a vase.
After the sixth sample, Thorn turned off the projector and sat in darkness trying to think. He could feel that sunny daylight had come, aboveground, but that did not concern him here. His course of breaking into the safe, despite its first feeling of instinctive rightness, was proving to be of no apparent help. The sad secrets of the safe seemed to have nothing to do at all with Mary Rogers or her death. Nor did they explain why Seabright or anyone else would have any reason to want to eliminate Thorn. Nothing here to tell Thorn who was guilty, where to start a search . . .
A faint sound, aboveground, out of doors but near the house. A car had stopped.
Someone else was coming to the mansion.
* * *
There was no hurry on this job, no need to be furtive. As former butler-bodyguard in the house, the man called Brandreth still had a set of keys. If the po
lice or the FBI or reporters should be watching the place this morning, he could tell them he had been sent by Ellison Seabright to check on things, and Ellison Seabright would back him up.
Brandreth eased his car to a stop outside the iron gates, and got out to unlock them. Even before he stopped, he had noticed the other car, parked a little distance away on the other side of the road. Whoever was watching the place from over there wasn't trying to be very subtle about it. Brandreth of course would go on in, the perfectly respectable servant doing a job. Only when he was in the house and sure, very sure, that he was alone, would he get on with his real job and go to open the small hidden safe that Gliddon had told him of . . .
A couple of hours earlier, about dawn, Brandreth had met Gliddon in a small town in northern Arizona, to get keys and instructions. Brandreth had been at the door of the dingy hotel room, leaving, when Gliddon called him back. "And, listen, if you ever get any ideas about seeing what's on those tapes and films and putting them to use yourself—"
"Not me, boss. Not me."
"—then you can go right ahead and try. They're not worth a cent, get me? I'd go and take care of them myself if that was the case, even if I am supposed to be missing. They're just something that could mean trouble for whoever is found in possession of them, and Seabright tells me he wants 'em out of the house. So get 'em and dispose of 'em, and I mean thoroughly."
"I will. I—"
"How are you going to do it?"
Brandreth, with an inward sigh, leaned his large body against the doorframe. Gliddon's stare always unnerved him and he tried to take a relaxed pose in order not to show it. "Want me to bring 'em here?"
"All the way up here? No. I won't be here anyway, I have to disappear again. Just tear them up, burn them, scatter the ashes. Then stay in Phoenix, where I can get hold of you by phone. I may have another job for you soon."
Brandreth looked a question.
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