by Ann Hood
“Whoa!” Felix said. “Ten o’clock? I don’t think—”
But Sandro and Maisie had already moved away from him.
“Um, Maisie?” Felix called.
But his sister didn’t even bother to turn around. She had her head tilted up to catch every obnoxious word Sandro Botticelli said to her.
Felix stood in the crowd in the Piazza della Signoria and watched until his sister and Sandro were nothing more than tiny specks of color in the fading Tuscan light.
CHAPTER 7
IN VERROCCHIO’S STUDIO
“Boy,” Felix heard someone call to him, “why are you dressed that way?”
Dejected, Felix stopped walking and looked in the direction from which the voice had come.
After Maisie took off with Sandro, Felix stood in the piazza, unsure of what to do or where to go. He was tired. He was hungry. And he was angry. Eventually, he started to aimlessly wander the narrow twisty alleys of the city.
“Are you from far away?” the boy behind the voice asked.
Unlike Sandro and his mocking voice, this boy seemed genuinely curious. His eyes were dark and very intense, and he wore a thoughtful, curious expression on his face.
“Yes,” Felix admitted. “Very far away.”
“You are a traveler!” the boy said, impressed.
“Yes,” Felix said again.
“Then you must be weary?”
Felix nodded.
“And hungry?”
“Oh, yes,” Felix said.
The boy broke into a grin. “Then come inside and share my meal with me.”
He opened the door wider to allow Felix to follow through it.
“It isn’t much,” he said apologetically. “I’ve been working on this painting, and I lost track of time.”
Felix studied the unfinished painting, a large canvas covered with what looked like religious figures—angels and saints and the like.
“I’m satisfied with the background,” the boy said, pointing to rocks jutting from a brown mountain stream.
“I don’t know much about painting,” Felix said, “but that looks really good. Realistic,” he added.
“Yes,” the boy said, his eyes still on the painting.
“My father is a painter,” Felix said, feeling homesick. “He studied here, in Florence.”
“Then I must know him! With whom did he apprentice?”
Realizing what a mistake it had been to say something like that, Felix just shrugged. “It was a long time ago.”
“Tell me his name,” the boy said.
“Jacob Robbins,” Felix said, feeling his cheeks grow warm.
The boy frowned. “I have never heard such a name. Robbins?”
“It’s English, I think,” Felix offered, hoping they could just change the subject.
“English?” the boy said, surprised. “Have you come from England?”
Felix shook his head. “It’s complicated,” he said.
The boy studied Felix’s face carefully.
“Ah,” he said at last, “I promised you some food, didn’t I?”
He disappeared out of the room for what seemed a very long time, and Felix took the opportunity to look around the studio. The place smelled bad, like oil burning and food cooking, not a good combination. Blank canvases leaned against the wall, and drawings covered a table that reminded Felix of a drafting table. Felix picked up one of the drawings and gasped, surprised.
In pen and ink, someone—maybe this very boy?—had drawn what looked like early airplanes.
“My flying machines,” the boy said, startling Felix.
“Oh,” Felix said. Flying machines? In the fifteenth century?
“I spend many afternoons and evenings at dusk studying birds and bats,” the boy said eagerly. “According to the laws of mathematics, the bird is an instrument equipped to lift off.”
His hands, held together like two wings, slowly rose into the air in front of Felix.
“I say, then man has the power to reproduce an instrument like this with all its movements. What do you say?”
“I say yes,” Felix agreed, nodding. “Absolutely.”
“But how?” the boy said, studying his own drawings briefly before slapping his forehead with the palm of his hand. “Our supper!”
The room had no chairs, just benches to sit on. Felix slid onto one across from the boy, who ladled vegetable soup into a bowl for Felix, and then for himself. He slid a wooden board covered with slices of thickly cut bread in front of Felix.
“This soup is my own recipe,” he told Felix. “You see, I’ve been a vegetarian since I was a small boy, so I often cook my own meals. I like experimenting with different herbs and spices.”
Felix tasted the soup. “It’s delicious!” he pronounced, and eagerly ate more, dipping the hard saltless bread into the rich broth.
“I’ll give you the recipe if you like,” the boy said eagerly.
“That would be great,” Felix said, his mouth full of soup and bread.
“I suppose that growing up on a farm, I developed a special relationship with animals, and I can’t imagine eating them.”
“We have a dog,” Felix said. “A big shaggy thing named James Ferocious.”
The boy laughed. “Is he? Ferocious?”
“The opposite!” Felix said.
Felix watched as the boy began to eat, holding his utensil with his left hand. Felix’s father was left- handed, too, and he almost commented on this similarity. But he didn’t want the boy to start asking questions again, so he ate instead, in silence, savoring the delicious vegetable soup.
“I noticed that you’re interested in the fact that I’m left-handed,” the boy said.
Felix blushed. “Sorry I was staring.”
“It’s not a good trait here. Some people think it’s the sign of the devil.”
“Not me!” Felix protested. “My father’s left- handed!”
“You know, many Florentines believe that studying the past helps with the present. But I believe we learn from observation. Like the way you were observing me,” the boy continued between bites. “What theories did you come up with watching me?”
“Well,” Felix said thoughtfully, “I saw that you are left-handed like my father, and since he’s an artist, too, I wondered if maybe being left-handed is something many artists have in common.”
The boy nodded. “Interesting,” he said.
“Like you observing birds to understand their flight patterns.”
“I don’t just observe the flight pattern of birds. I observe all of nature. The movement of water, the arrangement of leaves on a stem. For example,” he said, tapping the table, “I spend much of my time alone, in the mountains, to observe nature. There, I found fossils, shells and fish and coral, all in the mountains, far from the sea. I asked myself, How did these get here?”
He looked at Felix, seeming to wait for an answer.
“I don’t know,” Felix said. “Maybe someone brought them there?”
“Aha! Someone? Or something?”
Before Felix could respond, the boy said in disbelief, “Do you know that the popular theory is that these fossils floated up the mountain during the Great Flood? Which is scientifically impossible.”
He shook his head. “These things are too heavy to float up,” the boy said. “They’re too heavy to float at all!”
“So, then, how did they get there?” Felix asked.
Without thinking, he helped himself to more soup. The boy didn’t even seem to notice.
“The rock that formed that mountain,” the boy said, his eyes ablaze with excitement at his theory, “must have once been at the bottom of the ocean. The ocean receded, leaving the fossils behind.”
“Makes sense,” Felix said, wishing science was always explained s
o clearly.
“Not long ago,” the boy said, forgetting his dinner, “I was boiling water and watching the lid on the pot jump up and down. I asked myself, Why does a pot lid jump like that when water boils?”
He looked at Felix expectantly.
“I think . . . ,” Felix said hesitantly, trying to remember this very thing from science class. Something happened to water when it boiled. But what was it?
“I thought water must expand when it turned to steam,” the boy said.
That sounded possible. “That’s right, I think,” Felix said.
“That’s right, I know,” the boy said, satisfied without being smug. “I made a glass cylinder, put water and a piston inside it, then brought the water to a boil and measured how far the piston rose.” He leaned back slightly. “The water did indeed expand.”
“Wow,” Felix said, impressed.
“That is why my angel is not yet painted,” the boy said, pointing at the big half-finished canvas.
“I should probably go and let you get back to work,” Felix said, resisting the urge to lick his bowl.
“Where are you going?”
“Well, I have to go meet my sister,” Felix said.
“And then? Where are you staying? I so enjoyed talking with you that I’d like to see you again.”
Felix considered what to say. Finally, he opted to tell the truth.
“We haven’t found a place to stay,” he told the boy.
“But it’s almost Carnival! Every room in Florence is taken!”
“We’ll figure something out,” Felix said.
The boy’s face wrinkled with worry, but almost as quickly he brightened.
“You’ll stay here!” he said.
“Here?”
“Yes, yes. Go and get your sister and bring her back here.”
“Well . . .”
“And tomorrow I’ll take you to the mountains,” the boy said. “I have been thinking a lot about what happens when I throw a pebble into the pond there, and I have some theories I’d like to share with you.”
“All right, then,” Felix said, happy now. “I’ll go and get Maisie and bring her back . . . Where am I exactly?”
The boy laughed. “This is the artist Verrocchio’s studio. He has many apprentices, so there are always beds for more.”
“Verrocchio’s studio,” Felix repeated.
“Ask anyone,” the boy said. “He is one of the most famous artists in Florence.”
He pointed again to the unfinished painting.
“That’s his painting, in fact.”
“But I thought you were painting it,” Felix said, confused.
The boy laughed. “Surely your father doesn’t do all of his painting himself, does he? The renowned artists have their apprentices do the work, too.”
“They do?”
“Yes, yes. Of course.” His eyes settled on the painting again, and he sighed.
“Thank you for letting us stay here,” Felix said. “I’ll be back with Maisie soon.”
“Do you see that palazzo?” Sandro asked Maisie.
She looked up at the giant mansion, the light of oil lamps illuminating the windows and casting them in a golden glow.
“That is the home where the woman I love lives,” he said with fierce intensity.
“The what?” Maisie said, just as fiercely.
“Simonetta Vespucci,” Sandro hissed.
“You’re in love with someone?” Maisie demanded.
“I’m in love with her, yes. But the question should be, is she in love with me?”
“How could you invite me to . . . stroll . . . if you have a girlfriend?” Maisie said, refusing to let the hot tears that had sprung to her eyes fall.
“What?” Sandro said. “Simonetta isn’t my girlfriend! She’s married.” He added with disgust, “To a nobleman.”
“You’re in love with someone who’s married?” Maisie said, rolling her eyes.
“Simonetta Vespucci,” Sandro said, gazing longingly at one of the windows, “is the most beautiful woman in Florence. No! Florence and beyond!”
“Does she put that gross stuff with the beans and milk on her face, and dye her hair three times a week?” Maisie said, hoping he caught her sarcasm.
But Sandro seemed to have forgotten about her.
“Every night I come here and stand beneath her window, hoping for a glimpse of her. Just one glimpse is enough,” he said.
“That’s ridiculous,” Maisie said.
“It is not!”
“You aren’t going to marry her no matter how many glimpses you catch, if she’s already got a husband. A rich husband at that,” Maisie said, wanting to make him feel bad. He had hurt her feelings, and now she wanted to hurt his.
But Sandro only laughed.
“Married? I will never get married,” he said with great assurance. “The prospect of marriage gives me nightmares. Love, on the other hand . . .”
He shrugged and sighed and gazed back up at the window.
“How long are we going to stand here, anyway?” Maisie said.
But Sandro appeared to not hear her. Instead, he took a few steps closer to the palazzo, his head tilted upward.
Maisie sighed, loud enough to be sure he heard her. But he didn’t turn around. In fact, he took even more steps toward the palazzo.
Maisie followed his gaze up to the window, backlit in a yellowish glow from the oil lamps. There, a woman stood, staring out at them. Or, Maisie thought, at Sandro. Her blond hair seemed to begin far back on her head, revealing a pale white high forehead above her ivory face. She wore some kind of velvet dress with what looked like embroidery on it and long puffy sleeves.
“Simonetta,” Sandro said softly.
As if she heard him, Simonetta tilted her head and smiled a small smile.
“Simonetta!” Sandro said again, louder, his arms opening wide.
Simonetta lifted one small hand and waved ever so slightly.
Sandro, bursting with joy, lifted his arms toward her as if he could hug her from this great distance.
But Simonetta slowly drew a curtain, hiding herself from him. For a moment, her shadow remained, and then it, too, disappeared.
Sandro dropped to his knees.
“Such pain!” he moaned. “She’s stabbed me in the heart with that one small action.”
Maisie glanced around, embarrassed. “Get up,” she whispered, trying unsuccessfully to pull him to his feet.
Sandro grew even more dramatic, dropping his head lower and banging his palms on the cobblestone street.
“Such love!” he said.
“Sandro,” Maisie pleaded, “stop being so dramatic.”
Slowly, he lifted his head, revealing tearstained cheeks and eyes glistening in the evening light.
“Stop?” he repeated in disbelief. “How can one stop loving the love of his life?”
“But she’s married,” Maisie reminded him.
She couldn’t believe none of the passersby stopped to stare at this guy kneeling in the street and carrying on like this. But no one did.
“The heart doesn’t understand such obstacles,” Sandro said, his voice stronger. “The heart knows what it knows.”
“People do stop loving the love of their lives, by the way,” Maisie said, thinking of her parents. They had been so in love that she and Felix used to ask them to stop holding hands in public. Once, her father told her that when he met her mother, his heart went boom.
“Sometimes,” she continued, “your heart goes boom at first, and then it just goes back to regular.”
“No,” Sandro said, shaking his head sadly. “I will love Simonetta until the day I die.”
“My parents said that, too,” Maisie said, losing her patience with Sandro’s overly
romantic notions. “They promised to love each other in sickness and in health, for better or worse. But instead, they fell out of love and got divorced.”
“This is terrible, Maisie!” Sandro said, jumping to his feet. His eyes glowed with great passion. “Something is wrong with what you say. Love is endless. Love is . . . eternal!”
“Then how do you explain my parents?” she said, equally passionate.
“They didn’t love each other in the first place,” Sandro said firmly. “That is the only explanation.”
“They held hands all the time!” Maisie said, her hands on her hips as if she were preparing for a fight. “They sang together!”
Sandro pulled her hands from her hips and held them in his calloused ones.
“You must not do this,” he said, looking her right in the eyes. “You must believe in love, and you must believe that no matter what happened to your parents, love is eternal.”
Maisie opened her mouth to protest, but stopped. This sounded very much like a lesson, like something she and Felix needed to know. Was the seal of the giglio meant for Sandro Botticelli?
She freed her hands from his and reached into her pocket, pulling out the gold seal.
“Sandro,” she said, opening one of his hands and placing the seal in it, “this is for you.”
Puzzled, he looked down at what she’d placed in his hand.
“What is this?” he asked.
“For letters,” Maisie said. “You know, you drip hot wax on the back and then stamp it with this seal.”
Sandro held the seal up closer to better examine it.
“Why would I want this?” he asked finally.
“That’s the symbol of Florence,” Maisie explained.
“I know what it is,” he said. “I just don’t need it.”
He handed it back to her.
Maisie hesitated. If Sandro didn’t want it, then it wasn’t intended for him.
“Are you sure?” she asked.
“Absolutely,” he said.
Resigned, Maisie put the seal back in her pocket.
“Shall we walk some more?” Sandro suggested.
“What about Simonetta?”
“She won’t appear again, I’m afraid. I’m lucky if I glimpse her once. Twice? Impossible.”
