The Competition

by Donna Russo Morin

  Mattea heard Natasia’s whimpers. Her own fear was one thing, that of her innocent friend quite another. She bit the rancid flesh muzzling her mouth.

  The foul man yipped and pulled his hand away.

  Mattea kicked him.

  He yelped again, jumping away, out of range, as far as he could without losing his hold.

  Natasia slid to the ground; the tall man still clenched her.

  Mattea twisted her arms up and out, releasing the older man’s final hold upon her.

  “Natasia!” she cried as she ran to her, dropped to the ground beside her. Her once-abductor following but not attempting to regain his hold.

  “You have to stop. You know not what you do, what it will do if you continue.” The man holding Natasia squatted down beside her, his venomous words spittling their faces with phlegm.

  Mattea brought a fist down upon one of his arms, again and again, hoping to dislodge it from Natasia. She hammered a nail that would not plunge.

  “It is only a painting, a fresco, it hurts no one!” she shouted as she struck.

  “Shut your mouth,” he snapped, without taking his glare off Natasia. “This has nothing to do with you or the stupid fresco.”

  “These men are too powerful.” These words were for Natasia; he leaned ever closer to her. “You cannot fight them on this. You will not win.”

  “What is he talking about, Natasia?” Mattea cried, still pounding on the man’s arm. “What—”

  From the darkness to her right, deeper into the alleyway, came another sound, a shuffling. She turned, she saw it, she saw the shape of a person, though man or woman she could not tell.

  “I care not for their power,” Natasia screamed at the man, a vanquisher aflame. Her words, her vehemence, shocked Mattea as well as her captive.

  Mattea’s mind tumbled. What is she saying? What is she doing? Who is this man?

  Her head swiveled.

  The shuffling, it came again, closer.

  “Stay back,” Mattea yelled, too late. The form was but a few feet away now. Scoundrels surrounded them; or so it seemed.

  We are lost, came the thought, on the heels of others, on the exasperation she felt. Why me? Why is it always me? First with Isabetta, now with…

  The dagger hit her hand as the scrapping of metal upon stone pummeled her ear. It was her answer.

  “Take it, Mattea.”

  She heard a voice, but not just any voice. It was the voice from her dreams.

  “Mattea!” the voice nagged her into action.

  Mattea reached down. Her fingers grasped the hilt of the dagger. Just the feel of it brought her out of her paralytic shock, stopped her from crying out his name. For an instant, she closed her eyes, found the other her, the one who, after her mother slept, practiced, dagger in hand. She was again the one who craved the power of the steel.

  “Now, Mattea! Now!” the harsh whisper commanded. She obeyed.

  Mattea jumped up, pulled the short man who hovered about them not away, but toward her, pounding his chest against hers. The move set him off kilter. Just as she wanted. She controlled his body now; his balance was in her command. The hand without the dagger shoved him backward.

  Beside her, somewhere in the dark, came the grunts and thwacks of fighting. From below her rose Natasia’s whimpers.

  Mattea sucked in her breath, shut out the sounds. All she heard, all she saw, was the man before her. A man she had to stop.

  With another push, Mattea dropped into a crouch, swinging her right leg beneath him, hitting his ankles.

  He fell to the ground, his body thudding upon the stone.

  Mattea kicked out her skirts, straddling him, dropping on his chest. Leaning forward, she pressed the edge of the dagger against his throat; put her face an inch from his.

  “Run. Run now or die. Return, ever, and you will die.”

  She kept the dagger to his throat as she rose, pulling him up with her by his ragged doublet, letting him see the bloodlust in her eyes.

  A scream rent the air beside them, the pain of it even louder. It was not the voice she knew and loved. It was the other; that was all that mattered. In that moment, she had to stay on this man.

  “Do you wish to die?” she menaced the man frozen by the blade at his throat. Mattea pressed harder, breaking the skin, drawing blood; her threat was real, no matter that it came from a woman.

  “No,” he whined, not daring to shake his head.

  “Then run,” Mattea commanded, “run and tell any others the same fate awaits them.”

  She lifted the blade, barely an inch, and he was gone. Her glare stayed on him, until he turned the corner out of her sight. She listened until she could no longer hear his frantic footfalls.

  Mattea swiveled round, finding Natasia still huddled at the base of the wall, sobbing but safe.

  “You are all right? You are unhurt?”

  Natasia nodded, wiping the tears from her grimy face, looking at Mattea with fire in her eyes. “I will not stop.”

  Mattea felt her lips spread, felt admiration for Natasia’s strength, understanding it.

  “I know not what you do, Natasia, nor will I try to dissuade you of it. But you will tell us all.”

  Natasia only nodded again.

  Her friend secure, Mattea jumped back up, spinning round.

  The images bombarded her hard and fast: the dead man on the ground, the fatal wound to his gut spilling his lifeblood. The man standing above him, gasping for breath. The man she loved.

  Mattea threw herself into Andreano’s arms. “You are here. You are here.”

  “I am always with you,” he whispered as his lips lowered to hers, softly at first, a touch of love, then growing harder, the agony of need.

  “What goes on there?” A man’s voice came out of the darkness at the end of the alley at the Piazza Santo Spirito. Someone must have heard the ruckus in the quiet, wealthy neighborhood. Someone drew near hesitantly.

  Andreano tore Mattea away from him, tearing both their hearts apart. “I must go.”

  She shook her head, refusing his words. “Stay. Oh please stay.”

  “Soon, my love, my life. Soon.” He kissed her once more, tasted her, a taste to last. He pulled away from her even as he promised to return.

  Mattea’s arms, still outstretched, were now empty, as her heart was once more. She watched him turn, watched him run, his raven hair unfurling behind him.

  He was gone.

  Once more she stood in the void without him.

  “Mattea,” Natasia’s tender whisper came from her side. “We must go, Mattea. We cannot be seen near him…near that.” She nodded toward the body on the ground.

  Without a word, Mattea took the hand ready for hers. Together, they ran.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  “To hear the tune, one must pay the piper.”

  It mattered little that he had approached the castle upon this very same road many times. Each time he shivered as he drew ever near.

  Leonardo had waited as long as he could to make an appearance in Milan. The last letter from Ludovico Sforza had made it plain he would wait no longer. Leonardo’s horse crested the hill, and before him, the great peak of the Torre del Filarete poked at the sky, rising seventy meters tall.

  “There is nothing for it,” Leonardo mumbled, as much to himself as to his horse. He spurred it forward toward a challenge of his own making, one he must now manipulate to his advantage. The unpaved road brought him to the very door of the tower. Before he could dismount, liveried servants appeared, to relieve him of his horse, to bring him to Ludovico. It was nothing if not a well-run castle.

  They walked him through the tower, through the Courtyard of Arms, without a word. Leonardo took nothing from their silence; they were always silent, as silent as the stone sarcophagi from the Roman era forever standing guard along the courtyard’s perimeter. The courtyard spoke far louder, echoing the past. Its shape and mighty appearance begged the castle’s military genesis to be remembered.<
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  The first duke of Milan, Galeazzo II Visconti, ordered the construction of what was then to be a simple fortress. By the time of its completion in 1368, it consisted of four walls, each 180 meters long, with a square tower guarding each corner. Galeazzo’s successors, Gian Galeazzo and Filippo Maria, redesigned the structure, converting the military stronghold into a palatial home. Neither man was beloved by his people. Both died without heirs. The people had their say, razing the palace to the ground. Their mistake was turning to Francesco Sforza for help.

  Within three years, Francesco ruled Milan, declaring himself duke.

  One of his first acts was to rebuild the castle. While much in keeping with the original design, Francesco had added the tall central tower and two, smaller round ones to flank it.

  “Leonardo, you live!”

  The cry resounded and repeated, tossed against the curved coffers of the surrounding, columned walkway.

  Ludovico Sforza marched toward him. Leonardo dropped into a bow.

  “Buongiorno, duca,” Leonardo greeted him. “And to you, giovane duca.”

  Ludovico looked at his nephew as the thorny crown Ludovico wore, no matter his attempts at disguising it. A duke in his own right, Ludovico was but regent of Milan, in the service of his nephew, Gian Galeazzo Sforza. A boy of seven when his father passed, the cherubic child with the long curly locks of strawberry gold was quickly ascending to the height of both his deceased father and his uncle.

  “It is a good day, Leonardo,” Ludovico countered, “for it at last finds you here.” The ruggedly built, handsome man showed little of his welcome upon his swarthy face.

  “I came as requested, signore,” was Leonardo’s only reply. If the man wanted more, he must ask for it.

  Round, almost black eyes studied the artist. Thick brows rose, hid beneath a copious cap of straight black hair, rounded under at their ends.

  “Come, Leonardo, let us show you our progress.”

  Thus began a tour of all the rooms under renovation, nearly all in the vast castle. With the full power of Milan in his hands, if only temporarily, Sforza was determined to bring the castle into its true magnificence, with the full power of the rebirth of the arts and architecture that were at his disposal. Unlike the more military-minded of his family, Ludovico cherished the arts and those who made it, architects included. Ludovico saw Leonardo as one who would assist him in transforming the castle into a palace.

  From room to room they strolled. Ludovico lectured and Gian followed quietly. It was a large castle; it was a long walk. It was his penance, and Leonardo knew it. He paid it.

  In truth, Leonardo would be false with himself if he only feigned interest. Sforza’s plans were magnificent, modern yet classical. The man laid a gauntlet before Leonardo, one he likely knew da Vinci would be hard pressed not to pick up.

  “Ah, here. I most especially wanted to show you this room,” Ludovico declared, as they entered a large, rectangular room, fully enclosed within itself.

  It was an empty space full of promise.

  “Why is that, signore?” Leonardo asked, gaze drawn upward to the pointed, vaulted ceiling, the point of each vault buttressed to the wall two stories above his head. It was the most astounding feature of the room. It was the only feature of the room. To Leonardo’s eyes, the rest looked like a blank canvas.

  The dark man with eyes of midnight stopped and pinned Leonardo with his stare.

  “This will be your room, to do with as you wish,” Ludovico asserted, with both a superior nod of his head and a convincing grin upon his lips.

  “I…grazie, signore,” Leonardo’s tongue twisted, as did his mind. What he could do with such a room. What he could do in such a room. The images burst and flashed in his mind. “I am sure you will find the work pleasing.”

  Ludovico strolled away from him, his footstep echoing sharply in the empty cavern.

  “I am sure I will.” Ludovico spun back. “But you must be here to do it. You must be in Milan to do all we hope you will do, all we know you are capable of doing.”

  There it was. A veiled threat, perhaps. A dangling treasure on the long stick of Milan, most certainly.

  Leonardo knew nothing but the truth would suffice. He told it, the truth of what he was doing and for whom he was doing it.

  Ludovico studied him for the length of a fortnight, or so it felt.

  “It is a new world, Leonardo,” he at last murmured, and set to pacing the large room once more. “How much longer?”

  “A month’s time, perhaps a bit more,” Leonardo responded. It would have to be, as that was all the time remaining for the women to finish the fresco in keeping with the contract’s specifications.

  Ludovico returned to the artist’s side, a breath away.

  “I am a believer in change, in evolere. But not to my own detriment.” He patted da Vinci’s shoulder. “A month, no more, sì?”

  Leonardo once more let his gaze wander the room, and then fly out of it to include the castle, all of Milan. Possibilities flew with it. There was so much he could do in Milan; there was so much to do. He could not let it, and them, slip from his grasp.

  Leonardo dipped his head.

  “Sì, duca. A month.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  “Burdens, once shared, are no longer as heavy.”

  Verrocchio slept propped against the wall on the scaffold as he had the day before, and the day before that. He stirred only when they stirred him, muttering answers to their questions, instructing with half-opened eyes but extraordinary mastery.

  The days Botticelli had been there had been very different. He stood behind each of them throughout the day, tutoring, criticizing, complimenting. They learned a great deal from each, no matter their differing approaches.

  “Tell us, Natasia,” Mattea whispered. How glad she was for Verrocchio’s snuffling slumber. She did not know what Natasia would tell them; after the events of the other night, she knew only that it must be told to the Disciples alone. How strangely she looked back at that night. They had been accosted, threatened, and yet he had been there. A curse and a blessing.

  Natasia hung her head, picking quills from a feather brush as if it held all her concern.

  “Tell us what?” Fiammetta asked from her perch upon the scaffold, nose inches from the wall as she worked a fine facial detail.

  Mattea glared at Natasia, urging her to speak, but the young woman remained mute.

  “Very well,” Mattea huffed. “As Natasia and I were leaving Tuesday evening, we were set upon by two men.”

  Urgent questions rained upon them.

  Natasia looked up at Mattea as a younger sister would an older sister who had tattled, at the women crowding around them, all work forgotten.

  “Mattea does not tell the truth,” Natasia finally spoke.

  “What? You cannot—”

  “She was not detained nor warned—only I was. Her misfortune was merely in being with me.”

  “Tell us, Natasia,” Viviana repeated Mattea’s words with quiet concern. “We can only help if we know what goes on.”

  Natasia did not lift her head; she spoke in low tones. “When I was but a girl, no more than eight or nine, I overheard my father talking to my brother. Half of what he said I did not understand; the more terrible things I did.”

  She paused. No one spoke; no one moved.

  “My father’s grandfather was proclaimed a bastard, the illegitimate son of a prominent Soderini and a woman of France.”

  Natasia plucked at the quill in her hands still. “That man, Emiliano by name, knew it was not the truth. Though his parents both died young, he knew them to be married, for they had told him so and he believed them. His belief carried him far, to France itself. There he found the papers attesting to their marriage, to his legitimacy. But when he brought them back to Florence, those in league with the great Cosimo—those sycophants beneath him—denied the authenticity of the documents, of Emiliano’s words. He demanded they listen, that someone
listened. He showed them to as many people as would see them.” Natasia looked up at her sisterhood, pain writ sharply upon her cherubic features. “They charged him with aggravated fraud. They absconded with all the documents that he, in their words, ‘flaunted about the entire city.’ They executed him when my father was but a boy of two.

  “When my father was on the cusp of manhood, he and his brother Niccolò found Emiliano’s journal. It had remained hidden for nearly two decades. In it, they read of his searching, his travels to France. It told of the documents which proved his contention.”

  Natasia laughed; the bitterness clung to it spitefully. “My uncle’s reaction was fierce. And of this some of you may know.”

  “He stopped a plan to assassinate Rodrigo Santoro.” Fiammetta told what she knew; she knew the truth.

  Natasia nodded. “He did, for Rodrigo’s father was one of the few who believed Emiliano, who tried to help him.” She shrugged. “In the end, it helped my uncle, and my father too to an extent. The Medici once more welcomed them. My uncle has risen higher, being far more ambitious.”

  “But your father has not forgotten,” Viviana thought aloud.

  “Nor forgiven,” Natasia sniffed. “For he was—we all are—looked upon as descendants of a bastard. One who lost his life to repair the family name. My father has always craved the justice that his nonno died for.”

  Mattea sat down on the floor beside Natasia. “Is that what you are doing? Is that what this is all about? Are you continuing the work of your great-grandfather?”

  Natasia sat taller, straighter. “It is. I had to. It is the only way the Lord will allow a baby to grow in my womb.”

  “Oh Natasia,” Patrizia groaned. “Why would you—”

  “I have lost two already.” The scathing words negated all others. The women sagged with her burden of sadness. “I have to prove we are not bastards, or the progeny of a bastard. I cannot—God will not allow me—to bring another into this world as such.”

  “Uffa!” Isabetta bellowed. Caught hold of her impatience, and said more kindly, “Do you truly believe God is so cruel?”