Up in Flames

by E. W. Clarke

  Cover

  Title Page

  Code Page

  Hystorian File

  Up in Flames

  Acknowledgments

  Copyright

  You’re about to uncover the secrets behind some of history’s most pivotal moments.

  And with knowledge comes a special reward.

  The seven Infinity Ring Secrets stories each contain a fragment of a code. Collect the fragments in order to assemble a complete ten-digit code. Then:

  Go to scholastic.com/infinityring.

  Click on the “Add a Book or Code” button.

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  The code fragment for this story is:

  Hystorian File #1485043011

  They don’t call them “the Dark Ages” for nothing.

  The Medieval period was a difficult time for Europe. Following the collapse of the Roman Empire in the fifth century, people lived under constant threat of invasion, warfare, famine, and disease. Many of the artistic and philosophical advances of ancient Greece and Rome were lost.

  By the late fifteenth century, however, something was starting in Florence, Italy. Under the rule of the Medici family, the city was growing into a center of art and progress and great ideas. It was the start of a new era, which would be known as the Renaissance.

  But not everyone in Florence welcomed these changes.

  MARIO WAS begging for money in the street when he met Ghirlandaio, one of Florence’s most famous painters.

  Mario didn’t know Ghirlandaio was famous. Nor did he care. He treated the man like he would anyone else on the street. He held his hands out and wore his hunger on his face. If he was lucky, he’d be able to squeeze out a tear and let it darken a line down his dirty cheek. He wanted the man to feel bad for him so that he might take pity on him.

  “Please,” Mario begged, opening his bright, young eyes wide for the man. He pressed his palms together. “Please, I am so hungry.”

  “I’ve seen you here before,” the man said to Mario.

  It wasn’t often someone spoke to the boy. He hoped that if the man was willing to speak to him, he might also be willing to part with a coin.

  “Yes, sir,” Mario said. “Every day. My family is always hungry.”

  “Your father doesn’t work?” the man asked.

  “He has another family he works for,” Mario answered.

  “I see,” said the man, nodding somberly. Then, after a moment, he asked, “Would you like a job?”

  Again, Mario was surprised. He had never had a job. He wasn’t trained to do anything. He didn’t have a father around to train him, or friends of a father to make him their apprentice. His mother did work only a woman could do, and had no friends to speak of.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” Mario told the man. “I would like to work for you, but I have no skill to offer you for your money.”

  “Yes, you do. Everyone does,” the painter said. “I saw you yesterday, sitting by that wall. You were praying. Do you remember that?”

  Mario did remember. He had sat crouched there for a long time, pretending to pray.

  He had just finished eating a loose carrot that a woman had kindly given him from her grocery bag. He had eaten it, greens and all, and then rested along the wall. Mario had known that if he wanted another carrot — and he did — he would have to go back to begging. But the boy had been tired. He had been in the streets around the market since early that morning and had gotten in two fights, protecting what he had collected for his family.

  Mario had thought about taking a nap, but he couldn’t afford to squander the crowd in the market. In an hour, there might not be a crowd, and his family would go hungry.

  Instead, Mario had chosen to crouch along the wall, his hands lifted up high as if he were actually praying. If he closed his eyes in that whole time, it was only for a moment. He hadn’t wanted passersby to think he was sleeping. He had needed them to know how desperate he was.

  “I am a painter,” explained the man. “I am in need of models who can keep still for hours at a time while I paint. I believe you can do this. And I would pay you for your time.”

  Mario could scarcely believe his ears. It was guaranteed money to simply sit still. How could he refuse?

  Mario followed the man to a church, where the painter asked him to bathe. He did as he was told, washing his hair and face and feet — and with soap! Mario knew what soap was, of course, but he didn’t often use it.

  Mario lathered his hair until his fingers wrinkled, then he stuck his whole head in a clean bucket of water, pouring it down his back and feet. Ghirlandaio had a costume set out for him, and a comb for his hair. The transformation was jarring. As Mario looked into a mirror, he thought he looked like a girl in the fancy outfit and clean black shoes, his hair pretty and straight. He looked like he’d never even walked through the market, let alone begged there.

  Mario entered the chapel, where Ghirlandaio was busy setting up a variety of brushes. There were paintings on the walls. They seemed to tell a story, but each scene was incomplete, so he couldn’t quite make out what story the artist was trying to tell.

  They were amazing to Mario, though he didn’t say anything. He was afraid of talking too much, afraid that he would say the wrong thing and anger the man.

  “Now, sit up there on the block,” the painter instructed him, spreading plaster onto a wall, then scraping it smooth with a wide, flat knife.

  Mario did everything the painter told him. He put his legs out in front of him and stared forward, keeping as still as he could. He put his hands up again in prayer. Ghirlandaio adjusted Mario’s clothes so they draped a particular way. He angled a mirror near the window so that more light shone onto the boy. And then he started painting.

  Ghirlandaio asked Mario if he was curious about the painter’s project. Mario didn’t know if he was allowed to turn his head to look or even nod, so he simply mumbled, “Yes,” careful not to move his mouth. It made Ghirlandaio laugh.

  “You’re doing well, child,” the painter said. He explained that the Sassetti family owned the chapel, and that they were paying him to paint frescoes in their church. Frescoes, he explained, were a kind of painting where you painted straight onto wet plaster, so that when the paint and the plaster were dry, the images were actually part of the wall.

  Mario sat still as could be, desperate to earn the money he’d been promised. The man seemed to like the boy, and he talked to him kindly as he worked, explaining each of the six scenes, one of which Mario was being painted into. It was the story of a saint whom artists liked for all sorts of reasons. He had created the first manger scene, a living exhibit for which he had cast humans and animals in Biblical roles. The way Ghirlandaio described the event, it sounded like living, breathing art.

  “He called nature itself the ‘mirror of God,’” Ghirlandaio said, explaining that the saint referred to all creatures as his “brothers,” talking to the animals, preaching to them.

  His name was Saint Francis and according to the painter, he had a deep respect for poverty, so much so, that he had given away all of his wealth and told the wealthy men of his order to do the same.

  “He spent his time on the streets, too,” Ghirlandaio told the boy. “He preached to the people on the streets because he cared about them most of all.”

  Mario had always assumed that priests only cared about the people that went to church, but he didn’t say it. He liked the idea of priests caring for him, even if they had never met him.

  “Am I Saint Francis?” the boy blurted out, forgetting that he wasn’t supposed to move. He even turned to look at the paintin
g. He saw the beginnings of a face and his straight blond hair directly in the center of a blank wall.

  “No, but you have an even more interesting role,” the painter said, gesturing for Mario to keep looking straight ahead. “You’re a boy who fell from the building just outside the Palazzo Spini Feroni, but whom Saint Francis brought back to life.”

  Mario wasn’t sure if he believed that people could come back to life after they died, but he liked that he was going to be one of the people in the painting.

  Ghirlandaio didn’t talk anymore as he worked. The daylight was fading, and the man had to hurry if he was going to finish the painting before the plaster dried. Mario’s arms were tired from holding his hands up. His neck was tired from holding his head up. Even his face was tired, simply from being still for so long.

  Finally, he heard Ghirlandaio stand and walk around, looking at his work from several angles. When he was satisfied, he told Mario he was free to move. As soon as he heard that, Mario scratched his clean scalp, then rubbed his face with his clammy hands. He jumped down off the block and stretched his arms over his head with a loud yawn. The sounds he made echoed off the chapel walls.

  Ghirlandaio asked if he liked the painting, moving out of Mario’s view.

  There he was, his likeness, hovering above the altar, surrounded by blank plaster. His bright purple clothes and red stockings. The fancy black shoes. He thought of the boy who fell from the palazzo, wondering if he was looking down now from heaven — and thinking that if so, the boy was probably as happy as Mario was to be up on that wall.

  “I promised you payment,” Ghirlandaio said. “My coins are in a purse, alongside my paints. I am going to wash the paint off my hands. Feel free to take what you’re owed.”

  “Where should I leave the costume?” Mario asked, not really wanting to put back on his soiled clothes. The painter seemed confused, correcting him that the clothes were not a costume.

  “Keep the outfit, if you like,” the man instructed. “The clothes can be your payment if you’d prefer.”

  Ghirlandaio left the chapel without saying good-bye. He walked off to bathe, as he said he would, leaving his paints and purse alone with Mario. No one had ever trusted the boy before, not to his knowledge. He thought, Perhaps the man is tired, and forgot that I am a beggar.

  But the man didn’t forget. He was testing Mario. And so Ghirlandaio was very pleased when he returned to the chapel and saw that Mario had left and taken the clothes, without having taken any of the coins in his purse.

  The next day, when Ghirlandaio went to the market he found Mario there, begging again, his shirtsleeve ripped, his shoes missing.

  “They ganged up on me,” Mario told the painter when he asked what happened. “Usually I can fight them off.”

  The painter offered Mario another job, and the boy accompanied him back to the church. On their way, the painter replaced the boy’s shirt and shoes, explaining he could use a good assistant, one who could do as he was told and stay out of the way.

  When the two got to the church, a young man was already waiting for Ghirlandaio in the chapel. The two men embraced, and Ghirlandaio introduced Mario as his new assistant. The young man introduced himself as Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. The painter explained that the man was going to be the model for Saint Francis.

  “Pico is one of the bravest men Florence has ever known,” Ghirlandaio said to Mario.

  “I don’t know about that,” Pico said to the painter. “Perhaps the most reckless.”

  Mario liked Pico immediately and listened intently as the young man gave his account of traveling back from Paris, escorted by the king’s guards.

  “What did you do wrong?” Mario asked Pico, and both men looked at the boy with surprise.

  “A good assistant does as he’s told. Silently,” Ghirlandaio said to Mario, not unkindly.

  “Where’d you find this kid?” Pico asked, looking Mario up and down.

  “In the market, next to the suckling pigs,” Ghirlandaio answered, and the two men laughed.

  Mario didn’t like that they were laughing at his expense, but it was true what Ghirlandaio was saying, so he didn’t let it get to him.

  The three of them soon got to work, and Mario did exactly what he was told and nothing more, paying close attention. Eventually, he was able to guess which brush or rag or container of paint Ghirlandaio would request next. The painter remarked on how quickly Mario was learning and nodded at the boy, looking pleased.

  Not having a father around, Mario had never had a man smile at him that way, like he was proud. When the noon sun was gone and it became too dark to work, the painter dismissed Pico and Mario, and the boy promised to return early the next day.

  For weeks Mario served as the painter’s assistant, until Pico was worked into each of the scenes, and all of the frescoes were complete but one. Ghirlandaio explained that the final fresco was by far the most important, that even though the scene Mario had posed for was the clear centerpiece, the final painting would be the signature. This was because the models for the painting were special.

  “Have you heard of the Medicis?” Ghirlandaio asked Mario.

  “Of course, sir,” Mario told his employer. The Medicis were the most powerful family in Florence, if not all of Italy. If not all of Europe!

  “Lorenzo the Magnificent himself will pose for us tomorrow,” Ghirlandaio warned Mario. “As well as the owners of this chapel and church, the Sassetti family. I’ll need you to be on your best behavior.”

  Mario had been on his best behavior for as long as he could remember. Ghirlandaio hadn’t had to scold him or correct him for days. He didn’t want to disappoint him.

  The next day, when the models arrived, it was not like anything Mario had witnessed before. The models were accompanied by a legion of servants and stylists, each with their own assistants, sometimes several. By the time Mario had finished smoothing the plaster on the first portion of the wall, the chapel was full of people and the sound of their chatter echoed loudly throughout the church.

  Ghirlandaio had a desperate look on his face, as if he wanted to scream for everyone to be quiet, and yet he worked quickly and quietly, posing Lorenzo, and then the manager of the Medici Bank, Francesco Sassetti, beside him. Finally, a boy as young as Mario was asked to step forward, and Ghirlandaio posed him beside the men.

  “Federico, do not slouch, my son,” the manager said to the boy, and Federico pulled his shoulders back as if he were a prince. Ghirlandaio stepped back to see the three of them, then stepped toward them again and lifted the boy’s chin slightly with a gentle finger.

  “This is going to be your masterpiece!” Lorenzo said with a booming voice.

  “Will it?” Ghirlandaio said humbly.

  “Yes! In fact, I demand it,” Lorenzo said, and the whole room laughed, including Mario.

  Federico wasn’t as good at being still as Mario. Ghirlandaio had to remind him several times to lift his chin, and soon got frustrated with the boy. Eventually, he asked Mario to stand next to Federico and to poke him in the shoulder with a long brush each time his chin lowered.

  Federico didn’t like being poked one bit, and he stepped on Mario’s toe when no one was looking. Mario knew better than to fight back. He gave the boy the same scornful look he gave boys in the market who threw little rocks at him when their parents weren’t watching.

  Federico eventually settled into stillness, and soon their portion of the painting was complete. There was still much work to be done on the fresco, but for today, the work was finished.

  Lorenzo, who seemed as energetic as ever despite hours of sitting still, congratulated Ghirlandaio on his work, and everyone applauded. One of the women in the chapel asked Mario if he wanted to be a painter, too, some day.

  “No,” he said, and the chapel went quiet. Mario was afraid he’d said something wrong. He looked at Ghirlan
daio in a panic.

  “He’s a very honest boy,” Ghirlandaio said, smiling at Mario.

  Lorenzo looked Mario up and down.

  “What do you want to be, then, son?” he asked him.

  “I don’t know, sir.” If he was being truthful, he’d never really thought about what he wanted to be or do. He had only ever done what he had to in order to survive.

  “Well, what are you good at?” Lorenzo asked.

  “Fighting,” Mario said. Lorenzo smiled at that.

  “Ah,” he said. “A young warrior. I loved to joust when I was your age. And fencing! I bet you are as good at wielding a longsword as you are at poking adversaries with brush handles.”

  Everyone in the chapel laughed again, but this time it felt like it was at Federico’s expense. Mario didn’t bother looking at the boy. He could feel his glare.

  “You two boys should come to my estate sometime, and we can train together.”

  “You would like that, wouldn’t you, son?” Francesco Sassetti asked Federico, who only nodded. “My boy is quite the swordsman himself.” But Federico looked down at his feet.

  “I’ve never actually trained,” Mario admitted, and the other boy looked up, meeting his gaze. “I would love to learn, though.”

  “We’ll set it up,” Lorenzo said, then quickly changed the subject. Ghirlandaio winked at Mario, and gestured for the boy to begin cleaning the brushes. Mario noticed Federico watching his every move.

  The next month, the frescoes were complete except for a few finishing touches. A message was delivered to Ghirlandaio at the chapel, formally inviting him and his “mysterious apprentice” to a villa on Lorenzo’s estate. Ghirlandaio was reluctant, but the next day the sky was overcast and the light wasn’t good for painting anyway, so the two of them took a carriage to the villa and were welcomed by Lorenzo and his family. Federico Sassetti arrived half an hour later, accompanied by his mother, whom Mario remembered from another day’s work. The boys bowed to each other, and then sat politely while the adults in the room discussed plans for the church.