Anthology of Speculative Fiction, Volume Two

by Short Story Anthology

  There was a characteristic knock on the door: two light taps followed by a loud thump.

  "Enter, Andrea, lest the dead wake," Leonardo said without getting up.

  Verrocchio stormed in with his foreman Francesco di Simone, a burly, full-faced, middle-aged man whose muscular body was just beginning to go to seed. Francesco carried a silver tray, upon which were placed cold meats, fruit, and two cruses of milk; he laid it on the table beside Leonardo. Both Verrocchio and Francesco had been at work for hours, as was attested by the lime and marble dust that streaked their faces and shook from their clothes. They were unshaven and wore work gowns, although Verrocchio's was more a frock, as if, indeed, he envisioned himself as a priest to art—the unblest 'tenth muse.'

  Most likely they had been in one of the outer workshops, for Andrea was having trouble with a terra cotta risurrezione relief destined for Lorenzo's villa in Careggi. But this bottega was so busy that Andrea's attention was constantly in demand. "Well, at least you're awake," Andrea said to Leonardo as he looked appreciatively at the painting-in-progress. Then he clapped his hands, making such a loud noise that Niccolo, who was fast asleep on his pallet beside Leonardo's, awakened with a cry, as if from a particularly nasty nightmare. Andrea chuckled and said, "Well, good morning, young ser. Perhaps I could have one of the other apprentices find enough work for you to keep you busy during the spine of the morning."

  "I apologize, Maestro Andrea, but Maestro Leonardo and I worked late into the night." Niccolo removed his red, woolen sleeping cap and hurriedly put on a gown that lay on the floor beside his pallet, for like most Florentines, he slept naked.

  "Ah, so now it's Maestro Leonardo, is it?" Andrea said good-naturedly. "Well, eat your breakfast, both of you. Today I'm a happy man; I have news."

  Niccolo did as he was told, and, in fact, ate like a trencherman, spilling milk on his lap.

  "One would never guess that he came from a good family," Andrea said, watching Niccolo stuff his mouth.

  "Now tell me your news," Leonardo said.

  "It's not all that much to tell." Nevertheless Andrea could not repress a grin. "Il Magnifico has informed me that my 'David' will stand prominently in the Palazzo Vecchio over the great staircase."

  Leonardo nodded. "But, certainly, you knew Lorenzo would find a place of special honor for such a work of genius."

  "I don't know if you compliment me or yourself, Leonardo," Andrea said. "After all, you are the model."

  "You took great liberties," Leonardo said. "You may have begun with my features, but you have created something sublime out of the ordinary. You deserve the compliment."

  "I fear this pleasing talk will cost me either money or time," Andrea said.

  Leonardo laughed. "Indeed, today I must be out of the city."

  Andrea gazed up at Leonardo's flying machine and said, "No one would blame you if you backed out of this project, or, at least, allowed someone else to fly your contraption. You need not prove yourself to Lorenzo."

  "I would volunteer to fly your mechanical bird, Leonardo," Niccolo said earnestly.

  "No, it must be me."

  "Was it not to gain experience that Master Toscanelli sent me to you?"

  "To gain experience, yes; but not to jeopardize your life," Leonardo said.

  "You are not satisfied it will work?" Andrea asked.

  "Of course I am, Andrea. If I were not, I would bow before Lorenzo and give him the satisfaction of publicly putting me to the blush."

  "Leonardo, be truthful with me," Verrocchio said. "It is to Andrea you speak, not a rich patron."

  "Yes, my friend, I am worried," Leonardo confessed. "Something is indeed wrong with my Great Bird, yet I cannot quite put my finger on it. It is most frustrating."

  "Then you must not fly it!"

  "It will fly, Andrea. I promise you that."

  "You have my blessing to take the day off," Verrocchio said.

  "I am most grateful," Leonardo said; and they both laughed, knowing that Leonardo would have left for the country with or without Andrea's permission.

  "Well, we must be off," Leonardo said to Andrea, who nodded and took his leave.

  "Come on, Nicco," Leonardo said, suddenly full of energy. "Get yourself dressed;" and as Niccolo did so, Leonardo put a few finishing touches on his painting, then quickly cleaned his brushes, hooked his sketchbook onto his belt, and once again craned his neck to stare at his invention that hung from the ceiling. He needed an answer, yet he had not yet formulated the question.

  When they were out the door, Leonardo felt that he had forgotten something. "Nicco, fetch me the book Maestro Toscanelli loaned to me...the one he purchased from the Chinese trader. I might wish to read in the country."

  "The country?" Niccolo asked, carefully putting the book into a sack, which he carried under his arm.

  "Do you object to nature?" Leonardo asked sarcastically. "Usus est optimum magister...and in that I agree wholeheartedly with the ancients. Nature herself is the mother of all experience; and experience must be your teacher, for I have discovered that even Aristotle can be mistaken on certain subjects." As they left the bottega, he continued: "But those of Maestro Ficino's Academy, they go about all puffed and pompous, mouthing the eternal aphorisms of Plato and Aristotle like parrots. They might think that because I have not had a literary education, I am uncultured; but they are the fools. They despise me because I am an inventor, but how much more are they to blame for not being inventors, these trumpeters and reciters of the works of others. They considered my glass to study the skies and make the moon large a conjuring trick, and do you know why?" Before Niccolo could respond, Leonardo said, "Because they consider sight to be the most untrustworthy of senses, when, in fact, it is the supreme organ. Yet that does not prevent them from wearing spectacles in secret. Hypocrites!"

  "You seem very angry, Maestro," Niccolo said to Leonardo.

  Embarrassed at having launched into this diatribe, Leonardo laughed at himself and said, "Perhaps I am, but do not worry about it, my young friend."

  "Maestro Toscanelli seems to respect the learned men of the Academy," Niccolo said.

  "He respects Plato and Aristotle, as well he should. But he does not teach at the Academy, does he? No, instead, he lectures at the school at Santo Spirito for the Augustinian brothers. That should tell you something."

  "I think it tells me that you have an ax to grind, Master...and that's also what Maestro Toscanelli told me."

  "What else did he tell you, Nicco?" Leonardo asked.

  "That I should learn from your strengths and weaknesses, and that you are smarter than everyone in the Academy."

  Leonardo laughed at that and said, "You lie very convincingly."

  "That, Maestro, comes naturally."

  The streets were busy and noisy and the sky, which seemed pierced by the tiled mass of the Duomo and the Palace of the Signoria, was cloudless and sapphire-blue. There was the sweet smell of sausage in the air, and young merchants—practically children—stood behind stalls and shouted at every passerby. This market was called Il Baccano, the place of uproar. Leonardo bought some cooked meat, beans, fruit, and a bottle of cheap local wine for Niccolo and himself. They continued on into different neighborhoods and markets. They passed Spanish Moors with their slave retinues from the Ivory Coast; Mamluks in swathed robes and flat turbans; Muscovy Tartars and Mongols from Cathay; and merchants from England and Flanders, who had sold their woolen cloth and were on their way to the Ponte Vecchio to purchase trinkets and baubles. Niccolo was all eye and motion as they passed elegant and beautiful 'butterflies of the night' standing beside their merchant masters under the shade of guild awnings; these whores and mistresses modeled jeweled garlands, and expensive garments of violet, crimson, and peach. Leonardo and Niccolo passed stall after stall—brushing off young hawkers and old, disease-ravaged beggars—and flowed with the crowds of peddlers, citizens, and visitors as if they were flotsam in the sea. Young men of means, dressed in short doublets, wiggl
ed and swayed like young girls through the streets; they roistered and swashbuckled, laughed and sang and bullied, these favored ones. Niccolo could not help but laugh at the scholars and student wanderers from England and Scotland and Bohemia, for although their lingua franca was Latin, their accents were extravagant and overwrought.

  "Ho, Leonardo," cried one vendor, then another, as Leonardo and Niccolo turned a corner. Then the screes and cries of birds sounded, for the bird-sellers were shaking the small wooden cages packed with wood pigeons, owls, mousebirds, bee-eaters, hummingbirds, crows, blue rockthrushes, warblers, flycatchers, wagtails, hawks, falcons, eagles, and all manner of swans, ducks, chickens, and geese. As Leonardo approached, the birds were making more commotion than the vendors and buyers on the street. "Come here, Master," shouted a red-haired man wearing a stained brown doublet with torn sleeves. His right eye appeared infected, for it was bloodshot, crusted, and tearing. He shook two cages, each containing hawks; one bird was brown with a forked chestnut tail, and the other was smaller and black with a notched tail. They banged against the wooden bars and snapped dangerously. "Buy these, Maestro Artista, please...they are just what you need, are they not? And look how many doves I have, do they not interest you, good Master?"

  "Indeed, the hawks are fine specimens," Leonardo said, drawing closer, while the other vendors called and shouted to him, as if he were carrying the grail itself. "How much?"

  "Ten denari."

  "Three."

  "Eight."

  "Four, and if that is not satisfactory, I can easily talk to your neighbor, who is flapping his arms as if he, himself, could fly."

  "Agreed," said the vendor, resigned.

  "And the doves?"

  "For how many, Maestro?"

  "For the lot."

  While Leonardo dickered with the bird vendor, Niccolo wandered about. He looked at the multicolored birds and listened, as he often did. With ear and eye he would learn the ways of the world. Leonardo, it appeared, was known in this market; and a small crowd of hecklers and the merely curious began to form around him. The hucksters made much of it, trying to sell to whomever they could.

  "He's as mad as Ajax," said an old man who had just sold a few chickens and doves and was as animated as the street thugs and young beggars standing around him. "He'll let them all go, watch, you'll see."

  "I've heard tell he won't eat meat," said one matronly woman to another. "He lets the birds go free because he feels sorry for the poor creatures."

  "Well, to be safe, don't look straight at him," said the other woman as she made the sign of the cross. He might be a sorcerer. He could put evil in your eye, and enter right into your soul!"

  Her companion shivered and followed suit by crossing herself.

  "Nicco," Leonardo shouted, making himself heard above the din. "Come here and help me." When Niccolo appeared, Leonardo said, "If you could raise your thoughts from those of butterflies"—and by that he meant whores—"you might learn something of observation and the ways of science." He thrust his hand into the cage filled with doves and grasped one. The tiny bird made a frightened noise; as Leonardo took it from its cage, he could feel its heart beating in his palm. Then he opened his hand and watched the dove fly away. The crowd laughed and jeered and applauded and shouted for more. He took another bird out of its cage and released it. His eyes squinted almost shut; and as he gazed at the dove beating its wings so hard that, but for the crowd, one could have heard them clap, he seemed lost in thought. "Now, Nicco, I want you to let the birds free, one by one."

  "Why me?" Niccolo asked, somehow loath to seize the birds.

  "Because I wish to draw," Leonardo said. "Is this chore too difficult for you?"

  "I beg your pardon, Maestro," Niccolo said, as he reached into the cage. He had a difficult time catching a bird. Leonardo seemed impatient and completely oblivious to the shouts and taunts of the crowd around him. Niccolo let go of one bird, and then another, while Leonardo sketched. Leonardo stood very still, entranced; only his hand moved like a ferret over the bleached folio, as if it had a life and will of its own.

  As Niccolo let fly another bird, Leonardo said, "Do you see, Nicco, the bird in its haste to climb strikes its outstretched wings together above its body. "Now look how it uses its wings and tail in the same way that a swimmer uses his arms and legs in the water; it's the very same principle. It seeks the air currents, which, invisible, roil around the buildings of our city. And there, its speed is checked by the opening and spreading out of the tail.... Let fly another one. Can you see how the wing separates to let the air pass?" and he wrote a note in his mirror script below one of his sketches: Make device so that when the wing rises up it remains pierced through, and when it falls it is all united. "Another," he called to Niccolo. And after the bird disappeared, he made another note: The speed is checked by the opening and spreading out of the tail. Also, the opening and lowering of the tail, and the simultaneous spreading of the wings to their full extent, arrests their swift movement.

  "That's the end of it," Niccolo said, indicating the empty cages. "Do you wish to free the hawks?"

  "No," Leonardo said, distracted. "We will take them with us," and Leonardo and Niccolo made their way through the crowd, which now began to disperse. As if a reflection of Leonardo's change of mood, clouds darkened the sky; and the bleak, refuse-strewn streets took on a more dangerous aspect. The other bird vendors called to Leonardo, but he ignored them, as he did Niccolo. He stared intently into his notebook as he walked, as if he were trying to decipher ancient runes.

  They passed the wheel of the bankrupts. Defeated men sat around a marble inlay that was worked into the piazza in the design of a cartwheel. A crowd had formed, momentarily, to watch a debtor, who had been stripped naked, being pulled to the roof of the market by a rope. Then there was a great shout as he was dropped headfirst onto the smooth, cold, marble floor.

  A sign attached to one of the market posts read:

  Give good heed to the small sums thou

  spendest out of the house, for it is

  they which empty the purse and

  consume wealth; and they go on

  continually. And do not buy all the

  good victuals which thou seest, for

  the house is like a wolf: the more

  thou givest it, the more doth it devour.

  The man dropped by the rope was dead.

  Leonardo put his arm around Niccolo's shoulders, as if to shield him from death. But he was suddenly afraid...afraid that his own 'inevitable hour' might not be far away; and he remembered his recurring dream of falling into the abyss. He shivered, his breath came quick, and his skin felt clammy, as if he had just been jolted awake. Just now, on some deep level, he believed that the poisonous phantasms of dreams were real. If they took hold of the soul of the dreamer, they could effect his entire world.

  Leonardo saw his Great Bird falling and breaking apart. And he was falling through cold depths that were as deep as the reflections of lanterns in dark water.

  "Leonardo? Leonardo!"

  "Do not worry. I am fine, my young friend," Leonardo said.

  They talked very little until they were in the country, in the high, hilly land north of Florence. Here were meadows and grassy fields, valleys and secret grottos, small roads traversed by ox carts and pack trains, vineyards and cane thickets, dark copses of pine and chestnut and cypress, and olive trees that shimmered like silver hangings each time the wind breathed past their leaves. The deep red tiles of farmstead roofs and the brownish-pink colonnaded villas seemed to be part of the line and tone of the natural countryside. The clouds that had darkened the streets of Florence had disappeared; and the sun was high, bathing the countryside in that golden light particular to Tuscany, a light that purified and clarified as if it were itself the manifestation of desire and spirit.

  And before them, in the distance, was Swan Mountain. It rose 1300 feet to its crest, and looked to be pale gray-blue in the distance.

  Leon
ardo and Niccolo stopped in a meadow perfumed with flowers and gazed at the mountain. Leonardo felt his worries weaken, as they always did when he was in the country. He took a deep breath of the heady air and felt his soul awaken and quicken to the world of nature and the oculus spiritalis: the world of angels.

  "That would be a good mountain from which to test your Great Bird," Niccolo said.

  "I thought that, too, for it's very close to Florence. But I've since changed my mind. Vinci is not so far away; and there are good mountains there, too." Then after a pause, Leonardo said, "And I do not wish to die here. If death should be my fate, I wish it to be in familiar surroundings."

  Niccolo nodded, and he looked as severe and serious as he had when Leonardo had first met him, like an old man inhabiting a boy's body.

  "Come now, Nicco," Leonardo said, resting the cage on the ground and sitting down beside it, "let's enjoy this time, for who knows what awaits us later. Let's eat." With that, Leonardo spread out a cloth and set the food upon it as if it were a table. The hawks flapped their wings and slammed against the wooden bars of the cages. Leonardo tossed them each a small piece of sausage.

  "I heard gossip in the piazza of the bird vendors that you refuse to eat meat," Niccolo said.

  "Ah, did you, now. And what do you think of that?"

  Niccolo shrugged. "Well, I have never seen you eat meat."

  Leonardo ate a piece of bread and sausage, which he washed down with wine. "Now you have."

  "But then why would people say that—"

  "Because I don't usually eat meat. They're correct, for I believe that eating too much meat causes to collect what Aristotle defined as cold black bile. That, in turn, afflicts the soul with melancholia. Maestro Toscanelli's friend Ficino believes the same, but for all the wrong reasons. For him magic and astrology take precedence over reason and experience. But be that as it may, I must be very careful that people do not think of me as a follower of the Cathars, lest I be branded a heretic."