“These walls have ears,” the Father warned.
“I will be careful. Quiet. I swear it.”
“I don’t doubt that,” said the priest, his face softening. “I do not fear for my neck, but how would I ever forgive myself if you were imprisoned or excommunicated for something I allowed?”
“And how will you forgive yourself if you don’t help me free God’s vision from that stubborn block of marble?”
Michelangelo followed Father Bichiellini down a dark, dank hallway lit only by the prior’s flickering torch. Their footfalls echoed on the stone floor, making it sound as though they were strolling along the bottom of a well. As they approached a heavy wooden door, the priest asked, “Are you positive you want to go through with this?”
Michelangelo’s breath caught. How could he be sure? He hadn’t walked this path since he was seventeen—and then, he had been too young to grasp the consequences. The last time he left, he swore he would never return. Now he was back, breaking the rules of the church and the laws of man. If anyone found out, he could be ostracized, arrested, or executed. His father would disown him. Was he positive this was the right choice? No. “Yes, I’m sure,” he said.
Father Bichiellini grunted consent. He pulled out a heavy metal key and slid it into the lock. The bolt clunked. The prior pushed open the creaking door.
A stench of rot wafted out. Gagging, Michelangelo clasped his hand over his nose and mouth. He had forgotten how bad it smelled.
He peered into the inky black room. He’d been inside many times before, but his heart pounded as though he were staring into the unknown.
With his torch, Father Bichiellini lit a lamp and handed it to Michelangelo. “Make peace with the spirits, my son.”
“Leave the door open, Padre,” Michelangelo whispered and stepped over the threshold. When he looked back, Father Bichiellini was gone.
He lit two more lamps. Slowly, the room revealed itself. It was a small brick chamber with a single barred window overlooking the street. Four long stone tables stretched out in front of him. Two were empty. Two held shroud-covered heaps.
Hand shaking, Michelangelo touched one of the bodies’ stiff legs. He felt the other’s arm. It didn’t matter where he started; he would probably cut both open before the night was over. He chose the one on the right, if for no other reason than it seemed to smell slightly less wretched.
As he laid out his tools, he felt a chill. The church was silent, yet he sensed ghosts in every shadow. The terror, he recalled, was part of the process. When he was young, the nightmares had lasted for years. They probably would this time, too. “God, help me to do what I need to do. Give me strength. Resolve. Insight. Let me find your purpose.” He pulled back the tarp.
Over the next three weeks, Michelangelo returned to Santo Spirito seven times. He dissected toothless beggars, mercenaries killed in battle, and even a rich man covered in a purple rash, probably the result of the French pox brought to the peninsula by King Louis’s courtesans. He paid special attention to the two youths he encountered, making copious notes on their round faces, thin legs, undeveloped muscles, and the amount of fat still stored in their bellies. The bodies of children; the bodies of David.
One evening, he descended into the mortuary to find a dismembered corpse on the table. The poor fellow had lost half his head, both arms, and one leg. His body was bloated with river water, his skin half-eaten by fish. He had probably been killed in battle, dropped in the Arno, and pulled out by a local fisherman. The muscles were torn but still connected by flexible ligaments, like roots binding a tree to the soil. Bones were crushed, but joints still moved. Even though blood no longer flowed, the network of veins converged and dispersed like a system of rivers. Even this body, mutilated by man and nature, could not defy the laws of anatomy. It was still a man, connected and whole, and there was no way to contort even this ragged human form so it would fit comfortably inside that botched block of marble and still leave room for swords and sheep and decapitated heads of giants.
As dawn approached, Michelangelo heard the priests preparing for morning mass. He put down his tools, his shoulders slumping. One of the first scenes he had ever carved was a relief of the Battle of the Centaurs, a jumble of fighting, twisting male nudes. He had to accept the truth: there was no new way to contort the human form that he had not already imagined. Not even the gruesome work of dissections could lead him to an answer that wasn’t there.
Michelangelo cleaned up his work area, then slipped out the door, careful not to be seen by the praying priests. He trudged back to his shed and stood, defeated, in front of the silent stone. Michelangelo wasn’t going to find the answers he needed by cutting open dead men or staring at a dormant rock. He was going to have to ask the stone. But in order to ask, he first had to wake it up.
He picked up his hammer and chisel and climbed to the top of the scaffolding. He didn’t know where he was headed, but at least he could start clearing out excess stone, digging toward the figure he knew was hiding underneath. He placed his chisel onto the marble and struck. Hopefully, the sound of his carving would rattle the shepherd boy out of his slumber.
Leonardo
Sunrise was beginning to bleed over the horizon by the time Leonardo finished scrutinizing every vendor setting up a stall in the market. She was not among them.
Every day for the last month, he had gone to the market to search for the mysterious lady who’d saved his hand from the axe. Whether because of her luminescent complexion, her intense gaze, or her determined plea for him to fly, ever since he’d met her, he had an irrational urge to capture her image in paint. If only he could find her again, he could surely convince her to sit for a portrait. Then, maybe, he could understand his obsession.
“We’re never going to find her, Master,” Salaì said as they walked away from the market. Morning fog still enveloped the city. “You don’t know her name, where she lives, why she was at the mercato in the first place. She might not even be a Florentine. Perhaps you imagined her.”
The thought had crossed Leonardo’s mind. The gold embroidery, the wing-like ribbons, the fearless way she’d protected him. She might be an angel, sent by God to save his precious left hand.
No, Leonardo reminded himself. Her voice had been too alive, her eyes too radiant, her hand too warm on his. She was real, and he knew he would find her in the market. He was sure of it. Judging by her bravado and the fowler’s flash of recognition, she was a regular among those stalls. Leonardo would try again at noon. Then at sunset. Again the next day and the next. He wouldn’t give up until he found her.
They crossed to the other side of the river and turned down an alley. There, at the end of the street, a figure was creeping out the side door of a church.
The young sculptor was skulking out of a church at sunrise—and not just any church, but Santo Spirito, a parish with a history of allowing artists to study within her walls. There was only one explanation for such a scene.
Leonardo entered the church and waited in the back of the sanctuary until morning mass was over, and then he accosted the prior. “Father,” he began, stepping out of the shadows, “I just witnessed Michelangelo Buonarroti leaving your church.”
“Master Leonardo.” Father Bichiellini offered a small nod. “I am gratified to see you in a house of God.”
“I need your help,” Leonardo said, hoping honesty would appeal to the man. “I’m attempting to accomplish something no one has before …” He considered revealing his dream of flying, but he didn’t need another lecture about how if God intended man to fly, he would have given him wings. “I know what Michelangelo was doing here.”
“The young man was saying his prayers,” Father Bichiellini replied. “Perhaps you, too, should try kneeling before God.”
“Praying?” Leonardo voice echoed through the church. “He has been here. Dissecting.”
As that word wafted through the church, Father Bichiellini’s face turned pale. “Excuse me, I must tend to
God’s work,” he said crisply and walked away.
Leonardo followed. “He pays you, doesn’t he? I can pay you, too, and more, certainly …”
Father Bichiellini cut him off. “I assure you, I cannot be bought. And such a plot would never cross the mind of the pious young Michelangelo. His father taught him how to be a proper Catholic. He is from a good family.”
“I apologize. I have not had the privilege of such attentive parentage,” Leonardo responded coolly.
“Then you should look to your heavenly Father for guidance,” Bichiellini said, opening the front door of the church.
Leonardo only paused for a moment before marching outside. Salaì was waiting for him on the stairs. “Come, Giacomo. Today is our day to catch the wind regardless of the way it’s blowing.”
“Ready to witness history, Salaì?” Leonardo called over a howling winter wind.
“Yes, sir,” Salaì shouted back.
They were standing atop Mount Ceceri, a hill just outside of Florence. The sky was bright and blue, clear of any clouds. It was a perfect afternoon for flying. A gust threatened to lift the flying machine off the ground. That was a good sign. If the device was already trying to take off on its own, it would surely fly once properly launched.
The aerial screw, as Leonardo called the machine, was a large corkscrew wing, made out of cypress wood and linen, coiling around a center pole. According to his theory, as the corkscrew wing whirled around, it would push air downward and create a counteracting force to lift the machine, and its driver, into the air. In the future, he pictured such spiraling crafts dotting the skies. Tourists would ride in them over spectacular landscapes of lakes and waterfalls and volcanoes. In the future, maybe everyone would be able to fly like a bird.
Leonardo secured a bag of rocks in the driver’s seat. He wished he could be the one strapping in for the launch, but it was too dangerous. He needed to test it first. He attached a purple-feathered cap to the top of the bag of rocks and scrawled his name across the burlap.
“Imagine, Salaì,” he said, gazing out over the distant purpling hills, “if this works, someday soon, I’ll be able fly across the ocean and discover some new world for myself.” For the last few years, explorers had been returning home with stories of discovering great new lands on the other side of the oceans.
“Let’s try the test run first, Master, before we think of flying over the sea,” Salaì said.
Leonardo sighed. Sometimes he worried that he should have taken more time to teach his assistant to dream properly.
They loaded the aerial screw into a large slingshot. Once Leonardo was driving the machine, he would pedal to turn the corkscrew, but for now he had outfitted the contraption with a set of springs, weights, levers, and wheels, much like the mechanics of a clock, to do the pedaling. According to his theories, if the corkscrew kept spinning, the contraption could fly all the way up to heaven. The only problem would be getting it back down.
Salaì and Leonardo pulled back the slingshot.
“Uno,” Leonardo started to count. He had spent his childhood traipsing across these hills, running through thick grass, hopping over fallen logs, dodging around craggy trees. Now this land would provide the backdrop to his greatest victory.
“Due.” In the distance, two men cantered on horses, probably headed into Florence for the market day. Instead of returning home with mundane stories from the market, they would go away with an astonishing tale of mechanical flying creatures taking over the skies.
“Tre!” Leonardo yelled.
He and Salaì let go.
Bang! The slingshot exploded, flinging the twirling corkscrew into the air.
In the distance, the two horses reared and the riders yelled and pointed up at the sky.
Leonardo had been fantasizing about this moment his entire life. As his flying machine hurtled through the air, the world lit up bright as a painting: the sky was awash in ultramarine, the cypress trees flowered in deep malachite, and the yellowing hills blazed as if leafed in gold. Streaking across it all was that purple-feathered hat, bobbing jauntily on top of the bag of rocks.
As the machine headed straight for the two men on horseback, a gust of wind rattled the air. The contraption wobbled. Leonardo held his breath, willing it to hold firm.
The flying machine pitched and flipped upside down, plummeting toward the earth, the sack of rocks pulling it down like an anchor. “No!” he screamed and ran down the hill. The wooden armature cracked. The linen ripped. The aerial screw hit the ground with a violent crash, the bag of stones tearing open, rocks tumbling down the hill in a fury. The purple-feathered hat was crushed. If Leonardo had been riding in the contraption, his head would have been flattened, and his guts would have spilled out like those stones.
“No, no, no.” He had spent months building that beautiful machine.
Salaì scurried past him to gather up some of the surviving pieces.
Leonardo fell to his knees and dug his fingers into the damp soil, still wet from recent rain. The world looked drab again: the gold leafing blew off the fields, the ultramarine crumbled from the sky.
He took two deep breaths. He would have to rebuild, that was all—design a better, stronger flying machine. The aerial screw had probably been a bad idea, anyway. He should return to his study of birds and bats and dragonflies. He picked himself up off the ground and brushed the soil from his knees. Years from now, this would seem like a minor bump in his long, zigzagging road toward human flight. Perhaps this failure would be the one to finally lead him to success.
Salaì huffed back up the hill. “Borgia men,” he called, waving his arms furiously. “Run, Master, run!”
Borgia men? What was Salaì yelling about? Leonardo squinted down the hill. The two horsemen who had witnessed his test flight were galloping after Salaì. One of the men wielded a sword, the other a club, and their breastplates displayed a red bull over a yellow background, the Borgia coat of arms. Those were Cesare Borgia’s soldiers. Dread washed over Leonardo as he realized that, from their perspective, his failed flying experiment must have looked like two Florentine men firing at them from the top of a hill. It could easily be mistaken as an act of war.
Leonardo stumbled backward, then spun around and ran down the opposite side of the mountain, back toward Florence. Gravity propelled him down, down, down, until his left foot caught in a thicket and his knee twisted. He tried to recover his balance, but he was careening downhill too fast. His knee buckled and he crashed on top of a jagged tree stump. The splintered wood cut deep into his thigh, and a searing pain shot through his leg and torso. He cried out in agony as he rolled further and faster down the hill. He spotted a rocky outcropping up ahead. He tried to duck to avoid a collision, but his forehead smacked into the side of a boulder.
He tumbled to a stop at the bottom of the hill. Rolling over, he looked back up the steep hill. The soldiers were nowhere to be seen. Had he really outrun two horses?
“Master. Please. Andiamo.” It was Salaì, standing over him. He grabbed Leonardo’s arm and tried to help him to his feet. “We must get inside,” he said, careful to keep his voice low.
Leonardo tried to stand, but his leg buckled and he toppled over. Salaì grabbed Leonardo under his armpits and dragged him down the hill. As Leonardo’s legs bumped over the ground, he saw something move up on the crest of the hill behind them. He squinted at the figures cantering along the ridge. They were the two Borgia horses and riders, towing a wooden, spiral contraption: the remains of his flying machine. Leonardo didn’t know whether to feel relieved that he and Salaì had managed to escape, proud that his invention had attracted their attention, or worried that it was now in the hands of the ruthless Cesare Borgia.
Once they were safely inside Florence’s walls, Salaì shouted at the guards to close the gates against a Borgia attack. “My master has chased them away for now,” he claimed—a flattering lie that made Leonardo smile despite his pain—“but they may return.”
O
n every second Saturday of the month, people streamed into town from all across the countryside to trade at the open market. Leonardo guessed the guards would not close the gates to the incoming shoppers and merchants, but it probably didn’t matter. If Cesare Borgia wanted to strike, he would already be at their door.
Salaì led Leonardo away from the open walls, not stopping until they reached the other side of the Arno. He leaned his master against the side of a building and inspected the gash in his left leg. Salaì flinched. “Don’t look, Master.”
Air stung as it whistled across the exposed meat of his leg. He didn’t have to look to know the cut was deep. Salaì ripped a length of fabric off his tunic and wrapped it tightly around the wound.
“I can’t make it stop bleeding.”
Leonardo grimaced. He hadn’t needed to run away from the Borgia horsemen at such an uncontrollable pace. The soldiers had not come after him; all they wanted was his flying machine. His injuries were his own fault. He had forgotten his own philosophy: there was always time to stop and think.
“Master, you need help,” Salaì said.
Leonardo felt a shot of worry when he saw that his assistant’s face was pale. “Yes, I probably do.”
“Stay here.” Salaì sounded like a man in charge, instead of a boy in fear. “I’ll go get the apothecary.” He took off at a sprint.
The apothecary? “Salaì, wait,” Leonardo called, but his voice was weak. “Salaì!” he repeated, but the young man ran around a corner and out of sight. “The apothecary won’t be there,” Leonardo groaned, wiping a layer of sweat off his forehead. It was market day. No merchant would be in his regular shop today.
Blood drained from his leg and pooled on the muddy street. His head throbbed. Nausea sloshed through his stomach and throat. It could take Salaì an hour to run across town from apothecary shop to apothecary shop, searching for an open one, before realizing where everyone was. And the market was so close.
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