“But the expense!” one of the servants exclaimed.
“Use however much money it takes,” Piero insisted. “There has to be some advantage to owning a bank.”
“But, Father, shouldn’t we be buying weapons?” Lorenzo objected.
“In good time,” said Piero, “but right now we need the people behind us. If you were a common citizen, who would you rather support: the man who expects you to fight or the man who offers you as much food and wine as your belly can hold?”
Just then a grimace of pain twisted Piero’s face and he sank into his large padded chair. “Lorenzo, you must see to the defence of the house,” he said. “Luca Pitti will act cautiously, I believe, but Neroni might take it into his head to attack us here.”
“If we don’t attack him first,” Lorenzo suggested with an eager gleam in his eye.
“Put such nonsense out of your mind,” Piero ordered through tight lips. “I will not be the one to strike the first blow and start bloodshed on the streets.”
“But Lucrezia—” Lorenzo began.
“Lucrezia will keep. This is a time for careful steps, not grand gestures.”
Lorenzo looked crestfallen as his father turned to another of his manservants. “To you, Giorgio, falls the most important task of all. You must ensure that lunch and supper are served exactly on time, as usual. I will not put my digestion at the mercy of my enemies.”
Lorenzo marched out of the room with Leonardo at his heels. “How can he expect me to just sit here and do nothing?” he muttered in frustration.
A bearded man with the bearing of a soldier was waiting for his young master at the end of the passage. Leonardo recognised him as one of the monks who had abducted him in the Oltrarno.
“Bartolomeo, I need a full inventory of all the weapons we have in store,” Lorenzo ordered. “And fetch beams from the basement. We’ll use them to brace the doors in case of attack.”
“At once,” Bartolomeo said gruffly.
“I will have one of our scribes take a statement from you to be presented to the Signoria at the proper time,” Lorenzo said to Leonardo. “In the mean time, you have the run of the house.”
He walked off briskly with Bartolomeo.
Leonardo could not help feeling redundant in the midst of all the activity. He felt the folded paper still secure under his tunic and cursed himself for being unable to understand it.
He walked out into the courtyard where the bright sunshine stabbed his eyes. All around, servants and soldiers were bustling about with sacks, boxes, spears and swords.
“Leonardo! Leonardo!” called a voice.
Turning, Leonardo saw Sandro and Fresina hurrying towards him. Sandro embraced him and beamed. “Leonardo, where have you been? When you didn’t come back from the Duomo, I feared the worst.”
Leonardo explained about Silvestro’s workshop and what had happened after. Fresina tutted and took a bite from the chicken leg she held in her hand. “You were a fool to act the burglar without my help,” she said as she chewed. “It is only to be expected that you would be caught.”
“She’s been practising her skills in the Medici kitchens,” said Sandro despairingly.
“But how do you two come to be here?” Leonardo asked.
“Men came and said they were taking us to safety,” said Fresina, wiping grease from her chin with the back of her hand. “I wanted to fight, but Sandro said no.” She gave Sandro a contemptuous look.
“I recognised one of them from my visit to the Medici house,” Sandro explained. “I had to wrest my palette knife away from her to avoid a bloodbath.”
“When I got here,” said Fresina, “they bundled me into a room and made me tell my story to a scribe. He kept far away from me like I smelled” – she pinched her nose between two fingers and grinned maliciously – “so I spoke very quiet so he could not hear me without coming close. He wrote everything down in very small letters and had me sign it with my mark. Then he told me to go, like the smell had got worse.”
A servant carrying a bench on his shoulder bumped Leonardo as he blundered past. “Isn’t there somewhere quiet we can go?” Leonardo complained.
“I know just the place,” Sandro declared. “Follow me.”
He led the way through an archway into a lavish garden surrounded by a covered walkway. Several finely sculpted biblical figures stood in a circle around an ornate fountain from which a stream of sparkling water arced into the air. Leonardo scooped some water up in his hands and splashed his face.
Fresina tossed the bare chicken bone into a flowerbed and sucked the fat from her fingers. “You are not the only bad thief in this city,” she said to Leonardo, as she plunged her hands into the water. “The kitchen maids told me two burglars broke into this house last night.”
“Burglars?” Leonardo was instantly alert.
“Yes, a servant saw them run off carrying a heavy sack,” said Fresina, wiping her hands dry on the front of her smock. “A good thief should never be seen. In Circassia they would be dishonoured.”
“What did they take?” Sandro asked.
“That is an even greater dishonour,” said Fresina disapprovingly. “The whole house was searched and nothing was found to be missing. What is the point in stealing something no one will miss?”
“Nothing missing?” Leonardo said. Nothing missing.
The words rang in his head like the clanging of a bell. His thoughts flew back to his dream, of the whole city moving like a machine, and in the centre the great dome of the cathedral revolving like a vast wheel.
“That’s it!” he exclaimed. “I have the answer at last!”
22 A CHOICE OF ANGELS
Leonardo knelt down in front of a marble bench and spread his drawing out over it. “Silvestro told me that whatever I had seen, it would do me no good. Why do you think he said that?”
“I don’t know, Leonardo,” Sandro sighed. “I was never much for riddles.”
“Because he knew that what I’d seen was exactly what Toscanelli saw – a machine that would not function.”
Fresina flopped down on the bench beside the drawing. “You are raving, Leonardo. All your adventures have made you crooked in the head.” She patted herself on the brow.
“No, I was crooked in the head before. I wasn’t thinking straight, but now it seems so obvious. There’s something missing from the drawing.”
“Why?” Sandro asked.
“So that no one else could build the machine from this diagram. But Silvestro himself knew what was missing and could correct it during the construction. The whole point of the trick is that it is so simple. It’s as easy as standing an egg on its end.”
Recalling his dream once more, the dome turning slowly in the centre of the city, Leonardo knew exactly what it was that Silvestro had left out. He picked a stick of charcoal from the pouch at his belt and sketched into the centre of the diagram a large notched wheel.
“You see, if the components of the machine are brought together, the smaller cogs will fit their teeth into this large one, the moving rods will connect and the whole machine will move as it is supposed to.”
“It is still nothing but lines and circles,” said Fresina.
“No, it’s much more than that now,” said Leonardo as he carefully ran his index finger around the completed diagram. “This coil is wound and held in check until this catch here is pressed. Then the motion begins like a clock, the movement being passed from one side of the device to the other through the central wheel. Notch by notch, the cogs turn until at last, at some predetermined time, the weight drops, the larger spring is released…”
Sandro craned over Leonardo’s shoulder. “And?”
“The force of it makes this bar here jump forward.”
“To what end?”
Leonardo stared at the drawing. “I don’t know, but a spring this large would deliver a mighty blow to whatever was in the way. Perhaps it strikes a bell or a gong.”
Sandro blinked. “That hard
ly seems worth all the fuss.”
Leonardo gritted his teeth and squeezed the charcoal between his fingers until it snapped. Sandro was right. If anything, he was now more baffled than ever.
“Hsst! Someone is coming,” warned Fresina.
Leonardo got up and stuffed the drawing back into his tunic as a tall, bony individual stalked into the garden. He was dressed in the finery of a valued servant and had a sheaf of papers under his arm. He turned his small, probing eyes on Leonardo.
“You are Leonardo da Vinci?”
“The last time somebody asked me that,” said Leonardo, “they tied me up and pulled a sack over my head.”
Fresina pinched her nose at the man and he sniffed disdainfully. Leonardo guessed this was the scribe she had been speaking about earlier.
“I have been instructed to write down your account of the unfortunate events at the Torre Donati,” the man said.
“In that case, I am Leonardo da Vinci,” said Leonardo, following the scribe out of the garden.
Throughout the day the Medici house was a hive of frantic activity. Supplies were delivered and packed into the storerooms. Men streamed in from the country armed with pitchforks and spears. Companies were hastily assembled and marched off to patrol the nearby streets or guard the city gates.
While Piero dispatched letters to potential allies and foreign ambassadors, Lorenzo saw that the doors and windows were barricaded against attack and set lookouts on the rooftops. Midway through the afternoon a messenger arrived with the news that the Signoria had shut themselves up in their palace and barred the doors. A mob of Luca Pitti’s supporters had marched around the Piazza della Signoria chanting slogans, before retreating back over the bridges to the Oltrarno.
All Leonardo and Sandro could do was try to stay out of the way. Eventually, they took refuge in the library. Sandro gazed wide-eyed at the array of works that crowded the shelves.
“I had no idea the Medici were such scholars!” he exclaimed. “I’ll wager there’s no collection like this outside of the papal vaults in Rome! And have you seen the works of art they have all over the house? There are some of Donatello’s greatest masterpieces here.”
Leonardo could not share his friend’s enthusiasm. Nothing in the Medici house held even a fraction of the interest Silvestro’s diagram did. He had the drawing laid out before him again, studying how the cogs, wheels, shafts and springs interlocked, asking himself again and again what could be the final result of all this ingenuity.
Outside in the courtyard the babble of voices mixed with the rasp of grindstones on steel and the clip-clop of horses’ hooves. Leonardo dragged his fingers through his hair, as if trawling for some insight.
“All these preparations for battle are useless!” he burst out. “Whatever Neroni is planning, it can’t be stopped by an army!”
Sandro looked up from a manuscript. “Why don’t you put that away! I swear you’re letting it drive you mad. Let me read you some of this. It’s about the siege of Troy and the wooden horse.”
“I can’t sit here listening to stories. I need to do something.”
“We’re artists, Leonardo, not soldiers. There’s nothing we can do.”
Leonardo snatched up the drawing and headed for the door. “At the very least I can find Lorenzo and tell him what I’ve discovered.”
“Which isn’t very much,” Sandro reminded him as he stormed out of the library, slamming the door shut behind him.
Leonardo asked around after Lorenzo and was directed to the exercise room in the west wing of the house. As he opened the door he heard the harsh clatter of steel striking steel. He saw before him a long room, the walls lined with ropes and bars. Benches, beams and leather balls were laid out on the floor in such a way as to leave a clear aisle up the centre.
It was here that Lorenzo and Bartolomeo were exchanging quick, precise sword blows. They advanced and retreated in turn, striking out in a rhythmic series of expertly timed moves.
Leonardo understood that this was an exercise, a prearranged sequence designed to sharpen the fencer’s reflexes. However, he doubted the exercise was usually performed with the vehemence Lorenzo was displaying. Bartolomeo stolidly met each furious blow, allowing his young master to vent his frustration in this mock combat.
There was a final flurry of steel, then Lorenzo tossed his sword aside and snatched up a wet towel to wipe the perspiration from his face. He had stripped off his tunic and his light, open-necked shirt was stained with sweat from his exertions. Only when he laid the towel aside did he become aware of Leonardo.
“You look well prepared for a fight,” Leonardo complimented him.
Lorenzo gave a hollow laugh. “This is as close as I will get to a fight if my father has his way. He says that by nightfall we will have more men under arms than Neroni, but he still will not allow me to go after Lucrezia.”
“Your father is a cautious man,” Bartolomeo commented quietly. “He hopes to resolve this business without blood.”
Lorenzo’s eyes flashed. “Do you know what he did?” he asked Leonardo. “He made me swear by all the saints and the Blessed Virgin that I would not attempt to rescue Lucrezia.” He stretched out his arms and pressed his wrists together. “I might as well be manacled!”
He slumped down on the nearest bench and pressed a fist to his mouth.
Leonardo recalled his first sight of Lorenzo. He had wondered what Lucrezia could find to love in one so plain and graceless. Since then he had seen Lorenzo ride into the midst of a band of assassins to save his father. Now he was equally prepared to risk his life for Lucrezia’s sake.
Leonardo was embarrassed to think that his own concern had been with solving a puzzle, with demonstrating his own brilliance. But perhaps there was still something he could do to help. He recalled something Lorenzo had told him on the journey from Careggi and it suggested a plan to him.
“Your father is correct that an armed assault on Pitti’s palace would do more harm than good,” he said. “But where an army might fail, one man might succeed through stealth.”
Lorenzo looked up sharply. “You think so?”
“It’s surely the last thing Neroni would expect,” said Leonardo.
“It is true that surprise is the greatest weapon of all,” Lorenzo agreed, jumping to his feet.
“But Pitti’s palace is vast,” Bartolomeo objected. “A man could lose his own shadow in that maze of rooms. How could he find a prisoner and make his escape?”
“He would need a map,” said Leonardo matter-of-factly. “And I think we may have one. Lorenzo, didn’t you say that Pitti’s palace is based upon designs submitted to your family.”
“Yes, and rejected by my grandfather Cosimo.”
“But might you still have a copy of those plans?”
A gleam of hope flashed in Lorenzo’s eyes. “We just might at that! Father never throws anything away. If the plans still exist, they will be stored in the library.”
When the library door burst open, Sandro jumped from his chair with a yelp. He settled back with a groan of relief when he saw it was only Lorenzo and Leonardo, not some invading enemy. Lorenzo stalked around the room, his eyes darting this way and that, like a hunter in search of his prey. He stopped at a wide set of drawers and began rummaging through them with furious determination.
“What is going on?” Sandro asked, alarmed by Lorenzo’s behaviour.
Leonardo explained about the floor plans and Sandro groaned. “Must there always be some wild scheme with you? Can’t we just sit peacefully to one side and let events take their course?”
Lorenzo closed the first drawer with a growl and started on the second. This too he slammed shut, his dark brows knotted in impatience. He yanked open the next drawer and continued his search.
“Plans for the villas at Careggi and Cafaggiolo,” he muttered. “The chapel at San Lorenzo…Here it is! Filippo Brunelleschi – plans for the proposed Medici Palace.”
He hauled out a roll of parchment and t
ossed it on to the nearest table. Leonardo and Sandro joined him. Untying the bundle, Lorenzo separated it into three large sheets and unrolled the first.
Leonardo swept his gaze over the page. Here was the layout of the ground floor: vestibule, storage rooms, reception chambers, with all the passages and stairways clearly marked. Lorenzo unrolled the second and the third, laying them on top of each other. Bedrooms, galleries, banqueting halls. Leonardo took in every detail.
Lorenzo studied the plans in his turn. “Well, it is a map, I suppose,” he said doubtfully, “but no one could possibly sneak into Pitti’s palace carrying all this.”
“He could if he was carrying it here,” said Leonardo. He tapped his index finger against his temple.
“But there is no time to memorise all these details,” Lorenzo objected. “In a couple of hours it will be dark.”
“I don’t need much time,” said Leonardo, his eyes still fixed on the plans.
“It’s true,” Sandro confirmed. “He draws things in his mind and keeps them there. But, Leonardo, how can you be sure Pitti has followed the exact layout of these plans?”
Leonardo found himself thinking of his father. “If Luca Pitti is as vain and envious as they say, he will want to live in exactly the palace the Medici considered too grand for themselves. That is what a vain and empty man would do.”
Lorenzo leaned his weight against the table and stared hard at Leonardo. “You’re volunteering to take this mission on yourself?”
Leonardo had finished memorising the first of the sheets and was now on to the second. “There’s no one else who can do it,” he replied. “I can keep this map in my head and Lucrezia knows me.”
Lorenzo ground his teeth. “I wish I could come with you.”
“Even if your father allowed it, your face is too well known,” said Leonardo.
“The bridges over the Arno will be guarded by Neroni’s men,” Sandro pointed out. “What makes you think they’ll let you pass?”
Leonardo summoned what he hoped was a convincing smile. “If the Medici have bought up all the food and wine in Florence, who’s going to turn away a wagon loaded with both?”
Leonardo and the Death Machine Page 14