The Pope will be entering at any moment—he must be near, I can hear horses—
“Do you like—do you love—your master?” he says.
“Yes, sir, I do. And I would do anything for him.”
“Do not waste your feeling on Leonardo. He does not feel.”
I don’t like the way he said that. What is he up to? Does he want to be discovered before he can meet the Pope? And now he is looking at me strangely. Something is wrong, here—something—
“Giacomo, are you ready to learn what I promised to teach you?”
“Yes, sir, but after—”
“There is no after for you, my boy, except the hereafter.”
Oh God, I was right about this alchemist, I should never—
“The secret that I have come to tell you is this: Tonight you must die, so that the Brotherhood may live.”
“What—?” A terrible urge to vomit overwhelms me. I clutch at my stomach. “I don’t—”
“Hush, boy, I will tell you all, but quickly now. You will die. You must. And Pope Alexander must follow you.”
And from his black robe he withdraws a short sword, the like of which I think I—why, it is the same type of sword that the intruders were wearing, the ones who broke into my master’s house! Then the Duke had no hand in it, after all.
But what is Assanti saying now? The Master was right, he is a terrible prattler—but a very dangerous one. He’s rehearsing the story he will tell later, it seems—
“You see, my lord Duke, I had been praying at Santa Maria, and then I went for a walk in the garden. I heard shouts in the refectory and ran to help, but too late to stop Leonardo’s servant from murdering Pope Alexander. I drew my sword and killed the wicked youth, but not before he confessed and laid the blame on his master, Leonardo da Vinci, who ordered him to do it.”
He looks at me triumphantly. Perhaps he now expects me to applaud. I must think quickly. My dagger—
“And then, when the Duke trusts me as never before, I will poison him most painfully and take control of the city. And for the trifling sum of one hundred thousand gold ducats, I will surrender the keys of Milan to the French!”
—I have slipped it out of its hiding place while he has been talking.
The underarm throw is quickest from this position.
I flick it as hard as I can at the alchemist, and—
Impossible! I missed! The knife has embedded itself in a wooden post behind his right shoulder.
“Foolish boy, you—”
“—Are finished, Assanti. So says Leonardo da Vinci.”
The Master! Coming through the door that leads to the cloister. But how?
“Leonardo! Leonardo, the traitor to alchemy, the man I—”
“You talk too much, Assanti. One of two reasons I left the Brotherhood. The other being that there was nothing more to learn. Stand back, Giacomo.”
The Master draws his sword and advances on the alchemist.
“Primitive, Leonardo. A true member of the Brotherhood can do better than that.”
Assanti reaches inside his robe and pulls out a small leather ball. He throws it with great force to the ground in front of the Master, and as it hits the stone—pflatt!—it breaks apart and green dust billows into the air.
The Master walks right into it, his sword arm raised to strike at the alchemist.
And starts coughing. And drops his sword. And falls to his knees. And clutches his throat.
Master!!
He gasps! He cannot breathe! Without another thought I take a deep breath and hold it in. Assanti has produced a black hood, which he has drawn over his head—it must be some kind of protection! His voice, strangely distorted from beneath the covering, proclaims: “So I am no match for you, eh, Leonardo? Breathe deeply, the deeper the better! It’s poison of the deadliest kind! You once declared that alchemy was neither art nor science. Oh, Leonardo, how wrong you were—it is both art and science! You believe only what you can see with your own eyes and prove with your own deductions. But there is another world, Leonardo, closed to your eyes, the eyes of the unbeliever. The world of alchemy!”
The Master is crouched on the floor, gasping.
While the alchemist has been giving his speech, I have worked my way behind him and now I am pulling—out—my—dagger—come on, curse you!—from the wood in which it was embedded. I have only a few more seconds of breath left—
“Now I will have to kill you, painter. I had hoped the Duke would be the one to do that, and slowly, too, but your arrival has changed things. My story now requires that you and your servant both are dispatched by my sword, in order to save His Holiness, who dies soon after you. Good-bye, Leonardo, good—aaaargh!!!!”
I threw my dagger once more, and this time it landed in his thigh. Not the best place—that would have been in the center of his black heart—but good enough.
He turns his attention from the Master, takes hold of the dagger’s hilt, and pulls it slowly, sickeningly, from his leg—
“You will drown in your own blood for this!” he bellows.
And he raises his rapier and comes at me as well as he can with a ruined leg—
And then the main doors of the refectory are opened and Pope Alexander enters with two cardinals.
The Pope says: “What?”
And everyone halts where they are.
The thick green smoke is straightway swept out through the doors. Gasping, I take in a lungful of fresh night air.
One of the cardinals shouts: “Your Eminence, withdraw forthwith!” and tries to pull him back through the doors.
Assanti looks left and right, undecided who to kill first. Then he turns from me to the Pope and raises his sword.
But two armed attendants run into the refectory and stand in front of the Pope as a shield, while the cardinals pull him, stumbling, out of the room.
Assanti roars like a trapped beast. His black hood is shaking with the pent-up fury inside. And then he turns back to me and says: “Boy, you have done more damage than you know. But time means nothing to me. I have eternity to play with. Fear me, boy. I will come to you again, as I did once before. And next time will be my final visit. And your final day on Earth.”
Once again he reaches inside his robe and pulls out another leather ball, which he hurls to the ground—paff!!!
There is a blinding flash. Suddenly, everything is covered with a yellow fog, and the air is filled with a strong smell of old eggs. (Isn’t this?—It is!—exactly what happened when the Master emptied his glass vial over the heads of the thieves who broke into our house!) Once more I take a deep breath before the fog envelops me, and then I run to the Master, grasp him beneath the arms, and pull him towards the doors.
It is the hardest task I have ever undertaken. For a start, the Master is heavier than he looks, but he is also senseless from the dust he inhaled. It is like dragging ten full sacks of grain.
Slowly we make our way through the yellow fog, although I cannot see if we are moving in the right direction. Then a fresh pair of strong arms, this time belonging to one of the Pope’s guards, helps me to lift the Master and remove him from the refectory. Oh, let the vile dust not have poisoned him!
The doors are shut behind us.
“Open the doors again!” I shout. “Let the smoke out—it might harm the painting!”
The Master lies on his side, but his chest heaves—he is alive, thanks be to God! And then his eyes open, they are streaming; he spits, he coughs, and he retches on the ground.
“Water!” I cry. “Bring water!” And one of the friars scurries off to do so.
I help the Master to his feet.
“Enough, boy. I can stand, thank you.”
I let go. He doesn’t like to be touched. He rubs his eyes.
“Didn’t Assanti say that it was poisonous, that powder?”
“Yes, Master, he did.”
“Well, I’m still alive, aren’t I?” (Cough! Cough!} “So much for the claims of alchemy. By Heave
n, the Last Supper!”
He runs back into the refectory, with me following a pace behind.
Inside, the yellow smoke has almost dispersed. Assanti has made good his escape—through the cloister door, to judge by the drops of blood leading to it.
The Master, however, does not concern himself with following the trail of the alchemist. He is looking up at the Last Supper, holding one of the large tapers close to the surface.
“No damage—at least, no damage visible. You did well to open the doors, boy. The smoke did not have time to settle.”
“Master, Assanti threw a second ball—it gave off a yellow fog, just like the one you—”
He turns around.
“Yes, boy,” he says, “it is the same substance: a rock found near volcanoes that Assanti and I discovered together when we were in the Brotherhood.”
So alchemy does have its uses.
He turns back to the painting.
Saint Francis, I was almost responsible for the death of the Pope! What a fool I have been. And now I will pay dearly for my failing. My dreams of becoming an artist are over. When this story comes out, I will surely hang for my part in it.
“Master, I-I have done a terrible thing.”
“Hmm,” is all he says.
“Going behind your back to meet Assanti. I wish I had told you everything before.”
“So do I. Then I could have warned you about him. He is a schemer, always has been. And you are an innocent—don’t interrupt me, boy!—who thinks he already understands the ways of the world. Let me tell you, Giacomo, you have much to learn about the wiles of man! I did not know what Assanti had planned, other than treachery of some kind. I thought it might happen tonight, and your uneasiness confirmed my fears. That is why I wore my sword.”
“You saved my life again, Master.”
“And this time you returned the favor.”
He continues to look at me.
“What was your arrangement with Assanti, boy? For giving him admittance to the Pope?”
“He said he would tell me a secret. I hoped it would be a secret power, a spell or a potion, but it was my death he planned to reveal to me. I was greedy, Master, and I was nearly undone by it, but my motives for helping him were not entirely selfish. I was told that he planned to unite alchemy with Christianity and make a better world for all men.”
“Ah, that is Assanti, all right, cunning as a twice-escaped ferret. He knew how best to lure you in.”
“And he has no secret powers?”
“None that I know of. Unless you count the ability to talk for an hour without drawing breath!”
And the Master laughs. I want to join him, but I do not. After what happened in my room I cannot doubt that the alchemist possesses powers far beyond a normal man’s.
“What will become of me now, Master? I will have to confess to my part, however innocent, in this plot to kill the Pope.”
“Let me worry about that, boy,” he says.
The next morning, Holy Friday, the Master is summoned to the Castle to offer his explanation for the dire occurrences of the previous night.
When he returns, it is to say that he told the Duke a story in which I played no part, and that at the end the Duke thanked him for saving the Pope’s life—and Milan’s future alliance with the Church. But if the Pope had been killed at Santa Maria, the Church would surely have turned against Milan and made an alliance with the French—and I would have been responsible for that calamity, as well!
My master has earned high praise for his part in foiling the plot and saving the life of the Pope (being no longer in the story, I had to forgo my share of the glory). His Holiness, meanwhile, has been confined to his bed to recover from the unspeakable events. He will return to the refectory to view the Last Supper as soon as the doctors permit it.
The Duke has issued a new proclamation against all alchemists, vowing to wipe the land clean of them forever. Even now, bands of armed guards are preparing to scour the city and bring any suspects to the Castle for interrogation.
In the evening, I hasten to Tombi’s shop to warn him of the impending danger. I do not yet know how great a part he played in Assanti’s plot, but my heart tells me that he was no more aware of the alchemist’s true mission than I was.
I knock on his door again and again before the peephole is uncovered and Tombi’s eye appears at the opening.
I hear the door being unbolted and unbarred, and I hasten inside.
“You must leave Milan, Messer Tombi. Tonight!”
“Wha-what has happened, Giacomo? Did Assanti’s audience with the Pope go badly?”
He knows nothing, after all. He is innocent.
I start to explain what happened at the Last Supper the night before. While I relate the order of events—me, Assanti, my master, the fight, the Pope, the guards, the smoke, the Master’s near death, Assanti’s narrow escape—my tale is interrupted repeatedly by Tombi’s exclamations—
“No!”
“I do not—”
“I will not believe it!”
“Not Master Assanti, no!”
“Never!”
“Alchemists are not murderers!”
—So that it takes me twice the time it should to give him all the news, and that is twice as much as I wanted, because time is something Tombi no longer has. Not in Milan, anyway.
By the end of my story, the good apothecary, or alchemist rather, has sunk into a chair, his head in his hands. “No!” he says, one last time. It is more of a whisper, this last one. “I am ruined. All is done!”
“We must pack up your belongings and have you out of here by dawn, Messer Tombi. The Duke’s men will be searching the city, and they are sure to visit the Street of Apothecaries first.”
“But why, Giacomo? Why are you helping me after what has happened? You, your master—you were both almost killed!”
“Because I believe you for a good man, Messer Tombi. I know you were not aware of Assanti’s true intentions.”
“He convinced me I was helping the alchemists to make peace with the Church, not start a war with them. What a fool I was! And now—”
“And now I will help you pack,” I say.
“God bless you, Giacomo, for giving me this chance, which I do not deserve.”
“Messer Tombi, you have been a valued friend to me, a good and true friend, one of the very few in my life.”
He thanks me again and again—his eyes are shining, poor fellow, he is almost in tears.
“I will take myself across the mountains as far as Germany, by foot if need be. I have a friend in Heidelberg, a doctor, who will hide me until I can contact the Brotherhood and obtain their assistance.”
“And for the lessons you gave me,” I say, “I promised that my master would pay you as soon as the Duke—”
“Never mind that, Giacomo, it is too late to worry about my debts.”
“The Duke has still not paid us, sir. But I have brought you something …”
The ten ducats that Maggio gave me for his place in the Last Supper, the only money I did not hand over to the Master.
Without further delay I give them to him.
“Why, Giacomo—”
“I am sorry I cannot pay you more of what we owe. But I will. One day.”
We shake hands and I turn to leave. Then he takes my arm and says: “Farewell, Giacomo. We shall find each other again, I hope.”
XLI
On the Sunday we are up in good time to make our way to the Castle to join Maggio and the flying machine. The Master takes long strides and lectures me continually on the working of the wings and pedals (which he has already been lecturing me on for weeks, now). He is very nervous and speaks in short bursts, calling the machine “the great bird,” as is his wont.
“Be mindful of the wind’s whirls and eddies—that they do not overturn the great bird—respond to the pressure of the air raising you up from below or pushing down from above—by subtle manipulation of the lever, left a
nd right—it must be handled with great care—especially when the craft has risen more than ten braccia from the ground.”
“Yes, Master. I understand.”
“All it requires is the smallest movement of the lever, and the wind’s current will do the rest for you.”
“Master, I have not forgotten.”
While the Master continues the recitation of his list of reminders and instructions, my mind drifts as if on its own wings to the Street of Apothecaries. I pray Tombi has made his escape. The Duke’s men will not have been slow about their duties.
But here we are at the Castle gates.
We are admitted without delay and walk out into the vast, dazzling green square inside. In the middle, right in the middle, is the flying machine, fully assembled and ready to launch. It has been moved from the Rocchetta in readiness for its voyage. Maggio’s two assistants are underneath the body of the craft, screwing and hammering at something. Maggio is adjusting the rudder at the back.
And suddenly I think: I am going to fly this thing—today!
The sun has come out and the wind is favorable; I am glad I will not have to worry about the weather, when there is so much else to worry about. Everything looks set fair for the flight.
The Master tugs my sleeve.
The Duke’s Castle Guard, some five hundred men, perhaps, have filed out of the barracks and are lined up side by side the length of the walls. In front of them, at intervals of perhaps ten paces, are a hundred or more knights on horseback, riders and chargers both in full ceremonial armor and bearing the Sforza crest on banners and pennants. But most unexpected of all is the viewing stand, covered with a golden canopy, which has been erected for those invited to witness the flight. Even now, these important personages are filing out of the Duke’s apartments to take their places, radiant in purples and pinks, greens and golds, with attendants and servants following. By the laughter and loud voices, I judge there has been drinking and feasting at the Duke’s expense.
“Master, was this not to be a secret demonstration for the Duke?”
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