by Ann Hood
“Seriously,” Maisie said as they continued along the Arno River, “you need to find a different girlfriend. Someone who isn’t married, for example.”
Sandro shrugged. “A heart doesn’t take advice.”
Maisie thought about how her mother wouldn’t listen to reason about Bruce Fishbaum, and how her father almost married Agatha the Great, and how neither of them would take her advice to get married again—to each other.
“That’s true,” Maisie admitted.
From deep inside her stomach, a hungry growl made its way out and into the night.
“Oops,” Maisie said. “I guess I haven’t eaten in a long time.”
“But why didn’t you say so?” Sandro said. “Right here we can stop and have some meat and cheese.”
He pointed to a busy shop across the street.
“The owner is my good friend Pasquale. He will let us taste a little of this, a little of that.”
“I’d like a lot of something,” Maisie said, which made Sandro laugh.
Inside, the shop stank of cheese, the kind her father liked, but no one else did. She wrinkled her nose, trying not to show her disgust.
A short fat man came from around a counter of cheeses and dried meats, grinning at the sight of Sandro.
The two men hugged and gushed for so long that Maisie had to clear her throat to remind them she was there.
Sandro introduced her to Pasquale, who hugged her and gushed at her for so long that she finally said, “Nice to meet you, too,” very loudly, and then, “Sandro said you might have some snacks?”
“Ah!” Pasquale said happily. “A hungry girl!”
He went back around the counter, saying in a singsong voice, “A hungry girl, a hungry girl, Pasquale loves a hungry girl.”
Maisie stood on tiptoe to watch as he sliced and chopped salami and cheeses of all kinds, whistling as he placed them on a big round plate with olives and hunks of bread.
“Taste! Taste!” Pasquale said when he was done, holding the plate out to Maisie and Sandro.
She eyed the cheese, wanting to avoid the smelliest, and stuck to the salami instead. She had never seen so many different kinds of salami. There were small discs, hard red slices, softer large ones, and one studded with what looked like seeds. And each kind tasted different—salty, sharp, spicy, and even like licorice.
Sandro and Pasquale laughed as they watched her eat.
“May I have one tiny piece of salami?” Sandro teased her.
Reluctantly she let him have a few pieces, and some cheese and olives, too.
Usually, Maisie didn’t like most olives, but Great-Aunt Maisie’s love of Niçoise olives had made her fond of those. These were fat and green, cracked and sitting in oil and spices. And, Maisie decided as she tasted one, even better than those shrivelly black Niçoise olives.
Finally, she couldn’t eat even one more bit. She’d managed to avoid the smelly cheese and nibbled on a hard buttery-tasting one instead.
“Phew,” she said, wiping the oil from her mouth with the back of her hand, “I am stuffed.”
“I bet you are,” Sandro said. “You’ve eaten enough to feed a horse. Two horses!”
Then Sandro and Pasquale set about hugging each other good-bye, and then Pasquale hugged Maisie good-bye, and then finally they were back outside on the dark street.
“Felix!” Maisie said, suddenly remembering that she was supposed to meet him at ten o’clock.
“We’ll go to him now,” Sandro said. “We are only a little late.”
Sure enough, Felix was waiting right where he was supposed to be, looking worried and anxious, pacing back and forth.
When he saw Maisie, a look of relief came over him.
“Maisie,” he said, “I was afraid—”
Sandro reached down and pinched Felix’s cheek.
“I was feeding her!” Sandro said. “No need to worry when she is with Sandro Botticelli.”
“Ouch!” Felix said, rubbing his cheek.
“I’ll have your masks ready before Carnival,” Sandro promised.
“When is Carnival?” Maisie asked.
“In two days,” Sandro said, confused. “You came to Florence for Carnival and you don’t know when it is?”
“Um . . . ,” Maisie said.
“Where are you spending berlingaccio?” Sandro asked.
“Um . . . ,” Maisie said again.
“You will spend it with me!” Sandro declared, banging his chest. “At Lorenzo de’ Medici’s Palazzo Medici!”
“Okay,” Maisie said.
Felix kicked her in the ankle.
“Felix too, right?” she said, glaring at Felix.
“Yes, yes, of course,” Sandro said dismissively. “Felix too.”
“Thank you,” Maisie said, trying to remember the long b word he’d said, so she could find out what exactly they would be doing at this palace.
It was her turn to kick Felix.
“Right,” he said on cue. “Thank you.”
Sandro turned to leave, but he almost immediately turned back toward them.
“Where are you staying?” he asked Maisie.
Felix stepped forward, into Sandro’s path.
“At my friend’s,” he said.
“Really?” Sandro said, cocking his head. “And where is your friend?”
“At Verrocchio’s studio,” Felix said smugly.
“Really?” Sandro said, impressed now. “I know every single artist there.”
“I’m sure you do,” Felix said.
“You will be in good hands,” Sandro said, and once again turned to leave.
But once again he stopped and turned around.
“How do you know anyone in Verrocchio’s studio?” he asked.
“Our father,” Felix said quickly. “He studied art here in Florence. A long time ago,” he added to avoid more questions.
Sandro nodded. “An artist,” he said.
“Yes!” Maisie said, pleased that Felix had come up with an answer so quickly.
She wondered if he really had made a friend in this Verrocchio’s studio, if they really did have a place to stay. The night had grown chilly, and very dark.
Sandro nodded again. “Good night, then,” he said, tipping his hat slightly.
This time, he really did leave them, walking off into the night.
CHAPTER 8
LEONARDO DA VINCI
By the time Maisie and Felix got back to Verrocchio’s studio, making their way through the dark streets lit here and there by candles placed in front of shrines, clouds had swept over the sky, covering the stars.
Felix’s friend seemed distracted and deep in thought as he let them in. The smock he wore had spots of paint on it, and his hands were streaked with various shades of blue paint. He led them to a small storeroom and gave them each a heavy blanket and small flat pillow.
“In the morning, we will go to the hills,” he said to Felix. “But tonight . . .”
He gave a little apologetic smile and a shrug before leaving them there with a lit oil lamp.
“Friendly,” Maisie muttered.
“He is friendly,” Felix insisted. “He’s just busy finishing a painting.”
Maisie yawned.
“Not that I feel like staying up and chatting,” she said, wrapping the blanket around herself and settling onto the floor.
“Ugh,” she groaned. “This is a hard floor.”
Felix lay down beside her, yawning too. “What a day,” he murmured.
But Maisie was already asleep, her hair spread out like a fan around her head, and her arms flung out of the blanket.
A flash of lightning lit the small room, forcing Felix to sit bolt upright.
Oh great, he thought. A thunderstorm.
Even at ho
me he didn’t like thunderstorms. When he was little, his mother used to tell him thunder was angels bowling. Maisie would roll her eyes at that explanation, but it made him feel a little less frightened. Now that he knew that wasn’t true, thunderstorms had become scary again. And here he was back in the 1400s, which made it even—
Crack!
Thunder boomed, shaking the building.
Felix took cover under the blanket while Maisie snored lightly beside him.
Before long, another bolt of lightning lit the sky outside. Felix remembered that if he counted the time between the lightning and thunder, he would know how far away the storm was.
One, he began.
Two.
“Felix!” someone called. “Felix, where are you?”
“Under here,” Felix said softly.
The blanket got torn from him, revealing his painter friend looking down at him with excitement.
“This is no time for sleep,” he said.
“I wasn’t exactly sleeping,” Felix said.
More thunder crashed around them.
Felix ducked under the blanket again as the boy clapped his hands in delight.
“What are you doing here?” Maisie grumbled sleepily.
“Did you hear that?” the boy asked her.
“The thunder?”
“When I throw a pebble in a pond, I noticed that waves form in a circle around it,” he continued, “expanding steadily outward from it.”
“Okay,” Maisie said. “Sure.”
She yawned again. “What time is it, anyway?”
“From this observation,” the boy went on, “I deduced that sound and light must also travel in waves. But through the air.”
“Sound waves,” Maisie said. “Right.”
A bolt of lightning seemed to land right outside the house, and for a split second everything was illuminated: Maisie’s sleepy face and golden hair frizzy with static electricity, Felix peeking out from beneath the blanket, and the boy grinning.
“Wait!” the boy practically shouted. “I always see lightning before I hear thunder. Yes?”
“I . . . I don’t know,” Maisie said. “I guess so.”
“Therefore light waves must travel faster than sound waves!”
As if on cue, more thunder sounded, causing the boy to laugh with delight.
“Why is this so exciting, anyway?” Maisie said.
He looked at her, surprised.
“Discovery is the most exciting thing of all,” he said.
“Are you a scientist?” she asked, frowning up at him. “I thought you were a painter.”
He shrugged. “I love nature,” he said, as if that explained everything. “I learned this from my uncle Francesco. He ran my grandfather’s farm about twenty miles from here, where I lived as a boy. There, we had vineyards and olive trees, and we grew wheat. My uncle would take me outdoors with him, from the time I was five or so, and I grew to love watching the birds in flight, the flowers, all of nature. From this, we learn, yes?”
Rain began to fall, hard, outside.
“But how did you learn to paint?” Felix asked, feeling safer now that the rain had come.
“I always loved to draw,” the boy said. “And I was always very good at it.”
Felix wondered why, if Sandro Botticelli had said that very thing, he would have sounded boastful, but this boy did not.
“One day, a local peasant made a round shield and asked my father to get it painted for him. My father immediately thought of me for the job, because he knew I could draw. Immediately I imagined painting Medusa on the shield.”
“Medusa?” Maisie asked through a yawn.
“The creature with snakes in its hair, right?” Felix asked eagerly.
The boy nodded. “Exactly. I had seen many interpretations of Medusa, always looking so serene and pleasant. But I thought Medusa should be grotesque. I mean, a head full of snakes is grotesque, isn’t it?”
He didn’t wait for a reply. The memory had made him grow excited, and he paced as he described what he did next.
“I wanted these snakes to be realistic, not interpretive. To draw my Medusa, I needed models, so I went outdoors to collect specimens. Not just snakes, but lizards, too. What does a reptile’s scale really look like? How do I capture it realistically? I positioned my models around the room where I was painting the shield, and lost myself there for many days. I’m not sure if my father screamed at the sight of Medusa, or at the smell of those dead reptiles. But when he came in, he screamed!”
Maisie wrinkled her nose at the thought of decomposing animals, but Felix grinned as he imagined such a Medusa.
“Did the man like what you painted?” Felix asked.
The boy laughed.
“My father thought it was so good that he sold it to an art dealer, and the art dealer sold it to the duke of Milan, and now here I am! In a famous artist’s studio!”
“Wow,” Felix said in admiration.
The sound of footsteps nearing made the three of them look in that direction.
A short, pudgy, stern-looking man appeared in the doorway.
“Aren’t you working on the angel?” he said to the boy.
“I am, yes. But I noticed something important.”
He held up a small notebook and opened it, revealing the strangest handwriting Felix had ever seen. The letters seemed to be written backward, and ran from right to left instead of from left to right. Once, Felix and Maisie’s parents gave them a spy kit for Christmas, and one of the codes in it looked just like this handwriting. To break the code, Maisie had figured out, they just had to hold the message up to a mirror, where it became readable in the reflection.
“And I had to record it,” the boy was explaining.
The man sighed. “That’s all well and good,” he said, frustrated, “but did you get the paints mixed?”
“I . . . hmmm . . . I started to,” the boy said, thinking hard. “I spent all morning washing and grinding the minerals—”
“Such as?” the man continued impatiently.
“Iron,” the boy said. “And maybe terra verte?” he added uncertainly.
“And?” the man pressed. “Did you at least get it mixed with the oil and milk?”
“That,” the boy admitted, “I did not do.”
The man sighed again. “Why do you have so much trouble finishing things? Such a talented young man, but you get so distracted.”
“Yes, Signor Verrocchio, I do get distracted. But these distractions, as you call them, are important. For example, today I was preparing to add the oil and milk, just as you ordered. But I began to think of how I could make the colors less saturated.”
“Less saturated,” Signor Verrocchio said in the voice of a man losing his patience.
“Exactly! Subtler! Lighter!” the boy’s face beamed with enthusiasm. “Perhaps, with your permission, of course, I’ll try this tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow, you will paint the angel. Or the landscape, as my master sketches show,” the artist said seriously.
“Yes, yes, of course. But first, perhaps I can add some beeswax and water when the pigment and linseed oil are at the boiling stage? To see if my theory is correct?”
The man shook his head. “Where do you get these ideas, Leonardo?”
“Leonardo!” Maisie gasped.
“Da Vinci?” Felix ventured.
“You know me?” Leonardo asked, confused.
“We . . . I mean . . . yes . . . ,” Felix stammered.
“From . . . Sandro,” Maisie offered.
“Ah!” Leonardo said, satisfied.
Maisie and Felix couldn’t do anything except stare at him, the boy who would grow up to paint the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, now just an apprentice mixing paint for Andrea del Verrocchio.
Maisie did not want to go up into the hills with Leonardo.
“But he’s Leonardo da Vinci,” Felix said to her in disbelief. How could anyone, even his sister, Maisie, not want to spend every possible minute with the actual Leonardo da Vinci?
“I want to see what Sandro is doing for my mask,” Maisie said.
Even though she realized that Sandro stupidly loved a married woman, and was actually much older than she’d thought (he must be at least twenty, she’d decided), she didn’t care. She had, she realized, a great big crush on the curly-haired, unknown painter. Someone else, like maybe Bitsy Beal or Avery Mason, would have developed a crush on Leonardo, who, with his long eyelashes and dark eyes, was what those girls would call dreamy. But to Maisie, Sandro was cuter and more fun to be around than someone who got all excited about light traveling faster than sound.
“Sandro Botticelli isn’t even that good a painter,” Felix said.
“How do you know? You haven’t seen his work.”
“No one’s ever heard of him,” Felix said.
“Apparently,” Maisie said, defending Sandro, “everyone here has heard of him. He’s apprenticed with some famous monk named Flippy Lippy, or something.”
Felix shook his head. “Flippy Lippy? That does not sound like anyone serious about anything.”
“I don’t know who the guy is, but Sandro said it like he was someone very important,” Maisie said.
“That’s because he’s a braggart!” Felix exclaimed.
“Plus,” Maisie continued, deciding to ignore her brother’s insult, “he’s good friends with these Medici people, and apparently they run the whole city of Florence.”
“Fine,” Felix said. “I give up.”
“Besides,” Maisie said, “we’re going to all go to that palace later for the . . . What did he call it?”
“Berlingaccio, I think,” Felix said. “Whatever that is.”
They were interrupted by the sound of boisterous laughter coming from the artist’s studio where Leonardo had gone to paint.
“That sounds like Sandro,” Maisie said happily, and before Felix could roll his eyes at her she was out the door.
Reluctantly, Felix followed.
Sure enough, Sandro stood leaning against the wall, watching as Leonardo frowned at the giant canvas. In Leonardo’s hand was a clay model of an angel.