Secret of Light

by K. C. Dyer

  “Wait for me, boy,” Darrell whispered. This place was creepy when it was empty. I’m just going to drop the book in the studio and head back to the stable.

  Delaney nosed a door open, and Darrell could see a wash of light flow into the hall. She swallowed and stepped into the room.

  Two old men sat near a shuttered window, a single lamp on the table beside them. Both turned as Darrell entered the room. “Are you here to light the fire?” demanded one of the men.

  Darrell held out the book. “I’m here to return something I — I found,” she said in a low voice.

  “Bring it here then, bambina.”

  Darrell stepped closer and gasped. “Cristofo!”

  The old man laughed, and the other joined him, their voices creaking together in merriment. “You do look at bit like Cristofo, Giovanni,” said the second old man, when he had regained enough breath to speak. “This is what age has brought us. We have become our grandfathers.”

  Darrell turned and gazed into the eyes of Leonardo.

  For the first time, he looked like the portraits she had seen of him in her research at the library. His beard was long and mingled with hair both grey and white. His hands resting on the table were still large, but were knotted with arthritis. Still smiling, he turned back to his friend. “Who is this young thing who knows your old grandfather?”

  Giovanni shrugged. “Has Placida sent you to light the fires? It’s about time — we will freeze in here before long.”

  Darrell nodded. It was very cold in the room. “I’ve come to bring you this,” she said, moving aside a stack of half-painted canvasses and laying the notebook on the table. “And I can’t stay long, but I will light the fire. It’s too cold to sit here without one.” She walked over to the fireplace, limping a little, and knelt to pile up wood and coal.

  “She walks on a wooden leg,” remarked Giovanni conversationally. “Why does that seem important?” He shook his head. “It seems I can remember nothing these days.”

  Leonardo tapped the table with a gnarled finger. “I remember a little girl who walked on a wooden leg long ago,” he said quietly. “I wonder what became of her? I seem to recall she vanished like a dream — blown away like a wisp on the wind.”

  Darrell smiled to herself as she finished laying the fire. Using the stub of a candle she lit from the lamp, she soon had the tinder alight. She stood and walked back to the old men as warmth spread behind her and began to fill the room.

  Giovanni was leafing through the notebook. He looked up at Darrell sharply, his blue eyes gleaming in the light of the fire.

  “Where did you find this?”

  “It appears to be one of my old notebooks,” said Leonardo, reaching across the table. “Look! It is the one you gave me, with the letter ‘L’ on the cover.”

  “Uh — someone took it,” Darrell muttered. “Someone took it and I found it and thought you might want it back.”

  Leonardo flipped the book back to Giovanni.

  “What use would I have for it now?” The artist slammed his fist on the table. “I am an old man, destined to die as nothing more than a toymaker for a French king.” He stood up and walked to the fire. Still tall, he leaned down to the flames to warm his hands. “I am given leave to see my old friend for but a day or two while the king dallies in Firenze, and then I must return to the life of a buffoon.” He bent and tossed another log on the flames.

  “Did you see the lion I made King Francis, Giovanni? Its mechanism allowed it to walk across the room, and inside its chest was a bouquet of flowers for the queen.” He grabbed an iron poker and prodded the fire vigorously, his voice bitter. “Leonardo, maker of toy lions.”

  “You are the master, unsurpassed, without peer,” said Giovanni quietly. “Look at all you have done in your long life, my friend.”

  “Do you know what it means?” Leonardo interrupted, his mouth twisted, “to be without peer?” He turned back to the table, and Darrell could see tears in his eyes.

  Leonardo’s voice was laden with emotion. “In my life I have wrapped myself in arrogance the way most men would wear a cloak. Today I am an old man, and I lie stripped bare of such things.” He sighed deeply and returned to his chair. “You say I am without peer — but you are wrong,” he said. “There are many who are great masters of their craft. Michelangelo. Raphael. My own teacher, Verrocchio. For most of my life I struggled to stand out among these other artists. I strove to put myself head and shoulders above them, but really I am no better or, please God, no worse than the rest.”

  Delaney curled in a brown ball, and Darrell sank onto a small stool near the fire. Leonardo grasped the hand of his friend across the table and his words poured out like a river of bitterness and defeat. Listening, Darrell felt as though she had no more presence in the room than the other ghosts populating Leonardo’s memories.

  “Giovanni, you know at times the painting was not enough. I had other windows open in my soul. I longed to find how the world worked, what made it so, and what more could be done. These notes,” he gestured at the volume lying on the table between them, “these and my other notebooks captured my true love. My projects — the machines in all their mechanical glory can be found here. Here are my ideas of philosophy, theology, and more.” He shook his head sadly. “And yet there is no one, save you, Giovanni, with whom I can share these innermost thoughts. When I attempt it, even the most enlightened mind reels. I have been lucky to escape charges of heresy.” He slammed his fist on the table, causing the notebook to skip into the air and lightly skitter onto the floor.

  Darrell’s words tumbled out. “But what became of your secret project? I saw sketches in your notebook, but I could not understand any of it.”

  Leonardo stooped to pick up the volume and brandished it at her.

  “No one understands my ideas — how to raise a sunken ship, how to power a machine to fly like a bird, how to travel to the great depths of the sea.” He slumped into a chair, his brief burst of anger gone. He looked at Darrell and laughed a little. “My secret project was my biggest failure. I thought once there must be a way to harness time — ha!” He shook his head. “It cannot be done.”

  “But what if it can?” Darrell whispered.

  He leaned over and cracked open a shutter, and grey light streamed into the room. “Look at me, signorina. This is what time accomplishes. It gnaws away at all beauty — at all life. What little of it I have slips away more quickly every day.”

  Leonardo held up one hand, fingers cruelly twisted with arthritis. “When you put your hand in the river, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so it is with present time.”

  He lifted one of the half-completed canvasses off the table. “I am losing my battle with time, but before I do, perhaps I may conquer that other great illusion.”

  “Illusion?” Darrell clenched her hands tightly in her lap. Disappointment and puzzlement struggled within her.

  His raised his hand again and held it into the sunbeam streaming through the window. The light poured through the work-worn fingers and he flexed them as though trying to grasp the air. “Can’t you guess, signorina? I seek to conquer the light. The very thing which illuminates all things has eluded me, and even after all these years I continue to struggle with its mysteries. And yet — if that great thief Time allows, perhaps I may still triumph.” He shook his head and sighed.

  Darrell gestured at the sketches and half-completed paintings strewn haphazardly across the table. They all depicted various studies of a woman’s face. “Is this the Mona Lisa?” she asked quietly.

  For a moment, Leonardo smiled into his beard, staring once more into the beam of light piercing the shadowy room from above. He spoke slowly. “I have never heard that name used to describe this particular lady. I know not yet who she will become. All that I know is that her portrait haunts me. Every day I spend a little time with her, and in the end, I hope that she will teach me the secret of light.” He paused.<
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  “I must work,” he said, his voice suddenly sharp. “There is still much to do and my hours grow shorter each day.” He pointed toward the door. “Send her away, Giovanni!”

  Darrell stood and gathered her courage. “You sent me away once before, Leonardo, and I did what you said without question.” She stepped nearer the table. “But you hold a secret locked within you — and I need to find the key!”

  Darrell found she was shouting and had grasped the startled old man by the lapel of his collarless jacket. For an instant the room, and all within it, stood still.

  “I know you care about this,” she whispered. “You wrote it yourself: Tempo, Spazio, Luce. Time, Space, and Light. And I did not just blow away. I travelled through time. You saw me yourself.”

  Their eyes locked for an endless moment.

  “I know who you are,” he said, finally. “And I know from whence you come.”

  Darrell swallowed. “You do?”

  Leonardo plucked her hand off his lapel and walked over to the table to stand beside his old friend. “You are the devil,” he spat, “and you come from Hell.”

  His voice rose to a roar. “You give with one hand and take with the other. When I seek the truth of the secret contained in a beam of light across a woman’s face, you offer me promises that mean nothing. Yes — I have seen you before. I remember as though it were yesterday when you were swept away in a whirl of wind. I was a young man, filled with ambition, and yes — with greed. I wanted all that your very presence implied. I wanted time!”

  “So,” Darrell interrupted the flow of the old man’s words. Her face felt hot and she clenched her hands tightly at her side so Leonardo would not see them shake. “What did you do? Did you find out more?”

  He shook his head. “No. After years of study, I could discover no more. And I convinced myself that you were but a dream — a dream come to haunt me like the ghost of my own failure. In the end,” he swept a sketch off the table, “above all else, I am an artist. The answers I seek lie in light.” His voice dropped and he smiled wryly. “There is no time left for me to study time.”

  Darrell felt her own anger and disappointment surge. “You said you could do it,” she cried. “You said you could harness time, and I believed you! The secret of light is not important. It’s the secret of time that I need. You are one of the greatest thinkers in history. How can you quit now?” She stepped forward, and one of the carefully carved toes of her wooden leg caught on the floor. She stumbled toward the table, but in a single smooth motion that belied his age, Giovanni stood and caught Darrell by the arms, steadying her.

  She lifted her chin and felt the wetness of her own tears on her face. “There is much I could tell you,” she said, her voice low and filled once again with the pain of her loss.

  Leonardo remained facing the fire, but had pulled himself to his full height. “It is too late, bambina. I have turned my back on old failures. You must know,” he met her eyes at last, “the secret you desire is not in my grasp.” He stepped to the table and lifted the sketch depicting a quietly smiling woman’s face into the sunbeam coursing through the window. “I think,” he said, his tone firm, “that instead, I will seek the answer to a puzzle that it is within my power to solve.”

  Giovanni stepped to the door. He placed a hand on Delaney’s head, and the dog’s tail wagged like a gentle metronome.

  Darrell followed slowly, limping a little, and stopped in the doorway. “There is so much more I need to know,” she began.

  “Well, my girl, there is much we all would know,” Giovanni interrupted brusquely. “But we old men must content ourselves with that which we have. Within your grasp you have great riches Leonardo and I do not. Yours is the wealth of time. Do not waste this gift.” With a firm hand on her arm, he drew Darrell into the dark hall and closed the door.

  They walked through the hall and into the kitchen. The closing door had extinguished the last flame of hope within Darrell’s heart. She slowly wiped away the traces of tears that felt like ice on her cheeks in the penetrating cold of the kitchen. An old woman clothed in black stood near the stove, feeding wood into a new fire she was kindling.

  Giovanni’s voice lightened. “Ah, Placida. You are here to create a masterpiece for our noon meal?”

  The old lady made a rude noise as she expertly lit a lamp from the flame dancing on the tip of a tiny splinter of kindling. “I told you not to let the fire go out,” she scolded. “Now I have much more work to do before I can feed you old fools.” She pulled an iron ladle from a hook on the wall and looked disapprovingly down at the dog.

  Giovanni smiled and put a hand on Darrell’s arm. His eyes gleamed like sapphires in the light from the lamp. “I remember you now — you and your dog. And I remember a strange story my grandfather once told. ‘Treat her kindly, if you see her again,’ he said to me. A whole lifetime ago.”

  He reached into a dark recess near the door and pulled out a heavy woollen shawl. “Please take this. Your journey may be cold. And take care in the streets, cara. These times bring great change, and trouble is often near.” He clipped a tiny silver brooch onto the shawl, and with a last smile, he placed it in her hands.

  Darrell clutched the shawl and looked into the kind eyes that reminded her so much of a young man from another century, another country. The questions welled within her but could not find a way to her lips. “I wish...” she whispered, at last.

  “I do, too.” As he smiled his farewell, she wrapped the shawl tightly around her shoulders and followed Delaney into the thin afternoon light.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Darrell made her way carefully along the lane leading to Verrocchio’s stable. The sun had warmed the ground a little and most of the iciness had melted away. She thought about Giovanni’s grandfather and sighed as she walked. The old notebook was back in its owner’s hands, at least, but as it was for Leonardo, the secret of time still remained just beyond her reach.

  Concentrating on trying not to slip, she was surprised as she turned the last corner to see a horse and cart pulled up behind Verrocchio’s yard. She slipped behind a crumbling wall and peeked through the naked branches of a mulberry tree.

  The door to the stable crashed open and a man came out carrying a large, squirming bundle over one shoulder. With some effort he thrust the bundle in the rear of the rickety old cart and jammed a board across the back.

  “That’s the last of them, Sal,” called the man to the driver.

  A blur of brown fur shot from behind the bush.

  “Oy! Get off!” The man, startled, tried to aim a kick at the dog and then pulled himself onto the seat. The driver clicked to the horses, and the cart creaked slowly off down the lane. Delaney looked once over his shoulder at Darrell and trotted off after the cart, keeping pace behind the rear wheels.

  Darrell, weak with fear, stumbled through the gate in the wall and over to the stable. The door hung loose on its hinges, and she stepped inside.

  “Kate? Brodie?”

  Nothing. Then Darrell heard a rustle coming from the tiny stall. A wooden crate that had stood on one end by the door was shattered in pieces all over the floor. Her heart in her throat, Darrell picked her way across the broken boards.

  Kate was lying on the floor of the stall, her hands and feet bound with ropes and her eyes huge over the greasy rag stuffed into her mouth. At the sight of Darrell, she shrieked with fear and rage. The sound was muffled by the gag, and Darrell ran to free her.

  “They’ve taken Brodie and Conrad,” she said as soon as Darrell had pulled the filthy wad out of her mouth. “Quick, Darrell, untie me, we’ve got to go find them.” She turned her head and began to spit the greasy taste out of her mouth.

  “I’m trying! These knots are really tight.” Darrell struggled to pull off the ropes but Kate cried out, so she went back to trying to untie them. “Tell me what happened.”

  Tears ran down Kate’s face. “I’m not sure. Conrad was freaking out and he wouldn’t stay still. We
tried to explain the whole thing, but he wouldn’t listen. I was tired of hanging onto his legs, and Brodie found some kind of twine inside the crate by the door, so we tied Conrad’s feet. He started sliding across the floor, but we wouldn’t let him move so he worked himself into a total tantrum.”

  Darrell loosened one of the knots at last and Kate’s left hand came free. She wiped her tears away with the back of her wrist. “He didn’t believe anything we said and he kept trying to get away. You were taking so long and we were worried, so we hauled Conrad over to that beam and propped him against it. Brodie tied him there so we could at least go somewhere quiet to make a plan about finding you, but that made Conrad really panic.”

  Kate pulled her hands away from Darrell. “Get my feet,” she said, “and I’ll work on getting this rope off my other wrist.”

  “Finish the story!” puffed Darrell, her fingers raw from tugging on the rough rope. “Maybe we can figure out where they’ve gone.”

  “Okay, okay. So Conrad started yelling. I got down on my knees beside him, trying to calm him down and talk some sense into him, and then I heard a thump. I heard a voice behind me say, ‘This one’ll do.’ I didn’t even have time to move or anything before someone grabbed me and pulled my arms back. It felt like they were going to break, Darrell, so I couldn’t help screaming.”

  Kate stopped worrying at the knot and rubbed her other wrist. A tear rolled down off the tip of her nose. “That’s when they stuck the gag in my mouth.” She shook her head. “I didn’t have a chance to move. I feel like such an idiot. Some great black belt I am.”

  She wiped her nose with the back of her free hand. “Anyway, after they tied me, they put a big sack over Conrad and took him out of the stable. Brodie tried to help me, but they punched him and he fell down. That’s the last I saw, ’cause they dragged me into the stall.”