Lost in the City of Flowers (The Histories of Idan Book 1)

by Maria C. Trujillo

  “Zia, didn’t you say you needed milk?” I reminded her, gesturing towards the young girl.

  “Indeed, I did! But you can usually get better deals farther into the market. Shall we continue on to see if we find a better stock?”

  “Why not just buy them here? You also said that your feet were tired, no?”

  “That is true,” she answered, surveying the plumage of the chickens and the quality of the cheeses.

  Zia began to haggle with the girl. Gently squeezing her arm, I pointed to the column steps. “Go on, but remember do not speak to anyone and do not venture off. This market is a maze and a dangerous one for girls,” she said. I walked over to the steps and sat down on the side where no one was sitting. It somewhat hurt to sit as the skin of my elbows and knees still felt tight from the fall. Looking around at the market place, I could not help think how bizarre it was that I had not completely lost my mind. Hugging my knees, I peered down at my father's birthday present. The shoes, too, seemed to have added on years from our trip to the past. My poor dad must be worried, waiting with that wretched Mrs. Reed in that terrible house with those awful paintings. Why couldn’t we have done something more normal for my birthday?

  Zia broke my train of thought as she set down a cage with a chicken and a burlap bag with two canisters on a step.

  “I thought you were just going to buy milk?” I said, casting a weary look at the chicken. This was the first time I had seen a live chicken up close.

  “Well, I am usually less impulsive, but such an unusual day calls for an unusual purchase,” she said, wiping her brow with a handkerchief. “Also, I won’t have to take this long walk every time I need an egg. The heavenly mother knows I am getting too old for such expeditions. If it pleases you, you can name it.”

  “Thank you. I’ll try to think of a good one,” I said, looking at the hen’s rusty feathers.

  “I am off again to get flour. It will be quicker if I go alone, but I will be back,” she assured, counting the coins in her leather pouch. “Oh, I forgot to warn you. Watch out for those palm readers! They are swindlers and will steal you blind. I cannot abide their ridiculousness. Besides, if you want to have your palm read, I know a true seer,” she said before vanishing into the bustling market.

  While I watched her walk away, I realized that a real attachment and love for Zia was burrowing its way through my heart. What if she really was one of my great grandmothers? Either way, I felt lucky to have fallen by her feet.

  I looked back down at the hen. “What would be a good name for you?” I asked. She looked like a George to me, for no particular reason other than being the first name that popped into my head. Nevertheless, she was a girl, so I named her Georgina. After stealing a quick glance around to make sure no one was watching me, I opened my satchel and took out my sketchbook. Once I had flipped to a clean bright page, I began to draw Georgina in all her ruffled glory. Just when I was really getting into it, a voice over my left shoulder interrupted me.

  “Not bad!” I turned to see from whom the compliment or insult came from.

  He looked about eighteen with dark blond waves and budding facial hair surrounding his wide grin. Although he had a strong, stalky build, when he sat down next to me, I noticed he moved gracefully. His nose’s slight bump balanced his flawless bone structure.

  “You might think me a brute for saying so, but you will never truly be a great draughtsman or in this case, draughtslady unless you master light and shadow … May I?” the stranger asked, holding his hand out to receive the bound pages, his smile reaching his hazel eyes.

  My hands shook as I passed it to him. He reached into the pocket of his olive tunic and pulled out some charcoal. It was hard to see what he was doing to the drawing of Georgina because his hair blocked my view. After a few minutes of craning my neck around to get a better look, he parted with the drawing.

  “This book of paper is as curious as its owner … I have never seen a girl interested in drawing before,” he said. Scared of being recognized as a foreigner, I held my tongue.

  “Viola!” called Zia.

  When I looked up she was practically sprinting with a small sack of flour slung over her shoulder. As she approached the base of the fountain, she looked more relieved.

  “I told you not to speak to anyone, sweet girl. You are very lucky indeed that it is Leonardo who so imprudently sat down by your side,” she huffed.

  “Well, Zia Cioni, I must rid your sweet child of guilt. To my own displeasure, she has not opened her mouth once. Fortunately, I have the happy but sloppy manners of sticking my nose in where it is most certainly not welcome. Please forgive me, ladies. When an idea or vision grabs my interest, it rarely lets go,” Leonardo concluded with a look that would have melted the heart of Medusa.

  “By and by, I am glad you two have met. Tomorrow I am taking her to your master’s house to meet and possibly help him around the workshop,” admitted Zia.

  “Allora? But what of Margherita?” asked Leonardo.

  “She is very far along and her belly is much too big to be slaving after ungrateful apprentices! No doubt she would welcome some help.”

  “Zia Cioni, may I point out that you still have not introduced me to your sweet girl?” said Leonardo.

  “Viola, this is my nephew’s most talented pupil, Leonardo … You are from Vinci, are you not?”

  “Si, da Vinci.”

  “Leonardo, this is my ward, Viola Orofino.”

  The name Leonardo da Vinci instantly transported me to the tea and cake with Mrs. Reed. She had mentioned the artist as being a “renaissance man” and already very accomplished by my age. Although my brain strained to recall all her words, my stomach worked equally hard to keep my breakfast down. This was impossible. Out of all the places I could have gone back in time to, why here and with Leonardo? This was too big of a coincidence. Like it or not, in my gut I knew that he would help me return to the door I had fallen from.

  Instead of kissing my hand, he sprung up from the stairs, took off his hat, and gave a low bow. Not being able to stop myself, I beamed at his enthusiastic manners. He slid the sketchbook back onto my lap. After examining the drawing of Georgina, I found myself speechless. Leonardo had brought her to life on the page with so little effort that I recognized how much I still had to learn. My first reaction was astonishment for Leonardo’s talent, but the crisscross lines that made up Georgina’s feathers made me feel insecure about my own attempt to capture her.

  “Your drawing is incredible,” I admitted.

  “Aha! Viola speaks … It is a quick sketch of your excellent hen, but thank you all the same,” he said with a curious smile. “Your heavy accent betrays you.” He scratched his phantom beard. “Pray, where were you born?”

  “Very far from here.”

  “An orphan?”

  “At the moment … sort of.”

  “Then we have that in common as I am an orphan as well.”

  “Leonardo, my dear, that is not entirely true,” interjected Zia. “Are you so ungrateful to your father? Was it not Ser Piero di Antonio who recommended you to my nephew, Andrea, and helped you get started in your apprenticeship?”

  “Well, my natural father had plenty of chances to legitimize me, but he has decided against it. Please do not think me ungrateful, Zia, as I appreciate the pains he has taken for me,” he said, softening the stiff tone the conversation had taken. He offered me his hand and pulled me lightly to my feet. Putting his arm around Zia’s shoulders, he said, “But as I see it, all bastards are orphans in a way. If only we all had caring women like Zia Cioni to look after us.”

  “How can you speak of yourself so, Leonardo?”

  “I find it is best to call things and people by the names society or nature gives them,” he said with polite conviction.

  “As you say, but
for my part Florence can keep her names and I my opinions.” Zia sighed.

  “I must be off or Master Verrocchio will be cross with me. He sent me to the apothecary to get some ocher and saffron, and I have stopped one too many times on my return. I hope to see you both again tomorrow, Signora Cioni and Signorina Viola.”

  Mrs. Reed had also mentioned that Leonardo worked in Andrea de Verrocchio’s studio. Not wanting to be rude, I shouted back, “It was nice meeting you!” The volume of my voice surprised even me.

  Seeing that he was trying not to laugh and not wanting to end the conversation on an embarrassing note, I thanked him for the drawing with a gentler voice. He strode off across the stained stones of the Mercato Vecchio.

  “Do you think I was too loud just then?” I asked Zia, feeling a little self-conscious.

  “Heavens no, Viola! People do not speak loud enough in my opinion.” While I realized my mistake in having asked such a question to an almost elderly woman, Zia had taken out a small notebook where she begun to scribble some numbers down.

  “What are you doing, Zia?”

  “Normally, I would wait till I returned home, but with my mind the way it is, it is best to write down the daily expenditures as they happen.” Looking down at her account book, I saw the date scrawled on the top of the page.

  19 Dicembre 1469

  The numbers that made up that combination appeared in Idan’s peepholes. At least now I knew that I truly had lost myself exactly 544 years in the past. My dad often said “knowledge is power,” but I did not feel more powerful. With my free arm I lifted the burlap bag and Georgina’s cage. After Zia had closed her accounts, she carried the flour, canisters, and the delicate gift of velvet as we walked back to Via dei Benci. After arriving at my new refuge, we placed Georgina in a decrepit coop in the alley behind the house. Zia instructed me to give her a generous bowl of water and several chunks of hardened bread. Meanwhile, Zia prepared her famous goat cannelloni. Before this trip to the past, I was thinking of becoming a vegetarian, but after I saw the head of the goat that was soon to be our dinner, my decision was set. Exhausted, we ate our hot meal in silence while the sun slowly extinguished. Zia lit two candles on the table.

  After dinner we said good night at the top of the stairs. Zia took one candle into a room on the right and I took the other to the chamber with the hay bed. Immediately, I took Idan out of the satchel lying on my bed and tried to uncover its secrets. The hand was now between the moon and the rising sun. The combination of numbers had not changed. Now I knew that three of the knobs told the date, but what about the fourth knob? Earlier, I tried to move the knobs but they did not budge. I didn’t try too hard because knowing my luck they might break, leaving me stuck here forever.

  It would be a lie not to admit that I had never been so scared in my entire life. The hanged woman’s sprite face haunted me. While I felt indebted to serendipity for having dropped me in Zia’s path, I dreaded not being able to get back home. Passing by those chanting beggars on the streets reminded me just how terribly things could have worked out. Questions still plagued me as my head rested on the bulky pillow. Why am I here? How can I figure out which door will get me back home? What role does Idan play in all this? There were so many mysteries without answers. Yet what I yearned for the most was to wake up to the sound of morning traffic outside my window.

  PART II

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Goat Guts

  With a rooster’s crow, any hope that I had of waking up in New York City faded. I saw that a fresh water jug and a chunk of soap were waiting for me as I stretched my arms in the cool air. I rolled onto my belly to look out the window directly behind the bed. Making a circle in the clouded glass with my fingers, I saw that sunbeams had not yet climbed over rooftops of Via dei Benci. Falling back on my pillow, I pulled Idan back out of the satchel. It was December 20, 1469 and the mysterious number thirty had turned to twenty-nine. Was Idan counting down to something? It could be counting down days, but twenty-nine days till what? Hopefully until Mrs. Reed found me, but it might not be that at all. I could vanish on the twenty-ninth day.

  Thinking it was much too early for all these questions, I put Idan’s long chain around my neck and slid it under my nightgown. The cold metal against my navel made my hairs stand up. My lavender sneakers were waiting for me at the edge of the bed, so I pulled them on, grabbed a wool blanket, and descended the stairs to the kitchen. Everything in the kitchen looked grey except for Zia, who was surrounded by a halo of candle light. She looked even more saintly than the painting of the Virgin Mary hanging in my little room. Her weathered hands moved quickly as she sewed the gift of green velvet to my wool dress. For a little while I stood there basking in the glow of her goodness and watching her at work. As I stifled a yawn, she looked up.

  “My dear child, I did not hear your steps! I daresay my hearing is getting worse,” she confessed, examining her work. “Stand here, Viola. I want to make sure it is long enough.” She pinned the dress against my shoulders and gave me a victorious look. “My hearing might not be what it was, but my tailoring is like a good wine.”

  “Thank—”

  “Stop! Do not finish that word. I know you are thankful, and you can repay me by not worrying so much about it. You are not my guest but part Cioni.”

  Touched, I knelt down and squeezed her tightly. In our embrace I could smell the scent of rosewater lingering on her shawl. Her stomach gave a loud grumble and I could not help laughing.

  Pulling away, I asked, “May I make breakfast, Zia?”

  “I was hoping Georgina would have laid us a surprise but she has not yet … I thought you said you did not know how to cook?”

  “I said I know a little bit.” In the pantry I found some oats, honey, cinnamon, and walnuts.

  Twenty minutes later light crawled its way through the window as Zia and I ate our hot cereal. “How strange this is, Viola. Is this common where you come from?”

  “Very!”

  “What is it called?”

  “Oatmeal.”

  “O-mil-e?”

  “Close enough.” I smiled, painfully aware of what I must sound like in Italian.

  When our wooden bowls were empty, she urged me to dress. “We are going out soon and cannot be late.”

  This time around putting on all the layers and newly tailored dress was much easier. The sea green trim of the dress hid my Converse from sight. Although I was appreciative, it felt as if I was covering up Violet Menet for the sake of Viola Orofino. Chrysalises started to hatch in my stomach as the meeting with the workshop owner approached. Somehow, I knew that being close to Leonardo was key to getting back to my life.

  “Where are we going, Zia?” I asked as she twisted my hair.

  “To church, then to Andrea’s workshop. That reminds me, can you carry the goat leftovers while I carry the cannelloni?”

  In my head I was thinking “Gross!” But aloud, I said, “Si, va bene.”

  With last night’s supper and a bag of intestines, we left for church. I had not been to any kind of church since I was very young. We were all still a family then. If I closed my eyes I could still see us walking together and feel the pain in my hand from the squeezing contests with Clara. Thinking about it made me sad, but I tried to recreate the memory all the same. The heavy swoosh sound of the bag’s contents against my dress drew me back to our walk. It had been about ten minutes when I asked whether we were going to the closest church to home.

  “Santa Croce is closer to home, but I know too many people there! When we arrive you will see how people gossip. If it were not for my piety, I might say that it is the only reason people go to the house of the Lord. To answer your question, no, I would much rather go to a church that is farther and away from busy tongues,” she said, balancing the leftovers as we walked.

  After a couple mor
e minutes, Zia stopped abruptly in a narrow plaza teeming with vendors, gypsies, and church goers. In front of us was a jagged building made of pebbles and mortared with sticky mud. There were three wooden doors left, center, and right. Half a dozen elegant horses were drinking from a narrow stone basin propped against the church. We glided by a shoeless man attending to the steeds while Zia guided me to the door on the left.

  “This cannot be the church!” I bellowed. While entering San Lorenzo, I was shocked at the sheer grandeur of the church.

  “Hush! Nonsense, child, of course it is. What did you think of us Florentines? We may be quick to make a profit, but we put our money where our mouth is when it comes to the holy family,” said Zia with a proud countenance.

  Never would I have thought that behind the crumbly exterior was a palace of light suspended by columns, arches, and a golden ceiling. Savoring my amazement, Zia began to give me all the basilica’s juicy details.

  “San Lorenzo is a very old church but it was re-made into a basilica by a complete madman and genius named Brunelleschi. He has solved many problems that other men have scratched their beards raw over. It took a long time to bring it up to date, but they just finished the interior. Isn’t it heavenly?” I gawked in agreement. “Much of the renovation was paid for by the most powerful family in Florence.”

  “What is their name?” I asked.

  “You have already met one of them.”