Anthology of Speculative Fiction, Volume Two

by Short Story Anthology

  "Indeed, I did. But a painter does not paint for himself, in the darkness, as you are doing"; yet even as he spoke, he leaned toward the large canvass Leonardo was working on, casting his shadow over a third of it. He seemed fascinated with the central figure of a struggling man being carried into Hell by the monster Geryon; man and beast were painted with such depth and precision that they looked like tiny live figures trapped in amber. The perspective of the painting was dizzying, for it was a glimpse into the endless shafts and catacombs of Hell; indeed, Paolo Ucello, may he rest in peace, would have been proud of such work, for he had lived for the beauties of perspective.

  "Leonardo, I have called upon you twice...why did you turn me away?" Sandro asked. "And why have you not responded to any of my letters?" He looked like a younger version of Master Andrea, for he had the same kind of wide, fleshy face, but Botticelli's jaw was stronger; and while Verrocchio's lips were thin and tight, Sandro's were heavy and sensuous.

  "I have not received anyone," Leonardo said, stepping out of the circle of light. Since Tista was buried, his only company was Niccolo, who would not leave his master.

  "And neither have you responded to the invitations of the First Citizen," Verrocchio said, meaning Lorenzo de Medici.

  "Is that why you're here?" Leonardo asked Sandro. Even in the lamplight, he could see a blush in his friend's cheeks, for he was part of the Medici family; Lorenzo loved him as he did his own brother, Giuliano.

  "I'm here because I'm worried about you, as is Lorenzo. You have done the same for me, or have you forgotten?"

  No, Leonardo had not forgotten. He remembered when Sandro had almost died of love for Lorenzo's mistress, Simonetta Vespucci. He remembered how Sandro had lost weight and dreamed even when he was awake; how Pico Della Mirandola had exorcised him in the presence of Simonetta and Lorenzo; and how he, Leonardo, had taken care of him until he regained his health.

  "So you think I am in need of Messer Mirandola's services?" Leonardo asked. "Is that it?"

  "I think you need to see your friends. I think you need to come awake in the light and sleep in the night. I think you must stop grieving for the child Tista."

  Leonardo was about to respond, but caught himself. He wasn't grieving for Tista. Niccolo was, certainly. He, Leonardo, was simply working.

  Working through his fear and guilt and...

  Grief.

  For it was, somehow, as if he had fallen and broken his spine, as, perhaps, he should have when he fell from the mountain ledge as a child.

  "Leonardo, why are you afraid?" Niccolo asked. "The machine...worked. It will fly."

  "And so you wish to fly it, too? Leonardo asked, but it was more a statement than a question; he was embarrassed and vexed that Niccolo would demean him in front of Verrochio.

  But, indeed, the machine had worked.

  "I am going back to bed," Verrochio said, bowing to Sandro. "I will leave you to try to talk sense into my apprentice." He looked at Leonardo and smiled, for both knew that he was an apprentice in name only. But Leonardo would soon have to earn his keep; for Verrochio's patience was coming to an end. He gazed at Leonardo's painting. "You know, the good monks of St. Bernard might just be interested in such work as this. Perhaps I might suggest that they take your painting instead of the altarpiece you owe them."

  Leonardo could not help but laugh, for he knew that his master was serious.

  After Verrochio left, Leonardo and Sandro sat down on a cassone together under one of the dirty high windows of the studio; Niccolo sat before them on the floor; he was all eyes and ears and attention.

  "Nicco, bring us some wine," Leonardo said.

  "I want to be here."

  Leonardo did not argue with the boy. It was unimportant, and once the words were spoken, forgotten. Leonardo gazed upward. He could see the sky through the window; the stars were brilliant, for Florence was asleep and its lanterns did not compete with the stars. "I thought I could get so close to them," he said, as if talking to himself. He imagined the stars as tiny pricks in the heavenly fabric; he could even now feel the heat from the region of fire held at bay by the darkness; and as if he could truly see through imagination, he watched himself soaring in his flying machine, climbing into the black heavens, soaring, reaching to burn like paper for one glorious instant into those hot, airy regions above the clouds and night.

  But this flying machine he imagined was like no other device he had ever sketched or built. He had reached beyond nature to conceive a child's kite with flat surfaces to support it in the still air. Like his dragonfly contraption, it would have double wings, cellular open-ended boxes that would be as stable as kites of like construction.

  Stable...and safe.

  The pilot would not need to shift his balance to keep control. He would float on the air like a raft. Tista would not have lost his balance and fallen out of the sky in this contraption.

  "Leonardo...Leonardo! Have you been listening to anything I've said?"

  "Yes, Little Bottle, I hear you." Leonardo was one of a very small circle of friends who was permitted to call Sandro by his childhood nickname.

  "Then I can tell Lorenzo that you will demonstrate your new flying machine? It would not be wise to refuse him, Leonardo. He has finally taken notice of you. He needs you now; his enemies are everywhere."

  Leonardo nodded.

  Indeed, the First Citizen's relationship with the ambitious Pope Sixtus IV was at a breaking-point, and all of Florence lived in fear of excommunication and war.

  "Florence must show it's enemies that it is invincible," Sandro continued. "A device that can rain fire from the sky would deter even the Pope."

  "I knew that Lorenzo could not long ignore my inventions," Leonardo said, although he was surprised.

  "He plans to elevate you to the position of master of engines and captain of engineers."

  "Should I thank you for this, Little Bottle?" Leonardo asked. "Lorenzo would have no reason to think that my device would work. Rather the opposite, as it killed my young apprentice."

  "God rest his soul," Sandro said.

  Leonardo continued. "Unless someone whispered in Lorenzo's ear. I fear you have gone from being artist to courtier, Little Bottle."

  "The honors go to Niccolo," Sandro said. "It is he who convinced Lorenzo."

  "This is what you've been waiting for, Maestro," Niccolo said. "I will find Francesco at first light and tell him to help you build another Great Bird. And I'll get the wine right now."

  "Wait a moment," Leonardo said, then directed himself to Sandro. "How did Nicco convince Lorenzo?"

  "You sent me with a note for the First Citizen, Maestro, when you couldn't accept his invitation to attend Simonetta's ball," Niccolo said. "I told him of our grief over Tista, and then I also had to explain what had happened. Although I loved Tista, he was at fault. Not our machine.... Lorenzo understood."

  "Ah, did he now."

  "I only did as you asked," Niccolo insisted.

  "And did you speak to him about my bombs?" Leonardo asked.

  "Yes, Maestro."

  "And did he ask you, or did you volunteer that information?

  Niccolo glanced nervously at Sandro, as if he would supply him with the answer. "I thought you would be pleased...."

  "I think you may get the wine now, Sandro said to Niccolo, who did not miss the opportunity to flee. Then he directed himself to Leonardo. "You should have congratulated Niccolo, not berated him. Why were you so hard on the boy?"

  Leonardo gazed across the room at his painting in the circle of lamps. He desired only to paint, not construct machines to kill children; he would paint his dreams, which had fouled his waking life with their strength and startling detail. By painting them, by exposing them, he might free himself. Yet ideas for his great Kite seemed to appear like chiaroscuro on the painting of his dream of falling, as if it were a notebook.

  Leonardo shivered, for his dreams had spilled out of his sleep and would not let him go. Tonight they demanded t
o be painted.

  Tomorrow they would demand to be built.

  He yearned to step into the cold, perfect spaces of his memory cathedral, which had become his haven. There he could imagine each painting, each dream, and lock it in its own dark, private room. As if every experience, every pain, could be so isolated.

  "Well...?" Sandro asked.

  "I will apologize to Niccolo when he returns," Leonardo said.

  "Leonardo, was Niccolo right? Are you are afraid? I'm your best friend, certainly you can—"

  Just then Niccolo appeared with a bottle of wine.

  "I am very tired, Little Bottle," Leonardo said. "Perhaps we can celebrate another day. I will take your advice and sleep...to come awake in the light."

  That was, of course, a lie, for Leonardo painted all night and the next day. It was as if he had to complete a month's worth of ideas in a few hours. Ideas seemed to explode in his mind's eye, paintings complete; all that Leonardo had to do was trace them onto canvass and mix his colors. It was as if he had somehow managed to unlock doors in his memory cathedral and glimpse what St. Augustine had called the present of things future; it was as if he were glimpsing ideas he would have, paintings he wouldpaint; and he knew that if he didn't capture these gifts now, he would lose them forever. Indeed, it was as if he were dreaming whilst awake, and during these hours, whether awake or slumped over before the canvass in a catnap or a trance, he had no control over the images that glowed in his mind like the lanterns placed on the floor, cassones, desks, and tables around him, rings of light, as if everything was but different aspects of Leonardo's dream...Leonardo's conception. He worked in a frenzy, which was always how he worked when his ideas caught fire; but this time he had no conscious focus or goal. Rather than a frenzy of discovery, this was a kind of remembering.

  By morning he had six paintings under way; one was a Madonna, transcendantly radiant, as if Leonardo had lifted the veil of human sight to reveal the divine substance. The others seemed to be grotesque visions of hell that would only be matched by a young Dutch contemporary of Leonardo's: Hieronoymus Bosh. There was a savage cruelty in these pictures of fabulous monsters with gnashing snouts, bat's wings, crocodile's jaws, and scaly pincered tails, yet every creature, every caricature and grotesquerie had a single haunting human feature: chimeras with soft, sad human eyes or womanly limbs or the angelic faces of children taunting and torturing the fallen in the steep, dark mountainous wastes of Hell.

  As promised, Niccolo fetched Verrocchio's foreman Francesco to supervise the rebuilding of Leonardo's flying machine; but not at first light, as he had promised, for the exhausted Niccolo had slept until noon. Leonardo had thought that Niccolo was cured of acting independently on his master's behalf; but obviously the boy was not contrite, for he had told Leonardo that he was going downstairs to bring back some meat and fruit for lunch.

  But Leonardo surprised both of them by producing a folio of sketches, diagrams, plans, and design measurements for kites and two and three winged soaring machines. Some had curved surfaces, some had flat surfaces; but all these drawings and diagrams were based on the idea of open ended boxes...groups of them placed at the ends of timber spars. There were detailed diagram of triplane and biplane gliders with wing span and supporting surface measurements; even on paper these machines looked awkward and heavy and bulky, for they did not imitate nature. He had tried imitation, but nature was capricious, unmanageable. Now he would conquer it. Vince la natura. Not even Tista could fall from these rectangular rafts. Leonardo had scribbled notes below two sketches of cellular kites, but not in his backward script; this was obviously meant to be readable to others: Determine whether kite with cambered wings will travel farther. Fire from crossbow to ensure accuracy. And on another page, a sketch of three kites flying in tandem, one above the other, and below a figure on a sling seat: Total area of surface sails 476 ells. Add kites with sails of 66 ells to compensate for body weight over 198 pounds. Shelter from wind during assembly, open kites one at a time, then pull away supports to allow the wind to get under the sails. Tether the last kite, lest you be carried away.

  "Can you produce these kites for me by tomorrow?" Leonardo asked Francesco, as he pointed to the sketch. I've provided all the dimensions."

  "Impossible," Francesco said. "Perhaps when your flying machine for the First Citizen is finished—"

  "This will be for the First Citizen," Leonardo insisted.

  "I was instructed to rebuild the flying machine in which young Tista was...in which he suffered his accident."

  "By whom? Niccolo?

  "Leonardo, Maestro Andrea has interrupted work on the altarpiece for the Chapel of Saint Bernard to build your contraption for the First Citizen. When that's completed, I'll help you build these...kites."

  Leonardo knew Francesco well; he wouldn't get anywhere by cajoling him. He nodded and sat down before the painting of a Madonna holding the Child, who, in turn, was holding a cat. The painting seemed to be movement itself.

  "Don't you wish to supervise the work, Maestro?" asked the foreman.

  "No, I'll begin constructing the kites, with Niccolo."

  "Maestro, Lorenzo expects us—you—to demonstrate your Great Bird in a fortnight. You and Sandro agreed.

  "Sandro is not the First Citizen." Then after a pause, "I have better ideas for soaring machines."

  "But they cannot be built in time, Maestro," Niccolo insisted.

  "Then no machine will be built."

  And with that, Leonardo went back to his painting of the Madonna, which bore a sensual resemblance to Lorenzo's mistress Simonetta.

  Which would be a gift for Lorenzo.

  Seven

  After a short burst of pelting rain, steady winds seemed to cleanse the sky of the gray storm clouds that had suffocated the city for several days in an atmospheric inversion. It had also been humid, and the air, which tasted dirty, had made breathing difficult. Florentine citizens closed their shutters against the poisonous miasmas, which were currently thought to be the cause of the deadly buboes, and were, at the very least, ill omens. But Leonardo, who had finally completed building his tandem kites after testing design after design, did not even know that a disaster had befallen Verrochio's bottega when rotten timbers in the roof gave way during the storm. He and Niccolo had left to test the kites in a farmer's field nestled in a windy valley that also afforded privacy. As Leonardo did not want Zoroastro or Lorenzo de Credi, or anyone else along, he designed a sled so he could haul his lightweight materials himself.

  "Maestro, are you going to make your peace with Master Andrea?" Niccolo asked as they waited for the mid- morning winds, which were the strongest. The sky was clear and soft and gauzy blue, a peculiar atmospheric effect seen only in Tuscany; Leonardo had been told that in other places, especially to the north, the sky was sharper, harder.

  "I will soon start a bottega of my own," Leonardo said, "and be the ruler of my own house."

  "But we need money, Maestro."

  "We'll have it."

  "Not if you keep the First Citizen waiting for his Great Bird," Niccolo said; and Leonardo noticed that the boy's eyes narrowed, as if he were calculating a mathematical problem. "Maestro Andrea will certainly have to tell Lorenzo that your Great Bird is completed."

  "Has he done so?" Leonardo asked.

  Niccolo shrugged.

  "He will be even more impressed with my new invention. I will show him before he becomes too impatient. But I think it is Andrea, not Lorenzo, who is impatient."

  "You're going to show the First Citizen this?" Niccolo asked, meaning the tandem kites, which were protected from any gusts of wind by a secured canvass; the kites were assembled, and when Leonardo was ready, would be opened one at a time.

  "If this works, then we will build the Great Bird as I promised. That will buy us our bottega and Lorenzo's love."

  "He loves you already, Maestro, as does Maestro Andrea."

  "Then they'll be patient with me."

  Niccolo was
certainly not above arguing with his master; he had, indeed, become Leonardo's confidant. But Leonardo didn't give him a chance. He had been checking the wind, which would soon be high. "Come help me, Nicco, and try not to be a philosopher. The wind is strong enough. If we wait it will become too gusty and tear the kites." This had already happened to several of Leonardo's large scale models.

  Leonardo let the wind take the first and smallest of the kites, but the wind was rather puffy, and it took a few moments before it pulled its thirty pounds on the guy rope. Then, as the wind freshened, he let go another. Satisfied, he anchored the assembly, making doubly sure that it was secure, and opened the third and largest kite. "Hold the line tight," he said to Niccolo as he climbed onto the sling seat and held tightly to a restraining rope that ran through a block and tackle to a makeshift anchor of rocks.

  Leonardo reassured himself that he was safely tethered and reminded himself that the cellular box was the most stable of constructions. Its flat surfaces would support it in the air. Nevertheless, his heart seemed to be pulsing in his throat, he had difficulty taking a breath, and he could feel the chill of his sweat on his chest and arms.

  The winds were strong, but erratic, and Leonardo waited until he could feel the wind pulling steady; he leaned backward, sliding leeward on the seat to help the wind get under the supporting surface of the largest kite. Then suddenly, as if some great heavenly hand had grabbed hold of the guy ropes and the kites and snapped them, Leonardo shot upward about twenty feet. But the kites held steady at the end of their tether, floating on the wind like rafts on water.

  How different this was from the Great Bird, which was so sensitive—and susceptible—to every movement of the body. Leonardo shifted his weight, and even as he did so, he prayed; but the kites held in the air. Indeed, they were rafts. The answer was ample supporting surfaces.

  Vince la natura.

  The wind lightened, and he came down. The kites dragged him forward; he danced along the ground on his toes before he was swept upwards again. Niccolo was shouting, screaming, and hanging from the restraining rope, as if to add his weight, lest it pull away from the rock anchor or pull the rocks heavenward.