The Malice of Fortune

by Michael Ennis

  “You were correct, Maestro,” I conceded. “It is all of a piece. He did not indiscriminately discard the remains of his last victims, as I so incorrectly assumed. He has completed his disegno with the most terrible and marvelous of all his geometric figures.”

  Leonardo took no satisfaction in this victory. His face sagged, a hand greater than his making a portrait of his weary soul. “I wish only to seek the True Light,” he whispered. “This disegno is intended to impugn me and destroy everything the duke and I intend to build.”

  I gestured at the morocco-bound volume, certain that the murderer had examined the very pages from which we had just read. “Maestro, where did you obtain your Archimedes?”

  “It was a gift. From the duke.”

  “Did Ramiro da Lorca know about this gift?” I asked this with the considerable hope—and lesser expectation—that the butcher had already received justice on his own block.

  “Ramiro considered me his rival.” Certainly the duke had favored Leonardo in the investigation of this matter. “We did not engage in discourse.”

  “Is it possible that Ramiro somehow became privy to this Archimedes and devised this disegno? To impugn you and disgrace the duke?”

  Leonardo’s jaw quivered slightly. His hands went over his groin.

  Observing the maestro’s typically ill-concealed effort to conceal some truth, I was prompted to ask the question that had burned on my tongue since I had seen Ramiro’s head. “Did the duke or any of his people tell you the charges for which Ramiro was executed?”

  “Grain speculation. And crimes against the people of the Romagna.”

  Clearly Valentino did not intend to tip his hand regarding the larger question of his brother’s murder. But if the condottieri were waiting for signs and wonders, they would find Ramiro’s head a most satisfactory indication of the duke’s submission.

  I then asked a question that bristled the hair atop my head. “Is it possible that one of Valentino’s former condottieri knew about your Archimedes?”

  Leonardo now had the look of a man about to be thrown from a great height. This was the truth he had been hiding in his crotch.

  “Maestro?”

  “Vitellozzo Vitelli saw it. Before he became a traitor to the duke. He shares my interest in Archimedes. He is an artillerist.” In fact Vitellozzo Vitelli was Christendom’s foremost artillerist, a maestro of the modern art of war. “As was Archimedes himself, who designed mangonels and prodigious siege crossbows to defend Syracuse. Vitellozzo’s concern was equations and propositions regarding parabolas, by which the flight of a projectile can be described.”

  Nature had given Vitellozzo Vitelli both a savage temperament and great gifts. As an innovator of military tactics, he was rivaled only by Valentino; he had devised how to mass scoppiettieri to create an impenetrable wall of gunfire, a singular invenzione that transformed this small artillery piece—which can be carried by one man, fires a ball no larger than a grape, and had been previously regarded as a curiosity—into an instrument capable of defeating a charge of armored lancers.

  Determined to keep my well-founded suspicions of Vitellozzo inside my vest, I next asked Leonardo a question that fully credited his gifts—and my own demonstrated deficiencies. “Regardless of who this monster is, Maestro, let us for the sake of argument assume he is still among us. What do you think he will show us next? Will he begin an entirely new disegno?”

  Leonardo began to make shapes in the air with his hands, the fingers of one darting around those of the other like martens fighting. “In the manner that gears of finer tooth … acceleration … vortices of water and wind … compelled by the mass and impetus of their medium … toward the center.” He blinked at me. “This figure allows him infinite variations.”

  I did not understand the mathematics of these “infinite variations” any more than Leonardo understood this man’s unceasing need to nourish himself with suffering and death. Afraid to leave Damiata alone any longer, I made a final study of the mappa of evil. As my eyes traced its elegant geometry, my outraged soul told me that every point represented the flesh of an innocent. Yet whoever had made this obscene rebus had clearly contrived it to mirror not only Leonardo’s gifts of intellect but more pointedly his particular enthusiasm for whirlwinds, whirlpools, and various other vortices, which appeared in so many of his drawings. Leonardo had even fashioned gears, cogs, and screws that repeated the outline of this spiral.

  Hence another question traced cold along my spine. Had this obscene geographer also drawn something there for me, a disegno that mocked my own struggle to enter his mind? Was this spiral also the Labyrinth into which I had so futilely peered, trying to see the half man, half beast at its bone-strewn center?

  All the more anxious to return to Damiata, I offered Leonardo this parting thought: “I believe you will once again be proved correct, Maestro. He will soon enough give us another variation.”

  I ran to Damiata’s lodging as quickly as the icy streets permitted. She had locked the door to her room, which told me that my departure had already made her cautious; when she opened up, I found her dressed in a simple black camora. She took my hands without a word.

  I began with Ramiro, adding something that I had not had occasion to reflect upon until then. “It is likely that I received Ramiro’s last testament, just before Valentino arrested him,” I told her. “Ramiro implied that Valentino was protecting Oliverotto. And not because Oliverotto and Vitellozzo Vitelli have coerced him with the strength of their troops. Ramiro said the murderer was at Capua. He insisted I ‘ask the duke about the women at Capua.’ Those were his words. I take this to mean that Valentino and Oliverotto are both concealing something that occurred at Capua. Something to do with the women of the town, I am reasonably certain. You must have heard the rumors.”

  Damiata shook her head. “They did not trickle into the Trastevere.”

  “Shortly after the sack of Capua, unsigned letters circulated throughout all the capitals of Italy. Claiming various things. Women hostages who were guaranteed safe conduct but were raped and murdered after they left the city. One report, which was widely published, insisted that forty virgins had been delivered to the Vatican, for the pope’s amusement. At the time I regarded it all as a concerted slander, the sort of invention at which the Venetians are so well practiced—they have long considered the Romagna as their own vassal state and have scarcely been pleased at Valentino’s ascendance. But perhaps in this instance the facts are close enough to the calumny. Or perhaps even worse. Perhaps Valentino permitted something in the heat of the battle, which he now deeply regrets. Something more infamous than the crimes for which Oliverotto da Fermo is presently renowned.”

  Damiata let go my hand and crossed herself.

  “Who told you,” I asked, “that Oliverotto didn’t arrive in Imola until after the first woman had been butchered?”

  Damiata whispered, “Valentino.”

  “Then I believe that’s it. Valentino is protecting Oliverotto. And not because he needs his agreement to this treaty.”

  Damiata’s bosom rose. “You once told me the condottieri would drag Valentino’s soul into Hell. Perhaps they have already done so. At Capua.”

  I nodded. “But however he disgraced himself at Capua, the duke cannot redeem those crimes by abandoning Italy to the condottieri.”

  Damiata bit her lip, lost in her own speculation.

  I had to tell her the rest of it, all that I had seen and heard at Leonardo’s warehouse. When I described the mappa of evil, she had to sit on the bed, her face almost white. With a trembling finger, she traced the spiral in the air.

  “The maestro of the shop is playing the Devil’s own game,” I said. “He knows we are pursuing him. So he is sporting with us.”

  Damiata sat silently for a long while, as if summoning the resolve to look up at me. When at last she did, her eyes were filled with tears. “You can’t say he isn’t mad, Niccolò.” She seemed angry at me. “You can no longer sa
y it.”

  My science having suffered sufficiently that day, I had no appetite for disputing her. “Even if he is mad, he has quite cleverly contrived his mappa to lead us nowhere. Or perhaps lead us away from the truth. We must not forget that the Elements remain the key to all this. Without proof the condottieri had a connection to Juan’s amulet, we can establish nothing in the eyes of the world.”

  Damiata drew in a deep breath, bringing back some of her color. “If the condottieri have the book, they will keep it. As a surety against Valentino.”

  “I believe one of them has it. And he will keep it. As a surety against all the rest. The question is, which one? I am inclined to say Vitellozzo Vitelli. With the connivance of his lick-spittle, Oliverotto. But how would we get it? Either one of us would be strangled on Vitellozzo’s threshold.”

  Damiata looked quickly down. She shook her head with frustration and could only utter, “I don’t …” before she choked on a sob.

  I sat beside her and held her cold hands for a time. But knowing the urgency of these events, I soon had to get up. “I must go back to my room and write my government what I have seen. I believe Ramiro’s corpse is our sign that Valentino’s departure from Cesena is imminent. And we have no choice but to go with him. Because only at the end of this road can we even hope to find the Elements.” I did not need to add that where this road ended, the condottieri would be waiting, regardless.

  Damiata stared at the floor. “Yes, we must prepare to leave.” She smiled wistfully. “Another little home.” Her eyes shot up at me, their blue unfathomable. “Niccolò, whatever happens in the next days or weeks, you must remember this. You must remember it if we become separated. In particular you must remember it if you are blessed to hold your little Primerana again, as I beseech the Virgin you will be. My dearest, most darling Niccolò. The greatest love is nothing but faith. A faith that can bear all burdens, all doubts, and never be exhausted.”

  Here she stood up, took me in her arms, and whispered next to my ear. “To truly love another person requires more faith than even God asks of us.”

  Cesena–Sinigaglia: December 26–31, 1502

  CHAPTER 15

  Whoever actually sees the Devil sees him with fewer horns and a face more fair.

  Having begun our day so early, with the unpropitious augury of Ramiro’s corpse, Fortune determined that it should extend much longer. On leaving Damiata’s room, I stopped by the Governor’s Palace, finding the loggia as busy with ambassadors and embassy secretaries as was usual much later in the day. I quickly learned that none of Valentino’s intimates were available to remark on Ramiro’s fate; they had all journeyed down the Via Emilia a good fifteen miles south of Cesena, evidently to assemble the scattered army for the march toward Rimini. Nevertheless I spent considerable time outside the empty palazzo, comparing my accounting of Valentino’s troops with those of the other embassies.

  When I returned to my rooms at midmorning, I found a courier waiting with several packets from Florence. My friend Biaggio related that my wife was “cursing God” over our marriage and incessantly demanding that I send money, as if I were an alchemist who could create gold out of dross; I threw aside the letter with a weary groan. The second dispatch was from my government, containing sufficient ducats to see me through three more weeks, if I lived like a mendicant friar. This meager stipend was accompanied by further instruction to remain firmly attached to Valentino until I was relieved. Although my lordships in Florence were little concerned for my comfort or security, they attached considerable value to my observations.

  In addition to these missives, I had on my table various matters concerning Florentine business interests in the Romagna, which required my attention if I was to follow Valentino’s heedless march beyond the Rubicon. Hence I did not send the courier off with my dispatch to Florence, apprising my lordships of the day’s events, until just before dusk, whereupon I went at once back to Damiata’s room.

  I leapt up the stairs, believing that another night in Damiata’s arms might somehow transport me beyond Fortune’s reach, not to mention the day’s disastrous turn. The door was locked, as I had expected. But after I had knocked several times and failed to rouse her, I assumed that her preparations for our uncertain journey had been no less difficult than mine, and that she had gone into the city on various errands.

  Hence for several hours I walked the streets of Cesena, yet still I did not encounter Damiata; I also returned several times to her room to see if she had come back. By the third visit my anxiety was at a high pitch. Foremost among my fears, I had to wonder if Valentino himself had discovered Damiata’s presence in Cesena, despite her efforts to remain out of sight. He might well have located her hiding place and sent someone to arrest her, given that he now appeared as determined to protect the condottieri from the consequences of her inquiry as he was to deliver himself into their arms.

  Nevertheless, I could find no one at Damiata’s palazzo who had seen her go out, much less anyone come in and drag her out. I contemplated breaking the lock to her door, but that would only put her belongings at risk during the coming chaos, while probably revealing nothing I had not previously observed in her room. Instead, I continued visiting her palazzo every hour throughout a night as miserable as the preceding had been miraculous, my fears taking entire dominion over both reason and sentiment.

  I had returned from one of these futile journeys perhaps an hour before dawn, when I paused before my own door. Hearing the faintest little chinging, like coins in a purse, I quickly looked behind me.

  The tiny courtyard was empty. Yet all at once a stronger intuition coursed through me in a great spasm, turning me back to my door.

  For just a heartbeat, I was surprised that I did not see someone—or some thing—standing on the threshold before me. The little chinging sound seemed to come from the sky. I looked up to the very crown of the roof, two floors above me.

  The face of the moon, or perhaps a barn owl. Or no face at all. It appeared to hover above the eave for so fleeting an instant that I could not say what it was, other than a pale apparition. When it vanished, the chinging sound metamorphosed into a light clattering, as if a large rodent were scurrying across the roof tiles.

  I raced out of the courtyard and into the street, attempting to observe this creature’s escape. Yet I neither saw nor heard anything clambering over the roof. I peered into the alley that separated my building from the next, recalling the night I had found poor Camilla’s corpse. I had caught only the most ephemeral glimpse of the “barn owl” that Damiata had noted atop our building, at almost the same moment that I had observed the footsteps leading up her stairs, which I had followed with far more urgency—and what I discovered in Damiata’s bedroom had washed away any memory of the phantom on the roof. Yet now I could only presume that this owl-man had also been present that night, an unspeakably brutal apprentice who continued to stalk us behind the mask of Death.

  This led me to a more terrifying deduction: the Devil’s apprentice had watched me enter Damiata’s rooms and had probably observed me leave. Again I saw Camilla’s corpse, the fresh blood everywhere, as though we are nothing more than fonts of gore, the bones of her neck and shoulder jutting like pig joints.

  I started to run as if I had been struck by lightning, thinking only that I would die myself before I allowed Damiata to suffer poor Camilla’s fate.

  Yet just as quickly, I stopped. Damiata was not waiting in her room as Camilla had been that night; she had been gone for hours. I would have found her door open, as I had that night, if the murderer’s apprentice had savaged her in the same manner. Instead he was here, still watching me. More likely Damiata had been able to flee from him and was still hiding. And he hoped to find her here.

  Determined to bait a trap for this creature, I withdrew from the alley and returned to my rooms.

  In my haste to search for Damiata, I had left my door unlocked; now I barred it behind me, thinking that I might confound this creature by
not returning to Damiata’s lodging, as he had certainly come to expect. Instead, I would remain inside until he was provoked to call on me.

  I lit a candle and set about examining my room for something to use as a weapon. The search was not at once promising, because I had packed up everything in anticipation of a hasty departure. I might have swept the cold tile floor, it was so clean, save for the brazier and a useless rusted poker. I had even cleared most of the papers and manuscripts from my little table—

  I dropped my candle at once. The wick flickered at my feet, still providing a small amount of light. That scant illumination allowed me a fleeting, inchoate fragment of a prayer, that what I saw on my tabletop would prove to be only the delusion of a weary and desperate mind.

  The next thing I knew I was running down the street, my reason clinging to a single, slender thread.

  CHAPTER 16

  It has always been no less dangerous to discover new methods and principles than it has been to search for unknown seas and lands.

  Maestro Leonardo’s globe lamps glimmered through the cracks of the warehouse shutters, these slivers of light as brilliant as molten bronze in an armorer’s crucible. The door gave me no resistance and I burst directly into the abandoned refectory, to find Leonardo and his assistants staring at me as if I were a madman. They were engaged in bundling up many of the items that littered the floor; had I my wits about me, I might have observed that Valentino’s departure had taken his own engineer general by surprise.

  But I did not have my wits about me. I ran directly to the maestro and shouted into his face, “You must come at once! Bring your cazzo diavolo measuring things!”

  “You know what I am asking,” I grimly told Leonardo. Giacomo had placed a reflecting candle lantern on my tabletop, so that we could see quite well enough.

  Leonardo crouched, bringing his face within a palm’s length of the severed hand. “It is a woman’s,” he said, his voice lacking its usual melody.