Leonardo da Vinci: Renaissance Master (10 page)

“What else?” Leonardo was asking.

“We go into this room called The Treasure Chest,” Felix said, happy to
not
think about Lily Goldberg, “and we take an object—”

“What does that mean?”

“The Treasure Chest is full of . . . of stuff. Scrolls and coins and precious jewels and feathers and crowns and maps and test tubes and compasses and . . . seals . . .”

He looked at Leonardo's expectant face. If Felix had that seal, he would give it to him right now. But Maisie had it.

“That's how we got here,” Felix said. “With a seal of the city of Florence. And we need to give it to you.”

“Fine, then,” Leonardo said. “Give it to me. Maybe then I can come back to the future with you.”

“No,” Felix said, shaking his head. “Once we give it to you, we'll go back. Just Maisie and me.”

“Impossible!” Leonardo said vehemently. “There must be a way!”

“Actually, that's not exactly right,” Felix said. “We give you the seal, and you give us advice.”

“What kind of advice?” Leonardo said. “I have no advice for you. Or for anyone.”

“Not so much advice,” Felix said, “but like a lesson. Something that will help us when we go back.”

A slow grin spread over Leonardo's face.

“Excellent,” he said. “Then I will be sure
not
to give you any lessons. Until I figure out how to return with you.”

“No!” Felix said adamantly. “We need to go home. We have a family and school and . . .”

“And?”

“It's complicated,” Felix said.

Leonardo waited.

“Our great-uncle, he's dying. But by time traveling, we can save his life.”

“How?”

Again Felix struggled. “I don't really understand it,” he said, “but every time we time travel, he gets . . . not younger . . . but healthier? More vital.”

“So if you don't go back?”

“He'll . . .” Felix's voice caught. “He'll die.”

“I will take this under consideration,” Leonardo said finally. “Is the life of this uncle of yours more important than seeing what the future holds?”

He stood.

“We are late, and Lorenzo and the rest of them will assume I've forgotten the
berlingaccio
.”

Felix stood, too.

“Leonardo,” he said, “you belong here. Your ideas need to grow from this place, this time. The Renaissance—”

Leonardo interrupted. “Renaissance? Rebirth?”

Felix nodded. “That's what this era will be called. The Renaissance. A rebirth of ideas and art after the Dark Ages.”

“Renaissance,” Leonardo said to himself. “I like it.”

When Leonardo and Felix arrived, the multicourse dinner of soup and pasta and meat and cheese had finished. The servants were just putting several ring-shaped cakes on the table for dessert.

“Ah!” Leonardo said after everyone had greeted him. “We didn't miss the
berlingozzo
!”

“Almost,” Sandro kidded.

Maisie tried to make eye contact with Felix, but he had his worried look on his face, and she couldn't get past that.

The cake tasted like lemons and sugar, and Maisie happily accepted a second piece once she'd finished her first. But Felix merely moved the crumbs around on his plate.

“Come,” Leonardo told him quietly, “there's something I want to show you.”

They easily slipped away from the others and walked up the stairs to the family's quarters.

“You know,” Leonardo said as they walked past giant tapestries, endless bookshelves that seemed to stretch forever, and more marble and gold than Felix had seen in any of the Newport mansions. “If you are alone, you belong entirely to yourself. If you are accompanied by even one companion, you belong only half to yourself. With that many people, even less.”

Felix brightened. That sounded important, like a lesson. Maybe Leonardo had inadvertently told him something important, the very thing he and Maisie needed to go home.

“Here,” Leonardo said, opening a door.

Felix gazed at the room. It looked like a church, complete with an altar. But it was the most beautiful church he'd ever seen.

“The Magi Chapel,” Leonardo said, his voice hushed. “Frescoed by Benozzo Gozzoli.”

Felix took in the frescoes that covered the walls. He recognized the scene of the Three Wise Men, but . . .

“Hey!” he said.

Leonardo laughed. “That's right. The Wise Men are the Medicis.”

Felix recognized Lorenzo, with his black pageboy haircut and dark eyes.

“That's his brother, Giuliano, and his father, the two other Wise Men. The other characters are various emperors,” Leonardo explained.

Felix nodded appreciatively.

From down in the courtyard, a sudden burst of voices and shouting rose up to them.

“Don't worry,” Leonardo said, “they are just in the spirit of Carnival.”

Almost as soon as Felix and Leonardo left, Lorenzo stood and recited a poem. It seemed to be about life and happiness but also about how those things can change so easily.

Sandro watched Maisie's face intently as Lorenzo recited.

“How can it be?” he asked softly.

Maisie turned her attention away from Lorenzo and toward Sandro.

“How can you understand Tuscan?” he asked her.

“I was wondering the same thing,” Signor Ficino said.

“Tuscan is Italian, isn't it?” Maisie asked as she fingered the shard hanging cool against her skin.

“No,” Sandro said, narrowing his eyes. “Tuscan is the language here, little used now. That is why I wonder how you can understand it.”

“They don't speak Tuscan anywhere but in Tuscany,” Signor Ficino said in that cold voice of his.

“Well,” Maisie said.

“Yes?” Sandro asked expectantly.

“I'm a linguist.”

Sandro frowned.

“A linguist!” Maisie repeated. “I speak so many languages I can't even name them all.”

“But Tuscan?” Signor Ficino said.

Before she could answer, the front door burst open and a dozen men infiltrated the courtyard, wielding large swords and screaming, “Revenge!”

The men around the table, along with Lorenzo's new wife, Clarice, and Maisie, jumped to their feet and dispersed, some running through the small door to the garden, some running up the stairs to the family's quarters.

The intruders slashed at the air with their swords, cutting down the middle of the table, sending glass and food spraying everywhere.

Maisie stood, paralyzed.

Where was Felix?

But she had no time to think. The intruders, their faces covered in black hoods, their dark robes flapping as they set about smashing everything on the table, were in a frenzy, their swords slicing the air wildly.

She needed to get away.

One sword came so close to her that she actually heard the
whoosh
it made as it flew past. Her fingers shot up to her neck. Close? No. It had actually nicked her. Two small dots of blood were on her finger where she'd touched her neck.

Her heart pounding in her ears, Maisie dropped to the floor unnoticed and slithered under the table, watching as the men's black boots moved frantically back and forth.

“We should go upstairs and murder the lot of them!” an angry male voice said.

The men murmured in agreement.

“All in good time,” another man said. “We've let the Medicis know that the Pazzis mean business.”

Someone laughed a laugh so evil that the hairs on Maisie's arms stood up.

“At least let's take a souvenir,” the first man said.

Maisie heard them marching around the courtyard, trying to decide which painting to take with them.

Finally, they left in as much noisy chaos as they'd arrived.

Maisie stayed beneath the table for a few minutes after the courtyard grew silent.

When she believed they were truly gone and not returning, she slid on her belly along the marble floor and emerged from beneath the table. Her heart was still pounding, so much so that she didn't hear the small sound of something dropping to the floor as she stood. She touched her neck again and found tiny drops of fresh blood there.

I've been wounded by a sword!
Maisie thought, with some pride.

She wished she knew where Felix was so that she could show him, and maybe brag a little about her bravery. She had been brave, she decided. Standing amidst all those slashing swords, hiding under the table, emerging safe but bloody. The story grew even as she stood there, waiting for someone to come downstairs.

Eventually, she gave up.

Maisie had had enough excitement for one day, she decided. She would go back to Verrocchio's studio and wait for Felix and Leonardo to return. By then, her story would be even grander.

NON CAPISCO

M
aisie went to sleep alone that night, Felix and Leonardo still not yet home. She woke the next morning alone again, but the blankets beside her were tangled and messy, so Felix had come back eventually. But he had already gone off again.
Probably with Leonardo to prove some scientific theory or another
, Maisie thought with a sad sigh.

She made her way through the studio, empty except for the canvases leaning against the walls and the tables lined with painting supplies.

“Hello?” Maisie called, her voice echoing ever so slightly.

No one answered.

Of course, she realized, today was the first day of Carnival. Everyone had gone off to watch jousting and parades.

Her mood shifted immediately from lonely to angry. Couldn't Felix have woken her up? How dare he just leave her alone while he went to see jousting. Or whatever.

Her stomach growled, reminding her that in addition to being angry, she was also hungry.

In the sunny kitchen, Maisie found half a loaf of bread on a cutting board, some bright orange jam, and a bowl of figs. She helped herself to all of it, even though figs were kind of hairy inside and tasted like practically nothing. Chewing a hard slice of the bread slathered with jam, she got madder and madder. It was one thing to flee sword-wielding Pazzis—whatever that was—and quite another to simply flee.

Maisie worked herself into such a fit of anger that she almost didn't see the note sticking out from beneath the wooden cutting board.

Well, she thought, feeling a teeny-tiny bit less mad, at least they left her a note.

She slid it out and stared at the writing on it. Immediately, Maisie recognized it as Leonardo's strange backward scrawling. But she didn't recognize even one word written there.

Frowning, Maisie tried to sound out the letters.

Ciao
.

That was the only one she recognized because everyone knew
ciao
meant
good-bye.

But shouldn't this
ciao
read as
good-bye
?

Up until this very instant, everything in Italian, or Tuscan, or Latin sounded like English to Maisie. And everything written in those languages appeared in English to her.

This note, however, was most definitely
not
in English. Maisie considered this.

Maybe it had something to do with the odd way that Leonardo wrote. His backward writing, all the letters jammed up close together, could possibly be just gibberish rather than any language at all.

Yes, she decided, this note was simply impossible to read.

Even though it probably had specific instructions on when and where to meet Felix and Leonardo, it was completely useless.

Like a lightbulb going off in a cartoon, an idea quickly came to Maisie.

Clutching the note, she ran to Leonardo's room. Inside, she went to the small mirror that hung above the table in one corner. The table had a ceramic pitcher sitting in a ceramic bowl on top of it, and a cotton towel draped across one corner. But it was the mirror that she needed.

Standing on tiptoe, Maisie lifted the note so that it was reflected there. That backward writing would appear forward now, she thought, congratulating herself on her brilliance.

Except even reflected in the mirror and reading it from left to right like regular writing, the words were still
not
in English.

There was
ciao
again. And her own name was legible now. And there were two signatures—
Felix
and
Leonardo
.

Everything else, Maisie saw, getting angry all over again, was in a language that was not English.

Confused, she balled the note up and stuck it in her pocket. Feeling how empty it was in there, she remembered dropping the seal into the urn last night. For the first time since she'd done that, she wondered if maybe that had been a bad idea. No, she decided as she made her way out of the bedroom and back to the studio, when the time came to go home she would just go back to the Palazzo Medici and retrieve it. Better to take one problem at a time, Maisie thought. For now, she would have to venture into the city and find Felix and Leonardo.

Felix glanced nervously around the crowd. From his special seat in the grandstand that held the Medicis and other nobility, he had a perfect view of everything—the Piazza Santa Croce below, the priests and dukes and other high-ranking officials of Florence around him, the bright, round colorful tents below that Leonardo had told him held the jousters, and the steaming crowd of what Sandro referred to—with a sneer—as
commoners.
Maisie was not anywhere to be seen.

Surely she had woken up by now and read the note telling her to come here to the Medici box. Why, Felix thought, did his sister have to be so difficult?

Felix sat between Piero and Leonardo. Although Piero seemed engaged in the goings-on below, Leonardo had one of his notebooks opened and had spent his time so far working on a sketch of a horse. He drew and studied what he drew and then, dissatisfied, rubbed off a line here and a line there, only to try again. Behind him, Sandro searched for a glimpse of someone named Simonetta. And beside Sandro sat Lorenzo's wife, Clarice. Other men from last night's supper were there, too, as well as women in damask and embroidered dresses.

But no Maisie.

“Morello di Vento has to win,” Clarice said.

“Doesn't he always?” Sandro asked.

Leonardo leaned close to Felix and whispered, “That's Lorenzo's magnificent roan. He's won every race since Lorenzo took over from his father.”

“The horses run from the Porta al Prato, through the Borgo Ognissanti, and end here,” Piero explained. “That's why this is the most exciting place to be.”

Horses began to near the Piazza Santa Croce.

Excited, everyone jumped to their feet.

Although most had riders in elaborate clothing, some horses were riderless. The riders wore spurs to goad the horses into running faster. By the time they reached the Piazza Santa Croce, the horses were in such a frenzy that some of them seemed to have gone mad. They foamed at the mouth and stood on their hind legs. Felix watched as several riders were thrown from their horses' backs.

But the first to ride triumphantly into the Piazza Santa Croce was indeed Lorenzo de' Medici.

When he appeared, his horse regal and swift, the crowd went wild with cheers and applause.

Except, Felix noticed, one group. The men there stared coldly down at Lorenzo as he waved from high on the back of his horse, victorious.

“The Pazzis,” Leonardo said when he saw where Felix was looking. “They are rivals to the Medicis. Some say they are planning a take over.”

“Are they?” Felix asked.

Leonardo shrugged. “It's possible,” he said.

“Are they who stormed the palazzo last night?”

“I believe so,” Leonardo said.

More horses raced into the Piazza Santa Croce now, and the roar from the crowd made any more talking impossible. Leonardo turned his attention to the spectacle below. And Felix tried to do the same. But really one question kept getting in his way: where in the world was Maisie?

When Maisie stepped out of Verrocchio's studio into the streets of Florence, the city seemed electric with excitement. Vendors crowded the cobblestone alleys and large piazzas, selling hot chestnuts, wine, and sweets. The air smelled of sugar and sweat and horses and horse poop and oil and Florence's own particular smell all at the same time. Somehow, Maisie liked this combination and she paused to inhale it, happy again that she'd hidden the seal back at the Palazzo Medici, essentially keeping herself and Felix here for as long as she liked.

Two women stood watching her, their faces filled with curiosity. They didn't have the strange dyed-yellow hair like Clarice did, or the pasty-white faces. Instead, their dark hair was pulled up under pointy hats, and their olive skin and large brown eyes made them appear friendly.

Maisie smiled as she approached them.

“Excuse me,” she said, and the women glanced at each other, confused.

Maisie continued anyway.

“Do you know where the Medicis might be? I think Lorenzo is in some kind of race?”

At the name Medici, the women looked startled.

One of them said something to Maisie so rapidly that Maisie couldn't understand her.

“I'm sorry,” Maisie said. “Where are they?”

Again, the women glanced at her, confused.

In the distance, the sound of a crowd cheering and thundering horses' hooves could be heard.

The other woman pointed in the direction of the noise and said something else unintelligible.

“That way?” Maisie asked. “The Medicis?”

The name Medici had the same effect on the women, who nodded and stepped away from Maisie, letting themselves get swallowed up by the growing crowd.

What in the world is wrong with them?
Maisie wondered as she headed in the direction they'd indicated.

But it was difficult to follow sounds, and soon Maisie realized she'd walked in a circle, the cheers growing at first nearer and then, after several wrong turns, distant again.

This time Maisie approached a group of five boys about her age. They stood munching some kind of fried sweets from paper cones, and pushing and elbowing each other in the way boys at home did, too.

“Hi,” Maisie said.

“Hi,” the tallest, most handsome boy repeated, sending the others into a fit of laughter.

“Hi,” another one said.

“Hi,” the other three echoed.

“O . . . kay,” Maisie said, wondering why boys everywhere, even in Italy, even hundreds of years ago, acted exactly the same way. “I'm looking for the, I don't know, Medici seats? Or maybe they have, like, a box somewhere? Lorenzo is in a horse race?”

At first, the boys just stared at her, their mouths gaping open.

Then the tall one—the leader, Maisie realized—said, “
Non capisco
.”

“
Non capisco
,” Maisie repeated. “Is that near the Palazzo or—”

“
Non capisco
,” the boy said again, more adamantly.

“
Non capisco
, I got it. But I'm not from here, so I'm not sure where exactly that is.”

The boy laughed, throwing his arms up in defeat.

They all joined him, laughing and talking all at once. Maisie couldn't really make out what they were saying, though she heard the name Medici and something like Piazza Santa Croce.

“Thanks for nothing,” she muttered angrily as she walked away.

Once again she tried to follow the sounds of the distant crowds. She stopped periodically to ask directions from people who seemed kind or helpful.

“
Non capisco
?” she asked one after the other. “This way?”

But each time they looked back at her puzzled or amused or disinterested.

After a very long time, Maisie finally glimpsed what had to be this
non capisco
place. She saw horses and men with long swords, more vendors, men and women dressed in finery, jesters, and musicians.

Relieved, Maisie made her slow way through the revelers.

Now all she had to do was find Felix.