Leonardo and the Death Machine. Robert J. Harris

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      Gabriello chuckled, then coughed as the fishy fumes got into his throat. The senior apprentice did not notice the insult. He was too busy painting the last few locks of the woman’s hair, his tongue stuck into his cheek in concentration.

      Leonardo lifted the frame up off the straw-covered floor and leaned it carefully against one of the worktables. He nodded in satisfaction. The frame was firmly constructed, the canvas straight and taut. When Maestro Andrea came to inspect it, he would be pleased.

      A gust of wind from the open window sent a puff of acrid dust up his nose. Leonardo turned away quickly so that his sneeze missed the canvas, then waved his hands about to clear the air.

      The dust came from the corner of the room where Vanni and Giorgio were standing over a slab of porphyry, grinding brightly coloured minerals with their mortars. This produced a fine powder which would be mixed with egg to make paints. They were chatting together and occasionally breaking into song, their voices rising raucously above the rumble of passing carts and the yells of pedlars hawking their wares in the street outside.

      “Pipe down and pay attention to what you’re doing!” Nicolo barked at them. “You’re spreading that dust all over the room.”

      Leonardo pulled out his kerchief and blew his nose. He had thought that when his father brought him to Florence to be a pupil in the workshop of a great artist, he would be leaving behind the dirt and stench of the farmyard. But there was just as much dirt here and the stench was even worse. When Maestro Andrea was sculpting a statue, the dust hung so thick in the air it was like a chalky fog. And always there was the stink of fishbones, eggs, charcoal, turpentine and all the other unglamorous materials of the artist’s trade.

      Tucking his kerchief back into his sleeve, Leonardo went to the corner where his own paintings and sketches were stored. Reaching into the midst of them, he pulled out his latest work, one which Maestro Andrea had not assigned him. As he examined the object, Nicolo’s voice boomed out behind him.

      “There! It is done!”

      From his grandiose tone you would have thought he had just fitted the last brick into the great dome of the cathedral instead of completing a routine exercise.

      Nicolo beckoned Vanni and Giorgio over to admire his ‘masterpiece’. They gladly left their grinding materials behind and hurried over to examine the canvas, brushing the mineral dust from their aprons.

      “It’s very good, Nicolo,” said Vanni, knowing exactly what he was supposed to say.

      “Yes, it’s very good,” Giorgio echoed automatically.

      Leonardo strolled over and eyed the finished picture. All the life and animation of Maestro Andrea’s sculpture had been lost in Nicolo’s painting. It was as if he had strained the meat and vegetables out of a rich stew and reduced it to a thin, unappetising gruel.

      “So what do you think, Leonardo da Vinci?” Nicolo asked. The stern challenge in his voice made it clear exactly how Leonardo was supposed to answer. But Leonardo had taken enough insults from Nicolo that he wasn’t going to let slip this chance to hit back.

      “I think that if a corpse ever wants its portrait painted, you’ll be the man for the job,” he replied. Gabriello slapped a hand over his mouth to stifle a laugh. Nicolo growled and raised his fist.

      Leonardo took a step back but did not flinch. He was three years younger than the senior apprentice but equal in both height and strength. If Nicolo wanted a fight, he was ready – and eager – to oblige. But Maestro Andrea had made it clear that anyone caught fighting in the workshop would immediately find himself out on the street without a denaro to his name.

      The same thought was evidently in Nicolo’s mind. He lowered his fist, though his face was still ruddy with anger. “You may dress up like the son of a rich man,” he sneered, “but you still have the taste of a farm boy.”

      Leonardo winced. He was proud of the blue velvet tunic and scarlet hose he wore under his apron, even though he knew some of the other apprentices sniggered at his finery.

      “At least I have some taste,” he retorted. He waved at the painting. “This isn’t art. This is murder.”

      Nicolo’s eyes flashed with rage. “It is more than a clumsy left-hander like you could ever do!” Then he spotted what was in Leonardo’s hand and snatched the wooden object from the younger boy’s grasp. “What’s this? Some sort of toy?”

      “Give that back!” cried Leonardo hotly. He made a grab that Nicolo easily avoided. The senior apprentice waved his prize in the air so that everyone could see it.

      It was a wooden cylinder, small enough to fit into a man’s hand, with a piece of cord dangling from a hole in the side. There was another hole in the top into which a wooden spindle had been fitted. From the end of the spindle, four thin wooden blades spread out in different directions like the petals of a flower.

      “Is that what you’ve been doing in that corner all this time?” asked Vanni.

      “It looks like a little windmill,” said Giorgio, “except the vanes are on top instead of on the side.”

      “Is that what it is, country boy?” Nicolo asked. “A toy windmill to remind you of life on the farm?”

      “No, not at all,” said Leonardo, so annoyed he could hardly speak.

      “Maybe it’s a baby’s rattle.” Nicolo shook the wooden device by his ear, but it made no sound. Leonardo was tempted to make another grab but he was afraid of damaging his creation.

      “I give up, Leonardo,” smirked Nicolo. “What does it do?”

      Leonardo glared at him. “It flies.”

      “Flies?” The answer was so incredible it wiped the sneer from Nicolo’s face.

      “A merchant from Padua was selling one like it in the market,” Leonardo explained. “He said it came from Cathay and he wanted five florins for it.”

      Vanni let out a low whistle. It was a sum beyond the imagination of apprentices like themselves.

      “But for a few denari he let me examine it to see how it worked.”

      “And then you made your own,” said Gabriello admiringly.

      “Yes, I finished carving the four blades last night.”

      “And you think it will fly?” snorted Nicolo. “You’ve gone mad, country boy. The smell of turps has rotted your brain.”

      “Here, I’ll show you,” Leonardo offered, reaching for the device.

      Nicolo yanked it out of reach. “Not so fast,” he said. “We have to make sure there’s no trickery here. How does it work?”

      Leonardo gritted his teeth and reined in his temper. Ever since he had arrived at the workshop three months before, Nicolo had been goading him, mimicking the country accent he had been working so hard to erase, sneering at his drawings and telling him his hands were better suited to the plough than the brush and palette.

      “There’s a screw inside and the stick with the vanes on top is fitted into that,” СКАЧАТЬ