A Bolt From the Blue (33 page)

“But why, Tito?” I demanded, unable to hold back my own anger. “Why did you do your uncle’s bidding, when you knew it was wrong? You could have told the Master what the duke was planning, and he would have seen to it that you stayed safely in Milan and never had to return home to Pontalba again. What could your uncle have promised you in return, that you would resort to kidnapping and murder?”

At my mention of his uncle, Tito touched a reflexive hand to his bruised mouth, and his expression tightened. I recalled that his father had died when he was but a boy, so it must have been the Duke of Pontalba who had served in that role for him ever since. Unwilling sympathy momentarily cooled my heated emotions. What must it have been like for him as a child, being left with a brutal uncle whose approval he surely must have craved, while he feared the man himself?

Tito’s gaze met mine again, and he smiled a little.

“You don’t understand. Finally, I had the chance to make my uncle proud of me. He always thought me a fool and a weakling because I loved to paint. The only way he would let me join Leonardo’s workshop was if I pretended to be but a common youth so that I could act as his spy at Castle Sforza. It was my own idea to steal the flying machine and bring it back to Pontalba. When I told him my plan, my uncle promised that if I could accomplish that, I would be the first one to pilot it. And he said that once we built a whole fleet of flying machines for Pontalba, I would be captain over all of them!”

My first instinctive thought was that the duke would never have handed over such responsibility to his nephew; still, from the note of pride I heard in Tito’s voice, I knew that he had believed his uncle’s promise. Taking on such a glorious post would surely have seemed a vindication of all he might have endured at his uncle’s hands to that point.

The moment of satisfaction faded, and he turned an angry look on me.

“Most of what happened is your fault, you know . . . yours, and your father’s,” he cried in an accusatory tone. “If Signor Angelo had told my uncle’s men that he wasn’t Leonardo, or if you hadn’t listened to Rebecca and insisted on coming here to Pontalba, nobody else would have had to die. But because of your interference, my uncle will have you and all the rest of them—your father, Leonardo, all the other apprentices—slain or thrown into the dungeon, just because it pleases him.”

Even as he’d made that cruel accusation, I heard the sudden familiar sound of the portcullis opening. The shouts of the soldiers drifted up to us as they put heel to flank and began moving toward the gate. Soon, the duke’s men would be riding down the ramp to the open field. They would assemble into formation there, I knew, before beginning their assault upon the handful of boys hiding in the woods.

I had to act as they began that march but before they reached the trees.

“Tito,” I pleaded, kneeling beside him and grabbing his hand. “There is still a chance for you to make amends. Let me take the flying machine as I planned. If I can keep it airborne, I will use it to distract your uncle’s men while the other apprentices make their escape. I can do nothing for my father or the Master, but perhaps I can save some of them.”

“Pah, why do you care what happens to a handful of common apprentices?”

“They are my friends, Tito . . . just as they were yours.”

Not waiting for an answer, I released my grip on him and hurriedly lay atop the craft again, tightening the belt with shaking hands. Tito remained where he sat beside the craft, watching me with an unreadable expression. The strap fastened, I reached a hand for the end of the rope that held the flying machine tied in place. A single jerk would pull the knot free, and the rope would slip back through the ring as the craft made its descent down the roof.

I shot another anxious look at Tito. Slowly, he stood, and for a frantic moment I feared he would somehow try to stop me. But instead he said, “If I let you do this, you must swear if they capture you that you never saw me here, that I came too late to stop you.”

“I swear by all the saints,” I softly cried as I heard a shout from the duke’s captain of the guard and the answering rhythmic clop of hooves drift up from below. They were moving down the ramp and would momentarily be in formation. “Let me do what I can to save them . . . please, for Constantin’s sake.”

By way of answer, he stepped back from the craft. I gave him a grateful nod and made another hurried check of the pedals and levers. Lightly, I began to flap the wings, feeling with that tentative movement a slight lift of the craft’s frame. The momentum coming down the slanted roofline would be sufficient to keep me going as I reached its end, but I would swiftly plummet back to earth if I did not pedal fast enough to keep the wings moving at a quick pace. Yet if I flapped too hard as I cleared the roofline, I risked catching the wingtips upon the slate, causing me to lose control.

The rumble of hooves upon the ramp had ceased. I knew they were spreading their mounts into formation, with the foot soldiers taking up their positions to the rear. In another moment, the captain would give the signal to surge forward . . . and that would be my signal to take flight.

Any fear that I had earlier felt was gone, replaced by an oddly calm sense of purpose. No longer was I concerned with what might happen if I fell from the sky. All that mattered was staying aloft long enough to disrupt the ranks and give my friends time enough to flee. I barely had time for a half-murmured prayer to whatever saints might be listening to keep me strong, when another shout drifted up from below.

Taking a deep breath, I yanked the rope.

For an interminable moment, the craft remained motionless, so that I feared the rope had become tangled in its frame. But an instant later, and with swiftness far greater than I could imagine, it began rolling forward.

Though my descent down the ramplike roof must have taken but a few seconds, time slowed to the point that I took in every instant with an almost languorous clarity. I began to pedal, inwardly counting off each stroke,
one, two, one, two
. The canvas-covered wings rose and fell with the graceful precision of a dove taking flight, while their soft whoosh reminded me of a night owl’s hushed pursuit of its prey. My confidence grew, for surely this design so closely mimicked a bird’s anatomy that it lacked only feathers!

But as a thrill of triumph shot through me, I heard an anguished shout. I glanced back long enough to see Tito running after me, arms outstretched and face twisted in anger as he cried, “No! Stop! It’s mine!”

Stay back,
I tried to shout, but the words lodged in my throat. All I could do was pray that he would come to his senses, though I knew with sudden certainty how this must end.

For I was moving too fast for him to catch me; moreover, the break in the parapets was but a few lengths ahead of me. In the space of a few more seconds, the flying machine would be airborne. And still I heard the cries as Tito continued his pursuit, seemingly heedless of what lay ahead beyond the castle’s edge.

Yet I could not worry about him anymore. All I could do was keep pedaling while praying that Leonardo’s grand design would prove to be no folly but a triumph of genius. Ahead of me was nothing other than sky, cloudless and far bluer than any I could ever recall seeing.

And then, abruptly, the ground dropped out from beneath me.

23

—Leonardo da Vinci,
Codex Atlanticus

 

 

 

 

 

Iscreamed . . . not so much in terror as in sheer exhilaration. For, after that fi rst petrifying lurch as the wheels slipped off the castle’s edge, the craft swooped upward. I was flying! The Master’s invention worked!

One corner of my mind registered an echoing shriek of terror from somewhere behind me, the doleful cry cut short a heartbeat later. I dared not look back, but I knew to my great sorrow what that sound meant.

Blinded by the thought of losing what he’d shed both blood and soul to gain, he had forgotten that the roofline ended. Or perhaps he hadn’t. Either way, he had followed after me and plunged to what most certainly would have been his death. I prayed that his uncle the duke would treat him far more kindly as a corpse than he had treated his nephew in life.

As for me, I had loved Tito as a friend. Despite the evil he had done, I could not help but mourn the youth that I had thought him to be. Later—if there was a later for me—I would ponder whether or not justice had been served in the end. For the moment, however, my concern was focused on keeping control of my craft.

I felt as if I were cradled upon some invisible cloud, so gently did the craft hover. Each movement of my feet made the great wings rise and dip down again in a rowing motion, so that the craft glided atop the breeze like a ship rolling upon the waves. Yet, press one pedal too hard, and the craft wobbled. Press it too softly, and the machine tilted at an alarming angle. I found, as well, that the hand controls allowed but the subtlest change in altitude or movement. In order to make a circle, I needed to adjust the splayed tail that served as rudder, using yet another control.

I clung with grim purpose to the hand levers, concentrating on keeping the flying machine level while I studied the formation of soldiers below me. From my vantage point, they looked like chess pieces neatly spread across a dark green board. I stared in fascination, feeling almost as if I could reach down and pluck them up, one by one, and move them where I chose. Already, they were almost halfway across the field, their armor and weapons glinting beneath the late-morning sun. Recalling myself to my purpose, I shook free of my fancies and cautiously guided the flying machine above the soldiers’ path.

The craft’s shadow spilled over the field like that of some giant mythical bird, throwing a dark stain over men and beasts. Had any of the soldiers noticed this anomaly, they likely dismissed it as a wayward cloud crossing the sun’s face. The horses, however, realized something was amiss . . . perhaps instinctively recalling an ancient time when predators swooped down upon their ancestors from out of the sky.

As my shadow touched them, the armored beasts shied and whinnied in fright, breaking formation as they sought escape from their perceived attacker. This was what I’d hoped to accomplish, I thought with a small surge of triumph. More confident in my abilities, I adjusted the craft’s rudderlike tail and circled over the troops again.

Fear exploded into panic as one terrified steed after another thrashed and bucked, trying to unseat their riders. The foot soldiers following behind broke ranks, as well, scrambling out of range of flailing hooves. Faced with this abrupt dissolution of his forces, the captain, struggling with his own frightened mount, raised an arm and with a shout called a halt to the charge.

It was at that moment that one of the mounted men, who had been unceremoniously thrown by his horse, stared up and saw the flying machine.

His cries and frantic gestures caught the attention of his fellow soldiers, who followed his gaze upward. A chorus of shouts punctuated with pointing fingers arose from the disarrayed troops. Some must have known of the flying machine’s existence, for I heard faint cries of,
Leonardo, Leonardo
. Others, perhaps more superstitious than the rest, must have attributed the sight to divine intervention, for they fell to their knees and raised their arms in supplication.

For myself, any fear I’d previously felt was gone, replaced by an intoxicating sense of supremacy as I saw the power that I wielded. Indeed, I laughed. What would these battle-hardened soldiers say, I wondered, if they ever learned that a mere woman had disrupted their well-armed forces? Feeling quite invincible now, I wheeled the flying machine about and, with a slight dip of my wings, abruptly swooped low like a hawk rushing to strike.

And that was when I saw one foot soldier raise his bulky crossbow and fire it directly at me.

I pulled up abruptly. The bolt whizzed past me, its power far greater than I could have imagined at this distance, so that I surely would have been impaled had I not taken such evasive maneuvers. But a glance at my left wing showed me that the craft had not escaped unscathed. I could see daylight through the tear in the canvas through which the bulky arrow had passed.

A solid thud to the framework beneath me shook the craft. Someone else had fired off another bolt, this one lodging firmly in wood. Fighting back panic, I pedaled faster, trying to take the flying machine out of range. Yet a third bolt tore past, this one thankfully missing both me and the craft.

With a few more flaps of my wings, I was out of range, or so I prayed. But the soldiers’ attention was focused on me, and I knew I would face an onslaught of bolts and spears should I venture back too close again. More to the point was the fact that my limbs were rapidly tiring from the effort of pedaling to keep the craft aloft. My soft life as an apprentice had done me no favors in this particular instance!