A Bolt from the Blue

Leonardo met my anguished gaze with a look of regret and spread his hands in a helpless gesture. “Delfina,” he said softly, “you must leave now, no matter that it breaks my heart to see you go.”

“It breaks my heart, too,” I whispered so quietly that I wondered if he heard the words.

And then, choking back a sob, I fled the tiny chapel as if the devil himself were at my heels.

EPILOGUE

*

For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return.

– Delfina della Fazia, The Notebooks of Delfina della Fazia

It was several days after I had returned to our small town that I found the courage to unpack the bag containing the apprentice Dino’s worldly possessions. The rough sack held far more upon its return journey than it had when I had started out… just as I had brought back with me far more knowledge of the world than had been mine when I left. And so, gently, I poured the bag’s contents out onto my bed.

To be sure, one part of me had been tempted to consign it all to the fire, to put that small portion of my life behind me, but in the end I could not. For among the items were the three notebooks that I had kept in emulation of Leonardo.

More than books of sketches, the tiny volumes had become a chronicle of my life during those months when I had lived at Castle Sforza. The memories they held burned with both passion and pain… memories far too raw, most of them, to be held up for examination in the light of day. But one day, I would want to relive those moments of love and fear and laughter.

Just not yet.

Two of my three notebooks I had already tied shut, for the secrets they held had threatened to spill from them in careless disregard for my own feelings. I found another piece of cord and secured the third book, as well. Many of its pages were still blank, but that was as it should be. Should I ever be tempted to keep such a notebook again, I would fi nd a fresh new volume in which to begin.

For good measure, I wrapped all three volumes together in a heavy silk veil and tied it into a neat bundle. That bundle, in turn, I carefully hid atop my wardrobe, out of sight of anyone else but where I could retrieve it whenever I wished. That accomplished, I began sorting the rest of Dino’s possessions.

My bowl and spoon were there, as was much of the coin that my father had given me to pay for my apprenticeship, and which I had hidden in the toe of my spare boots. A change of linen and a cloth with which to scrub my teeth added to the pile. I’d also accumulated a few small trinkets from the occasional market day. The tunics and trunk hose in which I’d first disguised myself had belonged to my younger brothers, but they had long since outgrown those clothes. I shook that boyish garb free of its wrinkles and folded it into a neat pile. While I no longer had a use for the clothing, I was loath simply to toss it away.

Along with that simple garb, I found that my father had also packed away the page’s outfit that Luigi the tailor had made for me at Leonardo’s request. I felt a twinge of guilt at seeing it there, for it was far more costly than any clothing I had ever owned. Had I packed my own bag, I would have left it behind so that another youth might wear it should Leonardo find himself in need of an apprentice disguised as a servant.

With the same care I might have used with a fragile bit of old lace, I folded the silk and velvet garb into a second pile upon my bed and then eyed both stacks of male clothing. Sooner or later, my mother would guess that I’d fled the house in my brothers’ borrowed garb, and so would come looking for it. No doubt she would burn the offending garments if she found them, seeing them as flagrant reminders of my transgressions. But the page’s costume, she would have no cause to know ever existed.

I grabbed up those clothes and, wrapping them in another veil, carefully hid them atop the wardrobe alongside my notebooks. Then, not allowing myself to examine my motives for that impulsive act, I looked to see what remained.

I had sorted through everything, and yet here was something that I did not recognize… That was, not entirely. For whatever the flat, rectangular object was, it was secured in what appeared to be the same scrap of green silk that Leonardo had used to conceal his model of the flying machine. Curious, I untied the cord that held it.