I have never understood the Milanese court’s taste for these vulgar colors. My eyes turn upward to the painted vaults of the dining hall. The ceilings of each public room in His Lordship’s palace are garishly colored, frescoes hastily turned out by a team of painters chosen on the basis of their low bid rather than on merit. I might propose to His Lordship to do something entirely different, given the opportunity.
In many ways, I think, Lucrezia Crivelli is the opposite of dear Cecilia, at least in the way I have decided to portray her. She will be fashionably but modestly clothed in a silk shernia draped over one shoulder. She will wear her newest velvet gown, the one with the square-necked bodice and a pattern of knots. Cecilia has told me that the dress was a gift from His Lordship, along with a long string of onyx beads to offset her pale skin. I have sketched her hair in two heavy swaths, pulled tightly along her cheeks. The overall effect will be one of elegance, of understatement, the very opposite of this castle’s cheaply painted ceilings and walls.
I watch Ludovico il Moro’s black beard come to life as he chews. His gaze has not strayed from Lucrezia. With his beadlike eyes and nose like a beak, he resembles a great bird of prey, and I cannot help but think of the hundreds of drawings I have made of hawks in preparation for my flying machine. And then, I see that Lucrezia recognizes his gaze. She smiles, a shy yet comely grin.
I must complete this portrait of Cecilia Gallerani as quickly as possible, I think, for in this place, things might change at any moment.
31
Cecilia
Milan, Italy
November 1490
“YOU MUST TAKE CARE NOT TO TRUST PEOPLE WITH YOUR whole heart. They may not always have your best interest in mind, even if they seem kind on the surface.”
Cecilia heard Master Leonardo’s words, but she didn’t fully listen. She kept thinking about what His Lordship’s bastard daughter had told her in the palace kitchen. Her mother had gone to a convent, the girl had said. She knew little of her mother, the girl had told Cecilia, matter-of-factly; only what she wrote in letters Bianca received on her birthday, on her saint’s day, or at Christmas.
Cecilia’s heart ached. What would become of her and her own child? Would they be torn apart, the child trapped behind the walls of this castle and Cecilia trapped behind the walls of a convent? She did not know how to reveal her secret, the consequences of which loomed large, frightening, and unknown.
Cecilia’s thoughts were interrupted by the sight of three armed condottieri coming through the castle gates on muscular black horses. Their armor reflected the sun and the colored plumes on their helmets must have made them visible from a long distance, Cecilia thought. Hardly a way to sneak up on anyone. She expected hired mercenaries to be more subtle.
All morning, Cecilia and Leonardo had enjoyed the fresh air of the castle courtyard, where Master da Vinci told her they might take advantage of the natural, filtered light that would make for a more beautiful portrait. He had brought a stack of sketches in a leather portfolio. He pulled out a fresh page and began to draw, but, with a troubled look on his face, he held his pen in midair and paused.
“You see, cara? Even within these castle walls, some people feel . . . threatened. His Lordship himself must actively defend not only his territories but his own life.”
Cecilia tried her best to take Master Leonardo’s words into good conscience. She knew that Master Leonardo was intelligent, that he knew things of all manner of subjects, of matters far beyond the castle walls. When she had asked, he had shown her his notebooks, full on both sides of each page with a strange, left-reading, backward handwriting that she failed to interpret. Treatises on military machines and hydraulics, he had told her. On optics, on anatomy, even on the flight of birds. Drawings of Madonnas, of saints. Of beautiful, angelic-looking young boys.
“And His Lordship’s nephew. He is also a threat?” she asked.
Leonardo huffed. “Especially young Gian Galeazzo. He is only a boy but he is still the Duke of Milan,” he said, lowering his voice to a whisper. “Between you and me, I fear what might happen as he grows old enough to take matters—” Leonardo stopped himself, looking behind him instinctively to see if anyone might overhear their conversation. “But you, my dear. You yourself are in a position of relative power right now, as His Lordship’s companion,” he continued, “whether you realize it or not. Someone might try to take something from you, or perhaps withhold it. As I said, I advise you to watch those closest to you.”
But Cecilia felt anything but powerful. Instead, she feared for her life.
32
Dominic
Bad Godesberg, Germany
March 1945
HERR WEYRES WAS A SHADOW OF A MAN, HIS EYE SOCKETS dark and haunted. He shivered under a threadbare blanket on a kitchen chair, his gaze darting around the room, focusing on each American in turn as they clustered around him. Dominic imagined that the war must have reduced Weyres, who said he had once been an architect and an assistant to the provincial art conservator, to this shivering bundle of nerves.
“You’re telling me the lists were all lost?” Hancock asked.
“All of them,” Weyres said. Behind him, a hefty woman—Weyres’s distant cousin, who’d been giving him shelter—cursed in German as the stove sputtered and struggled in the icy wind. The men hardly fit into the little kitchen. They filled the bare room with a forest of tall soldiers. The woman’s house had been half bombed. Shattered glass lined the window frames; the tattered remnants of curtains had been drawn fruitlessly over the empty holes, fluttering in the desolate wind. She attempted to relight the fire under the copper pot that sat on the stove, trying to heat water for powdered coffee. The soldiers barely spared her a glance as Captain Hancock spoke to Herr Weyres.
“All of them,” Weyres repeated, drawing the blanket a little closer over his shoulders. “Burned in the bombings or torn apart by my own people.” Freezing rain pelted through a hole in the roof that gaped like a missing tooth. Dominic huddled a little deeper into the collar of his greatcoat, watching Herr Weyres’s hollow eye sockets. “Why would they take and destroy their own culture?”
The look on the old architect’s face had become all too familiar to Dominic and the others over the past few weeks as they followed the trail of Allied victories east. First Cologne, and then Bonn had fallen, both arduous battles. Dominic continued to want to be on the front lines, where the real warriors were, he believed. Where he could make a real difference. Instead, Dominic and his unit brought up the rear. They had never been far behind the front, seeking out as many museum and university professionals as they could, ticking names off a list in the smoldering aftermath of each battle. A tedious, soul-rending slog.
Most of the time, they came up empty. The individuals they sought had fled, were hiding, or, if they had chosen to stay, were certainly dead. But Captain Hancock, with the enthusiastic support of Vicar Stephany, persevered; the few professionals they had managed to find had been able to give them some information. Word of the Monuments Men—and of those few works of art they had been able to uncover—was beginning to spread underground through war-torn Germany. Gradually, a few people with information became more willing to speak to them. A few had even come forth of their own accord.