Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
May 1946
A MONTH AFTER LEAVING KRAKÓW, DOMINIC FOUND HIMSELF on a train again. But this time, there was no rifle on his back. No helmet at his side. No paintings under his surveillance. His duffel bag held no more ammunition or rations. And his heart felt as light as the sunshine that fell in warm rays through the train windows as it clanked through the green landscape of the country where he was born.
Dominic had not thought much of America on the long journey home from Europe; his mind had been utterly occupied with Sally and the children. But when his feet hit the dirt on Governors Island, he was overcome. Heedless of the watching crowd, he’d dropped his duffel, fallen to his knees, and pressed his lips to the ground, tears pouring from his eyes.
They hadn’t stayed in New York for long. Just pausing for a shave and to change into a clean uniform, he and a batch of other young men had flooded into Grand Central Station. Dominic descended to the platform where a conductor marched between two trains, one bound for Pittsburgh, another for San Antonio. Dominic paused in taking his seat as he watched the train headed for Texas pull away from the station. Without Paul. For so many of the soldiers, there would be no going home.
Dominic’s only consolation was that he had gotten to play a role, however small, in bringing home not only Leonardo da Vinci’s portrait of the enchanting Cecilia Gallerani, but also many other works he knew the Poles held dear. He thought back to his train ride from Munich to Kraków, surrounded by wooden crates holding many paintings and the dismantled pieces of the great Veit Stoss altarpiece. He thought of the ragged-looking people running alongside the train, so relieved and excited to see the Allies as they pulled into the Kraków railway station.
Now, a wide and distinctly American landscape—familiar and at the same time strangely foreign to his eyes—clipped by outside the train window. Dominic opened his duffel and pulled out his sketchbook, flipping through it to a sketch that he had kept especially for Sally. It was too precious to mail; his first drawing of the Lady with an Ermine, it was technically not his best—showing evidence of his clumsiness before he’d met Edith—but every shaky line spoke with the wonder he’d felt at beholding the face of an original da Vinci. He couldn’t wait to show it to Sally and tell her everything. He knew he would never see that masterpiece in the flesh again, but he felt content. Instead, he’d spend his days drawing the timeless masterpiece that was his beautiful wife, encouraged by the words that had drawn him through so many hard times.
Keep drawing.
The last leg of the journey seemed to take years, but at last, the conductor called out Pittsburgh. The atmosphere was one of tremendous excitement as the train pulled into Union Station. Servicemen hung out of the windows, waving, crying as they spotted family members and street signs and shops that spoke of home. Dominic’s heart was racing. He pressed up against the window, suddenly sick to his stomach with nerves. It had been so long. Would he even recognize Sally? Would she recognize him, two years and a war later?
When he saw her, it was like having a bucket of cold water thrown over his head. He couldn’t breathe. He could only stare. It was her hair that he saw first, licking like flames around the edges of the navy hat that perched on her head. Then her body, shapelier than before, and her face, and her eyes, searching the crowd for him. Her freckled cheeks were flushed with excitement, her lips curving into a smile that pierced his heart like lightning. She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. He had gazed upon Rembrandt and Vermeer, Rubens and Fragonard—even a portrait by Leonardo da Vinci—but none of them could come close to equaling the smile of his wife.
In her arms, a toddler was reaching for her mother’s face with chubby fists. And at Sally’s side, her little hand curved around her mother’s slender fingers, was Cecilia. The little girl had her mother’s eyes, and her head of baby fluff had grown out into a raven torrent.
Dominic wanted to run to them, but he felt he couldn’t move as the train clanked slowly to a halt. He just stared at his family among the swirling vortex of the crowd, and his heart swelled until he felt it might just lift him into the air and float him away toward the sun and the clouds. The memories of the war swirled around him. Landing on the foggy beach. Forging a friendship with Paul during the miserable forced marches. The sight of Aachen. Finding Stephany cowering beneath the pulpit. The bloom of blood beneath Paul’s writhing body. The bombed-out museums. Fighting on the roadside as they headed toward the Rhine. The smell of Siegen. Sketching on index cards in Marburg. Parading through Munich. Finding the beautiful da Vinci in Frank’s house. Edith. Major Estreicher’s tears. Kraków, and its cheering crowd as he hung Polish and American flags from the windows of the train. Years of pain and loss, suffering, beholding the wanton destruction for selfish reasons, the prejudice and unwarranted hate toward those deemed unworthy of life. The reign of terror brought to an end by violence.
He gazed at his family and he knew, to keep them safe, to give them a world where there was art and beauty, the long struggle had been worth it.
The train whistle sounded, bringing life back into Dominic’s limbs. As the doors slid open, he grabbed his rucksack and pushed his way forward into the crowd.
87
Leonardo
Milan, Italy
February 1497
THE REFECTORY OF SANTA MARIA DELLA GRAZIE LIES IN silence except for the sound of clinking spoons and the occasional scrape of a chair on the stone floor. I spoon watery polenta into my mouth and watch the two dozen Dominican friars huddled around me. To my right, His Lordship. But Ludovico has not taken a bite.
Instead, the Duke of Milan sits before his plate, staring at the wall before us. The wall is mostly blank, at least so far. There, I have roughly sketched a composition, a symmetrical image of Christ surrounded by his disciples. The men are huddled around a table, much like those of us at the table now. A Last Supper. His Lordship asked me to prepare the fresco months ago, but now, all he wants to do is sit here with the monks and stare at my work in progress.
In fact, ever since the beginning of January, when Death defeated Birth, taking his young bride and their baby to the Hereafter, His Lordship has done little but sit and stare. He does not eat. Hardly speaks. Ludovico is so shattered at the loss of his Beatrice that he has ordered all the windows of the ducal palace covered in black drapes. The music, the feasting, the gatherings. All of it has stopped. Not even Lucrezia Crivelli, heavy with a child of her own, can console him. Only the chambermaids slink down the dark corridors now.
His Lordship has only done so much as ask me to finish my Last Supper on the north wall of this refectory and request that I join him for a meal here twice a week. And so I sit and eat, watching the wall along with Ludovico, and considering how I might make this image more beautiful and different from anything ever before seen in Milan.
And so, it’s on to a new project. It’s not an armored vehicle or a flying machine, but until His Lordship is able to think of such matters again, it is enough to keep me in his service.
88
Cecilia
San Giovanni in Croce, Italy
April 1498
CECILIA WATCHED CESARE AND HER TODDLING DAUGHTER run down a grassy hillside, chasing an ungainly white goose. In her hands, Cecilia held a letter sealed with the wax stamp bearing the arms of Ferrara.