Beaming at her son, their mother finally took his arm.
But no sooner had Fazio opened the door to the corridor than he stopped short, pressing the women behind him. A small crowd was making its way toward them from the end of a long corridor. As the cluster of courtiers approached, Cecilia watched her brother bow in deference. She and her mother attempted to follow his example, casting their eyes to the intricate patterns on the floor. Cecilia heard the hiss of silk across the marble and could only catch fleeting glimpses of velvet gloves and slippers, silk hose, polished buckles, transparent sheaves of black lace, ribbons of green and gold.
The man at the front of the crowd stopped, and the crowd circled behind him.
“Fazio Gallerani,” the man said. From behind her brother’s back, Cecilia could only see that the man was stout and black-haired, with a voice so deep that it sounded as if his mouth was full of pebbles.
“My lord,” her brother said, his head and shoulders dropping still lower in deference to the man.
“You have brought guests,” he said, the deep voice and his Tuscan words with their Milanese accent both strange and beautiful to her ear.
“Guests? Oh no, my lord. Just my mother and my little sister. They arrived last night from Siena.”
“Let us greet them, then.”
A few long, silent moments passed. Cecilia watched her mother stare down at her dress, where red earth was still caked to the hem and under her fingernails. She did not move from her place behind her son’s back.
Cecilia pushed her way in front of her brother, where she found herself standing face-to-face with a man who could be no other than the lord of Milan. Though at least twice her age, Ludovico il Moro stood eye to eye with Cecilia. His face was angular but mostly invisible behind a richly oiled black beard. His breast was covered in velvet and metal, each finger adorned with a colored gem. The front of his doublet hung heavy with jangling emblems, the sounds heralding his arrival as if he were a prized beast. He raked his dark eyes over Cecilia, then held her under a penetrating gaze for a few more long moments. Was he waiting for her to bow?
But Cecilia did not bow. She only met his dark gaze and smiled.
5
Leonardo
Florence, Italy
December 1476
A SODOMITE.
Is that all I have become? The sum of my work? The reward for my years of tutelage under Master Verrocchio? The sum of my gifts in designing siege machines and other useful contraptions for men of war?
My father won’t speak on my behalf; he never has gone out of his way to protect his bastard son, and why should he now? And my uncles only tell me that I must be more careful about who I befriend. They say I am naïve, that I have much to learn of the ways in which noble families of Florence are accused for no good reason. But I am old enough to know that all it takes is for a cruel, jealous person to slip an anonymous accusation into the letter box of the Signoria to send a man to the gallows.
They will never prove anything, of that tailor, of the goldsmith, or of me. They cannot produce evidence for anything that was scratched out on that piece of parchment and slipped into the Mouth of Truth in the middle of the night. And as for Saltarelli, that young profiteer who prompted the whole thing, I hope the Officers of the Night find him. The rumors about him being more than an artist’s model may be true, but in the end, it is little more than jealousy that sparked this fiasco. If Saltarelli knows what’s good for him, he will have left Florence before another denunciation is passed into the tamburo at the Signoria.
But now I see that the time has come for me to depart Florence, too. Two accusations in as many years. I am not as naïve as my uncles think.
Surely, beyond the city, there is honorable work. There are men who will pay for my talents, for my contraptions, for my vision. They will put a roof over my head and food on my table.
Far to the north of here, they are already at war. The men of Pavia, Ferrara, Milan. Especially Milan, where not even churches are safe. Milan, where we hear that Duke Galeazzo Sforza has just been stabbed to death in the Basilica of Santo Stefano during high mass. And now, his little boy, Gian Galeazzo, barely old enough to lift a crossbow, carries the burden of the duchy. If anyone needs my assistance with war machines, it’s the poor little Duke of Milan.
No one need know of the unfolding events here. My drawings speak for themselves. I need only find people with connections far beyond Florence. Men in power who will advocate on my behalf. The right letters of introduction from the right men.
The fat tabby leaps onto my writing table and nearly spills the glass well of indigo ink. I run my hand over her gray stripes and feel the contented rumble in her throat as the beast urges her bony head against my palm. Then the cat narrows her golden eyes to slits and I ask her the inevitable question.
Who will grant my safe passage out of Florence?
6
Dominic
Normandy, France
June 1944
DOMINIC’S SHAKING FINGERS FIDDLED WITH HIS HELMET’S chin strap and he dug down deep for an ounce of courage. It’s about time, he told himself, a refrain repeated for months before he arrived here. I’m here to do a job after all; here to fight for something. We should have stood up to his madness long before now. How many lives might have been saved if the Americans and English had deployed troops months ago? Years ago?
He found himself running his fingers across the light stubble on his jaw. Dominic hated the feeling of having his hands idle. He was desperate for something to do with his nervous energy, something to think about that wasn’t being crammed shoulder to shoulder with thirty-five other men on the Higgins boat. Each undulating wave propelled them closer to the beach—and the enemy. Each man crouched in that hull was fighting his own internal battle to ignore the cold perspiration, pushing the fear down somewhere deep inside.
Let’s get this done, he thought. Let’s do the right thing, the just thing, so that we can all go home.
The sky was as gray as the sea; mist muffled the world around them so that even though Dominic knew there were thousands of other men aboard scores of landing craft all around them, it felt as though this little platoon was all that stood between the Nazis and the lives they strove to protect. As though only their little platoon would land on Omaha Beach and alone, face their fate.
Not quite alone. The shadow of a plane overhead chilled the air.
Instinctively, Dominic reached between the buttons of his fatigue shirt, only to feel a pang of longing when his fingers brushed against a ball chain and two dog tags. They had made him take off his Saint Christopher medal at basic training back in Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. He had stored the medal inside a zippered pocket of his leather wallet, resolving that it would be safe there until the day he could finally exchange his dog tags for his beloved Saint Christopher.
How soon would this be over? Dominic closed his eyes, feeling the kiss of spray on his cheek, and dreamed his way back to a bright day that now felt another lifetime and a world away.
Swede Hill. Greensburg, Pennsylvania.
It had been Dominic’s whole world for twenty-two years. He had grown up there, in the bosom of the only “wop” family among the Swedes and Irish. At least that’s how people referred to the Bonellis, some jokingly, some with derision in their eyes.
Dominic thought of his mother, who had latched that Saint Christopher at his neck, stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek, and put on a brave face.