Leonardo da Vinci: Renaissance Master (13 page)

At last, Felix and Leonardo also joined the procession. Of course Maisie hadn't waited for him.
Again
, Felix thought in frustration. But he didn't want his sister to ruin the day, so he accepted the noisemaker someone thrust in his hand and shook up and down, adding to the cacophony.

Like a giant serpent, the procession snaked through the narrow streets until it reached the Arno River. There, it followed the curve of the river. Voices from a float covered in fresh lilies—the flower of Florence, Leonardo explained—called out to Leonardo and Felix.

“Join us!”

Leonardo grinned. “There's your sister and Sandro Botticelli.”

Felix was about to protest, but Leonardo left the line to race toward them. Felix followed, reluctantly.

But once on the float, able to look down at the procession and across the river to the rooftops and hills of Florence, he was happy he had come.

Maisie, however, was scowling at him.

“You never showed up!” she said.

“You left me!” he reminded her. “And a priest grabbed me and—”

“Why can't you just stick by my side?”

“Why can't you stick by
my
side?”

They glared at each other.

“I don't understand you anymore,” they both said at almost the exact same time.

“Ah!” Leonardo told them. “That is a problem. You must try harder to listen to each other. To understand each other's point of view.”

Maisie shot him an angry look. “You have no idea all the things we are supposed to understand that don't make sense. Why our parents aren't together. Why our mother is with a dope named Bruce Fishbaum. Why—”

“Maisie,” Leonardo said, interrupting. “And Felix, too. The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.”

Leonardo's words settled in Felix's mind.

The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.

Felix looked at Maisie, who was looking right back at him.

The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.

Leonardo had just given them the lesson they most needed to hear. But they were still on the float, the smell of lilies all around them, moving along the Arno River in Renaissance Florence.

“Why are we still here?” Felix whispered to her.

Maisie avoided his gaze.

“Maisie?”

“We haven't given him the seal,” she muttered.

“That's right!” Felix said. “I think it's time, don't you?”

Maisie didn't answer.

“I don't have it,” Felix reminded her.

Maisie turned toward him.

“Neither do I,” she said.

AMY PICKWORTH'S MESSAGE

“Y
ou did what?” Felix gasped.

The procession had ended, and Maisie and Felix were heading with a large group to the Palazzo Medici for a banquet.

“It's no big deal,” Maisie said. “I put it in one of those big urns. We'll get it as soon as we arrive.”

“What if it's not there?”

“Why do you have to worry so much?” Maisie asked, rhetorically.

“Why can't you just do what you're supposed to do?”

“Maybe I didn't want to go back to Bruce Fishbaum, and Dad in a hotel, and everything upside down!” Maisie blurted.

“I don't understand why you can't accept . . .”

Felix stopped himself, Leonardo's words ringing in his ears.

He took a deep breath.

“I don't like Bruce Fishbaum much, either,” he told Maisie. “But Mom does.”

After all, Felix realized, they had to try to understand
her
as well.

“How can she?” Maisie said.

“It's an adult thing, I think,” he admitted.

“I thought after Agatha called off the wedding that Mom would see the chance to reunite with Dad.”

“I guess they don't want to get back together, Maisie. And I guess we have to understand that.”

Tears sprang to Maisie's eyes.

“So you think they're divorced forever?” she asked.

“I do.”

“Well,” Maisie said, wiping the tears from her face with the back of her hand, “I don't have to like it.”

Felix smiled at her. “No,” he said. “You don't.”

Together they walked through the front doors of the Palazzo Medici and into the courtyard.

The banquet table was practically drooping from the platters of meat and pasta and vegetables, the jugs of wine, the cheeses and fruits.

But Maisie led Felix away from the table, across the courtyard toward the terra-cotta urn.

Abruptly, she stopped.

“What now?” he asked her.

“The urn was right over there,” Maisie said, pointing to an empty corner.

“Oh no,” Felix groaned.

Maisie's gaze flitted from one corner to the next until she'd determined that the urn was indeed gone.

Clarice appeared in front of them, a quizzical expression on her face.

“There's food, and soon Leonardo will sing a song he wrote especially for Carnival,” she said.

“Thanks,” Felix remembered to say, despite his growing anxiety. Without that urn, the seal was missing. And without that seal, they would never go back home to Newport and their parents.

“What's the matter?” Clarice asked them.

“Nothing,” Maisie said quickly.

She forced a laugh. “You know,” she continued, “the other night I thought there was this big urn over there.”

She pointed to the empty corner.

“There was,” Clarice said. “Those terrible Pazzis smashed it. Lorenzo has commissioned something even better, more beautiful. In fact, we'll have a sculpture in every corner!”

“They smashed it?” Felix said, his stomach sinking.

“To smithereens. It was unsalvageable. We had to throw every piece away,” Clarice said. “And that was an antiquity. Irreplacable!” She added under her breath, “Those Pazzis!”

“How terrible,” Maisie managed to say.

“Where did you say you threw those pieces?” Felix asked hopefully.

Clarice laughed. “I have no idea. The servants take care of things like that.”

She studied their faces in that serious unnerving way she had.

“Why are you two so concerned with a broken urn, anyway?” she asked them.

“I just . . . um . . . admire antiquities,” Maisie stammered.

“O-
kay
,” Clarice said doubtfully.

Felix and Maisie looked at her as innocently as they could, holding her gaze until she finally said, “Well, then, come and eat.”

“Great,” Felix said.

“Oh, by the way,” Maisie said, trying to keep her voice light. “In all the excitement the other night, what with the Pazzis breaking everything and me hiding, I lost the seal I use on my letters.”

Clarice's thin eyebrows arched.

“Really?”

“It's gold? With the
giglio
on it?” Maisie continued.

“Hmmm,” Clarice said.

“I think I dropped it”—Maisie giggled—“in that urn.”

“You dropped it in the urn?” Clarice repeated.

Leonardo had made his way over to the three of them, his lute beneath his arm.

“I'm about to play,” he told them.

“One minute, Leonardo,” Clarice said.

She motioned to one of the servants, who scurried over to them.

“Madame?” he said.

“Aren't you the one who took care of the urn the Pazzis destroyed?” she asked.

“Yes, madame.”

“Was there anything in it?”

“Yes, madame,” he said. “I gave it to Signor Medici.”

“A gold seal?” Maisie blurted.

The servant looked at her sternly. “Yes, miss,” he said.

“Great!” Maisie said happily. “I'll just get it from Lorenzo.”

Leonardo grabbed Felix's arm.

“That's the object?” he asked. “When you give that to me, you'll return to the twenty-first century?”

“Yes,” Felix said.

Leonardo nodded solemnly.

“I understand that you need to go back,” he said.

“Understanding is the noblest joy,” Felix said.

Lorenzo had
retired
to his chambers. That's what Clarice told Maisie when she went looking for him. And the seal.

“Um,” Maisie said, “I kind of need to see him.”

Clarice smiled, revealing her small and slightly crooked teeth. “When he is rested,” she said.

“When will that be?” Maisie asked.

Clarice smiled again, and shrugged.

“And,” Clarice added, “I think I need some rest, too. What a marvelous day it's been!”

Maisie watched Clarice walk away, climbing the staircase to the family's private quarters.

Well,
Maisie thought,
I'll just have to wake up Lorenzo.

She gave Clarice time to get upstairs before she followed.

Maisie had not been up to the private quarters before, and the first thing she noticed was how much art they had. Paintings hung crowded together on every wall, leaving almost no blank space at all. Sculptures stood by doorways and in corners, some of them with arms broken off or pieces missing, others shiny white marble. She paused in front of two portraits, one of Lorenzo and one of Clarice, both of them dressed in formal clothes. She tried to imagine having to sit for a painter to get a portrait done. How did Clarice manage to do so many adult things, even though she was just a teenager?
There's a good reason to live in the twenty-first century,
Maisie decided as she continued down the long high-ceilinged hall.

Everywhere she looked she saw gold glittering back at her, or people in paintings staring at her. And doors. Closed doors to more rooms than Elm Medona had. Maisie had no choice. She stopped at each one and pushed it open carefully, just enough to peer inside. The first appeared to be a study filled with floor-to-ceiling books, and of course more sculptures and paintings. The next looked like a living room, all velvet furniture and giant tapestries covering the long stretch of walls. The tapestries were faded and showed scenes of what looked at a glance like rural life. Not the room she needed, so she quietly shut the door and continued past marble benches with mosaic scenes embedded in them, to still more doors that, when opened, revealed more studies and living rooms.

Finally, she glimpsed a room beyond one of the living rooms, and in that second room was a fireplace with a crackling fire burning and a narrow high bed covered in heavy red linens. The bed had four tall, intricately carved posts and a red canopy with fringe dangling from it. And in that bed lay Lorenzo the Magnificent.

Maisie stepped inside the first room, walking heavily to try to wake him and closing the door with a firm bang.

It worked.

Lorenzo sat upright and grabbed a large shiny knife from beside him.

“Put that down!” Maisie said. “It's only me, Maisie Robbins.”

Lorenzo's face had gone pale, and color did not return immediately.

“What are you doing in my private chambers?” he said, his voice regal.

“I'm sorry,” Maisie said. “But I think you have something of mine.”

“Do you realize that I could have you thrown in prison? With the Pazzis' assassination threats,
anyone
who breaks in—”

“Actually,” Maisie said, “I didn't break in. I was downstairs and—”

“Silence!” Lorenzo ordered.

How can a man in a red canopy bed, wearing a weird off-white nightgown, be so scary?
Maisie wondered. Because Lorenzo, his cheeks now bright red, was indeed terrifying.

“Now I want you to turn around and leave my quarters.”

“But—”

“Do you understand?” Lorenzo said, his dark eyes ablaze.

“I do,” Maisie said, taking a few steps backward toward the door. “But I—”

“Prison is a very unpleasant place,” Lorenzo said.

“Okay, okay,” Maisie said. “But I need my gold seal back,” she finished quickly as she rushed out the door.

Once back in the corridor, she leaned against a wall, trying to calm down. Behind her, she felt a picture go crooked. Maisie turned and straightened it, the saint with his gold halo and sad droopy eyes staring back at her.

“Miss Robbins,” a deep voice called, startling her enough to make her send the painting back to a crooked angle.

A servant walked slowly toward her, holding a small yellow satin pillow.

“Yes?” Maisie asked, her voice little more than a squeak.

“Signor Medici believes this belongs to you.”

There, sitting right in the middle of the pillow, the gold seal shone.

“Yes!” Maisie said with relief. “Yes!”

With that, Maisie returned, breathless, to the courtyard, waving the seal in the air.

Felix looked at Maisie. Leonardo did, too.

Leonardo put out his hand.

And Maisie placed the seal in his waiting palm.

The next morning, Maisie woke up to the sound of Great-Uncle Thorne's loud, boisterous voice echoing through the hall.

“Up! Up, you two rapscallions!” he shouted. “Awaken and greet the new day!”

Quieter, as if he were speaking to himself, he added, “I certainly have.”

Maisie burst into a big grin. Great-Uncle Thorne was not at death's door, that terrible phrase her mother had used. He was alive! And he was here!

Quickly, she pulled on an old faded concert T-shirt of her father's and her fleece vest, slipped her feet into her sneakers, and without even bothering to tie the laces, ran out into the hall.

Her mother hovered behind Great-Uncle Thorne, mystified.

“I got a call from the hospital,” she explained, “saying he woke up, then
got
up, and
then
demanded to come home right away.”

“A miracle,” Felix said from the doorway of his room, his eyes twinkling.

“Jennifer,” Great-Uncle Thorne ordered, turning his gaze onto their mother, “tell Cook I would like an
omelette aux fines herbes
, a pot of
café au lait
, and some melon.”

“All right,” their mother said.

“
Tout de suite
,” Great-Uncle Thorne added.

With that, their mother scurried off to the Kitchen.

As soon as she was gone, Great-Uncle Thorne turned his attention to Maisie and Felix.

“Let's go,” he said to them.

“Go?” Maisie said. “Go where?”

He pointed a gnarled finger toward the door.

What choice did they have? Maisie and Felix let him lead the way out, down the stairs, and into the hallway, the wall closing behind them.

“Have you two ever been in the Fairy Room?” Great-Uncle Thorne asked them.