CHAPTER 11 #5
"Yes," Da Vinci pointed to the three small lines of text in the bottom left corner and translated the mirrored Italian for her. "According to my calculations, one hundred of these machines can grind forty thousand needles per hour, and each needle is worth five silver coins."
Hedy paused for a moment, then quickly started calculating the total.
She had once been unfamiliar with the exchange rate between Florentine gold and silver coins, but now she was as knowledgeable as the locals.
"Annual income would be—sixty thousand gold coins?!"
Sixty thousand?! What kind of concept was that? In an era where most businesses were still small family-run workshops, the idea of generating around sixty thousand gold coins in revenue was staggering!
What more could the Medici possibly need for military funds?!
"What? Is that strange?" Da Vinci asked, somewhat confused. "It should be that amount, I think."
"My surprise is that... you haven’t even considered selling this idea or making money from it?" Hedy tried to offer some insight. "With this kind of money, you wouldn’t need to paint for anyone anymore."
He shrugged, clearly indifferent to such things.
"I prefer creating," he corrected. "As for money, as long as I can afford food and shelter, that’s enough."
Hedy took a deep breath, suddenly feeling the helplessness of an elder encountering a child.
In her past life, Hedy had gone through several movie investments and real estate failures, and both her middle and later years had been filled with financial struggles.
Many of her insecurities stemmed from these memories.
Otherwise, she wouldn't have let that ruby ring disappear into the black market like it did.
...Although she never understood why the Medici refused to return the ring, she had come to terms with it.
Years of financial difficulties had left her with a constant sense of insecurity.
No savings, no long-term investments—it always felt like she could slip back into those days when she couldn’t even cover basic expenses.
At least in this regard, Lorenzo’s generosity in paying her salary was truly kind.
The gold coins he had paid her over the past three years had been cautiously saved and nearly untouched.
Now, with this substantial starting capital, she could figure out a way to secure a stable business and maybe even join the emerging bourgeoisie in the future.
"Speaking of salary, I don't really need to worry about that now," Da Vinci said, shifting to pick up another scroll and showing her the design inside.
She saw rivers that branched and converged like veins, with the city of Florence standing proudly by the riverbank.
"This is...?"
"This is the city’s waterway planning," he said with a smile. "Thanks to you, I was just appointed as the hydraulic engineer for this city."
"Waterworks?!" Hedy was taken aback for a few seconds. "Why waterworks?"
She had thought the Medici would involve him in dealing with more known issues, but she hadn’t expected the scope to be so vast.
"Making irrigation and water diversion easier can promote the foundational development of the economy," Da Vinci shrugged. "Actually, the lord asked me what I could do for Florence, and I just shared my general thoughts."
...That seemed reasonable.
He then pulled out another parchment scroll and showed her the yellowed records. It detailed the entire water system of the Apennine Peninsula, including the Tyrrhenian Sea at the southwestern corner.
"I’ve been thinking about something," Da Vinci said, turning up the candlelight and sitting beside her as he sketched little mountains and valleys. "Low-lying areas have springs and rivers because they’re fed by flowing rivers from the mountaintops."
"Mm, and then?"
Hedy’s gaze drifted to Pisa, distracted. Her intuition kept her eyes lingering there, a vague sense of unease creeping over her.
"But where does the river water on the mountaintops come from?"
Da Vinci’s pencil traced several contours, clearly caught in his own confusion. Surely, it couldn’t just come from nowhere?
Or maybe angels were pouring water from divine jars?
She snapped back to reality, not directly answering the question.
"What do you think, besides the flowing rivers, is up on the mountain?"
"Snow," he answered without hesitation. "A lot of snow—and snow melts into water."
"Wait." Da Vinci straightened up, looking at her with a slightly stunned expression. "Snow comes from the sky."
"Yes, so..."
"It’s impossible that there’s a god…" He shook his head, rejecting the absurd thought in his mind, and stressed, "Then there must be something else."
Hedy couldn’t help but laugh softly at his reaction.
For modern people, common knowledge that we take for granted might take several hundred years to be concluded in this period.
The information gap between different times and spaces is truly vast.
"Leonardo, think about it again. When you pour a bucket of water on the ground in summer, where does it go?"
"To the sky," he answered instinctively. "That’s evaporation."
"So—" Da Vinci suddenly gasped, as if he had glimpsed the truth. "You mean, all the water evaporates up to the sky, turns into clouds, and then becomes snow or rain?"
"Mm-hmm?"
"Wow! It’s like that!" He showed an expression of realization, grabbing a notebook and hurriedly beginning to write and draw, muttering to himself.
So many questions had been forced into mythological explanations, but the truth was clearly different.
The Church claimed that God created everything, and men had Adam's apple because they choked on the forbidden fruit.
But when he dissected, there was no fruit pit, no such forbidden fruit.
The whole world had been shrouded in a vague veil of God’s existence—not God, really, but the existence of the Church, which cast countless things into infinite mystery.
But as long as he could glimpse even a little of it, or understand just a tiny bit, it gave him a strange sense of relief.
In the eyes of most, not believing in God was a sin, one worthy of execution by fire.
But the closer he got to the truth, the more he believed in himself.
I am not guilty.
I will not be watched or punished by the divine.
I am free.
In the following days, Hedy busied herself with her new workshop, while Lorenzo traveled to other city-states for various meetings and negotiations. The Doge’s Palace, in contrast, was quiet.
Several of the children were sent to the Church, actively learning sacred subjects. The women of the household kept to themselves, with servants occasionally changing the scent salts for them.
In this quiet interval, Botticelli’s new oil painting was finally completed and proudly hung in the most prominent spot of the hall.
The entire Doge’s Palace gleamed with gold and splendor, so radiant it seemed like the resting place of the Sun God.
If you walked in, you might even think it was heaven itself.
The dome above the corridor resembled a clear sky, where angels and gods appeared above the clouds. Luxurious Roman-style bas-reliefs were coated with gold paint, which made them glow even in the night thanks to the undying light of the lamps.
The council hall displayed several sculptures in various poses, with paintings from numerous masters arranged in a well-ordered manner, seamlessly integrating with the gold-trimmed family crests. Wet frescoes and woodblock prints blended effortlessly into the golden decorations.
The entire ceiling was designed in a checkerboard-like pattern, adorned with hundreds of pre-painted wooden panels with egg tempera paintings.
As you walked closer, your gaze would be drawn to countless moments from the Bible’s miracles.
Gold, wings, crests, sculptures, and gods...
The palace and the temple seemed to be indistinguishable.
Botticelli directed the servants to mount the painting in its designated spot, while Da Vinci looked up, observing the magnificent and grand scene.
A large shell floated on the Aegean Sea, with the blue sea and the trees so vivid they seemed alive.
Venus, her body bare, stood on the shell, her expression both confused and pure.
She had just arrived in this new world, her long hair cascading down to her waist, and her hands instinctively covering her lower body.
The wind god and the god of time had brought her to the shore, and the goddess of spring raised her hand to drape a magnificent robe over her.
At this moment, flowers fluttered around like butterflies, and the ripples of the sea were gentle and restrained.
Once the servants had finished, they bowed and excused themselves, leaving only the two of them standing in front of the painting.
Da Vinci stared at the painting for a long time before asking, "Another pagan myth?"
"A beautiful legend from Sicily," Botticelli murmured, his eyes lingering on the bewildered girl in the painting. "…This is the eternal, neither born nor dying."
He suddenly laughed, lifting a hand to his forehead as though trying to dispel some memory.
"I should call Hedy to come see this—she even suggested I paint stars on the robe, and it really does look great."
"Wait," Da Vinci spoke again, pausing for a moment before looking at him. "You seem to enjoy talking to her a lot?"
"Mm?" Botticelli chuckled. "I like her."
"Like?" Da Vinci tried to understand the word. "In what way?"
"Are you asking if it’s the same kind of 'liking' I had for Simonetta?" Botticelli met his gaze, still calm and open. "Leonardo, you should understand something."
"Even if she only shows those light blue eyes, there will be countless men who lose themselves in them."
"People have an innate perception of beautiful things, and an unconscious urge to possess them. If you paid attention, since she arrived in Florence, there have been quite a few men who’ve proposed to her, haven’t there?"
If she revealed more of her wisdom and insight, it would only enhance her charm, like fine wine that intoxicates those who encounter it.