Chapter Thirteen
The next morning, I resolve to be nicer to Leonardo.
I wake up extra early to leave him a slice of castagnaccio outside his door as an apology or a thank-you—whatever he needs to forget about yesterday—but he insists on making us watch a street performer’s trained parrot on the way to the Palazzo della Signoria, and those excruciating ten minutes nearly burn up all my renewed patience for him.
So of course we’re running late, and I make us jog to the palazzo, but none of it matters.
“Queuing outside the door!” Leonardo elbows me, smiling brightly. “See, we’re not late after all. You didn’t have to sigh so much.”
The queue snakes from the palazzo’s main entrance into the piazza. I join the end of it, unease humming beneath my skin.
I tap the apprentice ahead of us. “Excuse me, do you know what’s going on?”
He turns, and I immediately wish I’d asked someone else.
It’s Bartolomeo Rucellai, one of Botticelli’s apprentices and the only other apprentice who hails from a wealthy family like I do. He sizes me up with a smirk. “Niccolo Pitti. I was sorry to miss you at the Strozzi wedding.”
“It’s Virgil.”
Bartolomeo dips his head. “Sorry, I forgot about your affectation,” he says sweetly, not sounding sorry at all.
I count to three and allow myself to have a very brief, vivid fantasy of watching his face crumple when my and Leonardo’s wedding portrait wins over his. I give myself another two—to factor in the tears pouring from his eyes—but that’s it! A boy shouldn’t indulge too much.
And I’ve indulged far too much of Bartolomeo Rucellai in the past.
I made the mistake of kissing him when I was thirteen.
An eager curiosity was growing inside me, and I wondered if kissing a boy would feel different from the girls who pressed their shy lips to mine in the garden’s shadowy corners.
Sodding Bartolomeo seemed into it during our sweaty, nervous moment, but then he soured on me and told his father, who told my father, and well, we all know what happened then.
Niccolo Pitti’s enraged shouts filled Casa delle Volpi. If we open a rarely used cupboard, I’m sure one final, ghostly no son of mine! will wail out of it. He beat me so hard, Niccolo had to help me use the chamber pot afterward.
It’s when I learned our father would never, ever accept the parts of me he didn’t like. When I learned that keeping secrets would keep me safe.
“Yes, such a shame to miss it.” I’d rather let Verrocchio’s cats eat me one finger at a time than willingly mingle with the people from my family’s world, especially Bartolomeo. “What can you tell us about the queue?”
“They’re searching everyone for some reason. Medici guards are just inside the doors.”
Every feeling abandons me except gray dread.
The key I walked off with yesterday winks on the floor beside my bed.
Another apprentice steps through the palazzo’s door. He’s swallowed by darkness at once.
Lorenzo de’ Medici and his guards won’t find the key on me. But if they see me, they’ll find something far more damning: the memory of my face and the stumbling, clumsy lies I told yesterday.
They’re not looking for something; they’re looking for someone.
Me.
I take one step back. Then another.
“You know? I just realized we forgot charcoal,” I say.
Leonardo frowns. “You made us go through everything twice before we left.”
“Verrocchio… asked me for a favor.”
He shrugs and turns away. “Better go deal with your problem, then.”
He knows I lied to him yesterday and hasn’t forgotten. Fine, that’s fair. I wasn’t that nice to him. Except he’s made himself memorable to the guards and Lorenzo, too. If they see him, they’ll remember that I was with him. I won’t let him take the fall for my mistake.
I link my arm through his and tug. “Verrocchio said he needed you, too.”
Leonardo doesn’t budge. For such a tall, slender person, he’s shockingly solid. “Is this some sort of prank? First, you howl all morning to hurry up and get here, and now you want to leave?”
Bartolomeo Rucellai bursts out laughing. “Cristo, you two bicker like old women!”
I flinch, and Leonardo’s nostrils flare. “Actually, elderly women deserve a lot more respect—”
I tug Leonardo’s arm before he keeps going, and he finally starts walking with me. I make a rude gesture at Bartolomeo with my other hand. “Vaffanculo, Rucellai! Seeing your tears when we win will be the greatest prize of them all.”
I speed across the piazza. Leonardo follows, docile as a lamb, until we disappear down Via Vacchereccia.
Then he spins and cages me between his arms against a wall.
“No more lies!” His eyebrows are narrowed slashes over a serious gaze. They’re dark brown, a contrast to his rust-gold hair. “Tell me what’s truly going on.”
My pulse stutters, then spikes.
Our art supplies scatter across the ground—he’s dropped them to play prison guard—and I glance at the mess with a protesting sound, but he only draws closer to me, his nose inches from mine.
God, there are even more freckles on his face than I thought.
A truly hopeless amount. I couldn’t count them if I tried.
I shut my eyes so I don’t give in to the urge to start.
“Virgil.” My name is a command, an admonishment, and a plea all at once. “I won’t be upset, but I need you to be honest with me. I know that’s hard for you.” It sounds sarcastic, except there’s no mocking edge in his voice, no cajoling mirth.
I crack one eye open, and he’s just looking at me, his warm breath gusting across my face. He smells like cake.
I stare back at him, the rush in my veins slowly falling, steadying out into something manageable, something safe. Someone catcalls and makes kissing noises from across the street, but for once I don’t care what anyone else thinks about us.
I’ve done nothing but push him away, and he’s still here.
My back goes soft against the wall. “I… may not have been entirely truthful about why I wanted to work with you.”
He twists sideways, leaning against the wall with an elbow. “You? Being bootstrappy and secretive? I simply cannot believe it!”
Well, that hardly seems fair! There’s nothing wrong with keeping my business to myself. I bravely resist the urge to snipe back, knowing I’ll only prove him right if I do. “When we were inside the Palazzo della Signoria the first day, I found a portrait of my brother.”
The teasing vanishes from his face. “You think he’s alive and working for the government?”
“I don’t know—but he might be. The wedding commission was the only way I could get back inside and see what else I could find.”
“So you’re using me, then.” Leonardo’s voice keeps its calm tone, and yet I wince and flush bright red like he’s yelled at me.
“You don’t have to help me anymore now that you know the truth.
You could tell Verrocchio, get the commission fully for yourself, since it’s not like I could help you paint anyway.
” My hands fist, and the black marks on my arms follow the movement.
They cost me everything, and they’re all useless now, a reminder of how I’ve already failed Mamma and my sisters and how I’ll probably fail Niccolo, too. I wish I could scour them off.
“I don’t need you to paint, remember?” Leonardo says.
“In case you forgot, I also asked for your help with the wedding commission. I don’t love that you lied to me, but I know what it’s like to lose a sibling, and I imagine you still want the fifty florins.
I’ll stay in this if you do, but you can’t lie anymore. All right?”
Leonardo had a sibling? I try to remember if he’s talked about his family before: Nothing comes to mind. I nearly ask about it, but a warning glint in his eyes stops me. I run my tongue along my teeth and nod. “All right.”
He opens his mouth and hesitates. “What was all that with the search today, then?”
I have a feeling this isn’t want he wanted to ask me. “Oh, that?”
“Yes, that.”
“I… might’ve stolen something from Piero de’ Medici’s office?”
Leonardo smiles, a slow, melting expression he tries to hold back but can’t.
“Virgil Pitti broke a rule? His Highness is no better than a common thief?” He glances toward the slice of sky above us and cups a hand around his ear.
“Do you hear that? Rushing wings! I think every angel just fled Florence because of your sinful, snatchy hands.”
I wriggle out from under his arm, suddenly feeling very hot. “It was an accident!”
“I believe you, but your lies to Lorenzo were… how to describe them? Woefully inept, perhaps?”
“Yours weren’t much better!”
His smile bursts out fully, the brightest thing in the street. “Give him a few days to forget your face. I’ll say you ate moldy bread if anyone asks why you’re gone.”
“Oh right, thanks for that.” Bartolomeo will bring it up every time I see him.
He lifts his hands placatingly. “Or I’ll give whatever reason you want me to give. I’m not trying to humiliate you. You know that, don’t you?”
I think of my hideous portrait in Casa delle Volpi’s foyer.
How Father sometimes lingered before it, grinning like it was the funniest thing he’d ever seen, and I stood next to him twisting my hands and staying silent because it didn’t feel like I had a right to be upset.
“You can say whatever you want. I don’t care. ”
His response is instantaneous. “A family affair, then. Your house needed a repair.”
Why is my throat getting tight? I quickly stoop to gather up our fallen art supplies. For some reason, I can’t look at him any longer. “All right.”