"Leo, Leo!" sobbed Guaracco in shameless entreaty. "What will you do?"
He was trying to seize my sword and wrench it away, but the point was tightly wedged in the wood and his free left hand, shorn half in two by my previous stroke, could not grip the hilt. He remained a prisoner.
I let my actions answer him. From its peg I snatched the lantern. With my foot I stirred some straw and rubbish into a mass against the foot of a barrel. He saw what I intended.
"There is gunpowder in that barrel!" he shrieked.
I knew it, but still I spoke him no word. With all my strength I dashed the lantern down. The glass shattered, the straw blazed up. And then I raced away up the steps. Behind me fire gushed up luridly.
At the door of the house I almost trampled upon Guaracco's remaining dwarf, the handsomer one. He stared at me in mute horror, then at the glow behind me. He seemed to read in my face what had happened, for he scuttled past and dived into that flaming cellar as into a swimming bath.
"Master! Master!" he screamed.
I gained the street, ran along it for more than a score of paces before the whole world seemed to turn into thunder and lightning. I was flung to my face, skinning my cheek on the pavement, but I rose and ran on. That was the end of Guaracco's house— his weapons—his dwarf—himself—Lisa.
Nothing remained for me to do save to go and give myself up to Lorenzo… .
In the evening I stood in the groined, frescoed chamber where first the ruler of Florence had given me audience. Lorenzo de Medici was seated opposite in his chair of state, across the ebony and ivory table. His collar hung loose over his neck bandage, but otherwise he was the same Lorenzo as ever— alert, self-contained, far-thinking.
"I am driven to believe all points of your strange story," he said gently. "And no one can deny that you have saved Florence and me. Poliziano says so, and so do the officers of the guard. I grant you full pardon, and I ask you to pardon me. It seems that I drove you away once by my misjudgment. It shall not happen again."
I bowed thanks, but I could think only of Lisa. He read that tragic thought.
"Sorrow touches you, my friend, as it has touched me. My brother died today, as did your sweetheart. But perhaps work will comfort us both, and Florence hath need of my rule and your science."
"You are right, Magnificence," I agreed.
"Yours will be a great laboratory," he promised. "Aye, and a studio of your own, in the gardens of San Marco. Above all, honor and safety. But one chief change must be made in you."
"And that?"
"This matter of your strange journey from another age which, though I believe, I do not begin to understand. It must remain a secret between us. Since the death of Guaracco and your lady Lisa, you and I alone know it. Others might think you a devil's apostle, and urge that you be borne to the stake." He paused, pursed his lips, as if completing some decision. "Therefore it is expedient that we provide you with an ordinary birth and family among us—a father, and all the rest."
"A father?" I echoed him, not comprehending.
"Aye, that. I know the very man—an attorney who is in my confidence, and who has several children already. If I ask it, he will gladly own you as yet another son. The records can be arranged in various offices to make it believable. Forget that barbarous, unpronounceable surname of yours. The name of the attorney, your new father, is Piero da Vinci."
"Da Vinci!"
I sank back into my chair, implications rushing upon me with bewildering shock and speed.
"Leave all arrangements to me," said Lorenzo. "It is my peculiar talent to make perfect all such little things." His bitterly ugly face grew suddenly beautiful with that warm smile of his. "From this day forward you are Leo—no, Leonardo da Vinci."
And I knew the rich life given me to lead, as crown of the age and inspiration of ages to come. My scientific gropings will show the way to doctors, master engineers. My paintings will dazzle nations. Michelangelo will hate me too much, and Raphael admire me too much, but both will be the better for my examples.
One greatest picture I shall create, with LaGioconda as model to be sure, but preserving the smile and spirit of Lisa, Mona Lisa. And I shall die old and great, with kings weeping for me.
I am Leonardo da Vinci.
THE TIMELESS TOMORROW
CHAPTER I He Who Sees
Blessed or cursed, the moment of sight was coming again.
The light was stealing back into his room curtained so thickly against the coming dawn, stealing back, blue and ghostly from wherever that strange light shone. His twoscore experiences of it were not enough to quiet his trembling. Familiarity with the fringes of that strange land of the soul bred anything but contempt. He could barely hold the two forks of the laurel rod in the tight grip of his hands. His eyes felt wide and strained, as though their lids were bereft of power to open or close.
The mist thinned, so that figures could be seen stirring in it, first dim shadows and then sharp silhouettes. Two horsemen faced each other some yards apart. He caught the gleam of metal. They were armored jousters, on chargers richly mailed and caparisoned.
Beyond them a master-at-arms sat his own mount, with a baton lifted ready to signal, and still beyond him sat spectators in a gallery. It was a tournament of great folk.
The horseman nearest his point of view wore on his surcoat the device of a lion, and his tilting helmet's lowered visor gleamed like fire-new gold. The opponent wore a lion, too, but in a different heraldic pose, and his armor was less ornate. He was of gentrice, perhaps nobility, but not equal in rank with the gold-visored one. That gold visor meant royalty.
Voices made themselves heard, barely, as if from a distance. Ladies were cheering, and the voice of the master-at-arms rang out. He lifted his baton. The two powerful mailed steeds sprang forward at each other, the lances of the opponents dipped their blunt points into position, the armed riders settled their shields into place. Then—
A splitting crash, as of broken timber. The less gaudy rider's tilting lance broke on his adversary's shield and glancing upward, drove its splintered end full into and through the golden visor. A moment later the stricken man spun writhing to the ground. More cries, of dismay.
The victorious rider sprang from his saddle and flung up his own visor. His young face showed dark and concerned as it bent above the fallen one. He loosened the clasps of the gilded helmet and pulled it clear of a bloody, bearded face, more mature than his, with gleaming teeth clenched in pain and the eyes terribly torn away.
Then the mists were gone, and the witness sat alone in the dark, remembering who he was, and where he was, and what he had been doing.
Rising, he dropped upon his brazen tripod stool the robe of strange embroidery with its dampened fringe. Carefully he laid on his desk the forked rod of laurel, and stepped back out of the faint fumes, acrid with strange herbs, that rose from the basin. He went to a window and pulled aside the tapestry that hid it. Dawn was gray out there, and he would be given no more visions tonight. The sun of southern France would be betimes, warm and cheerful. But he, Michel de Nostradame, physician of Provence, had meditations of the gloomiest.
What had he seen? The face of the young victor in that shadowy tourney-scene was familiar to him—from another vision. Where and when had these things happened—or were they still to happen?
He should burn his books, he told himself. Even if scrying and spying into the future were lawful—and throughout France of this year of 1547 it was a hanging, burning felony—he did not feel that he could endure much more. Better to apply himself to his profession of medicine. Since his visit earlier that year to Lyon, he had come home to little Salon de Craux to find he had lost in popularity, with fewer patients and silver coins than before.
Even a solitary man, with one servant, needs work and money. Michel de Nostradame remembered the days when he was not alone, remembered the wife and children who had died so young in Agen. Too, he remembered his friend, Caesar Scaliger, poet and doctor, who had loved him like a brother and then on a trifling argument grown to hate him like an enemy.