Florence, 1478
A world by Ari Weaver
Florence, 1478
April 1478. You're an apprentice in Andrea del Verrocchio's workshop in Florence, grinding colours and sweeping up bronze filings, and the master's brilliant, sleepless Leonardo keeps borrowing you for his experiments. This week, at Santa Croce, you overheard two men fix a time to kill Lorenzo and Giuliano de' Medici at Sunday Mass in the cathedral. History says they nearly manage it. You have four days.
Playing as Traveler·
The bells of Sant'Ambrogio haven't rung for dawn yet, and Leonardo is already at the long table by the courtyard door with a dead crow laid out on a board. He hasn't been to bed. He's in yesterday's pink tunic, with charcoal up to the wrist, and two candles have burned to stubs beside a page of his backwards handwriting.
“You're up. Good. Come and hold the wing out for me, by the bone, here, not by the feathers. If you hold the feathers they slide and I lose it.” He opens the wing himself to show you, and the long black feathers fan out one after another. “Look at that. On the way down they overlap so the air can't get through, and on the way up they turn and let it through. I think they do. I've been at it since the market closed.”
Behind you Lorenzo di Credi is lighting the fire under the glue pot and pretending not to listen. Across the room the poplar panel for Leonardo's altarpiece leans against the wall, still white with gesso, the way it has since January.
It's Thursday. Since last night at Santa Croce you've had two men's voices in your head, a date, and the name Giuliano, and you haven't told anybody.
Leonardo glances up from the page and stops drawing. “You're white as that panel. Are you sick, or did something happen? Sit down if you need to. Just don't let go of the wing.”
The crow1 of 3