Diane Stuckart - A Bolt from the Blue

Eager to make amends, I seized an excuse to help mend those emotions that I had frayed.

“Pay no heed to my words,” I urged, dropping back down beside him and giving his shoulder an encouraging shake. “I–I thought you spoke of someone far older than you. I do know Rebecca’s daughter, and I am certain I have seen her give you favorable smiles when you were not watching.”

“You have?” A flicker of his earlier grin reappeared. “Do you think she will like my bracelet?”

“I’m sure she will think it a fine gift. Perhaps she will offer to launder your tunic in return. . That is, if she can manage to chisel it off your back first.”

With this small jest-Vittorio was known for his overly enthusiastic approach to plastering a wall-I managed a brief grin back at him. I fervently hoped that I spoke the truth about the girl whose name I had never known until now. Still, I had encountered her several times before, trailing in shy silence after her mother and usually burdened by a basket of linens almost as large as she.

She was a lovely child of Vittorio’s same age, possessing the airy grace reminiscent of mythology’s nymphs. Her delicate features could have graced one of Leonardo’s frescoes, while her pale curls beneath a sober white cap were almost as unruly as Vittorio’s tangle of blond locks. In appearance, at least, the pair seemed well suited. Whether she had ever taken notice of the boy, I did not know. But a handsome young painter would be a fine catch for a girl burdened by her mother’s lowly station.

I frowned a little as I considered this last.

While washerwomen ranked little better than prostitutes among society’s more downtrodden, I had never understood why they were dismissed as scandalous creatures. Did washerwomen not work long and hard and for meager pay? I could think of far more disreputable ways to earn good coin than scrubbing and carting about baskets of wet clothing that were heavy enough to stagger many a man.

Perhaps their seductive reputation stemmed from the fact that they dealt so intimately with male garments, routinely touching the same fabric that had had contact with a man’s most private areas. Or perhaps there was another, crueler reason for such universal condemnation. For such women were dependent upon no man for their livelihoods but made their own way in the world. How better to put them in their place again than by besmirching their reputations and reminding them that they were subordinate to the male species?

Then my frown faded. I was certain that Rebecca did not consider herself any man’s inferior. A large, black-browed woman of middle years with a brash grin and the familiar red-chapped hands and arms of her profession, she wore her starched white wimple proudly as if it were a crown. She’d first come to my notice several months earlier, when she had elbowed me out of the way to get a better look at a dead woman. She had later played a brief role during the Master’s investigation of that same suspicious death.

As often happened when Leonardo was involved, the unlikely pair struck up a friendship of sorts. Rebecca eventually had taken over the laundering of his clothes, while the Master had used her as a model for a series of sketches of the common folk. It had been in this capacity that I had made her acquaintance.

As for the fact that she had a daughter but no husband, I found the situation rather less scandalous than amazing. I also knew I was not the only one who secretly marveled that a woman possessed of as few physical charms as she could have found a willing bedmate, let alone produce from that coupling so lovely and graceful a child as the ethereal Novella. The man who had lain with her must have been handsome beyond belief and doubtless blinded by love. That or his sole encounters with her had been in the dark!

While I had busied myself with such thoughts, Vittorio appeared to regain his usual carefree air in the wake of my assurances. Tucking the bracelet back in his tunic, he stood. Pio, who had been distracted during the course of our conversation by a lark that had lit upon the wall, now looked eagerly at the boy.

“Come, Pio. We shall leave Dino and his gloomy face to mope here in the shadows while we pay a visit to someone much prettier,” he told the small hound, who gave an agreeable bark. To me, he added, “Unless, of course, you wish to walk part of the way with us?”

His tone and expression were hopeful, so that I knew he would be disappointed should I turn him down. I reminded myself that I had been ensconced in my spot since early morning. Perhaps it would do me well to shake off the worrisome cloak of the past for a time and enjoy a bit of amusement.

“I’m sure the Master would not expect me to spend the entire day hunched over my notebook,” I agreed and rose once more. The volume in question I took care to tuck under my arm lest it spur his curiosity. I was certain that Vittorio would not ask to see my work unless I first offered; still, I had to be on my guard, as this day’s sketches were ones that I was loath to share.

“I’ll go with you as far as the workshop,” I offered instead, “else I know I will never hear the end of your complaints. But I wonder, Vittorio, if your feet are as swift as your tongue?”

He gave me a quizzical look. Before he had time to question my meaning aloud, however, I flashed him a grin and took off at a run.

An instant later, I heard a shout and a bark behind me; then Vittorio and Pio came rushing past, their long legs readily putting distance between them and me as we headed toward the workshop. I grinned more broadly and slowed my pace, letting them take the lead. The corset I secretly wore beneath my tunic, tightly tied to flatten my female attributes, also held my lungs in check and made running for more than a short distance difficult.

Thus, I found myself the subject of Vittorio’s good-natured taunting when I finally caught up with him and the panting hound not far from Leonardo’s quarters.

“Ha, you run slow as a girl,” the youth declared as I joined him. He strutted about in triumph while Pio was content to flop on his side in the grass, pink tongue lolling. “All your moping has made you grow weak. Look at you, Dino. Once you were taller than me, but I have outstripped you in height as well as speed!”

Standing there beside him, I realized he spoke the truth. He was a good head taller than me and might soon be as tall as the Master. And how had I not realized before now that his once-smooth chin was covered in blond stubble grown in a fair imitation of Leonardo’s neat dark beard? Even his voice had lost its childish timbre and had deepened.

For Vittorio was no longer a boy but was almost a man, I realized in chagrin. And surely such was the case with most of the other apprentices with whom I had begun my studies more than a year ago. So caught up had I been in my own sorrows these past months that I had paid scant attention to my fellows, had missed the way they were rapidly taking on adult bearings. And as more time passed, they must notice that I, alone of their number, remained small and smooth-cheeked, voice never growing deeper and form never broadening.

But even if they remained oblivious to such differences, surely the Master, with his keen eye for the human body, would become suspicious when one of his boys never grew to be a man.

To cover my dismay, I assumed an offended air. “You may be faster and taller, Vittorio, but I am still your senior in age. You should show respect to me.”

“I respect the fact that you are far slower than me,” he replied with a grin, his humor dimmed not at all by my censure.