Diane Stuckart - A Bolt from the Blue

“Dino, you sound almost like Master Leonardo,” he said in an admiring tone. “Very well, you have convinced me. But now that we know where the wagon is, we must find out where its cargo has gone. Quickly, before we are spotted.”

We hurried to rejoin Rebecca, who was keeping the stable master entertained with her ribald jests.

“Ah, there are my fine young sons,” she declared, pausing to give us fond maternal smiles. “Handsome fellows, ain’t they?” she said to the stable master, adding with a wink, “Course, they look like their sires and not me.”

While the man left to gather his linens, I gave Rebecca a quick, whispered account of what I’d seen.

“Seems likely,” she agreed when I’d finished. “Let’s see what the barracks have to offer.”

A few minutes later, we were carrying a basket of linen redolent of the stables. Our destination was the oddly out-of-place structure I’d noted earlier. Hunkered up against the main wall, it bore a resemblance to the barracks of Il Moro’s men with its series of alcove entries.

I frowned. Perhaps there was room enough within one of those chambers to store the flying machine while still in pieces. Fully assembled, however, its wingspan would surely be too broad to be contained within those walls. And even if it could fit, none of the doors was wide enough to accommodate it being rolled out again.

Discouraged, I said as much to Tito and Rebecca. Tito merely shrugged, while the washerwoman tapped her lips with her blunt finger once more.

“But this is where the page said he saw the wagon halt,” she said in a considering tone. “Maybe they unloaded here and then carried the pieces wherever they needed to go.”

“But why do that? If they were trying to be inconspicuous, surely it would have made more sense to drive the wagon to the exact spot. Unless. .”

I paused and eyed the nearby tower as an idea took form. From what the Master had told us of his design, the finished machine would have to be launched from a spot where it could catch the wind and gain height. Save for the slight rise on which the castle sat, the surrounding countryside in Pontalba was relatively flat. The only spot to offer any altitude was-

“The roof,” I softly cried. “See how it has many slopes and flat areas all along the top of the castle? They must have carried all the pieces of the flying machine up the tower steps and to a flat section somewhere behind the battlements where they could be put together.”

Tito nodded vigorously at first, but then his expression fell. “Wait, Dino. I’ve been in towers like that before, and the stairways all twist like corkscrews. The pieces of the flying machine are too long to ever wrap around those curves. How could they carry them up there?”

At his words, my own enthusiasm promptly faltered. I’d also been inside such towers before, and I feared that Tito was right. Some of those structures were built with but a narrow spiral of iron steps in their centers, with the opening at the landing above barely large enough for a man to pass through. Others had staircases of stone that wrapped along the inner walls, but the narrow steps did not easily accommodate more than one man abreast. Either way, it would be almost impossible to carry the flying machine up beyond the battlements.

Rebecca, however, was not prepared to concede defeat. Frowning, she studied the upper reaches of the castle with a scholar’s intent look. A moment later, a smile spread across her round face.

“Maybe they didn’t have to carry the pieces to get them up on the roof,” she declared and pointed.

We followed her gaze upward until we saw what she had seen. . a pair of ropes dangling from the battlements directly above us. With a few men above and a few below, it would be relatively simple to use the ropes to haul the body and wings of the flying machine straight up!

“I must get up there,” I said with a determined jerk of my chin. “If the flying machine is on the roof, then surely my father must be somewhere near the craft. Perhaps even now he is working on it.”

“Not so fast, my boy,” the washerwoman protested, gripping my arm in one beefy hand lest I suddenly flee. “Remember what we said about finding you a tunic? Come.”

She gestured us toward the heavy basket and then started at a brisk pace back toward the shed. Tito made a rude sound of protest, and I was hard-pressed not to follow suit. By this point, I was beginning to feel like Rebecca’s brown mare, with all the hauling back and forth of baskets. But our masquerade had thus far yielded promising results, so I bit back any complaint and swiftly shouldered my portion of the burden.

Rebecca was already sorting through the remaining pile of tunics by the time we had reached the laundry shed. Plucking forth one with the fewest stains upon it, she tossed it in my direction. “This should fit. Quickly, put it on.”

Removing my belt, I pulled the pale blue tunic over my own brown garb and then retied the strip of leather about my waist. Wrinkling my nose at the smell of someone else’s sweat, I turned in a circle to model my disguise.

“Very good,” the washerwoman approved. Then she frowned. “I don’t mind saying, I’m a bit nervous letting you wander a strange castle by yourself. If you’re found out, and someone suspects what we’re about, it could go bad for all of us. . Signor Angelo, included.”

“The duke might toss us all into his dungeon,” Tito darkly predicted. “Maybe I should go in your stead. I’m older, and-”

“No! Signor Angelo is my father, and I shall discover where they are hiding him. Besides”-I hesitated, glancing from one to the other of them-“if you or Rebecca found him first, he might refuse to go with you. He might fear that you are in league with the duke and that it is a trick.”

Tito assumed a faintly offended expression at this last, but Rebecca pursed her lips and nodded.

“That is true. It is not impossible that the Duke of Pontalba has spies at Castle Sforza. There was the boy who tricked Tito and the figure that you, Dino, say you saw more than once. There might be others, as well.”

Then she straightened the tunic on my shoulders and gave me a maternal pat. “Your sire would be proud of your bravery. Go, but be careful. And if you’re caught, pretend to be simple and tell them that your mother sent you looking for more laundry, and you got lost.”

“Ha, that should be an easy role for Dino,” Tito muttered, but his amiable smirk took the sting from his words. Then, after reaching behind one of the pots, he plucked my cap from my head and plopped another one in its place.

“Here. I grabbed this off that page’s head while he was busy sniveling about the duke’s men.”

Though a bit surprised at his callous attitude toward the frightened boy, I was pleased by his foresight in completing my disguise. Surely no one would have cause to question me should they see me wandering about the castle.

“I’ll be back soon,” I promised as I straightened the cap. “And I vow I will have news of both my father and the flying machine by the time I return.”

Another bit of wisdom I had learned while conducting similar clandestine activities for the Master was that, if one carried some mundane object and walked with brisk purpose, one was seldom stopped or questioned by those in charge. Thus, I slipped into the main castle wearing my borrowed tunic and cap and bearing a small armful of folded table linens.

Had I been staring down from the vantage point of the clouds, I would have seen myself standing within the bottom portion of the U that formed the castle’s main structure. I had entered the great hall, which stretched before me. . dark and bleak and redolent with the smell of sweat and burned meat and woodsmoke. What little natural light there was came from the archer’s windows along the front wall. Their purpose defensive rather than ornamental, those wedge-shaped windows narrowed from a recess large enough for a man to stand within to a mere sliver of an opening. The few stripes of sunlight they allowed in were mirrored by the remains of the previous night’s blaze smoldering in the immense fi replace along the distant rear wall. Not surprisingly, the hall was empty, given that it would be several hours before the evening meal was served.