Free The Malice of Fortune by Michael Ennis

surmised, then he might also be the paymaster of a little spy who kept him apprised of rumors and other reports from the countryside—and who might yet lead him to certain witnesses.
    But we had not gone into the countryside. Indeed, as I stood on that corner, an uncomfortable suspicion began to roil my thoughts: that boy had not been employed to gather rumors in the contado but rather to watch the same palazzo that held Messer Niccolò’s rapt attention. Yet even this vigil seemed fruitless. A half hour went by, I would guess, with no indication that anything of note would occur on this street, much less in front of this particular palazzo. I regretted that I had squandered my precious time—this gift Fortune would soon angrily snatch away—on assumptions made in haste.
    All at once the pedestrian door set within that great oaken portal clanked open, issuing forth a youth of perhaps eighteen, whose appearance almost made me gasp. He was as lovely as an angel in an altarpiece, with abundant blond curls falling over his shoulders. His attire was no less blinding—no cape, only pink hose to display well-shaped legs, and a short carnation-hued jacket that did not cover his pretty ass. The effect was spoiled a bit, however, by black farmer’s boots; more strangely, he had strapped to his back a considerable implement of some sort, a large wheel attached at the axle to a long handle. The entire thing might have been a wheelbarrow absent the barrow.
    A moment later the pretty boy was followed by a man of good height, dressed in a horsehair cape and the sort of black velvet berretta a “doctor” of astrology will affect; hair like dirty wool fell from thiscrown, framing a long, pale face, the nose almost flat, like a Moor’s. Upon his back, he carried two spades and a canvas sack. Directly at his heels a third man emerged, taller still. I recognized him at once, though I had never seen him before.
    Now, in the years just after the French army first came into Italy—this being before you were born—I often boasted that hunchbacked little King Charles once drooled on my hand, but God knows His Most Christian Majesty only kissed it wetly, although later he slobbered on my neck. Dukes, popes, cardinals, the brother of the Turk sultan—all have bent their heads to me in intimate conversation, if I can be so vain to say. But never until that day had I laid eyes upon the most famous maestro in Christendom.
    Wrapped in a beige chamois cape, Leonardo da Vinci might have been Apollo incognito, a head taller than many men, his features almost as lovely as the young man who had preceded him: his brow strong, his long, straight nose flawlessly proportioned. Parted in the middle, his pewter hair fell like a thick lion’s mane, the emblem of a god’s ageless wisdom rather than a man’s weary age. Yet like his companions, this great maestro carried a stuffed canvas sack upon his back. In his hands he held a small wooden box, carefully, as if it were the reliquary of a saint’s finger bone.
    Here a little parade began, winding through the slushy, crowded streets, led by Maestro Leonardo da Vinci and his two companions, with the Florentine following at a distance of about twenty steps, I another dozen braccia behind him. Our route led us back to the Via Emilia, although we were now proceeding to the far end of the city, entirely opposite the Rocca and my lodgings.
    In my former business, I learned by hard practice to quickly take stock of a situation and the men involved. Duke Valentino’s engineer general had set out upon some peculiar errand, he and his people dressed for the country and proceeding in that direction. And the Florentine who was following him had no doubt been keeping a watch on Maestro Leonardo’s house—and seemed to have anticipated this excursion. Now I could only pray that Fortune had not manufactured some cruel fraud, and the maestro’s errand indeed had something todo with a faceless, ill-starred woman, whom