The Medici Dagger

answer, just closed the door. I turned on both gold spigots, put my hands on the edge of the sink, and leaned in toward the spotless mirror. There I was looking back at me, two semi-automatics hanging under my armpits.

But this time the cameras weren’t rolling, and the ammunition was real.

I closed my eyes, seeking sanctuary. The sound of the tap water summoned up images of a camping trip I’d taken with my folks in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. It was the Fourth of July, 1976. I was seven and the United States was two hundred. The temperature was half that and the air was as gummy as rubber cement.

We’d carried our packs for what seemed like two years up a steep grade and pitched our dome tent on a flat spot with a long view by a bubbling stream. I was picking my way from rock to rock to cross the creek when I heard what sounded like gunfire off in the distance. I looked up to see where it was coming from, forgetting what day it was and that you’ve got to pay attention when crossing streams. My boot slipped off a wet, mossy rock, and I sank halfway up my calf in the cold mountain water.

There was something about that scene I’d liked. The icy water enveloping my leg, the slippery rock that got me when I wasn’t looking, the unavoidable irony of humanity, blasting off fireworks when it was supposed to be quiet. It was nature, all right—unstoppable— totally imperfect in all its perfection.

Opening my eyes, I saw myself in the hotel mirror: imperfect, absolutely unstoppable, probably abstruse.

Antonia had changed back into her clothes, for which I was grateful. The dinner cart had arrived, too. It was laden with fruit, a silver bowlof cold jumbo shrimp that were fanned out side by side, leaning over the lip like tired tourists, a loaf of bread, a chunk of cheese, and a bottle of Chianti.

I poured us each a glass of wine, which Antonia immediately slugged down. She wagged her glass at me, without looking up. I filled it again and she knocked it back. I quietly fixed myself a plate of food. Antonia did the same, avoiding my gaze. She was a professional eater, digging right in with the delicacy of a pit bull.

“You know,” I said, trying to get back in her good graces, “I just realized I don’t even know your full name.”

“Antonia Ginevra Gianelli,” she said, a little chunk of cheese shooting out of her mouth onto my knee.

“Excuse me?”

“Antonia Ginevra Gianelli,” she said, brushing the cheese off my pants.

My knee felt warm where she’d touched it. “Ginevra?”

“Yeah, Ginevra. You’ve got a problem with that, too?”

“Ginny?” I repeated, closing my eyes. I was on a fault line over a heartquake.

“What’s thematterwith you?”

Antonia stripped some grapes from a stem, popped a half-dozen in her mouth, and offered me a few. I took them, still avoiding her gaze. “Ginevra de’ Benci,” I said to the grapes.

“Born in 1475,” she recited, “the second child of banker Amerigo de’ Benci. Wrote poetry, called herself a ‘mountain tiger.’ ”

“Leonardo’s friend,” I said.“Myfriend, too.” My face flushed.

“What do you mean?” Her eyes were on me, penetrating.

I looked away, slurping my wine. “What does the first half of the page say?”

Antonia pulled two pieces of lined paper from her pocket, and handed them to me.

The first looked like this:

Con gran diligenza lavorai per il Magnifico e per tutti quei che’l mio sangue hanno richiesto. Non sangue delle vene beninteso ch’esso ne son certo si rigenera ma sangue della mente.

La nostra feconda terra si fara arida e sterile nelle mani degli uomini che pare a nulla valgan se non a vanamente devastare la cosa stessa che lor dona sostento. Con i miei occhi vidi alla luce del sole e nell’ombra del crepuscolo la bonta degl’inani e la lussuria dei forti.

In solitudine nella mia bottega mi misurai con la ricerca dei segreti della vita ed ogni ostacolo vinsi con successo senza curarmi dello sforzo necessario. I cerchi e i cerchi. Ammiro il mio valor, ma sono stanco.

On the other piece of paper was her translation, which she read aloud.

“I worked most diligently for il Magnifico and for all those who have demanded my life’s blood. Not the blood from my veins for that multiplies I am certain but the blood of my mind.

“Our fruitful earth will unavoidably become dry and sterile at the hands of men who it seems cannot help but wantonly destroy the very thing which gives them succor. I have witnessed in the light of day and dimness of dusk the goodness of the weak and the lust of the mighty.

“Alone in my workshop I have sought to discover the secrets of life and have met with success for every obstacle no matter how great yields to effort. The Circles and the Circles. How clever I am but tired.”

No cars beeped in the city below, no hotel toilets flushed. The brilliant passion of Leonardo’s heart had been unleashed from the rusty cage of time to a man and a woman, in close proximity, eyes fully engaged.

“The Circles and the Circles,” I said. “See, the Circlesandthe Circles, right? He’s talking about two sets, One and Two. You agree?”

“Yes. And you intuit from that . . .”

“That Circles of Truth One and Two go together somehow. And that Krell and Tecci have nothing.” I picked up both pages, studied the two sets of ten concentric rings. “There must be some kind of pattern here.” At the word “pattern” some association poked at a memory that didn’t reveal itself. I ignored it. Nothing else jumped out at me save the limitations of my intellect.

“Leonardo was amused by his own genius,” Antonia said. “Ponder that for a second.”