Your extreme giftedness, the intellect, the luck. Where does it all come from, old man? Is it God-given or did the devil make you an offer you couldn’t refuse?
He was almost ready to mention the matter to Leonardo, but lurking behind them was always the cook, who seemed to listen to their every word.
“As you know, I studied your Figura Umana,” said Johann instead. “Your sketches suggest to me that the human body is a type of machine, like a complex clockwork. Maybe all we need to do is replace a small spring or screw.”
“We both have a loose screw?” Leonardo grinned, childlike mischief glinting in his eyes. “I like the image. And I agree with you in general, Doctor Faustus. But maybe there are some diseases that can’t be cured because . . .” He hesitated. “Because the bill can only be paid a certain way.”
Johann’s hand paused above his plate. “How do you mean?”
But instead of giving a reply, Leonardo da Vinci ate his stew in silence.
Francesco Melzi, the steward, who had looked at Johann with derision in the beginning, occasionally crossed paths with them on the huge estate. Johann knew now that Melzi was a young Italian painter who had been a loyal friend of Leonardo’s for years and who had followed him to France. Leonardo liked to surround himself with handsome men, including another young painter with the nickname Salai, meaning “little devil,” who currently traveled around Italy. Melzi’s main task was to sort through the countless notes Leonardo had made over the last several decades. The steward hadn’t had a chance to paint in a long while.
Melzi was visibly annoyed that his patron accommodated Johann and his friends as guests—Karl especially was a thorn in his side. Melzi seemed to be jealous of Karl because Leonardo looked at him a certain way. Johann had soon realized that Leonardo, too, was secretly a sodomite. Was that why he’d suddenly left Rome a few years ago?
From time to time Francesco Melzi allowed people in for an audience, including men of nobility for whom Leonardo had built automatons for their courtly celebrations. But the king never visited. They said he was residing farther north, where he led negotiations about the German election. He sent letters sealed with gold leaf and inquired about Leonardo’s health several times a week.
In all their time with Leonardo, Johann came no closer to finding answers to his own questions. He was permitted to study Leonardo’s books and notes in the library but found no clues about his disease or about Tonio. But at least his paralysis wasn’t getting worse. He was increasingly using theriac, however, for the worst of the pain. He always kept a bottle under his bed where Karl couldn’t see it.
One evening, when Leonardo was still painting in his atelier, Johann was sitting in the library next door. Reading and studying here by candlelight was like a journey with an uncertain destination. The books weren’t sorted—not by author nor by subject or title. The tomes piled up on shelves and tables like dusty mountains of knowledge; in between lay scrolls of parchment and crumpled scraps of paper—part of Leonardo’s famous collection of notes. The great master seemed to document everything he saw. With wonder Johann gazed at the sketch for a type of umbrella from which hung a man, evidently gliding to the ground with it. On a different drawing Johann saw a crossbow the size of a ship. There were men with bird wings, cogwheels, war chariots, movable bridges, dozens of cannons in a row, men who looked like monsters and appeared to breathe underwater, but also drawings Johann didn’t understand, like gruesome war scenes full of the dead and injured.
Johann came upon one especially shocking sketch: it was of a castle that sat enthroned on a mountain of bones and skulls. The longer he stared at the drawing, the more he thought the castle itself was one huge human skull. A single word was written at the top.
Seguaffit.
Johann didn’t understand; he’d never heard the word before. But for some reason it seemed just as terrible to him as the castle of skulls.
Seguaffit. What in God’s name?
“You shouldn’t be reading this late. You’ll ruin your eyes.”
Johann gave a start. When he turned around, Leonardo was standing in the door. It seemed to Johann that the old man had been watching him for a while. Leonardo held a brush in his left hand, the drawing hand, while his right hung down limply.
“The same goes for the painter next door,” said Johann with a smile. He pushed the paper with the strange drawing aside, feeling as though Leonardo had caught him reading something forbidden.
“You’re right. I was about to finish up, anyhow. Melzi just gave me some bad news.”
Johann turned serious. “What has happened?”
“My young stable boy, Silvio, had a riding accident. Apparently, there was a branch he missed in the light of dusk. Sadly, he fell in such a way that he broke his neck.” Leonardo sighed. “I never thought that Silvio would depart this life before me. The funeral is in two days, and until then, his body is over in the shed and . . .” He paused and looked at Faust.
“You said once that man is like a machine,” he continued eventually. “A rather heretical thought indeed, especially since it could only be proven if we looked inside the human body . . . which is forbidden by the church.”
“The church forbids many things,” replied Johann cautiously. “But not all of it makes sense in my eyes.”
“I, too, prefer independent thinking to religion. I guess I will
