A Bolt from the Blue

“It-it wasn’t the Master who told me,” he admitted in a tight little voice. “It was one of the castle pages who said he had a message for me from Master Leonardo.”

I swallowed back the cold bile of fear that rose in my throat at his words.

“That makes no sense, Tito. Why would the Master go to the castle in the middle of the night to rouse a page when he could have wakened you himself? Quickly, tell me all that happened and spare no detail, for it might have some bearing on my father’s fate.”

He resumed his seat upon the bench, his feet shuffling at the sandy ground beneath them. “It was just after midnight when someone woke me up. At first, I thought it was the Master-you know his habit of summoning us in the night-but it was one of the castle pages. He bade me be silent and follow him outside. He said he had an urgent message from Master Leonardo.”

His tone took on a sound of desperation as he went on. “It sounds foolish, in the light of day, but I was still half asleep and I didn’t think to question why the Master did not come to me himself. And so I went with the boy.”

“What happened afterward?” I prompted him when he hesitated once more.

Tito dropped his face into his hands, so that his words were muffled as he continued. “The page said that Leonardo had told him that some important men-diplomats, perhaps-were to examine the flying machine, but that it must be done under cover of darkness. Since I had one of the keys, I was to meet them there and unlock the door. The page said that the Master would join them later and would relock the shed when they were finished. He also said he was to tell me that Leonardo would not require my assistance the next day.”

I stifled a groan at this confession. “Was my father at the shed, or the Master?”

“No, but I did see three men there. They must have been the diplomats.”

“These men… did you see their faces?”

“Not their faces,” he replied in a sorrowful tone, “for they were wrapped in fine cloaks and kept carefully to the shadows. They said nothing, but they gestured me away once I’d unfastened the lock. I-I was a bit nervous by then, so I hurried back to the workshop and took to my bed again.”

He lapsed into silence while I took a moment to consider his words. I was certain that these three mysterious men were no more diplomats than were Tito and I. But could one of them be the mysterious robed figure that had spied upon me, or even be the man who had cruelly murdered Constantin? And if none was guilty of those crimes, who had sent them here? And did my father’s disappearance have something to do with their arrival?

The cold knot in my stomach tightened as the questions flooded my brain, and I was certain that Constantin’s death and my father’s disappearance were connected.

“The shed was locked when I tried the door earlier,” I recalled, “and I saw nothing amiss, so those three shadow men were careful to leave no sign they’d been there. Had I not gone there searching for my father, I would have had no cause to set foot near the place, at all.”

I paused and frowned. “And with the Master gone-and you, Tito, sent to work once more with the other apprentices-it might have been days before anyone looked in the shed again.”

The import of what I’d said struck me at the very instant that Tito leaped from the bench again, eyes wide.

“The shed!” he cried. “Quickly, we must check it!”

I made no reply but joined his frantic race across the quadrangle. I dared not give voice to what I dreaded to find behind its locked doors, lest speaking the words make it so.

And yet that was the most logical explanation for my father’s strange absence. Perhaps he had awakened in the middle of the night with an idea for the flying machine, and so had gone to the shed to take measurements or carve a bit of wood. And perhaps he had arrived there to find these three mysterious men examining the craft and had confronted them, only to be overcome by their greater number.

I choked on a sob of denial at that last thought, even though I had to admit that this was the most likely scenario. Having overpowered him, it made sense that the men would have left him locked in the shed so that he would not be found for some time, rather than leave him somewhere on the grounds to be discovered at dawn.

The question was, had they abandoned him injured and unconscious, or had he suffered Constantin’s same brutal fate?

With a shudder, I quickened my steps in hopes of outrunning the gruesome images that filled my mind. Thus, though Tito’s legs were longer than mine, I readily kept apace of him as we neared the secluded spot behind the stables where the shed lay.

We both were gasping for breath by the time we reached the splintered shed and its barred doors.