A Bolt from the Blue

My words seemed to reassure her, for the tormented eyes vanished from the slot. Sighing, I turned toward the final door, which lay at the end of the hallway. This must be the way to the roof, I told myself as I started in that direction. By this time, however, I feared that my father and the flying machine were both lost to me… perhaps had never been in Pontalba, at all. Even so, I would first search the battlements for any clue before giving up and returning to rejoin Tito and Rebecca.

Barely had I put a hand to the latch on that door, however, when a thin voice drifted to me from Marianna’s tiny cell.

“Leonardo. That’s what I heard the soldiers call him… Leonardo.”

“I found it. As we hoped, the flying machine is hidden up behind the battlements.”

My eager words as I returned to the laundry shed drew cries of relief from both Rebecca and Tito. The latter dropped the paddle he was using to stir one pot of laundry and leaped lightly from the wooden step on which he’d been balanced to stand before me.

“Is it damaged?” he eagerly demanded. “Have they assembled it yet, or is it still in sections?”

“It is in sections, just as we last saw it,” I told him as I stripped off my borrowed page’s tunic and retied my belt over my own brown garment. Swapping out the pilfered cap for my own, I recounted how I had made my way from the great hall to a narrow spiral stairway at the top of the castle, which led up to the battlements.

I kept to myself, however, the way my heart had pounded as I’d climbed those final iron steps-each little better than a rung-all the way up to a small hatch that opened onto the sky. The dizzy sensation had intensified there, making me feel as if I might tumble from the parapets at any instant, no matter that I made no move. Steadying myself against a short chimney, I had swallowed back my nausea and taken stock of the situation.

As I’d hoped, the walks from one tower to another were all connected; moreover, several portions of the main roof were relatively flat and quite sturdy enough for a man to walk across. I had hoped to find the flying machine lying directly behind the battlements above the barracks, but the walks there were too narrow to accommodate its breadth. I would have to search out the craft, which meant avoiding discovery by Nicodemo’s guard.

Fighting dizziness, I had lurched from battlement to wall to tower, keeping low as I clung with sweaty desperation to whatever sturdy bit of masonry was in my path. I had feared for a moment that my search had almost ended before it began when, but a few moments into my search, I heard the thud of heavy footsteps that announced the approach of a guard. Swiftly folding myself into a gap between two chimneys, I prayed the soldier would walk past without seeing me… and that I would be able to extricate myself again once he’d gone!

I soon resumed my search, losing but a bit of skin on one elbow as I wriggled free. It seemed as if I had been balancing upon the rooftop for hours, and sweat had soaked through both tunics I wore. In truth, however, it had been but a few minutes later when I discovered what it was that I sought.

Leonardo’s flying machine-or, rather, the various sections of it-lay on a wide section of walk, looking as if it had been deposited in careless afterthought by some giant hand from above. The Master would have been outraged to see his grand invention so treated. Still, from what I could see, it appeared undamaged by the wagon ride and subsequent handling.

I’d not spotted the craft from below when I’d first entered the great hall; thus, I was confident that I, too, was hidden from all save someone watching from one of the towers. Looking down, I had an unobstructed view of the gatehouse and outer wall, as well as the open field beyond. If not for my fear of heights-that, and the fact that but a few feet from me the roof dropped at an alarming pitch-I might have enjoyed the hawk’s-eye view of the world.

As I finished my account, Rebecca set aside her own paddle with which she was stirring a vat filled with clothes already boiled and scrubbed, and needing only to be rinsed. Climbing off the step, she wiped the sweat from her brow with the edge of her wimple and asked, “What about Signor Angelo?”

“I fear he was not on the roof with the flying machine, nor did I find him locked in any cell,” I replied with a grim shake of my head.

Perhaps his kidnappers had not yet taken him from whatever cell in which they were keeping him, I had told myself. Or maybe, believing him to be Leonardo the Florentine, they had brought him for an audience with the Duke of Pontalba himself. But my fear for him eased somewhat as I realized that, at least until the flying machine was completed, he surely would be kept in good health to work on it.

“No, I did not find him,” I repeated, “but I found someone who says she heard the duke’s soldiers escorting someone they called Leonardo. So if the flying machine is here, my father must be here, as well.”