A Bolt from the Blue

And how could he have betrayed us all by callously murdering the most worthy one of our number?

“It was you,” I managed when I could draw breath again. “You killed Constantin… shot him as he was rushing to warn the Master that you had stolen his notes on the flying machine!”

“No! Constantin was the thief!”

Tito’s indignant response was all the more unsettling for its genuine note of dismay. Giving his head a violent shake, he went on. “He thought he was so clever, the way he watched me when he thought I was not looking… the times he followed after me and pretended it was but chance that we ended up in the same place. I warned him to leave well enough alone, but he would not. And then I found him snooping about in my trunk.”

He referred, of course, to the wooden casket stowed beneath his cot, which was large enough to hold his extra garb and other personal belongings. Each apprentice was assigned one. Though none could be locked, it was a matter of honor that no boy disturbed another trunk without first gaining permission from its owner. The senior apprentice’s suspicions must have been well-founded for him to have broken that unspoken rule.

“That’s when Constantin found the pages you’d cut from the Master’s notebook,” I guessed, earning a careless nod in reply.

“I didn’t bother to deny it, for what good would it have done? Instead, I told Constantin who my uncle was and said that if he forgot all he’d seen and heard, I would make certain that he was well paid for his silence. He pretended to agree, but instead of giving the pages back, he ran off with them. I had to stop him. I-I couldn’t let him ruin my plan.”

He hesitated, as if regretting he’d confessed this much, before he went on. “My uncle had given me a crossbow, as well as the knife. It was lying at the very bottom of my trunk, wrapped in a cloak. I’d almost forgotten I had it, until that moment. I grabbed it up… and I went after Constantin.”

Abruptly, as if his legs could no longer hold him, he slumped from his proud stance into a sitting position on the roof beside the craft.

“I didn’t mean for it to happen,” he said in the pat tones of one who was repeating an oft-told tale. “All I wanted was for Constantin to give the pages back, to pretend that he knew nothing. But he ran off to the garden, where I knew the Master was working. I watched him try the gate. When it turned out to be locked, I thought I was saved. But then he started climbing the wall.”

A tear rolled down one cheek as he spoke, and he swiped it away with an angry hand.

“I was too far away to stop him any other way. I-I don’t think I meant to shoot him, not really, but somehow I pulled the trigger. I saw the bolt hit him in the back, and I saw him fall. I waited for someone to come after me, but they didn’t. And so I knew he must have died before he could tell the Master what I’d done. But the worst part was that I no longer had Leonardo’s notes, and so I had to come up with another plan. And that was when I decided to kidnap Leonardo, as well.”

“But why, Tito?” I demanded, unable to hold back my own anger. “Why did you do your uncle’s bidding, when you knew it was wrong? You could have told the Master what the duke was planning, and he would have seen to it that you stayed safely in Milan and never had to return home to Pontalba again. What could your uncle have promised you in return, that you would resort to kidnapping and murder?”

At my mention of his uncle, Tito touched a reflexive hand to his bruised mouth, and his expression tightened. I recalled that his father had died when he was but a boy, so it must have been the Duke of Pontalba who had served in that role for him ever since. Unwilling sympathy momentarily cooled my heated emotions. What must it have been like for him as a child, being left with a brutal uncle whose approval he surely must have craved, while he feared the man himself?

Tito’s gaze met mine again, and he smiled a little.

“You don’t understand. Finally, I had the chance to make my uncle proud of me. He always thought me a fool and a weakling because I loved to paint. The only way he would let me join Leonardo’s workshop was if I pretended to be but a common youth so that I could act as his spy at Castle Sforza. It was my own idea to steal the flying machine and bring it back to Pontalba. When I told him my plan, my uncle promised that if I could accomplish that, I would be the first one to pilot it. And he said that once we built a whole fleet of flying machines for Pontalba, I would be captain over all of them!”

My first instinctive thought was that the duke would never have handed over such responsibility to his nephew; still, from the note of pride I heard in Tito’s voice, I knew that he had believed his uncle’s promise. Taking on such a glorious post would surely have seemed a vindication of all he might have endured at his uncle’s hands to that point.

The moment of satisfaction faded, and he turned an angry look on me.