A Bolt From the Blue Read Online Free PDF Page B

looked rather like the Master from a distance. But it was not this vague resemblance that held me; rather, it was the way he moved humbly if confidently among his fellows, pausing once to assist an elderly man in a tattered leather jerkin struggling with the bundle of twigs balanced upon his skinny back.
    By now, the newcomer was close enough for me to make out his features, and my eyes opened wide in surprise. I knew this man, I realized with a gasp, knew him as well as I knew myself!
    It was at that moment that the man turned to meet my gaze. He halted again, his leather sack slipping from his shoulder as he stared at me. Then a warm grin split his pleasant features, and he caught up his bag again.
    The few moments it took for the guards to wave him and several others through the gates seemed to stretch into hours. I was aware of Leonardo’s hand upon my shoulder in a gesture of gentle restraint, doubtless to keep me from making a spectacle of myself before the soldiers. I allowed him to stay my movements, but only until the man was safely past the gate.
    Then, unable to wait an instant longer, I shrugged off the Master’s grasp and rushed toward the newcomer, flinging myself into his open arms with a joyful shout of, “Father!”

3

    Feathers shall raise men towards heaven even as they do birds . . .
    —Leonardo da Vinci, Manuscript I
     
     
     
     
     
    “ A h, child, I have missed you!” Angelo della Fazia exclaimed, lifting me from my feet with his hug just as he had done when I was but a small girl.
    Then, as if realizing his gesture might appear a far too exuberant greeting to bestow upon a male child, he abruptly set me back down. His gaze flicking in Leonardo’s direction, he gave me an awkward pat upon the shoulder and amended, “Rather, it is good to see you again.”
    “It is good to see you,” was my warm response. Not caring what the Master might think, I grabbed my father’s hands in mine. “Though I confess I did not recognize you at first. You have cut your beard differently, and your hair is longer.”
    “That last is not by design,” he said with a small laugh. “I am so busy these days with my commissions that I scarce have time to stop for a meal, let alone sit still long enough for the barber to shear me.”
    Frowning, he took an equally close look at me. “I was hard-pressed to recognize you, as well. Your clothes and your hair . . . they are—”
    “Pray, Father, do not tell me I have changed so much since you last saw me,” I interrupted him, fearful lest he make a misstep and reveal my disguise. “Despite my apprentice’s tunic, I am still your well-loved son Dino.”
    “Ah, yes, that you are, my well-loved son,” he agreed with great vigor. “So tell me . . . er, Dino . . . are you well?”
    “Quite well now,” I responded, certain that my wide grin should have been proof enough for him.
    And I realized that, at least for the moment, my melancholy had indeed slipped from my shoulders like a discarded cloak. Perhaps the excuse I had given to Vittorio earlier had been the truth, after all. Until that momentous night when I had made my decision to leave home in male guise, I had never in my brief life been away from my family even for a day. Looking back over the recent months, I could see how I had instinctively made Leonardo and my fellow apprentices stand in for the father and brothers I had left behind.
    But, here in the presence of my true parent, I realized with a pang that even the most beloved friends could never take their place.
    Blinking rapidly so that no tears might mar my carefully boyish facade, I instead asked, “But how can this be, that you are here in Milan? Surely you are not the craftsman that the Master has said is to join him?”
    “He is, indeed,” Leonardo spoke up, satisfaction evident in his tone. Then his smile took on a mischievous quirk.
    “You do not know how pleased I was to discover that the man whose genius in wood I admired was also the