“Do you see how my friend Leonardo decided to not follow those lines and is doing his own design there?”
“The landscape needs sunlight!” Leonardo exclaimed. “And shadows! When you go outside, that is what you see.”
“But Andrea del Verrocchio did not draw in these shadows and this sunlight, and you are his apprentice, Leonardo. That means you learn from him, not the other way around.”
“That reminds me,” Leonardo said, wandering away from the canvas. “I was going to finish making some red chalk. But why did I need it?”
He stared down at the clay angel in his hand as if he didn’t know where it had come from.
“Ah, well, enough work for today, then,” he said finally. “I believe I’ll go into the hills before we meet at the palace.”
“I’m coming, too,” Felix said. “Remember?”
Leonardo looked as if he didn’t remember, but he smiled and agreed that Felix should indeed come along.
When Sandro and Maisie were alone in the studio, Sandro pointed to a figure on the canvas.
“I painted that,” he said proudly.
“Nice,” Maisie said.
“Yes, I apprenticed here, too. All the great ones do,” Sandro added, matter-of-factly.
“Hmmm,” Maisie said, because the figure Sandro painted didn’t look any better than anything else on the canvas. In fact, the rocks and ground that Leonardo had painted with shadows and light were the best part of the painting. Maisie decided to keep this opinion to herself, though.
“Would you like to see your mask?” Sandro asked her.
“You finished already?” Maisie said, delighted and surprised.
“What you will learn very quickly,” Sandro said, “is that the difference between Leonardo and me is that I actually finish what I start.”
An image of the Mona Lisa from one of her father’s art books floated into Maisie’s mind.
“Oh,” she said, “I suspect that Leonardo will get around to finishing a painting or two.”
Sandro placed a hand on her shoulder, patting sympathetically.
“One can only hope,” he said.
He turned her toward the door and led her out of Verrocchio’s studio, down the cobblestone alley to Fra Lippi’s, where Sandro apprenticed.
There, on a long table covered with dishes of paint and boxes of chalk and paintbrushes, sat a beautiful white-and-gold mask.
“Yours,” Sandro said, lifting it gently.
The gold formed intricate designs around the border, shining brightly against the pure white. He placed the mask over Maisie’s eyes and nose, adjusting it until it sat just right.
“A peacock feather, perhaps,” Sandro murmured as he studied it from a few steps away from Maisie.
Maisie wished there was a mirror so she could admire herself.
As if he knew exactly what she was thinking, Sandro said, “Wait!” and retrieved a mirror from another room. He held it up for her to see.
“It’s beautiful!” she gasped.
“Yes,” Sandro said, “it is. The gold picks up the gold highlights in your hair perfectly, just as I thought it would.”
“Do you think you’ll be able to finish Felix’s in time?” Maisie asked.
“It’s completed,” Sandro said. The corners of his mouth twisted up into a small satisfied smile.
He walked across the room to another table and lifted a terrifying mask up for Maisie to see. It looked almost like a bird, with a long beak, but sinister somehow.
“How do you like it?”
“It’s . . . interesting?” Maisie offered.
Felix was not going to wear that, she thought. At Halloween, he always opted for gentle costumes, like a friendly ghost or the Lone Ranger, instead of vampires, skeletons, or werewolves. This thing would not suit him. At all.
“Il Medico della Peste,” Sandro said. “The Plague Doctor.”
“What plague?”
Sandro looked at her in disbelief.
“The plague that wiped out a third of Europe!”
“Oh,” she said, not knowing what he was talking about. “That plague.”
“Yes, that plague,” Sandro said. “The doctors wore disguises so no one would know who had tended to the people stricken with the Black Death.”
That made the mask even worse, Maisie decided.
Still, she thought, staring at her own reflection in the mirror Sandro had left on the table, her mask did pick up the golden highlights in her hair, just like he’d said. She smoothed her unruly curls and smiled at her reflection, satisfied.
In the hills above Florence, Felix and Leonardo lay on their backs in the grass, watching birds fly above them.
“If a man had a tent made out of linen,” Leonardo said thoughtfully, “perhaps twenty feet across and twelve feet long—”
“A tent?” Felix interrupted, trying to picture such a thing.
“Yes! With all of the apertures stopped up, I believe he would be able to throw himself off any great height and float to the ground without sustaining any injuries.”
“Oh!” Felix said. “You mean like a parachute?”
Leonardo propped himself on one elbow and looked down at Felix.
“Parachute,” he repeated.