“You are . . . ,” The man paused, his eyebrows now shooting upward. “Dangerous . . .”
“It’s the night before Carnival,” Piero said. “You’ve already put a damper on the evening by telling us right off that it was an inauspicious date for a gathering. Now you’re picking on our poor young visitor.”
“I only say what is in the stars,” Signor Ficino said. “And the stars tell me that there is trouble tonight.”
“I’m not bringing any trouble,” Maisie said.
Signor Ficino glared at her.
“You are . . . ,” he said again. “You are . . . other!”
A woman’s voice cut through the ominous pronouncement.
“Yes, Signor Ficino,” the woman said, gliding through the courtyard in a heavily embroidered red dress. “She is other. We’re called women, in case you didn’t know.”
The men laughed in embarrassment.
Except Signor Ficino.
He continued to stare at Maisie with a combination of horror and curiosity.
“Clarice!” Lorenzo said, taking the woman’s hand in his and kissing it as he bent into a dramatic bow.
Up close, Clarice had the strangest shade of yellow hair—not blond, but yellow—and a high forehead that showed tiny dots where hair had been plucked from its natural beginning to way back on her head. Overall, the look, combined with a pasty-white face covered in powder, was creepy. But when Clarice smiled at Maisie, she softened a bit, and Maisie realized that Clarice was only a little older than her. And already married!
“My husband has the oddest friends,” Clarice whispered to Maisie with a giggle, as she kept her hand drooping in the air and one by one each man bent to kiss it.
Except Signor Ficino.
He did not take his eyes from Maisie.
“Leonardo?” Clarice said, glancing at the people gathered.
“Late,” Sandro answered.
“I so wanted him to play his lute for me,” Clarice said with a small pout. “And to sing me a song.”
“Perhaps after dinner,” Lorenzo said.
Clarice sighed. “I suppose I have no choice.”
To Maisie’s surprise, Clarice took her hand.
“You will sit next to me,” Clarice announced. “And you can tell me how you got such beautiful hair and skin.”
Maisie smiled as she and Clarice walked hand in hand to the banquet table.
But Signor Ficino grabbed her by the shoulder, pressed his lips to her ear, and whispered, “Where are you from?”
Startled, Maisie yanked away from his grip.
“I will find out,” he said coldly.
Clarice laughed. “He’s full of doom and gloom,” she said, tugging Maisie along again. “He’s an astrologer, and he’s always saying dire or ridiculous things. He told me I would have ten children! And he told my poor brother-in-law that he would be murdered right in the piazza!”
“That is pretty gloomy,” Maisie agreed.
But Clarice was already smiling—and changing the subject happily.
“I just love berlingaccio, don’t you?” she said, letting a servant pull back one of the heavy chairs, and sitting with a bounce.
Maisie nodded and smiled back at Clarice, but she couldn’t help but notice Signor Ficino watching her.
“I don’t understand,” Leonardo said sadly to Felix. “Explain more clearly why I can’t come with you to the future.”
The sky above Florence had turned from blue to lilac to lavender, now an inky blue studded with stars.
“There are rules,” Felix said, struggling to explain. “For one, you have to be a Pickworth.”
“What is this Pickworth?”
“It’s our name. Like yours is da Vinci,” Felix said.
Leonardo frowned. “So you are from Pickworth?”
“Well, no. I mean, kind of,” Felix said. “Pickworth was our great-great-grandfather’s name. And probably his father’s name, and so on.”
“But da Vinci simply means that I am from the village of Vinci. You are not from the village of Pickworth?”
“Honestly,” Felix sighed, “I have no idea. In the future, we don’t do it that way.”
“Well, suppose I become a Pickworth—”
“No, no,” Felix protested, “it doesn’t work that way. And even if it did, you have to be a twin to time travel.”
“Why?”
Felix shrugged. “I have no idea.”
He remembered how he’d gone to The Treasure Chest and tried to take Lily Goldberg with him, and how it had failed. Even the thought of Lily Goldberg sent a sharp pain of embarrassment through him. Had she received that letter? Did she find him pathetic?
“What else?” Leonardo was asking.
“We go into this room called The Treasure Chest,” Felix said, happy to not think about Lily Goldberg, “and we take an object—”
“What does that mean?”
“The Treasure Chest is full of . . . of stuff. Scrolls and coins and precious jewels and feathers and crowns and maps and test tubes and compasses and . . . seals . . .”
He looked at Leonardo’s expectant face. If Felix had that seal, he would give it to him right now. But Maisie had it.