CHAPTER FIVE
Three days later the word arrived at Imola that the conspirators had brought Duke Guidobaldo back to Urbino, which he had re-entered in fatheaded triumph. At appreciably the same time, they learned that Castel San Pietro, just seven miles to the northwest, had fallen to the forces of Giovanni Bentivoglio, advancing down the Via Emilia from Bologna. Aside from one remaining line of communication with de Lorqua at Rimini, Borgia was now practically under siege at Imola.
So were Machiavelli, Leonardo, and Blackfield. From mid-October to early December, they huddled with Borgia in a walled “city” less than a mile long and half a mile wide.
Leonardo didn’t seem to be bothered. As usual, he lived in the infinite world of his own mind. And he had a special project to occupy him.
Blackfield saw him at it late one afternoon, when he was taking one of his restless walks outside Imola’s walls, north of the moat. The engineer was walking east, consulting a magnetic compass. One of his assistants followed him under Salaì’s superfluous and comically pompous supervision, pushing… what? At first Blackfield thought it was wheelbarrow, for it had a vertical wheel like one. But that wheel had notches around its rim, which were clicking forward, advancing a cogged horizontal wheel above it, causing it to rotate.
“Maestro,” he greeted.
“Ah, Captain,” said Leonardo, looking up. “Excuse me for a moment.” He jotted something down in a notebook. “The duke has asked me to prepare a map of Imola and its immediate surroundings,” he explained.
Blackfield nodded. Good maps were notoriously hard to come by, and Borgia would need one if he was to withstand an attack or even a serious siege. “But what is…?” He gestured at the incomprehensible device.
“Oh, that’s a hodometer–something I devised for measuring distances accurately.”
As Blackfield watched, the vertical wheel completed a revolution, moving the horizontal wheel a notch and causing a small stone to drop into a container.
“That happens every ten braccia,” Leonard explained. A braccio, Blackfield knew, meant a distance the length of a man’s arm—but if he knew Leonardo, the engineer had established a precise value for it.
“While constructing it,” Leonardo continued, “I discovered ways of overcoming the difficulties in something else I’ve considered: a mechanical calculating machine capable of adding.” He shook his head. “Ah, well, I must get back to work on the measurements.”
“Maestro, when you finish your map I’d like very much to see it.”
“Yes, of course,” said Leonardo, moving on in a preoccupied way.
Blackfield turned away… and it was then that he saw a solitary, cloaked figure he had not noticed before, standing in the field, silhouetted against the westering sun.
He automatically tensed and reached for the dagger which was his minimum armament whenever he went outside. But then he relaxed, for the new arrival seemed to present no threat.
Only… where had he arrived from? Blackfield hadn’t seen him approach.
The man—for man he seemed to be, and an exceptionally tall, heavyset man at that—stepped toward him. The hood of his long gray cloak was pulled up, and his face was in shadows. Blackfield kept his hand on his dagger hilt, for all sorts of weapons could have been concealed under that cloak. But for some reason, and in defiance of the customary caution of one in his line of work, he didn’t think there were.
The strange man raised an arm and pointed at the retreating figure of the engineer. “Is that Messer Leonardo da Vinci?” he asked without preamble. His Italian—almost but not quite the Florentine dialect that was becoming the standard speech of educated people—was perfectly fluent, but it held a faint accent, neither Spanish nor French nor anything else in Blackfield’s experience.
No, Blackfield thought with a mental headshake. I wouldn’t really call it an accent. It’s a… a quality I can’t find a word for.
“Yes, it is he,” he replied shortly. “Who are you?”
The stranger did not deign to answer. His eyes, barely visible inside the hood, remained fixed on Leonardo. “I am very eager to meet him,” he said.
“That can perhaps be arranged. It would be up to the duke.”
“Ah, yes: the duke. Duke Valentino, as I believe you call him. Cesare Borgia. And Messer Niccolò Machiavelli—he is also here, is he not?”
“Yes, he is.” Blackfield found himself unable to evade a direct response.
“So it’s true after all. The three of them, together for months in this ridiculously tiny town. What a unique—!” The stranger suddenly stopped talking to himself and addressed Blackfield. “I need to meet the duke and Messer Machiavelli as well.”
The sheer presumptuousness of it brought Blackfield out of passivity. “See here! I ask again: who are you? And who sent you?”
The hooded head swung slowly toward Blackfield, and the shadowed eyes held him. “These are matters I must take up with the duke himself.”
It suddenly occurred to Blackfield that this might well be a secret courier with a message from one of the innumerable, ever-shifting factions with whom the duke had to deal. At least he dare not assume otherwise. At the same time, he dare not assume that the man wasn’t an assassin. He decided on a cautious middle course.
“Come with me. I’ll turn you over to the duke’s personal guards.” He led the way around the curve of the moat, through the western gate, and then turned right to the castle. After a brief consultation with a Spanish officer, he left the stranger in the latter’s custody and walked off.
But his curiosity remained. The next day, he spoke again to the same officer. The Spaniard said he had admitted the cloaked man to the duke’s presence… and now he shared Blackfield’s puzzlement, for nothing had been seen or heard of from the stranger since. Blackfield was left more mystified than ever.
**********
A few days later, Leonardo showed the completed ink-drawn map to Blackfield. For a time, the Englishman simply stared, for this was a work of art as well as of science, combining beauty with an exactitude such as he had never seen before. Every parcel of land, every street, every building, every detail of the ramparts was here, set off by delicate wash coloring. The eight major directional lines of the compass were shown, and around the edges were distances to nearby towns.
But the most extraordinary thing about it was that it showed Imola from directly overhead, as though seen with the eye of a bird… or of God. In Blackfield’s experience, maps were really more like pictures, with mountains, castles, and so forth drawn as they would be seen from higher ground level (not to mention the occasional dragon or unicorn) and only cursory attention paid to distances.
From now on, are armies in the field actually going to know where things are? he wondered.
But the more he thought about it, this was simply one more manifestation of a unique quality common to Leonardo’s painting and his science: accurate visual display of information. He had seen drawings in the maestro’s notebooks, with geometrical figures perfectly shaded so as to appear three-dimensional, mechanical devices with separate views of individual components, and human anatomy displayed in multiple layers. It was a fundamentally new way of displaying the universe.
“I’ve made other maps for the duke,” he heard Leonardo say.
“I’m sure you have, But I’m astounded that you’ve found the time, amid your other duties for him. Ever since the new artillery the duke ordered arrived from Brescia back in early October, you’ve been responsible for its upkeep.”
“Yes. In addition, he and I have had many discussions on military matters. I’ve shown him certain ideas—”
“Yes, I remember seeing some of your designs for weapons.”
“I’ve had others since then. Remind me to show them to you. Mortars capable of firing explosive balls, for example.”
“But how could that be done safely?”
“I have certain ideas. But the concept in which the duke is most interested… well, I’ve shown him I can design a machine capable of carrying three hundred men right up to enemy ramparts.”
Blackfield stared. “Have you actually begun building this thing?”
“No. We don’t have the resources here. The duke is talking in terms of the future—of constructing it in Rome, after the first of the year. In fact…” Leonardo gave a humorless laugh. “He is so interested that once the project has commenced, he himself could probably see it to completion without me.”
“Surely not, Maestro!” said Blackfield with a smile. But Leonardo did not smile back. And Blackfield thought to discern a quiver of conflict beneath the sage’s normally serene features at this talk of weapons.
Is it the things he saw at Fossembrone and Calmazzo? he wondered. Or… could it just be that he’s gotten to know Borgia better?
**********
As October neared its end, various Orsini began appearing at Imola for brief periods, and Blackfield found himself seeing Machiavelli less and less frequently—and when he did, the Florentine was too distracted for conversation. But then, on October 27, he happened on Machiavelli as the latter was finishing a dispatch to the Signoria.
“Not that I have much to report about the duke’s intentions,” Machiavelli grumbled. “Four days ago I managed to get a lengthy audience with him, just after Paolo Orsini left. He was full of indignation about the treachery and unreliability of the Orsini clan—especially Paolo—who have been putting out cautious peace offers.”
“Presumably without informing their fellow conspirators,” said Blackfield drily.
“Unless, of course, it’s all a deception, at the behest of those same fellow conspirators. But at any rate, the duke expressed contempt for their ability to act. It seems Vitellozzo is still laid up with syphilis, and Guidobaldo is suffering from a flare-up of his gout. But as for what his own plans are, I can’t get an inkling. In fact…” Machiavelli frowned. “If I didn’t know better, I’d swear that he often doesn’t seem particularly interested—as though the conspiracy against him is an annoying irrelevancy, and his mind is concentrated on much larger things. He’s been that way ever since he started spending an inordinate amount of time with a newly arrived stranger—”
“—Who wears a gray cloak,” Blackfield finished for him.
Machiavelli gave him a sharp look. “How did you know?”
“I met him when he first arrived.”
“Ah! So you know something about him.”
“Not a thing. I only had a few words with him. He said he couldn’t answer questions, except to the duke. I assumed he was one of the couriers who are always coming and going. I was hoping you had found out something.” If you can’t, nobody can, Blackfield added silently.
“No. He never talks to a soul except the duke and, on a couple of occasions, Messer Leonardo—who, I understand from the servants, came away with the same kind of preoccupied expression that the duke wears after talking to him.”
The two of them were silent for a moment, each alone with his own uncomfortable thoughts.
“Well,” Machiavelli said, a little too briskly, “whatever great future matters the duke and his new councilor have in mind, he’s going to have to deal with the current little matter first.”
**********
After October had turned into a dreary November, they found out just exactly how he had dealt with it.
Blackfield learned of it by accident. Walking in the east-west street that ran almost the length of Imola, and avoiding mud-puddles, he chanced to come within earshot of Machiavelli and Borgia’s secretary Agapito. The latter was expostulating furiously, although in a cautiously low voice.
“That pig! The effrontery! He stabbed us in the back, and now he thinks he can heal such a wound with mere words!” Seeing Blackfield approaching, Agapito muttered something and scuttled off.
“What was all that?” Blackfield asked Machiavelli. “Who was he talking about?”
“Oh, I suppose I may as well tell you; it will become common knowledge any day now. He was talking about Vitellozzo. He and the Orsini have signed an agreement with the duke, agreeing to return to their former allegiance, in return for continued payments for their services.”
Blackfield’s jaw fell. “I’m surprised Agapito was willing to tell you this,” he said when he had regained the power of speech.
“Oh, he knew it did no harm. You see, I obtained a copy of the pact on the tenth of this month and relayed the contents to Florence. It makes interesting reading,” Machiavelli continued, ignoring Blackfield’s stare. “Among other things, they promise to return whatever possessions of his they’ve seized—including Urbino. I’ve learned that Guidobaldo got wind of it, panicked, and fled in disguise on a mule. The duke sent men to look for him, but so far he’s escaped.”
“What about Bentivoglio of Bologna? He’s the one whose troops are encamped at Castel San Pietro, just seven miles up the road from here.”
“He wasn’t included. But he’s learned of the agreement, and now he and the duke are negotiating an arrangement of their own.”
“So now all is sweetness and good fellowship.”
“Oh, yes! The pope has even allowed Cardinal Orsini to return to Rome, all the while making it clear that he doesn’t insist.” Machiavelli’s irony was rich. But then he grew serious. “You’ll have gathered that Agapito doesn’t take any of it seriously. Neither do I.”
Blackfield considered all this for a moment. “This mysterious stranger the duke has been spending so much time with—was all this his doing?”
“No.” Machiavelli shook his head emphatically. “In fact, according to my sources of information inside the duke’s household, he’s barely even interested in the whole business. In fact… It’s strange, but the duke doesn’t seem all that interested either, as though it all seems almost unimportant to him now. He remains obsessed with whatever the stranger—people have started calling him the Councilor—is telling him.”
Blackfield said nothing. In thoughtful silence, they walked toward the castle.