"I hope to recover my faculties later," I apologized. "Just now, I progress in generalities only."
"Even so, you are better grounded in these things than any man of this present age," he encouraged me. "Your talk of that astounding power, electricity, amazes me. Perhaps things can be harnessed with it. Steam, too. I think I can see in my mind's eye how it can be put to work, like wind in a sail or water flowing over a mill-wheel." His eyes brightened suddenly. "Wait, Ser Leo. I have an inspiration."
"Inspiration?" I echoed.
I watched while he opened a small casket on the bench and fetched out a little purselike bag of dark velvet. From this he tumbled a great rosy pearl the size of a hazelnut and glowing as with its own light. Upon his palm he caught it, and thrust it under my
nose.
"Look!" he commanded, and I looked.
To be sure, it must be a valuable jewel, to be as full of rose-and-silver radiance as a sunset sky. It captivated my soul with the sudden impact of its beauty.
"Look," repeated Guaracco, and I gazed, as though my eyes were bound in their focus. The pesirl grew bigger, brighter.
"Look," he said, yet again, as from a distance and, though I suspected at last his motive, I could not take my eyes away.
The light faded, consciousness dropped slackly from me like the garment. I knew a black silence, as of deep sleep, then a return to blurred awareness. I shook myself and yawned.
A chuckle sounded near by, and I opened my drowsy eyes to find Guaracco's foxy face close to mine.
"You are awake now?" he asked, with the false gentleness.
"How long did I sleep?" I asked, but he did not reply.
He polished the pearl upon his sleeve, and slid it carefully into its velvet bag.
"I think that some, if not all, of the forgotten things are buried in your mind," he observed. "With you I tried a certain way that fools call black magic."
Hypnotism, that was it. Guaracco had hypnotized me. Had he, in reality, found in my sub-conscious mind those technical matters that I seemed to have almost forgotten?
"Every minute of your company," he was continuing, "convinces me that I did well to spare your life and enlist you in my service. Now, draw for me again."
I obeyed, and he watched. Once again he praised me, and swore that I should be placed as a student with Andrea Verrocchio. It had grown late by now, and he escorted me to my bed chamber, bidding me goodnight in more cordial terms.
But, when the door closed behind him, I heard the key turn in the heavy bronze lock.
CHAPTER IV Apprenticeship
On the following day fell the torrents of rain that had been prayed for in such occult fashion, and the trip to Florence was postponed. To my chagrin, my memories of various details that had been so clear during my Twentieth Century existence were even cloudier, so much more so that I spent the morning making notes of what little I remembered.
These notes Guaracco appropriated, with as cordial a speech of thanks as though I had done them expressly for him. I might have protested, but near at hand loitered the uglier of his two dwarfs, and there might have been even a greater danger at the window behind me, or hidden among the tapestry folds at my elbow.
So I gave over writing, and went to talk to Lisa, the sober but lovely young girl to whom he had introduced me the night before. I found her still shyly friendly, possessed of unfailing good manners and charm. She had needlework to do, and I sat talking and listening, fascinated by the play of her deft white fingers. While we were together I, at least, felt less the sense of being a prisoner and an underling.
But the rain had ceased by sunset, and early the next morning Guaracco knocked at my door to call out that we would go to Florence immediately after breakfast. We ate quickly, and went out into the fine early sunlight. Servants—Guaracco had several in a nearby cottage, peculiar fellows but deeply devoted to me—brought around horses, a fine white stallion for Guaracco and an ordinary bay for me. I mounted, being glad that I had not forgotten how to ride, and we cantered off along a clay-hardened highway, with a groom on a patient mule behind us.
We had not far to ride to Florence. I found the valley of the Arno much the same as I had known it in my former existence, green and bounded by hills, sprinkled with villas, clusters of peasant huts, and suburbs, with the town in the middle.
Florence itself was smaller, newer, more beautiful. The town lay secure with high, battlemented walls of stone, with the river running through. I saw the swell of the Duomo, second cathedral of all Christendom, great and round and pale, like the moon descended to Earth; and around it, the towers of many white houses and palaces, and cool green of garden trees.
The gate we entered was perhaps twenty-five feet wide by fifteen high, and the tall lintel of gray-brown stone bore a bas-relief of St. Mark's lion, complete with wings and book; also several female figures which appeared to have tails.
Within the walls, the town I had known as grubbily ancient in the Twentieth Century, all shone new and fresh. By the clean whiteness of the houses and by their style of architecture, I judged that all, or nearly all, of the older Florence had been razed to allow this new Renaissance capital of the Medici its full glory.
The streets were for the most part smoothly paved, or at least had good gutters and cobbles. Some of them, the side ways, were too narrow, even for one-way traffic, and darkly close with the upper stories of the houses projecting. In many places these upper stories jutted out so far as to make a covered way for pedestrians at either side. Here and there stood the enclosed mansions and gardens of nobles or wealthy merchants, and at many crossings were wide squares, with, occasionally, the statue of a saint or a hero.
Many folk were afoot or on horseback, though there were few wains, and these of the most primitive. Most of the transport was done by donkey pannier, or in baskets on the brawny shoulders of porters. The people seemed prosperous, and in most cases happy. Later I was to be reminded that the Florentines then enjoyed a unique freedom, and were wont to boast about it to less favored Milanese or Venetians.
At last, at Guaracco's signal, we reined our animals before a tall, barnlike structure of drab stone, fronting away from the brink of the green Arno. It was several stories high, pierced with many barred windows and furnished with a double door of iron grillwork.
"This is Verrocchio's bottega," said my guide, and we dismounted, leaving our bridle-ends in the hands of the silent groom.
I moved toward the door, but Guaracco's big hand touched my elbow. I turned inquiringly.
"Before you enter here, I have a thought to burn into you," he said in a cold, hushed voice.
With his deep, penetrating eyes, his red beard and suddenly sinister face, he might have sat for a traditional portrait of Judas. I knew, more fiercely than ever, a dislike and distrust of him.
"You wish to exact a vow of fealty from me?" I suggested. "Vows begin, Ser Guaracco, only when hope is dead."
He shook his head, and under his beard his mouth wriggled, like a snake in singed grass.
"No," he replied. "I exact no vow. I say simply that if you betray me in word or deed, if you seek ever to hurt or to hinder me—if, in short, you do not adhere to the service I have set you I will see that you die by the foulest death ever invented."
"I am not afraid of you," I said to him, striving in my heart to make this the truth.
"Nor do I seek your fear," was his quick rejoinder. "Only your understanding. Shall we go in?"
The great front room of the academy was as large as a riding hall, with lofty, musty beams on the ceiling, and whitewashed walls; not as much light as one might wish to paint by, but with the windows all set toward clear, open ground. The corners of the room were cluttered with art materials, plaster molds, half-finished paintings on blanks, broken chairs, pots of paint, sheafs of brushes, and rolled parchments and canvases.