Читать книгу Herotica 1 - Kerry Greenwood - Страница 10

The first time I saw Salai, he was stark naked in a stableyard, picking maggots out of Il maestro’s hair. He caught sight of me and yelled in the roughest street dialect I had ever heard in a gentleman’s house, ‘Strip off and get yer arse over ‘ere, pretty. I could do wiv some ‘elp.’

I had just arrived. I was Leonardo Da Vinci’s new apprentice. But that was Leonardo Da Vinci standing there, covered in something which smelt appalling. So I did as I was bid. A manservant handed me a bucket of warm water with lye soap in it and a sponge.

Salai grinned. ‘You get the wrigglers on this side,’ he ordered, and I picked out maggots. I forgot to be disgusted when I noticed that around our feet were a covey of birds, beaks gaping. So I was careful to distribute my provender fairly. One thrush alone was allowed to fly onto the Maestro’s tangled head and pick up his own wrigglers.

When his head and beard were clear and the birds dispersed, we started to undress Leonardo. The apron he was wearing tied at the back, and we eased it off and laid it out on the cobbles. Thereunder was a soiled shirt, a disgraceful pair of hose, horrible soft shoes, and a loincloth which was the sole cleanish element in this ensemble. Salai removed that, also. Then he washed Leonardo down with the warm water and soap.

All this time, as we tended him, il maestro was silent. I was about to ask a question when Salai’s disinfected hand slapped across my mouth. So I shut up. The manservant gave me a bucket of plain, warm water, a linen towel and a scholar’s gown. Salai let go of me, sponged the suds from our master, dried him roughly with the towel and dropped the gown over his head. Leonardo leaned on his shoulder as he slipped his feet into common stable pattens.

Then he ran inside and I heard a door shut, hard.

‘Y’ can’t talk to ‘im when ‘e’s doing that,’ Salai told me.

‘Doing what?’

‘I’m Salai,’ he said belatedly. ‘Leave the rags, the stablemen’ll swill ‘em down. Come in, you’re Mentzi, ain’t yer? Welcome to the ‘ouse. I c’n tell you’ll like it ‘ere.’

‘You can? How?’ I asked, redressing and following him into a cavernous room, filled with fascinating half seen things which I would investigate later - surely that wasn’t a human skeleton? - and sitting down next to him on a bench near the fire.

‘E’s remembering,’ said Salai, pouring us large cups of wine. ‘E’s been to a hospital today. ‘E’s been into a burial pit, by the smell of ’im. And he can’t take notes in such places, so ‘e remembers it all. Then ‘e keeps it in ‘is head until ‘e c’n draw it all. So yer can’t talk to ‘im or ‘e’ll forget bits.’

‘I see,’ I drank some wine. Salai smiled and patted me on the knee.

‘Yer will,’ he asserted.

‘Aren’t you going to get dressed?’ I asked him.

He was magnificent, sprawling on the bench. Long limbs, flat belly, perfect Vitruvian proportions. He had olive skin, dark eyes, and long, curly dark hair. He had the Grecian nose which il Maestro favoured for his angels and red, full lips. He was a workman. The state of his hands showed me that. He was pampered. His skin had been washed with expensive soap and oiled with good olive oil. He was the most beautiful human I had ever seen and my fingers itched to ... well, to sketch him, as he was probably taken and kissing him senseless might be imprudent.

‘Nah,’ he drawled in his coarse voice. ‘Master might want me and then I’d ‘ave to get undressed again,’ and he ran a gentle finger up his bronzed thigh to a drop of wine which he had spilled. He took it up, and then licked his finger. I caught my breath and he smiled lazily, pleased with the effect he was having on me.

Well, that answered THAT question. Hands to yourself, Francesco. I wrapped them firmly around my wine cup. At that moment a stocky man in a long gown clipped Salai over the ear and dropped a bundle of cloth in his insolent lap.

‘Slut,’ said the man, dispassionately. ‘Put some clothes on. You dishonour a gentleman’s house, you scapegrace. You stole the coins to buy this gown, so you might as well wear it!’

Salai shrugged his way into the gown, which was of fine indigo wool. My father imports indigo. The robe would have been very costly. And he stole the coins to buy it? From his master? Why was he still here, and not flogged in the marketplace?

‘Signor Raffaelo,’ the stocky man introduced himself. ‘Housemaster. Pay no heed to this creature. The Maestro keeps him for a pet. He has a lot of pets. We’ve almost got him house-broken,’ he added, and Salai laughed. It was a very joyous, very childish laugh, so infectious that I joined in. And that was how I met Gia Giacomogaprotti de Oreno, known as Salai.

I joined the Da Vinci household in 1506, when I was sixteen, to learn to be an artist. I was diligent and always absolutely riveted by whatever il maestro said or did. He was the most amazing man in the world. He knew everything - stars, plants, animals, people; pigments and stains and paints; carving, sculpting, building, engineering; machines, gears, wheels, ballistics, wings, hydraulics. But he flitted. He was infinitely distractable. When drawing some really important schematics for a bombard for the Duke, he caught sight of reflections in raindrops and covered a whole folio sheet with them. The Duke had not been impressed. He missed an important audience with a bishop because he was nursing three orphaned kittens and could not leave them, and would not adventure their delicate persons in journeying. And he told the bishop, when he called, why he had not come at his bidding. His voice was direct, clear and very pleasant to hear. He could sing like a lark and play a harp like King David. If he stood still under a tree, birds came and settled on his hands and shoulders and Signor Raffaelo complained about the droppings all over his gown. Again.

And he was never cruel. Occasionally he lost his temper - mostly with Salai, stealing again, tom-catting around the town, fighting, getting drunk, only a saint wouldn’t have lost his temper with Salai. But he loved that reprobate, and always forgave him after a day or two. Salai would weep, kiss his feet and promise to be good, and Leonardo would smile and forgive him, and everyone in the household knew that Salai would break out and get into trouble again in a few months’ time. Including Leonardo. Including Salai.

When il Maestro did lose his temper, all we had to do was hear him out - his oaths were remarkable, an education in themselves, he could swear in six languages - and then offer a pot of the herbal tisane he favoured for cooling, thyme and citron, sweetened with honey. And something new. Raffaelo kept a cabinet of curiosities with which to distract the master when he was despondent. He would always respond well if we bought him a cage of wild birds from the market. He would walk out into the meadow behind our house and open the lid, and cry out with pleasure as they flew away. I once brought him a perfect little nest, no bigger than a cupping glass, which a dormouse had made for her babies. They had grown up and gone, but the nest was a tiny miracle of chewed and knotted grass, lined with tufts of cat fur. This had made the master laugh with joy and earned me an approving glance from Raffaelo. There were no beatings in Leonard da Vinci’s house. He was so benevolent and wise a man that no one wanted to disappoint him. Except, of course, Salai.

The master never had a mistress, as far as I knew. But he had Salai, who lay with him and solaced him with his flesh. Salai was decorative and uncomplicated. He had never been overburdened with thoughts or worries. I think that is why Leonardo loved him. To the master, the flesh was simple. He valued love. “If there is not love, then what?” he said. “Love binds the forces of the universe together. Why else should the sun shine, if not for love of the moon?” It seemed like a reasonable question. And even though I was destined to be only a mediocre painter, I could not leave this fascinating man. I became his secretary, squeezing unpaid fees out of noble patrons, reminding them politely that to make their tower invulnerable, the architect must eat. And his numerous household, which always included the usual domestic animals, plus the master’s birds. Only in Leonardo Da Vinci’s house was the perpetual war between the creatures suspended. Cats did not hunt, dogs did not chase cats, raptors did not take mice. He was a magician. We all fell under his spell.

Except Salai, of course. I loved to look at him as he wandered around the house nude. He was utterly beautiful. I wondered what his skin would feel like, it seemed so smooth and glossy. How that curly hair would spring between my fingers if... and then I dragged my lustful mind to heel by its lead and went right back to trying to understand the mathematics of water, which are complex beyond belief. Salai knew that I desired him. Sometimes, when we went out into the town to feast on meat - Leonardo Da Vinci’s house ate no meat, except for the raptors and the cats - Salai would slide an arm around my waist, lean his head on my shoulder. He always smelt sweet and musky.

‘Yer can kiss me,’ he would growl. ‘I won’t tell.’

‘No,’ I would put him gently away, aware that my hands were trembling and my body was yelling yes yes yes yes please!

‘Yer want me,’ he would say, puzzled.

‘Of course I do,’ I would push him away from me. ‘But you belong to il Maestro. However much I want you, I will never have you. On what shall we dine? Roast pork, Salai, or roast mutton?’

He always voted for pork.

When the Duke died in 1513 we knew that we would have to leave. Only by being himself, il Maestro had alienated three quarters of the powerful men in Milan, and Ludovico’s successor was not in favour of conflict. I handled the correspondence. The best offer, agreeably unconditional, came from the King of France. So there I was, at the tail of a long mule train, my bosom squirming with kittens, Madonna Luisa their mother sitting on my saddle bow - balancing admirably with her tail - and Salai riding beside me. We had bought a salami at the last village, since we had heard that they did not make such things in France, and Salai was cutting chunks off it and sharing them with me, Madonna Luisa, and Forte, one of the bigger dogs. Forte was not all that hungry, because he had already caught and eaten a rabbit in decent privacy, out of il Maestro’s sight. Some dogs have a lot of tact.

‘‘E’s sick,’ commented Salai. I swallowed my bite of greasy, garlicky sausage.

‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘He’s been getting weaker for days. This will be his last journey. But he’s travelling in style in that coach the King sent. And we’re going to a fine house, they say.’

‘’E knows,’ said Salai.

‘He’s the wisest man in the world,’ I agreed. ‘Well, he’s brought all his notebooks, the paintings, the animals, the household, we’ll be all right.’

Salai snarled at me. ‘Not without ‘im!’

‘No,’ I agreed. When I looked back at him, Salai was weeping. I had wondered if he loved il Maestro. He did.

It was a fine house and we settled into it speedily, used to moving. The hawks approved of their roost, the cats flowed into the chateau and made it their own in the way of cats. One of us slept in the same room as the master, now, because he was weak, in case he woke and needed a drink or the chamber-pot. He was not dying hard. He had good days, when he was just as before. King Francis made much of him. He designed masques for the King, with a triumph - a hollow golden mechanical lion, more than life size, which walked up to the king and presented him with an armful of lilies.

But our beloved master was tiring, slowing down; life leaving him like sand running out of a glass. He was old. He did not seem to be in pain. He accepted a little more wine than he had been used to drink to help him sleep. That was the only change.

And Salai drooped, wracked with mourning. The last picture which my master completed was of Salai. He is John the Baptist, with Salai’s wicked smile, pointing upward. There are other drawings of him, beautiful and lewd, proud of flesh.

Still il Maestro asked Salai to lie down next to him, the master’s head on his bare chest, breathing in his familiar scent. I heard them whispering together when it was my watch.

Salai left the master and grabbed me. I woke from my sad half-drowse.

‘Yer ‘ave ter ‘elp me,’ he said in a fierce whisper. ‘What would you do for ‘im?’

‘Anything,’ I said with complete truth.

‘Then come,’ he said, and urged me out of my clothes. He lay down next to the dying old man. He pulled me down almost on top of him.

‘Let me see you again, my Salai,’ whispered the master. ‘Let me hear you cry out once more.’

‘Yes,’ said Salai, and kissed me hard, thrusting his hips up so that our sexes collided. I knew what he was doing. Mourning, broken hearted, Salai could not give the master what he wanted on his own; the fugitive scent and taste and sound of the flesh, now that il Maestro was leaving it. Salai could not fabricate desire. He needed me to make love to him, something I had always wanted to do. But not like this, not like this!

‘Stop thinkin’,’ snarled my lover, shaking me. So I suspended thought. I kissed that pomegranate mouth with teeth like seeds, I sucked, I bit, I tasted, and our bodies clashed, then slowed as we caught our own rhythm. In the firelight, on the French King’s pillows, I made bittersweet love to Salai as I had desired to do for so long, and I wept as I climaxed, and so did Salai, so that I tasted tears in his final kiss.

Then I mopped us clean with my shirt, and listened to the master as he praised us, called us beautiful, called everything beautiful, bade a loving farewell to life, and moved into sleep and thence into death as softly as a cloud passing.

Salai was killed in a duel two years after il Maestro’s death. I don’t think he particularly wanted to live. Neither did I, but here I am. I have the notebooks, the household, the legacy of that amazing man to secure for the future. I am not allowed to die yet. I must make sure that no one will ever forget Leonardo Da Vinci, the most wonderful man in the world. And while the paintings live, no one will ever forget Salai.