Page 4 of A Dangerous Bargain

“No it’s not!”

“Of course it is. How else was I supposed to find you? Lurk outside your horrible attic? The younger boys all think it’s haunted, you know. Are you going to let us in, or not?” He flaps his hand. It collides into mine and knocks the key flying.

I roll my eyes and look pointedly at the fallen key. “Gesù Cristo. Must you tonight?”

He stoops so suddenly to pick it up, my own stomach reels. He offers me my key with a flourish. “Yes, I must! Because someone ordered me to do chores all day, and now I’m behind in my work.”

“Right, yes, it’s all my fault you refused to practice this morning,” I grumble.

He hadn’t even attempted to sketch before Giorgio’s outburst. He’d sat there twirling a curl of hair around his finger instead. A token from his new lover? Madonna santa, I hope not. If he’s the reason we endure another plague of lice, I’ll shear off his fetching waves myself.

Sometimes it feels like Leonardo da Vinci joined Verrocchio’s workshop just to punish me. I’ll never forget the first day his red-blond hair was bobbing around. He was showing his portfolio to all the artist workshops, trying to get one to bring him on as an apprentice. When I saw his sketches, it felt like a gut punch, because they were so good. Better than everyone else’s. Including mine.

The next day he was circling my workshop, being all handsome and jovial, the other apprentices already hanging on his every word, welcoming him like he was the most interesting person they’d ever met. I hunched on my stool, quietly and inexplicably furious, working on a tiny detailed part of my painting so I had an excuse not to say hello.

But then he sat on me. Yes, on me.

“Oh, sorry,” he said, laughter on his lips. “I didn’t see you there.”

He’s been sitting on me ever since. Metaphorically, of course. I hate it when we touch.

He’s always late, always behind, never around when you need him. And Verrocchio lets him get away with it because when he does work, everything Leonardo touches sends our patrons to their knees. Last year, he put finishing details on a David statue that were so vivid, so exquisitely rendered, the lady of the house had to cover it with a sheet to keep her daughters from swooning over it.

Despite all his feckless loafing, his inability to meet a single deadline, and what a disgraceful role model he is for the other apprentices, when Leonardo actually tries, he’s the best artist in the workshop without ever making a bargain with the angel. Even though thinking the very thought makes me want to rip off my fingernails, it’s still true, and having fewer fingernails won’t make it less true.

And so, with a roll of my eyes, I usher him into the workshop with a sarcastic after you gesture. Leonardo doffs an imaginary cap as he sweeps past me, and my eye twitches.

Tragically, despite me subtly and not so subtly begging him not to, Verrocchio has assigned Leonardo and me to work on the same painting.

Like all Florentine workshops, most of Verrocchio’s commissions are collaborations between artists. It allows workshops to work harder, faster, to more quickly quench Florence’s endless thirst for beauty. The breathtaking magnificence is what makes Florence so special, what draws the angels to our city and our city alone.

God-blessed, the church says of Florence. The angels flock here for beauty, and the magic they provide in return lets Florence strengthen her walls, keep gold in her coffers, heal the sick. Florence’s wealthy families surround themselves with beauty in the hopes of attracting an angel of their own, to show their allies and enemies alike that even among blessed Florentines, God smiled on their name. After all, who wouldn’t want their daughter to marry into a home where an angel walked? Who would dare attack a family so favored by God? What merchant wouldn’t want to bargain for an internal whisper that said whether or not a deal was good or bad, if the price of silver would rise or fall?

But sometimes I wonder if the wealthy take things too far. Last week, I painted gold cherubs on a chamber pot. An actual chamber pot! Shitting gold seems preferable to shitting in gold, but to each his own, I suppose. It’s not like my family would ever be well-off enough to dream of having their own angel.

I unroll the damp linen protecting my painting palette. “You know, if you spent as much time working as you did fooling around, you’d have your own workshop by now.”

Leonardo shields his eyes from an imaginary sun and pretends to look for something. “Oh yeah? Where’s your workshop, then?”

I scowl at my paints. His question makes me feel like the grayish greenish brownish smear at the palette’s edge. He’s right. I should have my own workshop by now. ’Tis none of his business why I don’t. Unlike me, Leonardo doesn’t have anyone depending on him. He can mess around, do whatever he wants when he wants, and there’ll never be any consequences for him. We’re the two oldest apprentices in the workshop by several years. I’m still here because I have to be. He’s still here because he can’t be bothered to do anything else. The unfairness of it twists me up in knots.

“Can we start?” I snap. “I’d like to sleep before sunrise.”

Tobias and the Angel has the marks of a good painting, but not a great one. I stare at the half-finished image, trying to diagnose what’s amiss. “The fish in Tobias’s hand.”

Leonardo gags. “It looks like a slug. A horrible, turgid slug.”

I bite my lip. I will not smile at him when we’re working. It’s a rule of mine. “Do you think you can improve it?”

He rolls up his sleeves, cracking his long, thin fingers. “For you, Virgil? I would happily banish this tumescent slug.”

We lift our brushes. Even if I hadn’t seen Leonardo’s narrow shoulders hunched over the workbench all day, I would’ve known he mixed the paints. There’s no grittiness, and the egg tempera’s stink is tamed by smoky myrrh. When I offer a begrudging compliment, he beams like I’ve just proclaimed him the greatest artist of our generation.

“So I’ve been having thoughts,” Leonardo begins.

“Must you share them now?”

“I’ve been thinking of centaurs.”