The Witch in the Lake (3 page)

Leo stared at his father.

Marco sighed, spreading his hands. ‘There are very few of us. And the authorities fear magic. The Church says we are devil worshippers—'

‘But that's silly—'

‘
We
know that, but the consequences of being discovered, Leo, could well be death.'

There was silence for a moment and then Marco leaped up to close the shutters. ‘I think it will take many years before you'll have the power to perform transformation. And I pray to God that by then you will have the wisdom to use it well.'

Now that Leo had started looking, he found it hard to stop. He practised ‘seeing' everywhere, not just on the wooden stool near the fireplace. To his delight, he found it easy. Without even trying he discovered new worlds nestled inside such familiar things. He saw trees that remembered the wind in their branches inside firewood and benches and shelves. He saw little boys curled up in men's hearts; a disappointing dream in the eyes of his neighbour. Soon it came as naturally as his next breath. But sometimes it was almost too much. He saw double, triple of anything that other people saw—his mind became crowded, his eyes flooded with private truths. Secrets lay there before him like landscapes behind a fog, and he only had to breathe on them for the cloud to clear.

When Leo was eight, he went with his father to visit a merchant who sold brooms. Marco was looking at a fine, thick straw broom, when Leo whispered into his ear. ‘There's a hungry wolf in that man's heart. When he smiles, I can see its teeth bared to bite.' Marco, who had no money to spare, and didn't want to get bitten, decided not to do business with the merchant, and later bought a good, cheap broom on his travels to the city.

Marco was very pleased with Leo. ‘I knew it,' he exclaimed, ‘you have great talent. Your vision is your strongest magic. I've only had a thimbleful. You have a river. Just like your great grandfather—'

‘Who, not Manton?' Leo shuddered.

‘No,
his
father—Illuminato—he had the twin signs, too.'

‘Did he look like me, what magic did he do?'

But Marco waved his hand. ‘Let's walk quickly. Tonight we'll have supper early, because tomorrow I must leave for Florence at dawn.' He rubbed his hands together at the thought of it.

Leo never heard all the history of the great Illuminato, and it is a pity because if he'd known more about him, he might never have thrust himself into danger, unarmed and ignorant, in the years to come.

Leo's village was quite a distance from the great walled city of Florence. Most days except Sunday, Leo waved to his father as Marco set off for the two-hour walk to the city. Only a few of the men from the village worked in Florence, in the busy workshops where they sold wool and silk, cut hair, made looms, built furniture. Most villagers thought it too far to venture, and preferred to stay within the slow secluded world of the village, working in the olive groves and vineyards, or curing pigs for the market.

Marco was a wood carver and worked in the back of the shop owned by Signor Butteri. When he was younger, Signor Butteri did his own carving and selling, but now he suffered from gout—a disease that caused his legs to swell and his temper to sour. But he was fond of his assistant, because Marco often came to work with a new remedy to try for his illness, and was always interested in discussing his latest symptoms. Even though Marco was sometimes late to work, he was an excellent carver. The workshop specialised in wedding chests, where brides placed their linen, and Marco's chests were very popular, with their smooth satin finish and careful decoration.

Marco quite enjoyed wood-carving—it was a living, he told Leo—and it allowed him to roam about in the city he loved most.

Marco finished work at three in the afternoon. But he never walked straight home. He lingered. He liked to talk with people—merchants, apothecaries, lawyers, labourers—and hear the heartbeat of the city. He'd drink a glass of wine at the markets, visit the other workshops where artists were painting or sculpting or inventing. The bustle of Florence was so different from the secretive stillness of the village. Marco liked to listen to people's news, and news about medical discoveries was his favourite kind.

Marco was like a detective, searching for clues that would help him solve the mystery of the human body. He wanted to know how it looked inside, how the blood flowed in the veins, how the bones stayed attached and didn't float all about. If he'd had to remain in this small village all his life, he often said, he'd go to the grave believing that the arrangement of the planets above caused the plague down here on earth.

‘In the city of Florence men are searching for truth,' he'd sigh. ‘Here there is only superstition and fear.' And that never saved anyone, he'd mutter to himself.

When Marco came home late from work, he was often lit up, as if he were a lamp someone had kindled. He glowed with hope, talk, new information. ‘This is a wonderful time we're living in,' he'd beam to Leo, ‘we are discovering so much—it seems every day we know more about life, about
us!
'

And Leo would beam back, knowing he was about to hear news that belonged only to a handful of people in the country.

In Florence, only twenty years ago, there had lived Marco's hero, Leonardo da Vinci. Leonardo was best known for his art, but Marco was more interested in his investigations of the human body. The great man had kept private notebooks—no one knew how many, most people knew nothing about them at all—and he'd sketched drawings, made notes, scribbled ideas that had never been thought of before in the history of the world.

Leo had stayed up with his father many nights until dawn, when Marco had just returned from the city. He'd tell Leo how he'd got talking with someone, a scholar who'd known another, whose father had assisted the great Leonardo.

‘The man had a passion for truth,' Marco would begin in a hushed, awed voice, ‘and he didn't care what danger that put him in.' Leonardo had opened up human bodies, Marco said, to study them.

‘Ugh!' cried Leo. ‘
Che schifo!
'

‘Well, he wanted to get the anatomy right,' Marco explained. ‘How can you draw a leg properly, with all its strength and power, if you don't know how it looks inside? What's under the skin, how does the muscle pull? So you know what? Leonardo went to hospitals at night, with a lantern, and dissected corpses. He'd cut open the body, and draw what he saw inside.'

Leo, listening to this in the flickering light, couldn't help shuddering. He'd looked at his own leg, tracing the muscle under his skin.

‘He even followed criminals on the day they were to be executed, to see their faces and how they looked at the point of death. But then,' and Marco's face darkened, ‘the Pope stopped him cutting up bodies. Leonardo wasn't allowed to even set foot in a Roman hospital any more—or he'd be sentenced to death.' Marco snorted. ‘Didn't he just want to discover the truth? Who else ever had the courage to do it!'

Marco kept his own notebooks in a locked box under his bed. He faithfully recorded conversations he'd had, word for word, with people in the city. He'd copy drawings, and compare them with others he'd made, trying to build up his own library of knowledge about anatomy.

But on the night that Leo came home late, with the ghostly echo from the lake still throbbing in his head, Marco was perhaps the most excited that Leo had ever seen him.

‘This is truly amazing,' Marco was exclaiming to himself as he tried to copy from the sketches lying in front of him. ‘The human heart on the table.'

Leo silently cheered. Wasn't it lucky that Marco's remarkable discovery had occurred on the very same night as his own? But as Leo built up a fire, and filled the pot with water and slices of turnip and onion, he felt a tug of anger that
his
discovery could never be discussed, whereas the next two hours would be devoted to Marco's.

‘See?' Marco thrust a drawing into the lamplight. ‘This is a copy—but a person who I won't name told me it's a faithful copy of a sketch made by Leonardo some twenty-five years ago. It's only just been found.' Marco wiped his hand over his face. ‘If we know what's inside us, we can find a cure when the sickness comes!'

Leo peered at the drawing. There was a cluster of wiggly lines inside the heart, and lots of tiny arrows and writing that all looked like it was written backwards.

Marco chuckled as he watched Leo's puzzled face. ‘Mirror writing,' he explained. ‘Leonardo wrote like that for secrecy.' Marco picked up a small lady's pocket mirror from the table, and held it close to the drawing.

‘He's done cross-sections of the heart,' murmured Marco, ‘you can see all the cardiac vessels. Leonardo says it's the heart that pumps the blood all around the body! What do you think of that?'

Leo had a turn with the mirror, and was excited too when real words leaped out of the jumble of mirror writing. But even as he looked and admired, he wished he could talk about what went on
inside
his heart, and not just about the look of it.

‘I think I'll go to bed, Papà,' he said at last, and got up wearily from the table. But Marco was still under the spell of the drawing. Leo was putting on his nightshirt when Marco finally looked up and answered him.

‘What? You're going to sleep already?'

Leo pulled the curtain back.

Marco looked like someone who has been underwater, coming up suddenly for air. ‘You're not having any supper, Leo?
Is
there any supper?'

Leo sighed. He watched Marco trying to remember something as his mind came slowly back into the room, into the present.

‘
La minestra
,' answered Leo. ‘You know, the soup—onion and turnip. But I'm not hungry.'

‘Why? Don't you feel well? What is it?' Marco was alarmed. All at once he was on his feet, coming over to feel Leo's forehead.

Leo grinned. If he'd ever wanted his father's whole attention, Leo had only to mention a slight headache, a sore throat, a stomach ache, and Marco would be there, bending over him, consulting his notebooks for treatments. ‘No, no I'm fine,' Leo waved his hand away.

Marco straightened up. His face was set.

He's remembered, thought Leo.

‘Did something happen tonight that made you so late?' asked Marco. ‘Or were you just careless?'

Look at him wanting me to say the second thing, thought Leo. He has to ask the first, but he doesn't really want to know.

Leo struggled. He imagined those little vessels of his heart wriggling around in confusion. ‘Something happened, Papà, down near the lake,' he burst out.

‘Oh, Madonna!' cried Marco, stamping his foot. ‘How many times have I told you not to go there? A hundred, a thousand? Are you deaf, boy?'

Leo jumped up in rage to face him. ‘But
why?
You're always saying how stupid these superstitions are. You don't believe them all anyway! Why should we obey these silly laws when it might be just another story—I've heard you say just that!'

‘Yes, but the lake—'

‘Like the crazy people who believe Massimo's beads ward off the evil eye.'

‘I know, and now everyone wants them. But the lake is different—'

‘And even your Signor Butteri,' Leo went on, ‘last week when his son was ill, he replaced all his furniture with red, because he was told that would cure his son!'

Marco laughed. ‘You're telling me—I had to go out and find all the new coverings!'

‘You admire your Leonardo so much because he
didn't
believe these fanciful ideas, don't you? He did his own experiments. He wanted to discover what's true, right?'

‘“Those who only study old books and neglect Mother Nature will never find the truth they are seeking.”' Marco brought out Leonardo da Vinci's words in his serious, deep voice.

Leo nodded. He began to pace around the room in his nightshirt. He felt flushed, excited, as if he were on the edge of a discovery. ‘So Leonardo relied on experience for his knowledge, yes? He even cut bodies open to see with his own eyes! He didn't just believe what people say.'

Marco frowned as his eyes moved around the room, watching his son. ‘Mm, but the lake is something else, Leo, and you know it. You won't get around me like this.'

‘What do I know about the lake? Only what people say. Why do
you
believe them?'

Marco looked away. He stared at the wall, where a painting of his wife was hung.

Leo waited, his heart pounding.

‘I'll only say this,' Marco's voice was loud in the still room. ‘You must never go near that lake again, my boy, and I hope you didn't involve Merilee in this dangerous adventure of yours tonight—'

‘Well, if you want to know—'

‘I don't.' Marco waved his hand. ‘Heaven knows we've caused enough sorrow to that family. Just keep away—from the lake and Merilee.'

Marco turned his back on Leo and moved towards the table.

Leo let out a grunt of anger. ‘Are you still dwelling on that? Laura disappeared three whole years ago! It's Meri's aunt who's responsible for all that mess! You tried to do everything you could!'

Marco sat down heavily in his chair. ‘I did try, but it wasn't good enough. And sometimes that's worse than doing nothing at all.'

Leo watched Marco pick up his notebook and begin to read. But he saw his father's eyes hold still, staring off into the dark space of the room. He could only imagine what it must have been like to live through every second of that last hour. Because Leo hadn't been there. No one had—only Marco, who had never said a word.

Leo and Merilee were nine years old when Laura fell ill. She'd just had her thirteenth birthday, and Leo remembered Merilee telling him huffily that Laura had gone and grown up overnight and wouldn't play games with them any more—not even hide and seek.