Il Eterno Da Vinci

Il Eterno Da Vinci

She shuffled past the carts pushing their meager wares, crowded like flies on all of Via Nazionale.  Nearest the monastery, diviners of the Black order, their machine crafts spread before them in their armored wagons.

Most prized above all other creations their fudge, which she bought once a year on her birthday when her master permitted her free leave from the piazza.  She stopped, breathing in the heavy cocoa perfume, imagining what it would have been like in the new world, before the great war, and before all passage to the new and strange world beyond Europa was deemed as sin by the Da Vinci.

Their black masks hung in their face, the fine mesh of their hoods wafting with their breath; their hands shuffled the sleeves, hidden in their long robes.  They stood silently, watching her every move as she scanned their wares.  Coffee, cocoa, and “Inspiration Dust” nearly 300,000 gilding a gram, their wares are worth a king’s ransom from the new world.  She selected a sizable piece of fudge, and handled her ten gilding, a year’s savings, to the white gloved money-keeper.

Only ten more days until her 21st birthday; it’s only ten more days until she travels to the Piazza Di Giudizio to await her trial, fate, or oil.  Just think of fudge… Everyone must receive judgment from the Da Vinci.

Would you give your life for Cocoa?  Columbus paid for two of the most delicious discoveries of the forbidden new world, tea and cocoa.  Directly disobeying all the laws set forth by the Da Vinci II regarding discovery and ocean travel, he set forth onto new land bringing back with him tea and cocoa.  Reluctantly the greusomeness of his trial and execution was overshadowed and Da Vinci XVII realized the potential commercial properties of cocoa.

Da Vinci XVII made Columbus into an example, showing the brave or foolhardy what happens when one is to directly disobey the orders of any Da Vinci law from any era.  The Da Vinci XVII said that evil brown skinned men that would eat the flesh of civilized man lay beyond the horizon, if the monsters beyond the horizon didn’t swallow your ship whole.

The Yorks from Amsterdam thought to spirit Columbus away, or hold him in Worms at a sanctified church of the “Christians,” a rising sect.  Their people had thought Colubmus held the key to a vast mythos and deemed him a “Messiah.”  They refined the cocoa, tried to grow the beans into trees in indoor gardens.

Da Vinci XVII, having hunted Columbus, seized him and left a ruin of the Yorks, burning nearly every village to ruin.  Da Vinci XVII then gave the duties of growing, refining, and making of all things chocolate to the Black Order, the Il Machina.

It is the Da Vinci XVII, the savior of our world, our year of 15 and 490.  Only ten more days.  

Suddenly she remembered the heavy burden of pigment and humana oil in her messenger’s pack, slung across her shoulders.  She had to somehow find her way back through the pressing throng of the morning commerce before the Master finds she tarried too long, as her free leave was only for this hour.

The Master has been commissioned to paint a legacy portrait of Da Vinci XVII to hang in the Piazza Di Giudizio, the hall of judgments.  The painting, largely worked upon by herself and the other apprentices, is nearly finished and awaits detailing by the master.

As she ran her slippers slapped against the uneven cobblestone and hurt her feet.  As she wound her way back to the piazza, turning here, turning there, down the uneven streets and crumbling plasterwork she wondered if the Da Vinci knows that while his painting is being worked upon by hands of those he’s about to judge, that master sits drinking, selling back some of the humana excess he was granted?

She also wondered how many apprentices went into the painting.  How many were judged and died that worked upon the Master’s paintings?  Not just the craftsmanship alone, but how many people died to make the humana they mix with pigment?

The broken cobblestones of this ancient cit of Florence proved no match or score, as she arrived only moments before the last stroke of the thirteenth hour.

She hurried through the crumbling Plaza Di Friazzo, where the Master called home, even though she was only moments late…

“JANYS!” she heard the Master bellow drunkenly, not even past the luncheon hour.  “JANYS!” he screamed again.

“You damned waste of humana…” he started, and slurred in his poor Italian.

She hurried up the scrawled iron work spiraling stairs to his private suites.  She rushed, taking steps two at a time, following the sound of his cursing and opened the door. She found him bathing.  Blushing, she turned and closed the door back to only a crack.

She stammered, “Forgive me Maestro di Friazza… I .. I did not realize…” she began an apology only to be cut short.

“A sworn virgin living life as a boy and embarrassed to see a grown man bathing?  Hand me a damned towel.”

“Maestro?”

“A towel!” His voice bellowed off of tiled room.  He stood from the bath, revealing his full naked body.  Steam started to rise slightly from his white skin, dancing in the light streaming from the window behind him.

She started in, turning her head to one side.  She found the towel with her hand and handed towards her Maestro.  He caught her hand and started at her for a moment, then pushed it away.

She quickly rushed out as he began a cruel and hard laugh.

II.  Janys’ Brother

The only hope she ever had was as a sworn virgin.  A mind such as hers was developed and tested, studying in primary art schools with color theory before the age of 5.  All teaching and life skills were taught and tested before the age of Endocrine, 13 years.  It is crucial before the body begins making changes that the mind be set in stone.

Her parents, not wanting the burden of raising a daughter, sold her to the Maestro.  Her father said that only the rich can afford dogs, birds, and daughters.  Sons were the lifeblood of the poor, by the backs of which their meager subsistent lives were scraped from the Italian countryside.

Her brother possessed an equally sharp mind.  Ever since they were small children playing games, Romus would take control, set rules, complex tasks of interactions and never seemed to tire of them.  Games would seem like separate lives, separate worlds where a passersby were only part of the background where Romus and Janys were the players.

It came as no surprise to her when she reached the age of 5 that Romus was to be an Il Machina, trained of the Black Order.  He had already devised of a better way of farming the land in terrain steps and a more yielding crop rotation.

She felt a pang of jealousy for the Il Machina, making fudge.  It seemed so luxurious, and the one day that her fudge lasted was enough to keep her going until next year…

She once begged her parents to run away to Indighrdi, on the outskirts of the lands East outside of the passable zones.  Outside the passable zones it is said the land is ravaged with the Black Plague, but if they were a bit farther from the reach of the Da Vinci….

Travel to the zones outside of the passable areas was entirely forbidden.  It had been lectured to her by her primary teacher that the Plague would take her and empty all the sin of its sickness so black and thick that no death eater could possibly erase all of it, even with the finest of breads and the thickest of salt.

To Be Continued.