Secret of Light (10 page)

Darrell worked quickly on Brodie's hand. “Now don't forget. Federica told me everyone has a big lunch here and then a
riposino
in the hot hours of the afternoon.”

“Okay.” He nodded. “So while everyone is napping we can meet in the stable and look for the route back through to the lighthouse near Eagle Glen.”

Kate nodded her agreement, and in moments Brodie's hand was bandaged with a rag, bloody from the remains of a chicken that had been slaughtered in preparation for the evening meal. His lip curling, Brodie headed inside to tell the master of his unfortunate accident with a kitchen knife.

“That was really gross.” Kate chuckled.

“Gross, but as realistic as I could manage on short notice,” said Darrell, dunking her bloody hands in a wooden bucket of water left beside the kitchen garden. “Hopefully they'll give him a job that will let him hide his true talent for now.”

“
Ragazze
!” Federica's voice came bawling from the kitchen. “Girls! Where are you? I need you to help me with the
pranzo
.”

Darrell shrugged. “It's only until after lunch,” she promised Kate as they made their way back into the
cucina
to help prepare the midday meal.

“Federica tells me you want your lunch in here,” Darrell said, as she set down a tray in front of Leonardo.

He grinned at her and smacked the table, making her jump a little. “Ha! Glad to see you doing the work you are meant for. Over here, beside me — and make it fast.” Darrell's face burned. How could the artist who had produced so many beautiful things have been a young man like this? She moved the tray as requested
and headed for the door, reminding herself that he didn't have the benefit of a twenty-first-century education.

She stepped over to the table and looked down at the sketches he had set to one side depicting a vicious-looking beast, fire leaping from its mouth.

“These sketches are wonderful,” she admitted. “It looks like you have taken the body of a lion and added the head of a serpent, or perhaps a lizard.”

“Yes, and the hind legs are actually those of a squirrel I found dead in the garden. I copied the shape of them and then lengthened them to resemble the legs of a horse,” he responded, a note of pride in his voice. “This sketch is meant for the image on the shield I showed you earlier.”

Leonardo walked around the table, his voice distant, as though lost in thought. “My father thinks he will get something any stupid farm boy could draw, but I will make him a masterpiece. Then we shall see what he thinks of the ‘low arts,' as he calls them.”

Darrell looked at him quizzically. “You sound so angry,” she ventured. “But didn't your father arrange for you to learn art from Master Verrocchio?”

“Only for a year, until he can buy me a commission in the army. He thinks this is an easy way to keep me quiet and out of his hair.” For the first time, Leonardo grinned, and he took Darrell roughly by the arm. “If you think these are good, wait until you see the finished result.”

He whisked her over to a small closet and from the recesses drew out a large package wrapped in rough sacking. He pulled the sacking aside and Darrell gasped.
It was the beast from the sketches, painted in magnificent colour upon the surface of a shield.

“This will show him,” Leonardo crowed. “He will see I am more than just a bastard son and know I am meant for more than life as a soldier or a notary.”

Darrell nodded and headed for the door.

“Wait!” he barked, and she was forced to turn around. “What are you hiding?”

Darrell flushed. “What do you mean?”

He made an impatient move with his hands. “What are you hiding?” he repeated, and clarified, “In the stable.”

“There are horses in the stable,” she muttered, trying to sidle out of the room.

“Don't be stupid. There have been no horses in Verrocchio's small stable for years. What do you have in there that is not a horse?” He looked at her craftily. “You seem to be full of secrets, just like Giovanni's crazy grandfather. Perhaps I should take you back to him in his dark, foul
casa
. He would make you tell me.”

“No — no. Don't do that.” Darrell's thoughts raced. She didn't want anyone in the stable this afternoon, most particularly this arrogant young artist. “I'll tell you. It's my dog. I know he is not welcome in the
casa
, so I keep him out there.”

“Oh.” Leonardo looked disappointed and returned to his work, ignoring the lunch Darrell had brought.

“Aren't you going to eat?” she asked, as she turned to leave.

“I will eat as I have time. I must prepare these canvasses before this evening. If I do not finish in time, Master Verrocchio will have me flayed.”

“Perhaps I could help you,” Darrell offered, feeling a bit shy. “I have done a lot of canvas preparation in my time.”

Leonardo looked shocked. “Certainly not!” he spluttered. “You are only a girl! Verrocchio would never allow it. Girls and women do not labour under his tutelage.”

Darrell felt her temper flare.

“Well,” she said, sarcasm dripping from every word, “I'm sure I couldn't possibly paint as well as any boy.”

“You are mocking me,” he said, his own face reddening. “No woman can paint with the talent of a man. Get back to your
cucina
, you
serva
.”

Darrell stepped to the table and neatly overturned the entire contents of the lunch tray onto the freshly prepared canvas. “Enjoy your lunch,
Senor Porco
,” she said sweetly, and then, clutching her new stick, hurried out of the room to the sound of his anguished roars.

Darrell hop-skipped her way into the kitchen and spied Kate right away, labouring over yet another pile of earthen crockery in the sink. “Where's Federica?” she hissed.

“She's gone to lie down,” said Kate. “I was going to wait another minute or two and then come and find you. Shouldn't we be looking for the portal?”

Darrell could hear a roaring sound approaching from down the hall. “Something else has happened. We've got to go! Hopefully we can get to the stable and hide before...” She grabbed Kate's hand and pulled her out into the garden.

“Before what?” Kate, stumbling over the hem of her long skirt, yanked her arm out of Darrell's grasp and picked up her skirts in both hands. She dashed toward the stable. “Who's mad at you now, Darrell?” she called back over her shoulder, as Darrell hobbled behind.

“Never mind — I'll tell you later.” Darrell closed the door and slid the latch. “Hopefully he won't think to look here.”

“What's happening?” A voice from inside the stable made both girls jump. In her haste to bar the door, Darrell had missed the dim glow emerging from the stall where Kate had found refuge the previous day. The glow quickly coalesced around a small lamp held high as Brodie stepped out of his place in the stall, Delaney wagging at his side.

Darrell sighed in relief. “Look, Brodie, I don't have time to explain, but I don't think we can spend any time looking for the portal right now.” She grabbed the lamp from his hand and looked around frantically. A partly broken ladder appeared in the circle of light, angling to a tiny loft above.

“That's going to have to be it.” She was at the bottom of the ladder in an instant, peering up into the darkness of the loft. Angry voices swirled outside in the yard.

“Take this,” she said firmly to Kate, handing her the lamp. She flung her stick into the loft and, pulling the ladder back as far as she could to lessen the angle, she patted the third rung. “Hop up, Delaney.”

The dog put his front paws on the first broad rung and then ran to the top, nimbly hopping over a broken
rung in the middle. He picked up Darrell's new walking stick and held it gently in his teeth.

“You next, Brodie.”

“I'll go last,” he said quietly. “I'm not afraid of these people.”

“There's nothing to be afraid of,” whispered Darrell. “I just want to stay out of the way for awhile — and I need you to pull me up this thing.”

He rolled his eyes. “If you're hiding from someone, don't you think you should put out the light?” he said, as he scurried up to the loft.

“Oh yeah!” Darrell grabbed the lamp back from Kate and twisted the knob. The wick hissed out as Kate clambered to the top. She flipped easily onto her stomach and leaned over the edge of the loft beside Brodie. Darrell grabbed Brodie's arm and scrambled up, but missed her footing on the broken rung. She cried out as her left foot swung free, and the ladder slid to the stable floor with a thud. Four arms flailed in the darkness and managed to grab various parts of Darrell's anatomy and drag her over the edge.

“That was close,” Kate breathed, still holding Darrell's hand. “Now are you going to tell us what happened?”

Darrell wiggled her skirt down to cover her knees, thankful the darkness hid her current deficiencies in the underwear department. “I had a bit of a problem with Leo...” she began. The door below them crashed open and light poured into the stable.

“I know she's in here somewhere,” a furious voice thundered.

Darrell rolled onto her stomach and put her hand on Kate's arm, pulling her backwards. She reached her other hand out to Delaney, but at the touch of his fur she felt her hair blow straight back from her face as in the teeth of a winter storm. For an instant that seemed to last forever, she gazed down over the edge of the loft into the angry and astonished eyes of Leonardo. Then the wind took her and she was gone.

“You're kidding!” Kate's face was incredulous. “We got blasted back to the present because you had a
fight
with one of the greatest artists in the history of the world?”

Darrell felt sheepish. “Well — it was more of a disagreement than a fight,” she said with mounting indignation, “and besides, I was right!”

She sat with Kate and Brodie in the deserted dining hall. It was early Saturday afternoon, and they had all recovered from the ordeal of the previous day. The night before, Darrell had found herself sprawled at the bottom of the spiral steps leading down from the lantern room, feeling like she had made it through the punishing final round of a wrestling bout. Nausea had coiled in her stomach like a sour serpent. Delaney licked her face twice and finally dropped an old stick on her chest before she was able to drag herself to her feet. Without thinking of anything but getting back to the
school, she tucked the stick in her pocket and staggered off to find Kate and Brodie in the darkened lighthouse.

Dizzy and sick, they dragged themselves outside to find howling wind and driving rain. Darrell clutched Brodie's arm all the way back along the beach to avoid tripping over rocks in the raging night. By the time they reached the top of the path, sleet was stinging Darrell's eyes. They struggled in the front door only to face the wrath of Mrs. Follett for being out in such a storm. She bundled them all upstairs for showers. Fifteen minutes later, Darrell was staring at the clock in her room as she rubbed her freshly washed hair with a towel. It was six-thirty, and the whole adventure had apparently taken an hour and a half. Including the shower!

“It's strange that you wanted to hide in the stable,” said Kate. “Didn't you realize it would be the first place that Leonardo would look?”

Darrell shrugged. “I wasn't thinking very clearly,” she admitted. “I knew he would have to take the time to wipe his lunch off the canvases before they got stained, and I figured we would have a few minutes to decide what to do next if we hid in the stable.”

“And instead, we got dragged forward through time.” Kate looked thoughtful.

“I think we need to look at this thing scientifically,” said Brodie. “Last summer when we travelled through the cave, Darrell touched the glyphs on the wall.” He paused. “But this time — no cave, no glyphs. Just the lighthouse.”

Kate shivered. “It's so weird to think we have some kind of portal to the past right down the beach from
where we're sitting now. I mean, anybody could go through it.”

“I don't think that's true,” said Brodie. “If that was the case, everyone who has ever worked in the lighthouse could have been flipping back and forth through history. And what about the people who use the old hayloft in the stable? Do you see them dropping by for a visit?” He looked at Kate. “No. Think about it — who travelled through the cave?”

“Well, duh! We all did.”

Brodie turned his eyes to Darrell. “No,” he said, “that's not quite right.”

“I did,” she whispered. “With Delaney. Every time. If you guys were touching me, you came, too.”

Brodie nodded. “So, if conditions are right, we can all travel through as long as we have Darrell and Delaney.”

“But the cave had those three glyphs,” said Kate. “Somehow they helped move us through time. What made it work in the lighthouse?”

Brodie shook his head. “I don't know. But I'd like to go back and run a little test.”

Kate stiffened. “Oh no — I don't think I'm ready yet, Brodie. I mean — I love this time travel thing, it's really interesting and everything, but — I'm just not ready to head back yet. What if we got turned around and went into the future instead?”

Darrell jumped in her chair, feeling as though a tiny shock had crackled along her spine. She opened her mouth to speak, closed it, and gave her head a little shake.

Brodie crumpled the paper napkin under his elbow and tossed it at Kate. “You goof! I didn't mean we
should take another trip into the past. As a matter of fact, I want to be completely safe, so I think Darrell and Delaney shouldn't come at all.”

Kate flipped the napkin back. “In that case, I don't think I need to be there either.” She shuddered. “I don't want to go near the lighthouse for a while. My stomach needs a chance to settle for a few days.”