“Closer and farther,
“Closer and farther,Together and apart”
Together and apart”Mattea stopped just inside the door. She had expected to be the first to arrive at the studio and to find it empty. It was not.
Isabetta jumped up at the sight of her friend in the doorway, though the man standing beside her showed no signs of perturbance.
Leonardo da Vinci stood at Isabetta’s table, where she had been perched upon her stool. Spread about on the wood plank before them were the many sketches Isabetta had made of Boticelli’s mural. In some there was but a single gibbeted man, in others there were the three already in place on the wall and in eternity.
But Mattea saw all Isabetta longed to hide in how closely she had positioned her stool to Leonardo’s body, the fineness of the woman’s dark gr
