In Bed With Lord Byron

giggle.
    Finally we ended up snuggled up on the pallet, soft and dreamy together, my head lolling sleepily against Leonardo’s shoulder.
    ‘Look at the light as it withdraws up the walls and creeps back into the night,’ he said softly. ‘I’m fascinated by different types of light. I must write it down in my
notebook – but I’m too drunk.’ He giggled, and then became serious again. ‘I like the quality of light when it’s constrained and falls through a window, but there is
nothing more dazzling than the light out in the countryside, when it is utterly free and only falls through the clouds, those wispy windows in the sky. I like the percussion of light. I think that
is the right way to describe it . . . the way it hits an object and then fractures into light and shadow over it. Then there is the light which is spiritual – it illuminates the divine
within. You see, I am not so sacrilegious as they all think. It’s just that I prefer not to find God in a church but in the beauty of everyday—’
    Perhaps it was the drink, but I found tears welling up in my eyes.
    ‘
Mia ragazzo
, are you all right?’ he asked tenderly.
    ‘It’s just – you reminded me then of someone I once loved.’ For some reason I had started thinking about my first night with Anthony and the video he had showed me of the
dawn, and I had felt inexplicably moved. ‘His name was Anthony . . .’ I saw something flicker in Leonardo’s eyes and added hastily, ‘I meant Antonia, of course.’ I
laughed, drying my eyes. ‘I’m drunk.’
    ‘Of course,’ Leonardo said, but there was a wry smile in his voice.
    My disguise was starting to slip. I just about got away with that faux pas, but a few days later I made an impossible blunder.
    iv) The Lady with an Ermine
    The following week we went to Duke Ludovico’s palace to begin work on
Lady with an Ermine
. We were taken into a large room, the walls adorned with tapestries.
There we waited as ten minutes, fifteen minutes, twenty minutes passed. The ermine’s claws scuttled in agitation against the cage. Leonardo became impatient and was just muttering that the
Duke could go
sfrozare
himself, when Cecilia entered. She was followed by a bored-looking male guard.
    The moment I saw her, I cursed myself.
    Over and over and over.
    She was beautiful. Tall and willowy, with luxuriant brown hair that she wore pinned back from her elegant face. Her skin was so translucent it looked as though it had been laid over her face
like finest tissue paper, highlighting an exquisite map of blue veins beneath; her features were so refined they looked as though they had been sculpted by Michelangelo. Her blue eyes were shrewd
and she carried about her a calm, resigned air which made her seem much more mature than her eighteen years.
    As Leonardo came forward and bowed, she smiled. The guard frowned.
    ‘Erm, this is Benedetto Dei, Ludovico’s right-hand man,’ she said.
    Translation:
I’m young and female and you’re young and male, and there’s no way the Duke is going to leave us alone together.
    ‘And I see your apprentice has joined us.’ She nodded at me shyly.
    ‘Yes,’ said Leonardo. ‘He’ll be sketching you too, and learning from me, if that’s all right.’
    ‘Of course.’
    Several rather tedious hours passed as Leonardo set up the lighting with his usual fastidiousness, but Cecilia was very patient. The ermine was released from its cage and she seemed pleased to
hold it, petting it lovingly. As Leonardo began working, I found myself biting my pencil in agitation. I was convinced that though Leonardo could do nothing with her in the flesh, he was making
love to her in his mind; every stroke of his pencil seemed to vibrate across the page like a frustrated caress.
    And I’d been
so
close to seducing him. Surreptitiously, I consulted
The Idiot’s Guide to da Vinci
and discovered that
The Lady with an Ermine
took two bloody
years. Jesus. I couldn’t hang around for that long!
    I felt black with despair. Maybe this whole time machine thing was a joke. After all, Byron had only ended up hurting me, and now it looked as though I was in a case of unrequited passion.
Perhaps these escapades were doing me more harm than good . . .
    When the session had ended, Cecilia left, thanking us both, and Leo looked over my sketches.
    ‘I think your sense of perspective needs work,’ he remarked. Seeing my sulky face, he chided me. ‘Come, come, I studied for years as an