In Bed With Lord Byron

apprentice with Verrocchio before I
developed my skills.’
    I couldn’t help it. I burst out: ‘She’s very attractive, isn’t she?’
    ‘Is she?’ Leonardo asked. He looked genuinely surprised. ‘Beautiful, yes. I had not considered if she was attractive.’
    I felt relieved but confused. Was Leonardo being kind or was he just blind?
    The week passed. I watched Leonardo intently as he painted Cecilia, but it was impossible to gauge him. I’d always imagined that he would work with hunched-up shoulders
and a frown, but he was very relaxed, almost foppish, his pencil spooling easily across the page, brush dabbing lightly. Then I watched Cecilia. After a while I began to realise that the longing in
her eyes was one of poignancy, not love. I consulted my book again and read that after giving birth to the Duke’s son, she was soon discarded and married off to Count Lodovico Bergamini.
After that, I felt a little sorry for her. Women in the fifteenth century were just birds locked in cages. I had made the right decision to come here as a man, I thought, and yet how was I ever
going to get Leonardo’s attention, his attraction, whilst he thought I was a
ragazzo
? But if he realised I was a woman, would I not instantly be put into a cage myself; would he not
immediately view me as a member of the weaker, inferior sex, as all men did in this century; someone to be tamed, caught, seduced, but not respected?
    And then Cecilia fell ill with a cold and we could not paint her. Leonardo was restless. He suggested we go down to the market to buy some birds and set them free – one of his favourite
pastimes. We went to an alley and let them out and watched them swoop and soar across the sky. Leonardo turned to me breathlessly, his eyes shining, and said, ‘I have decided. The time has
come. I must paint you. I have been wanting to ask you for so long. I must paint you.’
    ‘You want to paint – me?’
    Leonardo took a lock of my hair and curled it around his forefinger, smiling. ‘I want to paint you because I want to immortalise your beauty.’
    My God, I thought.
My God, my God, my God.
Leonardo da Vinci – the world’s greatest painter and all-round genius – fancies me!
    Back in his studio, Leonardo set up the lighting and the wooden panel to paint on swiftly. The impatience, the agitation in his gestures – he knocked over several brushes and a paint mix
in his hurry – created a deliciously electric frisson in the air. Then, his face flushed, he suggested that I go behind the screen and prepare myself.
    ‘I’m sorry?’ I asked.
    ‘Well, I thought . . .’ He blushed slightly. ‘I felt I could only do justice to the beauty of your form if you were nude,
mia caro ragazzo
.’
    ‘Oh, right,’ I blustered, suddenly turning all British in my shock. ‘Well. Great. Fab.’
    I slipped behind the screen and pulled off my tunic joyfully, shaking with desire. Oh God, this was going to be great. Then I looked down at my chest and let out a cry.
    Oh Lucy, how could you have been so stupid? Leo can’t paint you nude. Because you have BREASTS, Lucy. They may not be very large ones, but they’re still unmistakably
female.
    I slid down into a heap, locked into a ball of sorrow, my face pressed against my knees. It was hopeless. The best thing to do would be to just go home. This was the very spot where the time
machine had deposited me, so all I had to do was will it back and escape right this minute.
    Unless . . .
    I stopped panicking and started thinking a little more logically. The whole point of my plan had been, after all, to reveal my true identity, for all my doubts about his reaction. Just not
quite
so blatantly: I’d hoped to sidle up to him and confess my femininity rather than revealing my private parts. But didn’t Leonardo suspect something anyway? I remembered the
glint in his eye when I told him about Anthony. Surely he was playing games too, dropping hints so that I could feel safe about coming out of the closet?
    ‘Are you ready yet,
caro
?’ Leonardo called.
    ‘Nearly,’ I called back.
    Before I could lose my nerve, I decided to take the plunge. I tore off my clothes. I unravelled the bandages, letting my breasts spring gloriously free. I paused, feeling bashful, and pulled my
hair over my breasts. Then I muttered a quick prayer and walked out into the room.
    Leonardo looked up.
    There was a tick-tack-clattering noise as his paintbrush hit the floor.
    Finally I summoned the