Leonardo DaVinci sketches a conspirator

(from Caterina by Moonlight, page 133)

The walk back to the Medici palazzo took us past the Signoria, where bodies in various degrees of decay still hung from the upper windows. Seated below the skeletal corpses was a handsome fellow sketching the hanging body of Bartolomeo, still in the rags of his Turkish disguise. I recognized the artist—the inventor of the contraption that had hoisted me on high as an angel when I was a child.

“Signor DaVinci?”

He glanced up at me with no recognition.

“I was one of your angels at the Santa Croce miracle play, seven years ago.”

“Ah, yes. I remember you now. All grown up, I see.”