His master’s room was a mess, in stark contrast to the shop below, which he always insisted be kept in strict order. Books and sketch tablets littered his work bench. Leonardo’s immediate attention was brought to the shelves above an etching table. He had known his first week that Master Verrocchio etched his death masks and mourning vases in which widows of substantial men nurtured flowers in their husbands’ memory. But one partially etched vase occupied the narrow etching table, which barely protruded from the wall farther than the shelves above. The shelves were lined with death masks, perhaps a dozen.

He turned to Verrocchio. “Master, why are they not sold?”

“They are long ago sold. I keep one of each here. They are my friends. The ones I deliver are etched and painted according to the whims of the surviving family members. These I do not hurry. But when one of their owners comes to me in a dream, I rise at night, light my candles, and apply the nuances of expression to them. No one can know. The Church would break me on the rack.”

They both advanced and Leonardo examined each incomplete face on the bottom two shelves. His eyes then drifted to the three complete versions of the same face above, a face that was not cast from the deceased’s impression, but was modeled on a life-sized bust. That bust sat in the center of that shelf, looking lifelessly out into space without expression.

“Who is he Master?”

Verrocchio intertwined his hands in a painful wringing motion and spoke softly, “I was a few years older than you are now. Some friends and I were walking along outside the walls between the Little Gate and the Holy Gate. We sometimes had rock battles, the other boys and I. I suppose in remembrance of the street-fights our great-grandfathers indulged in long ago. The boys liked me on their side. I had a good arm.”

His master stopped and flexed his right hand, looking at it in a melancholy way. “I have not thrown a stone since.”

He paused, continuing to flex and open his hand as he stared into it. “I cannot say he was a friend—he was no rival. He was fourteen, very near your age, younger than I. Antonio di Domenico, he was; a woolworker…an apprentice like you. A stone I threw in our mock fight struck him in the temple. He died later. We did our friendly best to bring him to a physician. He died, but not in my mind. I was arrested and tried. But, according to the magistrate there were so many hopeless fools like I that living with the guilt would be sufficient punishment. That was my punishment, to be named a wicked fool headed to an audience with God.”

There was an uncomfortable silence. Then his tone turned from self-reproaching to weary, “God saw, and took my father the same year. I shall never forget the look on Domenico’s face before—smiling—and after. I try in vain to recreate his likeness here…ever failing. God makes my hand dumb, my eyes clouded, when I look within to reach for Domenico.”

This revelation had rendered Leonardo speechless. Verrocchio continued, “Even Herman knows naught of this. Though you are a boy still, you have walked long with your own sorrows—not speaking the words. I needed to impose upon an un-judging mind, so have imposed upon you. Stay and consider the masks if you like. I have another mold to take just now. Old Cosimo just passed. I must go.”

With those words Master Verrocchio turned and walked silently away, a ghost in his own house. Leonardo stood and looked up at the death masks, regarding them all without touching them for a length of time he was not later able to recall. Eventually he faded away as had his master, too stunned to even wonder about the masks that looked upon his leaving with a timeless accusatory stare.