Da Vinci's Cat Read online

  Suddenly Bee’s eyes were filled with tears.

  Mom held her tight. “You okay?”

  Moo leaned over. “Are you in trouble?”

  “I was.” Bee wiped her eyes. “But I fixed it.”

  The old lady raised a teacup, toasting Bee like it was just the two of them in the house. “Grazie,” she whispered. Thank you.

  “. . . and sold!” the cell phone cried.

  “Sold?” Mom cried. “It sold?” She threw her arms around Moo. Moo was screaming. The woman in the blue dress hugged the man beside her, cheering like crazy. The people in the dining room shrieked. The man in the bow tie blew his nose.

  Miss Bother didn’t move, though. Nana. She just kept watching Bee. “You made everything better, Beatrice,” she whispered. Their secret. “You made everything good.”

  Author’s Note

  Federico II Gonzaga was a real kid, born in the year 1500 in tiny Mantua—now part of Italy—in a castle with five hundred rooms. Beginning in 1510, he spent three years in Rome as a hostage of Pope Julius II. The two became friends, the boy even nursing the old man through malaria. Federico’s mother, Isabella d’Este, one of the great art collectors in Europe, wrote Federico and his tutors countless bossy letters. Following the pope’s death in 1513, Federico returned to Mantua, becoming duke in 1520.

  Raphael’s portrait of Federico can still be seen in The School of Athens, the curly-haired boy on the left. (There is controversy over whether this boy is in fact Federico, but I’m certain of it.) The painter Raphael was handsome, charming, and witty, with a constant circle of students and admirers. Everyone loved him . . . except Michelangelo. The two trash-talked each other whenever they met, Raphael usually winning. He actually called Michelangelo a hangman. Legend has it that Raphael borrowed a key to the Sistine Chapel from the architect Bramante and snuck in to study the ceiling by torchlight. To the best of my knowledge he did not sketch Bee, but a quick internet search of “Raphael drawings” will show his incredible talent.

  As you’ve probably gathered, Michelangelo had issues. He changed his clothes so infrequently that when he took off his boots, “the skin came away like a snake”—that’s how one friend described it. He fought nonstop with Julius II and once got so angry that he threw a board at the pope from the top of the scaffolding. He then panicked and fled Rome on horseback at midnight, chased by the pope’s spies. Michelangelo didn’t seem to mind young Federico, however. He even let the boy give tours of the Sistine Chapel while he worked.

  Amazingly enough, the great artist and inventor Leonardo da Vinci lived in Mantua before Federico was born and drew a portrait of Isabella d’Este. By 1511, however, he had fled Italy’s endless wars for France, where he worked for the king and sketched cats. Perhaps he invented a time machine, but since many of his notebooks have been lost, we’ll never know for sure. He called Michelangelo a baker, as an insult.

  Italians did indeed eat spaghetti with cinnamon sugar because tomatoes weren’t yet known in Europe; like chocolate and peanuts, they’re from the New World. And for a time canaries were so popular that they were worth their weight in gold.

  Acknowledgments

  Many thanks to historian Brad Bouley for his excellent insights into Renaissance Rome, disease, wages, and schoolwork.

  —C. G. M.

  About the Author

  CATHERINE GILBERT MURDOCK is the bestselling author of the Newbery Honor Book The Book of Boy. While researching Da Vinci’s Cat, she traveled to Italy—unlike her characters, she had to take an airplane—and visited Mantua, including the five-hundred-room castle where Federico Gonzaga grew up. She is the author of several acclaimed novels for children and teens and lives outside Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

  WWW.CATHERINEMURDOCK.COM

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  Copyright

  DA VINCI’S CAT. Copyright © 2021 by Catherine Gilbert Murdock. Illustrations copyright © 2021 by Paul O. Zelinsky. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  www.harpercollinschildrens.com

  Cover art © 2021 by Paul O. Zelinsky

  Cover hand lettering by Ryan O’Rourke

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Murdock, Catherine Gilbert, author.

  Title: Da Vinci’s cat / a novel by Catherine Gilbert Murdock.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Greenwillow Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2021. | Audience: Ages 8-12. | Audience: Grades 4-6. |

  Summary: Using a mysterious wardrobe that allows them to travel through time, two eleven-year-olds, Federico a boy from the Italian Renaissance and Bee a girl from present-day New Jersey, work together to prevent the bickering between two great artists from changing the future.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2020053868 | ISBN 9780063015258 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780063015272 (ebook)

  Subjects: CYAC: Time travel—Fiction. | Michelangelo Buonarroti, 1475-1564—Fiction. | Raphael, 1483-1520—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.M9416 Dad 2021 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020053868

  Digital Edition MAY 2021 ISBN: 978-0-06-301527-2

  Print ISBN: 978-0-06-301525-8

  2122232425PC/LSCH10987654321

  FIRST EDITION

  Greenwillow Books

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