Page 43 of DATE
"Thank you, my lord."
Lorenzo, clearly uninterested in talking further with the three of them, turned and left the room.
Alejo let out a cheer, and Da Vinci came over to pat her shoulder.
Meanwhile, the girl, having narrowly escaped death, was still counting money on her fingers.
One gold coin is worth 120 soldi. I earn 65 soldi a month. That means… how much exactly?
——
So, they were really going to move into the palace together.
Both Da Vinci and she now had personal servants, and she no longer had to worry about making sure the artist drank enough orange juice while he worked on his drafts.
When she thought about it… there was a slight feeling of loss.
Since they had started out living together in the same place, naturally, they had to divide things up.
The freshly dried pasta had to be packed away, and the unsuccessful wine had to be thrown out.
Da Vinci also gave her two books, both on literature and art theory.
Hedy really didn't have much to her name, so she only packed up the bottles, jars, and the half-made gloves and masks she had been working on.
The afternoon before leaving, she secretly checked those small packages once more. Each one was still intact, with no signs of having been tampered with.
… It was a relief that Medici hadn’t discovered them, or she would have certainly been accused of witchcraft and burned alive.
This time and age, they didn’t even know whether diamonds existed, so everything had to be hidden very carefully.
She thought long and hard about her assets in Florence.
Even if she had money and could buy anything, nothing was truly reliable.
One of the differences between adults and children is understanding that life is unpredictable, and at any given moment, one might lose control over their own fate.
As soon as Hedy realized she had arrived in this world, she immediately replaced her Austrian-style maid uniform with the light, flowing dresses worn by the locals.
This place had a typical Mediterranean climate, warm enough during the spring and summer that clothes couldn’t hide jewelry—its contours would be too obvious.
She had stayed in Da Vinci’s home for a while back then, and she couldn’t bring herself to feel at ease. She decided to either bury or hide her belongings, placing them in absolutely safe spots.
She didn’t have a home in this world.
Whether it was Da Vinci’s home or the independent bedroom in the Doge’s Palace, both were places she could lose her right to stay in at any moment.
And the owners of those houses had the right to search and inspect at any time. If discovered, she might really be thrown into the hands of the Inquisition for judgment.
But if she hid things in a tree hollow or a bird’s nest, there was the risk that wild animals or birds might take them away, and she would never know what happened to them.
It was said that Mr. Lorenzo had always been close to the citizens, and when they entered the palace, he personally checked the various items they had brought with them.
"What is this?"
"Sir, it's a mask."
He looked at it with suspicion. "Put it on, let me see."
