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She thought about the instrument the lady of the house had played earlier and mimicked the motion of pressing the keys at the table, showing Da Vinci.
"Is it a Cvichord?" Da Vinci asked, surprised. "How can it play by itself? Is it also alchemy?"
Hedy pointed to the fresco behind him that was nearly dry. "When you finish this painting, I’ll tell you."
"—So we’re not getting past the fresco today, are we?"
The girl laughed. "You've been distracted more than five times today."
After returning from the monastery, Hedy gathered the papers she had previously written and went to meet the lord on time, listening to the bells toll.
She had come up with a solution for the water problem that could not only purify the water but also remove parasites from the river.
When she entered the office, there was a long table with two cages on it.
"What is this—"
Cosimo immediately stepped forward and pulled aside the velvet cloth, revealing two rabbits in the cages.
A gray rabbit and a black one.
Hedy instinctively looked at Lorenzo next to her and then at the two rabbits, which seemed to be intended for experimentation.
—These weren’t gifts from Leonardo, clearly brought in from elsewhere.
"I had my people do what you explained earlier," Lorenzo said as he stood up, his tone somewhat complicated.
She was right.
The two rabbits, one drinking water from the Arno River and the other from rainwater collected on the roof, were housed in lead bowls with a glaze.
The black rabbit, which drank the river water, was quite lively, always trying to dig or gnaw at its cage, eagerly eating whatever food was given.
But the gray rabbit, which drank the rainwater, had been lively before, but now it lay listlessly every day, barely responding even when someone approached.
The results were immediate and undeniable after just twenty days, making it hard to argue with the effectiveness.
Hedy hadn’t expected the servants to execute the task so efficiently—she had only just drafted the format for the experiment report, and they had already gathered the results.
"The elders at the Florentine Academy have also reviewed the relevant literature and found similar references in ancient Roman texts," Lorenzo remarked, observing the gray rabbit, which was sleeping soundly, deep in thought. "But without rainwater, I'm afraid brewing with river water might..."
"Boiling would solve the problem," Hedy instinctively replied. "You could build a boiler room for the palace."
Whether it’s river water or well water, neither is suitable for direct consumption.
Bacteria and parasites can cause diseases like dysentery or enteritis, and harmful substances in the water need to be boiled to be purified.
But the issue is that boiling water requires fuel—this era doesn’t have induction stoves or water heaters, so it would be quite a hassle.
"Boiling?"
Hedy took the documents from Dechio’s hands, spreading them out to show the specific design.
First, a windmill would be built by the river to create a water pump to continuously pump water.
Then, a sedimentation pool, adsorption pool, and filtration pool would be created to ensure clean water flowed into different tanks.
On top of this, a boiler room would be established to ensure hot water could be provided at any time after boiling—
