by Diane Haeger
It was the way both friends wished it.
Francesca Chigi was a beautiful woman—tall, very slender, with thick wheat-colored hair, which she wore braided and clipped above wide-set, cornflower-blue eyes. Agostino had met her in Venice, and their scandalous affair, before they married, had produced three children. In spite of her humble origins, she was, he declared, the love of his life. Not only had he built this villa for love of her, but he had fought to marry her, the same way Raphael now fought with the greatest determination for Margherita.
“I am so pleased you could be here,” Francesca smiled as minstrels dressed in elegant costumes played airy music on a raised dais behind them. “And do let me have a look once again at that ring about which all of Rome is buzzing! It is truly all the talk, you know, after what Raphael has dared to do!”
Margherita felt her stomach seize up. All eyes in the room seemed suddenly upon her.
“What do you mean?” she hedged, her body on guard, even with a friend. Such had become her life among the powerful of Rome.
“Oh, come now. We have all heard that Raffaello has painted you wearing it—and, for that matter, precious little else! A bold move indeed to think of the emperor’s ring on a finger like yours or mine for all eternity!”
How did she know such a thing? Raphael would never have revealed it, and he had painted the wedding portrait in his private studio at home . . .
The hair on her neck stood on end at the prospect. Margherita’s mind wound over thoughts and connections, ways this might have happened, as she stood reluctantly holding out her hand and doing her best to appear casual. The ancient gem glittered before all of them.
It came to her then with a cruelly hard blow. Antonio!
The man she had left behind. The one who had never quite forgiven her. He was the single link, through the family connection of Donato, between the privacy of her home and the Chigi Villa. Antonio had discovered the portrait’s theme through her meddlesome sister. Of course, that was it! Letitia never had learned to hold her tongue when there was something interesting to speak about, and she was certain Antonio had been only too willing to listen to her.
The sense of anger rushed at her then, mixing with private memories, vulnerabilities, and the sweeter times of their youth. Her face flushed, she steadied herself, and drew back her hand.
“It really is a small thing,” she said, struggling to keep her voice steady. “An ornament to the greater work only.”
“But what a remarkable ornament is your betrothal ring! From Emperor Nero?”
Francesca took her shoulders and leaned forward with a clever smile.
Margherita forced herself to laugh blithely so that everyone might hear. She had learned enough of this world to do at least that. “And in uncovering much of my body in order to be painted, I hope it is that state which the viewer remarks upon, rather than the ring, or the chill I took posing for it shall have been for naught!”
As laughter erupted between them, the tension of the moment dissolved. This was not the first time she had charmed them. Francesca had won her place among them with her wit; now, too, had Margherita.
“You know,” Francesca softly warned, pulling her away from the others, “Cardinal Bibbiena is still wildly bitter over losing the ring to you. A brilliant move, I say, for someone to get the better of him!” They walked a few steps more, Francesca still tightly gripping her shoulder.
“I am sorry to hear that. I would have hoped by now the bitterness of the past would be behind all of us. Considering events, there was much to be forgiven on all sides.”
“How quick you have become, cara. You have delighted everyone.” Francesca smiled. “But still you dream a fool’s dream. There are those, to this day, who still do not accept me as Agostino’s wife, and from whose anger I shall never consider myself entirely protected. I fear it may well be the same for you once Raphael marries you.”
“I have grown accustomed to the ridicule. His love and important place here in Rome protect me from more than that.” As she spoke, Margherita casually hid her hand at her side within the voluminous folds of her elegant topaz gown. “In that, I am kept safe.”
Walking together, they arrived at the collection of chairs facing the garden and the river beyond. Margherita glanced around, anxious to see Raphael. As bold as she tried to be, Margherita was not at all certain she was capable of convincing everyone of her self-confidence.
“Sadly,” Francesca murmured fervently, “women such as we are never completely safe.” She leveled her wide blue eyes on Margherita’s with such gravity that Margherita felt her blood run absolutely cold as the two women linked hands. “Never completely let down your guard to any of us.”
“Even you?”
“Even me.”
“I thought . . . ,” she hedged. “I believed that we had a deep—”
“Friendship? Make no mistake. I, too, am at the mercy of the man of my heart. His alliances, his life, determine all for me.”
There was no point in not asking. “Did you know about my abduction before it happened?”
“No. But I cannot honestly say that if I had, I could have, or would have, done anything to stop it.”
“That seems such a bleak picture you paint.”
“Yet it is the truth, and the fate for women like us. Follow the will of our men and we survive. Go against them and all shall be forever lost.”
Margherita shook her head and looked away at the line of elegantly clad guests still filing in from the entrance hall. “Raphael trusts my opinion,” she tried to disagree as they sat down together in rich tapestried chairs positioned to hear the musicians. They had only just begun to play a new tune for the guests already seated in rows of chairs behind them. “He would never forsake me in that way.”
“Everything changes, Margherita,” Francesca warned. “And never is a very long time.”
The musicians had played two of their lighter tunes when Margherita felt a firm tap on the top of her shoulder. A strange premonition rushed at her, bleeding through the serene facade she had worked so hard to project, even before she turned around. Giulio Romano was behind her, his face gray and his expression very grave. She knew instantly, even before he spoke, that something was very wrong. He bent low to whisper to her.
“You must come at once, Signora! Dio mio, it is Signor Raphael!”
39
April 1520
AT FIRST, THE PHYSICIANS AND A COLLECTION OF PAPAL guards barred her entry into her own bedchamber. By the time Margherita found Giulio, and they were able to push their way past the barrier of men, it had been well over an hour’s time since she had first been summoned home.
Passing the three somber papal physicians, who shook their heads in regret, she felt herself tremble with an ominous fear. Once past them, Margherita crept softly toward the bed, up on its platform, enclosed by heavy tapestry curtains, where he lay. The bed they had shared. The room was dark in spite of the early hour. Candles were lit. The table beside him was littered with all manner of medicines and potions in glass bottles and jars the physicians had already brought. It had not been long, but they had still gotten to him first, she thought in horror. The physicians had made choices for him before she even knew what the sickness was. She was firmly made inconsequential, and so quickly, she realized with great foreboding as she moved nearer the bed.
AS IF SENSING HER APPROACH—knowing it from all others—Raphael suddenly opened his eyes. He reached out to her and she sank beside him onto the bed. He was so horribly feverish, she thought, in shock, as his fingers laced with hers.
“I left you only a little weary this morning. What wicked thing have you done since we parted to bring on such heat?” she asked, feigning indignation to make him smile. Yet only a flicker of one crossed his face before she saw him grimace in pain replacing it.
“It was more than that,” he confessed. “I have not felt well for over a fortnight.”
“And you did not tell me?” she asked wi
th an uncertain, half smile.
“And now I fear I am not going to be able to keep my vow to you,” he said, struggling for breath. His voice came as a low, croaking sound she did not recognize. Tears leapt to her eyes at the mere suggestion, for she remembered well the vow. “This is not going to end well, amore mio.”
Margherita put up a hand and backed away. “Do not say it, for I will not hear you!”
Raphael took her hand and with great difficulty held it tightly. “Margherita mia . . . my own precious gem, per favore . . . you must listen.” He drew in another difficult breath, and there was a small pause before he could continue. For a moment his eyes rolled to a close. When he opened them again, he quietly said, “There are plans to be made . . . for your safety . . . We must speak of them.”
“I will not!”
“Cara, why will you not hear me?”
She shook her head and wrapped her arms tightly around her waist. “If we speak not of it . . . if there are no plans . . . ” Tears rained in ribbons down her cheeks. “Then you cannot leave me!”
“Margherita,” he crooned to her, and brought her near to him once again with all of the strength he had in his hand. “I am going to die. I have seen this sickness, the fever, a dozen times myself in this city from the great cross section of people who have posed for me! Pretending otherwise cannot change what is!”
“This is fool’s talk! You will not die! You are young and strong, and there is so much yet for you to do!” She chattered with nervous resolve through her tears, as the papal physicians sent from the Vatican Palace waited across the room. They rung their hands in frustration and murmured in low, derisive tones about her even as she held Raphael’s hand. “Saint Peter’s is nowhere near complete! There is the portrait of the Holy Father and his cousin and nephew . . . and your Transfiguration—”
He drew in another difficult breath, then released it. “I finished the work two days past,” he revealed. “And when I cough . . . there is blood.”
“No!” she cried out bitterly. “You see death, but I see only an illness! A small setback! I shall take care of you, stay with you every moment, and in time—”
“See it for what it is, I beg you! For your own safety, let me plan for you! Knowing that you are safe is the only thing that shall bring me peace!” he murmured, then began to cough. “I am not afraid to die, amore mio. I will welcome the new life I will have with—”
“Your life is with me!”
“S . . . and it has been the best life . . . the very best . . . ”
As Margherita leaned over to embrace him, she could feel how weakened he had swiftly become. He was limp in her arms, as if already he was slowly beginning the process of leaving her. She wiped another flood of tears from her cheeks with the back of her hand, and glanced at the physicians who stood cruelly in judgment of her, refusing to come forward or to counsel with her on his condition. “We must be married! Then they will listen to me, and I will know how to help you!”
His eyes were heavy and he needed to sleep. She knew that he must sleep a great deal if he was to conquer this fever and whatever else was trying to conquer him. “Believe forever that was my dearest wish . . . ” he said faintly, as his eyes fluttered to a close. “To make you my wife.”
“I do believe it,” she whispered back, close enough at that moment, to feel his labored breath on her face. His breath . . . life . . . as long as there is that, there is hope . . .
She bid Elena, who lingered with Donato in the shadows nearby, to come forward. In a low tone, Margherita said, “I must leave for just a little while. Will you stay with him while I am gone?”
“Of course, signora,” she answered with her own tear-filled eyes.
“Do not leave him alone with those vultures over there for even a moment, no matter what they tell you.”
“No, Signora Luti. I shall stay with him until you return.”
She looked next to Donato. “Go with me to Trastevere?”
“I would go anywhere you wished, you know that.”
Once she saw that Raphael had fallen into another sleep, Margherita quietly left his bedside and moved across the vast bedchamber to the place near the door where Pope Leo’s best personal physicians were still gathered, discussing the gravity of the artist’s condition in their hushed tones.
“Per favore,” she pleaded. “I know what you think of me, but can you not at least tell me there is something that might be done for him!”
There was a moment of silence before one of them, a stout, elderly man with a puffed chest, turned to glower at her. “We shall tell you nothing, signora. And you would be well advised, at this stage, to do what you can for yourself, for he shall not survive this.”
Not so long ago, everyone who entered this house would have rushed to obey her, masking their disdain of the way Raphael lived his life so blatantly with her in order to ingratiate themselves to the mastro. But no longer. Their bold response was painfully ominous. “Care not for me,” she cried through her indignation. “I accept that! But, I bid you, help him!”
“Would that we could. But it has gone too far. The fever will not abate.”
“No!” Her face blanched as another physician dryly spoke.
“We speak the truth. Raffaello is greatly favored by His Holiness. If any of us could save him, for that reason alone, we surely would.”
Her hands were covering her mouth. “There must be something! Dio, anything!”
“Signora Luti, you are not family. As he said, you are nothing in this discussion,” proclaimed another of the physicians, a grizzled man with a noticeable paunch. “Now kindly remove yourself from our midst.”
“You are wrong! I am going to find a cleric to marry us, and then I will be family, and you will regret your treatment of me!”
“Pitiful woman.” The first physician shook his head. “Do you not know there is not a single cleric, much less a respectable citizen in all of Rome, who supports what you have done to the great mastro? You, a lowly girl, with your wanton ways, have corrupted his entire being—and now brought about his death, as surely as if you had plunged a knife into his heart!”
She shuddered in the echo of his words, as if those venomous murmurings alone held the power to destroy her, and had begun to do just that. Cupping her hands tightly over her ears, Margherita pivoted away from their accusing expressions and harsh stares.
“Signora, see the truth for what it is!” he cruelly called out as she dashed from the room. “Raphael’s life is nearly over now. Do what you can to save yourself.”
“DO YOU not understand, I must marry her!” Raphael declared with a quavering voice as Giulio leaned over his bed after Margherita had gone. “She has waited for so long in good faith. I must make her my wife in case something should happen! If this illness is—”
“You cannot possibly take that risk, mastro mio! Think of it! Cardinal Bibbiena is still full of rage over his niece—over the ring—and he is the senior-most cleric in Rome while the pope is away in Florence!” Giulio quietly urged, huddled close to Raphael at his bedside. “If you were not to survive this, and leave Margherita with the one honor his niece never had, you will not be able to protect her. He will make the rest of her life a misery! I have heard it whispered so myself!”
He grimaced, fighting for strength. “But she is meant to be my wife!”
“Is she not that already in your heart?”
“It is not the same thing for her! Without a true marriage, she will be forever thought of as a whore! My mistress! Margherita deserves better than that!”
“Let not your heart cloud your judgment, I bid you, mastro. The cardinal is an old and vindictive man who loved no one in this life so much as he did his niece! He will not be kind to Signora Luti if she is the widowed Signora Sanzio!”
“Then find me someone, Giulio, I bid you—as my most trusted assistant, and my friend! Find anyone who will marry us in secret before it is too late! She must know I did not let go of this earth wit
hout keeping my promise to her! It is the last request I will ever make of you!”
As he closed his eyes, falling into a short, fitful sleep, Giulio left his side and went to stand in the mastro’s private work area beside the bed chamber. Beyond the heavy velvet drapery, he could hear the team of Pope Leo’s physicians struggling to save the artist’s young, important life with a wild, mysterious collection of potions, purgatives, and bloodletting. Through tear-misted eyes, and the sound of their low, concerned conversation, Giulio faced the final painted image of Margherita—what he knew to be her wedding portrait.
There had been such joy, such hope brushed into that image. A new painting style marking a new chapter of their lives. Each brushstroke of the master reflected that. As an artist himself, Giulio understood the passion. He knew what this painting, and this woman, meant to Raphael, for it was precisely how Giulio would wish to immortalize Elena.
Giulio brushed the tears away with the back of his hand as he looked at the serene smile. There was the sensually scant costume, the ruby ring painted onto the finger that symbolized the route directly to the heart, and he felt as if he were intruding on something very private even by looking at it.
He turned then to a large black leather folio of sketches and studies. They were more priceless than even Raphael’s paintings because, while the paintings were so often a collaborative effort within the workshop, these images were always fashioned solely from the hand of Raffaello himself. In their revelation to the world, there was yet more danger to Margherita; and as his final homage to the one who had never forsaken him, Giulio Romano would do for her what Raphael could not. He would protect her.
“God save you, what are you doing with those?” Elena gasped.
He did not look up at her, but kept on. “I thought you were not to leave the mastro’s side.”
“I have come away only for a moment, hearing movement in here. And still you have not answered me.”
“I am destroying the last of what might harm Margherita.”
