Light in the Shadows

by Linda Lafferty

  “Shut up! You will be next, you fool,” said the man’s wife. “Stick to fish. What do you know of lambs?”

  “Poor girl!” moaned a gray-haired woman in a ragged kerchief. “Spare that one, at least!”

  The crowd hummed with dissention as the sun broiled overhead.

  “Spare the girl! Spare the girl!” shouted voices in unison.

  Beatrice Cenci lifted her head only enough to gaze out to her defenders, the mob who had gathered to witness her death.

  The sword lifted.

  The executioner’s blade sliced through her neck as the Romans gasped. A spurt of blood stained the swordsman’s tunic.

  He looked down at his work and swore silently. Part of the noblewoman’s neck remained intact, her head still attached. The executioner withdrew a dagger from a sheath behind his back.

  Caravaggio’s eyes were riveted on the executioner now, not the victim. The swordsman’s face showed the concentration of a butcher as he bent to the practical task of severing bone and muscle from a piece of meat.

  The girl’s head rolled on the wooden scaffold and then came to an abrupt stop.

  The people stood stunned. Even the sbirri with their swinging cudgels and curses could not disperse them.

  As the sun sank mercifully into the west, its surrender flooded Roma in crimson light, coloring the ochre stucco a golden rose. Children brought crowns of flowers to adorn Beatrice’s head, her bloody turban long discarded as the street sweepers rinsed clean the cobblestones. Mothers combed out the dead woman’s hair using their bare fingers.

  Mourners brought candles, costly to the poor, to line the biers of the dead, lit against the blackening night. Women, men, and children wept in the darkness.

  Caravaggio saw the reflection of light dance in the still eyes of Artemisia Gentileschi.

  Orazio Gentileschi put his arm around his daughter’s shoulders and walked toward home. But Caravaggio, like so many others, stayed rooted in vigil, long into the night. The flickering candles lit the gash of Beatrice Cenci’s severed head, replaced on her marble-white neck.

  And for Caravaggio, a seed was planted for a masterpiece in his dark future.

  Chapter 4

  A WAREHOUSE

  Professor Richman woke once into a world of swirling shadows and lightning flashes and, later, woke again into a calmer darkness. A gentle hand stroked his forehead. His eyes weren’t ready to focus. A face loomed over him. He twitched; the face became Lucia’s. His head was cradled in her lap as she bent over him, her hand on his forehead. And beyond her was a room cluttered with broken furniture and piles of boxes. A faint blue-white light—moonlight? How long had he been unconscious?—seeped in through a window high above. Where were they?

  He tried to sit up, and her calm, cool hand clamped down over his mouth. She leaned even closer. “Not a sound.” Her words were no more than breath in his ear. “Listen.”

  Beyond the pounding inside his head, he eventually could hear angry voices from the next room, muffled by thick walls and a heavy door. He couldn’t understand a word, but she listened with fierce concentration. He let himself drift away again, but his mind filled with lightning flashes, disturbing images. The priest’s body—yes, he had seen that. And the blood—yes, that was real too. And he remembered the painting and the shouting, and he veered away from the memory before it replayed the pistol slashing across his face.

  It had gone quiet in the next room, a sullen silence. The professor struggled to sit up. Lucia steadied him and helped him rest his back against a wall. She leaned close again. “They’re fucked. They have no idea what to do with the painting. Don’t know where to go with it. Don’t know what it’s worth. No idea it was going to be so big. Idiots.”

  He didn’t feel strong enough to point out who was in charge and who was captive.

  “Where are we?” He tried to keep his voice as quiet as hers had been.

  “No idea. It took hours to get here. Locked in the back of a truck. Didn’t know if you were ever going to wake up.”

  The professor sat in silence for a while, trying to make sense of what had happened. He couldn’t. He’d thought he wanted an adventurous new life—now he just wanted his old life back. As soon as possible.

  With a sudden stabbing jolt of pain, his leg began to cramp. He lurched, trying to get to his feet, and in an instant she was up, steadying him in the near dark.

  For a moment they stood, swaying, hugging each other for support. Then she gave a start, grabbed his shoulders, and slowly turned him—until, clutching each other in the darkened room, they were staring at the painting. The painting from Te-Te’s chapel, with its cracked frame and too-perfect faces, leaning against a stack of cardboard boxes—but seeming to float in the dark, picked out of the shadows by the moonlight.

  The professor closed his eyes. Someone had died for that painting. For that sad fraud of a painting.

  But Lucia was transfixed. She settled Richman on a solid-enough box and walked a few steps to stand just outside the pool of moonlight and stare.

  The moon was long gone, but Lucia was still standing in the dark watching the faintest gleam on the varnish of the painting when the shouting began again in the next room. Shouts of surprise, then anger, rage, and fear. A choking gasp. A struggle. A scream that was choked off. Silence.

  Lucia whirled, grabbed the biggest box she could lift, and set it against the inside of the door. There were quick footsteps prowling the next room. The professor was on his feet, and together they staggered to the door with an even larger box. It hit the door with a thump and the footsteps stopped, then hurried across the room toward them.

  The doorknob rattled. They abandoned stealth and raced to stack boxes against the door. The professor wobbling, doing his best.

  There was pounding on the door, a fist. The pounding changed to thundering kicks. The boxes shook, but held. Lucia scanned the room for a way out, but everything was lost in shadows. The professor paused, swaying, one last box in his arms, when a gunshot sounded, muffled by the door and the boxes. The bullet didn’t penetrate the boxes, but the professor sat down fast. There were two more shots.

  Sitting on the floor, Richman reached out and slapped the side of one of the boxes. Lucia looked over at him.

  “Books!” he said, managing a smile. There wasn’t any point in keeping quiet now.

  There was one more shot, and Richman scooted away from the pile. The saving power of literature only went so far.

  The pounding began again. This time heavier. Sharp and heavy—an axe—and now there was a crashing and cracking. The door couldn’t hold for long. Lucia grabbed Richman’s hand and dragged him back toward the shadows. Another thundering blow. The sound of the door splintering.

  And then, in an instant of silence between the blows, there were new voices on the other side of the door, clear and sharp. Lucia pulled the professor farther into the dark. A gunshot. A shout. A volley of shots. Lucia grabbed the professor, hugged him tight, and they turned to face the door, clinging to one another in a moment of simple survival.

  And then the room exploded. Exploded out of the darkness behind them—not in front, where the noises and the danger seemed to be coming from. The force of the blast tossed them back against the boxes of books that had saved them from the gunfire.

  Darkness closed in again.

  A cell phone vibrated silently. The man pulled it out of his pocket, checked who the call was coming from, pushed the button to answer, but didn’t say a word. After a moment of mutual silence, the caller mumbled, more than spoke, in Sicilian.

  “Fattu.” Done.

  “Tutt’a ddui?” Both?

  “Tutt’a ddui. È quacchi ccosa di cchiu. Quacchi ccosa di valuri ranni.” Both. And something else. Something of great value.

  The man didn’t respond to that. He let the moment of silence stretch out. Then he hit the “End” button.

  Chapter 5

  Roma

  1600

  A chorus of cheer
s filled the grand dining hall at Palazzo Madama as Giambattista Marino finished reciting his poem in honor of Gran Duca Ferdinando de’ Medici of Firenze. The gran duca nodded in acknowledgment, and Cardinal Maria del Monte rose to offer one more toast in honor of his esteemed guest as servants marched in bearing enormous platters of roast meats and fish for the assembled guests.

  Far down the table from the host and his guest of honor, Caravaggio sat next to Galileo Galilei, who had traveled with the Florentine entourage of Gran Duca Ferdinando. It was not the first time the two had been seated together, and they took up an old conversation.

  “Still lost in the heavens, Signor Galilei?” said Caravaggio, reaching for the pitcher of wine. “Deciphering divine movement of the stars for us ignorant souls?”

  Galileo smiled, touching a blemish on his left cheek. “Indeed I am. And are you still painting prepubescent pretty boys?”

  Caravaggio snapped his head around in anger.

  Galileo rested his hand on the artist’s forearm.

  “Come now, Michele. I admire your work. I do believe you are a genius. But you must see how this”—he waved his hand vaguely to indicate everything surrounding them—“this decadence has corrupted your vision.”

  Caravaggio shook off Galileo’s hand. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Then you are blind, my friend,” answered the astronomer, nodding toward his host at the end of the table. “You have mastered the perfection of nature in your art. You do not disguise God’s beauty with unnecessary flourishes. I have never seen a better tribute to God’s handiwork than your images. But you waste your time and cheapen your gift, painting luscious boys for lustful clergy.”

  Caravaggio’s jaw tightened. The criticism blinded him to the praise. “And you stare into your telescope imagining heavens that don’t exist.”

  “Quite the opposite. I imagine nothing. I trust only my senses, my eyes. I am not corrupted by theories or opinions.”

  Caravaggio hesitated.

  I trust my senses, my eyes.

  “But what of God?” said Caravaggio. He stared hard at Galileo’s strikingly large forehead.

  Galileo took a sip of vino nobile. “You have never struck me as a particularly God-fearing man, Maestro Merisi—”

  “You are wrong. I believe fervently in God. But only God. God and Nature, nothing else!”

  Galileo regarded him, his eyes focusing slowly. The time he spent studying the heavens had strained his sight for things close on Earth. “And truth?” he asked mildly.

  “Truth above all, damn you! God and Nature are truth.”

  “So it would seem we agree,” Galileo said, nodding, his voice still calm. “I cannot believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses to perceive his world and the intellect to understand it has intended us to forgo their use. I see God’s world and accept the evidence of what I see.”

  He nodded to a servant, who filled his wineglass.

  Caravaggio met the astronomer’s eyes. “I trust Nature. That is all the God I need.”

  “Perhaps you are more of a scientist than you know, Maestro Merisi. Science illuminates the truth, like a shaft of light cuts through shadow.”

  Again Caravaggio hesitated.

  Light and shadow.

  “I’m no scientist,” he insisted.

  “Art and science are not enemies,” Galileo countered. “Consider Da Vinci—”

  “Forget Da Vinci! My art is unlike anyone before me.”

  Galileo laughed. “You are rather immodest, aren’t you? Still, Da Vinci studied science and was not afraid to look beyond what pleased his patrons. He had vision and would not sacrifice that for all the gold in the world.”

  “What do you mean?” Caravaggio said, bristling.

  Galileo shrugged. “These paintings of naked boys—those angels—are leading you away from your vision.”

  “I am paid well for them, I assure you.”

  “Sì, sì.” Galileo sighed. He sipped his wine. “I am sure you are handsomely compensated. But that is my concern. Your boys are amusing, but what do they have to say to humanity? ‘Behold, I am beautiful.’ And nothing more. Surely you have more to say, do you not?”

  “I—”

  Now Galileo’s voice strengthened. He leaned toward the artist. “Beauty alone is not enough, Michele. It becomes boring in isolation. Like individual stars without a constellation. Not relevant to the greater heavens.”

  Caravaggio chewed viciously on his mustache. “And you, Signor Galilei. You say that our Earth is not the center of the universe . . . that our planet and the others revolve around the sun. That is blasphemy.”

  “I believe we revolve around the sun because I observe it. With my senses.” He pointed to his face. “With my two eyes! You and I have this in common, Michelangelo Merisi.” The astronomer served himself some small fish in oil from a platter offered by a servant. “We have the ability to perceive truth if we cast off the blindfold”—lowering his voice to a whisper, leaning closer yet—“the blindfold of the Church’s overbearing doctrines. Otherwise we are forever handicapped, like hooded falcons. Unable to soar.”

  Galileo scooped up the fish and oil with a crust of bread, chewing thoughtfully. A small piece of parsley lodged in his teeth.

  Caravaggio stared at the green splotch in the astronomer’s teeth. He drew a deep breath, casting a glance around the room. Others were deeply engaged in conversations, boisterous and drunken talk. Giambattista Marino was moving around the room, receiving accolades for his poem.

  A sudden commotion and a shriek of women’s laughter sliced through the men’s voices.

  The courtesans had arrived at the farthest door, and all eyes were cast in their direction. Ranuccio Tomassoni entered the room, leading his flock, laughing at something the beautiful auburn-haired Fillide said.

  Caravaggio twisted around in his chair. He locked eyes with Fillide. Ranuccio followed her glance to him, and his smile died on his lips.

  “Ranuccio!” shouted a dark-bearded man from the middle of the room. His booming voice cut through the clanking of cutlery, chatter, and roar of drunken laughter. He was dressed in the black tunic of the Maltese Knights, the eight-pointed cross across his chest.

  Caravaggio recognized those reptile eyes, slits of mossy green.

  The knight crossed the room toward Ranuccio, clapping him on the back. Then he turned to Fillide, wrapping his arm around her waist. She pushed him away, laughing.

  As the knight whispered in Fillide’s ear, Ranuccio and Caravaggio exchanged a cold stare.

  “Ah, the Knights of Malta grace Gran Duca Ferdinando’s banquet,” said Galileo.

  “You know him?” said Caravaggio, regarding the knight with the same hostility as he did Ranuccio.

  “Fra Giovanni Rodomonte Roero of Piemonte.”

  “Some knight! I’ve seen him before,” said Caravaggio. “He keeps company with pimps.”

  Ranuccio hissed something to Roero. The knight’s eyes shot to Caravaggio.

  “You seem to have offended those gentlemen,” observed Galileo. “Not wise having a Knight of Malta as an enemy, my friend.”

  Caravaggio turned away. He took a long draught of his wine. “Forget them!” he said. “I think you make enemies easily too, signore. The Church—a powerful adversary. Are you not afraid of the accusation of heresy, Galileo?”

  “Are you?” said the scientist, his fingernail deftly dislodging the scrap of parsley.

  The artist snorted his scorn for such fears. He gestured to a servant standing against the wall to refill his glass with wine.

  When the attendant had retreated, Caravaggio said, “I have left Palazzo Madama.”

  “Ah,” said Galileo. “Congratulations for escaping the holy orbit! Perhaps now you will have something more to say. You can listen to your senses without your patrons’ chatter to divert you from the truth.”

  The artist stuffed a piece of crusty bread in his mouth and nodded, chewing vigorously. �
��I find my truth in the street. The beggars and whores. The fishwives and sausage makers, the swindlers and thieves.”

  The astronomer smiled. “Roma is your sun, Caravaggio. Find your heaven and fill it with stars.”

  Chapter 6

  Roma

  1600

  Anna Bianchini lowered her hood as she walked into the drafty room and shivered. Her long red hair spilled down her shoulders.

  “You are the one who sent for me?” she said, staring at the man in the black velvet tunic. The material was shiny, the matte worn thin.

  I needn’t have borrowed Fillide’s good taffeta skirt. This is no nobleman!

  “I have the money to pay you. I will want you for a few hours.”

  “A few hours?” she said, raising an eyebrow.

  “Maybe longer. We’ll see.”

  “Signore, I am good at what I do. A few hours—”

  “Over here, ragazza.”

  “They call me Annunccia,” she said. She cast a look around the room, inclining her head. “That big hole in the ceiling. You should fix that.”

  “Stand right there. Under it, where the light is the brightest.” He moved her roughly as if she were a chair. “Now a little to the right. There!”

  The morning light, fresh from the rainstorm, glanced off her cheekbone. He raised his hand, pressing his fingers to her cheek, tilting her head.

  His touch sent a tremor through her body. She knew he felt it.

  “Maestro,” she murmured.

  “Take off your cloak,” he said. “Don’t move from this spot.”

  “You want me here?” she said. “Do you not have a bed? A pallet perhaps?”

  “Cecco,” he called. “Take the signorina’s cloak.”

  For the first time, Anna noticed an adolescent boy emerging from the shadows of the room.

  “He’s going to watch?” said Anna. “I don’t do things in front of boys that age. It isn’t right.”

  Caravaggio laughed. “It isn’t right, you say? You are a whore.”

  “I’ve got my morals, Maestro Caravaggio,” she snapped. “I’m a good girl in my way.”