by Matt Rees
Caravaggio’s tension seemed to reach into his throat and cut off his air. He croaked out his words, ‘Is he in Rome?’
‘He is.’
‘What happened?’
‘A fight.’
‘Don’t you have people to take care of these things? A purse for the injured man. A bribe for the arresting officer.’ Even as he spoke, he understood. This is too serious for the usual remedies. There’s a great danger here. But for whom?
‘It’s a Farnese,’ she whispered.
Fabrizio, what have you done? He made a quick calculation of his connections, of men who might help Costanza’s son. Her urgency communicated itself to him; he felt it pulse in his neck.
The two wrestlers in the piazza had represented the battle between these great families, each with their monumental palaces on either side of Rome and their armies of retainers ready to take up cudgels and daggers and to shed their blood. He thought of Fabrizio and some hot-headed young Farnese duke. The same violence, but with nobler weapons. And consequences for you too, Michele, if you get involved.
He looked into Costanza’s pleading eyes. She had helped him so much in his life, but now that she wished for his aid, her demands could disturb the position he had worked so hard to establish. He knew she saw his reluctance and that it pained her.
This isn’t your gaming debt to Ranuccio. This is a woman to whom you owe more than you could ever repay. ‘I’m at your service, my lady. Always.’
Her fingers reached to Caravaggio’s shoulder. They were tentative. He wondered that in all these years she hadn’t touched him except to allow his kiss on her knuckles. He shuddered. It seemed as though the force of generations of her family’s nobility, of princes and generals and even a pope, coursed from this tiny hand into his body. It was the power that might demand a man go to his death, and it numbed him.
‘Michele, you’re painting the Pope’s portrait,’ she said.
They wait years for their moment, these nobles, and then in an instant they see their opportunity, he thought. Loyalty is an elegant word for blackmail.
Her hand was still, but her touch seemed to circle his neck and travel down his arms and back. He regretted his reluctance. She came to him because she knew what Fabrizio had meant to him. But he couldn’t suppress his bitterness. If you hadn’t sent me away, perhaps this would never have happened. Fabrizio would be a different man. And so would I. ‘What expression would you have me paint on the Holy Father’s portrait, my lady?’
‘Forgiveness.’
He recalled the shrewd little eyes on the canvas he had left at the Quirinale. Mercy on that face? That’ll be a work of imagination no less than a ceiling frescoed with the god of the sea and all his nymphs.
‘I can try, my lady. I can try.’
Prudenza came in the middle of the night. She climbed the stairs and twisted Cecco’s nose to wake him.
‘Get yourself below, little fellow,’ she whispered. ‘I need a place to hide tonight.’
Cecco wrapped himself in his blanket and stumbled down the stairs, grumbling. Prudenza lay on Caravaggio’s bed. She pushed her hand under his sleeping cap. Her fingers moved in his hair.
In the darkness, he ran his palm over her face. He was careful to avoid the wound Fillide had cut beside the girl’s mouth, but she flinched when he touched a new bruise around her eye. ‘Fillide threw a stone,’ she said. ‘I can’t go home. You don’t mind, do you?’
She was playful in the face of an implacable hatred. He had a vision of her dead, dropped into the Tiber with the refuse from the street. He looked across his studio to his easel and the unfinished Martha and Mary Magdalene. He used to think his work would outlast time, but when he touched Prudenza he knew that anyone could walk up to his canvas and take a dagger to it. Once it was dry, porters would carry the painting to the Lady Olimpia Aldobrandini’s palace and she would display it in her gallery for the respectable public to view. Everyone would feel justified in criticizing it, free to mock it. He had heard them do so with his other works. Why shouldn’t one of them decide it ought to be destroyed?
His work hadn’t immortalized this girl. Canvas was no more resilient to violence than flesh. It rotted more slowly and people gave it a higher value, but it was as fragile as bone and skin. He found her hand and held it. Soon he felt the warm looseness of sleep in her fingers, and he shivered for her.
‘What a jumble of rotten shit.’ Caravaggio went into the side chapel towards the painting. Eight yards high, five yards across, The Resurrection. A lithe Christ struck an effeminate pose holding a flag at the upper centre of the canvas. Languidly strumming lutes and puffing flutes, the angels surrounded him. Tiny cherubs reclined under the angels’ buttocks like cushions in a courtesan’s boudoir.
Prospero followed Caravaggio through the Easter crowd in the Church of the Gesù. ‘I’m trying to get a commission out of the Jesuits who run this place,’ he said. ‘Let’s just get our communion cards stamped and be off. Don’t make trouble.’
‘Look at these silly buggers. The damned, they’re supposed to be.’ Caravaggio’s voice was loud enough to draw the attention of the worshippers awaiting the Eucharist. He heard Prospero’s warning, but the canvas goaded him with its incompetence and pomposity.
In the lower reaches of the painting, turning their faces from Christ, the sinners rested. They were guarded by a swordsman. ‘He’s a caricature of the assassin in your Martyrdom of St Matthew,’ Prospero said. ‘But all the turbulence of your work is so fey and banal here.’
‘The condemned don’t exactly look like they’re suffering the torments of hell.’ Caravaggio laughed. ‘It’s as though Christ just told them he didn’t like what they’re wearing.’
A sharp voice, nasal and imperious, cut through the babble of the congregation. ‘Your sacrilege doesn’t surprise me, Merisi.’
Giovanni Baglione held his plumed hat at his hip. His chest puffed out under an expensive padded doublet studded with knotted lengths of silk. His chin was high, pugilistic and triumphant, like one of the nudes in his Resurrection.
Prospero nudged his friend. ‘Be nice.’
Caravaggio felt a glimmer of compassion for the man. Why can’t he just paint? Why this competition with me? His technique isn’t so bad. He could make something of himself. But he’ll never match my work. ‘Baglione, let’s not get into anything here.’
Baglione’s eyes flickered around him, as though he believed the entire congregation waited for his response. His slender fingers, gloved by soft skin farmed from an unborn calf, flicked at a lapis lazuli rosary. ‘If you don’t stop your slander, I’ll have you called before the Inquisition.’
A crowd gathered about them and Caravaggio felt the onset of a rage trembling through his chest, growing with each breath. ‘You think I’m scared of the Inquisition?’
Prospero lifted his palms in resignation. ‘Here we go.’
‘I care for art.’ Caravaggio tugged at a silk rosette sewn over Baglione’s breast. ‘If that leads to insults, it’s only because I care for art more than I worry about your feelings.’
‘Paint as you wish,’ Baglione said. ‘But I say you’re here to destroy art. Your technique—’
‘My technique is good enough for you to make a hash of copying it in this clumsy piece of dung on the wall behind us. It’s the worst thing you’ve painted. I’ve never heard anyone say anything good about it.’
Caravaggio was so emphatic that the Jesuit at the altar raised his head from the Host. It wasn’t unknown for a fight to start in the crowded quarters of a church and the priest tensed in alarm. Caravaggio shut his mouth, and the Mass went on.
Baglione headed for the door. ‘Maybe the Inquisition would like to hear about you and Cecco, your little butt-boy.’ He dodged between the worshippers ascending to the church. ‘You wished for the commission of this Resurrection yourself. It’s clear that you’re envious of my status.’
‘I eat dickheads like you for breakfast.’ Caravaggio leaped down
the steps to pursue Baglione. In his haste, he collided with a heavy gentleman. He found himself dazed and pressed to the steps by the fallen man’s weight, his feet higher than his head. Upside down, he watched Baglione rush across the piazza, his cape flowing behind him.
Prospero took Caravaggio under his arms and sat him upright. ‘Let’s go back into the church,’ he said. ‘We have to get the Holy Host inside you before the Devil takes you.’
Caravaggio rubbed at a trickle of blood from his eyebrow.
In the piazza outside the Pope’s palace, the bailiffs hauled a criminal into the air by the strappado. Lifted at the wrists with his hands bound behind his back, his shoulders dislocated before he had risen a dozen feet. He screamed that he was innocent of whatever small crime had incurred this punishment. The market-goers gathered to jeer. At the foot of the pole, another offender was bent double in the stocks. His tongue had been pulled forward and caught in a clamp, a penalty for speaking ill of the government. Caravaggio crossed the square to the palace gates.
Scipione Borghese was at the window when Caravaggio entered to work on his portrait of the Pope. The cardinal held the edge of the curtain between a finger and thumb, as though he were peeling back an undergarment to look on the very sex of his lover. He gazed with a quivering intensity at the man writhing on the strappado. ‘You’ve been called to the courts many times, Maestro Caravaggio. Have you ever—?’
‘Been tortured for evidence? No, Your Illustriousness.’ His voice was louder than he intended. Still nervous around Scipione, aren’t you, Michele, he told himself. Or are you anticipating some torture?
Scipione frowned as though he was sorry not to hear how torture felt. ‘I saw you cross the piazza. You didn’t stop to watch the punishment.’
‘The view is better from up here.’
A nasty shadow clouded Scipione’s eye. ‘You’re bleeding.’ He prodded the spot where Caravaggio had cut his brow in his fall outside the Church of the Gesù. A scarlet bulb of blood ran down his finger. ‘Could you use this to paint?’
‘Blood? As a pigment, you mean?’
Scipione wiped his finger on Caravaggio’s doublet. ‘Yes.’
‘It rots and gives off a foul smell, Your Illustriousness.’
‘You’ve tried it?’
‘No. But I know what happens to blood.’
‘I’ll wager you do.’
The man on the strappado bellowed as he came down. The crowd in the piazza thinned and the bailiffs untied the prisoner. His arms dangled from shoulders strangely squared by the dislocation. He dropped to the cobbles.
Caravaggio went onto one knee. He imagined Fabrizio undergoing his punishment like the criminal outside. As if he held his friend’s tortured body in his arms, he felt a pang of wounded love. The skirt of the cardinal’s red cassock rocked before him. ‘I beg of you a favour, my lord.’
‘Ask.’ It was as though Scipione’s voice came from some other organ than his throat, so strangled and tense did it seem.
‘My beloved mistress the Marchesa Costanza Colonna has a son.’
‘Several sons.’
‘I speak of Signor Fabrizio. He’s held for some offence. Might Your Illustriousness grant him a pardon?’ The painter kept his head down. He should have flattered Scipione, spoken of his famous capacity for mercy and other qualities churchmen liked to think they possessed by the grace of God. But he reckoned Scipione would have felt mocked, and he anyway doubted he could bring himself to speak such words. His mind was overcome with the pain awaiting Fabrizio.
‘For a crime of this nature, the Holy Father himself must grant a pardon,’ Scipione said.
Heat crept around Caravaggio’s throat. A crime of this nature. He had neglected to ask Costanza of what her son stood accused. What has she asked of me?
‘If he had merely killed a peasant or even a gentleman . . .’
There it was. He recalled Fabrizio’s handsome, playful face. Caravaggio had known men who had done others to death. He never knew how to detect the wickedness in their eyes until it had been made plain. In the Evil Garden, all men’s features flickered with butchery.
‘. . . then I’m sure something could’ve been arranged. But he killed a Farnese, a member of a powerful family, whose support the Holy Father needs as much as the Colonnas. You understand the politics? We can’t simply overlook this killing.’
There was no way back. ‘I beg of you, Your Illustriousness. I owe a debt of gratitude and loyalty to the Marchesa which I would pay at any cost.’
‘Would you, now?’ Scipione laid a hand on Caravaggio’s shoulder. ‘Finish the picture.’
Once Caravaggio’s voice started to slur, Onorio found it hard to follow his friend’s surly dialogue. Something about a brother – or someone who was like a brother – and the Colonna family and Cardinal Scipione. Onorio assumed there had been a complaint to the cardinal as a result of the fracas with Baglione at the Church of the Gesù. That hardly merited this morose mood. Scipione wouldn’t be too upset. His painter had been in far worse rumbles.
When the food came, Onorio pointed at the platter the waiter had laid before them. ‘Is this goat’s cheese, Pietro?’
‘It’s from a cow,’ the waiter said.
‘Which cow? Your mother?’ Caravaggio growled.
‘Leave the poor little slob alone, Michele.’ Onorio grinned as the sullen waiter made for the bar. Others recoiled from Caravaggio when he was in this mood, but Onorio enjoyed it. This was when he felt the greatest bond with him. They alone were fearless and not to be toyed with. A night at the inns and whorehouses with Michele gave him a feeling of camaraderie that was bone-deep, as he imagined soldiers must feel when they fight a battle side by side.
Caravaggio cut a slice of cheese and ripped away some bread. ‘More like a brother to me than my own damned brother ever was . . .’
‘I didn’t know you had any family left, cazzo. Remember my brother Decio? If he wasn’t in holy orders, he’d be chained to the oars of a galley.’
‘Decio’s trouble,’ Caravaggio lifted an unsteady finger before Onorio’s face, ‘like you.’
‘My record is much the same as yours, Michele.’
‘I’m poison.’
‘It’s in our blood.’
‘Fabrizio . . .’ Caravaggio shook his head. ‘Blood? That’s not why I do these things.’
Why, then? Onorio wondered. Does Rome do this to us? Or is it that we’re men who know we’re talented enough to be needed even by people who detest our behaviour?
The door of the tavern opened fast. Onorio tensed, peering into the dim light to see who entered. Mario Minniti walked in between the tables. He was breathless. ‘Fillide killed the poor bitch.’
Caravaggio stopped chewing. ‘Who?’
‘That girl Prudenza, she’s dead.’
Caravaggio let his head drop back against the wall, his eyes shut. Onorio frowned at him. Something in his friend’s stillness reverberated like the tremors he had experienced when he was in Naples once and the earth had jolted the walls of the buildings.
‘Fillide found her in bed with Ranuccio,’ Mario said. ‘Before he could stop her, she slashed Prudenza and the girl bled to death. Ranuccio put her body in the street so that Fillide won’t have to go to trial. He doesn’t want to lose two of his whores in one day.’
Onorio held up his hand to silence Mario. The little Sicilian was always heedless of the emotions of those around him. He watched the candle’s trembling touch over Caravaggio’s immobile features. His compassion endures even after a decade and a half in the Evil Garden, he thought. Michele can’t hide it from me, though the rest of Rome thinks he’s the Devil himself.
Caravaggio rubbed his face and moaned like a man waking from sleep. Then he looked with disgust around the inn.
Onorio watched his friend close himself up. Still, the girl’s death had broken him open for just a moment and some softness had leaked out. She meant that much to him. But he’ll have to block it out now. If you can
’t do that, you have to get out of the Evil Garden. ‘This quarter is crawling with whores who’ll pose for you,’ he said. ‘Find another one, Michele. One with more sense, this time.’
‘May God bless her. He has taken her to His care.’
‘It’s only in stories that whores are redeemed, Michele.’
‘What about me? How am I to be redeemed?’
Mario giggled, but Onorio’s response was quick and wondering. ‘Your painting, Michele. Your painting is from God, and it will redeem you.’
Caravaggio’s eyes fixed on him. Onorio wondered at what he had said. Can painting save a soul? Can the churches I design bring salvation? When an artist draws, does he create something holy in his own mind? Caravaggio returned the smile. He’s pondering the same thing.
‘If some day I make just one painting that’s true,’ Caravaggio said, ‘maybe then God will take my soul and it’ll be clean. But how will I know when I paint that picture?’
Onorio had an answer, and he was puzzled that it had come to him. ‘You’ll know. You’ll feel clean. Like you’ve been washed.’
Caravaggio rose. He put his hand on Onorio’s head. Then he went to the door.
He took some raw sienna and thinned it with linseed oil. Cecco grumbled at the light. ‘It’s the middle of the night, Maestro.’ The boy turned onto his side and pulled the blanket over his pale back. With delicate strokes, Caravaggio laid a new shadow over Prudenza’s face. They’ll wonder who you were, he had said to her, when she’d asked why he had obscured her features. But I’ll know. I see through all this paint. I see what’s underneath. I see you.
He laid down his brush.
3
The Madonna of Loreto
In the weeks after Prudenza’s murder, Caravaggio withdrew from the whores in the taverns, even from his friends.
Impatient with this rupture, Onorio came to his house. ‘You need to get out. You need a woman,’ he said. ‘Much as it might go against the grain for me to say this, perhaps you ought to try a girl who doesn’t sell it.’
