A Name in Blood

by Matt Rees

  ‘You’re no gentleman.’ Lena spoke with defiance, but Caravaggio heard the tremor underlying her words. He had to get her away from Ranuccio.

  ‘Your boyfriend certainly isn’t a gentleman. But surely you already know that.’

  Caravaggio took Lena’s arm and hustled her to the entrance. Rounding the corner, he thought at first his way was barred, then he saw Onorio among the swordsmen crowding through the gateway.

  ‘Michele, what the hell are you doing in there?’

  ‘He’s been educating me,’ Lena said.

  Caravaggio laughed in relief now that the girl was away from Ranuccio. ‘Go home, Lena.’

  She reached for him. ‘Michele, don’t —’

  ‘Quickly, before this fight takes off. I can’t leave, not after what Ranuccio said to me.’

  She hesitated, as if considering what she might say to dissuade him. He shook his head and touched her chin with the point of his index finger. She kissed his cheek as she went.

  ‘She’s a nice little piece, cazzo.’ Onorio tapped Caravaggio’s behind. ‘So Ranuccio’s in the palace?’

  They went into the courtyard, a dozen yards from the rank of Farnese men.

  Caravaggio wondered at himself. An hour ago he had been as perfectly happy as he could have imagined, alone in the galleries of this palace with a woman who beguiled him. Now, one thrust could be the end of everything. Is that how your life will pass? Is that how it’ll be?

  Ranuccio stepped out from among the Farnese men. ‘Where’s your strumpet gone, painter? I want to put my horn up her so that you’ll have the horns of a cuckold on your head.’

  Caravaggio lifted his hand to his mouth and bit at the knuckle of his middle finger, baring his teeth.

  ‘You bite your finger at me? You insult me.’ Ranuccio drew his blade and advanced.

  Caravaggio withdrew his own rapier from its scabbard. A shimmering, glistening rasp vibrated from its edge up his arm and through his torso.

  The first impact, a parry, as Ranuccio leapt forward and thrust. His blade was a half-dozen inches longer than Caravaggio’s and his reach was bigger, too. Caravaggio feinted at Ranuccio’s sword, then he lunged and stabbed for the man’s bicep. His tip ripped the fabric of Ranuccio’s doublet. He felt flesh under the point of his sword.

  Ranuccio spun away from him and stood apart, probing inside his shirt with his left hand, his eyes on Caravaggio, wary and angry.

  Around them, the duel became general, thirty men on each side. The friction of steel edge against edge was like the pealing of illtuned bells in all the church towers of Rome at once.

  Ranuccio took up his guard, and lunged. Caravaggio parried with a turn of his wrist, leaning forwards over his right knee to deliver his riposte. Ranuccio barely pulled his head out of the path of the thrust and came at him again.

  His attacker’s blade seemed to Caravaggio to be a claw, a snake, a tendril of some tropical grasping plant. His throat was dry and his feet willed him backwards out of danger. But the sword in his hand pulled him closer. The urge to wound his man was irresistible.

  The hilts of their swords locked together. Caravaggio stepped in low and punched Ranuccio in the throat. He lifted his foot and kicked down on Ranuccio’s kneecap.

  He felt the big man sink. Grabbing Ranuccio’s sword hand, he pulled back his own blade for the coup. Is it to be now? Am I to prove as murderous as they say I am?

  A blow caught his temple with the force of a kicking horse. He fell and rolled. On his knees, he slashed blind so that his attacker might not approach until he had regained his senses.

  Someone dragged him by his collar. Onorio spoke in his ear, ‘I have you, Michele.’

  He blinked hard. A man he knew for Ranuccio’s elder brother, the soldier Giovan Francesco, was before him. It must’ve been him who prevented the coup de coeur, the final thrust home. He felt reprieved, like a man freed on the gallows. He hadn’t killed.

  Caravaggio was on his feet now, but he saw double and his head was heavy. Onorio steered him to the gate.

  Ranuccio leaned against his brother’s shoulder. ‘It’s not over, painter.’ His voice was drawling, slurred.

  ‘We’ll fry your balls, you scum.’ Onorio gestured for the other Colonna men to withdraw. A few came to the gate, sucking at cuts or binding wounds. Most were laughing and swapping insults with the Farnese men in the courtyard.

  They crossed the piazza. ‘Quick, before the patrols arrive.’ Onorio called to a slim swordsman whose refined hauteur appeared undisturbed by the duel. ‘Ruffetti, our friend needs a doctor.’

  As he approached, the swordsman frowned with not a little horror. ‘Bring him to my house,’ he said.

  Caravaggio lifted his hand to his temple. It came away red with blood.

  The investigators from the criminal court found Caravaggio in bed at Ruffetti’s house with wounds in his neck and the left side of his head.

  One of the officers pulled a chair up to the bed. ‘A Farnese man died of his injuries after the fight at the palace.’

  ‘What fight?’ Caravaggio touched the bandage on his throat and coughed.

  The two investigators shared a glance. The seated one, small and spare and grey-skinned, raised his eyes. The other stroked his thick black beard. They were familiar with the direction this was going to take.

  ‘A brawl, a swordfight at the Farnese Palace this week. Colonna men entered the courtyard. About two hundred took part.’

  Caravaggio almost said there had been no more than sixty. He saw the thin investigator edge forward in his chair, waiting to be corrected. ‘That’s a lot of men. Was anyone hurt?’

  ‘I told you, one of the Farnese men died.’

  ‘May God have mercy upon his soul.’

  ‘People said they saw you there.’

  ‘No chance. I’ve too much work to do. Who said I was there?’

  ‘Reliable witnesses.’

  ‘No one I know, then. Anyway, I’m too busy for such things. I’m painting a portrait of the Holy Father.’

  The man in the chair hesitated, but his colleague craned towards Caravaggio, holding onto the bed post. ‘We heard you’d finished that portrait.’

  ‘The Cardinal-Nephew and I have been consulting over the frame for the portrait. You can ask him.’

  ‘We might do that.’ The bearded investigator jabbed a finger at Caravaggio, but the one in the chair clicked his tongue.

  ‘What happened to you?’ the little investigator said. He took a tablet from his pocket and scribbled a note with a stylus.

  ‘I hurt myself with my own sword.’ Caravaggio tried to conjure up a laugh of self-deprecation. ‘I fell down the stairs somewhere near here.’

  The stylus scratched across the tablet. ‘Where?’

  ‘I can’t remember where exactly. I was a bit, you know – I was drunk.’

  ‘Boozing with the Cardinal-Nephew?’ the bigger man said.

  ‘By Jesu, Cosimo,’ his companion hissed. ‘Did anyone see you? Or come to your aid when you fell?’

  ‘There was nobody about at the time.’

  ‘Why did you come here?’

  ‘Luckily I realized I was close to the house of my friend Signor Ruffetti, the advocate.’

  Another glance between the investigators. That’s right, gentlemen, Caravaggio thought. I have friends who know the law.‘There’s nothing more I can say.’

  He listened to their gloomy descent on the stairs. When he swallowed, his throat felt as though it would blow out in every direction right through his neck.

  In the afternoon, Onorio brought him a flask of wine. He sat on the edge of the bed, as Caravaggio drank.

  ‘One of the Farnese men died.’ Caravaggio rested the bottle against his thigh.

  Onorio’s skin was flushed with excitement and his eyes were bright. ‘He was no one important.’

  ‘What would they say if I had died?’

  ‘They’d say you should’ve killed Ranuccio when you had the chance.’ Onorio s
lapped his leg. ‘There’s nothing wrong with a little blood on your hands. It makes a man of you.’

  Caravaggio blinked. ‘You killed the Farnese man?’

  ‘Give me the bottle, cazzo.’ Onorio’s voice twinkled with enthusiasm. He tipped the wine into his throat.

  Caravaggio shivered. Onorio had taken a life. He seemed to have become unknowable to Caravaggio, to have passed into a world where his only companions were the dead. ‘I’ve been lying here, thinking about how close I came to death,’ he said. ‘I could’ve been finished.’

  ‘You’re right. Dying is very easy.’ Onorio shoved open the shutters. The sun swept into the room as though the darkness had accrued like a layer of dust.

  ‘My father and grandfather died in a single day from the plague,’ Caravaggio murmured.

  ‘Everyone dies. You’d think that we died more than once, so much does dying abound. There hardly seem to be enough people living to satisfy all the dying that must be done.’

  ‘Now I’ve died my first and second times,’ Caravaggio pointed to his throat and head, ‘I’ve fewer deaths to fear.’

  When Onorio went whistling down the stairs, Caravaggio drifted into sleep. He dreamed that he fought Ranuccio again at the palace. This time, he was driven to his knees and Ranuccio thrust his rapier through his chest. He fell, his head on the cobbles of the courtyard, watching the statue of Hercules as if it lay on its side. Ranuccio ran past, chasing Lena, laughing. He caught her. Caravaggio awoke, screaming.

  Footsteps on the stairs. He sat up, shaking, sweating, his throat rebelling against his cry.

  Scipione entered, his moustache twitching with delight, like a thespian responding to his cue.

  ‘Quite a cry of horror. I often evoke that reaction, Maestro Caravaggio. But do calm down,’ he said.

  Caravaggio swung his legs off the bed.

  ‘Stay as you are.’ Scipione gave his hand for a kiss. He wrinkled his nose and pulled his arm back after the briefest of touches. ‘My dear, you are a mess.’

  ‘I fell down some stairs. I hurt myself on my own sword . . .’

  Scipione sucked in his breath. ‘I’m not investigating you, Caravaggio. ’

  ‘Yes, Your Illustriousness.’

  Scipione sat carefully, as though he didn’t trust the chairs in a commoner’s house. ‘It wasn’t many days ago that I told you not to make trouble with the Tomassoni boys.’

  ‘Yes, Your Illustriousness.’

  ‘I remind you that the head of the Tomassoni family is the chief of the guards at Castel Sant’Angelo. In times of trouble, that castle is the refuge of the Holy Father. That means Tomassoni is someone on whom the Holy Father himself must depend.’

  Caravaggio winced, lifted a hand to his throat.

  ‘If the Holy Father were to go to Castel Sant’Angelo and find the doors barred or the guard –’ Scipione brushed his moustache with his thumb ‘– unwelcoming, it would be a catastrophe for all Christians.’

  ‘I’m always deeply indebted to the Holy Father and to Your Illustrious Lordship.’

  The cardinal steepled his plump fingers. ‘I dined at Cardinal del Monte’s palace last night. I conversed with a man of science who informed me that humans are the only species that carries on vendettas. I thought of you.’

  Naturally.

  ‘Vendetta, it seems, is the thing that distinguishes us from the animals,’ Scipione went on.

  ‘And belief in the true God, My Lord.’

  ‘There’re many who don’t share that belief, and of course they shall die like animals. But you’re making fun of me. Don’t. Your conflict with Ranuccio is human. I ask you to be a little divine – to rise above it.’

  ‘Are you never vengeful, Your Illustriousness?’

  ‘Don’t compare yourself to me. In my case, vengeance is divine. It has the sanction of the Holy Father.’ Scipione stretched to touch Caravaggio’s arm. ‘I’m trying to help you with the issue of Don Fabrizio Sforza Colonna. I wish to show you my regard, as your patron. I wish to secure the happiness of the Marchesa Costanza Colonna.’

  Caravaggio would have taken the cardinal’s hand and kissed it, but Scipione restrained him with surprisingly easy force. He was stronger than he looked.

  ‘I have to buy off the Farnese to get them to overlook the killing of their cousin by Don Fabrizio. It doesn’t help me to have you brawling in their courtyard.’

  ‘There were a lot of men there. Not just me.’

  ‘I have no dealings with those other fools. Whereas from you I have commissioned a picture – of the Holy Father. And I wish to have more.’

  ‘But Tomassoni impugns my honour and—’

  Scipione’s tone went in one moment from his customary languid smoothness into the high-pitched frenzy of a thwarted child. ‘You’re my man, damn it. Behave like one on whom I can rely.’

  He rose from the chair, listened to its joints creaking back into place. He went to the door. ‘When you’ve recovered, go and see the family of Cavalletti the merchant, may his soul rest in peace. They’ve bought a chapel in his memory at Sant’Agostino.’

  Scipione went down the stairs. He was out of sight when he added, ‘They want a Madonna.’

  ‘From me?’

  ‘From Scipione’s man.’

  The house where the Virgin had heard she would bear the son of God arrived from Nazareth in the time of the Crusades. Angels bore it away from the threat of destruction at the hands of the Mohammedans. They set it down in Loreto, a town in the Marches overlooking the Adriatic. Many great artists painted the transport of the Holy House through the skies, always showing Maria alongside her old home, flying with the seraphim. In his will, the merchant Cavalletti left a bequest for an altarpiece, an image of the Madonna of Loreto.

  The merchant’s brother-in-law, Girolamo de’Rossi, held the contract towards Caravaggio.

  ‘I won’t paint the Madonna flying like a bird, you know,’ the artist said.

  De’Rossi rubbed the sheet of paper between his thumb and forefinger. ‘I could ask Maestro Baglione to do it.’

  ‘Baglione will certainly give you a Virgin no one can believe in.’

  ‘Do you mean you don’t take the miracle of the Holy House seriously?’

  ‘I take everything seriously. But I’m not like any other artist. That’s why I’ve gained such a reputation.’

  De’Rossi tried to smile.

  ‘Don’t worry, Signore.’ Caravaggio took the contract. ‘I believe in the Madonna. When I paint her, I’ll be in her very presence.’

  He leaned over the table, took the quill, and signed.

  Lena stood on a box with her sister’s boy on her hip. Caravaggio brought in a pair of old beggars he had hired on the street outside the Tavern of the Moor and had them kneel in supplication.

  ‘You’re bathing the boy and someone calls you to the door, Lena. You want to get back to the bath, but you also feel compassion for these simple pilgrims before you. Look into their faces.’

  ‘That’s how it was when you came along to my house the first time,’ she said. ‘But aren’t I supposed to be the Virgin?’

  ‘Don’t try to imagine how the Virgin would behave.’ He knelt behind the beggars. ‘Look at them, Lena. I want to know what you feel when you see them.’

  ‘They seem like good, old people.’

  ‘They walked all the way from their home to see you, endured robbery and hunger – just to look into your face. Would you turn away?’

  ‘No. Except I remember that Domenico started to feel a bit cold.’

  ‘Right, the Virgin wouldn’t forget the child either. So swing a little on your toes just as you are, because you’re thinking of the boy and that you need to get away. But look into their faces too.’

  She let her chin rest almost on her shoulder, shy of the responsibility he gave her to be a channel for the Virgin, yet filled with pity for the beggars.

  He stepped back to his booth, slipped inside the black curtain, and saw the projection of his
models on the canvas. He dragged the easel forward to make the image sharper. When he had them in focus, the figures were vivid before him. A flurry of joy made him clench his fists and bite at his lip. The painting wouldn’t be done for months, but here he had already seen it.

  In the reddish brown ground he had laid over the canvas, he took the handle of a brush and carved the positions of his models. The old man’s dirty feet pushing out towards the viewer; the beggar woman’s cheekbone, sharp from age and hunger; the child’s hand gripping the crimson velvet of the dress Caravaggio had bought for his Madonna; Lena’s foot, arched on her toes, and the line of the collarbone where her chin reached down.

  A few more cuts into the underpaint to mark the models’ positions, and he left the booth. He chalked around Lena’s feet so he would know where she was to stand for his next session, and did the same each side of the old people’s knees. Then he let the child go to the courtyard to play with the beggars, while he built the skin tone of Lena’s face and shadowed her nose and eyes. After a while he heard a small groan. ‘Your neck aches?’

  She smiled. ‘Yes. Can I have a look?’

  ‘There’s nothing much to see yet.’

  She swayed at her hips. ‘What does the Holy House of Loreto look like?’

  ‘It looks like your house.’

  She turned her head to the side, smiling and wary, expecting some trick. He watched her image where it was projected onto his canvas. He wanted to bring her inside the curtain. Where no one would see us. Except my Madonna.

  ‘You’re the Virgin. You live exactly where you live. Right down to the plaster falling away from the wall and the chips in the doorframe,’ he said. ‘It’s the place where Christ grew up. Do you think he lived in a palace? Or a church? Was he a prince?’

  ‘He was a carpenter.’

  ‘Where do carpenters live? In the Quirinale Palace?’

  ‘There’s one on our street.’

  He put down his brush and his palette and came to her. He took her hands. She rubbed at the oils in his palm with her fingertips. He caught his breath. This is how it’d feel to receive a message from Heaven. It wouldn’t be in Italian or Latin. It’d come as a sensation and you’d comprehend it instantly. The same way I feel before a great work of art. I sense everything, before I know it.