by Matt Rees
Caravaggio opened his mouth, but he wasn’t sure if he wished to console Ranuccio or to apologize. Death had been a point of honour for them. Now it was something else, the seeping of blood into the street, puddling between the cobbles and soaking into the vegetables dropped by traders on their way to market.
Mario and Onorio fought off the Tomassoni swordsmen as they went down the street. Caravaggio jogged on unsteady legs to the corner. The last thing he heard as he turned into the dark sidestreet was the scream of agony as the Tomassoni gatekeepers raised Ranuccio.
He rode with his hand tight on the guide rope of his pack mule. The beast stepped easily under his few belongings and his painting materials. He pulled his hat down low to hide the bandage on his scalp and threw his cape so that it covered his chin. He went south past the cow pastures in the old Imperial Forum towards the San Giovanni Gate. The guards lounged in the shade. Pasted to the brown brick of the Aurelian walls was a wanted notice. It named Michelangelo of Caravaggio as a bandit for the murder of Ranuccio. Anywhere in the papal lands, a man presenting Caravaggio’s severed head to the authorities might claim a reward. To signal the shame of his sentence and to persuade anyone who knew him that he was beyond aid, the poster depicted him upside down, hung by his feet.
The face shown in ignominy on the notice was a simplified version of one he had painted himself: his self-portrait as a bystander to the martyrdom of St Matthew, glancing over his shoulder with pity, fleeing the scene of the holy man’s killing. The police employ art lovers to do their wanted signs, he thought, with bitterness.
The horses’ hooves echoed under the gate, and then he was out in the fields. Rome was behind him, and Lena as well. He hadn’t asked her to join him in his flight. He had imperilled his immortal soul, perhaps already damned it. Contentment would be forever denied him. He didn’t wish that she, too, should be endangered, shrouded by the malign shadows of his capricious spirit. I can’t take Lena with me, knowing that soon I’ll invite another expulsion, he thought. And don’t forget the Tomassonis in pursuit, after my blood. Too dangerous to involve her.
He left Lena without explanation. He feared that if he had told her where he was going, she might have volunteered to accompany him to hell.
II
MALTA
A Name In Blood
1607
6
Portrait of the Grand Master
At the prow of the galley, Caravaggio squinted into the glare of the sun off the swells. His lungs filled as if he was drawing clear air from beyond the far horizon. Only now did he understand how fear had constricted him in the crowded streets of Naples, where he had spent the last year. Everywhere had been the untrustworthy shadows, the assassins stalking him. The backstreets of the Sanità proved that Baglione was wrong – darkness didn’t cover up your mistakes; it laid bare your vulnerability.
The open sea brought a sense of safety. Here there were no suspicious echoing footfalls, no soldiers rushing down from the new Spanish Quarter with bottles and daggers. He wasn’t even concerned that those who waved them off from the quay had called out, ‘God save you from the galleys of the Arab corsairs,’ or that he had been ordered to carry his sword until they docked in Malta in case of attack. The pirates enslaved those they captured, but Caravaggio hadn’t been free since he had killed Ranuccio.
Under his feet, two decks of slaves laboured at their benches. The splash of the oars was a soft tenor over the regular bass of their breathing. The loathsome odour of their defecations emanated from the hatches. The sea darkened emerald to olive. He cursed. He might as well have been tethered like the wretches below decks.
He looked along the length of the ship. Bigger than the galleys of Genoa and Spain and Venice, one hundred and eight oars and two massive sails, a shallow draught for raiding the inlets where the pirates had their lairs. The Capitana, flagship of the new Admiral of the Knights of St John of Malta: Fabrizio Sforza Colonna.
Costanza’s son emerged from under the scarlet awning across the poop deck at the stern of the ship. He laid a brotherly arm over the shoulder of one of his red-surcoated knights and called out an order to the helmsman. His teeth gleamed like the waves in the sun. His skin was regaining its colour after his time in jail. Relaxed and confident like a host with his guests in his own hall, he passed among the sailors.
A few soldiers gamed with dice on the deck. Fabrizio threw down a coin and bent to read his numbers. He swore with good humour and enjoyed the laughter of his marines at their commander’s loss.
He came to Caravaggio’s side at the prow and lifted his leg to balance against the bulk of the figurehead. ‘I feel as I used to when you and I would run out into the mulberry fields, just the two of us. No one to tell us what to do.’
‘Freedom was an illusion then, too.’
Fabrizio pursed his lips. Caravaggio regretted his words. His friend had been in a condemned cell almost two years. He might be forgiven for feeling childlike in his sense of liberty.
‘Not an illusion for me,’ Fabrizio whispered.
Caravaggio heard the recollection of fragile memories in the new Admiral’s voice. ‘You’re right that we escaped everyone back then – for a while at least.’ The dry hills of Calabria striped the horizon a few miles distant. He squinted into the glare off the waves.
‘We shall escape again, in Malta. Just as we did back then.’
Caravaggio’s features sharpened. Does he think I’ll be in his bed again so easily? ‘I’m coming to Malta because I gave my word to your mother.’
‘Then you are bound.’
‘I am bound.’
The soldiers bellowed at the fall of the dice. One of them tumbled onto his backside, shoved by the angry loser. Fabrizio called out and the fight was defused. The game went on in sullen silence.
‘Don’t blame my mother, Michele. It’s an opportunity for you. The Grand Master of the Knights agreed to take me on, in return for your presence on Malta. Your art will bring prestige to the new city he’s building. I’m pardoned for killing the Farnese boy, and you’ll get some good commissions. What else could Mama do?’
Caravaggio remembered the relief on Costanza’s face as she explained the deal. She had called him to her chambers in the palace of her cousin the Prince of Stigliano, where he had lodged during his year in Naples. She had seemed younger by a decade, and Fabrizio was the cause. He remembered then how she used to glow when she came across the two boys in the gardens of her estates. I had always hoped I was the source of the joy, he thought. Foolish of me. Fabrizio is her blood. He glanced at the handsome, welcoming features of the man at his side. I still wish it. But I’m like a pilgrim who competes with the Son of God for the Virgin’s love.
‘You had commissions in Naples, of course. Our Lady of Mercy at the Pio Monte is a masterpiece,’ Fabrizio said. ‘But you were too much in danger there. The Tomassonis can’t get you in Malta.’
Our Lady of Mercy. Another Madonna with Lena’s features. This time drained and grey-skinned, pouring out the compassion Caravaggio craved. ‘Yes, Malta is so remote, it might as well be the Indies.’
Fabrizio’s skin was smooth and fresh. He wore his confidence like the embroidered cape on his shoulder, loose and dashing. He pushed his hair, straw and gold, back from his brow and sucked at his lip. His hesitant eyes sought to meet Caravaggio’s gaze. ‘Do you think of him, Michele?’
‘The man I killed?’
Fabrizio nodded, and his hair fell in a swoop over one eyebrow.
‘He’s more implacable than his vengeful brothers,’ Caravaggio said. ‘He pursues me everywhere. No doubt to Malta as well.’
‘It seems sometimes a greater death to have survived my duel than to have been the loser,’ Fabrizio said. ‘Do you ever feel as though all your freedom and happiness expired with him?’
‘I was cut off from freedom and happiness the day I left your mother’s house,’ Caravaggio said. ‘There’ve been some times over the years when I sensed it again, but mostl
y I felt like a heavy man on boggy ground.’
Since that jab into Ranuccio’s groin, every day and with every stroke of his brush Caravaggio had measured his soul’s jeopardy. He reached for Fabrizio’s shoulder. ‘When freedom is open to you, you know only restriction. You end up taking a man’s life, perhaps just to see if even that greatest of the Lord’s commandments is yours to transgress with impunity. You and I are bound to the most sacred things by what we have done.’
Fabrizio snorted a sad laugh. ‘A test from God?’
‘No.’ Caravaggio’s voice was wondering. ‘A gift.’
Fabrizio gripped Caravaggio’s wrist and squeezed it.
Caravaggio flicked his eyes along the boat to signal the care they must take when together.
Fabrizio removed his hand. ‘Scipione wants you to stay on Malta only so long as it takes to get the Tomassonis to agree to your pardon. The family still demands revenge for Ranuccio’s life.’ He craned his neck to check on the four ships in line behind them. ‘On Malta, you’ll be safe from the Tomassonis. But watch out for the knights, Michele. They’re pledged to live as monks, except when they go forth to kill the infidel Turks. Some find themselves more given to killing than to praying.’
‘What does that have to do with me?’
‘These knights are all noblemen. A German knight needs to show four generations of nobility on each side of his family to enter the Order. A Frenchman must be free of the blood of a commoner in all four grandparents, and the Spanish and Portuguese knights have to demonstrate that they’re untainted by Jewish heritage.’
‘And you?’
‘We Italian knights must be noble in all four lines for two hundred years.’
In the hold below, the lash cracked over the slaves at their oars.
‘So they’re not really monks,’ Caravaggio said. ‘They’re princes.’
‘Princes, and pirates preying on Turkish shipping. When they get back into port, their entertainment is whoring and the taverns. The senior knights exert slight control. Back in the Evil Garden, Michele, you could hit people on the head and Cardinal del Monte would get you out of jail. If you pick a fight with one of these knights, I warn you it’ll be as though you declared war on the finest families of all Europe. The Pope himself thinks twice before he writes a rude note to a knight. Play the humble artisan. Stay clear of them.’
Fabrizio’s voice was like the drone of a mosquito, so distant that it seemed almost to be a figment of Caravaggio’s imagination, until, with a sudden crescendo, it was there on his skin and gone by the time he could slap at it. The humble artisan.
‘What do you think I’ve been doing this last year in Naples?’ he snapped.
Fabrizio wagged his finger. ‘I told you not to argue with a prince.’
Two sailors came up through the hatch from the rowing deck. They carried the limp body of a slave. His skin was patchy and peeling with malnourishment. Excrement fouled his loincloth, and his thighs and hands were livid with sores from the bench and the oar. His tongue thrust from his cracked lips as though it might find sustenance on the air.
The whip had reopened old scars on the slave’s shoulders. They bled feeble scarlet tracks down his sweaty back, as if his body barely had enough energy with which to die.
The slave groaned as the sailors jerked him onto the starboard rail. His neck rolled. The sailors dropped their burden over the side, timing the release so that the body didn’t impede the stroke of the oars below. They gave a little cheer to celebrate a clean fall. The air cleared as though the man had been a bucket of night soil dumped into the water.
The façade of the Grand Master’s Palace in Valletta was simple and stern. It extended along the square where the ridge dropped down to the hospital, the Knights’ original vocation five hundred years before in Jerusalem. Beyond the gate, Caravaggio passed through a courtyard lush with palms and orange trees. A ramp rose to the Grand Master’s chambers, so that knights might climb in their heavy armour with less effort than stairs would demand of them. The corridor to the Sacred Council chamber was paved in grey and russet marble. He awaited his audience.
The door swung open. The meeting of the Sacred Council was over. Out came the senior knights of the nationalities around which the Order was organized – of France, Auvergne and Provence, Aragon and Castille, Italy, and Germany – and a secretary to represent the few old English knights who had remained when their King Henry turned against the Roman Church. Their expressions were guarded, intense and subtle.
Caravaggio entered the Council chamber. Across the room, a fresco portrayed the arrival of the knights on Malta and the building of Valletta. A tall, gaunt man in the red habit of the knights examined him. His eyes were bloodshot and pale orange like shelled clams floating in a ragout. He squinted at Caravaggio and his red eyes were like two wounds on his face. Through such a filter, Caravaggio thought, a man would see nothing but blood. The knight had his hand on the hilt of the dagger in his belt. His beard was ragged and sparse, like pond scum on the disturbed surface of a pool.
‘Brother Roero, you may leave us.’
An older man spoke from an enclosed wooden balcony framed by the fresco on the far wall. The younger knight passed close to Caravaggio, his nostrils quivering, as if he sniffed for some scent that would give Caravaggio away. He shut the door behind him.
Caravaggio took a step across the room towards the old man who wore the black doublet denoting the most senior knights. He was rugged and lined in the face, his white hair and beard clipped short. He fretted a rosary. Caravaggio made to kneel before him, but his melancholy eyes flicked along the Council room, signalling that it wasn’t he who Caravaggio sought.
The Grand Master of the Order sat on his dais at the far end of the chamber. Alof de Wignacourt wore the vestments of his office, a doublet of woven gold and a cape embroidered with Our Lady of Liesse. His mouth was tight and his brow blotchy, as though some pressure pulsed beneath it. His index finger ticked at a large wart on the side of his nose and he watched Caravaggio’s approach as if he were at the battlements reading the tactics in an enemy’s formation.
‘Your Serene Highness.’ Caravaggio knelt on the step of the dais. ‘Michelangelo Merisi begs to be of service to you.’
Wignacourt extended his hand. When Caravaggio brought down his lips, it was like kissing a glove of chainmail.
‘Won’t make any problems for me, will you, Maestro Caravaggio? Enough trouble with the Sacred Council. Don’t give me cause for anger.’
The words of command were spoken in a tone of such loneliness that Caravaggio at first thought he had missed their meaning in Wignacourt’s French-accented Italian. He glanced at the other knight, who had come to his side. The old man in black winked.
‘Your Serene Highness shall witness how grateful I am to be given . . .’ Caravaggio was about to say refuge, but he didn’t want to acknowledge that he was so much at Wignacourt’s mercy. ‘To admire the feats of engineering carried out by the knights in building their new capital on this rock.’
Wignacourt flicked at his wart. ‘Troublesome types, you artists. That fresco there, by Perez d’Aleccio. A bit like your story. Ran away from Rome after some kind of assault a few dozen years ago. Went to Naples, then came here. Can’t leave. Isn’t safe anywhere else. Vendettas, you understand. Us? Stuck with the decrepit old fool.’
Caravaggio jerked his thumb towards the wall painting. ‘His art certainly isn’t like mine.’
The other knight smiled.
‘There’s another artist. What’s his name?’ the Grand Master said. ‘A Florentine, like you, Martelli.’
‘He’s called Paladini,’ the Knight said.
‘Paladini, that’s it. Condemned to the galleys for a brawl in Tuscany. Ended up here. Twenty years now. Rough lot, you painters.’
‘Like you knights.’ Caravaggio caught Martelli’s smile once more.
Wignacourt stood. Under his vestments, his knee rocked back and forth. His stocky frame was tremulou
s with tension. ‘Always been an atmosphere of riot among the Knights of the Order. Previous Grand Masters tried to rein it in, faced rebellion. Me? Done a better job of it.’
Caravaggio recalled what Fabrizio had told him about the princes and pirates of the Order. If the Grand Master aims to make these men behave like the monks they’re supposed to be, his task is by no means at an end.
‘We’d like to pay tribute to the Grand Master’s work,’ Martelli said, ‘by making a new portrait of him for the palace.’
Wignacourt tried to look grave, but the corners of his mouth flickered with pride. ‘I acknowledge Brother Antonio’s gesture. Commence with this portrait at our command, Maestro. Then I’ll have a further project for you. Wish my knights to have more time for contemplation, fewer distractions.’ The Grand Master caught Caravaggio’s elbow. Brother Antonio took his other side. He was pinned gently between the two knights.
‘His Serene Highness confronted the Turk at the Battle of Lepanto,’ Brother Antonio said. ‘I fought here in the Great Siege against the Sultan’s army. Those desperate times gave us an understanding of life and death – and of the life to come. If we didn’t live for God before those battles, we were His entirely after we survived them, by His Grace.’
‘The novices of our Order should prepare themselves for the sacrifices of battle and of holy orders,’ Wignacourt said. ‘How? Contemplation of art, inspiration.’
‘You might say that the proximity of death terrified the less worthy lusts and impulses right out of us older knights.’ Brother Antonio squeezed Caravaggio’s elbow. ‘We wish for an equally inspiring terror to be instilled in our new knights – by you.’
Caravaggio said, ‘What makes you think I know—?’
Wignacourt shook a dismissive hand. ‘Want to read the letters the Marchesa of Caravaggio wrote to me about your fight with Signor Ranuccio? About his death? If the letters weren’t enough, Brother Antonio here came through Naples recently. Saw your work there. Liked it.’
