by Matt Rees
‘Wait, Michele.’ The Marchesa lifted the cloth again.
‘You don’t have to do this, my lady.’
‘The wound has to be cleaned.’ She went delicately along the scab that drew down from his eye to his lip. ‘If it gets infected –’
‘You’re worried I might die?’
‘An infection would . . .’ She halted, hearing accusation in his voice. ‘Michele, what do you mean?’
‘I’m going to live. I’m going back to Rome.’ His defiance was edged with resentment and frustration. I’ve been forced into danger for this woman and she has kept me always servile, humiliated.
‘Of course you are, Michele.’
‘I’ll see to it that Scipione orders the knights to free Fabrizio.’ His sarcasm was undisguised.
She threw the cloth into the ewer of water on her lap. Her face was thin and pale, like a sketch with a fine quill and watered ink. Concern for Fabrizio pared her down and sucked her from the inside.
‘You don’t have to deny it,’ he said. ‘You don’t have to pretend to be worried about me.’
‘That’s an awful thing to say.’
‘It stands to reason you’d be worried. You’d have nothing to bargain with if I was dead. It’s only natural. You’re Fabrizio’s mother, after all.’
‘And what am I to you?’ Her voice was loud. Her body quivered. She raised the ewer and dashed it to the floor.
Her shriek punctured his anger. He thought of the young woman who had taken him in when his father died. She had been with him all this time. She had understood him with as little effort as Lena had.
She murmured, ‘It’s the least you can do for Fabrizio after what you did to him.’
What does she mean? he wondered. Something that happened on Malta?
She saw his confusion and added, ‘When you were boys.’
She thinks I seduced Fabrizio. He was about to spit out the words he knew would hurt her – that Fabrizio had been the one who wanted his touch – but his throat closed up. He thought back to Fabrizio’s chamber almost thirty years before. Who had reached out first? Perhaps his memory had shielded him from his guilt. I always thought I sacrificed myself for him, that I allowed Fabrizio’s father to believe I was the one who made love to his blameless son. The wounds in Caravaggio’s face stung and his neck twitched. Was I telling the truth? Is this all because of me? He blinked. No, surely that’s not how it was.
Costanza sucked her upper lip and squeezed her fists together in her lap. ‘Forgive me. Yes, you’ll return to Rome. You’re right.’
He would leave her and she would be alone. What’s worse – to have a price on your head as I do, he thought, or to know that at any moment the boy who grew from your own body may meet his death?
‘Those who love you the most see you more clearly than you see yourself,’ she said.
‘I’m a painter. Who sees better than I?’
‘A lover, a mother – or God. His sight is clearest of all. With Fabrizio, you were a boy and you behaved as a boy, but you felt a man’s guilt. You can’t allow yourself to be forgiven.’
‘But Fabrizio —’
‘If you don’t know that he loves you, then you know nothing.’
He pushed the heel of his hand against his brow. ‘We have sinned so much, my lady, Fabrizio and me.’
Costanza leaned close and kissed his wounds.
The Baptist’s plump foot rested on the log at the fringe of the canvas. Caravaggio edged the toes with a deep umber, filling the nails with grime. He stepped back from the painting, the first of the works he would take to Rome for Cardinal Scipione. The young St John reclined on a stump, his fleshy midriff twisting against his staff and a flowing red drapery. Beside him, the ram that was the symbol of the saint reached up to eat a leaf from a tree.
‘He’s a bit chubby for an ascetic who lived off locusts in the desert, don’t you think?’
Caravaggio dropped his palette and brush. Spinning towards the stairs beyond the studio door, he unsheathed his dagger.
‘A fat little saint. It’s almost conventional. Back in Rome everyone’s doing dirty toenails now, just like you. I couldn’t even call that a typical touch of Caravaggio anymore.’ Leonetto della Corbara grinned as he approached the canvas. Guiding the dagger back to its sheath, he embraced Caravaggio. He held on as the artist pulled away. ‘But I imagine the painters who copy your style in Rome wouldn’t be quite so poised to drop their work and take up their weapon.’
‘Yes, I’m the real thing.’
The Inquisitor slipped his hands into the sleeves of his black habit. His beard, unshaven for a day or two, cut dark across his grey skin. His eyes were avid and hesitant, like a man unsure of a woman yet desperate for love. ‘I was happy to hear from Cardinal del Monte that the reports of your death were as exaggerated as Maestro Baglione’s reputation.’ A nervous, failed laugh. ‘Even so, infections can set in, when a man is wounded. I’m doubly pleased to see that you still live.’
‘Perhaps I’m already dead. I seem to be meeting so many ghosts from my past. Del Monte, and now you.’
‘Maybe you’ve gone to heaven.’
‘I wouldn’t expect to see you there.’
Della Corbara looked hurt. It was a tactic he had employed before, but Caravaggio was surprised to see the expression linger.
The Inquisitor went to a curved-wood chair. ‘Sit down, Maestro.’ The Inquisitor’s face was grave and for once it seemed he didn’t pretend. Caravaggio gripped the arms of the chair tight.
‘Michele, Lena is dead.’
Caravaggio doubled forward as though a dagger gutted him.
Della Corbara laid a hand on his shaking shoulder. The Inquisitor’s touch was trembling and exploratory, like a rat seeking food.
‘I don’t believe you.’ The wounds in Caravaggio’s face seemed to break open and burn. ‘How did she die?’
‘She caught a chill standing in the Piazza Navona with her vegetables. Her lungs were weak, it seems. Within a few days . . .’ The verminous hand crept to the back of Caravaggio’s neck. ‘But come now, Michele. She was twenty-eight years old. It’s not such a young age for Our Lord to take to His breast a poor woman in lowly circumstances. Let’s talk about how I can help you with Cardinal Scipione.’
‘What do I need your help for now? Lena’s dead. What is there for me in Rome?’
‘Redemption. Greatness as an artist.’
Caravaggio shoved the Inquisitor’s hand away.
‘Very well, how about your head on your shoulders?’ della Corbara said. ‘Because it’s clear that here you’ll be dead very soon.’ He jabbed his finger into Caravaggio’s scarred cheek.
The artist yelled with pain.
‘I’m skilled in torture, Michele, but I’m not merciless.’
Caravaggio felt as though his muscles were wasting by the second. Breathing seemed an intolerable burden. His face contorted as if he were an angry child trying to squeeze out a tear. ‘She had a beautiful soul.’
Della Corbara’s hand circled Caravaggio’s neck, like a seducer drawing him in for a kiss. ‘Come to Rome. It’s what you want. For yourself.’
‘I don’t want anything anymore.’
‘What about your paintings? What do you want people to think of when they see your works? Innocence and the souls of the martyrs? Or murder?’ The hand was in Caravaggio’s hair now, caressing. ‘Come to Rome and rescue your paintings. Even if you think yourself not worth saving, your work must be.’
Della Corbara toyed with a mortar and pestle on the table. ‘You work from nature. By showing what you see, you reveal the deepest meaning of your subject. But what if you were commissioned to paint the Council of Ten that rules over the Republic of Venice?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘By a quirk of the Serenissima’s history, there are in fact seventeen men on the Council of Ten. If you painted the Council, would you show ten men, so that everyone knew it was the famous Council of Ten? Or would you paint sev
enteen men and allow everyone to wonder what it was that you had depicted?’
‘You’re trying to trick me?’
‘I’m an Inquisitor. You may be assured that I’m always trying to trick you.’ He rose stiffly. ‘But as Leonetto, the merchant’s son from Salerno, I want to warn you. If you think nature can be observed and painted on a canvas, you forget that people’s secrets aren’t so easily recognized. There’s no chiaroscuro in the heart, no radiance emerging from the shadows. The soul lies entirely in darkness. Only God brings it to the light.’
He went to the door. ‘After you left Malta, the Cardinal-Nephew called me to Rome to report on what had happened. I came to know Lena there. I told her stories about you. I gave her absolution before her death, Michele. She’s in the company of Christ.’
Caravaggio felt his chest tighten. He saw the trap that had been laid for him. Not by della Corbara or Scipione, nor by Tomassoni or Roero. It was set by the Almighty and he felt its jaws about to snap on him.
‘If you wish to enter Heaven and be reunited with Lena, you must redeem yourself in the eyes of the Church. Otherwise, you know where you’re going.’ The Inquisitor poked his index and little finger downwards – the sign of the devil. ‘Finish the paintings for Cardinal Scipione. Then you may come to Rome and be forgiven before God. I’ll be in Naples for two weeks on other business for the Holy Inquisition. Return with me to Rome. We’ll pray together for Lena’s soul in front of the portrait you made of her as the Madonna of Loreto.’
Della Corbara mounted the steps. He was out of sight when Caravaggio heard his voice. ‘Meanwhile, I’ll pray for you. You look about ready to die. But don’t let my prayers be in vain.’
Caravaggio stared into the mirror, preparing for his self-portrait. His mouth hung open, as though he had just sprinted some distance and needed more than the usual breath. His damaged eye wavered above the wound in his cheek, the image in the mirror blurred, and he squinted in frustration. The horror of what he saw crept across his features. His father had watched death summon his spirit from the plague room – it was coming for him too.
He shambled across the room like a man woken too early. The basement felt like a dungeon. He needed air. He went up to the gates of the palace and leaned against the piers of the entrance, breathing hard.
A group of women came over the hill from the Royal Palace and the old quarters, dancing and singing. ‘The blood of St Gennaro liquefied,’ they called out. ‘God bless the saint and his miracle.’
It’s a sign, he thought. You know what you have to do.
One of the Stigliano porters came out of the gatehouse and watched the women go by. ‘The blood of the saint flows. We’re all saved for another year,’ he said.
The evening breeze brought the scent of salt on the air from the bay. Caravaggio watched the women dance down to the incoming tide on the beach. ‘Let us give thanks for the blood,’ he said. He went back to his studio to write a message.
In the morning, Caravaggio went down to the waterfront. He strode with purpose away from the city, until he came to the narrow strand of Chiaia. The fishermen gathered around their small boats, chattering with the eagerness of men who spent their nights riding alone on the darkness of the bay. They argued the price of their catch with the women and pulled handfuls of grey shrimp and coral-pink octopus from their pails.
A man perched against one of the beached wherries. His stillness marked him out against the laughing fishermen. At Caravaggio’s approach, he rose and threw back his cloak. The fishermen moved away when they saw the cross of the Order of the Knights of St John of Malta on his breast.
From the rocks above the beach, Caravaggio touched the skin beneath his good eye and pulled it down, the Neapolitan signal that asked, Do you understand?
Roero licked at his lips and bared his teeth. As if to show that he too had learned the gestures of the city, he lifted his hand, the tips of all his fingers meeting and an insistent little shake from the wrist. Hurry up.
In his studio beneath the Stigliano Palace, Caravaggio completed the paintings for Cardinal Scipione faster than he had imagined possible. Three canvases, side by side, filling out the figures on one as the paint dried on the others, then moving on to the next to lay in new details once the oils were stable enough.
The Inquisitor came upon him as he blocked in the body of a youth for the final canvas. The model, a kitchen boy from the palace staff, held a bag of apples from his outstretched arm and gazed upon it mournfully. ‘What’s this? A sad still life with fruit?’ della Corbara said.
‘It doesn’t matter what he’s holding.’ Without coming from behind his curtain, Caravaggio adjusted the concave mirror he was using to project the boy’s torso. ‘I just want the weight of the fruit, so I can show the muscles of his arm working.’
Della Corbara twitched his lips, watching the light from the high lantern pale on the boy’s thin biceps. ‘I’m glad you came to see it my way.’
Caravaggio opened the curtain and lifted his chin.
‘Cardinal Scipione will be most pleased with me. Del Monte, too.’
Caravaggio gave a low, graceful bow. When he raised himself, his expression was placid and implacable. The Inquisitor was unnerved. ‘Carry on, Maestro,’ he mumbled. ‘We sail north for Rome in two days. I’ll see you at the boat.’
‘I can’t wait.’
The artist’s insolent tone made della Corbara halt. He regarded him with curiosity, then impatience.
The young model held the sword at a gentle angle across his legs, while Caravaggio worked at the slash of light down its centre and along its outer edge. Costanza watched from the foot of the steps. Caravaggio hadn’t painted this boy’s features. The face she saw on the canvas was of someone else. She couldn’t quite place the pursed lips and pitying eyes. At the end of his foreshortened arm, the boy held a head. It was, as yet, without detail. From the darkness of the background, it emerged as a mass of unkempt hair and a beard. The base colour of the face was already drying as a yellowish brown.
‘It’s David with the Head of Goliath, is it not, Michele?’ she said.
Caravaggio went on with his work. ‘Quite so, my lady.’
She had seen many Davids before, but never one like this. David was usually a triumphant figure, the helmeted warrior of old Maestro Donatello or the muscular giant by the divine Michelangelo which she had seen in a square in Florence. ‘The way you’ve painted it, David looks so sad.’
Costanza tried to remember how Caravaggio had appeared as a child. There’s more than a trace in the painting, she thought, of the boy I took in so many years ago. ‘Is it you, Michele?’
He rounded on her. She stepped away in surprise. The wound on his cheek, the twitching eye, the lowered shoulders, his scars all threatened her.
‘The boy looks like you used to.’ She gestured towards the canvas with a quivering finger.
‘You’re mistaken, my lady.’
The model broke his pose and reached for the fruit in a bowl beside him. He tossed a grape into the air and caught it in his mouth.
‘Keep still,’ Caravaggio said.
He circled his brush on his palette to load the bristles. ‘My lady, I must get on with my work. I’ll be here all night as it is. I need to be finished in time to sail with Father della Corbara tomorrow.’
‘Will the paint be dry by then? Surely there’s no time.’
‘My lady, please.’ He shuffled his feet, seeming embarrassed to have raised his voice. ‘There’re ways to pack the canvases so that the work won’t be damaged, even if the oils aren’t quite dry. Now, please, your Grace.’
As she reached the step, he bent to build the highlights of the cloth draped from the boy’s shoulder. She was sure this David would be a masterpiece. It would overturn the conventions by which the biblical king had so long been portrayed. She watched the muscles in Caravaggio’s back move under his light smock. She felt such love for this man, whose genius might even rescue Fabrizio. She recognized love, t
oo, in the intensity of his labour. It doesn’t matter what happened all those years ago. My boys loved each other and that love endures.
‘Michele,’ she called.
His head dropped back and he sighed with impatience.
‘Thank you.’
His eyes were shadowed black by the lantern above him, but she was drawn to them. She wondered if he wanted her to enter those dark passages, to follow them right to the heart that had so often been hidden from her.
The boy launched another grape. He laughed as it bounced off his lip and rolled across the floor.
‘Good night, my lady.’ Caravaggio went back to his canvas.
Beneath the loggia of the Stigliano Palace, the cart was loaded with his few possessions. Caravaggio tossed a rolled canvas into the back and came over to Costanza. He was bent at the waist. His mid-section seemed to have collapsed into his hips. He looked as though completing the paintings for Scipione had expended an entire lifetime’s energy.
‘You have your safe passage from Cardinal del Monte?’ Costanza took his hands in hers.
‘I have it, my lady.’
‘In a day you’ll be in Rome, safe from harm, pardoned for – for that fight. A free man.’
The Pope might forgive me my sins, Caravaggio thought, but it’s to God and to Lena that I must make my most earnest supplications. He bowed to Costanza.
She drew him close and touched her mouth to the scar on his cheek. A dart of loneliness pricked at him.
‘You have the paintings, too, for Cardinal Scipione?’ she said.
He reached over the side of the cart and tapped his hand against the tan weave of the canvas, tied with twine. ‘The St John, a Magdalene, and David. I’ll pack them properly once we get to the boat. I’m in too much haste now to reach the port.’ He swung up onto the seat beside the carter. As the mules lurched forward in the traces, he touched his hand to Costanza’s shoulder. ‘You’ll see Fabrizio soon, my lady.’
