by Diane Haeger
“Your friend Leonardo told me, before he left for France, that I should try at least to be a part of your world. And so tonight I shall.”
“You have worked greatly for this.”
She wanted to say that he could not begin to imagine how hard she had worked for this first public event—the dancing instruction, the etiquette lessons, and the exhausting drills in polite conversation—nor how nervous she was to attempt to use them all in one night. But that would have ruined this moment for him. Raphael touched her cheek with the whisper of a kiss.
“They must all know, sooner or later, that you are meant to remain in my life.”
“I do not suppose it shall be easy.”
“What in life worth having ever is?” he asked her, and she knew it was true.
“My mother would have been very fond of you.”
“I wish very much that I had known her.”
Margherita pressed a hand to her heart. “She is with me here, every day of my life. And I know she believes I have done the right thing in loving you.”
He extended his arm gallantly to her. “Well, then? Shall we go and set all the tongues of Rome to wagging by our presence together?”
“I suspect you could do little else, appearing anywhere with a Trastevere baker’s daughter!”
“That is certainly not how I see you, amore mio. Nor shall it be what the rest of the world thinks.” He led her toward the foyer where a velvet-clad servant held open the front door for them. The cool night air soothed them both as they walked out amid a canopy of stars.
“At the moment,” said Margherita. “I would settle for amusing even one of your very important friends.”
“YET AGAIN, more delays?” Agostino Chigi bellowed, his deep voice echoing through the cavernous stone rooms of the Castel Sant’Angelo. “Impossible! It cannot be! This is entirely out of the question!”
Cardinal Bibbiena stood with the imposing, black-bearded banker, who was dressed in finery of olive-green velvet edged in silver. They were the first guests to arrive for Chigi’s weekly midday dinner, this one given across from the Vatican Palace at the ancient papal fortress. They stood together, draped in white silk, in the library hall, with its soaring ceiling, massive windows, and large banquet table, while the pope’s favorite buffoon, Niccol, entertained in the corner.
Bibbiena’s hands were clasped piously, and the expression on his face was one of rigid contradiction. He was biting back a victorious smile. “Alas, it is so, I fear,” he said patiently. “That is the news I was given, and I come to you with it only in friendly warning. Signor Sanzio has told His Holiness that he needs more time with everything. He says it is due to the slow progress on the architectural drawings for Saint Peter’s, and his work with the antiquities, about which I do not mind confessing to you, caro, I believe him to be far in over his head. And yet it is also my belief that the excuse is merely a tactic to mask . . . other things.”
“But my wedding is in four days’ time, and you tell me that the fresco in the very room where we will banquet shall not be complete, when Raphael himself assured me that it would be?”
“I fear it may well be so.”
So mired in angry disbelief was Chigi that he saw no ulterior motive in Bibbiena’s patient explanation. “This cannot stand! I am a man of great power, and this fresco is my legacy, my story! He will have his assistant—that Romano fellow, someone—see it to completion or there will be hell to pay!”
“Perhaps you shall effectuate that. And yet does it not mask a greater problem?”
Chigi looked imperiously at him. “That girl!”
“S. Still that girl. For a common tart with no family of note, she has managed for some time to entirely disrupt his life, his work, and his reputation. What, one might be given to ponder, will that do to the value of his work?” He sighed for effect, paused, then said, “Would that my poor niece had managed to marry him before that girl came along. But alas—”
“This is an abomination, that a Trastevere peasant could supersede someone so important as myself!” blustered Chigi. “And I had an agreement about his work for me long before he discovered her!”
“Sentiments I assure you that I share with you, Agostino mio. You could certainly take this up with him at dinner today,” Bibbiena offered.
“The great Raphael is going to grace us, at last, with his presence when he has been so taken up with his whore?” Chigi asked sarcastically, still fuming with indignation.
Then, unexpectedly, Margherita herself entered the room on Raphael’s arm.
Everything fell to a sudden, bitter hush. Bibbiena saw Margherita go very pale as all eyes in the grand villa were, at once, turned upon her. Then low murmuring voices began to fill the marked silence. Soft snickering behind raised palms followed, chins lifted loftily in judgment. Bibbiena thought for a moment she meant to turn and run. Or perhaps that was merely wishful thinking. Alas, she was still moving forward on Raphael’s arm, looking nothing at all like his niece. She was undeniably exquisite in a rich white damask gown, ornamented in beadwork and gold thread, and her face . . . breathtaking.
Puttana!
“Apparently he means to bring the objectionable girl along as an accent to one of these dinners of revelry and comedic entertainment!” the cardinal cautiously replied behind a raised hand.
He quirked a smile. If his informants were correct, there was a presentation about to be made at this gathering, and the cardinal decided now, with that in mind, that the Luti girl’s introduction into their world could not be more well timed.
As the hour wore on, he watched them seated together, amid the first trays piled with almonds, figs, and chunks of rich yellow cheese. He was sickened by the current that pulsed between them, the low whispers and the smiles they exchanged, as they repeatedly glanced at one another and then giggled like children.
Bibbiena was still tormented by the fact that Raphael had not paid a price for breaking his niece’s heart. Yet anything he did—any public reprisal he might set in motion—would come back too boldly on him, and reflect poorly on his own eventual papal bid. No, his actions would need to be surreptitious. Careful. As in everything he did—as it was with the favors he had called in with Cardinal de’ Rossi, encouraging him to speak glowingly to Pope Leo of Bibbiena’s work so that he might stand out just now from the other cardinals.
It was Maria’s place beside Raphael. His niece should be here. Not this girl. The pope’s buffoon, dressed in a brightly colored costume, with hair dyed the color of fresh carrots, entertained them near the fireplace hearth, but Bibbiena could enjoy none of it.
Before the meal, as most of the guests sat staring at Raphael’s mistress among them for the first time, the pope raised a hand to speak. By the gesture, his guests were immediately silenced. The buffoon bowed and left the room. The music and the clink of glasses faded softly away.
“Bernardo,” Pope Leo intoned in his high, thin voice. “We are told many good things, of late, about your work. Finding the tone of our official position in the letter to Emperor Maximilian is extremely important, yet you keep such successes so nobly to yourself. Your selflessness is pleasing.”
Pure brilliance! He would owe Cardinal de’ Rossi for this. Bibbiena made a mental note of it as he smiled politely. “My thanks for the high compliment from Your Holiness. But the work is its own reward,” he smoothly replied.
“And yet it is still my wish for you to have something, Bernardo. A token of my gratitude and pleasure with you and your exceedingly important work.”
He lay a meaty jeweled finger to the side of his chin, enjoying his magnanimity. “You know I am much interested in the excavation at the Domus Aurea, the endless examples of ancient art left there, in spite of the cruel destruction.”
“I have seen the exquisite frescoes there myself,” Bibbiena concurred, a sweetly toned dig forming on his lips. “As you know, those ancient works have driven my desire for similar decorations by our own, very busy, Raffaello.”
“Occasionally there have been gifts smaller than frescoes that history has offered up to us—other glimpses back to the exquisite grandeur and beauty of ancient Rome left for us to behold.” As he made the slow pronouncement, Pope Leo withdrew from the small, plump finger of his own left hand a delicate, square-cut ruby set in a band gold. “This was found at the Domus Aurea of Nero in excavations which our good Raffaello has ably overseen for us. Spoken of in the writings of Suetonius, as the favored piece of jewelry for Nero’s wife, if it is that ruby ring, it would be, as you might imagine, priceless.” He leveled his protruding, bloodshot eyes on Bibbiena. “As you have made yourself to this papal court.”
Smiling, Bibbiena took the ring as the pope extended it to him, and held it up to the light. Not exquisite, but lovely enough. Nevertheless, by the look on Raphael’s face just now, it was priceless and would suit his purposes well indeed.
In a social strata where everything was said and done for the effect of gain, Bibbiena was pleased that this presentation of something from the pontiff’s own person had been made in the very presence of the scoundrel and his peasant mistress themselves. He felt a spark of victory in that, and more than a hint of pleasure.
Bibbiena bowed deeply, causing more guests at the table to turn from their private conversations, as he held the ring up to the light in a dramatic gesture.
“It is exquisite. And so difficult to believe that down there, amid all of that rubble, so delicate and beautiful a thing—” He broke off with appropriate awe. “And yet I cannot help but think Your Holiness is the only one who should wear such a fine and rare jewel.”
“Perhaps it is so,” Pope Leo conceded, his fleshy cheeks swiftly bulging as his expression became merry. “Were it not for my great affection toward you, and a strong desire to reward your loyalty.”
“With benevolence and grace, Your Holiness leads us in all things,” said Bibbiena as he slipped the ring onto his own finger and then lifted his goblet of wine with the same hand so that the gem might glitter a little more brightly in the candlelight.
RAPHAEL SAT SILENTLY on the other side of the pope, watching the scene play out, his anger and shock breeding in him a curious detachment from the scene. It was the ring meant for Margherita’s hand, the one he had tried for weeks to obtain. He had personally petitioned the pope—a thing to which His Holiness had, at first, easily agreed, simply because his favorite artist desired it. A bold statement indeed that this—the only thing he had ever asked of a pontiff who asked much of him—should be so publicly presented to someone else. In particular, to the uncle of a woman he had spurned.
Raphael touched his chin where a small, neat brown beard now grew beneath a trimmed mustache. He studied the pontiff, seated across from him. Something very odd, an undercurrent of danger, was beginning to swirl around this particular collection of people. Instinct told him to be cautious until he was absolutely certain who he should fear, as he saw Bibbiena lean across to speak with Margherita.
As great silver serving dishes of sugar biscuits, marzipan, pine nuts, quail, and sweetmeats were laid across the surface of the vast, linen-draped table, they saw bread that had been gilded set beside shining silver saltcellars and vases of fresh flowers. There was a velvet-clad boy playing something melodic on a lute across the room near the fire. Raphael reached beneath the damask table cover and found Margherita’s small hand, which he squeezed reassuringly. Both of them saw the cardinal prop the palms of his hands conspicuously on the surface of the table so that his rings, especially the ruby ring, would glitter in the candlelight.
“The ring is exquisite, Your Grace,” he heard Margherita very softly remark, knowing nothing of its value to Raphael. They were the first words she had spoken to anyone but Raphael all evening.
She was straining, Raphael knew, to adopt the appropriately modulated tone to be used with so important and intimidating a cleric as the one who sat stiffly only two guests away from her. His heart squeezed with pride, and he willed himself not to intercede. This must become a successful evening for her—never mind the ring—and she must do it on her own.
“And it seems I have your Raphael to thank for it, signora,” Cardinal Bibbiena replied with an imperious gleam.
Raphael set down his goblet of wine and listened more carefully, the hair on the back of his neck suddenly prickling in warning.
“After all,” Bibbiena continued, stabbing a piece of white fish with his gleaming silver fork, then settling his gaze very directly on Raphael, “was it not you who brought it up yourself from the ruins of Nero’s house?”
Where do you mean to go with this? He felt the caution surge up inside him. “It is so,” he carefully replied.
“Well, there you see? The credit for my gift then is exclusively yours.”
“I am glad the ring pleases Your Grace.”
“And so at least one Bibbiena is victorious against a Sanzio in something.”
He had been played like that lute, Raphael realized. The cardinal knew he had valued that ring, and now he sat there beside him, so smugly pious, twirling it around on his own cold, reedy finger. Raphael had long been wary of the cardinal’s power. His wariness had increased once he had sought to leave Maria. But he had not truly feared him until now—now that there was Margherita, vulnerable and unaware, between them.
MARGHERITA glanced at Raphael across the room half an hour later as he stood, arms crossed over his chest below a bronze medallion he wore on a heavy chain. He was deeply engaged in conversation with another cardinal. This one, called Inghirami, was a short, stout man, nearly bald, yet with the shadow of a beard on his double chin, and one unfocused eye. She allowed herself the slightest self-satisfied smile then, and drew in the first full breath she had taken since the dinner began. Madre Maria! She was actually surviving this! She had not spilled any wine or spoken too quickly, nor even said the wrong thing.
She watched Raphael and the cardinal speak intensely of the great architectural debate concerning the mammoth size of the planned basilica for Saint Peter’s, and whether or not, once complete, it could actually stand. The artist and the cleric spoke intensely and quietly, standing there holding their jewel-encrusted goblets, only a few feet from the Holy Father seated in his silk-covered dining chair. Raphael was wrapped in an elegant doublet of aubergine and gold thread, his toque tilted in the stylish French manner. She was dressed like a princess.
This was her world now, she thought, as unbelievable as that still seemed.
That world had shifted entirely from one of baking endless loaves of bread in a stifling kitchen, and wondering daily if they had earned enough money to feed them all, to an existence of deciding upon shoes with pearls or beads, attending to the needs of various servants, reading books, engaging in fascinating discussions, and making choices on more new gowns than she could count. She had fine jewelry and two very fashionable French headdresses. These trappings, and Elena’s patient lessons, had recast the uncertain peasant girl from Trastevere like a layer of blue wash on one of Raphael’s paintings. By his devotion, she had been transformed, and she almost dared to believe that she was actually on the pathway to becoming someone appropriate for him. For example, the handsome young painter Sebastiano Luciani, with his sharply assessing black eyes, had dined near her and treated her with the greatest respect. He inquired as to her opinion of the Castel Sant’Angelo, and her new very elegant home, as if they were the most natural of subjects.
She found very quickly that it was difficult not to like Sebastiano, his sense of humor, and the way in which he so quickly put her at ease. Once Raphael, on her other side, was taken up in conversation elsewhere, Margherita was grateful to have had Sebastiano ask a cardinal if they might trade places.
Margherita had no idea what had made Raphael so tense after the presentation to Cardinal Bibbiena, but she was beginning to understand the sometimes volatile and always changing temperament of an artist. And because of the kind attentions of the dining partner on the other si
de of her, she had been given no opportunity to ask him.
A slim hand on her shoulder brought her back to the moment. Margherita turned around to see a lovely woman with shining honey-colored hair and a kind smile standing beside her. She wore a dress of rich, dove-gray silk, and her hair was braided with tiny sapphires.
“Ours are complicated men who have dared to love beneath expectation,” she said sweetly. “Our ranks, as those who love them in return, are few.”
When Margherita looked puzzled, she added with an easy smile, “I am Francesca Andreozza, betrothed of Signor Chigi.”
Margherita had heard about her from Raphael, as well as about Chigi’s other mistress, Imperia, who had battled valiantly for the title of Signora Chigi. Francesca, like herself, was common. And in the beginning she had been treated to the very same social rebuff.
“I am Margherita Luti.”
“Of course. All of Rome knows who you are. But only I understand what it is like to be in your shoes.”
“Perhaps you have a point.” Margherita found herself smiling.
“I would be most fond of a sound ally.”
Trust was a difficult thing for Margherita to risk in a world so new to her, and thus so fraught with danger. But she, too, could benefit from an ally. And Raphael would be proud of her, she determined, having found one in his own patron’s fiance.
“I would like that.”
Francesca clasped her hands. “Splendid! Then tell me you will come to supper with me next week. We will have a more private opportunity to speak of things then.”
“It would be a pleasure.”
Francesca smiled. “And it has been one for me this evening—meeting you.”
The entertainment began. The pope’s buffoon was making everyone laugh with his antics set to music played on a lute and a flute set up near the fireplace hearth. Francesca was distracted then by another guest. Alone now, Margherita felt brave enough to seek a breath of fresh air. This really had been the most extraordinary event.