The Ruby Ring

by Diane Haeger

  Still, as they waited, with Margherita’s love and constant encouragement, Raphael had gotten back to work, full force, and he was too excessively committed to press the situation when the Holy Father pleaded for his patience. As spring turned to summer, and summer cooled to autumn, Raphael, as always, worked on several commissions at one time.

  Two days before Christmas of that year 1517, as a gesture of friendship, trust, and reconciliation, Raphael accepted from Cardinal de’ Medici, the pope’s cousin, his most important commission thus far, marking his full return to work. He was to paint the Transfiguration on a large panel as an altarpiece that would hang in the cathedral of Saint-Juste, in Narbonne, France, part of the cardinal’s archepiscopal see. It would be, Cardinal de’ Medici told him, the crowning glory of not only his art, but of Pope Leo’s papacy. What he did not tell Raphael, at first, was that the Holy Father had agreed to see a second highly prized commission for a companion piece, The Raising of Lazarus, given to Sebastiano Luciani.

  When he discovered that, Raphael bounded up the grand stairway of the house on the Via Alessandrina, his face white with rage. With a knotted fist, he rapped at the door of the little art studio beside the bedchamber, where Margherita generally took her afternoon reposo with her father and Letitia, for the view of the piazza and the reasonably fresh breeze it offered. This time, however, she was alone. The door crashed against the wall, shaking the house.

  “You will not believe what he has done this time!”

  Margherita came to her feet, her rich blue silk skirts unfolding around her legs, the hem sweeping the tile floor like gentle waves. “What has upset you, amore mio?”

  “His Holiness is trying once again to control me! Of all the artists in Rome, his cousin has given a commission for a companion piece to my Transfiguration to that bastard Sebastiano!”

  “Perhaps he feels it is time to end the grudge between the two of you. After all, it has been such a long time, and are we not stronger together even than before?”

  “Yet, from Florence, Michelangelo still stirs the pot between us daily! Bitter old fool! I still cannot trust his lackey, Sebastiano, and I will not risk your safety by trusting in the very men who sought to destroy us!”

  It was only then that he became aware of something. As he had come into the room, Margherita was standing beside the finished painting of herself, yet unframed, still on his easel, her eyes shining with tears. He had been so angry entering the room that he had forgotten he had left it here, and it was clear she had just seen it, now that it was complete.

  In the wedding portrait, he had painted Margherita as voluptuously as anything she had ever seen: a beautiful smile highlighting her face, a turban on her head, her breasts bare. But it was the newly added details that moved her. On the finger believed to lead to her heart, he had painted the exquisite ruby ring. The band painted so seductively onto her arm now bore words: Raphael Urbinas, the brand of the great master—his signature, his sign of possession to all the world.

  “You’ve signed it?” she asked through her tears, unable to break her gaze from the signature band he had painted onto her arm in such shades of bright blue and gold that it could not be missed by the viewer.

  “One of the few I ever have. It rarely felt right to do so until now. It was never something with which I wished to ornament my work as other artists do. But as you can see,” he smiled, and his face was full of adoration, “in style, tone, and subject matter, this is like nothing I have ever painted before.” He kissed her deeply. “You have inspired that change, Margherita mia—you!”

  “No one who sees it shall ever believe it is a true Raphael painting, you know. In it, you have broken all of your own artistic rules.”

  “Just as I have broken all of the other rules, it seems, by falling so desperately in love with you. This is meant to be our symbol of that fact.” He took her in his arms. “This painting is a proclamation that I adore you more than life itself.” He shook his head, then looked back at her, his eyes bright with devotion. “Dio, the things I have done for love of you—things I never believed I could. I have reached new heights of daring in my work—your Madonnas . . . the concept for the Transfiguration . . . all of it, I owe to your encouragement.”

  Margherita wrapped her hands around his neck, and he encircled her waist. For a moment, her expression grew serious, as Raphael whispered, “By God’s grace, and your patience, I am yours now completely.”

  They shared a kiss, and in it she felt the full promise of the future they would have together at last. Even so, Margherita had learned enough of this complex world of Raphael’s to know that anything could happen between now and the day they married. She must be wary of that. In the meantime, another token of reconciliation was presented to Raphael the very next day by Margherita herself, along with her dear friend Francesca Chigi.

  “WHAT IS he doing here?” Raphael’s face swiftly grew red and his expression angry.

  When he returned from the workshop that evening, there were guests in his drawing room, and they were the last two people in the world he expected to be there. Agostino and Francesca Chigi sat together in tapestry-draped chairs set at an angle near the fire. Seeing them, Raphael paused in the doorway as Margherita moved near, her expression one of openness and love.

  “Will you not hear him out, at least? He is, after all, one of your dearest friends in Rome.”

  “He is nothing but a traitor to me!” Raphael raged, pivoting back toward the staircase before Margherita stopped him with a gentle hand.

  “There will be no end to it, amore mio, until you say it is so. You have the power now.”

  “They took that power away from me when they imprisoned you!”

  “It is in the past, Raphael! Francesca is my friend, and I am hers. It is a torment to us both that we cannot say the same of the men we love.”

  Raphael was still white with rage, his body coiled in anger. “He has yet to show a single bit of remorse for what he did!”

  “Forgive me—I bid you. I was horribly wrong.”

  The voice belonged to Agostino Chigi. When Raphael turned back slowly, he saw the elegant banker standing, hands extended in pleading, his expression one of sincere regret. Raphael had not expected that.

  “Was the kidnapping a plan of your design?”

  “I am as guilty, surely, as if it were, since I chose not to object to it.” Agostino moved a step nearer, then stopped, seeming to think better of pushing too hard and too swiftly. “I cannot change that I agreed to the action, Raphael. But I was just as wrong for not speaking out against the plan, and for that I can only plead guilty.”

  “Bibbiena planned it, did he not?”

  “Per favore, it is not for me to indict others, Raphael. Only to make amends for my own actions. I do despise myself for what I did. Truly!”

  “If you are wanting full forgiveness right now, this moment, I warn you I cannot give it.”

  “I would settle for an open door between us, and the time to see where it may lead.”

  Francesca and Margherita exchanged a glance in the uncertain silence. The fire cracked and popped. Shadows danced on the high painted walls.

  “Signora Luti has forgiven you?” Raphael cautiously asked.

  “She says that she has.”

  “You all misjudged her greatly.”

  “We did indeed.”

  “If Signora Luti wishes to spend time with your wife, then I shall not object.”

  “And perhaps one day you will begin to accompany her again to my home?”

  “We shall see, Agostino. I will not close the door, but the most I can say for the two of us is that we shall see.”

  Part Four

  To lose time

  is the most

  displeasing

  to he who|

  knows most.

  Dante

  38

  July 1519

  BY THE SUMMER OF 1519, MORE THAN THREE YEARS AFTER Margherita’s kidnapping, the massive sca
le and intricacy of the Transfiguration had become Raphael’s new obsession. Knowing that he was now openly competing with Sebastiano, whose work on the companion, the Raising of Lazarus, was progressing more quickly, he began to consider ways to stall the unveiling of his competitor’s painting before his own. It was a move Margherita wholly opposed. Desperation, she said, was beneath him. He was, after all, she reminded him, the great Raffaello, and Michelangelo Buonarroti was still out of favor and living in Florence.

  Hoping to bring him a more full sense of peace to balance his ambition, Margherita reminded him daily of the richness of his life. He was now an integral part of a new family, and there was healing in that. Not only did Francesco Luti and Donato pose often for male studies at the workshop, but they all dined together regularly as a family at Margherita’s house. Crowded around her table, they broke bread, drank wine, argued, and laughed like any family for hours on end. Raphael particularly reveled in spoiling Matteo Perazzi, knowing he was still Margherita’s favorite nephew.

  In addition to family life, the broken bond of friendship with Raphael and Agostino had begun to mend. At the instigation of Chigi’s wife, Francesca, Margherita was made a frequent guest at the villa, and spent many happy hours in the company of Francesca’s three children, who considered her an aunt. But something always weighed on her—the fact that in all of the passion and all of the years, Margherita had never been able to give Raphael his own child.

  “Are you sorry we have not been blessed in the way Francesca and Agostino have?” she finally asked one night as they lay together in her bed, gazing past the open shutters and up at the full moon in a black night sky.

  Raphael smiled at her. “We still might be one day.”

  “My courses were never regular, even when I was younger. And then, all of this time with you and I . . . I have just never believed I was meant to bear a child of my own.”

  Raphael was silent for a moment. “You would make a splendid mother. I’ve seen you with Matteo enough to know that absolutely.”

  “Letitia was so taken up in those early days with the other three boys, I suppose I always thought of him as my own.”

  “It showed.” He smiled. “And he does adore you.”

  “As I adore him.”

  “Will he be enough for you, do you think?”

  Margherita touched his cheek and then smiled. “You are all I have ever truly needed, or ever will,” she devotedly said.

  But by spring of the following year, the pope’s counselors had once again informed Raphael that the Holy Father would need to delay the performing of Raphael’s wedding. The postponement was due now, they said, to the pope’s all-consuming political maneuvering to secure an essential treaty between himself and King Franois I against the powerful and dangerous Emperor Charles V. After the battle for Milan, Pope Leo understood the power of the French king, and felt he could take no chances. Politics and scandal had worn down the beleaguered pontiff, who had spent the past two years struggling to expand the states of the Church, and Raphael was strongly advised not to press personal matters.

  As he worked at an intensely frenetic pace in the busy workshop that had sprung back wildly to life, Raphael saw nothing, felt nothing, breathed nothing but the powerful images of the risen Christ and the compassionate apostles around a boy possessed for the Transfiguration. He ignored the strange chill that he could not shake, along with strange alternating bouts of sweating and fatigue.

  There was no time for illness, he told himself.

  Not now when everything had finally fallen into place.

  Giulio Romano filled in the details unfolding on his huge panel. The concepts, however, were from the mind of Raphael. He had used Donato Perazzi as the model for the figure of Christ himself; his tall commanding body and the gentle lines of his face were just right for the feel of the piece he wished to achieve. Francesco Luti was forever immortalized now as the balding and tired-faced Saint Andrew. And beneath the Christ figure, amid the apostles and the chaos of the healing of the demonic boy, a strong female figure was painted from behind.

  Early on, in preparation sketch after preparation sketch, Margherita herself had posed for this character. When the actual panel was begun, Raphael painted her first, like the axis of the piece, so that artistically everything else would flow from her. Of this great altar panel, like his life, she was the center force.

  On a day late in March 1520, now that the work was nearly complete, Raphael stood, his arms crossed over his chest, studying the work. He was feeling oddly dizzy, and not a little disoriented. He had forgotten to eat today, that must surely be it, he was thinking, as the shapes before his eyes began to change, to darken, to cloud over.

  Raphael! Come and help me lift this panel! And the brushes! I want only boar brushes, you know that!

  He turned with a start, feeling his skin go very cold. It was the voice of his father. His father! Raphael saw a figure behind him but the image, the face, was distorted, as if through rain-washed glass. He blinked hard, feeling as cold, suddenly, as ice. Still, the sensation was strong and unmistakable. In his mind, he was a boy of twelve again, with his father in the studio at the ducal court of Urbino, where his own artistic life had begun. The ache for a figure long gone from his life was powerful, overwhelming. And everything grew darker still. The cold sensation was taking him over, yet he could see now it was not his father, and not Urbino, but it was Giulio Romano behind him.

  “Are you all right, mastro?”

  Raphael lost his balance and sank for a moment onto his knees, breathing heavily. “Fine, Giulio, I am fine. A bit tired, perhaps.”

  But he was flushed and his eyes were bloodshot, the pupils mere pinpricks. His father’s image and the memories around it dissolved like rain.

  “Allow me to see you home. Signora will have my head if I do not!”

  “Where is she?” He could not seem to remember that, either.

  “On her way to the Chigi villa for the afternoon, at Signora Chigi’s invitation. You are to join her there.”

  “Perhaps you should have her sent for, Giulio,” Raphael grimaced. “I find I am feeling a bit worse than at first I thought.”

  ANTONIO had changed. It was the first thought Margherita had sitting astride her horse, looking down at him standing in the gravel courtyard of the Chigi Villa. She took the hand he extended to her, then descended elegantly from her saddle.

  He stood before her in his stableman’s livery, a little paunch now straining over the leather belt, and his eyes less steely blue. Her second thought, seeing him again now for the first time in over a year, was that the ambition had gone from those wild eyes. It must be the result of his yearlong marriage to the daughter of the fishmonger from the Portico Octavia—one of the many girls with whom he had betrayed Margherita.

  Now it was Antonio, of all the Chigi servants in the world, who took the reins of her sleek bay horse, caparisoned in a blanket of azure velvet, and topped with a fine Portuguese leather saddle studded in silver. Elena and Donato, Margherita’s constant companions, had already dismounted. They stood waiting, watching the rare exchange between two strangers who once, long ago, had been the closest of friends.

  Margherita lingered a moment in the sun, wearing a gown of rich topaz satin with gold embroidery. Her shining hair was held back by a matching cap, and her hands were ornamented with jewels. Looking at Antonio now, she felt none of the fondness she once had. Nor did she feel any longer like the naive girl from Trastevere who he had so avariciously pushed toward this new life. This brief encounter was a heady moment of triumph for all that their inequality implied.

  “Signora,” he said, at last releasing her finely gloved hand from his own. He was forced, by protocol, to defer to her with a formal bow. Her horse stamped at the graveled ground.

  “Signor Perazzi.” She nodded coolly in return, betraying nothing.

  Though they did not speak beyond the greeting, her eyes, in that single instant of connection, said to him, You di
d not think I would succeed. You wanted me to fail because you have failed. But I have survived, with Raphael’s love and guidance to protect me . . .

  Margherita felt a sudden chill course very powerfully down her spine then. But have you truly? a small, strange voice inside her asked. Are you yet his wife? Will you ever be? Are you truly safe until the day that you are? Take great care with how you hold your memories, the small voice taunted. They may well deceive you as much as your enemies ever would.

  Margherita looked up keenly at Antonio as Elena took her silk shawl and then properly straightened the skirts of her dress. Antonio had been so handsome once, and had seemed to her so full of promise. Now he was a stranger—one she could add to the very long list of those in Rome she did not, and could not, trust.

  Margherita moved away swiftly then, away from a life that had abandoned her long before she had left it. Without looking back, she walked through a shaft of sunlight, across the courtyard, toward the front doors of the magnificent stone villa—an entrance through which Antonio would never be allowed to pass.

  She would think no more of Antonio, she decided as she walked. All she would consider now was joining her love, and the other noble guests, for Francesca Chigi’s afternoon concert—a world away from the little bakery that lay just a few steps, through the Porta Settimiana, in humble Trastevere.

  STANDING in front of Raphael’s enormous and impressive Galatea, Francesca Chigi warmly greeted Margherita with a genuine embrace. The two women had become close friends these past years since her marriage to Agostino. Francesca understood Margherita in a way no other could—the challenges she had faced, the ridicule and the determination it took to hold her head up in society, had bonded them. Her husband’s involvement in Margherita’s kidnapping was only ever referred to as “that former unpleasantness between our men.”