Michelangelo veered away from the disagreement. “If His Holiness paid his toiling servant, he would find me more obedient. But I have not been remunerated in months for the wages of my assistants, or even for my materials. These days I’m safe from robbers because I haven’t got a penny.”
Donato Bramante offered unexpected support. “I too am pressed for funds, yet the Holy Father always cites financial deficits of his own.”
“The Holy See is aware of the problem,” Giovanni de’ Medici replied. “I have suggested to His Holiness that he expand the Church’s income through utilizing the very commodity to which he has sole access. God’s Grace.”
“You refer to indulgences, Eminence?” Raphaela studied the grape she had just bitten into, as if the fruit were more important than her remark.
“Yes, of course, Signorina. That is exactly what I mean. The plenitude of grace granted by God through the throne of Peter.”
Raphaela persisted, her head tilted back and her lips parted slightly, as they did when she asked difficult, challenging questions. “The forgiveness of God and the guarantee of heaven. These are normally granted for Christian sacrifice or suffering and for charitable acts—not as a source of revenue. Isn’t that so, Eminence?” She pressed the other half of the grape in her mouth.
Donato Bramante cleared his throat.
Cardinal de’ Medici was unfazed. “Yes, of course, Signora. As well as for any other act the Holy Father deems pleasing to God. Financial support for the good works of the Church is by its very nature pleasing to God.” He discovered he had room for yet another portion of boar and filled his mouth, preventing a more detailed answer.
“But Eminence, doesn’t God see into the hearts of men and know if an indulgence has been bought without contrition? Surely true remorse would have the same effect as the indulgence.”
After a long moment of chewing, Cardinal de’ Medici picked his teeth with the fork, apparently forcing patience on himself. Then he raised an authoritative hand, the one that displayed the Cardinal’s ring, in front of Raphaela’s face. Raphaela held her ground and did not cede him space, though the ecclesiastical finger was close enough to touch her nose.
“Signorina. Indulgences are not handed out in the marketplace. The Holy Church bestows them only upon confession and evidence of contrition. Though you may not understand them, these issues have been thought out for centuries by wise and divinely inspired men.”
Raphaela inhaled and appeared about to reply, but Bramante cleared his throat again and she closed her lips. In the tense silence, Michelangelo raised his glass. “Well, then, I propose we celebrate something that’s pleasing to both God and man, the divine voice of Signor Raggi. You’ll sing for us this evening, won’t you?”
Domenico brushed back a swath of dark hair and glanced around at the table. “If you wish.”
“We very much wish,” Bramante replied, with obvious relief.
Domenico stood up from the table, brushed invisible crumbs from his lap, and took a position between two columns of the loggia. The torches burning on both sides of him illuminated him with pleasing symmetry. His voice began as pure velvet, on a sustained note, then changed timbre, weaving a complex melody, each phrase a variation on the one before, all in the voice of a powerful contralto. Then, as from a fountain, the stream of sound rose and dropped and rose again, ever higher, into the soprano range, achieving sounds of such delicate sweetness it did not seem possible they came from the throat of a man.
Adriana studied his audience. The Cardinal had the look of a man being soothed, and Bramante also seemed to be transported.
Adriana allowed herself to glance over at his daughter and Raphaela stared back. The gray-green eyes took hold of her for a moment. She saw interest, disarming in its directness, as if Raphaela were awaiting something.
She shifted her gaze to Michelangelo, who never took his eyes from the singer. Only the slight motion of his beard revealed that he bit his lower lip. Domenico finished on a gradual decrescendo, the sound fading slowly, like gold stretched ever more thinly and finally disappearing. After a momentary pause he bowed, his dark brown hair falling loosely over his face.
“Bravo, bravo!” Giovanni de’ Medici said warmly. “Come here and sit by me, young man. Tell me how they treat you in the Sistine Choir.” He poured them both more wine.
With graceful steps, Domenico went to the Cardinal’s side, brushing against Michelangelo as he passed.
*
Bramante was the first to stand up from the table, pulling his red cloak around his shoulders. “Lady Borgia. Your banquet was sumptuous, and your villa is as gracious as its mistress. But I must to bed after so long a day.”
“Of course, Signor Bramante. I’ll escort you to your rooms.” Taking a lantern, she led father and daughter along the southern loggia. The servants had already lit the candles and carried in basins of water for washing. Adriana bade him good rest.
Raphaela stood in the doorway of the adjoining room. “May I see you alone, Lady Borgia?” she asked quietly. “We haven’t really spoken this evening.”
Adriana detected the pleasant fragrance of crushed grapes. “You’re right, of course. You arrived so late, and…” She trailed off nervously. “I must see to my other guests first, until they retire. But perhaps in the garden, later.”
She gathered her crimson skirts and hurried down the stairs to the courtyard. Giovanni de’ Medici had risen unsteadily from the table. Jacopo supported him on one side, Gianino on the other, and together they assisted the Cardinal up the stairs to his bedchamber.
Michelangelo and Domenico were shoulder to shoulder in quiet conversation.
“What are my Sistine genii conspiring in now?” she teased, sitting down with them. “A concert perhaps, for the unveiling of the chapel ceiling?”
Michelangelo brightened. “I hadn’t thought of that, but it’s a good idea. I’ll speak to Paris de Grassis about it. It is something the Master of Ceremonies would have to arrange.”
“Oh, I’d love to be part of the unveiling,” Domenico said. “You must promise it.”
Michelangelo stood up from the table. “I give you my word that you’ll be there. But now I will say good night. Don’t worry about me, Adriana. I’ll see myself to my room.” He bent and kissed her quickly on the cheek and turned away.
Domenico watched Michelangelo climb the stairs. “I suppose I should retire too,” he said transparently.
Adriana considered reminding him of the punishment he had recently endured, but on a tender impulse, she caressed his cheek instead. Its smoothness brought a stirring recollection.
XXV
Adriana paced before the tree at the center of her private garden. Though it was nearly midnight, and she had drunk a great deal of wine, she couldn’t sleep. She faced the old Roman fountain, watching the water trickle over the edge of the upper dish into the basin below. The cicadas chirped all around her, and a breeze rustled high in the trees of the nearby woods.
She heard nothing of it and listened only for footfall on the gravel of the garden path. When she heard it, her heart leapt. “Raphaela?” she whispered.
“I’m sorry to disappoint you,” a man’s voice said, and the wiry form of Michelangelo emerged from the darkness. He sat down on the bench beneath the tree and took her hand, drawing her down to him as he had done on her first day back in Rome. He was slightly drunk, she could tell, but then, so was she. She sat comfortably with him, as with an eccentric cousin, feeling the knots and calluses on his hand.
“What brings you to my garden in the middle of the night, Michelo? The privy is over there, you know, on the other side of the house.”
He did not laugh, but instead took a deep breath. “Adriana, you’ve known me for years. Since you first arrived from Spain.” He looked up to the stars, as if hoping for assistance. “You know I don’t think about women. I’m at a loss with them. But I want to try to settle down. I have been thinking about this since you came back to Rome.”
He was silent again for a moment, then took another tack. “Life can’t be easy for you either. You’re a widow.”
“Twice widowed, in effect, if not in law.” Her mouth formed an ironic smile, which in the darkness he would not see.
“Precisely. Aren’t you tired of being alone?”
“Where is this going, Michelo?”
“There is something about you that has always attracted me, something forceful and audacious. And then tonight, you looked so lovely. If there could be any woman for me, it would be you.”
“Are you proposing marriage, Michelangelo, or something less respectable?”
“Oh, no. My intentions are honorable. I only want respectability…for both of us. And though I have no money now, I will when the ceiling is done. And there will be other works, of course. I would offer you a man’s protection.” He began to ramble nervously. “A woman needs protection. We can help each other that way. Domenico is right, you know, there is peace in obedience.”
He stood up in front of her and held her by the shoulders. It was an awkward position. Perhaps he expected her to stand up so he could kiss her, but she did not want to kiss him. She turned slightly so that she could lay one of her hands on his, and the heavy paper of Silvio’s letter crinkled in her pocket. Silvio’s letter, mocking her.
She sighed. “An honorable proposal, old friend. Yes, it would quiet both our lives and keep us from sin, wouldn’t it?” She paused, choosing her words. “I care for you as much as I care for any man. But all things have their season. What is alive one moment is dust the next.”
“Now it’s you who are being mysterious. I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
It annoyed her that she had to explain to him what she could scarcely explain to herself. She was full of uncertainty, and she had not even finished reading Silvio’s letter yet. It annoyed her even more that Michelangelo would not sit down again, for while he stood so close before her, she spoke to his groin rather than to his face.
“You see, something has happened. A hope that was already frail has died in me. I’m no longer fit for domesticity. We can’t help each other that way.”
He still did not move.
“But…there’s another one who needs your protection more than I do, and who waits for you now.” She dropped her voice until it was barely audible. “I think you should go to him.”
He stood motionless, his silence revealing his confusion.
A voice whispered from behind her. “Lady Borgia?” Adriana turned toward the sound.
The figure stepped from the darkness into the moonlight. Raphaela.
Michelangelo abruptly grasped a limb of the tree over her head, the suddenness of the gesture startling her. Exasperation, she assumed, at being interrupted in so sensitive a conversation.
Raphaela stopped. “Oh, I’m sorry.” Adriana rose to her feet, acknowledging her. Michelangelo glanced back and forth at the two women, and the moment was unbearable. Finally, he bowed and marched with heavy footfall back toward the house.
“Forgive me. I’ve disturbed your conversation, haven’t I?” Raphaela looked toward the departing man.
“It’s good that you did. It was becoming very awkward.” Adriana emerged from under the bough of the tree and motioned toward the wide stone rim of the fountain. They sat down, keeping a measured distance between them. Yet the long folds of their two skirts, the scarlet and the green, overlapped slightly on the mossy stone.
Raphaela trailed her fingers in the fountain pool, breaking up patterns in the shimmering silver water. The moon lit one side of her face in blues and whites and cast her gown in pale gray. They sat for a long moment, the gurgling of the fountain and the persistent chirping of the cicadas filling the night air.
Raphaela inhaled deeply and Adriana heard the soft sound of her long exhalation—an intimate sound, as if she shared her breathing. She toyed with a pebble on the fountain rim between them. “Your friend Domenico is amazing, isn’t he? So beautiful in face and voice. And so pious.”
“Pious? Yes. His devotion is absolutely genuine. He thinks of God as an actual Father who looks after him, weighing everything he does. He makes gifts to Him on his altar.”
“Is that so?” Raphaela tilted her head slightly. Adriana could not be sure she was really interested or merely polite.
“Yes. On our first afternoon together after I came back from Spain, he was so happy that he sacrificed a ring on the high altar of St. Peter’s. It was a tiny silver thing I’d given him when he was a child. For all I know, it’s still there.”
Adriana fell silent, uncertain of what to add. A minute passed, and the cicadas chirped again. She looked over at the confident hands of the young artist, then at her own, pale helpless creatures folded on her velvet lap.
“What is it that you want, Raphaela?”
“That is the first time I’ve heard you speak my name.”
“No, I spoke it at Michelangelo’s house. While you changed from boy to woman.”
“Ah, yes, I had forgotten. You helped me dress.” The pebble dropped into the fountain with a faint plop.
“That evening, you never answered my question about the painting. And you haven’t answered what I just asked either.”
“Of what I want?” Raphaela tilted her head back. Her lips fell open slightly. She brushed grit from the fountain wall between them. “Do you remember Pope Alexander’s requiem mass, that afternoon, in the chapel?”
“Yes, of course I do.”
“Then you will remember the air, the smell of corruption. It seemed the perfect symbol for Alexander’s court. But the Vatican gave my father work, wonderful projects, so we stayed. Father could shut his eyes to the excesses, but I couldn’t.
“You see, my father wanted me to go back to Padua. There was a young man there he hoped to marry me to. I was wavering, on the brink of agreeing to leave Rome. And then I heard you say my name.”
“Yes, you looked at me for a long time.” Adriana warmed, recalling the moment. “Did you know who I was?” She brushed at the space on the fountain rim between them, repeating the other woman’s gesture.
“Yes, certainly. With Alexander dead, I wondered what you would do. And then, of course, you fled.”
“Yes, the chapel and Rome as well, that same day. And for five more years I stayed with him.”
“I knew you were with him, but it seemed you had called me for a reason, so I stayed in Rome and painted. Portraits mostly, but I also painted you. As I remembered you and as I wanted you to be. When I saw you again at St. Peter’s it was a shock because, in a way, I had already recreated you.”
“I know. As Europa, with Cesare as a bull. Very clever, using the Borgia symbol. But what you painted was your fantasy. It wasn’t me.”
“It was a part of you.” Raphaela rubbed her fingers on the stone, as if polishing it. “There is a kind of truth to art that transcends our lives. Well, outlasts them at least.”
“Why do you need me, then? Why do you…pursue me?” Her voice remained neutral, betraying no emotion but caution.
Raphaela considered for a moment. “Because I’m flesh and blood and feel desire. Because you do as well.”
“Do not speak of my desires. It is presumptuous. You don’t know me.” Adriana drew her fingers through the pool of water, cooling them.
Raphael’s reply was like a touch. “I knew you once, for a moment.”
Adriana glanced up, perplexed, but the harsh chiaroscuro obscured the expression on the other woman’s face. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“I think you do. At Carnevale.”
Adriana felt a pounding in her chest. “Carnevale? I don’t remember Carnevale. I drank too much. A boy accosted me. That was all. A masked…boy.” She pulled her skirts closer to her.
“You knew it was a woman. You pressed against me.”
“No. I had no idea. It was a night of excess. Of violence and lust. The kind you want to forget about the next day.”
> “It was a night when people revealed themselves. And what moved me that night was not lust, but devotion, the same devotion that guides me when I paint.”
“You have portrayed too many pagans, Raphaela. I speak of excess and evil, and you reply with painting. You’re twisting things.”
“Don’t disparage pagans. They knew something that we’ve forgotten, that desire is not evil.”
“It can be. You yourself saw the debauchery of Alexander’s court, where lust could end in death. There are lines, I think, too dangerous to cross.”
Raphaela shook her head. “I crossed them long ago. And something wonderful happened. A candle seemed to light inside me.” She touched the marble medallion over Adriana’s heart, holding it for a moment on the tips of her fingers. “And I saw you, Adriana. In the midst of a vile funeral for a corrupt man, I saw you and wanted to tell you.” She let go of the medallion and pressed her fingertips on the crimson dress beneath it.
“Tell me what?”
“That what we are taught, of good and evil, is false, that the God they threaten us with is cruel. And that the forbidden thing is the most precious thing of all, knowledge.”
Adriana touched the encroaching hand, though whether to hold it back or caress it she was not sure, and so she held it lightly.
Raphaela’s fingers crept on, over the white silk to the naked skin above. “What we were that night was neither good nor evil. For just a few heartbeats we didn’t need God. We were like gods ourselves.”
Adriana shook her head weakly but did not move away.
“You do remember, don’t you,” Raphaela murmured. “You let me do it. You knew, and you kissed me back.” The insistent hand slid up to Adriana’s throat, curled gently around it, palm resting softly against the pulse. Raphaela leaned close; her lips brushed the warm cheek.
Like gods, knowing good and evil. The biblical temptation flashed through Adriana’s mind as Raphaela’s mouth covered her own. Then she surrendered to the embrace. Nothing else mattered any longer. Nothing existed but Raphaela’s mouth and the delicate light entry of the stranger into herself. She tasted wine again, as in the confessional, but now it was sweetened by fresh grapes.
Sistine Heresy Page 16