Sistine Heresy

by Justine Saracen

  She rubbed the side of her face, as if to waken herself. “Please inform Maestro Buonarroti that Adriana Borgia wishes to see him.”

  With a nod, the guard left her, closing the chapel door behind him. In a few moments he returned, the same wooden expression on his face. “Maestro Buonarroti does not wish to see anyone.”

  “What? You spoke to him? You told him who it was who waited?” Her voice was hoarse.

  “Yes, Signora. I told him.”

  From the exaggerated patience in his manner, she knew he would not be persuaded to carry another message inside. She took a few defeated paces backward away from the chapel door. Exhausted and demoralized, she turned to make her way toward the stairs and nearly collided with a familiar form.

  “Lady Borgia,” Donato Bramante said solemnly. “My deepest regrets for the death of Signor Raggi. I know he was very close to you.”

  “Can you tell me where he lies?” she asked, her voice breaking. “And why Michelangelo will not see me?”

  “He will see no one, Lady Borgia.” Bramante drew her down onto a bench and sat down next to her, somewhat ill at ease. “He attended to all matters pertaining to the funeral, then locked himself away in the chapel. He dismissed his assistants too, including my daughter.”

  “What happened? To Domenico, I mean.” Her throat tightened as she said his name.

  Bramante shook his head. “I know only that he was attacked late at night, in the courtyard below the Pope’s chapel. The Vatican has ordered an inquiry, but it’s not likely to be fruitful. Murder is all too common. In fact, the bodies of three other men were taken from the Tiber the very next day. From the Farnese family. That is all I know, Lady Borgia. I’m sorry.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “Signor Raggi? In the crypt in the city cemetery. Michelangelo arranged for him to be embalmed before the Chapel Choir held the requiem mass. And he insisted that the boy not be interred but entombed in the mausoleum. He paid the cost himself.”

  Terrible words: embalmed, interred, mausoleum. Adriana’s eyes filled with tears and her voice became high and tight. “When I got word…” She wiped her nose. “I left as soon as I could, within the hour.” She took a breath. “I didn’t even let the coach stop at night.” Another breath. “But the storm came.” She wiped her nose again. “Robbers attacked on the road. They killed the driver and guard and abducted me.” Then, as if a fragile vessel had carried all her fears and suddenly broken, she wept freely into her cloak.

  Bramante’s hand hovered over her, not touching. “Dear God. But you escaped.”

  Adriana nodded, then regained her voice. “Yes, the horse reared at a lightning flash and threw us both to the ground. I was able to run.”

  “It’s a miracle that you were unharmed.”

  “A miracle?” She grimaced, bereavement giving way to anger. “For me and not for the two good men who were killed?” The more she recalled the event, the more bitter she became. “No miracle for them, was there? Why was that, I wonder? When I dragged the coach with their two corpses back to the village, I tried to hire a new driver and guards, but no one would leave in the storm. It raged two more days. And every hour that passed made it more certain that Domenico would be lost to me. No miracle for him either.”

  She wept again remembering the ropes that cut her wrists and the terrified horses she had to force along the deep mud with two corpses in the coach behind her—and it filled her with new rage. With tears streaming down her face, she looked at Bramante. “I cursed God that night, and I curse him still. If He’s all-powerful, then He’s a brute. If He’s not, then He’s useless.”

  Bramante clasped his hands helplessly in front of him. “Dear Lady. You must not let sorrow make you say such things. In time, we may come to understand His divine purpose.”

  She was not listening to his platitudes. Yet, having vented her fury in the outburst of blasphemy, she was suddenly calm. Letting go of the need to reconcile the tragedy with divine benevolence gave her an unmistakable relief. Nature’s indifference, she found, was easier to bear than divine injustice. She cleared her throat and spoke almost normally again.

  “Thank you for your comfort, Signor Bramante.”

  They sat in silence again until Bramante took a large breath. “I’m sorry to tell you that there have been other ominous developments while you were in Florence.”

  “What do you mean?” Adriana searched her memory for anything left to lose.

  “Your friend Silvio Piccolomini was to be arrested. For heresy, I understand. Somehow word got out to him, though one can only guess how. A number of persons at the Vatican, including a few Cardinals, think highly of the Piccolomini family. In any case, being forewarned, he fled.”

  “Silvio, a heretic?” Adriana was speechless, though half a dozen of his remarks flashed through her mind, and it seemed suddenly obvious that he had always played with fire.

  “So he escaped?”

  “I assume so. If he were in the hands of the Church, I should think we would hear about it. By all accounts he has gone to Venice, which was a wise choice. The Venetians are resistant to papal interference and seem to have a high tolerance for heterodoxy in general, though some call it decadence.”

  “Then he lives,” she murmured. It seemed a small comfort.

  “For now,” Bramante replied cryptically, then inhaled for another announcement. “His doctor, or rather his father’s doctor—”

  “Salomano?”

  “Yes. He is also gone. He was relieved of his position with Dr. Ligori at about the same time. Apparently also Cardinal Carafa’s doing. Part of his program to, as he says, ‘separate Romans from Jews.’ He was not arrested, though, merely hounded from Rome. He’s fled, of all places, to Constantinople. Who would have thought?”

  Wiping her eyes, Adriana looked at the architect with new respect. “How do you know all these things?”

  “Dear Lady, I have been puttering in and around the Vatican for over a decade, giving artistic advice to three Popes. I know a great deal of what happens and who causes it to happen. Right now, after His Holiness, it is Cardinal Carafa who is able to do that. I suggest you avoid attracting his attention.”

  “Unfortunately, I attracted it a long time ago. Do you think he had something to do with Domenico’s murder?”

  “That I cannot say, Lady Borgia. He was at the funeral and the entombment, but that says nothing.”

  Adriana nodded, in control of herself now. “In the crypt in the city cemetery, you say?”

  “Yes, the large one, on the hill. He lies just beside the stairs on the lower level.”

  “Thank you, Signor Bramante. I know what I must do now. If you would be so kind to accompany me to my coach.”

  *

  It was sunset as Adriana’s coach pulled along the gravel road into the cemetery, and mist rose from the saturated ground. Adriana drew her cloak closer around her.

  A gravel path wound diagonally up a slope to a large mausoleum, one she knew was for those who could afford to pay for entombment in such an edifice, but whose families did not have their own. The temple-like structure loomed black against the last evening light.

  “I’ll go with you, Madama,” Jacopo said. Without waiting for agreement, he unhooked the light from one of the carriage poles and helped her out of the coach.

  At the foot of the hill on both sides of the path the common graves held the indigent in wicker coffins or in winding sheets alone. The lowest-lying common graves were under pools of rank water. “How awful to leave them there,” Adriana said.

  Jacopo shrugged. “They will all decompose, Madama, some sooner, some later. It is only the living who wish to be spared thinking about it.”

  She thought of her father, whom she had buried in Seville, and the remark seemed crass. “Have you ever buried anyone you loved, Jacopo?”

  “Yes, Madama. Two years ago. My brother.” He pointed to one of the flooded graves. “He lies there.”

  “I see.”

/>   They hiked up the hill, passing old graves covered with grass and newer ones still bare. Gravediggers’ tools, a pick and shovel, stood near a fresh grave. One sensed them all together, the long and the recently departed, and the men who interred them, the quick and the dead. At the top of the hill, they halted before the bronze door of the crypt. Jacopo put his shoulder to it expecting resistance, but the heavy door slid open with alarming ease, as if inviting entry to the hereafter. He stepped through the doorway but Adriana held him by the arm. “No, I’m going by myself. There are things I want to say to him, alone.”

  Jacopo relinquished the lantern. “Very well. I’ll wait here. But please don’t be long. This is a haunted place.”

  Adriana stepped carefully on the slippery stone, her footfall hollow in the cavernous marble-walled space. On the ground level, sarcophagi lay head to foot on two levels, one on the floor and one on a shelf that ringed the chamber. A rotten, mushroom-like smell pervaded the whole place. The cadavers, she knew, were all embalmed and covered with heavy shrouds, but they decomposed nonetheless.

  At the center of the mausoleum a staircase led downward to a subterranean space that was still contained within the slope and above the level of the plain. In the semi-darkness of the chamber where she stood, the pit at her feet seemed even blacker, more otherworldly. But that was where she had to go. Her fingers curved around the handle of the lantern smoldered orange red. Slowly she descended, wondering how far among the dead she would have to venture.

  But she found him at the forefront. She held the lantern high over the bier and the form muted by the heavy embroidered shroud of the Papal Choir. She thought she was depleted of tears, but the sight of him struck her like a blow to the chest, and she wept again, whispering his name and recalling once again the boy she had ransomed from the choir school in Jativa and brought to the Vatican. How sweet it had been to walk with him through St. Peter’s Basilica and hear him defend Rome against her accusations. Rome, which had murdered him.

  Setting the lantern down on the floor she knelt by the body. It was the moment to say a prayer, but that was the last thing she felt like doing. Delicately, she lifted the head wrapped in the heavy shroud and cradled it in the crook of her elbow. Inanimate, it lolled limply away from her. Nothing of him was left. His spirit, his comforting words, his ethereal voice: all gone.

  She could not bear the silence and so she spoke to him, her voice hoarse with grief. “Agnellino. I still see you on my hillside, looking up at the shafts of sunlight. As if God were somewhere in the sky. Do you stand before Him now?” She looked around at cold marble walls, streaked with black mold, and she was appalled at the thought that he might not. What did anyone know of the Hereafter?

  Even with the full force of her understanding, she still could not imagine what awaited him. Or her. All of it, all the vague promises of the Catechism flew in the face of logic. How could God be merciful if his Vicar on earth was not? She trembled, recognizing her own mortality and the paucity of her faith. In all her confusion there congealed a tiny sphere of certainty, that Domenico was more precious to her than faith.

  She desperately wanted something from him. Some tangible object that would forever be real while memory faded. An article of clothing, his missal, any object to show that he had been. Then she remembered. There was something precious that linked them.

  *

  When she returned to the top of the stairs, it was full night. Jacopo led the way along the cemetery path, and Adriana stayed close, appreciating his avuncular strength and his simple human warmth.

  “I can’t bear the thought that he died for nothing.”

  “We all die for nothing,” Jacopo said. “Early or late, struck down by sickness, accident, murder. It matters only what we live for. I think this young man lived well, and for something he loved.” He had never before spoken to her this way, and she trusted that, once they were back home, he would not do so again. But she took no offense, for at the moment, it was a comfort to be at the side of a strong and thoughtful man.

  As they retraced their steps, cicadas had taken up their soothing night sounds. At the coach, Jacopo said, “I’ll take you to the Albergo now, where you can rest while I stay with the horses in the stable.”

  “No, there is one more place I want to go, Jacopo. Then we both can rest.”

  XXXVII

  Adriana hurried across the Piazza San Pietro, which was emptying after the evening mass. At the top of the wide stone steps, the church doors were still open and the last of the worshippers came out, talking among themselves. She strode through the narthex and along the center aisle of the basilica, her feet tracing the same steps she and Domenico had taken together. The smell of candle wax was just as before, reminding her how he had walked at her side and now there was nothing. She made her way around the tomb of St. Peter to the apse where the high altar stood. Meter-high candles burned on massive silver stands, casting circles of trembling light on the surface of the altar.

  The jewels embedded in the silver gave back the light in myriad faint glimmers. Among them, she could make out nothing that looked like a ring and so ran her palms over all four corners and slid her fingers under the altar cloth on both sides. Nothing. Desperate, she repeated the search, touching every inch of the altar surface and reaching as far under the cloth as she dared.

  Gone. It was gone.

  She dropped to her knees, defeated. It had been foolish to come, as foolish as the offering had been in the first place. She pressed her hands to her face.

  “It’s not there,” a voice behind her said. Alarmed, she twisted around, still on her knees.

  A figure stood a scant meter away, obscure in dark clothing, reaching out. The hand opened and in the palm something small and silver caught the feeble candlelight. “This is what you are looking for, isn’t it?” Raphaela Bramante said.

  “How…how did you know?”

  “You told me. In your garden. Don’t you remember? Then, at the funeral mass, when the priest spoke of his piety, I remembered. I couldn’t be sure it was still there, but it was, so I took it for safekeeping.”

  Raphaela pulled Adriana to her feet and they stood face-to-face before the high altar.

  “How lovely of you to remember.” Adriana reached for the precious object, but Raphaela took hold of her hand and slid the ring onto her third finger.

  “I’ve been carrying it around for days. Cardinal de’ Medici said you had gone to Florence, but I didn’t know when you’d return. Then this afternoon, Father said he saw you at the Sistine Chapel. So I waited here most of the evening. I’m very good at waiting.”

  “You’ve waited a long time too, haven’t you?” Adriana stepped into Raphaela’s embrace, an unexpected refuge.

  Raphaela brought her lips to Adriana’s ear. “I wish I could carry some of your grief.” She slid her hands delicately along the satin-clad back.

  Adriana touched her face to the warm cheek and let her lips brush once against Raphaela’s cheekbone. Slowly, scarcely realizing when gratitude and comfort evolved into the amorous, she began to press soft kisses. On Raphaela’s hair, her ear, then the corner of her lips. She halted for a moment, as if before a line that marked a dangerous place, then crossed it, covering the pliant mouth completely. In the chill darkness of the church, Raphaela’s mouth seemed hot, at once forbidden and inviting.

  Raphaela wiithdrew from the kiss for a moment, breathlessly. “This is the second time we profane a church.”

  “Yes, I know.” Adriana laughed softly, kissing her again, feeling her respond. Her hands moved, seemingly of their own volition, exploring Raphaela’s clothing, throat, hair, learning the landscape of the new body. Finally she came to her senses. “My God, what are we doing? Anyone could come in.” She cupped Raphaela’s cheek in the dim light, trying to see it with her fingertips. “Listen. My housemaster waits outside to take me to the Albergo dell’Orso. Come with me.”

  “No, it’s better if I return home first and make excuses to m
y father. Then I can join you later this evening and stay longer. The Albergo dell’ Orso? I’ll come in an hour.”

  “I’ll wait for you.” Adriana caressed the warm lips with her thumb. “I think I’ve been waiting all along.”

  She hurried back through the sanctuary to the piazza, her ringed finger closed in a fist over her chest. “Forgive me, Domenico,” she murmured into the air. “Tonight I choose life.”

  *

  Holding the candle in one hand, Adriana opened the chamber door. Raphaela swept in gracefully and sat on a wooden chair. Adriana sat across from her, on the edge of the bed, with hands clasped over her knees. Her need to rush again into Raphaela’s embrace was softened by the sense that they had crossed a wide gulf that night. They were together and safe, at least for the moment. It was a time for exploration, the slow sweet discovery of each other’s thoughts and ways, all while desire still grew beneath. Raphaela too seemed to understand that there was time, that she could begin with simple consolation. “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “Yes. I suppose so. I’ve accepted that Domenico is gone. But what troubles me most is thinking I caused it to happen. I mean, did I ruin his life by returning to Rome?”

  “Of course not. You had nothing to do with what happened to him.”

  “Oh, but I did. He had been in the Church for all those years, happily, I think. And then I arrived, cynical and embittered. I taught him doubt. Because of me he learned disobedience and left the protection of the Vatican to go into the streets.”

  Raphaela’s face hardened. “No, it was not that way at all. It was not the streets that killed him, it was the Church.”

  “What do you mean?”