Forgiving Rome

by Clay Ferrill

  I thought of the talentless nasty old master, a lecherous man with clutching hands the younger the boy within his reach. How bitter I was in my last days under his lamed tutelage. I shuddered at the thought of a repeat of that long five years of my young life. Ten years. Life is simply too short. It is why I let myself fall into the habit of not bathing for long periods. My stink protected me from him. I sniffed back my tears and tried to strengthen my resolve. Falling apart and feeling sorry for myself would not help my mother or our farms. When I looked up from the floor to her face he was standing on the other side of my mother’s bed holding a leather purse in his extended hand. “For my mother’s portrait Raphaello. Ten thousand ducats. Another ten thousand for my portrait is yours, if you will honor me with your talent in a portrait of my own.” He wasn’t smiling. He was dead serious.

  I studied the intensity of his dark blue eyes. His mother’s eyes, their intense dark blue. He shook the purse one time and the scraping of thick gold coin over thick gold coin unmistakable, each one worth one thousand ducats. His expression was insistent.

  Was he trying to buy me out of this Vatican contract? This banking prince?

  I could not accept this much for paintings, certainly not. They would have to be of such grand scale indeed to be worth such an amount. Reaching into his pocket as if it were nothing, he withdrew another polished leather pouch and added it to his already extended hand. Another ten thousand ducats.

  My mother turned almost in fright at this realization. In this room there are enough ducats to sustain this household and our lands for the rest of my life and my children’s lives. Twenty thousand ducats. Five minutes ago, we would have had trouble scraping together enough coin to cover tomorrow’s meals alone. My mother genuflected and kissed the cross hanging always around her neck as she stood up. I saw it in her face. She would see me sold.

  I held the Vatican letter out to her “we must return the note with our sincere regrets. The pope can keep Yellow Roses in Moonlight. My position on this, mother, is final. I will not go to Rome to work another ten years of my life to toil at the senseless vision of others while my own vision parishes. I will not. That is final. We must return it at once. We have already delayed too long.” I turned briskly then and walked out of her French doors onto the small patch of flowering milk thistle she grows there to attract butterflies. I didn’t care. I trampled right over them and just kept walking. I let the tears flow down my face as I thought of how proud my father had been of my talent as a painter, why he never could bring himself to form those words to me when he lived to do it, I do not know and never will know now.

  My father had been proud of me? The conflict of that ripped at my heart. But the truth of this is, it had not been his painting or his life to give away. I felt comfort in focusing my anger on his memory and such a stupid decision as this. It was my mother’s and hers only. It angered me that he had made that decision without even consulting with me about it. I would have told him no plainly had he thought to include me in his plans for my life. I was angry with him, futile, I realize. I slow my walk down the hill and my eyes opened to spill water uncontrolled. I sighed in resignation, knowing what this all means now that he had given his word as the last Duke of Urbino. It was my duty to keep his word as his son even if I didn’t inherit the title.

  Before I knew it, I was pacing at the edge of the lake on the far northern side, pacing back and forth in deep thought and deep grass there, swatting my hands at the tops of the stalks angrily. I stopped for a moment as I thought of the scale of the painting I would create for the Marquise. The blank canvas in the parlor was not large enough and I had made that for a portrait of my mother anyway. I would need more fresh fabric and wood. It must be of grand size for that kind of payment. My time is short here now. I must leave my home, the only place I have ever felt the calming safety of peace. My silent tears renew and I surrender to their insistent press.

  I paced out the rectangle shape wiping my eyes and nose on my sleeves. I kept making the square of it larger and larger. It would be eight feet high and six … no, seven feet wide. I would paint her with candlelight behind her head to make her glow as Archy’s had in the sunshine this morning as I stared down into the beautiful face of him in my mind. My new friend. Both of them staggering beauties in their own right. I shook my head to clear my thoughts and continued pacing.

  I had not even heard him approach behind me. I just turned and there were his leather boots and his huge feet. My shoulders danced in a fleeting laugh and I looked up into his face drying my eyes. Big broad smile with a lemon wedged behind his lips over his teeth. I sniffed in the snot in my nose and laughed out loud, not because it was all that funny, but for him to be doing it solely for my benefit and delight as an adult man to an adult man. Ten-year-old boys do those kinds of things. He saw that expression cross my face and spit out the lemon rind and immediately leaned his head into mine and pulled me to his lemony mouth.

  His kiss was so unexpected. His urgency in it palpable. As a chewing motion he pressed to wedge my jaw open wider so more of his tongue could explore there more easily. Pulling his mouth from mine, his hand tight around my throat, he pushed my face to the side and bit my earlobe and bit hard repeatedly down my jaw line to my chin and then up the other side. He was devouring me with his urgent passion. I swooned and my knees buckled. His hand swept up just in time to stop me falling to the ground, catching me under the arm and laying me down on the cool grass gently. He laid down next to me and smoothed my cotton blouse with his calloused hand while he studied my face with his fingers, wiping away the tears I had been crying before he surprised me.

  I had fainted and lost consciousness for only a minute. I opened my eyes to his face hanging over mine, his thick blonde hair spilling around the sides of my head, his breath hot and lemony on my face. He closed his eyes and kissed me slowly and more gently than he had before. The weight of his head laying on my shoulder and chest when he broke the kiss was divine and comforting in and of itself. The large size of this man that can’t keep from grasping for me in some way. He needs me. I am not objecting because in my deepest heart, I need the love of this man specifically as well. This beautiful man only. In that moment of calm intimacy, I willed myself to him body and soul.

  “I have made a list, Raffy” he said, smiling against my chest. “Have you now. And what kind of list have you made lumbering soldier that runs and leaps like a stag and kisses me so sweetly?” I really was curious, jovial aside. “You will need to have time to paint my mother ... before Rome, so I am going to do some chores and make some repairs that are necessary here. If you will allow it, I will go into Urbino and bring back laborers in your stead for the citrus groves. To help with harvest and market. Then we’ll turn the soil now so it will be ready to plant beans and vegetables at the first sign of spring. You also need pigs Raffy, for the soil alone, so I will also buy some pigs. If we are to stay here with you and enjoy your generous hospitality, my new and already very, very cherished friend, I must be of some use to your house. I must insist. Do not waste your breath in objection. I will have my way with you.”

  He spoke with such finality and authority. I sighed and said nothing. Just stared at his face laying on my chest as he busied himself pulling at long stalks of the grass in thought, his expression so resolved.

  “Raffy … I believe I have seen the painting you referred to when speaking with your mother with my own eyes.” He spoke evenly as if he were struggling to control his emotions. “I am sorry to have interrupted and should have said something then to make my presence known at such an intimate moment between a mother and her son, but when you described it by its exact title, I was moved. I knew it was the painting I saw hanging in the Pope’s private apartments. My mother is his connected family by marriage. Did you know that? She and I were just recently granted an official audience and later dined with His Holiness in the privacy of his apartments. On our way here for visit. It really is magical, Raffy. It is truly a stunning
work. You painted that?! It’s about this big by this big?” He showed me the size with his hands. I shook my head yes “I was nine. It was my last scrap of clean cloth. I built a frame to match it and stretched it to shape, not wasting a stitch. Precious to me even now.” I looked at him to judge his sincerity. He was being genuine with me.

  I do have to admit, I am glad to hear that my painting is being enjoyed by His Holiness the Pope. This honors me and I am humbled deeply by the thought of it there. He has been a kind and just ruler these many years. If my mother is not to have it, then it is best in God’s hands. I added laughingly, “I thought it mistakes on top of mistakes. I used too much linseed when I overpainted what I sought to change and further perfect. That is what created the rose-like soft effects and why the painting is called Yellow Roses in Moonlight. That layered transparency affect was an accident. I could not see clearly as it was painted at night. In the moonlight, hence the name. I was nine! But I have many, many such accident paintings, all of them, truth told. I will show them to you if you like. Over a decade worth of painting mistakes.”

  He jumped up to his feet urgently. “Show these to me! Show me now!” His excitement was so wonderful a feeling as it washed through me. To have him excited about anything to do with me. I raised my hand and he helped me up. On the walk back around the lake and up the hill to the barn where my art is stored on thick layers of hay with nothing but the feral cats in and out to keep the mice away, he laid his arm around my shoulder and twice kissed the top of my head as he spoke to me about how the Pope has my yellow roses displayed so proudly. Curious, this. My new and sudden friendship so strong of bond already. Still, though, something made me uneasy about him. I shrugged it off as I opened the large door at the back of the barn, he the other hanging on the handle as it swung out widely. Excited, the expression on his face.

  I lit the oil lamp for us to see. The smell of paints in this large room, the oils, is intoxicating to me. The scent often lulls me into a bliss of sorts as I paint. I have loved this smell of paint since I was an infant.

  My father often told people that my mother put a brush in my hand before I could hold eating utensils to feed myself. I was stroking color onto canvas before I learned to go to the outhouse by myself. My parents sacrificed a great deal so that I could perfect my artistic talents and not have to toil physically as so many country children are borne to do for their family’s livelihoods. While we are not wealthy by any consideration, we have lived comfortably and I most certainly have not wanted for more. My father’s title had not passed to me, but to my uncle, his brother, and after him, to his sons.

  I pointed him to sit on my father’s saddle and stand. He walked up to it and hitched his big leg over and straddled it easily. His feet touched the floor, his legs so long. I pulled out one painting at a time, the largest of them first. I have arranged and rearranged these many times and have decided to store them in the order that they were painted. This more clearly illustrates the stages of my artistic development and the subject changes from landscapes and florals to portraits. I started with my earliest large works, dragging each one over the hay careful not the let the edges or wood drag the hardened packed earth of the floor directly and soil them.

  As I showed him each one, I told him the age I was when I painted it, why I thought it was not good enough to display in any place where others would see it, what my challenges were with the medium I’d used, the subject, and the paint types I had used. Everything I think of when I look at my work to harshly judge why it is wrong and not what I had intended. Not good enough. By the third painting I showed him, he was crying. Streams of tears down his face. His cloudy teary eyes looked at me and all he said over and over was “they are so beautiful Raffy. Raffy. You are so beautiful.”

  Finally, before I finished showing him everything, I had a lot more still, he got off the saddle stand and came to me. His mouth was all over my neck as he pulled my blouse over my head roughly to touch and suckle more of my naked skin. The feeling of being ravaged. His breath so hot against me. Leaving me there momentarily he pulled the large door closed and stripped out of his clothes and boots. I watched his body move through the dim light of the oil lamp, knowing what is happening now, his magnificence in his physical form. So strong and so powerful he appeared.

  He came to me and knelt down, undoing the fastens for my britches and eased them down my legs to my knees. I laid my hands on his head and pulled his hair, holding it tightly while I pushed and pulled him. I lifted my hands into the air and tilted my head back. Archy was adoring me, borne of a hunger to please me. I caught my breath at the sensations.

  He stood and pulled the leather strap from my hair. I usually explore with my fingers there, but it felt nothing like this, so amazing it feels. No one else has ever even touched me there since being a babe in a crib. Trying to move my legs I fell over and he took this opportunity to again put his mouth to my skin me while he removed my boots and pants. Laying there on the hay with him naked and panting in extreme passion, he stood up over me and looked down at me.

  Next to me again. Tracing his tongue on my throat and licking my ear, he exhaled hard through his nose into my ear, deafeningly loud, and bit hard on my earlobe.

  “Have I hurt you or damaged you Raffy? Was I not tender enough to you? I have never felt such passion before in my life and I have had intimate relations with many women. Only one other man but I was ... younger. I was far too rough with you. He caught his breath and then sighed deeply. “I think it may be because you initially refused me. I had wanted you more then in your refusal, seeing you lie there naked when we first met. I made up my mind that I would never know you ... not like this. I then looked upon you as a challenge and wanted to take you that way since you said no to me. I turned the passion I felt for you into a challenge to overcome and triumph. But you move me still. You move me deeply. Answer me. Have I hurt you?!” I smiled at him. I have never before been spoken to in this manner. I had no idea of it even. I feel heavenly. It seemed natural, this man speaking of me in this worshipful way.

  “I am not hurt Archy. I am overtaken with surprise. I had no ... I had not known. I too am so moved.” Archy rolled to his side and placed his hand on my belly and kissed my cheek and then my forehead and then my ear where he had bitten so hard to distract me. “Let us go to Rome together Raffy. My family has a small palace there where we can live while you work for the Vatican. Pope Julius is enamored with your talent, so it is very likely that you will be elevated above assistant quite quickly. Please think about that. We can hire the labor needed to run things here for your mother, whom I adore already, actually. I have never seen my mother happier to see anyone else ever. Not even me. Well, perhaps me when I returned this last time. My mother will approve of this, I assure you. Not that it matters as I own the estates now. As soon as she knows the Yellow Roses in Moonlight is in fact your painting, as she had expected, you will have a benefactor for life. She loved that painting so, Raffy. Coveted it, actually, even asking His Eminence if she could purchase it, in jest, of course. It was only upon leaving the Vatican that day one week hence that she told me she suspected the painting to be the same gift to your mother that she spoke of in one of their many letters to one another. When she asked, he had simply shaken his head no while he gazed into it. He would not even reveal your name.”

  I raised myself up on my elbow to level my face with his. His smiling lips, messy hair with hay tangled in it now, the softness of the skin on his sated face, the grooming of his beard immaculate. I kissed him on the mouth and got up quickly. “Thank you.” I gathered my britches and boots and blouse not bothering then to put them on, opened the door into the main barn and began walking over to the stairs up to my studio. As I turned to make the first step up I saw his beautiful face there in the dim light of the oil lamp, looking at me questioning. I stopped.

  “I am going upstairs to clean up and change for dinner a changed man entirely. Please pick two paintings, any paintings you wish, and
carry them into the house as gifts for your mother. I adore her as well Archy. I have never seen my mother happier either. They have missed one another these past years and your visit too long in the coming. Not the yellow roses paintings though. They are not yet finished. And only two pigs please, no more than that Archy. They smell so horribly.” I began to climb the stairs. “Yes, to everything else.” .

  “Everything else?!” he called out “yes to everything else? We go to Rome then?!” Smiling more widely than I can ever recall, I called down into the cavernous space of the filthy barn, their horses loudly stomping at the loudness of his voice. “Yes, to everything else and probably anything you ever ask of me again, young Marquis. Yes. We go to Rome.” As if the choice were mine. I was simply at the thought of not having to endure Rome alone.

  Just inside the door when I heard him bounding up the old stairs, laughing at my sudden happiness. His loud footfalls creaking the old wood under his weight makes me smile outwardly because I see it in my mind. He appeared there moments later, naked. “Did you mean that Raffy? When you said you would say yes of anything I ask of you?” I looked at him to judge seriousness. “Yes” I nodded my head affirmatively. “Then I will buy four pigs!” and with that he bounded right back down the stairs to get dressed and begin looking through the rest of my paintings. He knew my answer. Yes.

  Every night since he’s been here, Archy has snuck from his room at the far end of the main house near his mother’s room, out his window and down the lawns around the hill, then up to the pasture door at the back of the barn where we often sit talking in the moonlight. Up into my studio and cot he sneaks, to sleep the nights holding me in his arms. This pleases me greatly. His large body provides me with warmth and cushion, it grows colder and colder at night now. Though the cot we share sags low in the middle and we keep meaning to boil and dry some straw to re-stuff it. Its deep curve inward does make for some interesting angles and sleeping positions as he is, every night and sometimes more than once, prone to cradle me to his center, so urgent says he of his need for my body. I love him immeasurably, though I would not confess this to him out loud.