Forgiving Rome

by Clay Ferrill

  “Archy?” his mother called from the top of the stairs loudly. He quickly kissed my lips with his and murmured to me “I love you Raffy. I love you.” He wiped his eyes and sucked in his snot, opened the carriage door and climbed out, reaching his large hand back inside to help me out. I took his hand and again the tears come. The Marquise was half way down the stairs already as I surfaced, my wet eyes beaming up to hers. I bounded up the steps and wrapped the elegantly dressed lady in a firm hug, kissing her cheek repeatedly just as I do my mother. I would let her think my tears are in the joy and happiness at seeing her again. Over her shoulder I see an older man dressed in a long red silk robe. At first my thoughts are so muddled and cheered that I fail to recognize who I am seeing there. My eyes drift over to the right of the stairs and waiting there, with four armed guards, is the golden Papal Carriage.

  My head snaps back to him standing there, and he sees the recognition on my face and smiles genuinely at me.

  Archy’s hand on my shoulder urged me to walk further up the steps to be introduced to him. The sun just setting, the lights of the sky are so vividly orange, they create such an incredible life glow in the old man’s face. Everything in sight bathed in the smooth brightness of the color. Archy’s hand drifts down my back as he leans in to whisper in my ear. His hand finds the mound of my ass and he squeezed it and with hand covering his mouth, let his tongue slip from his mouth and taste my skin there. I sighed deeply as we walked up to His Holiness, Pope Julius II.

  My head bowed, I simply say “Your Holiness.” He reached his hand out and laid it on my head. “At last I have the privilege of meeting the artist of my Yellow Roses in Moonlight. Young Raphael, I have so long wanted to meet the child, now a man, that created that wonderful work of art for me to both cherish and lament. I enjoy its influence in my heart every time I cast my eyes on it and know some day soon I will cast my eyes upon it no more.” His words moved me profoundly. I lifted my head as Archy came up behind me, handing me the cloth carry with my large scrolls and my vision for the Grand Corridor.

  While seated across the large table from Archy, the Marquise was escorted to her chair at one end while the Pope’s private guard helped his aging body to be seated comfortably in his chair. As he cast his eyes around the table he lowered his head in prayer to speak. Before I closed my eyes, I looked at Marquesa, eyes closed. I lifted them to my Archy, who had been waiting for my eyes to find his. No expression there on him, he simply fixed me in his stare and a single tear descended his cheek and disappeared under his billowing white collar.

  Looking at His Holiness he lowered his head in prayer, his lips moving in time with Father’s words. His arm extended over the table reaching for me. I had not taken my eyes off of him. I reached out and grazed my hand over the back of his and withdrew quickly, as Father spoke aloud ending his prayer over our meal “… per sempre nel vostro servizio oh Signore. Così sia.” I spoke aloud “Amen” perhaps too loudly, my eyes finding Archy’s as soon as they opened. He smiled warmly at me as the many servants filed in carrying each a full plate of the first course of seven. A dinner fit for a prince of God.

  In parlor, His Holiness sat patiently listening to Archy regale us with his tales of the war in southern France, the conflicts still brewing in Milan with the Sforza family once again lobbying to regain their power and lands back from King Louis. He clearly states his position that the lands should be returned to their family, having occupied it since time immemorial. How viciously his King defends lands he has no interest in owning, nearing risk of the death of himself repeatedly in his quest for more and more. I sat riveted to him listening to the quality of his voice and his clarity of speaking so respectfully to His Holiness. Standing suddenly, he lifted his shirt and under-blouse to expose a long-jagged scar from where he had taken a sword slice and almost died from the resulting infection. I could not help myself. I hitched in a deep gasp at seeing him scarred like that.

  The tears burst forth from me so suddenly that I could no more control the urgent commerce of them before running from the room. The painting I had envisioned for the centerpiece of the work was a soldier of God lying wounded on the earth, his wound bleeding as the hand of God above reached down for him. I could not help but draw that parallel and rose suddenly and left the parlor overwhelmed. I turned left, not knowing where I was going in this extremely large and grand place of marble. I just walked away from the front entrance that I could see because there were guards posted at the Pope’s carriage in wait. I burst loudly through two doors before I saw the windows at the back of the house and marched right past the servants in the Butler’s pantry and right out onto the large manicured lawn with a grand and splashing fountain.

  “Who lives like this?!” I yelled away from the house hoping not to be heard, but lacking all control of the volume of my voice as it boomed from my chest as if a pressurized release. His voice spoke behind me. “We live like this Raffy. We do. You and me. This is our house. We two live here only once mother departs back to France in two day’s time. Her brother, my uncle, is gravely ill. Oh Raffy, I have so much to tell you. I have not read your letters back to me. I could not bear the thought that they may tell me from your own hand that I must forget about you. To forget about us. What we feel for one another … or. I am sorry Raffy if I presume too much. I love you. I will not be apart from you again, ever, if you too feel as I do. Death’s hand will have to pry mine from yours my love. I love you.”

  I dropped unconscious to the ground. Just crumbled to hear Archy retell it. Waking up with my head in his lap and his sweet kisses on my face the next thing I remember. Death’s hand … separated from me. His words, spoken with such conviction, had moved me deeply. Overwhelming me completely. His lingering kiss on my mouth as I woke. The feel of his breath on my face. I am to die here and now I had thought. How else can so much overwhelming happiness be explained?

  I shot up from his lap suddenly, bumping our heads together painfully. “His Holiness! I have been so rude, so rude it in inexcusable. I had so wanted to show him my sketches. Hurry, we must return to them.” I lowered my arm to him and he grabbed it. His weight almost toppled me but he caught me around the waist and steadied me. I parted from him momentarily and touched his side where his scar was. “They have hurt you my love. But you will see why I reacted in such a way in front of the Pope. You will see. I must show him the sketch I made of The Stallion of God. The image there that I envisioned, it is of you, my warrior. You will see. The wounds in my sketch are the same as the scar you now bear.”

  Excitedly, he led the way back the way he had found me out here. Through the open grand parlor doors onto the patio and vined pergola. His Holiness was still comfortably seated. I blurted out “Father, you believe in divine guidance, do you not?” He smiled and nodded his head yes. The Marquise rose from her seated position, her lovely amber gown magnificent in fine silks from the Orient. She took two paces and lifted a cloth-wrapped painting and walked it over to His Holiness. He smiled at it and patted it gingerly in his lap and then looked up at me. He held it in his shaking outstretched hand to me. I sprang forward to accept it from him, kneeling and then sitting on my boots. I held it. It is the right size. Long of width and narrow of height. I unfolded the cloth and there it was. Yellow Roses in Moonlight. I burst into tears anew. My mother’s birthday present from me. I lifted my eyes to him, the gratitude present there on my face. My tears dropped onto the oiled and preserved surface.

  Archy was standing behind me and pointed to it proudly, exclaiming “he was but nine years old when he painted that painting Your Holiness, did you know that? Did you know that he was so young of age when he painted this?” He simply shook his head yes in reply. He waved his hand in a down, down motion to Archy. He kneeled at my side. “You are so very tall. My neck, it is so old. It strained me to look up so high. There I can see you both. It pleases me so much that you have viewed this wonderful painting again young artist. It is yours young brilliant artist, it is yours. I will ask
only that you let me keep it until I join my father in heaven. Upon my death it will be returned to you, I promise you. I have decreed it.” I rose from the floor and picked up his hand from the arm of the chair and kissed his ring. “Nothing would give me more honor than to provide you with anything you wish of me. Always, your Most Holy Eminence, always.” I rose then and walked the few paces to my carry cloth and emptied the rolled sketches out onto the floor dramatically.

  Right on the parlor floor I unfurled them to him. He spoke little, his eyes bright with wonder as I described the colors I would use in the works, the vivid colors of life giving life. The blues and greens and reds in description from my tongue into the air, more accurate and beautiful words had never before crossed my lips. Bobbing his head in recognition of the space where I proposed the frescoes. He nodded firmly. “Please come with Padre Bispeppi tomorrow young artist. I would hear you retell your plans for the Grand Corridor, as you call it. We shall make it such a hall. Perhaps the Hall of Raphael!”

  At last, I unrolled the last sketch I had made for The Stallion of God, the centerpiece I proposed for the work. I had hand-made the crimson paste into pencils that I dried in a bread oven. The same with the royal blues of the sky above and around him, dried and crushed tempera smeared there by my raw fingertips themselves. His cape the darkest of the reds I had sketched and colored from memory alone. It was the cape he was wearing the day we met.

  I looked up into Archy’s eyes, wet with tears, his mother, also crying, patting his tall shoulder proudly, gazing down at the largest of the sketches and fully colored. The soldier laying there, from my worst nightmares of anguish at not being with him, was the visualized image of a wounded and dying Giuseppe Allard Archambault, Marquis de Orleans the rough handwritten and smeared title across the bottom of the piece. I had cried so hard when I titled it and the smears were an attempt to wipe them away before they stained the work.

  The Pope looked up again into Archy’s face and then down to mine. His eyes watering with the emotion the sketch invoked in him. “Yes, yes my son. I see it more clearly now. This is the divine guidance you spoke of. As a man of God, I must tell you this to be true. I will see this centerpiece in life before I leave this world Raphael. I am very old so we must not waste time. Come tomorrow. I demand it.” He smiled very widely, his old teeth yellowed and stained red from the wine.

  It was at this time in my life that I came to be known simply as Raphael. Raphael the jubilant young artist of the Pope of Rome. I am now the Pope’s preferred artist, in residence, my things moved from my small rooms into the grander rooms inside the Vatican walls. A private garden of my own. My wardrobe now extensive and lavish. I work daily at my task of creating a scene of unmatched resplendence, a series of 18 frescoes on the walls and 9 corresponding ceiling frescoes. At the apex, a connected painting of heaven itself throughout all the ceiling. An ambitious feat to be sure, but my supplies are instantly provided, the porters seeming to anticipate the needs and have, on many occasions, procured to me as soon as the words were leaving my lips to request the item.

  Every single need of mine is met save one. I see Archy only once per week on Sundays. He picks me up here late on Saturday afternoon before sunset and does not leave my side until early Monday morning at first light when his carriage leaves him with me inside and drops me off. For the past months, my mother has been down from Urbino to vacation with her cousin the Marquise at their summer house near Castiglione del Lago on Lake Trasimeno. Her son is now a famous painter far and wide. Painter to the Pope of Rome. We have the grand place to ourselves and rarely even dress when we rest on Sundays. His passion for me has not slowed when we lay together. Ours is a blissful and loving time together and he never tires at trying to make me happy in some new way. He’s an animal. My warrior lover. My Stallion of God.

  Chapter Eight

  Day Three, Wednesday November 25, 2020, 03:35 GMT

  Desert Palaces

  The afternoon sunshine coming in the bank of windows was heavenly on my naked body as I stretched out on the large white bed after my long luxurious hot then cold shower. I quickly figured out that in this roughly 4,000 square foot suite, there were massive His and Her 5-piece bathrooms, Hers six-piece with both a toilet and a bidet. All gold. I had squatted over it and turned on the jet just for the experience of the thing. I can clearly see its function, the cleansing and rinsing of the interior of the woman’s genitals pre- and post-coitus. The jet had felt good when its aggressively strong stream shot up into me. It felt great and very cleansing before I showered. The large circular fan overhead was literally soundless. Not even the slightest whisper. It disked the clean cool air down over my body. I drifted off into a deep, relaxed sleep. That had taken a lot out of me. I briefly thought of Luigi and succumbed to sleep quickly.

  I woke hours later, the sun had almost finished setting, when I heard a slight knock at the door. “Uno momento por favore” I called out and reached for the bathrobe I had carried in from His bathroom but had not put on before crawling onto the top of this marvelously soft bed. I fell asleep naked in the luxurious breeze. I tightened the tie around the waste and opened the door. Her Highness the Princess stood there next to her servant, an older woman who averted her eyes, holding long black folded garments in her hand and in the other, shoes in exactly my size with light cotton fabric pants called his serwal folded over her arm. The fabrics were likely the finest that money could buy. I stepped back to allow them to enter.

  The Princess came in first and looked around the room, noticing the dimple in the downy bed cover where my body had lain naked only moments before. Pheromone soaked. The servant busied herself with hanging the fine garments in the exquisitely carved wardrobe nearest the bed and then rushed to leave the room, closing the door behind her as she left bowing. Her mistress would have had to have instructed her to leave specifically, as it was not proper to leave Her Highness alone with a man not her husband in the privacy of a room such as this.

  The Princess turned to me. “I am no longer pregnant Father Livingston. I miscarried our sons. Our sons! The Prince is so very angry with me and feels me at fault for having caused it somehow. He’s calling in another surrogate but I do not wish to allow it again. The thing arrives tomorrow as I begin to ovulate. I cannot and will not allow this again. Allah himself took those babies from me.” I motioned her over to sit on the bed and sat down next to her, putting my hand on her shoulder and lowered my head to her level. Her hands went up to her face to hide the sudden onset of tears. God had willed this. Unless someone else has molested her chemically as I had intended to do myself. I am relieved that will no longer be necessary. But I cannot let her reproduce from another Akmal clone either.

  I still her sobbing with gentle pats on her shoulder. I smell of her. My senses now detect that, yes, she is in fact ovulating. This is when my body will react in obligation to female ovulation. I am a man. She had lost the babies or this would not be possible. I will console her in this loss as best as I can, but I am relieved. She is an innocent. Her shoulders hunched and bounced as she cried helplessly. I spoke to her in a hushed, conciliatory tone, trying to ease her worries and obvious distress. She really was an innocent in all of this. I dosed her only lightly. Delicately.

  I asked her to confirm that I had heard her correctly, in a questioning, calm voice “you said that the Prince was calling in what? Another surrogate? This I do not understand Your Royal Highness” I spoke in broken English with a heavy Italian accent. Her tears and crying renewed. “The Prince is not able to father children, but the royal family requires that we together produce an heir, a male successor to the throne. If I am not able, I will be replaced and likely killed for the failure. The King is very unforgiving in this. He will not see this as his son’s fault. The pressure on us has been enormous, Father. We must produce an heir for the King.” She motioned back toward the door with her arm “that was my mother, Father Livingston. She is placed in this role of servitude to me to torture us both. It
is cruel.” I patted her on the shoulder and spoke softly to her, breathing my pheromone into her face.

  She is so beautiful and delicate, this princess. She should always be cherished and adored. I breathed in her scent deeply. She is already a day into ovulation and highly fertile. I lifted her hand to my face and placed my warm lips against her skin, kissing her hand gently and softly. I let my tongue taste here delicate, soft skin. She turned into me suddenly and put her arms around my waist and laid her head flat against my bared chest, the robe having spread open when I sat down next to her.

  I breathed into her hair on top of her head, down the side of her face. Her lips parted and her tongue tasted my clean skin, the scent of pine oil light and fresh there. I am reacting naturally to her strong female pheromones, her desire for me sexually so palpable, it influences me and my pheromones to her. She will not and cannot ever utter her words of desire aloud to me or to her husband the Prince. I placed my large hand on hers and guided it to my lap. My rise under her touch. She gripped me through the robe and lifted her face to kiss my lips. I laid her back on the bed and let my hands run over her body, the silks and chiffons of her soft dress, salmon in color with dark pink layers underneath and red ribbon trimming so beautiful this desert flower. I squeezed her thigh hard. I whispered to her gently.

  “I would couple with you Your Highness. Together we would produce a son and heir to the throne easily. I am extremely fertile, you see, unlike your husband the Prince. A son is assured from the coupling. Who you lay with and give your body to in sexual congress, should always be man or a woman of your choosing only. You should never have to let another man enter into your beautiful body if you do not wish it. You don’t have to let another man take you in this way to make you pregnant. I offer myself to pleasure you in this way. Does this please Your Highness? Would you like for me to father your child?”