by Clay Ferrill
His Holiness raised his hand and the glass wall behind us instantly lit up inside. Our tears dried quickly, in awe, as the lights raised, there, the glint of the polished sheath of gold bearing his King’s royal crest, was Archy’s missing sword. An old roughly-hewn sawhorse and saddle. Hay on the floor indicated a rough bed of some sort. Familiar somehow. A lantern on the floor in front of it, unlit. Stacks of paintings in groups of two, each facing out from the other, backs touching. His red cloak lined royal blue, his King’s colors there vivid still. So vivid and clear and well-preserved all of it. I rose with the lights and walked to the glass. Trunks, rugs, cloth, blankets and even pillows remained. Small wooden casks open and filled with gold coins.
Anything the church could collect of his to protect as they hid his very existence from the world for centuries.
The door hissed open and retracted slowly to allow entry into the vault without touching the door. I walked back and grabbed Luigi’s hand and walked to the opening. Led him inside. We paused in front of his cape, blood stain still present there at its center where his heart was, the large hole gaping from the spear that had stilled his heart. Luigi turned back to the glass and he lifted his hand shaking his head yes. Allowing them both to touch, feel, and smell anything they wish. These were their things.
His Holiness, The Pope of Rome
As I watched them through the glass, I rested again in my chair and sipped lemon water. Luigi lifted the cape from its stand and gently draped it over Cole’s shoulders, stooping down to accept it from him. His rise then to grasp the sword and dramatically unsheathe it loudly, quite dramatic as he waved it about in the air. Their chuckles of good spirit please me greatly. They revel together again, mischievous as in youth.
Returning everything carefully to its place, they again joined hands as they approached the leaning canvases and planks of wood gathered there. The contents of the Urbino farm’s largest barn. Anything flat that he could paint on at the time of his life was there, so remarkably well preserved all of it. Cole looked back at me then with tears streaming down his face, Luigi kneeled on the floor pulling out panels, his shoulders dancing in happy tears of joy as he covers his face with his hands. My hand flat to the glass and my head tilted downward, my lips moved in a silent prayer to God begging for their forgiveness. Please help them to forgive us. Every painted surface there was a small masterpiece. Two attempts at the Yellow Roses in Moonlight, clearly painted in the dark of night. So wondrously captured there on a wood plank, and raw cloth, both wide and stout, the incredible illumination of the pedals nothing short of miraculous to behold. No greater artist since.
Luigi held it to his chest, huffing his breath, Cole kneeling at his side to console him. They both stood, Luigi with the plank to his chest and Cole standing tall and proud as if at attention facing me. His hand proudly holding Luigi’s. I raised my hand and the wall behind them slid to the side. Slowing coming into view, lights turning on as the view of the eye moved into the distance, a large open gallery of Raphael’s many paintings. Stolen then from his barn in Urbino and later from the attics of the Grand Marquise’ Estates in Rome, Paris, Luxembourg, Germany, and Holland, where they had been spirited away at his death by his mothers. The Marquise herself had died in the fire she set herself to burn her grand castle in Orleans to the ground rather than allow the church and vicious Medici Pope to rob them of anything else or from her cousin, Raphael’s mother. Her portrait there at the very end quite large and framed in solid good.
They wait for them there. Ahead, I believe. The mothers do. Mothers always wait for their sons.
They walked closely embraced into the vast open space. Sketches, the very sketches Raphael had used to introduce his idea for the Grand Corridor to Pope Julius II. The largest sketch mounted behind sealed glass in vacuum to protect the colors he had used to illustrate the central image of the stanze, the painting to be The Stallion of God. Luigi’s head leaning into Cole’s arm then, his tight grasp of his arm so sweet to see. The first attempts at including his own image suspended above the sketch showing Raphael’s face directly staring at the viewer and not turned toward heaven as currently reflected in the actual fresco itself. It was indeed the very image of Luigi’s face there. It had been re-painted by assistants after his death to look away as Pope Leo had found it ghoulish and too haunting otherwise.
As they approached the end of the long gallery, they stopped to face the portrait of the Grand Marquise du Orleans. Something very timely about the way they both stand there holding hands, their breath in the cold place raising about their heads as they spoke their words to one another. His arm over Luigi’s shoulder. A portrait of his mother. They turned around. Behind them, unnoticed as they had passed into the vault, was a small oil lamp burning in a tiny barred window. A small alcove next to a darkened wood doorway, its entry quite small. You would have to crawl on hands and knees to enter there. Holding locks of Luigi’s hair, Cole again envisioned the timeline lines for each of them on the graphs of his mind. Now densely intertwined. Their position in their progressive walk back through time in Raphael’s works will end abruptly there, very closely following the timeline of Giuseppe’s cruel execution.
He slows him and wraps his arms around Luigi’s chest from behind. He stills them there as I watched, observing the young lovers in contemplation of what it was they were about to see. As a matter of science, he is whispering the description of Raphael’s death scene before they enter the small doorway into a hovel on their hands and knees as I myself have done now many times in repentance.
The dense quiet in this place now almost unbearable, the weight of the collected time here heavy on all of our souls. I sit then and ask for forgiveness. Scanning my eyes as Luigi lowers to his hands and knees on the floor to crawl into the small room with the slanted, damp ceiling where Raphael had lived the last months of his tortured life, essentially a captive. The very room where he died by his own hand. There, piles and piles of sketches lay resting in dust, left undisturbed these many centuries since. It is exactly as it was at the time of his death. Standing over them, their necks bent severely and against the web-entangled ceiling looking down into the small space with a small cot and lantern on a chair, the charcoal sketches there all of Archy. All of them. Their shared tears now dot the dust on the floor. They bring their tears back into this sacred and preserved place centuries after they had originally dried here and died. Luigi dropped to the floor and crawled out urgently. Cole immediately followed him.
The pair stood there for nearly thirty minutes as I looked on, waiting patiently on their decisions. Waiting for their forgiveness. Cole brushed the hair off of Luigi’s forehead and planted his lips there, kissing several times. His hands on the sides of his face returned, their lips met and they fell into a strong embrace.
An agreement has been reached between them. The lips moved only slightly as they murmured to one another in their private discussion.
Nodding both, they turned toward the door and walked hand-in-hand. Cole slowed as Luigi walked back into the small anti-chamber first. The door closed behind Cole automatically and hissed as the air was being sucked from the vast room now sealed and frozen in time again. The flame of the old oil lamp extinguishing quickly. He turned in time to see the wall pale and then darken to opaque gray again.
Luigi moved to me and extended his hands to me. I lifted my hand and he kissed my ring. Stepping back, he took the second seat away from me of the three chairs present. Cole then approached and bowed accepting my hand and kissed my ring. He took the chair next to mine. They looked at one another and handed me their remaining collars, smiling. “I release you from your vows, with my deepest heartfelt blessings” I genuflected over them and accepted their priestly collars. “We beg your forgiveness.” I gestured toward the now muted glass. “The paintings in this vault were stolen. I return them to you now, young Luigi Berlusconi. I would only request that you take them on tour to show them to the entire world. As the collection’s owner and prima
ry curator. The world needs to see the true brilliance of him in life. Do you agree to this Luigi?” Cole turned his face back to Luigi and they both nodded yes. “We are then forgiven young artist?” Luigi alone shook his head yes, the tears now streaming down his face and into his smile.
At the very second we both nodded, two senior Cardinals entered the small anti-chamber and approached the pontiff seated. Cole lifted his smile to his oldest “friend” Cardinal Mosconi. They each bowed formally to His Holiness and dripped the wax as he first kissed and then pressed the wax to the document with his Papal Seal. The other Cardinal presented his Eminence with the pen. His signature scrawled, with a smile, the pen carrier produced a Vatican Bank draft for seven hundred million euros. The pontiff raised his hand waving it as if to clear the air “as due rents only for the works as they sat idle here in these vaults hidden from the world’s eyes for far too long. Cardinal Mosconi will see to Dispensations for your paid salary, young artist. We owe you quite a handsome sum indeed.” I smiled then and fixed my eyes on young Cole. For all intents and purposes my son manifest in flesh and bone, his soul from The Guf, the Hall of Souls, ordered forth not from my loins but from the hand of God himself as science. “I will get to you in a minute my son.” I assured him, patting Cole’s hand.
“As payment for wages earned and compounded interest as those monies had never been conveyed to him in life, to you, young artist, the sum of two billion euros. We have included a significant penalty as those actions require punitive measures.” He winked at Luigi. Again, the document was lowered and the wax dripped from the solid gold gilded pourer. I rolled my eyes. The kissing of the seal and the pressing of it so formal and old-world seeming in this setting. He looked at Luigi and asked “Are we forgiven this transgression now corrected young artist? I must ask that you respond to me verbally, as Santi Raphaello Sanzio da Urbino, but please, I beg of you to let me explain this more clearly before you object.” I waited patiently for his reply and he nodded then, raising his hand for me to continue. I know they have not read the documents I sent. This is the hardest part for me. I must humble to him now, to beg of him, forgiveness for the small room, forgive his brutal, crippling beatings. Forgive them for his cage.
“For the suffering of the young artist Raphaello Sanzio da Urbino in his last 10 months of life, at the hands of Pope Leo the fifth of the church by our Holy Name, he had ordered the whippings and beatings of the artist Raphael, who suffered cruelly during that time, his soul was caged in that room. His body at death a riddle of broken and healing bones. He had been hobbled and in severe pain from it.” Clearing my throat now as the document was lowered in front of me, I finished. Almost there. I scrawled my signature across the line and waited for his verbal reply. Cole looked into his eyes searching. Luigi looked past his eyes to me and nodded his head yes and spoke.
“The burden you present in requesting my forgiveness for past sins is too heavy a blanket to lay on my shoulders alone, Father. I can answer for myself only.” I waved upward for him to continue. “I forgive any transgressions made those centuries past and see, clearly, Your Holiness’s intentions in giving us life in return, Cole and me. I don’t fear excommunication now as I am no longer in your brotherhood. That known, I speak now for Raphael which I would not have dared do as a priest. His friends called him Raffy, Your Holiness. I am moved by him to forgive your need to even ask in seeking his forgiveness. It is he that would seek your forgiveness. His forgiveness is not forthcoming. I truly believe his spirit has long ago moved past the transgressions of that horrible time and that he has been happily reunited with his mothers, his loved ones in heaven’s Urbino, there now even with his Giuseppe, his Archy. This is where I am from as you know.” I lowered my seal into the wax and the document floated away in Cardinal Mosconi’s grasp.
Luigi had given everything he could give in his honest reply. I had just legally changed his name from Luigi Alfonse Berlusconi to Raphaello Luigi Alfonse Sanzio da Urbino. Conveying untold inheritance, including his now-priceless art works, his church-ceased lands returned to him from Vatican ownership, interests compounded. Very, very wealthy indeed. His friends will call him Raffy though. This simple thing makes my heart smile most.
We are not to be forgiven for caging him, beating him, and torturing his very soul. I bend my head then to pray for the thanks we give for allowing us his soul, returned to us now from The Hall of Souls. I thank The Guf for the grace of the act, the very love extended in allowing it. I cross in the air and kiss my hand and thank God. I keep my head lowered as the monks finish their Benedicamus Patrem chant outside the room, having gathered there in silence at my request, singing quietly as I requested his forgiveness.
I reach my aged hand for his now, my Cole. “The dates of events surrounding the death of The Marquis de Orleans, Raphael’s friend and champion, had taken the longest in the revised timeline of his life, correcting his erasure from history. We restore them now in this act, the life history of this citizen of France, to him living again this day of our Lord, as Giuseppe Coleman Allard Livingston Archambault, Grand Duke of Orleans. If he will accept and forgive us our past sins and transgressions.”
I closed my eyes and held my breath. The life we took from him. “Yes, sure. I forgive you. Archy can’t forgive you though. I agree, as Luigi has explained, I too feel his spirit has moved past it and no longer seeks an act of forgiveness of any kind. He was a brave solider, this warrior lover of Raphael. He fought proudly for everything he loved until he died fighting for his life and breath. I have read literally everything there is to read on him. On me, I guess if you look at it that way, and scientifically speaking, we should. I am directly of his blood as Luigi is of Raphaello’s. We are, scientifically speaking, exact genetic copies of them. I have his spirit in me though Father, I can feel it building in strength every second. I love this man with every fiber of my being too, so I’m going to say anything and agree to do anything that clears our path ahead in our life together. My very soul loves his very soul. I cannot not be ashamed of this because I believe in my heart and soul that it’s God’s will.” He stopped speaking. I let his comments hang in the air as the document was lowered for my seal and signature.
“Such lands and titles you now hold young soldier of centuries past. Your friends and family so loved you. I do hope you have the fortune to form such bonds with we mere humans in your new life. I welcome you to the fold of humanity my young Archy. My son Cole. I do understand, from a scientific point of view, that it is not possible for the actual transfer of memory from one life so long ago into a life now in this time. But when you speak and breathe again here after so long, I am wondering. The comments you made to me earlier in private Cole. Do you? Do you remember then? I am simply curious of the soul so recently provided to us from The Guf for you. The spirit of the soul you have now. I wonder, truly, if it has been waiting there for you all this time.” He bobbed his head in a chuckle. Luigi patted his arm and squeezed it. He thinks Cole is really, really smart. He told me so when I spoke with him privately as well.
“I love that you ask this question, Father. Yes. I believe I do remember certain things. Major events mostly. First casting my eyes on him, um, naked, lying sleeping on top of a burdened and sagging old cot in a stinky barn loft with gapingly large window openings. I have never before seen such a place, but I believe that to be the first time they cast eyes on one another. I don’t know this as fact though. Call it an intuition. But, I can tell you that I even smell the oils of the paints there in that specific memory. Watching him then splash into a lake. I wring from my brain anything like these images that I can think of to give a name to it and draw back blanks from memory, so these are not my own memories. To answer your question more directly, yes, I do have Giuseppe’s memories. At least some of them.”
I rose from my chair and the door to the anti-chamber was opened by two porters that would see me to my following meetings and one formal audience before my mid-day nap. They won’t let me drive the ca
rt any longer, either. I grow old. I am very tired today to have done such fine works. They form quite a pack, these four souls. Raffy will join Archy, Siren and Adam. Free of obligation. The jet and fuel for a lifetime is theirs.
Giuseppe Coleman Allard Livingston Archambault, The Grand Duke of Orleans
His Holiness left the room. Audience over. Raffy came to my side and wrapped his arms around my middle. Cardinals receded and disappeared next with a wink from Mosconi. When their graces had left the room two gentlemen in black suits stepped in and smiled. Leaving Raffy standing there, I walked over to the taller of the two, still shorter than me by an inch, accepting the produced large square card. They both smiled widely. Our new full names used, mine with full title. It extended the services of two armed guards every minute of every day for the rest of our lives. The estates of my family then, now grown into a vast network of real estate holdings and extensive material wealth and status across Europe. I’m a fucking Duke!
I walked it back to Raffy and showed him. I shrugged my shoulders. Motioning to the only two empty chairs, Raffy sat and I took my place behind him with my hands resting on his shoulders, playing with his ponytail. He swatted at my hand to stop it and we both chuckled.
A life to plan outside the confines of church dogma centuries in the forming. A step outside of it for the much-needed fresh air of freedom itself. Unshackled of vow. I wouldn’t miss that collar at all, though I suspect Raffy will struggle with the loss of what he had believed his entire life to be his calling. He will make a fine curator of the art collection of Raphael’s works. He knows everything of him now once we read Raphael’s complete dossier. He has been granted access to the personal diaries any time he wishes for the rest of his life and what he reads there will help him to love me. He will create some art of his own now, I think. His strokes and technique are quite masterful and so modern, his subjects never crisp and photo-correct, but blurred hauntingly, and distant, the cities behind his portraits busy and cluttered. I am happily restored in this vision of our future together.