Why is this woman speaking to me? Could she not leave me alone?
“My husband is a very jealous man,” she said. “And a dangerous one. Please forgive him.”
“È niente,” Cecco mumbled. It’s nothing.
Please let me go before Ranuccio comes and sees me talking with you!
“I make you uncomfortable, I see,” she said, scanning his face. “I’ll leave you in peace.” Before she left him, she squeezed his arm, leaning close. He smelled a unique scent of jasmine on her skin.
“Give my salutations to your master,” she said. She left, the cloying perfume still lingering in the air.
Chapter 18
Valletta, Malta
1605
The wind raced wet and cold off the sea, rattling the windows of St. John’s Cathedral. Winter storms often battered the remote outpost of Malta, a rocky speck in the Mediterranean, south of Sicily.
Alof de Wignacourt, grand master of the Knights of Malta, shivered under his wool tunic, boots, and leggings. A nagging cough rattled the eight-pointed cross hanging on his chest. The tomblike air trapped in the limestone church made his aging bones ache. He thought of his home in Provence, with its aroma of lavender and linden trees, abuzz with honeybees.
Wignacourt lifted his head from prayer, looking up past the simple altar at the stone block wall.
Les pierres, calcaires.
Limestone. The bones of this rocky island. How humble a tribute to our Saint John. A pauper’s offering. No glory here!
The Knights of Malta have aided and defended Christians since the medieval ages, in Jerusalem and beyond. Should not the oratory of our glorious Saint John be properly adorned with his image, rather than this barren face of rock?
Wignacourt shifted his weight on his knees. He suffered from old wounds from the Great Siege of 1565, when he was but seventeen years old. The grand master winced, then cursed at his body, shutting his eyes tight.
“Tais-toi!” he mumbled aloud.
Shut up! This is a moment with God, you fool. Not a time to console the flesh.
Dear God. Bless our Maltese order, our eight houses of nations, les huit langues. Together we from so many countries pray with one heart, our devotion to you dictates our lives.
Help us to heal the sick in our infirmaries and give them comfort. May we defeat the barbarian Turks who thirst to murder us and grab our fortress outpost of rock. May these islands stand as a bastion between the infidel barbarians and Christendom of Europe.
He opened his eyes again to see the candlelit crucifix on the altar. He gazed beyond the altar at the empty expanse of limestone blocks.
How the stone begs to be adorned with the grace of God. A painting depicting our great saint and his martyrdom—
He felt a presence hovering by his right shoulder. The aging knight swiveled his head to see nothing but unadorned stone.
Chapter 19
Roma
1605
Mario Minniti lit a candle and lumbered up the stairs of 19 Vicolo dei Santi Cecilia e Biagio. Despite the fact that Mario had known Caravaggio since the first year he had come to Roma, he had never visited his bottega in this house. He saw the gaping hole in the roof and stopped to stare up at the bright stars glittering above his head.
“Idiot,” he mumbled. “Incorrigible arrogance.”
Minniti knew Caravaggio as well as anyone alive.
Of course he would need a source of light. Certo he would not worry what the landlady had to say about the damage.
He spied Cecco asleep in a cot alongside Caravaggio’s bed, snoring softly.
The boy has grown—he is no longer the cherub Michele painted in Love Conquers All.
Minniti grimaced. Like me, he will have outgrown his usefulness as a lover.
Minniti remembered drunken nights when he and Caravaggio, young apprentices at Cavaliere d’Arpino’s studio, had found pleasure in each other’s bodies. They had no money for food, let alone whores, so they had made do. But in Roma, while a young boy was not uncommon in a man’s bed, a boy beyond puberty was considered disgusting.
Mario walked closer to the sleeping boy.
See the pimples on his face, the stray dark facial hairs of a man. I’m sure he cannot appeal any longer to Michele. Cecco is purely an apprentice now. So Michele seeks out whores.
As Mario watched, the sleeping boy’s eyelashes fluttered. He stared up into Mario Minniti’s face. Startled, he sprang to his feet.
“It’s all right, Cecco,” whispered Mario. “Calmati! Relax. Your master told me to wait here for him. He wanted me to see a new canvas.”
Cecco stood naked. Minniti saw the curly mat of pubic hair and dangling penis as the adolescent pulled on his leggings.
“I’m sorry I startled you,” said Minniti. “Michelangelo gave me the key when I wouldn’t wait any longer.”
“It’s all right, Maestro,” said Cecco, his voice still hoarse with sleep. “Va bene.”
His voice has changed, thought Minniti. He is indeed a boy no longer.
“Where is my master now?” asked Cecco, fumbling with the waist tie of his leggings.
“In Piazza Navona arguing with a tavern owner about being cheated. Overcharged for his wine and supper, he claimed. I had enough of it and told him I’d meet him here.”
Cecco rubbed his eyes. “Did he have his sword?”
“Yes,” said Mario, shrugging. “And his dagger too. He will probably be arrested again. His shouts attracted the sbirri and he insulted them as well. I’m tired of defending him. He drags every one of us into his Greek drama.”
Cecco laughed softly. “You know as well as anyone.”
“Sì,” said Mario, shrugging his shoulders. Then he looked the boy square in the eyes. “The two of us know him too well. How is he treating you, Cecco?”
Cecco blushed hot red and looked away. “I’m learning a lot. I think my own art is improving.”
“So he tells me. Might I see some of your work?”
The boy swallowed hard. Minniti could see his Adam’s apple bob.
“I would be honored to show you, Maestro Minniti,” said Cecco, nodding. “But I beg you not to judge me too harshly. I’m only begin—”
“Let me see it, Cecco. I’m not such a cruel master as our friend. He showers me with insults about my own paintings—and always has!”
Cecco’s mouth twisted in a shy grin.
He walked to the far corner of the room, where he stored his canvas and colors. As he unrolled a painting, Minniti could see it was prepared in black gesso, imitating Caravaggio’s style.
The canvas spread open, spilling luscious images of apples, pears, and grapes in a bowl, two amber-burnished lutes, and a scattering of leaves on the sunlit floor.
Minniti stared at the brushstrokes, the shadow and light that imitated Caravaggio himself. Yet there was a spark of Cecco’s own vision.
He has a gift.
“They are good, Cecco. You have a knack for the shadow. And perspective. Really quite remarkable, Signor Boneri!”
He clapped the teenager on the back. His fingertips met bone, and he flinched.
Skinny bugger.
Cecco did not notice. He ducked his head in humility, absorbing the compliment.
Mario smiled at the boy. What a hard life he must have, enduring the wild tempers of Michelangelo.
“Have you given much thought to your future?”
“I hope to find a patron one day, like Maestro Caravaggio has done. But I wish to remain by his side forever. I am devoted to him and his art. He is a genius.”
Mario could not hide the sadness in his eyes. Cecco saw it there.
“Have I said something wrong, Master Minniti?”
“No, no. Of course not. Well . . .”
“What is it?”
“Caravaggio is a difficult man to . . . remain friends with. I am as close a friend as he has ever had, I believe. But it becomes a nightmare. His rages.”
Cecco nodded, his face betraying f
ear. “I worry about him. He and Signor Tomassoni—”
“It’s more than just Ranuccio. Michele has a fight to pick with the whole world. See how he has not returned even yet? I will wager he has been arrested again.”
Cecco’s face tightened with worry. “I should go, then—”
“And do what? Don’t you know that you could bring him more trouble?”
“What do you mean?”
“At your age. You living here with him.”
“I am his apprentice,” said Cecco, swallowing hard. “I—”
“And you have shared his bed. There are laws, Cecco. He could be put to death. As you grow older, the clergy will no longer look the other way.”
All color drained from the boy’s face. Minniti felt a rush of compassion and grasped the boy by the shoulders, squeezing him gently.
“You must understand that. The same could have happened to—well, I have been in your situation. I loved Caravaggio, but then we both grew up. It’s only now that I realize—”
“I—I should go,” the boy stuttered. “I must look for my master.”
“And if he is in prison?”
“I will tell Cardinal del Monte. And the Marchesa Colonna.”
Mario expelled his breath in a deep sigh. “His guardian angels. Always to the rescue. And you. Looking out for him like a faithful dog.”
“He is my master!” said Cecco, his eyes flashing. “I—”
The door downstairs banged open.
“Mario!” shouted a drunken voice. “Mario, you Sicilian bastardo! You cowardly scoundrel. Where were you when I had to defend my honor from these Roman nincompoops?”
Mario shook his head. The faithful Cecco’s face shone with relief and the faintest hint of pride.
Cecco never grew accustomed to the women in his master’s bed. Night after night, Caravaggio would stumble in drunk with whores or loose women, and occasionally young boys. As his fame grew, sometimes he would return with more than one lover at a time.
The whores offered their bodies for free. They clung to the artist, charmed by his reputation, rough demeanor, and bravado. The women of the night hoped for a chance to model for a masterpiece. But it wasn’t only the prostitutes who found their way into his bed . . . there were clandestine trysts, even with married women who wanted Caravaggio.
In the cramped apartment at 19 Vicolo dei Santi Cecilia e Biagio, the upstairs room was used as a studio, and one room was used as a kitchen and shop, leaving only one small bedroom for both artist and apprentice. Cecco’s pallet was set in a corner, across from Caravaggio’s bed.
The boy had been with Caravaggio since he was very young. He learned the sounds of sex as a young child before they held any significance. Long before Caravaggio ever reached for him as a lover, the boy had been exposed to the sounds, smells, and sight of lovemaking.
Lusty laughs and obscenities drifted across the room where the apprentice lay, trying to sleep. The musky smells, acrid and potent, wafted from the sheets. The sounds of sucking, slapping flesh, creaking boards, and animallike screams of pleasure and pain penetrated the boy’s ears, even as he plugged them with paint-stained fingers.
There was plenty of sex. It mattered not if it was with male or female. Caravaggio’s appetites were insatiable. He wasn’t bisexual but omnisexual. His lovemaking was rough and selfish, though his partners begged for more, trying to worm their way back into his embrace even when he spurned them.
One night, Cecco was fast asleep, dreaming of a seashore next to shallow turquoise waters glistening with silver fish. Caravaggio stumbled in drunk with a woman every bit as intoxicated as he was. Raucous and more belligerent than usual, the artist began tearing off his lover’s clothes. She shrieked with joy.
Cecco turned over under his blanket, facing the wall.
Ah, but tonight’s lover was a squealer! For every kiss, lick, and poke, she screamed like a stuck guinea pig.
Cecco pulled his pillow over his ears, fighting to fall back asleep. But something about this woman haunted him. From her clothes and the scent of her perfume, Cecco knew this was no whore.
What does it matter? I want to return to the seaside. To the blue waters and teeming fish. The sand warm under my feet.
“Ah! Ah! Ah!” panted the woman under the artist. “Take me, Michelangelo. Take m-m-me!”
Cecco’s eyes flew open. He knew that shrill voice.
No, Maestro! No!
Cecco sat up in the moonlight, staring over at the bed.
“You are an animal in bed, Lavinia,” growled Caravaggio, pumping hard, his knees bent, hovering over the women’s body.
“What’s the matter?” gasped Caravaggio, going at her faster. “Doesn’t Ranuccio ever give it to you?”
Cecco stopped breathing.
The woman shrieked in orgasm, her scream piercing the night.
Chapter 20
SIENA
For a room-service meal, the dinner really was extraordinarily good. And having finished every last bite despite a bad sore throat, Professor Richman treated himself to a ridiculously expensive miniature bottle of excellent single-malt whiskey from the minibar. The price was absurd—perhaps to be expected at the best hotel in Siena—but a man certainly deserved some kind of celebration after escaping certain death.
Extending that celebration to a second tiny bottle—which he sipped much more slowly than the first—the professor let his mind wander back to the moment when the thug, a knife in his hand and spittle on his face, had lunged forward and grabbed the professor’s throat in a grip that seemed likely to kill him in seconds without need for the knife. Surprised at his own calm, the professor had waited for death, staring into his assailant’s eyes—and realized he was watching a struggle for self-control. He saw self-control win out. The grip on his throat relaxed, and the professor gasped for air. The man shoved him back into his chair, snarled an incomprehensible obscenity, and slipped—silently for someone of his size—out of the room.
Professor Richman had still been recovering his breath when his dinner arrived. And hungry though he was, he took his time answering, peering carefully through the peephole before he opened the door.
“Why don’t you use my cell phone?”
It was the third time Lucia had asked, and now that they were sitting in a cheap Naples hotel room, Moto finally had a chance to answer. The first time she had asked was in the airport after he had explained that, yes, they were in Naples, not Malta, and it was all according to plan, but now everything was a mess because he’d lost his cell phone and he couldn’t call the people he needed to talk to for the next leg of the trip. And now they needed to find a taxi.
The second time she’d asked had been in the taxi on the way into town—rocking over huge, uneven paving stones that looked to have been there since Roman times, threading their way through an impossible throng of people and motorbikes and enormous buses that crowded the narrow street beyond all reasonable belief and filled the air with a thick mix of exhaust fumes and blaring horns—and he’d simply gestured at the madness surrounding them. But now he had to answer.
“I can’t use your phone because they won’t answer.”
“Why not?”
“They won’t answer unless they know the number the call’s coming from. They know my number. They don’t know yours. They won’t answer.”
Lucia’s eyebrows knit. The deep crease appeared. “Who are these people, Moto?”
“Just . . . people. Friends.”
“Moto . . .” There was a warning in her voice.
“Lulu, don’t ask. I trust them with my life. With your life. Our lives. I can’t tell you any more than that.”
“That’s not good enough.”
“I can’t.”
“I don’t want their names. But I need to know more than I do. You want me to trust them because you trust them. But right now I’m not sure I know who you are.”
“You know me.”
“No, I don’t. I mean, yes, I do. But
I’m finding out there’s a lot about you that I don’t know—and it’s been smacking me right in the face all day. You going crazy at the Alitalia counter. The laundry van. The driver who looked right through us. The men with guns. The boarding passes. And now your mystery cell phone. Moto! Who the hell are you?”
The room was silent for a long time—silent except for the endless din of traffic and the buzzing of the hotel’s neon sign that was right outside their window.
Finally, Moto said, “My father is a businessman. A successful businessman. He has a lot of connections. He has interests in a lot of companies. OK?”
“And . . . ?”
“One of those companies is Biancheria Biancaneve. They go everywhere. Everyone needs clean linen. Even airports. So . . . there are”—his hands waved vaguely—“people, people who work for my father. And I can ask for a favor. They want to make my father happy. They want to make me happy.”
“Even airport security?”
“Everyone needs clean linen.”
Lucia fell back onto the bed. The springs creaked. She stared up at the water-stained ceiling and shivered in the damp chill.
“Trust me,” Moto said.
Lucia closed her eyes.
“So if that settles your question”—he sounded a little annoyed—“I’ve got a question of my own.”
Lucia nodded.
“Why are we making ourselves crazy—why are we risking our lives—chasing after that worthless bastard?”
“Caravaggio?”
“You know any other worthless bastards?”
“You want a list?”
“Never mind. Yes. Caravaggio. I never knew much about him. Only the name. So I’ve been reading about him, and—”
“I thought you hated to read.”
“Don’t make fun of me.” But he was smiling. “You dragged me into this mess.”
“That’s what friends are for.”
“Thank you?” A moment to share a smile. Then: “I wanted to know what I’m risking my life for. And Caravaggio was a worthless, mean bastard. He betrayed everybody who got anywhere near him, anyone who did him a favor. And those little boys! That painting of Cecco as Cupid? How old was he? Twelve? Fourteen? And you look at that painting, and you know Caravaggio was—”
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