Light in the Shadows

by Linda Lafferty

  Mario entered the basilica, watching his old friend dab more white paint onto the gravedigger’s rump.

  “You can never resist poking your public in the eye,” he said.

  “You don’t like it?”

  “It is magnificent,” said Mario, his breath exploding in a whistle. “The Siracusans will love it as well. As will all Sicily. But . . .”

  “But what?”

  “It’s . . . rude. So like you. A laborer’s ass leaping out of the canvas. And you have Santa Lucia already stone dead rather than at the moment of martyrdom while she still breathes. I’ve always marveled at your choice of timing.”

  “She can’t be a martyr unless she is dead.”

  “Well . . . she looks dead, all right. Basta!”

  “Bene. I’ve succeeded, then,” said Caravaggio.

  “I bring you news from the senate, Michele,” said Mario. “The knights sail the coasts of Sicily looking for you. Inquiries have been made in Messina. The members of the senate have pledged your safety but suggest you stay hidden in the monastery for a while yet.”

  Caravaggio shrugged. “All right.”

  Mario cocked his head. “I thought you’d find the monastery dull.”

  “It is. But it is quiet. The monks do not bother me with questions. I’m content to eat in my cell and focus on my work.”

  “Perhaps they will take you into the order, Michele! What a monk you would be.”

  “I doubt that. The whores here are tasty.”

  “Sì, hai ragione.” Mario laughed, shaking his head. “You are right. Perhaps the brothers would not accept you as one of their own.”

  “I think not,” said Caravaggio. He went back to dabbing paint on the gravedigger’s buttocks.

  “Michele. What will you do in the future?”

  “I have another commission in Messina,” Caravaggio said without looking away from his work.

  “Did you not hear?” Mario gaped. “The knights have a presence there! Malaspina is the prior of Messina—”

  “I am to paint the Resurrection of Lazarus. The subject appeals to me and the patron will pay well. Then I would like to see Palermo.”

  “You are mad, Michele. Palermo?”

  “Then I am returning home. Napoli first to wait for my pardon. Then Roma.”

  “The pope will have your head if the knights don’t find you first.”

  “I cannot stay in hiding. I must return to Roma, Mario. Nothing else matters. Roma is where I belong.”

  Caravaggio remembered Galileo saying, “Roma is your sun, Caravaggio.”

  He needed that sunshine.

  Caravaggio stood on the terrace of the Colonna palace in the wealthy Chiaia neighborhood of Napoli, watching the waves lap against the rocks. Palm fronds grazed the balcony of the palazzo, the chatter of birds filling the air.

  The artist gazed across the bay. After two months in Palermo, rumors had reached his ear that a Maltese knight had been looking for him in the city. Sicily had become too dangerous.

  Napoli suited Caravaggio. Though he vastly preferred Roma, he felt at home here in the rough streets and back alleys where only the cutthroats and wary survived. Yet this time, the artist was living at the Colonnas’ castle at the invitation of Costanza Colonna.

  “Fabrizio has negotiated on your behalf,” said the marchesa. “Alof de Wignacourt is amenable to unofficially ending the search and the demand for your return.”

  The marchesa studied Caravaggio’s face. “Your art bewitched the grand master, didn’t it? I cannot see how else you would have escaped Malta.”

  Caravaggio shrugged. “I am good at keeping secrets, Marchesa. Even from you.”

  “You will, of course, be required to paint for him in exchange for his cooperation.”

  “I shall send him a painting—John the Baptist’s head on a platter. In the hands of Salome herself. But what of Roma? When may I return to Roma?”

  The marchesa widened her eyes at the artist’s reckless intentions. “You don’t understand the danger you are in, do you, Michele?”

  “I’m always in danger.”

  “Alof de Wignacourt has considered pardoning you, but the pope, the Tomassonis, and the wounded knight—what was his name, the Conte della Vezza?”

  “Fra Giovanni Rodomonte Roero.”

  “He is still out for your blood, says Fabrizio. You are not out of danger.”

  “None of this matters, my marchesa. I must return to Roma.”

  The marchesa shook her head adamantly, loosening a tendril of hair from her immaculately coiffed upsweep. “You cannot return to Roma, nor should you venture into the streets of Napoli. Michele—you are a wanted man and a despised one! Your enemies will track you down, mark my words.”

  Notwithstanding the marchesa’s determined warning, Caravaggio pursued negotiations with the Borghese pope. Through the young cardinal Gonzaga, son of Duca di Gonzaga who had acquired The Death of the Virgin, Caravaggio was in contact with Cardinal Scipione Borghese. The pope’s nephew desperately wanted Caravaggio back in Roma, beholden to the Borghese and once again producing masterpieces. The cardinal’s keen lust for Caravaggio’s art motivated progress toward a papal pardon.

  One night, after taking pleasure with the whores in the upstairs rooms of Locanda del Cerriglio, Caravaggio stumbled out the door into the black alleyway. The flickering oil lamp placed at the entrance was the only illumination in the narrow passage.

  Before he had taken five paces, three men surged out of the dark and grabbed him. They stunk of sweat and unwashed clothes.

  Caravaggio jerked back, his tunic tearing in an assailant’s hand. He ran down the narrow street, his leather shoes slapping the cobblestones.

  The men pursued him. One swifter than the others, a dagger in his right hand, lunged wildly. His dagger sliced into Caravaggio’s left arm. Caravaggio turned, slashing with his sword. The blade struck the young man’s knife hand, cutting deep into his wrist.

  Blood spurted and the assailant crumpled to the ground, writhing.

  Caravaggio faced the other two men, who advanced, swords gleaming in the torchlight. One thrust forward, engaging Caravaggio. As the artist parried the attack, the other man moved quickly around him. With both hands grasping his weapon like an axe, he struck downward, knocking the sword out of Caravaggio’s hands.

  “Enough of that, you bastard!” he growled, grabbing Caravaggio by his hair. He yanked the artist backward. The man dropped his sword, his hand now holding a dagger.

  “I do this,” the man panted, “in the name of one you have wronged.”

  Caravaggio saw the glint of the dagger like the flash of a silver fish.

  The blade sliced Caravaggio’s face deep across the cheek, nicking his eye. The last thing he saw was the three men disappearing into the shadowy warren of Napoli’s streets.

  After that, there was only black.

  Chapter 47

  MONTE PICCOLO

  Sometimes, Lucia wished she had an old office typewriter. Solid. Heavy. A clattering, bell-ringing thirty-pound chunk of iron. Just so she could have the pleasure of ripping a sheet of paper out of the roller, wadding it into a ball, and hurling it into the trash.

  She was trying to write an academic paper about her work tracing the troubled provenance of The Judas Kiss—Il bacio di Giuda—alleged to be by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. The painting Te-Te had died for.

  She had thought it would be easy. After all, it was her story. But it was turning out to be a tangled, endless frustration—which was why she wanted a solid machine. You can’t take out your frustrations on a computer. Silently deleting text doesn’t come near the exhilaration of crumpling paper in your fist and throwing it across the room.

  Still, she kept at it because she suddenly, astonishingly, didn’t have anything else to do. Everything was normal again. She had been returned to her ordinary life. Which was, for better and for worse, very different from the excitement and fear and challenge of the past few months.


  The police said the Roero Brigade had been wiped out in l’incidente dei monaci ubriachi—the incident of the drunken monks—which the detective had called it with a bit of a smirk. He wasn’t as charming as he seemed to think, but his report was reassuring all the same. The carabinieri had ruled the three deaths accidental—drunk-driving, high-speed crash—and were more than glad to leave it at that. Happy that someone had taken care of their problem.

  And so it was over. The case was closed. The police insisted it was finished. The painting, recovered—perhaps “seized” was a better word—from Lucia’s apartment, had disappeared into official custody, safely buried beneath multiple layers of security, as evidence in the murder of Father Antonio.

  So Lucia had headed back to Monte Piccolo—where she was still enrolled in an art history seminar.

  When she got back to her apartment on the tiny piazza, spring was making itself felt at last. The cluster of small trees had bludgeoned themselves into bloom—grudging but still blooming. The cobblestones, some historic, some patched with asphalt, glistened with dew every morning, without a hint of ice anywhere. She opened her windows to the sounds of children shouting, Vespas buzzing, nuns murmuring. Life moving along as it always had.

  And Vittore, the poliziotto di parcheggio, still tipped his hat and called her “mia signora,” and he still wasn’t giving her tickets.

  So all was well—if a little lonely.

  Moto wasn’t there. He’d left two or three days after the police came to Lucia’s apartment and took the painting away. They’d had a big dinner—Lucia, Moto, and Professor Richman—to mark the official end of their pursuit of the painting, and Moto had raced away the day after that, off to somewhere down south where yet another cousin was having—he shrugged—romantic problems and needed cheering up.

  Professor Richman had left as well, heading north, saying, “I’m off to Piemonte. Research.” Details were not offered. But when he left, he seemed invigorated by the events of the past months. He managed to cut something of a dashing figure, his step jaunty as he headed for the train.

  So Lucia was alone. She focused on her dissertation, on the painting. She had thought of it as her painting, their painting, for so long. But now it was just “the” painting, a painting, something to parse and study, passion restrained by scholarship. Preserving the academic tone meant leaving out a lot of the story. This year’s deaths, this year’s terrors, meant nothing. All that mattered were events of the distant past, lives and deaths that were centuries old. And untangling past from present, documenting a purely academic effort to trace the painting, was not only difficult, frustrating work, but it seemed pointless.

  Still, she might as well get the semester credit she’d paid for. And she had nothing else to do. Except be alone.

  She was working from her memory and a few sketchy notes she’d scrawled along the way. She picked her way through the story, skipping over the parts that didn’t fit in academia, separating out strands of reasoning from moments of panic, so she could weave a consistent fabric as she pursued the painting back through time into the dark corners of one of art’s great mysteries: the final days of Caravaggio. She had a pad next to her computer, and she jotted notes on the parts she had to slice out of the story to preserve the paper’s proper academic focus. From time to time, she’d stop and look at that lengthening list and consider the very different shapes of the very different stories outlined there. On the computer screen, calm logic and reason. On the pad, blood and death and dark nights. And two good friends who had suddenly disappeared from her life.

  She was unraveling one particular tangle, juggling events and ideas, holding them in her mind and sorting them—even while she was staring out the window at the blossoms blowing in the breeze and wondering how winter could have ever been here or could ever return.

  That was when Moto burst through the door.

  “Great news!”

  His explosive entry scattered her thoughts, and the tangle escaped her grasp, tied itself even tighter, and rolled away under some heavy furniture in a far corner of her mind. For a moment she was annoyed, but her pleasure at seeing him again and his enthusiasm overrode any objections.

  “We got it!”

  “Got what?”

  “Approval.”

  “For what?”

  “For everything!”

  “Moto! What are you talking about?” She was glad to see him again, but something felt wrong, something in the back of her mind nagged at her. Something hiding in those notes on her yellow pad was keeping her from leaping all the way back into their old friendship.

  Moto didn’t notice.

  “The painting. A real investigation. Science.” The words tumbled out in his excitement. “Not yet,” he went on, “but they’ll start soon. In a week or two at most. X-rays. Thread samples. Paint analysis. Computer interpolations. Everything! All of it!”

  She narrowed her eyes. “How?”

  “The police are going to let us—”

  “Us?”

  “OK. Not us. But top scientists and art restorers and historians. Everyone. They’re going to prove we’re right!”

  She should have smiled, joined him in celebrating, but that something was still gnawing. “I can’t believe the police are letting anyone even near it. How did that happen?”

  Moto gave his smile, his shrug. “You know. A little money. A little leverage.”

  She didn’t say anything, but her face demanded answers.

  Moto stopped. He looked down. Maybe his enthusiasm had carried him too far. He shrugged—more to himself than her.

  “My fath—” He stopped. Tried again. “My fam—” A shake of the head. Again. “Friends. Friends of the . . . friends”—a quick correction—“friends of the family. They offered to—”

  But Lucia wasn’t listening. The words “friends of the friends” had shot her back decades, back to Long Island, back to her life alone with her widowed nonna—Nonna with her hawk nose and her hawk’s pitiless eyes. Bitter, savage, and endlessly dedicated to the memories of Sicilia, her Sicilia, a land of omertà—the code of silence. And “the friends of the friends.”

  That phrase meant one thing. Always and only. The Mafia. The families whose endless battles for territory, influence, and profit affected all of Sicily and spilled across the ocean to poison Lucia’s life in the United States.

  And suddenly, all the stories, the threads, the missing pieces she’d been juggling, fell into place with a snap, and she was catapulted out of the chair by the twin shocks of rage and shame. Rage at Moto for not telling her. Shame for herself for not seeing it before. She exploded upward and grabbed Moto by his unzipped motorcycle jacket. Caught by surprise, he stumbled backward and her momentum carried them a few steps across the room until his back slammed into the wall. She pinned him there.

  He instinctively struggled, but they were evenly matched. He was a little taller, but she had surprise and rage on her side.

  She spat his own words back at him. “Friends of the friends!”

  American, Italian, Sicilian warred within her. And the American won. She wasn’t going to be afraid to say the word.

  “Mafia.”

  Still breathing hard.

  “Your father is . . . You are . . . one of them.”

  Moto tried to laugh. He spread his arms wide. “Does this look like someone ‘they’ would embrace?”

  “Stop it!” She was almost screaming.

  It wasn’t the idea of the Mafia that enraged her. It was the lying. Her best friend, and it was all a lie. She didn’t know anything about him. She shook him.

  “Who are you?”

  He didn’t say anything and she let him go.

  “Lulu . . .”

  “Mi chiamo Lucia.” She spat it out. My name is Lucia.

  There was a long silence. They both caught their breath.

  “I was just watching out for you.” His voice was reasonable. Slightly pained, slightly bewildered, wounded puppy, pure Moto.
The old Moto. But he didn’t need that charm to get her to say what came next. She would have said it anyway.

  “You saved my life. I will always love you for that.” Then she said the rest—what his charm couldn’t stop. “But you were lying to me the whole time. Lying about who you are. Friends don’t do that. Real friends don’t do that.” She stopped.

  He stared at her. She studied his face. He was still Moto.

  “You’re my best friend,” he said. “Ever.” He was almost pleading. She almost believed him. “And I never would have met you if those . . . friends . . . if my father . . . hadn’t suggested I come up here and make sure you were all right. That’s not a bad way to meet a new friend, is it?”

  Her eyes narrowed. There was a tightness in her jaw. Now everything he said just made her angrier. “I wasn’t a friend,” she growled. “I was an assignment.”

  The Sicilian in her was taking over, and she could feel herself ready to lunge at him.

  He saw it, but he didn’t move any farther away from her. He stared into her eyes, and she could see he was almost crying.

  “It was the first time my father ever asked me to do anything for him. The first time he ever acted as if he could trust me. He was always ashamed of”—a long pause, and then all he could say was—“who I am.” He said it again. “My father was ashamed of who I am. And I thought I could make him proud of me. One time. Just one time.”

  Lucia watched him get control of his emotions and leave that confession behind. She couldn’t forgive his lies, but she also couldn’t deny the painful truth of what he had just told her.

  And Moto went on. His voice tighter, under control.

  “And my father is a businessman. Very successful and very respectable. And when those friends suggested I come up here, he thought his arty son might enjoy hanging out with the intellectuals in Chianti. And I did. I found my best friend.”

  “Stop it,” she said.