Pasquale's Angel

by Paul J McAuley

  Pasquale blushed and said, ‘For your honour, sir, I would have preferred to have had enough leisure to remove all traces of my day’s work, but the matter is urgent, although Master Niccolò is too polite to tell you.’

  The grey-haired man whispered in Raphael’s ear again. Raphael said, ‘Painting a backdrop for an artificer’s light-show isn’t really working, but I suppose you must take what you get.’

  The fat man by the fire said with jovial malice, ‘There’s the motto that made Florence the centre of the artistic world. How often I heard it, so that I never wished to hear it again.’

  A second man said, ‘We have enemies here, Signor Machiavegli. Michelangelo Buonarroti in particular. He is consumed in a fury of jealousy since he lost the Pope’s patronage. We have been subject to his false accusations, his crazy assertions that he invented every technique in the history of painting. He is a dangerous man.’

  Raphael said, ‘We do not fear Michelangelo. But he can be troublesome, and he has many friends.’

  ‘Many friends amongst the so-called artists,’ the second man said.

  Niccolò said, smoothing things over, ‘I have suffered enough false accusation to understand your caution, but let me assure you that we are here as servants of no one, except truth. You all know me. You all know I cleave to no faction, take no side.’

  This seemed to satisfy Raphael. He clapped his hands and loudly called for wine, then winked at Niccolò. ‘I assume one of Signor Taddei’s vintages will be acceptable.’

  ‘You’re very kind.’

  ‘Taddei is a good friend to me, Niccolò. What’s happened is distressing enough. That it should happen in the house of my friend makes it worse. I’ll help you if I can, if in turn you’ll be frank with me. Is there a chance that his murderer will be found by the city militia?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  Raphael said to the grey-haired man, ‘I told you! They care nothing for us. We are amongst enemies here, and there is danger on every side.’

  The grey-haired man said, ‘We mustn’t speak of that.’

  ‘No,’ Raphael said, ‘no, I suppose not. All in good time, eh?’

  A sleepy-eyed boy half Pasquale’s age brought in a gold tray bearing a flask of wine and half a dozen gold beakers. He poured wine, handed round the beakers, smiling when Pasquale gasped at the solid weight of his beaker, its buttery smoothness. It was pure gold, worth a year’s profit. The wine gave off a rich, heady aroma.

  Raphael drank his wine down in a gulp, held out his beaker to be refilled. He said languidly, ‘What do you think, Niccolò? Be truthful. You know I respect your opinions. Who murdered my friend?’

  ‘In truth, I have yet to form an opinion, except that I am certain that the murderer does not live in this house.’

  The fat man by the fire said, ‘Which leaves only two hundred thousand of my fellow Florentines, every one of them with a knife in his purse and murder in his heart.’

  ‘Be quiet!’ Raphael thumped the bed. Wine slopped from his beaker and stained the coverlet. The woman beside him stirred, but did not wake. ‘Be quiet,’ Raphael said again, softly. ‘Giovanni, you’re a fine painter, most especially of animals, but right now you don’t see the nose in the middle of your face. I loved Giulio best of all of you, and he is dead. I want to find who killed him, but more important than that, I want all of us to get home safely. We are the focus of some terrible conspiracy, our enemies are everywhere…but it is nothing that we cannot overcome, eh? A day, two days, and Papa Leone will be here. Meanwhile we must be vigilant. You all know how much my fame has cost me. For every admirer there are two who say I am only derivative, that I am only a reflection of Perugino, or that I stole from Michelangelo. I, whose ideas have been stolen more often than any other, whose works are copied and printed in every country without my permission…!’ He took a breath, clearly struggling to master his emotions. ‘Niccolò, what would you know?’

  Niccolò waited until he had everyone’s attention. ‘In my experience,’ he said quietly, ‘the best way to understand how a man came to be killed is to work backwards from the moment of his death. That is, to know what he said and what he did, and what was said to him, and by whom. To know who hated him, and who loved him, to know his enemies and his friends. I’d talk with you and your disciples, if I may, about all that befell Giulio Romano after his arrival in Florence. That, to start with.’

  ‘You ask a lot,’ Raphael said.

  ‘Forgive me, but I ask only because I know what your friend meant to you.’

  ‘Only that? You don’t know how much you must work, to earn one-tenth part of what Giulio meant to me.’ Raphael inclined his head to listen to the grey-haired man’s discreet whisper. ‘All I ask,’ Raphael said, ‘is that your assistant waits outside while you put us to the question, Niccolò.’

  Pasquale’s anger flared. He said, ‘Romans are very fond of secrets, it seems. If I speak plainly, forgive me, but I can’t help it, being a mere Florentine.’

  The grey-haired man said mildly, ‘Myself, I am from Venice. As to secrets, I have heard that Florentines love secrets above all else, particularly those of other people.’

  ‘Excuse me, signor,’ Pasquale said, ‘but we haven’t been introduced. If you are from Venice, why then you must love secrets more than any Roman, and certainly more than anyone in Florence. Your city is a city of secrets.’

  ‘Lorenzo is my agent,’ Raphael said. ‘I trust his opinion. Please, young man, as a favour, wait outside. Baverio,’ he said, to the boy who had brought in the wine, ‘look after the friend of my friend.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Niccolò told Pasquale, adding in a whisper, ‘I’ll tell all after.’

  ‘And have them send up more wood,’ the fat man said, as the boy servant led Pasquale away. ‘Florentine air is bad enough; but I’d forgotten that Florentine cold is worse.’

  ‘They don’t mean any harm,’ the boy, Baverio, told Pasquale as they left the room. ‘My master is convinced that his mission here has put him in mortal danger, and his assistants are all convinced that they will be cut down one by one. We are painters, not soldiers or ambassadors.’

  ‘Then you do have a mission,’ Pasquale said. ‘We thought as much.’

  Baverio looked unhappy—a pout, a toss of his shoulder. ‘Please, I’m not skilled in these games. Here, sit, I’ll fetch wine, we’ll talk. I want to help.’ They were in the room where the black hunting-dogs dozed in the cold fireplace. Pasquale sat on a carved stool, let the dogs smell his hands and rumpled their folded ears. His father had owned two such dogs; their soft mouths could bring back shot songbirds without hurting a feather. His anger was gone. He was simply tired.

  Baverio brought a flask of wine and a round of hard cheese; Pasquale sliced off a hunk of cheese and chewed and sipped alternately. Baverio watched him. He wore a velvet tunic striped in dark green and black, elaborately buckled breeches of the same material, and black stockings. A gold circlet rested on the mop of his springy brown hair.

  Pasquale remembered the circlet Rosso had placed on his own head—but Baverio’s was real gold. He told the boy that he looked more like a princeling than a servant, and asked if he too was a painter.

  ‘I draw a little, but not well enough.’

  ‘Anyone who is properly taught can draw well enough. Surely, with a master such as yours—’

  ‘Then perhaps I lack ambition. It is enough to serve my master as best I can.’

  ‘You said you wanted to help. Perhaps you can tell me…do you know why Giulio Romano was in the tower?’

  Baverio shook his head. ‘I was helping my master at his bedside toilet when we heard the screams. We rushed out, all of us, and that was when we realized Giulio was not amongst us. But as to how he came to be in the tower, and what message he was sending…’

  Pasquale took a risk, calculating that one disclosure might be worth another. ‘Giulio Romano sent no message, but perhaps he sent a signal, simply by lighting the lamps on the
signal-vanes. A signal to someone outside the Palazzo, someone waiting to come in, or wanting to know that it was safe to come in.’

  Baverio said with some agitation, ‘You must not think that Giulio would betray my master! He was my master’s best friend, a master in his own right who for love pure and simple used his talent to help my master complete his commissions. Listen, Pasquale, if Giulio was killed by someone outside the Palazzo, as Signor Machiavegli implied, then why was Giulio signalling that it was safe to enter? And if that person had entered on Giulio’s signal, why did he make his way to the tower and kill Giulio and then escape?’

  ‘I think that’s why Niccolò wants to ask his questions. It’s like the cartoon for a painting. We have the lines, as it were, but none of the details. I don’t think Giulio meant to harm your master or any of his friends, Baverio, but perhaps he was mistaken in his choice of allies on whatever business he was about.’

  ‘That is my master’s burden,’ Baverio said. ‘Take more wine, against the cold if not for your stomach’s sake.’

  ‘It’s very good.’

  ‘Then you must thank Signor Taddei.’ Baverio grew serious, leaning forward and fixing his eyes on Pasquale’s face, and enveloping Pasquale in a cloud of musky perfume from the silk pomander hung at his breast. ‘I said that I want to help, and it was not an idle boast. While the others were trying to break down the door of the tower, and then trying to find a key, I went to look for Giulio. I do not know what I was thinking of, except that it seemed to me that he might have returned to his bed. It seemed that if I could find him there, then all would be well, all would be as it had been.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘He wasn’t there, of course. He slept in the room adjacent to my master’s, in the same bed as me. I knew his satchel was still there, hidden under the bolster, and I looked in it. I don’t know why. I am ashamed of having done it, and haven’t told anyone, not even my master. Especially not Raphael.’

  ‘I won’t tell anyone, Baverio, not even Niccolò.’

  ‘It was the wrong thing to do,’ Baverio said, ‘but it may have been the right thing to do, too. I found something there, and have it still. I heard the guards coming, you see, and thrust it into my scrip. Here.’

  Baverio drew out a square of shiny glass. Pasquale thought at first it was a small blackened hand-mirror, but the black coating was too friable, and he could scrape off a curl of the stuff with his thumbnail. He sniffed: a piercing chemical reek.

  Baverio said, ‘It was wrapped in black silk, and when I drew it out it changed from grey to black, I swear this. There was also a box of stiff black-painted leather. On one side of the box was a kind of sliding cap, covering a little hole. But the guards took that away, with the rest of Giulio’s luggage.’

  ‘An artificer’s toy of some kind,’ Pasquale said. ‘There was glass like this, broken in a heap, in the signal-tower. And there was this, too.’ He drew out the little flying toy from his own scrip. ‘Here, look. Your friend’s dead hand was clutching this. These are common in Rome?’

  Baverio took it between his fingertips, turned it around and handed it back. ‘I’ve never seen one before.’

  ‘I thought perhaps some artificer in Rome might have made them.’

  ‘Your own Great Engineer is the greatest artificer of them all. Perhaps he would know.’

  ‘I’m pleased to hear that there is someone of the embassy from Rome who sees some good in Florence.’

  Baverio said, ‘I saw your Great Engineer only yesterday. We had an audience with him, and he spoke alone with my master for an hour. He will attend the feast in honour of the Pope, my master says.’

  ‘Then it will be the first time in twenty years that he has left his Great Tower. He awaits the new Flood, that will sweep away the wickedness of the world and leave only the pure in heart behind. He has written pamphlets on this—some say that is why he invented the movable-type printing-press. But I’m not the Pope, Baverio. I can’t ask him about these things.’

  ‘Then ask some other artificer.’ Baverio cocked his head. ‘My master calls.’ He handed the flying toy and the blackened glass to Pasquale. ‘These things were important to Giulio, Pasquale. You keep them. Find out what they mean.’

  7

  As they were led out by the impassive major-domo, Pasquale asked Niccolò what he had learned, but Niccolò Machiavegli shook his head and whispered, ‘Not here.’

  Outside, as the sections of the round door ratcheted shut behind them, Niccolò told Pasquale that they would wait and watch from the other side of the street. They sheltered in a doorway, watching the Palazzo’s gate through traffic rattling past. This was a main thoroughfare, busy with carts and carriages, velocipedes and vaporetti in the last hour before the city gates closed. The city was filling with people from nearby towns and villages who had come to see the Pope. Acetylene lamps shed a weary simulacrum of daylight.

  Pasquale asked, ‘Who do you expect to arrive?’

  ‘We are waiting for someone to leave. I believe that not only Giulio Romano is involved. We will wait and see who leaves, and then we will know who it is. And we will follow him, for he will lead us to those who plot with him.’

  ‘Everyone sees plots everywhere.’

  Niccolò took a little nip from his leather flask. ‘When I was Secretary…’

  ‘Is this the time for drinking?’

  ‘There were plots everywhere, back then. There are always plots.’

  Pasquale felt a pang of sympathy. ‘Those memories must be painful, Niccolò.’

  ‘All memory is painful. We remember what was, and in remembering inevitably think what could have been. It is the nature of men never to be content with their lot, no matter that they are rich or poor. The beggar may curse the optimate in his carriage as it goes by, thinking that there goes a man without worry, but that same optimate may look out and see a free man in rags, without the responsibilities of power. By Christ’s balls, it is cold out here.’ Niccolò blew on his hands. Stray light from a distant lamp made his stubble-shadowed cheeks look blue, his dark eyes black.

  Pasquale lit a cigarette, and offered another—his last—to Niccolò.

  Niccolò smiled his sadly pensive smile. ‘That’s one vice I don’t have.’

  ‘Unlike drink, it is a simple pleasure that will not kill you,’ Pasquale instantly regretted his tone. ‘You talked with Raphael, and now you seem unhappy.’

  ‘In wine I escape from my past, forget what has happened to me and what I fear might happen, and think only of the moment. A problem like this is nearly as good as wine. One needs problems, to keep back the past, and boredom. There! Look there, Pasquale!’

  Pasquale saw a paired spark, red and green, high above the tiled roof of the Palazzo. The sparks moved away from each other, then back again.

  ‘The signaller has been dismissed, yet someone uses the tower,’ Niccolò said, with a certain satisfaction. ‘Unless of course Signor Taddei is a part of this conspiracy.’

  ‘Can you read the lamps? What was the message?’

  ‘I can read plain-talk, if it is transmitted at a slow enough rate. But that was no message, just a simple swing of the signal-arms. Now we will wait and see what has been summoned.’

  ‘What did Raphael tell you?’

  Niccolò said, ‘Raphael has much to protect. He is a careful man, friend of princes…and of course of popes. In such company you learn circumspection should you wish to survive. You cannot behave like our own Michelangelo.’

  ‘He talked of plots. He dismissed me because he feared I was part of a plot.’ Pasquale remembered the little square of black glass in his scrip, nestled next to the flying toy. He knew that he should tell Niccolò about what Baverio had said, but did not know how to begin.

  Niccolò said, ‘There are always plots, in the circles in which Raphael’s ambition has thrust him. Such men can trust nothing and no one. It was not a personal thing, Pasquale. It is just business.’

  ‘I know that,
but thank you.’

  They smiled.

  Niccolò said, ‘It is my understanding of human nature that men are evil-ready. Since the Fall they must struggle against their nature to achieve goodness, because their nature tends to evil. Think of the single virtue of goodness, and the army against which she stands: ambition and ingratitude, cruelty and envy, luxury and sloth. In particular, sloth. We are all drunkards at heart, and curse the drunkard not out of hate but jealousy. If we were brave enough, we too would roll in the gutter with him.’

  ‘Niccolò, are you talking about men in general, or men in particular?’

  ‘Oh, I feel it in myself,’ Niccolò said, and took a long pull on his flask.

  There was a silence. There was less traffic now. Passers-by hardly spared a glance for Pasquale and Niccolò: after all, they were doing no more than lounging and watching the world go by, a popular sport in Florence. They watched the guard walk to and fro in the circle of lamplight by the closed maw of the gate in the Palazzo’s forbidding wall. Once, he stopped and bent over a flare of light, then sucked on his lighted pipe and blew out a long riffle of smoke, flicked away the spent match.

  Niccolò, watching its arc, remarked, ‘Lucifer falls.’

  ‘More and more I find myself thinking of an angel…’

  ‘Lucifer Morningstar was the prince of angels, the most beautiful until the instant of his rebellion. I’ve always wondered which wounded God more, Man’s Fall, or that of His chief lieutenant.’

  ‘Well, He sent His son to redeem us.’

  ‘Perhaps our redemption is only the first step towards the redemption of Lucifer. But that is not a thought you must repeat, Pasquale. Even in excommunicated Florence, it may be enough to send you to the stake as a heretic, as they tried to burn Savonarola. You cannot count on a thunderstorm saving you. But what angel are you thinking of, Pasquale?’

  ‘The archangel Michael, who drove Adam and Eve out of paradise.’

  ‘Never a popular theme, I must admit. You know, I have always found it odd that the Fall does not have a feast-day. Perhaps then there would be a tradition for you to follow. Although I suppose you have seen the painting by Masaccio.’