CHAPTER FOUR
THE SKIES OPENED JUST AS FRANCESCO REACHED ST. PETER’S Square. The rain swept down the hills from the direction of The Turk’s, a wall of water that advanced with the rage of an invading barbarian army. He dove for the nearest portico. Running up the steps with the rain at his heels, he reached the top, slouching against the back wall to catch his breath. The water poured off the roof with such fury it was like viewing the square through a waterfall.
On most days, even at this hour, workers still lingered in the square, but tonight only a few remained. Francesco watched as, bent against the onslaught, the workers hastily bundled their tools and scattered, leaving him, as far as he could tell, completely alone. He wished he could keep going. In another few minutes he could be beside Susanna’s fire. But he couldn’t go there. Not yet. Imperia was waiting for him to tell her whether The Turk had claimed Calendula’s body, and he still didn’t know what he was going to say.
He could say The Turk hadn’t claimed her body and didn’t know who had, or he could say he thought The Turk was lying and that not only had he claimed the body, he’d killed her too.
He could already hear Imperia’s exclamations of disbelief. He was most distressed, she’d said. When I broke the news to him, it took both my guards to keep him from destroying my house. And he wasn’t sure he had an answer for her. Why, for example, would The Turk go to the trouble of cutting off the finger to make it look like a robbery? Or, for that matter, throw the elaborate scene of grief at Imperia’s? Why these elaborate measures to cover his tracks when he was so clearly displaying his guilt by wearing the ring?
And then there was the ring itself. Imperia seemed convinced the ring was not from The Turk but from a secret someone. What if Calendula had flaunted the ring in front of The Turk, telling him it had come from someone richer than even he, someone who was going to marry her? Could The Turk have killed her in a jealous rage, cut off the ring and kept it?
Still, was The Turk one to be jealous? He clearly knew of Marcus’s existence. He knew, too, that Calendula was a whore. If he was so fond of Calendula, why leave her at the brothel? Why not take her to his house or another of his properties and keep her there as his mistress, as many a rich man did? The Turk’s wife lived in Naples, and was by all reports happy for the distance between them. And surely if anyone was to keep a harem it would be The Turk, so carefully had he cultivated the image of a sultan. Or maybe The Turk had been agreeable to sharing her and only had a problem with losing her permanently, especially to a man much wealthier than himself. Francesco pictured Calendula showing off the ring, taunting him as she had Marcus. Someone far richer than you’ll ever be. But while Marcus had struck her across the cheek with his hand, The Turk had struck her with his eagle-topped cane, the golden wings ripping through her face. Had he panicked and cut off her finger to make it look like robbery, only to decide on reflection it was unnecessary? After all, Calendula was only a whore.
Maybe making it look like a robbery hadn’t been The Turk’s intention at all. He was a collector, and perhaps the ring was more than he could resist. A souvenir of the crime. Still, Francesco found it hard to believe The Turk would mutilate what he found so beautiful. I once brought back from the East a very rare tiger. A vicious beast, to be sure, but of the purest white. It died before I reached port and was too far gone to be preserved by my Egyptian. I had to throw it overboard to the sharks. It broke my heart, but such is life. But then again, once her face was bashed in, surely he no longer found her so beautiful.
Francesco felt he was just going around in circles.
Or maybe The Turk stuffing her full of his Egyptian friend’s herbs wasn’t so farfetched. The Turk had thrown the tiger’s body overboard because it was rotten, but Calendula’s body would have been fresh. He imagined The Turk taking the missing finger from his pocket and giving it to his Egyptian friend to reattach. Somehow he would be able to repair her face too. If The Turk couldn’t have her alive as part of his collection, perhaps he could have her dead. Francesco pictured her propped up in a corner, her eyes replaced with blue glass, her stitched-together face like leather, only the golden hair still radiant in the light.
“Mother of God, Francesco,” he said aloud, his voice lost in the pounding rain. “What morbid imaginings!” And it couldn’t be true. The Turk had said he regretted not cutting a lock of her hair. Would he say that if he had taken her entire body? And would he have thrown her body in the river in the first place if he’d wanted to keep it? It was only by chance it had been found so soon and not months later in a fishing net far downstream, an unrecognizable horror of rotten flesh.
The rain showed no sign of abating. The square was a lake now, the ground so saturated it could no longer absorb the water, and indeed here and there the water seemed to be boiling up from underneath. It flushed out the rats from their holes, and like the figures in Michelangelo’s Flood, they scrambled onto the stacks of stone and marble now serving as islands. An especially large one with a scabby tail staggered almost drunkenly up the steps and stopped for a moment to look up at Francesco with its evil little eyes before crossing the portico and disappearing through a chink in the stone. Francesco, who felt he would never get used to Rome’s overabundance of rodents, shuddered.
Across the square he could see dim light through a window of what he knew were the Pope’s apartments. He imagined His Holiness with his boy at his side, reassuring them both that God had promised Noah that He would never again send a flood to destroy the earth. Why should he think of the boy now? Of course—he was the Christ Child in The Marigold Madonna, his hair every bit as golden as Calendula’s. Had Marcus approached His Holiness with a request to paint him? The Pope was known to be quite protective of the boy, and Francesco wondered if he might be a nephew or bastard son. He was said to have a daughter somewhere, so why not a son? Though Francesco wouldn’t put it past the man to be keeping some enemy’s child hostage. He had no idea what the boy’s name was. Everyone referred to him as “the Pope’s boy.”
Francesco could just make out the bulk of the Sistine Chapel, soon to be blocked from view by the new St. Peter’s. How was Michelangelo’s fresco faring with all this rain? He imagined the fresh plaster darkening with mold and falling to the ground with a damp thud that wouldn’t so much as summon an echo. Michelangelo’s Flood, destroyed by a flood. A fitting end Susanna would see as an omen of something even bigger and more terrible. Maybe not the end of the world, but something close in scale.
Christ! He didn’t want to go to Imperia’s. In just a few minutes he could be at Susanna’s, stripped of his wet clothes, bundled in blankets, and eating the food The Turk’s cook had given him. He pulled it out from under his doublet. The wrapping was fragrant with grease, and inside were not one but two very fat roasted legs of pheasant. He held them up to his nose, and his stomach decided the next move. Imperia could wait. There was nothing to be done anyway. Calendula was dead. Her body was gone. It would still be gone in the morning. He would take the food and share it with Susanna. He stored the pheasant back under his doublet and, pointlessly pulling the hood of his cloak over his head, stepped out into the deluge. Yes, he concluded. Imperia could wait until morning. Let her believe the rain had kept him away.
IT wasn’t until he pulled the gate and it didn’t open that he noticed the scarf tying it shut. It was their prearranged signal that the silversmith was home. He kicked the gate and swore. Why tonight of all nights? Now his only recourse was next door with Michelangelo. Maybe he should go to Imperia’s after all. But he was soaked through and his teeth were chattering, making him fear a return of fever. Besides, it was too dark to find his way and too wet for a torch. How he wanted to be beneath Susanna’s blankets, sharing the roasted fowl. Instead, the silversmith Benvenuto was there, grunting away like an old boar. Shit.
He kicked the gate again, then turned to his own door, giving it the usual boot only to have it swing easily inward. Thrown off balance, he lurched into the room a
nd almost landed on Michelangelo’s lap. With a piece of charcoal poised over a sheet of paper, Michelangelo didn’t flinch at the interruption, and neither did the three-legged chicken, who blinked calmly at Francesco from the other side of the table.
Michelangelo had fresh paper. Expensive, heavy paper and new candles. One was lit, and three new ones lay beside it, the chicken perched next to them as if keeping guard. And there was a fire. It wasn’t roaring, but it was a fire nonetheless, and the room felt almost warm. “We have firewood!” Francesco exclaimed as he untied his wet cloak and let it drop to the floor. He felt his spirits lift almost instantly.
“And you’re still alive, I see,” Michelangelo said, as though the knowledge had ruined his evening. “Your little friend told me it wasn’t the plague.” Still, he adjusted his chair a bit farther away as if he didn’t trust Susanna’s diagnosis. He picked up the sheet he was working on and studied for a moment what seemed to Francesco but a series of arcs and lines, before turning it ninety degrees to the right and setting it down again.
Francesco shook his head. “A fever. My mother always warned me against wet feet.”
“It’s not wet feet,” Michelangelo said, looking up at him from his drawings. “It’s worms. Worms so small they can’t be seen. They live in the swamps. If you swallow them, they make you sick.”
Michelangelo’s theories, if bizarre, were not peculiar to himself. “You’ve been reading Varro Reatinus,” Francesco said.
“Who?”
“Varro Reatinus. He supported Pompey against Caesar but was pardoned by Caesar and oversaw the library in Rome,” Francesco said, thinking how it seemed to be his day to give lessons in Roman history. “He was a great historian, admired by Cicero, and he was also said to have warned against the swamps. He claimed they contained tiny creatures that floated through the air and made men sick.”
“Not flying creatures,” Michelangelo said, sounding not at all impressed. “Worms. Worms too small to see. He was right about swamps though. And Rome, being nothing but a giant swamp, is full of worms. They get on everything. Here, if you wish to live, it is wise to drink only wine and eat only bread.”
Francesco didn’t remind him that he’d eaten plenty of Susanna’s cabbage soup of late. He doubted Michelangelo could sustain this regimen anyway. He simply put in his mouth whatever was at hand to keep him from starving.
“Wine and bread don’t have worms?”
“They’re the food and drink of our Savior, so they’re safe.”
One had to wonder how genius and ignorance could coexist so comfortably within the same person. It was all Francesco could do to stop himself from asking if drinking wine and bread was going to get him nailed to a cross too. But Michelangelo was looking quite pleased with himself, and it was probably a good idea to leave it that way, since Francesco just wanted to get out of his wet boots and hose before his fever returned and eat his roast pheasant in front of the fire. Besides, constantly appealing to reason was a thankless task and best left to his circle of humanist friends—although superstition tugged at even their minds.
“You have a point,” Francesco said finally and without sarcasm. “Enough talk of worms. I see you’ve made the wood seller understand things your way as well.”
Michelangelo gave one of his laughs that sounded as if he were choking and poured a few drops of wine on a heel of bread. This he placed before the chicken, who shifted legs before taking a peck. Francesco wasn’t sure whether Michelangelo was fattening the bird up or whether he was actually thinking of the chicken’s safety from invisible worms. He certainly seemed to be developing an attachment to it in the way some men were attached to their dogs.
“The old cheat came around today and offered a bundle at half price,” Michelangelo said. “I told him that didn’t change the fact I’d paid full price for green, wet wood and still expected to be reimbursed in full.”
“And did he reimburse you?”
Another laugh, more choking than the last. “Of course not. He was here looking for money. Utterly desperate. I paid half price for one bundle, and he left the other two to replace the green wood. Don’t burn it all at once. And, oh yes, he repaired the door too.”
“I’m surprised the Pope hasn’t appointed you his treasurer. You’d squeeze the clergy until they squeaked for mercy. Though I hate to think what you’d pay the painter who replaced you in the chapel.” He couldn’t be expected to forsake all jabs at Michelangelo. “And where did you get the new paper and candles? Did you shake them out of the wood seller too, or did His Holiness cough up a few coins?”
Michelangelo looked up at him and snarled, “What are you doing here anyway? Why aren’t you with your little whore?”
It annoyed him to hear Michelangelo call Susanna a whore, even though he’d occasionally done the same.
“Don’t let her hear you say that,” Francesco said. “Benvenuto is home.”
“Is he?”
“She tied a scarf around the gate. It’s our signal.”
“In truth? You’d think I’d have heard them at it by now. He usually has a good go at her the minute he comes home. Then again after dinner. Can hear them grunting and squealing right through the wall. Makes it hard for a man to sleep.” He turned his paper ninety degrees again, forcing the chicken to hop out of the way. “I don’t recall you ever getting such a reaction from her.”
Francesco knew Michelangelo was retaliating in kind. He could accept the slight against his manhood—Michelangelo was hardly known for his prowess with women—but the image of the wizened old silversmith on top of Susanna bothered him more than he cared to admit, especially to Michelangelo.
“Don’t think you can get a rise out of me, old man. I know what you’re up to. And having Benvenuto home is not without its benefits. I was going to share my roast pheasant with her, but now I have it all to myself.” He pulled the bundle out from under his doublet and showed it to Michelangelo. “I’d offer you some, but I wouldn’t want you to get invisible worms.”
Michelangelo bent lower over his paper. “I only hope I get the chance to say I told you so before you die. And pick that cloak up. I’d call the houseboy, but if I recall correctly, that would be you.”
“Consider it done,” Francesco said, scooping the cloak off the floor and hanging it on a hook beside the fire. He tossed his dagger onto the mantel. “Though I should remind you that my father is paying you quite handsomely. I wouldn’t be surprised if, in the end, you’ll be paid more for putting up with me than you will for frescoing that whole damned ceiling. So I don’t see why I shouldn’t be just as much trouble, if not more.”
“At least that bloody ceiling doesn’t talk back at me.”
Francesco pulled his boots off and, draping his hose over them, placed them as close to the flames as he dared. Really, he thought, this isn’t turning out to be the worst evening of my life. A fire, enough roast pheasant to actually fill his belly, and Michelangelo was even in a passable mood, thanks no doubt to his victory over the wood seller and whatever windfall had resulted in candles and paper.
As Michelangelo was occupying the only chair, Francesco sat on the edge of the bed and unwrapped the pheasant. He peeled off a strip of fatty skin encrusted with salt and rosemary and sighed as he took a bite. He was going to have to tell Imperia her cook was no longer the best in Rome.
He dropped the leg back on its wrapping and went to pour himself a cup of wine from the pitcher. Not the usual cheap swill Michelangelo invariably bought. It truly must have been a good day. Maybe that brother of Michelangelo’s had finally repaid some of the money he owed. Francesco took another draught before topping his cup up again and sitting back on the bed. The chicken gave another little hop out of the way as Michelangelo turned his paper yet again.
“Where’d you steal the meat?” Michelangelo asked.
“I didn’t steal it.” He hadn’t intended on telling Michelangelo he’d been to The Turk’s, but it could be interesting to learn what Michelangelo k
new of him; he’d be sure to have an opinion. Francesco took another bite. “The Turk’s cook gave it to me,” he said as nonchalantly as possible.
Michelangelo looked up sharply. “What were you doing at The Turk’s?”
“Just an errand for someone. Nothing important. I saw your friends Paride di Grassi and Cardinal Asino there. What business do they have with The Turk?”
“Don’t call them my friends! Not even in jest. And any business they have with The Turk is bound to be trouble. If there’s any providence, they’ll wind up on the wrong end of his famous sword.”
Topping off his cup again, Francesco finished the wine. He was decided on one thing: he would get drunk. Drunk and full of lovely, greasy pheasant. “You don’t believe that story about the three hundred men he killed with his sword? He seems like too much of a buffoon for such slaughter.”
“He may seem like a buffoon, but if he has business with Asino and di Grassi, that makes him dangerous. With or without a sword, as long as you’re under my roof, you’re forbidden from seeing any more of him.” This warning was delivered with all the stern counsel of a parent, and Francesco couldn’t help but laugh.
“I didn’t know you cared so much for my skin. In honor of your concern, I’ll obey your wishes … Papa.”
Michelangelo picked up his paper and held it close to his face, as if suddenly nearsighted. “Don’t test me, boy. Or I’ll feed you to The Turk’s crocodile myself.” It was a threat, but Francesco was sure that behind the paper, Michelangelo was hiding the slightest smile.
Francesco couldn’t help smiling himself and, resuming his seat on the bed, ate slowly and meticulously, picking off every piece of meat and skin and sucking the bones for every last drop of fat before tossing them on the fire. It wasn’t until the final bone had hit the flames with a sizzle that he realized what Michelangelo had said.
The Wolves of St. Peter's Page 8