by Matt Rees
Costanza had come forward with Fabrizio and her eldest son Muzio, and the fresco master had pretended only then to notice her.
‘Your son is a natural painter,’ the master had said.
‘He’s not her son, you fool,’ Muzio had snapped.
The brush had shaken in Michele’s hand. The master, who had hoped to gain the lady’s favour by indulging her child, had glared at him, as though he had told a lie.
‘But he’s a natural artist, nonetheless,’ Costanza had said.
‘It looks just like a real boot, Michele.’ Fabrizio had crouched beside him. ‘It’s wonderful.’
Costanza had decided that he ought to be apprenticed to a painter in Milan. Michele had been seven years in Costanza’s house and he was fourteen years old. He couldn’t deny that the career of an artist was an attractive prospect or that she had been generous in paying Maestro Peterzano in Milan to oversee him. But throughout his training, he had wished to be home with her and Fabrizio. He had thought he might return as the steward of her household when he grew up. Yet that would have been to take the formal role of a servant, to confirm him in the lower status with which Muzio taunted him. There had seemed no way home – or, as he now saw it, no home at all. In Milan, he had wondered if Costanza had sent him away to be rid of a boy she no longer wanted in her house. He speculated that behind her warmth there was an inborn contempt for the low-bred, for the boy who had corrupted her darling Fabrizio. When he had drunk too much wine, Michele felt confirmed in this belief. That was when he became helpless before his anger and he brawled and fought in the Milanese taverns. Costanza had sent him to Rome to escape the trouble he had caused in Milan, but that had felt like another expulsion and he had become yet more volatile.
Painting made him feel whole, filled with joy and touched by something sacred. But his status as an artist was lowly, on a par with uneducated craftsmen. Whenever his self-control lapsed, the face of the man before him would transform into the disapproving glower of the fresco master for whom his artistic talent was less important than his low breeding, and then Caravaggio would have to smash the features that reminded him of the home he had lost.
Costanza fretted at her flea fur. ‘Your portrait of the Holy Father was well received?’
‘I remain in the favour of the Cardinal-Nephew. That outweighs one dissatisfied customer.’ He touched her hand. She barely noticed. He would have told her about Lena and the baby, but he didn’t wish to add to her worries. His voice shook with fear and guilt at what he kept unsaid. ‘I’m still Scipione’s painter. My influence over him will be greater as time passes. Be assured Fabrizio shall be in his thoughts.’
She watched him, her mouth slightly open. He sensed that she knew what he felt. She always noticed the smallest details of his feelings – as if his soul was the dew evaporating from the moss of a tree.
Costanza covered her face and whispered a prayer. When she was done, she took Caravaggio’s hand. She led him to the edge of the garden and paused to admire a grotto, a collage of classical sculptures all dug out of the ancient Baths of Diocletian. ‘When I was here last with Fabrizio, he liked this one best.’ She prodded at the heavy folds of flesh gathering above the hips of a legless Poseidon.
‘Fabrizio never knew much about art. This statue looks like the whole torso is slipping down over the groin.’
She was pleased at his familiarity. ‘It’s the heroic style.’
‘No one ever had a body like that. At least, no one who wasn’t also fat here, here and here.’ He slapped the muscular stomach, chest and arms of the sculpture. ‘Michelangelo exaggerated this sort of thing. Now other artists base their figures on the mistakes he made.’
‘But he was a great artist, nonetheless.’
Caravaggio groaned. ‘The old fool used male models for his female figures. I use women to create women.’
‘Why not copy what Michelangelo did?’
Caravaggio met her eyes. She felt them grasping at her. ‘I want to know what women look like, not what I wish they looked like.’
They entered the palace and went up to the winter apartments arm in arm. The ceilings were frescoed with scenes of the Battle of Lepanto. Costanza’s father strode over captive Turks. She stopped beside a long red carpet captured from the Turkish commander’s cabin on his flagship. It was patterned with wide, seven-pointed leaves, meandering vines and delicate buds. Caravaggio stooped to lay his hand on the carpet. He seemed lost in his own memories.
‘Just when my father was claiming this carpet as the spoils of his victory in battle,’ Costanza said, ‘you were born, Michele. It seemed to me as if you were a gift to commemorate the honour of my family. You still are.’
Caravaggio’s head was bowed. His hand spread over the sharp patterns of the carpet. He was silent.
She gestured down the gallery of rooms. ‘My father received this palace in return for that victory. But I’d rather be the woman who received you into her household than have a gift of the greatest mansion in Rome.’
He looked up at her, his eyes glassy.
‘If you watch us closely enough, it’s love that is to be found in a woman, Michele.’ She clasped his face and kissed his forehead. ‘I’m glad to know that you’re looking.’
As Caravaggio went out into the Piazza of the Sainted Apostles, the Colonna water-carriers were coming from the Tiber with the palace’s supply for the night. Their jugs slopped cold riverwater down the flanks of their donkeys and onto the men’s legs. The last one passed with his teeth chattering so loudly that Caravaggio thought at first it was the donkey’s feet on the cobbles. He wore a patch over one eye. Caravaggio recognized the wrestler he had seen gouged by the Farnese groom in front of the palace. The man shambled beside his donkey, hunched and miserable. Losing that bout had robbed him of more than his sight.
The honour that was so vital to men seemed so destructive to Caravaggio. It’s love that is to be found in a woman. Costanza’s words made it suddenly clear that Lena needed him. Still he hesitated, unsure if he ought to go to her as darkness fell. They had barely spoken since she had lost the baby. All the dangers she faced – the enmity of the Tomassonis, the hazards of birth – originated with him, and so he had withdrawn to protect her. He had turned to Onorio and the taverns, when he ought to have supported her. Wouldn’t it seem to her now that he had come for nothing more than a tumble in her bed?
His confidence faltered and he went to the Tavern of the Turk. He sat alone in its darkest corner. Alcohol rolled through him like a nauseating tide, sweeping his thoughts away from Lena towards all his resentments. What had del Monte said? Baglione has been heard to remark that you cover up your mistakes with shadow. That fool. Shadows revealed things at their clearest. A man’s face in the daylight was full of detail. One might spend hours reading what it had to say to you and understand nothing. In the darkness of the tavern, you detected no more than a malevolent glimmer of an eye, or the sudden vicious baring of a tooth. The shadows distilled a man to his basic wickedness – or to the sufferings most worthy of our compassion.
Candles flickered across the faces of the inn’s patrons. Some hunched over their food, dejected and tired. Others swilled wine into mouths wide with manic mirth. Sores shadowed their skin and their suppurating eyes glinted. Baglione doesn’t know what he’s talking about, Caravaggio thought. Mistakes could no more be hidden in the darkness than in the fullness of day. Men were sweating, coughing, bellowing receptacles for filth and disease, but they bore within them something eternal. An artist didn’t cleanse a body of its earthly imperfections in order to show what lay beneath: he saw directly to the soul within.
Then Lena returned to him. She floated forwards into the light of the candle on his table, and then receded as though she were a corpse carried on the eddies of the tide around the piers in the Tiber. Her voice sighed like the water rippling against the banks.
‘Why didn’t you show her some compassion, you bastard?’ he shouted, slapping his chest.
> A ripple of wary silence spread outwards from him through the inn. He had painted Lena dead, because he didn’t know how to live with her. If she were dead, I’d be tragic, and I might mourn my impossible love. Instead, I must face my failure at being with a living woman. He addressed himself again, but in a whisper this time. ‘What do you know of compassion?’ He went to the door. ‘Can’t you show some to her?’
He stumbled up the Via del Babuino. ‘Lena, Lena,’ he murmured. He had drunk more than he thought. He cursed himself for failing to go straight to her from the Colonna Palace. Promenading gentlemen seemed to laugh at his expense, and the carriages veered towards the side of the road to run him down. I’ll make it right, amore.
As he approached the corner of Lena’s street, the crowd thinned. He noticed an extravagant hat moving towards him beyond a group of Spanish sailors. The man in the hat paused beside a lantern. It was Baglione, and he spotted Caravaggio just then. The peacock feathers in his hatband fluttered as he looked about for an escape.
Caravaggio advanced, picking up a stone the size of an orange in each hand. A sudden pounding in his head and neck overcame him, as if he were a soldier drummed into battle. His first pitch caught the brim of Baglione’s hat and the stone rattled over the steps of the Greek church. Baglione ducked into the Via dei Greci. The throw released some tension and Caravaggio hurried to the corner with a smile of quickening hatred. ‘Come back here, Baglione, you turd.’
The next stone only skittered past Baglione’s feet. He’s fast, Caravaggio thought, or I’m slowed down by booze. He took up another rock and juggled it.
Lena watched him from her doorway, pale and fretful, a bucket of kitchen slops in her hands. She shook her head and tipped the bucket into the gutter.
At the far end of the narrow street, a few torches illuminated the ludicrous hat. Baglione was gesturing towards Caravaggio, frantic, retreating even as he urged the police patrol to arrest his rival. Caravaggio dropped the rock and kicked it away with the side of his foot.
‘Lena, I want to make things right.’ His voice was slurred.
The woman put her hand to her brow. From the room behind her, Domenico called her name. ‘Go to sleep, little one,’ she said. ‘It’s late.’
‘Is that Michele outside in the street?’ the boy said.
‘I told you to go to sleep.’
‘I heard him talking.’
‘No, it’s not him. It’s someone else.’ She whispered to Caravaggio,
‘What do you think you’re doing?’
‘I came to tell you I’ve been wrong.’
Her head tilted towards her shoulder. The street was dark. He couldn’t read her face, but he heard a wounded scorn in her voice. ‘So you threw stones at some man? To show me how wrong you’ve been?’
‘Not just some man. That’s Baglione. He’s—’
‘You couldn’t give me your attention when I was sick and you’ve failed again now.’
‘That’s not how it is.’
Her voice softened. ‘I’m not ready for this, Michele, just not ready.’
He glanced towards the patrol. The constables closed in on him. ‘Go inside, Lena.’
‘Michele—’
‘I’m sorry. Anyway, don’t get involved in this.’
‘May I see your permit for that sword you carry, Signore?’ The corporal at the head of the patrol threw back his long black cloak and put his hands to his hips.
Lena closed the door, softly.
Caravaggio recognized the corporal. He had picked him up many times before. ‘Ah, it’s you, Malanno.’
‘Signor Merisi, good evening. No surprise to find myself confronted with your charming face.’
Insolent bastard. Caravaggio reached inside his doublet and handed over a folded sheet of paper. ‘You’ll see that I’m entitled to carry the sword, as a member of the household of Cardinal del Monte.’
Malanno called forward a constable with a torch to give him light to read. He sucked at his teeth, disappointed. ‘It’s in order.’ As he folded the paper, he glanced at Lena’s door. ‘May we accompany you on your way, Signor Merisi?’
‘I’m not going anywhere.’
‘You must be going somewhere.’
‘All right, I’m going towards the Colonna Palace.’
He peered at the corporal. The torch over his shoulder shadowed Malanno’s features. He held out the permit. ‘Here you are.’
Caravaggio reached for the paper. The policeman withdrew his hand, teasing, so that Caravaggio snatched at the air. He grabbed the paper and smelled the corporal’s dinner on his breath. Malanno grinned at his patrolmen. Before he slipped the pass into his doublet, Caravaggio ran it in front of his lips and muttered, ‘Shove it up your ass.’
‘What was that?’
Caravaggio clicked his tongue. Nothing.
The constable touched his hat. ‘Good evening to you, then, Signore.’
He watched them go. The light was out behind the shutters of Lena’s home. She didn’t want to hear from him. He had missed the chance to make things right with her. His jaw pulsed with tension. He murmured again, ‘You and everyone with you can shove it up your ass.’
This time the constables heard him clearly. The patrol halted. Malanno leered in the torchlight.
Scipione Borghese scribbled a note at the bottom of the letter and shoved it aside. His secretary shook sand from a silver box to dry the ink. The cardinal felt a few grains on his fingers and twitched them in irritation. He flicked the letter so that it fluttered to the floor. The secretary dropped on one knee to catch it.
His manservant draped a fur over the Cardinal-Nephew’s shoulders. Scipione took another paper from his desk and read it, pacing towards the fire. He sat in a chair of curved wood. Without looking up, he gestured towards the grate. The manservant pumped at an iron bellows to feed the flames.
‘Bring him in,’ Scipione said.
The door opened at the far end of the room. He watched the fire and listened to the footsteps advancing across the expanse of his study. He held out his hand. Caravaggio knelt to kiss it.
Scipione dropped the paper on his chair when he arose. He regarded Caravaggio as if he were an ancient relic dug from the soil of the Forum. The artist looked worn. His clothing was dirty and in need of repair. No, Scipione thought, it ought to be replaced entirely. He looks disappointed and hungry. Is that straw poking out of his hair behind the crown? If he were an antiquity, I doubt that I’d add him to my collection. He warmed his back against the fire.
‘I appreciate that at least on this occasion you didn’t pick a fight with a member of the Tomassoni clan,’ Scipione said. ‘You have my dispensation to make rude comments to the night watch whenever you so wish.’
Caravaggio hesitated, then bowed. ‘I humbly thank Your Illustrious Lordship.’
Scipione held still. Something about the painter’s voice didn’t sound humble at all. It was resentful, even superior. He stroked his beard and took a deep breath of the jasmine oil freed by his fingers. ‘People tell me you’re a killer. Or if you’re not yet, you will be soon enough. They say you bugger boys, too.’ He pushed down the ends of his lips and raised his chin as if to acknowledge that he viewed murder and sodomy with equanimity. ‘They tell me one can find the proof in your art.’
‘All paintings are full of death and naked boys,’ Caravaggio said. ‘It’s just that no one ever noticed it before I painted dead men and young nudes.’
‘It seems not everyone wishes to be made to look.’
‘I’ll do The Death of the Virgin over again, if Your Illustriousness wishes it.’
‘I do not.’
‘The Shoeless Fathers—’
‘Shall remain tasteless, as well as shoeless.’ Scipione inclined his head towards the paper on the chair. ‘Unlike them, I’m a man of discernment.’
Caravaggio picked up the sheet and read it. He dropped to his knee before Scipione and kissed his hand, with fervour this time.
Th
e cardinal plucked the straw from Caravaggio’s hair and rolled it between his fingers. ‘The Confraternity of St Anne of the Grooms will be pleased to purchase a painting from you, as you see.’
‘For their church near the Vatican?’
Scipione liked to shock. If only my position allowed me to use this power for surprises more often, he thought. For pleasant surprises. He pursed his lips and made his moustache twitch. ‘For the Holy Father’s own basilica.’
‘For St Peter’s?’
Scipione watched the ambition and exultation gleam out of Caravaggio’s eyes. St Peter’s was the most important location for a commission. An artist might measure himself against the great masters whose work was displayed there. To the glory of God? Scipione mused. Well, why not?
‘I believe the Confraternity will want some sort of repetition of Maestro Leonardo’s painting of the Virgin and Child with St Anne. Needless to say, I shan’t expect you to do any such thing.’
‘I’m most humbly grateful to Your Illustriousness, most humbly.’
That’s better, Scipione thought. That sounds more like it.
The boy Domenico rolled a leather ball across the floor of packed earth. Caravaggio bounced it back, but his attention was not on the game. He watched Lena, uncertain, gauging her face in the half-light of her mother’s home.
‘I was scared when I saw you throwing stones in the street, Michele,’ she said.
Resentment touched him like a cold breath. He had no way out but to beg her forgiveness for a fight in which he had been the insulted party. The ball dropped in his lap. He squeezed it. ‘I’m sorry,’ he muttered. The boy reached out, lifted the ball by a loose thread, and swung it towards his chin with a laugh.
‘You scare me when you’re angry. You shake like an old man.’ Lena bit at her knuckle.