A Name in Blood (10 page)

His work hadn’t immortalized this girl. Canvas was no more resilient to violence than flesh. It rotted more slowly and people gave it a higher value, but it was as fragile as bone and
skin. He found her hand and held it. Soon he felt the warm looseness of sleep in her fingers, and he shivered for her.

‘What a jumble of rotten shit.’ Caravaggio went into the side chapel towards the painting. Eight yards high, five yards across,
The Resurrection
. A lithe
Christ struck an effeminate pose holding a flag at the upper centre of the canvas. Languidly strumming lutes and puffing flutes, the angels surrounded him. Tiny cherubs reclined under the
angels’ buttocks like cushions in a courtesan’s boudoir.

Prospero followed Caravaggio through the Easter crowd in the Church of the Gesù. ‘I’m trying to get a commission out of the Jesuits who run this place,’ he said.
‘Let’s just get our communion cards stamped and be off. Don’t make trouble.’

‘Look at these silly buggers. The damned, they’re supposed to be.’ Caravaggio’s voice was loud enough to draw the attention of the worshippers awaiting the Eucharist. He
heard Prospero’s warning, but the canvas goaded him with its incompetence and pomposity.

In the lower reaches of the painting, turning their faces from Christ, the sinners rested. They were guarded by a swordsman. ‘He’s a caricature of the assassin in your
Martyrdom
of St Matthew
,’ Prospero said. ‘But all the turbulence of
your
work is so fey and banal here.’

‘The condemned don’t exactly look like they’re suffering the torments of hell.’ Caravaggio laughed. ‘It’s as though Christ just told them he didn’t like
what they’re wearing.’

A sharp voice, nasal and imperious, cut through the babble of the congregation. ‘Your sacrilege doesn’t surprise me, Merisi.’

Giovanni Baglione held his plumed hat at his hip. His chest puffed out under an expensive padded doublet studded with knotted lengths of silk. His chin was high, pugilistic and triumphant, like
one of the nudes in his
Resurrection
.

Prospero nudged his friend. ‘Be nice.’

Caravaggio felt a glimmer of compassion for the man.
Why can’t he just paint? Why this competition with me? His technique isn’t so bad. He could make something of himself. But
he’ll never match my work.
‘Baglione, let’s not get into anything here.’

Baglione’s eyes flickered around him, as though he believed the entire congregation waited for his response. His slender fingers, gloved by soft skin farmed from an unborn calf, flicked at
a lapis lazuli rosary. ‘If you don’t stop your slander, I’ll have you called before the Inquisition.’

A crowd gathered about them and Caravaggio felt the onset of a rage trembling through his chest, growing with each breath. ‘You think I’m scared of the Inquisition?’

Prospero lifted his palms in resignation. ‘Here we go.’

‘I care for art.’ Caravaggio tugged at a silk rosette sewn over Baglione’s breast. ‘If that leads to insults, it’s only because I care for art more than I worry
about your feelings.’

‘Paint as you wish,’ Baglione said. ‘But I say you’re here to destroy art. Your technique—’

‘My technique is good enough for you to make a hash of copying it in this clumsy piece of dung on the wall behind us. It’s the worst thing you’ve painted. I’ve never
heard anyone say anything good about it.’

Caravaggio was so emphatic that the Jesuit at the altar raised his head from the Host. It wasn’t unknown for a fight to start in the crowded quarters of a church and the priest tensed in
alarm. Caravaggio shut his mouth, and the Mass went on.

Baglione headed for the door. ‘Maybe the Inquisition would like to hear about you and Cecco, your little butt-boy.’ He dodged between the worshippers ascending to the church.
‘You wished for the commission of this
Resurrection
yourself. It’s clear that you’re envious of my status.’

‘I eat dickheads like you for breakfast.’ Caravaggio leaped down the steps to pursue Baglione. In his haste, he collided with a heavy gentleman. He found himself dazed and pressed to
the steps by the fallen man’s weight, his feet higher than his head. Upside down, he watched Baglione rush across the piazza, his cape flowing behind him.

Prospero took Caravaggio under his arms and sat him upright. ‘Let’s go back into the church,’ he said. ‘We have to get the Holy Host inside you before the Devil takes
you.’

Caravaggio rubbed at a trickle of blood from his eyebrow.

In the piazza outside the Pope’s palace, the bailiffs hauled a criminal into the air by the
strappado.
Lifted at the wrists with his hands bound behind his back,
his shoulders dislocated before he had risen a dozen feet. He screamed that he was innocent of whatever small crime had incurred this punishment. The market-goers gathered to jeer. At the foot of
the pole, another offender was bent double in the stocks. His tongue had been pulled forward and caught in a clamp, a penalty for speaking ill of the government. Caravaggio crossed the square to
the palace gates.

Scipione Borghese was at the window when Caravaggio entered to work on his portrait of the Pope. The cardinal held the edge of the curtain between a finger and thumb, as though he were peeling
back an undergarment to look on the very sex of his lover. He gazed with a quivering intensity at the man writhing on the
strappado
. ‘You’ve been called to the courts many times,
Maestro Caravaggio. Have you ever—?’

‘Been tortured for evidence? No, Your Illustriousness.’ His voice was louder than he intended.
Still nervous around Scipione, aren’t you, Michele
, he told himself.
Or
are you anticipating some torture?

Scipione frowned as though he was sorry not to hear how torture felt. ‘I saw you cross the piazza. You didn’t stop to watch the punishment.’

‘The view is better from up here.’

A nasty shadow clouded Scipione’s eye. ‘You’re bleeding.’ He prodded the spot where Caravaggio had cut his brow in his fall outside the Church of the Gesù. A
scarlet bulb of blood ran down his finger. ‘Could you use this to paint?’

‘Blood? As a pigment, you mean?’

Scipione wiped his finger on Caravaggio’s doublet. ‘Yes.’

‘It rots and gives off a foul smell, Your Illustriousness.’

‘You’ve tried it?’

‘No. But I know what happens to blood.’

‘I’ll wager you do.’

The man on the
strappado
bellowed as he came down. The crowd in the piazza thinned and the bailiffs untied the prisoner. His arms dangled from shoulders strangely squared by the
dislocation. He dropped to the cobbles.

Caravaggio went onto one knee. He imagined Fabrizio undergoing his punishment like the criminal outside. As if he held his friend’s tortured body in his arms, he felt a pang of wounded
love. The skirt of the cardinal’s red cassock rocked before him. ‘I beg of you a favour, my lord.’

‘Ask.’ It was as though Scipione’s voice came from some other organ than his throat, so strangled and tense did it seem.

‘My beloved mistress the Marchesa Costanza Colonna has a son.’

‘Several sons.’

‘I speak of Signor Fabrizio. He’s held for some offence. Might Your Illustriousness grant him a pardon?’ The painter kept his head down. He should have flattered Scipione,
spoken of his famous capacity for mercy and other qualities churchmen liked to think they possessed by the grace of God. But he reckoned Scipione would have felt mocked, and he anyway doubted he
could bring himself to speak such words. His mind was overcome with the pain awaiting Fabrizio.

‘For a crime of this nature, the Holy Father himself must grant a pardon,’ Scipione said.

Heat crept around Caravaggio’s throat.
A crime of this nature.
He had neglected to ask Costanza of what her son stood accused.
What has she asked of me?

‘If he had merely killed a peasant or even a gentleman . . .’

There it was. He recalled Fabrizio’s handsome, playful face. Caravaggio had known men who had done others to death. He never knew how to detect the wickedness in their eyes until it had
been made plain. In the Evil Garden, all men’s features flickered with butchery.

‘. . . then I’m sure something could’ve been arranged. But he killed a Farnese, a member of a powerful family, whose support the Holy Father needs as much as the Colonnas. You
understand the politics? We can’t simply overlook this killing.’

There was no way back. ‘I beg of you, Your Illustriousness. I owe a debt of gratitude and loyalty to the Marchesa which I would pay at any cost.’

‘Would you, now?’ Scipione laid a hand on Caravaggio’s shoulder. ‘Finish the picture.’

Once Caravaggio’s voice started to slur, Onorio found it hard to follow his friend’s surly dialogue. Something about a brother – or someone who was like a
brother – and the Colonna family and Cardinal Scipione. Onorio assumed there had been a complaint to the cardinal as a result of the fracas with Baglione at the Church of the Gesù.
That hardly merited this morose mood. Scipione wouldn’t be too upset. His painter had been in far worse rumbles.

When the food came, Onorio pointed at the platter the waiter had laid before them. ‘Is this goat’s cheese, Pietro?’

‘It’s from a cow,’ the waiter said.

‘Which cow? Your mother?’ Caravaggio growled.

‘Leave the poor little slob alone, Michele.’ Onorio grinned as the sullen waiter made for the bar. Others recoiled from Caravaggio when he was in this mood, but Onorio enjoyed it.
This was when he felt the greatest bond with him. They alone were fearless and not to be toyed with. A night at the inns and whorehouses with Michele gave him a feeling of camaraderie that was
bone-deep, as he imagined soldiers must feel when they fight a battle side by side.

Caravaggio cut a slice of cheese and ripped away some bread. ‘More like a brother to me than my own damned brother ever was . . .’

‘I didn’t know you had any family left,
cazzo
. Remember my brother Decio? If he wasn’t in holy orders, he’d be chained to the oars of a galley.’

‘Decio’s trouble,’ Caravaggio lifted an unsteady finger before Onorio’s face, ‘like you.’

‘My record is much the same as yours, Michele.’

‘I’m poison.’

‘It’s in our blood.’

‘Fabrizio . . .’ Caravaggio shook his head. ‘Blood? That’s not why I do these things.’

Why, then?
Onorio wondered.
Does Rome do this to us? Or is it that we’re men who know we’re talented enough to be needed even by people who detest our behaviour?

The door of the tavern opened fast. Onorio tensed, peering into the dim light to see who entered. Mario Minniti walked in between the tables. He was breathless. ‘Fillide killed the poor
bitch.’

Caravaggio stopped chewing. ‘Who?’

‘That girl Prudenza, she’s dead.’

Caravaggio let his head drop back against the wall, his eyes shut. Onorio frowned at him. Something in his friend’s stillness reverberated like the tremors he had experienced when he was
in Naples once and the earth had jolted the walls of the buildings.

‘Fillide found her in bed with Ranuccio,’ Mario said. ‘Before he could stop her, she slashed Prudenza and the girl bled to death. Ranuccio put her body in the street so that
Fillide won’t have to go to trial. He doesn’t want to lose two of his whores in one day.’