A Name in Blood (16 page)

From beneath his tray of pigments, Caravaggio produced a pair of compasses. ‘I thought you’d never ask.’

When his Madonna was finished, Caravaggio sat before her in the quiet of the late afternoon. The winter sun went down. Its beam through the edge of the shutter crossed her body
like a heavenly caress.
Nothing else should touch her
, he thought.

The house was silent. He had sent everyone to the Tavern of the Moor, telling them he would follow for dinner. He wanted to be alone with her, before he gave her to the Church of
Sant’Agostino.

The wound on his neck ran like a thick seam gathering him together.
If the scar weren’t there, I’d slip to the floor, a suit of clothes with the stitching unpicked.
His hair
had grown back over the cut on his temple, but he sensed something at work beneath the skin. His body was struggling to repair whatever damage he had suffered there.
Perhaps the impact of the
sword knocked something free in my brain, to let me know there’s no ‘next time’.
At any moment he might cease to exist – with no opportunity to explain, to say farewell,
to apologize.
The last thing I said to Lena might simply be the last thing I
ever
say to her.

He saw this in the way he had painted his Madonna.
I’m not playing games
, he thought.
Here she is. Anyone who sees her will know exactly who I am too, even if I’m gone,
taken in a brawl or by disease.

In his first years in Rome, his canvases had been whimsical and satirical. He painted cardsharps, for the amusement of cardinals who liked to imagine the forbidden darkness of the inns and the
lowlifes within; nubile boys bitten by lizards, as if nature wished to warn of the dangers of love; youths peeling fruit, unaware that someone crept close to watch their pale necks, their delicate
fingers. His works were clammy and foetid and disreputable like the bars and bedchambers where he passed his time.

When had he changed? What had started him on the path that led to this Madonna?

The Rest on the Flight into Egypt
. He barely knew what he had done at the time, a few years after arriving in Rome. A scene of the Holy Family succoured by the music of an angel as they
fled the vengeful Herod, painted with the dreamy clarity of the Venetian school. But later, in the gallery of the Lady Olimpia Aldobrandini, he had recognized that his heart was imprinted on the
canvas.

In that painting, exhausted by the journey, the Holy Mother rested her cheek on her baby’s head. The little Jesus, also halfasleep, picked at her mantle, as though he dreamed of feeding at
her breast. Menica’s friend Anna had modelled for the Virgin. She had understood that her life as a cheap whore wouldn’t be a long one. Still she had faith that there might be an
escape. Caravaggio had illustrated her hope and fear and acceptance in the drained, loving Virgin. The love of a mother who knew her son would be a sacrifice and was yet willing to undergo the
hardships of the desert to preserve him for it.
I saw all that in the face of a whore.

Anna had been dead a year now, at twenty-five, her skin wasted and scarred, her red hair dry and lustreless. He was with her at the end, and she had reminisced about the sixteenyear- old beauty
he had painted as the Virgin. When she expired, he had dropped his head to her breast and shocked himself with his weeping. He had known many whores who had disappeared from the streets with little
more than a shrug from him. Yet he had cried for Anna as though she had invented death, a malignant novelty displayed in a gallery which only he might view.

He touched his fingertips to his new Madonna’s toes and traced the arch of her foot. He had to let her go. He kissed his fingers and went down the stairs to the street.

He reached the Tavern of the Moor. In the darkness of the inn, he squinted to adjust his eyes. Something fluttered near the lantern by the bar. It was a hand. Lena was waving to him.

They drank rich wine from the volcanic island of Ischia. Lena pressed against Caravaggio’s shoulder. With his cup in his hand and his friends around the table, he felt a
rush of enthusiasm that made him boisterous and extravagant. He loved everyone. Across the table, Gaspare nuzzled Menica. Mario Minniti stabbed his dagger into the board between Onorio’s
fingers until he cut the skin. Onorio flattened his hand against Mario’s nose and laughed when it bled. Prospero licked at the wound in Onorio’s thumb and moaned like a dog.

Onorio pushed Prospero away and drew Caravaggio to him.‘Come gambling with me.’

Caravaggio waved him off and drank some more wine.

‘You finished your Madonna. You need to cut loose, like you always do when you complete a painting.’

‘I can’t. Scipione has arranged a new commission. I need to start right away. Tonight I’m celebrating, but tomorrow I’m back in the studio.’

The architect slugged down the rest of his wine. ‘What’s this new commission?’

‘
The Death of the Virgin
. For the Barefoot Carmelite Fathers at Santa Maria della Scala.’

‘It’s not really your style. The Virgin floating up towards heaven while all the disciples raise their arms and eyes in wonder.’

Caravaggio battered at his friend’s arm. ‘Do you take me for Baglione,
stronzo
? I won’t paint her the traditional way. I’ll paint her dead.’

Onorio was quiet and intent.

‘I’ve painted Christ dead,’ Caravaggio said. ‘Why not his mother?’

‘You can show Jesus dead, because we know he’s coming back. No artist ever showed the Virgin’s death as anything but a glorious ascension to heaven. As if she simply
didn’t die.’

‘Still, dead she shall be.’

Onorio’s sullen eyes peered from beneath the fringe of his hair with such malevolence that Caravaggio held his breath. ‘So your model for the dead Virgin would have to be dead
– to be truly lifelike.’

Though Onorio spoke in a murmur, it stilled Prospero and Mario. They watched him, knowing what was on his mind and fearing it. Caravaggio thought of the man who died in the sword fight at the
Farnese Palace and Onorio’s unscrupulous boast that he had killed him.

‘Let’s go and get you a Virgin. Let’s go and kill a whore.’ Onorio’s teeth glimmered in the candlelight.

In a single breath Caravaggio was sober. His lips quivered as he tried to form the words that would end this.

With a sudden burst, Onorio threw up his arms and bellowed.‘I had you, you bastard. I had you.’ He grabbed Caravaggio and kissed his head. ‘I really had you going.’

The laughter around the table was relieved and horrified. Onorio punched Caravaggio lightly in the stomach. His guts chilled, as if the playful jab had disembowelled him.

‘By Jesu, I nearly died there,’ Mario said.

Onorio reached over the table, half-rising, and bestowed a kiss on Mario’s cheek.

Lena held Caravaggio’s hand in hers. ‘I’d do it, Michele. I’d be the dead Virgin.’

His pulse was quick from Onorio’s joke. It picked up still more as she spoke.
I couldn’t watch her even
pretend
to be dead.

‘I enjoyed being a model,’ she said. ‘I liked that you told me what the Virgin might think. That I could imagine the Madonna’s thoughts and show them on my face. It
won’t be difficult, after all, to be the dead Virgin. I’ll just have to lie there.’

‘Then you should get Menica to do it,’ Mario said. ‘That’s how she makes her living.’

Menica flipped her finger off her ear.

Lena knitted her fingers into Caravaggio’s hand. ‘You haven’t let me see the finished
Madonna of Loreto
. When can I have a look?’

He stared into his cup. For now, it was still his.
She
was his, on the easel of his studio.

‘I, too, should like to see your Madonna,’ Gaspare said. ‘So that I can write a poem about it.’

Lena’s not like those other dead girls. I’ll protect her.
Caravaggio made himself jolly. ‘Allow me to give you some of my own verses. They’re not as fine as the
sentiments of our true poet Signor Gaspare, but perhaps they’re more appropriate to these surroundings.’

Lena laughed in good-humoured shock. Caravaggio squeezed her hand.

Gaspare raised his arms. ‘The true work of art is womankind. May I? Lady Menica Calvi —’

‘— one
scudo
to suck me.’ Mario giggled.

Gaspare tried again. ‘Lady Menica Calvi —’

‘— two
scudi
to fuck me.’

Lena’s nose touched Caravaggio’s beard. ‘Why don’t you write a poem about me?’

He rose so fast that his hips jogged the table. His friends reached out to catch their drinks. He pulled at Lena’s arm. She stumbled after him to the door of the tavern. Prospero hooted
and made a bawdy gesture with his forearm.

Caravaggio went so quickly down the Corso that Lena had to run to keep up. His silence was sudden and violent, but her features were composed, unworried. He took her to his studio.

In front of the
Madonna of Loreto
, Lena stood more motionless than her image in the picture itself. In the quiet, Caravaggio thought he could hear the Madonna’s skirts as she swung
her hips.

‘Maestro Raphael frescoed the Prophet Isaiah on one of the pillars in Sant’Agostino. When they hang this Madonna in that church, do you think anyone will ever so much as glance at
Raphael’s work? It’s you they’ll come to see. You still want me to pen some doggerel for you?’

She shook her head and moved backwards until she dropped onto his bed.

When they had made love, she wrapped herself in his blanket and stood before the
Madonna of Loreto
. ‘They’re praying to her, these two old beggars. But
she’s not granting them a blessing.’

He rose from the bed. ‘The Madonna knows she ought to take the baby back inside. With the strength of their devotion, they must persuade her to stay and bless them. I want people to see
this in the church and realize that
they
must draw the grace out of religion.
They
have to bring the Virgin to life.
They
have to make her real.’

‘Lucky for you I’m not the Virgin then. You don’t have to try so hard.’

‘Lucky for me.’

‘Yeah, you’ve got it easy.’ She took his naked body into the folds of the blanket with her. ‘The old people in the picture remind me of my grandparents.’ She rested
her cheek against his shoulder. Her chestnut hair dropped over her chest and to her nipples of that same dark redness. He ran his fingers through it. It was the first time he had touched her hair
this way.