A Name in Blood (22 page)

‘It’s our friend Signor Ranuccio,’ Onorio said. ‘Looks like he just won.’

Ranuccio picked up the ball, a leather casing around packed wool with a lead pellet at its heart. He smacked it high in the air with his long-handled racquet and lifted his arms. The crowd
mingled, making good on the bets. Some of those who had wagered against Ranuccio pelted the loser with dung from the street.

Ranuccio glanced over the heads of the gamblers. ‘Painter, what about double or quits on that ten
scudi
you still owe me?’ His smile was open and joyful, which made Caravaggio
hate him more.

Caravaggio handed his cloak to Onorio. He had suffered all the insults he could take from powerful men before whom he must suppress his anger. He didn’t have to endure Ranuccio’s
goading. He cared nothing for the ten
scudi
. He only wanted to finish Ranuccio, to push his face into the dirt and fill his mouth with it until he choked, as if he were stifling all the
snobs of the Fabbrica and Baglione too. ‘Give me a racquet.’

Ranuccio signalled his serve as required. It was one of the game’s few rules that he should call out, ‘Eh.’

Caravaggio returned the serve. His shot glanced off the wall of the palace. Ranuccio chased it down, but Caravaggio backhanded the ball straight down the centre of the court. A few in the crowd
cheered. Most bayed their derision at Ranuccio.

He doesn’t know yet
, Caravaggio thought.
He thinks we’re just playing tennis. He’ll understand the stakes soon enough.

After only a few points, Ranuccio was sweating hard and breathless. ‘You should’ve had a rest before you played another game,’ Onorio called to him. ‘Or you
should’ve challenged Michele to a game of cards, so you could do it sitting down.’

Ranuccio flicked his fingers off his chin.

‘You waste all your energy tupping your whores.’ Onorio played to the crowd. ‘You’ve less facility at sports that’re played standing up.’

Ranuccio’s elder brother, Giovan Francesco, jostled Onorio. They exchanged threats under their breath.

Ranuccio served. He went for Caravaggio’s return. His shot was intended to bounce off the palace wall, but it caught a window ledge. It came back towards him and the point went to
Caravaggio.

The painter felt a stillness within. Excitement came before a contest, and fear in the fraction of a second when defeat was inevitable. The time between was filled with the instinctive, absolute
focus of the hunt. His eyes on Ranuccio were dead.

With the next point, Caravaggio sent his ball wide and deep, almost to the chalk line. At full speed, Ranuccio stretched for it, missed, and went head first into the wall, to the amusement of
the crowd. His brother dragged him from the ground. Ranuccio stared at Caravaggio, his feet apart, his racquet held with the force of a weapon.

Now he knows what we’re playing for
, Caravaggio thought. ‘My serve.’

Ranuccio lashed the ball back to him.

The game was tight, the rallies short, each man striking with such force that his opponent could barely keep the ball alive once the initiative was lost. They were quickly to the deciding point.
Ranuccio had Caravaggio on the defensive. He advanced towards the cord and volleyed deep. Caravaggio flicked the ball wide. It ricocheted off the head of an onlooker. The deflection wrong-footed
Ranuccio and the ball rolled to a halt behind him.

Ranuccio picked up the ball and made to serve. Caravaggio came to the cord. ‘It’s my game, Tomassoni.’

Ranuccio grumbled under his breath and set himself for the serve.

‘Hey,
coglione
, you lost,’ Caravaggio said.

‘It came off that fool’s head.’ Ranuccio wiped at the sweat on his bruised brow. ‘It doesn’t count.’

‘What’re you talking about? Spectators are in play.’

‘No, they’re not.’

‘Where do you think you’re playing? In the court of the French king? It’s a street game. You know the rules.’

‘The game’s not over.’ Ranuccio came towards Caravaggio. ‘It didn’t
bounce
off that man. He stuck out his head and nodded the ball past me. He did it
deliberately. That’s not in the rules.’

Tremors of unstoppable fury shuddered through Caravaggio, the aftershocks of the agitation he had been forced to repress in the presence of his wealthy patrons. ‘You lie through your
throat.’

At the side of the street, the onlookers argued over the call. The man whose head had been struck by the ball claimed innocence, but those who had bet on Ranuccio converged on him.

‘We’re not finished yet,’ Ranuccio shouted.

‘Shut up. It’s over. You can say farewell to that ten
scudi
now.’ Caravaggio poked Ranuccio on the shoulder with the end of his racquet.

Ranuccio swatted it away. ‘You dirty faggot.’

‘Once you’ve done kissing your money goodbye, you can kiss me here.’ Caravaggio turned and slapped his backside.

A swordsman’s turn of the wrist and Ranuccio had struck him on the shoulderblade with the frame of his racquet. Caravaggio spun and swiped at Ranuccio’s chest. They clubbed each
other with their racquets, until Onorio and Ranuccio’s brother came between them.

Caravaggio jabbed his finger at Ranuccio. ‘I’m going home for my sword, you prick.’ He threw his racquet like a spear.

‘You know where to find me. I’ll cut you up.’

Caravaggio rushed away to collect his weapon. His breath came in shuddering snorts.
It’s now
, he thought.
It has to be now. Let him die, and I’ll be free.

At the corner, the man who had blocked Caravaggio’s shot slumped against the palace wall. He was bleeding from his nose and staring with puzzlement at the blood on his palm, as though it
were a text in a secret language.

Once they had their swords, they rushed past a game of
pallone
on the way to the Tomassoni house. A player drove his wooden armguard into the nose of a youth on the
opposing team who had made the mistake of watching the ball loop through the air. ‘Did you see that?’ Onorio laughed. He spotted Caravaggio’s naked, stern concentration.
‘No, of course you didn’t.’

Mario Minniti caught up with them on the way. ‘A duel, I heard. Let’s hope his seconds join in. Then Onorio and I can make it a general brawl. Michele, try a few feints, a disengage
and a cut- over. Then take a long step in with your left leg and shaft him in the groin with your dagger.’

‘You’re obsessed with the groin, aren’t you, Sicilian.’ Onorio clapped his hand to Mario’s shoulder. They laughed like boys on their way to see a game, excited and
carefree.

Caravaggio ceased to hear anything. The evening darkness deepened. He glided down the streets, the shadows cradling him. Ranuccio wouldn’t be able to spot his outline. He would rush into
the light and kill his man.

At the doorway of the Tomassoni house, his breath surged in his body, all his force ready for this. He would kill his man.
Kill him.

‘Come out, if you’ve got the balls,’ Onorio yelled. He picked up a stone and threw it at a first-floor window. The moment it connected with the shutters, heavy feet sounded
from inside.

Caravaggio drew his sword, a gilded hilt from Ferrara, a Toledo blade, the bevel glistening down its length like an icy vein. He sighted along it as Ranuccio came out of the courtyard flanked by
his brother and another soldier. With his left hand, he drew out a dagger as long as his forearm.

The seconds threw some insults, but Caravaggio heard only his breath and the blood in his head. His mouth was dry. He flexed his grip around the sword handle. Thumb and index finger met above
the crosspiece to control the blade, protected by the sweeping guard of the quillon block. He shifted the dagger in his other hand so that his thumb lay along the spine of the blade, bracing it,
the flat of the knife facing him, not the edge.

Ranuccio advanced. The two men extended their sword arms, right feet forward, the tips of their rapiers high and
en garde
. Ranuccio’s pupils were long slits across his cobalt
irises, like a goat’s eyes. Caravaggio wondered if he were fighting some kind of evil beast, then he realized his opponent was mad with such fear and exhilaration that it distorted him.

He had practised the sword so often with Onorio and watched so many duels at the French tennis courts, his movements were instinctive, but he made himself check his position. He had to be sure
not to forget his technique in the rush to kill. He set his feet apart the width of his torso, twisting his hips to keep both shoulders facing Ranuccio, his right arm leading, his left arm ready
with the dagger. He engaged the muscles of his belly, to stay light on his feet.

As they circled, Caravaggio watched his opponent’s body. He might parry the rapier easily enough if he saw the signs from Ranuccio’s arm and torso before the attack advanced. It was
the hardest thing to learn when he had first held a sword, not to be mesmerized by the killing tip as it dangled half an arm’s length from his face.
Watch the arm
, he whispered to
himself.
Watch this big bastard’s bulky torso. It’ll be as if he were shouting, ‘Now I’m about to try and hit you this way.’

Ranuccio lifted his chest a fraction. Caravaggio parried before the man extended his arm fully into his thrust. Again Ranuccio tried, perplexed and furious at Caravaggio’s sharp defence.
The heavy sword glanced aside with a delicate, almost feathery contact, as Caravaggio turned his wrist upwards and nudged the oncoming blade beyond his shoulder.

Caravaggio thrust, the tip of his blade making for the eyes. Ranuccio slapped it away with a hasty jerk to the left. He jumped backwards and crouched low.
The fool ought to have parried with
a roll of the wrist
, Caravaggio thought.
It would’ve kept his point on me. He might even have counter-attacked. Either he’s nervous or he’s not much good.

He tried to recall their first fight at the Farnese Palace. He couldn’t remember the way Ranuccio had moved, but he knew he had beaten him. He cleared that fight from his mind. He was here
and this time it was to the death.
God help me.
He whispered an
Ave
.

With a shuffle and a short spring, Ranuccio made another high thrust. Caravaggio let it come onto his blade. He took his left foot across behind his right, pulling his body out of the path of
the thrust. With an upturn of his wrist, the point of his rapier rose above Ranuccio’s sword. In the same movement, he went forward a quarter step with his right foot and felt his tip catch
in Ranuccio’s upper arm.

He backed away. Ranuccio went onto one knee and fingered the wound. Pain replaced the rage in his face.

Giovan Francesco was only a few yards from his brother, but still he yelled to him: ‘Ranuccio, remember all I taught you.’

The older Tomassonis were soldiers
, Caravaggio thought.
They fought for the faith and for the Farnese in Flanders and Hungary. Ranuccio’s problem is that he’s never had a
chance to prove his manhood. All his bravado is bullshit.

‘Not much of a teacher, are you, Giovan Francesco?’ Onorio laughed. ‘This dickhead couldn’t spear a whore with her skirts over her head. Good thrust, Michele. Keep the
big idiot moving. He won’t touch you.’

Ranuccio snarled, came up from the ground and forward in one motion.

‘Dirt,’ Onorio shouted.

From Ranuccio’s dagger hand came a spray of dung and mud he had grabbed off the street. Caravaggio blinked hard and rubbed his face with his sleeve.

Ranuccio laid into him with a heavy slash. It took Caravaggio’s rapier almost out of his grip, hammering it to his left.
Thank God it wasn’t a thrust, or I’d be skewered
now.

His eyes still clouded, he went by instinct to his right.
Get behind your sword.
He put up his guard and felt Ranuccio slash once more. Through the grit, he could just about see. Not the
blade, but the arm and the set of the body.
Here he comes again.
Another step to his right and this time Caravaggio followed his parry with a thrust that connected.

Ranuccio cursed. A cut to the head, above his ear.

‘Lucky for you he couldn’t see where you were, Ranuccio, or that would’ve been the end for you,’ Mario bellowed. ‘You cheating bastard.’

Caravaggio retreated a few steps and squinted hard through the remaining dirt around his eyes. A dozen bystanders had gathered, hanging back from the duellers and their seconds. They were quiet.
Even in Rome, where blood was sport, they knew they were about to see a man die, and it silenced them.

His sword arm high, Caravaggio closed on Ranuccio. He pretended to hesitate, made his eyes freeze with fear. He wanted Ranuccio to sense an opportunity. Ranuccio fell for it. He bared his teeth
and slashed. Caravaggio relaxed his wrist and let Ranuccio knock his blade low. The force of his own blow left Ranuccio off balance, leaning to Caravaggio’s right.

Then Caravaggio made his move. A step forward with his left foot. He swung his rapier in a high arc onto Ranuccio’s head. It glanced off the crown as the man dropped to the ground.

‘A fine move, Michele,’ Onorio said.