A Name in Blood (32 page)

The hatch lifted and Caravaggio blinked through the morning sun into the artful features of Leonetto della Corbara.
A strange Christ to raise this Lazarus back among the living.
The
Inquisitor’s eyes flickered, a minute deviation as if he were calculating the worth of the man in the hole beneath him. He made an impatient gesture and a ladder slid into the dungeon for his
descent.

He held the sleeve of his black robe to his nose. Caravaggio pointed to the side of the chamber furthest from the slops bucket. Della Corbara sat against the wall, wincing at the contact of his
back with the rough rock. ‘Inside the infamous
guva.
It’s almost like hell.’

‘I could get used to it.’

‘You mightn’t have so long.’

From his sleeve, the Inquisitor slipped a paper. Unfolding it, he held it forward into the light from the hatch. ‘A pardon. A blank pardon. Usually I sell them for a few hundred
scudi
, as you sell a painting. I’m offering this one to you free of charge.’

‘Not quite free.’

‘Well, you can have it – if you do as I wish. The knights are going to kick you out of the Order. There goes your protection, the pardon you thought you had. Tell me what I want to
know about the way they live.’

Caravaggio gestured around him. ‘I’m not at liberty to oblige, Father.’

The Inquisitor pulled up his bottom lip as if to suggest that the dungeon was a triviality. ‘Don’t you want to go home?’

‘God is our final home and he’ll lead us there.’

Della Corbara bellowed with laughter and wagged an appreciative finger at Caravaggio. The face of one of the guards appeared above, curious and disapproving. ‘Don’t quote St
Augustine to me,’ the Inquisitor said. ‘
He
was never imprisoned in the
guva
of Malta, Maestro Michele. Had he been so immured, he’d have advised you to rely upon
your friends, not only on God.’

‘Signore?’ the guard called down.

‘Father, to you.’ Della Corbara made his expression harsh and the guard pulled back. ‘Michele, you have no choice now. If you stay here, the knights will expel you for wounding
a noble member of the Order. You’ll be unprotected. They’ll send you to Rome to be executed for the murder of Ranuccio. But I might be able to claim custody of you.’

Caravaggio shook his head. He didn’t believe the Inquisitor could face down the knights. He felt sympathy for the priest’s desperation.

Della Corbara displayed a momentary exasperation, like a tired father with a boisterous child. When he stood, the Inquisitor blocked out the light. His robe and the rock were black.
‘I’m talking to you as a friend, Michele. If you get out of here, put your faith in love. We hope love is everlasting, but we know we can’t count on it enduring. That’s what
makes its pleasure so intense.’

The Inquisitor had always seemed part of the prideful tide of the world, before which Caravaggio had to posture and push out his chest. In defeat, the priest showed him his weakness, and
Caravaggio felt naked before it. The cold stone of the dungeon made him shiver.

In the Grand Master’s Palace, the senior knights sat around a heavy oak table built in an open curve. As Admiral of the Galleys, Fabrizio took his place on the Venerable
Council. He lacked long service in the Order so his chair was near the tip of the horseshoe. The
piliers
of each nation among the knights were ranked beside Wignacourt, who slouched on his
throne, his hand cradling his chin, fingers disguising his troubled features. On his right, Martelli was upright and tense with a rage he seemed barely able to check.

The knights had heard the evidence of the investigators, but before they decided to expel Caravaggio from the Order Martelli had insisted that Roero recount the story of the fight at the
dinner.

Wignacourt’s page passed around the table with a taper, lighting the candles as the hearing went into the evening. When he set the flame to the candle before Fabrizio, his hand shook.
Fabrizio smiled gently, but the boy hurried to illuminate the other candles. He cursed himself for what he had done with the page, for revealing the man he was to Michele. If he could have hidden
himself all those years ago when he had first been with Michele, what pain would others have been spared? His mother, Michele, this page boy. He damned his father, who had been the first to lay his
touch on him in lust, and he wondered when he would meet him and in which circle of hell.

Roero told his tale, a tone of horror in his voice. Fabrizio thought it a disgusting piece of acting. Roero had often done worse violence than Michele and joked about it.

The page threw the taper in the grate and took up his place behind the Grand Master. His delicate hand absently circled the rim of a chilled water pitcher on a trolley beside him. Fabrizio
watched it, breathless. The boy brought the condensation on his finger to his lips, sucking it away. When he noticed Fabrizio’s absorption, he snapped his hands behind his back. The disgust
Fabrizio had felt for Roero passed now to himself.

‘What started the dispute at the dinner, Brother Roero?’ Martelli spoke low, more like a threat than a question.

‘I criticized his painting,’ Roero said. ‘The
Beheading of St John
in the Oratory.’

‘Your criticism was what exactly?’

‘His model for Salome was a Maltese whore.’

‘How do
you
know she’s a whore?’

‘What other woman would an artist consort with? Certainly she’s not fit for the sight of our novices.’

Caravaggio was beyond protection. Even Martelli was powerless to stop the trial. Fabrizio wished his mother had been there to speak for her protégé. He clicked his tongue. How weak
he was to require the strength of a woman in such moments. He recalled the desperation with which Caravaggio had wrestled him on the bed in his residence. Fabrizio had felt repulsed and embraced at
the same time.

Roero’s speech seemed interminable. Quietly Fabrizio rose. He looked for some command from Martelli, but the old knight’s attention blazed at Roero.

Fabrizio went at a jog through the courtyards of the palace.
Let them sit up there in judgement. Michele is neither a knight nor an artist to me. I won’t be constrained by their codes
of behaviour. I judge him by another measure
–
by love
–
and in that he has never been lacking.

The sound of a scuffle above him awoke Caravaggio. He wondered what time it was. When the hatch opened, the night was at its darkest point.
Roero has come to finish it
.
He let his hands fall and relaxed his body.

‘Michele, let’s go.’ Fabrizio slipped the ladder down to him.

He climbed out. The slaves given him by the Grand Master crouched over the body of the guard. One of them prepared to club the fallen soldier’s head, but Fabrizio held him at the
wrist.

‘I told these two you’d grant them their freedom if they’d help you.’

The Africans watched Caravaggio like angry prey. They rolled the unconscious guard into the
guva
and shut the hatch.

‘I’d advise you not to write up their emancipation papers until they’ve rowed you to Sicily. Otherwise, they might just drop you in the sea.’ Fabrizio pulled him towards
the battlements.

A grappling iron anchored a rope to an empty sentry post. Fabrizio signalled for the Africans to climb over the wall. They went quietly into the darkness below, their forms indistinct against
the foaming water on the rocks.

‘The Venerable Council is going to expel you from the Order, Michele,’ Fabrizio said. ‘The Grand Master will have no choice but to extradite you to Rome.’

‘This rescue – it’s a risk for you.’

Fabrizio averted his eyes with the resignation of a man for whom all perils were past. ‘My mother has protected you all your life, Michele. I promised her I’d guard you in
Malta.’

Caravaggio slipped over the wall and held the rope. He gave Fabrizio a searching look. The nobleman smiled. ‘It’s like the games we played in my mother’s courtyard when we were
children. Keep the memory of those times with you, even if our other intimacies are painful to recall.’

‘I wanted you just as much. I’ve tried to forget that, but I can’t.’

‘Nothing is ever forgotten, Michele. It’s the curse of the world.’ Fabrizio gripped Caravaggio’s wrist. ‘Hold the rope under your arm. Push out with both legs at
once. Lower yourself down a few stones at a time.’

Caravaggio sensed tenderness in the strong hold Fabrizio had on his arm.

‘At the bottom, follow the slaves to the head of the point. There’s a boat waiting there. One of my sailors will steer you to Sicily.’

‘I shan’t forget this, Fabrizio.’

‘Neither shall Roero. Keep that in mind and let it inform your conduct. You’ll have him in pursuit now, as well as the Tomassonis.’ Fabrizio checked to be sure the guards of
the watch weren’t approaching. ‘When I was in prison, I plotted an escape. I wanted to run away from death. You, Michele, seem to pursue it.’

Caravaggio’s hands rubbed raw, as he measured the speed of his rappel. The sea in the harbour below seethed as if it were greedy for him. He made it down and followed the silent Africans
along the edge of the water. Behind him, he heard the grappling iron slap into the water where Fabrizio had tossed it.

A high-sided wooden rowing boat bounced at the end of the walkway. The slaves glanced along the foot of the fortress to the barred caves where they had been captive.

Fabrizio’s man prepared to cast off. ‘Get a move on, in the name of Christ,’ he hissed.

The slaves settled at the oars. The sailor shoved off and took up the tiller. Caravaggio craned towards the battlements for a sight of Costanza’s son.

Within an hour, the lantern lights of Malta and all the knights and the works he had painted there slipped beneath the horizon.

III

SICILY and NAPLES
The Head of Goliath
1608

8

T
he Flagellation of Christ

In the Palermo dawn, he was alone. The early light glimmered off the tacks attaching his canvas to its frame. But no companion watched the sun cross his face.

He lay on his front, fully dressed and with his arms outstretched, like a man who had been assaulted by an attacker approaching unseen from behind. In the heat of the summer, he had sweated
through the night, clothed and armed for a quick getaway in case his murderer should come. Shapes moved in the shadows and he tracked them, holding his breath. The shutters creaked as the wood
expanded in the heat of the first sunshine. Their every click and rasp made his heart thrash.

Perhaps his killers would come today.
I’d almost welcome the company.

He imagined the saints in the dawn of the day of their martyrdom. They had consolations unknown to him. They were certain of the fate of their souls. But when he pictured their deaths, he saw
the bodies they left behind. Slaughtered, bloodless meat.

He leaned over his tray of pigments. ‘Good morning, my only friends,’ he murmured. The clay dug near Siena, filled with iron and making a yellow-brown oil, or burned in a furnace for
the red-brown he loved to use; red ochre also from the Tuscan hills; St John’s White, made from quicklime by Florentine monks; green earth quarried near Verona; and the most expensive,
ultramarine blue, ground from lapis lazuli that was mined in the land of the Khans beyond Persia – he touched them all. They were like a cooling salve on a wound.

He descended the stairs to the kitchen. An old Franciscan monk laid a bowl of thin cabbage soup before him. ‘How’s our
Nativity
progressing, Maestro Michele?’

‘Almost done.’ Caravaggio had finished the canvas two days before. He lingered over it, fearful of what he might encounter if he were to leave his studio.

‘God bless you, Maestro. Where will you go when it’s completed?’

The minced cabbage in the soup was sparse. He noted the skin of a bean floating in the broth, but when he trawled his spoon through the dish he found no trace of the rest of it. ‘I
haven’t considered that, Brother Benedetto.’