A Name in Blood (37 page)

Caravaggio glanced in apology at the boy. ‘Humble, devoted and obliged,’ he said, as he dipped the quill again. ‘Your creature.’

Del Monte drew a paper from his sleeve. It was bound with a red twine and sealed with the imprint of his ring. He handed it to Caravaggio. ‘Here’s your safe-conduct to Rome.
I’m going to leave it here with you. It’ll get you through the port inspection when you arrive. Don’t use it until I tell you it’s all right to return.’

Caravaggio balanced the document flat in his hands, his features amazed and wary. To del Monte his touch against the paper seemed as delicate as a man caressing his lover’s face.

10

D
avid with the Head of Goliath

Caravaggio pulled away as Costanza touched his wounds with the cloth. Tomassoni’s dagger still hummed inside his head.
But I’ve beaten its summons
, he thought
.
He had
the letter of safe passage from del Monte. He would return soon to Rome and to the one woman for whom it was worth living. He had signed his name to a humiliating letter for Scipione, but it would
merit the humbling if it brought him to Lena.
Your creature.
He was tired of life in the basement of Costanza’s cousin.

‘Wait, Michele.’ The Marchesa lifted the cloth again.

‘You don’t have to do this, my lady.’

‘The wound has to be cleaned.’ She went delicately along the scab that drew down from his eye to his lip. ‘If it gets infected –’

‘You’re worried I might die?’

‘An infection would . . .’ She halted, hearing accusation in his voice. ‘Michele, what do you mean?’

‘I’m going to live. I’m going back to Rome.’ His defiance was edged with resentment and frustration.
I’ve been forced into danger for this woman and she has kept
me always servile, humiliated.

‘Of course you are, Michele.’

‘I’ll see to it that Scipione orders the knights to free Fabrizio.’ His sarcasm was undisguised.

She threw the cloth into the ewer of water on her lap. Her face was thin and pale, like a sketch with a fine quill and watered ink. Concern for Fabrizio pared her down and sucked her from the
inside.

‘You don’t have to deny it,’ he said. ‘You don’t have to pretend to be worried about me.’

‘That’s an awful thing to say.’

‘It stands to reason you’d be worried. You’d have nothing to bargain with if I was dead. It’s only natural. You’re Fabrizio’s mother, after all.’

‘And what am I to
you
?’ Her voice was loud. Her body quivered. She raised the ewer and dashed it to the floor.

Her shriek punctured his anger. He thought of the young woman who had taken him in when his father died. She had been with him all this time. She had understood him with as little effort as Lena
had.

She murmured, ‘It’s the least you can do for Fabrizio after what you did to him.’

What does she mean?
he wondered.
Something that happened on Malta?

She saw his confusion and added, ‘When you were boys.’

She thinks I seduced Fabrizio.
He was about to spit out the words he knew would hurt her – that Fabrizio had been the one who wanted
his
touch – but his throat closed
up. He thought back to Fabrizio’s chamber almost thirty years before. Who had reached out first? Perhaps his memory had shielded him from his guilt.
I always thought I sacrificed myself
for him, that I allowed Fabrizio’s father to believe I was the one who made love to his blameless son.
The wounds in Caravaggio’s face stung and his neck twitched.
Was I telling
the truth? Is this all because of me?
He blinked.
No, surely that’s not how it was.

Costanza sucked her upper lip and squeezed her fists together in her lap. ‘Forgive me. Yes, you’ll return to Rome. You’re right.’

He would leave her and she would be alone.
What’s worse
–
to have a price on your head as I do
, he thought,
or to know that at any moment the boy who grew from your
own body may meet his death?

‘Those who love you the most see you more clearly than you see yourself,’ she said.

‘I’m a painter. Who sees better than I?’

‘A lover, a mother – or God. His sight is clearest of all. With Fabrizio, you were a boy and you behaved as a boy, but you felt a man’s guilt. You can’t allow yourself to
be forgiven.’

‘But Fabrizio —’

‘If you don’t know that he loves you, then you know nothing.’

He pushed the heel of his hand against his brow. ‘We have sinned so much, my lady, Fabrizio and me.’

Costanza leaned close and kissed his wounds.

The Baptist’s plump foot rested on the log at the fringe of the canvas. Caravaggio edged the toes with a deep umber, filling the nails with grime. He stepped back from
the painting, the first of the works he would take to Rome for Cardinal Scipione. The young St John reclined on a stump, his fleshy midriff twisting against his staff and a flowing red drapery.
Beside him, the ram that was the symbol of the saint reached up to eat a leaf from a tree.

‘He’s a bit chubby for an ascetic who lived off locusts in the desert, don’t you think?’

Caravaggio dropped his palette and brush. Spinning towards the stairs beyond the studio door, he unsheathed his dagger.

‘A fat little saint. It’s almost conventional. Back in Rome everyone’s doing dirty toenails now, just like you. I couldn’t even call that a typical touch of Caravaggio
anymore.’ Leonetto della Corbara grinned as he approached the canvas. Guiding the dagger back to its sheath, he embraced Caravaggio. He held on as the artist pulled away. ‘But I imagine
the painters who copy your style in Rome wouldn’t be quite so poised to drop their work and take up their weapon.’

‘Yes, I’m the real thing.’

The Inquisitor slipped his hands into the sleeves of his black habit. His beard, unshaven for a day or two, cut dark across his grey skin. His eyes were avid and hesitant, like a man unsure of a
woman yet desperate for love. ‘I was happy to hear from Cardinal del Monte that the reports of your death were as exaggerated as Maestro Baglione’s reputation.’ A nervous, failed
laugh. ‘Even so, infections can set in, when a man is wounded. I’m doubly pleased to see that you still live.’

‘Perhaps I’m already dead. I seem to be meeting so many ghosts from my past. Del Monte, and now you.’

‘Maybe you’ve gone to heaven.’

‘I wouldn’t expect to see you there.’

Della Corbara looked hurt. It was a tactic he had employed before, but Caravaggio was surprised to see the expression linger.

The Inquisitor went to a curved-wood chair. ‘Sit down, Maestro.’ The Inquisitor’s face was grave and for once it seemed he didn’t pretend. Caravaggio gripped the arms of
the chair tight.

‘Michele, Lena is dead.’

Caravaggio doubled forward as though a dagger gutted him.

Della Corbara laid a hand on his shaking shoulder. The Inquisitor’s touch was trembling and exploratory, like a rat seeking food.

‘I don’t believe you.’ The wounds in Caravaggio’s face seemed to break open and burn. ‘How did she die?’

‘She caught a chill standing in the Piazza Navona with her vegetables. Her lungs were weak, it seems. Within a few days . . .’ The verminous hand crept to the back of
Caravaggio’s neck. ‘But come now, Michele. She was twenty-eight years old. It’s not such a young age for Our Lord to take to His breast a poor woman in lowly circumstances.
Let’s talk about how I can help you with Cardinal Scipione.’

‘What do I need your help for now? Lena’s dead. What is there for me in Rome?’

‘Redemption. Greatness as an artist.’

Caravaggio shoved the Inquisitor’s hand away.

‘Very well, how about your head on your shoulders?’ della Corbara said. ‘Because it’s clear that here you’ll be dead very soon.’ He jabbed his finger into
Caravaggio’s scarred cheek.

The artist yelled with pain.

‘I’m skilled in torture, Michele, but I’m not merciless.’

Caravaggio felt as though his muscles were wasting by the second. Breathing seemed an intolerable burden. His face contorted as if he were an angry child trying to squeeze out a tear. ‘She
had a beautiful soul.’

Della Corbara’s hand circled Caravaggio’s neck, like a seducer drawing him in for a kiss. ‘Come to Rome. It’s what you want. For yourself.’

‘I don’t want anything anymore.’

‘What about your paintings? What do you want people to think of when they see your works? Innocence and the souls of the martyrs? Or murder?’ The hand was in Caravaggio’s hair
now, caressing. ‘Come to Rome and rescue your paintings. Even if you think yourself not worth saving, your work must be.’

Della Corbara toyed with a mortar and pestle on the table. ‘You work from nature. By showing what you see, you reveal the deepest meaning of your subject. But what if you were commissioned
to paint the Council of Ten that rules over the Republic of Venice?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘By a quirk of the Serenissima’s history, there are in fact seventeen men on the Council of Ten. If you painted the Council, would you show ten men, so that everyone knew it was the
famous Council of Ten? Or would you paint seventeen men and allow everyone to wonder what it was that you had depicted?’

‘You’re trying to trick me?’

‘I’m an Inquisitor. You may be assured that I’m always trying to trick you.’ He rose stiffly. ‘But as Leonetto, the merchant’s son from Salerno, I want to
warn you. If you think nature can be observed and painted on a canvas, you forget that people’s secrets aren’t so easily recognized. There’s no chiaroscuro in the heart, no
radiance emerging from the shadows. The soul lies entirely in darkness. Only God brings it to the light.’

He went to the door. ‘After you left Malta, the Cardinal-Nephew called me to Rome to report on what had happened. I came to know Lena there. I told her stories about you. I gave her
absolution before her death, Michele. She’s in the company of Christ.’

Caravaggio felt his chest tighten. He saw the trap that had been laid for him. Not by della Corbara or Scipione, nor by Tomassoni or Roero. It was set by the Almighty and he felt its jaws about
to snap on him.

‘If you wish to enter Heaven and be reunited with Lena, you must redeem yourself in the eyes of the Church. Otherwise, you know where you’re going.’ The Inquisitor poked his
index and little finger downwards – the sign of the devil. ‘Finish the paintings for Cardinal Scipione. Then you may come to Rome and be forgiven before God. I’ll be in Naples for
two weeks on other business for the Holy Inquisition. Return with me to Rome. We’ll pray together for Lena’s soul in front of the portrait you made of her as the
Madonna of
Loreto
.’

Della Corbara mounted the steps. He was out of sight when Caravaggio heard his voice. ‘Meanwhile, I’ll pray for you. You look about ready to die. But don’t let my prayers be in
vain.’

Caravaggio stared into the mirror, preparing for his self-portrait. His mouth hung open, as though he had just sprinted some distance and needed more than the usual breath. His
damaged eye wavered above the wound in his cheek, the image in the mirror blurred, and he squinted in frustration. The horror of what he saw crept across his features. His father had watched death
summon his spirit from the plague room – it was coming for him too.

He shambled across the room like a man woken too early. The basement felt like a dungeon. He needed air. He went up to the gates of the palace and leaned against the piers of the entrance,
breathing hard.

A group of women came over the hill from the Royal Palace and the old quarters, dancing and singing. ‘The blood of St Gennaro liquefied,’ they called out. ‘God bless the saint
and his miracle.’

It’s a sign
, he thought.
You know what you have to do.

One of the Stigliano porters came out of the gatehouse and watched the women go by. ‘The blood of the saint flows. We’re all saved for another year,’ he said.

The evening breeze brought the scent of salt on the air from the bay. Caravaggio watched the women dance down to the incoming tide on the beach. ‘Let us give thanks for the blood,’
he said. He went back to his studio to write a message.