A Name in Blood (38 page)

In the morning, Caravaggio went down to the waterfront. He strode with purpose away from the city, until he came to the narrow strand of Chiaia. The fishermen gathered around
their small boats, chattering with the eagerness of men who spent their nights riding alone on the darkness of the bay. They argued the price of their catch with the women and pulled handfuls of
grey shrimp and coral-pink octopus from their pails.

A man perched against one of the beached wherries. His stillness marked him out against the laughing fishermen. At Caravaggio’s approach, he rose and threw back his cloak. The fishermen
moved away when they saw the cross of the Order of the Knights of St John of Malta on his breast.

From the rocks above the beach, Caravaggio touched the skin beneath his good eye and pulled it down, the Neapolitan signal that asked,
Do you understand?

Roero licked at his lips and bared his teeth. As if to show that he too had learned the gestures of the city, he lifted his hand, the tips of all his fingers meeting and an insistent little
shake from the wrist.
Hurry up.

In his studio beneath the Stigliano Palace, Caravaggio completed the paintings for Cardinal Scipione faster than he had imagined possible. Three canvases, side by side, filling
out the figures on one as the paint dried on the others, then moving on to the next to lay in new details once the oils were stable enough.

The Inquisitor came upon him as he blocked in the body of a youth for the final canvas. The model, a kitchen boy from the palace staff, held a bag of apples from his outstretched arm and gazed
upon it mournfully. ‘What’s this? A sad still life with fruit?’ della Corbara said.

‘It doesn’t matter what he’s holding.’ Without coming from behind his curtain, Caravaggio adjusted the concave mirror he was using to project the boy’s torso.
‘I just want the weight of the fruit, so I can show the muscles of his arm working.’

Della Corbara twitched his lips, watching the light from the high lantern pale on the boy’s thin biceps. ‘I’m glad you came to see it my way.’

Caravaggio opened the curtain and lifted his chin.

‘Cardinal Scipione will be most pleased with me. Del Monte, too.’

Caravaggio gave a low, graceful bow. When he raised himself, his expression was placid and implacable. The Inquisitor was unnerved. ‘Carry on, Maestro,’ he mumbled. ‘We sail
north for Rome in two days. I’ll see you at the boat.’

‘I can’t wait.’

The artist’s insolent tone made della Corbara halt. He regarded him with curiosity, then impatience.

The young model held the sword at a gentle angle across his legs, while Caravaggio worked at the slash of light down its centre and along its outer edge. Costanza watched from
the foot of the steps. Caravaggio hadn’t painted this boy’s features. The face she saw on the canvas was of someone else. She couldn’t quite place the pursed lips and pitying
eyes. At the end of his foreshortened arm, the boy held a head. It was, as yet, without detail. From the darkness of the background, it emerged as a mass of unkempt hair and a beard. The base
colour of the face was already drying as a yellowish brown.

‘It’s
David with the Head of Goliath
, is it not, Michele?’ she said.

Caravaggio went on with his work. ‘Quite so, my lady.’

She had seen many Davids before, but never one like this. David was usually a triumphant figure, the helmeted warrior of old Maestro Donatello or the muscular giant by the divine Michelangelo
which she had seen in a square in Florence. ‘The way you’ve painted it, David looks so sad.’

Costanza tried to remember how Caravaggio had appeared as a child.
There’s more than a trace in the painting
, she thought,
of the boy I took in so many years ago.
‘Is
it you, Michele?’

He rounded on her. She stepped away in surprise. The wound on his cheek, the twitching eye, the lowered shoulders, his scars all threatened her.

‘The boy looks like you used to.’ She gestured towards the canvas with a quivering finger.

‘You’re mistaken, my lady.’

The model broke his pose and reached for the fruit in a bowl beside him. He tossed a grape into the air and caught it in his mouth.

‘Keep still,’ Caravaggio said.

He circled his brush on his palette to load the bristles. ‘My lady, I must get on with my work. I’ll be here all night as it is. I need to be finished in time to sail with Father
della Corbara tomorrow.’

‘Will the paint be dry by then? Surely there’s no time.’

‘My lady, please.’ He shuffled his feet, seeming embarrassed to have raised his voice. ‘There’re ways to pack the canvases so that the work won’t be damaged, even
if the oils aren’t quite dry. Now, please, your Grace.’

As she reached the step, he bent to build the highlights of the cloth draped from the boy’s shoulder. She was sure this
David
would be a masterpiece. It would overturn the
conventions by which the biblical king had so long been portrayed. She watched the muscles in Caravaggio’s back move under his light smock. She felt such love for this man, whose genius might
even rescue Fabrizio. She recognized love, too, in the intensity of his labour.
It doesn’t matter what happened all those years ago. My boys loved each other and that love endures.

‘Michele,’ she called.

His head dropped back and he sighed with impatience.

‘Thank you.’

His eyes were shadowed black by the lantern above him, but she was drawn to them. She wondered if he wanted her to enter those dark passages, to follow them right to the heart that had so often
been hidden from her.

The boy launched another grape. He laughed as it bounced off his lip and rolled across the floor.

‘Good night, my lady.’ Caravaggio went back to his canvas.

Beneath the loggia of the Stigliano Palace, the cart was loaded with his few possessions. Caravaggio tossed a rolled canvas into the back and came over to Costanza. He was bent
at the waist. His mid-section seemed to have collapsed into his hips. He looked as though completing the paintings for Scipione had expended an entire lifetime’s energy.

‘You have your safe passage from Cardinal del Monte?’ Costanza took his hands in hers.

‘I have it, my lady.’

‘In a day you’ll be in Rome, safe from harm, pardoned for – for that fight. A free man.’

The Pope might forgive me my sins
, Caravaggio thought,
but it’s to God and to Lena that I must make my most earnest supplications.
He bowed to Costanza.

She drew him close and touched her mouth to the scar on his cheek. A dart of loneliness pricked at him.

‘You have the paintings, too, for Cardinal Scipione?’ she said.

He reached over the side of the cart and tapped his hand against the tan weave of the canvas, tied with twine. ‘The
St John
, a
Magdalene
, and
David
. I’ll pack
them properly once we get to the boat. I’m in too much haste now to reach the port.’ He swung up onto the seat beside the carter. As the mules lurched forward in the traces, he touched
his hand to Costanza’s shoulder. ‘You’ll see Fabrizio soon, my lady.’

‘God willing. Then we’ll never be parted again. I’ll never ask anything more of you. Since you were a boy, you’ve made such sacrifices for me.’

He protested, but she held up her palm to stop him. ‘I understand that you left my household for Fabrizio’s sake. I can hardly know what it cost you. You’ve nothing more to
pay.’

Soon enough that’ll be so
, he thought. His injured eye wavered and she was a flickering blur, her hands over her heart until the cart went out of the gate.

The mules turned down to the beach. Caravaggio watched the bay curve towards the sap-green haze of Posillipo. The water was a vibrant shimmer of gold. The sea held his fate now.

When the carter reached the bottom of the road, he made to turn for Santa Lucia and the port. Caravaggio held his wrist. ‘Not that way.’

With a shrug, the man yanked at the reins and took him inland. They went uphill and skirted behind the Stigliano Palace and the edge of the Spanish Quarter. Caravaggio directed the driver to a
gate in a long plain façade. He whispered a few words to the man, gave him a bag of coins, and jumped down. He went through the gate and crossed a sunny grove of mandarin and lemon. He
murmured the melody of the old Bolognese song.
You are the star that shines. More than any other lady.
At the far side of the courtyard, four armed men leaned against the wall of a chapel.
Their faces were stern and hostile. Above them, a red flag dangled in the humid stillness. The white cross of the Order of the Knights of Malta.

In her study, Costanza wrote to the Grand Master of the Knights. She informed him that Caravaggio had returned to Rome under the protection of del Monte and would take up a
position in Scipione’s household. She wanted the man who held the key to Fabrizio’s freedom to know that she had secured an influential ally in the Pope’s retinue and that she
believed her son must now be freed.
Most humbly I salute you and pray God for your every happiness
, she signed off.
From Naples, July 18, 1610
.