A Name in Blood (5 page)

‘I’ll bite it, you nasty little strumpet.’ He spoke with some humour, but the girl backed away, all her effrontery crushed and quailing. Onorio’s features went dead, like
a painting in which the artist forgot to dab a spot of light on the eyeball.

Mario took the whore’s elbow. She flicked the tips of her fingers off her chin in Onorio’s direction. Mario squeezed her backside and took her into the alley, laughing.

Onorio lifted his head, swivelled and sneezed. He brushed a trace of mucus off Caravaggio’s shoulder. ‘Never mind. You already have the same diseases I have.’

Caravaggio gestured after Mario and the whore. ‘I hope I don’t have whatever she’s carrying.’

‘You will. Soon enough.’ Onorio wiped his nose on his cuff.

‘Mario and me? Not since he married.’

‘He has two wives. One cancels out the other, thus making him single and available.’

‘I hope that isn’t the kind of mathematics you use when you design your buildings.’

‘Don’t worry. My job is to make the façades look good. I rely on the stonemasons to keep them from falling down.’

Along the Corso, the Arch of Portugal glimmered in the torchlight. It marked the southern edge of the Evil Garden, where the whores lived by order of the Pope and where artists came to be among
their own low type. Caravaggio halted beneath its pillars. He felt some force preventing him from crossing that border, as though he were unworthy of walking among the decent classes, away from the
harlots and pimps and slumlords. Anyone who saw him outside the purlieu of the Evil Garden would shrink from him as if a wild beast had come down from the hills.

‘What’re you going to do about Ranuccio?’ Like a villain, Onorio measured his pitch to reach no further than his conspirator’s ears. ‘The money – the
bet.’

Some shred of recollection told Caravaggio that Ranuccio had cheated. Or had he created that memory, moulding it from his rage? ‘It was a bad call. The ball was in. He didn’t beat
me. The game’s void. I’m not giving a single, dirty
baioccho
to that bastard.’ His adrenaline pounded, that familiar sensation of abandon, always accompanied by an absolute
conviction that he was right, no matter how his anger shocked those around him.

Onorio held Caravaggio’s hand. ‘Ranuccio’s family is tight with the Pope, Michele.’ The pulse in Onorio’s thumb was syncopated and uneven against Caravaggio’s
palm. Nothing about him was regular or natural. ‘His brothers fought in the papal armies. His father’s head of the guard at Castel Sant’Angelo. You hear me? The Pope’s own
fortress. They keep order for the Holy Father in this neighbourhood.’

‘Doing a great job, aren’t they? You can’t walk down the street without some thug taking a swipe at you.’

‘The Pope doesn’t care about crime. He cares about riots against the government. The Tomassoni family prevents such trouble. So what if Ranuccio plays the tough guy. So what if he
cuts up his whores. When the Pope wants a sword to fight his corner, Ranuccio will lift his blade and say, “Hail, Holy Father, those who’re about to stab someone in the back salute
you.” If the Tomassonis run this quarter like a bunch of gangsters, that isn’t the Vatican’s problem.’ Onorio leaned in close. ‘But if you don’t stay on
Ranuccio’s good side, it’s
your
problem.’

Caravaggio withdrew his hand. ‘I can handle him.’

‘It isn’t just
him
. It’s his brothers and his father and everyone in this neighbourhood who ever got a job from them or who ever asked them to take an enemy into a dark
alley and leave him there with his guts around his ankles.’

Caravaggio moaned and puffed out his cheeks.

‘People say
I’m
crazy, Michele, and I admit there are times when everything goes red, you know what I mean.’ Onorio leered. ‘But you’re taking a big risk.
You’re my friend. I can’t let you do it.’

‘Be there with me when I fight him.’

Onorio stepped back. Caravaggio’s neck shivered, trepidation and passion and wild disturbance streaming through every muscle. His whole frame was in motion, even as he held himself still.
He felt as though he had risen above his own body and watched it, all his actions under the control of some other power.

‘Dear friend, I’ve seen you throw rocks at men from only a couple of paces and club them on the head with the flat side of your sword.’ Onorio pursed his lips and blew.
‘But fighting Ranuccio? You shouldn’t even joke about it.’

Caravaggio quivered in the lightless doorway. Night had come in full to the Evil Garden. He merged with it until he was unsure if he had stepped into a dream where he took on powers beyond those
of a human.

‘You can’t just paint over a killing, Michele.
Pentimenti
, repentances you call them, the changes you make to the angle of an arm or the line of a neck on the canvas. A fight
with a man like Ranuccio can’t be repented. It’ll end in blood.’

Caravaggio’s breath trembled. He was coming back from the phantom unreality, descending back into his body, displacing the blackness of night from his limbs.

‘I’ll stand with you, if it comes to violence,’ Onorio said. ‘But do me a favour and don’t do it. I’ve a wife and five children to consider.’

‘All right,’ Caravaggio whispered. The night was around him, but no longer in him.

‘Leave Ranuccio to his whores.’ Onorio laughed. ‘Syphilis will take care of that dickhead. Pay him the money.’

‘You’re right. I’ll pay him.’ They embraced, laughing.

Two men passed beyond the doorway, moving with purpose down the Corso. ‘It’s little Prospero and that bugger Gaspare.’ Onorio called out, ‘Hey, Prosperino.’

The men turned. They were short and brightly clothed. Prospero was a Lombard like Caravaggio, a decade older and thick in the hips. He wore a full beard that ran grey along the jaw.

‘Michele, I’m pleased to see you out and about.’ Prospero’s bulging eyes were set almost in the sides of his narrow head. His mouth looped from ear to ear beneath a long
upper lip, like one of the ancient grotesques he copied into his paintings from the walls of Rome’s catacombs, a face ready to laugh at the filthiest of jokes. He reached up to slap both
hands onto Caravaggio’s shoulders. ‘If you’re strolling on the Corso, it means you’re not in jail and I won’t have to bail you out again.’

‘The night is young. Give him a chance to get some trouble started.’ Onorio took the end of Gaspare’s moustache in his fingers and pulled upwards. ‘Did that hurt, little
finocchio
?’

Gaspare smoothed his moustache back into the horn shape he liked. ‘Just a bit.’

‘Write me a poem about it, then. Your poetry is painful to hear, so its subject should be pain.’

Gaspare smiled, blinking as though at some deep, private pleasure. The skin beneath his eyes and at the sides of his nose was red and flaking. ‘Here’s a rhyme: If Onorio tries to
touch my mous
tache
, I’ll take his fat ass and give it a th
rash
.’

They applauded and Onorio shoved the poet playfully.

‘Bravo, the bullshit Boccaccio of the ribald remark.’ Prospero invited Gaspare to give a bow. ‘Now, come on, lads, Fillide’s entertaining a few discerning gentlemen at
her place on the Via Frattina. Who’s up for whores, gambling, song and dance?’

Fillide twisted side to side in counterpoint to her skirt. She held the scarlet taffeta before her and let it rustle in accompaniment to her laughter. At the neckline, white
lace ruched in two concave descents to meet in a point between her breasts. She had arranged it so that the upper third of her dark areola showed through. ‘What do you think,
ragazzi
?’

Onorio went for a bottle of wine on the table. ‘All that red cloth. You look like a cardinal with big tits.’

‘Maybe it was a cardinal who bought it for her?’ Prospero reached up to give the courtesan a light kiss on the cheek. With a dip of his neck, he scratched his beard over her
cleavage. ‘One of her gentleman clients?’

She clipped her knuckles against the crown of his head.

Caravaggio entered with Gaspare.
Scipione recognized Fillide’s portrait. Did he buy her these rich clothes?
he wondered. He surveyed the room, apprehensive, as though the hedonistic
Cardinal-Nephew might be reclining voluptuously on a divan.

A silver candelabra dripped wax onto the Oriental carpet spread across the table. The paintings and wall hangings floated in darkness. In the far corner, a heavy white curtain shrouded the side
of the bed. A convex mirror at the foot of the mattress disclosed the elongated form of a reclining man. He wore a loose white shirt and red hose and he rested on one elbow, attentive to the
newcomers. He caught Caravaggio’s stare in the mirror. At first, his face was like a dangerous animal at bay, then a scornful recognition leeched out of it.

‘The one who gave you that dress –’ Caravaggio spoke directly towards the mirror ‘– is no gentleman.’

The man on the bed flicked his index finger against his earlobe twice.
You faggot
.

A black-haired woman came from the kitchen. Her skin was so pale the candle painted it like red cadmium on a new canvas. She carried a tureen of boiled mutton.

Gaspare helped her set it on the table. ‘Allow me,
mia cara
Menica,’ he said.

‘Are you going to write a poem about how you’d like to stick your boiled meat in her soup dish?’ Fillide took Gaspare’s chin in her left hand. Her ring finger hooked
upwards, its unnatural angle a memento of a dislocation by a rough client. ‘Spare us, eh, Gaspare.’

Fillide’s round face had the slight fatness of a girl. Curling at the temples, her amber hair glowed against her skin. A fresh rose pink bloomed along the flesh of her collarbone and in
the hollow at the bottom of her neck. Her underlip was so full that it alone would have made the fortune of any other courtesan. She had been Caravaggio’s Judith and his St Catherine. She was
the Magdalene he was working on now. As she doubled over in harsh laughter, he thought her more human than the paint he had spilled for her. But only just.

Menica came to Caravaggio and stood on his feet with her arms around his neck. Stretching up on her toes, she brought her mouth close to his ear. ‘Ranuccio’s on the bed, Michele. He
was talking about a fight – with you.’

He stroked Menica’s cheek. Her skin was growing rough after her six years as a whore. Kissing her forehead, he called across the room: ‘Prudenza was looking for you at the inn,
Ranuccio.’

Onorio stiffened and reached for his dagger. Fillide glared at Menica. A taut laugh came from the bed as the curtain drew back.

Ranuccio swung his feet to the floor. He scratched inside his hose and found something that he flicked away with long slim fingers. His beard and hair were brown with yellow highlights, like
straw rotted to damp silage. He reached for the bottle in Onorio’s hand. ‘Give it up, Longhi,’ he said. He gave another tug before Onorio let the bottle go.

‘It’s funny, see.’ Ranuccio held Fillide from behind, smelling her hair. ‘This one tried to cut Prudenza up.’

‘What do you expect?’ the girl said. ‘I found you naked in the strumpet’s bed.’

‘ “Whore, I’m going to scar you everywhere,”’ Ranuccio bellowed in a mocking falsetto. ‘You should’ve heard her,
ragazzi
. She was a fury.
“You dirty whore, I want to cut you. I want to cut you.”’

Caravaggio interrupted their embrace. ‘You’ll leave her be.’

Ranuccio slipped his hand slowly out of Fillide’s dress and moved her aside. ‘You owe me, painter. Remember your debt?’

‘He’ll pay you.’ Onorio slapped Fillide’s backside. ‘But now let’s have some music and a dance.’ He picked up a Spanish guitar from the corner and
tossed it to Caravaggio.

As Caravaggio tuned up, Ranuccio peed loudly in a bucket beside the door. With the first notes of ‘
Ti parti, cor mio caro
’, he hauled up his hose and moved over to Fillide. He
kicked into the
villanella
with a showy step and took her with him. Gaspare rounded Menica, courtly and stiff. Onorio pulled Prospero laughing to his feet and they spun across the
boards.

Caravaggio picked at the strings and sang the old Bolognese song in a clear, deep voice:

Ranuccio whistled and nuzzled Fillide’s neck.
That buffoon would reel about like this to a funeral dirge,
Caravaggio thought.

Ranuccio slowed his step and drew Fillide to him.

Ranuccio and Fillide went to the bed. She pushed him onto the mattress and climbed on top of him, pulling the curtain shut.

Onorio stamped and clapped. ‘Play louder, Michele.’ Caravaggio lifted his voice above the grunts and cackles from the bed.