The Ruby Ring (9 page)

As
I
have always seen you.” A smile played across his lips. It made his dark eyes dance in the light that the moon cast across the two of them through the window. He leaned nearer, clutching her hand more tightly. “I know of a woman, a lady’s maid in the Chigi villa. Someone I met through my brother.” He seemed suddenly uncomfortable but continued nonetheless. “I showed her a courtesy once with regard to Antonio. She says she owes me a favor. Tomorrow morning at dawn, come with me to the stables. There just might be something I can do to change your opinion, and your mind, concerning the weight you give my brother versus your interest in Raffaello.”

She smiled as well, feeling so safe and happy in Donato’s company. There was nothing she would not do for him.

T
HE MORNING AIR
was crisply cold, and a thick fog rolled around their ankles and around their heavy cloaks. Passing an oxcart heavily laden with baskets full of vegetables on the way to market, Margherita and Donato stepped out of Trastevere. Each step brought them closer toward the elaborate, three-story Chigi stables.

The important facade was an architectural work of art itself, where Signor Chigi had actually held parties to boast of the building’s unique splendor. It was an imposing, square, sandy stone building ornamented with intricate cornices, and sleek pilasters, and a rounded, stone-trimmed gate. In the courtyard beyond the large carved door, and hidden from the street, was a splashing fountain designed in the manner of a waterfall, the ribbons of water falling into a circle of marble goddess statues.

She waited quietly with Donato amid lush fig and plane trees, and rich emerald vines of ivy overhanging the high walls of weathered stone. Margherita was unable to still her racing heart. She could barely believe the opulent world she had entered, so oddly close to their modest bakery.

A beautiful young woman crossed the courtyard to meet them.

“Buon giorno,”
she whispered to Donato in a tone that seemed to imply something. Margherita saw that she was older and startlingly elegant, with her wide gold-green eyes, and honey-colored hair smooth and long beneath a soft cap stitched with silver thread. Her sweeping dress, of claret-colored silk, with gold and silver embroidery, had tight sleeves and a very tight bodice, enough to highlight a willowy, elegant form beneath.

There would be only a moment or two, she explained. They dare not risk more. Early or not, one of the other servants or a page might discover them. Then she and Donato both would likely lose their positions with the Chigi family. The woman led them silently from the courtyard. Margherita followed behind them, feeling as if she were not so much walking as floating. Something drew her forward past the juniper trees, magnificent statues, and Grecian urns. They went through a small side door and into the palazzo itself. Margherita’s heart raced so that she almost could not catch her breath. Never in her life had she done anything so impetuous, and been rewarded with the sight of such grandeur!

The hallway they entered was low, shadowy, and silent. Margherita clutched Donato’s hand tightly to keep from making any sound. They rounded a corner and abruptly entered a large, magnificently frescoed room, facing out to the large formal gardens and the snaking Tiber beyond. Margherita stepped back, stifling a little gasp with the back of her hand. Grand and imposing, the frescoes rose up before her. One in particular drew her gaze. It was the image of a magnificent woman, her hair flying out behind her as she rode in a chariot drawn by two dolphins. Around her were small boys with Cupid’s bows and arrows aimed directly at the heart of the beautiful sea nymph. All of it seemed to jump out of the work and into her emotions. Such beauty and grace, yet such power and authority! It was the mythological figure Galatea, but the effect of her being painted in pale, soothing colors, her hair loose and flowing, was to make her seem a kind of everywoman. Raphael had envisioned her, not grandly, but humanly. A sudden rush of admiration shook her, and Margherita was breathless. She had no idea Raphael might be so sensitive, or perceptive.

“They say she is modeled on one of Signor Chigi’s mistresses, Imperia,” the girl informed them in a careful whisper. “And I can tell you that the artist has made her exactly how she is in life—her face is exactly as I saw her only yesterday. Though she is in less favor now that he has had another child with his other mistress, Francesca.” The girl glanced around then. “That is all the time we dare take in here. But the debt for what happened—is that now paid?”

“Fully,” Donato returned quietly.

She nodded silently and led them out of the magnificent chamber, the hem of her fine silk dress whispering along the polished marble floor of the passageway before them, like the edge of a claret-colored cloud.

“I cannot believe you had seen something so magnificent as this before and not told any of us at home,” Margherita whispered as they walked alone back toward the stables.

“I had not seen it before.”

“And yet you knew it was here?”

“It was described to me.”

“But who would tell a stableman about a place like that? People like us would never be invited there by anyone but another servant—”

Yet as she asked, the answer was before her, reflected in Donato’s kind eyes. She saw who had found favor with the pretty servant girl above his station, and who had seen these frescoes with her before today. The same one who, by so doing, had betrayed the friend from Trastevere he had claimed to love all his life. Margherita felt her blood go cold. She was dizzy as the image of Antonio in the arms of this worldly servant girl flashed before her. She had known there were others, but to see one of them, and to have her be so elegant and beautiful . . . Bitterness at a betrayal she had not expected hit her squarely, then twisted like a dagger. Unable to control her tears, she tried to wipe them away with the back of her hand as Donato brought her against his chest.

“He is my brother and I love him. But I am in agreement with your father,” Donato murmured, smoothing her hair. “Do not give up the possibility of something extraordinary in your life for a man who can never be all that you deserve.”

So much was swirling in her head, and she could not help but wonder what might lay beyond life here in Trastevere.

A
CANDLE FLAME
flickered in the library of Raphael’s narrow three-story house on the Via dei Coronari. It was a sanctuary of gilded wood paneling, heavy Portuguese painted furniture, and silver candlesticks. The overwhelming fragrance that met him when he returned home so late tonight, and every other night, was of linseed oil and richly fragrant stew warming, just beyond, in the kitchen. The newly completed panels he kept there beckoned him more than a dish of sweet cooked veal. Supper was provided by a full-faced girl, with pretty light-gray eyes. She did his marketing, prepared his meals, laid out his wine cup and plate, then pulled in the long shutters before she left him alone to dine in solitude.

In addition to Elena di Francesco Guazzi, who cooked what he liked and kept order in his house, Raphael possessed two of his own liveried attendants, as well as several fine horses that were housed and cared for at the Chigi stables. He also employed a fencing master, a dancing instructor to keep him current with the latest nuance added to the pavane, and a personal valet. But only the valet, a silent, sloe-eyed boy named Ludovico, dwelled in the house with him. Ludovico laid out clean clothes for the
mastro
in the morning, assisted him in dressing, then shaved the stubble of beard that he often was too busy to realize had grown.

By day, Raphael belonged to his benefactors. He painted for them, ate with them, joked with them, flattered them, and strove to please them. But here, on the Via dei Coronari, he craved privacy. Even the women who passed through his life, he did not like to bring here—mainly preferring the brothels around the Bocca della Verit, in the little labyrinth of lanes there called the Bordelletto. Here, he needed some bit of the boy remembered, instead of the artistic commodity he had become.

Use the cerulean blue for that, but only a touch, Raffaello. It will make the eyes more limpid. More believable . . .

Feeling his father’s presence with him suddenly, he allowed the memory in just a little further. The great full, dark beard. Long, tapered fingers, the nail beds stained with color. Eyes that were bold and dark, possessed by work. And always, the odor of sweat and paint swirling wildy around him.

But can I not go out with the other boys, Padre mio? They have asked so often. What if they no longer ask and I wind up with no friends at all?

One day everyone shall be your friend, my son! You are an artist, Raphael! That is your future, your destiny! I have seen your wor
k—
I know well the talent there. Waste it not on trifles, and you shall be a mastro far greater than I could ever dream of being!

But will I not be a man with a happy life as well? I have no friends.
We
have no friends . . .

Your life will be your art! And art will be your life, as it is my own. Only that.

But what if I want more? What if I want what you had with my mother?

Love is not for you, Raffaello mio. Matters of the heart would only stymie your talent . . . impede what you are meant to become, as it did me. But the res
t—
the adoration, the piles of gold, . . . and s, the wome
n—
that all shall follow. Expect to claim the greatness that lays even now at your fingertips, Raphael! Expect it, and seize it boldly, as if it has only ever belonged to you!

Loving my mother wa
s—
a mistake?
Raphael could still hear his own boyish voice ask, and his own words echo back hauntingly. Profound. Painful. Loving her and having me was a mistake? That was what he was meant to ask, but even at the age of fourteen, he knew he would not have been able to bear the reply.

If your mother had not found me, Raffaello, there is no telling where this world might have taken me, and what sort of artistic commissions I might have been offered by now, far beyond the court of Urbino . . .

The bitter memory of a man whose life was punctuated by regret . . . At that point in the recollection, Raphael sank wearily into a stiff armchair of upholstered red velvet fringed in gold, set before his carved wood desk. Other than the day they buried him, it was his most vivid—and the most painful—memory of his father. The call to greatness—the phrase that had spoken the loudest—had defined Raphael from that impressionable day forward.

It had also shaped the relationships he had sought—and those he had avoided.

His hand was calloused, his body, his arm, and his fingers were numb and aching from a day of sketches, painting, and frescoes. The chair in which he sat faced a massive desk inlaid with mother-of-pearl and supported by four lions in black wood. Beneath it was a rich Persian carpet softening a dark, polished floor. Raphael was alone here amid the candle lamps, and the echoing silence around him—for the first time in many days—was compelling.

. . .And the eyes, Raffaello, done so vividly as you can do them, ah! Now that is what shall always make your paintings unforgettable! The eyes must be unforgettable! Paint your women as you feel them, and you shall need no other lover!

A stray cat that he fed jumped up onto the surface of his writing table then and stretched beside an uneaten chunk of bread and a slice of Prosciutto di Parma, chasing away the last of his memories. He swatted the cat away absently, but the straggly tabby only returned.
This is what I deserve,
he thought,
for having been soft with this mangy little creature when it had first come to my door.
Softly, lovingly, he stroked the cat’s back then and it began to purr.

“Ah, if the world could only see the sad limit of real affection for the vaunted Raffaello,” he murmured, smiling ruefully to himself.

Moonlight came in past the iron grille and through the tall, half-shuttered window beside his desk, and Raphael turned to gaze out. It came to him then as it often did when he was alone: What if he were to die a young man? Now . . . without ever having loved? Without having known the sort of passion and commitment about which he painted every day of his life? It was a fear he could not recall being without. After the death of his mother, the fear had intensified. No matter how famous, how important, or how necessary life seemed to make one, everyone was expendable.

Pressing the thought away, he once again picked up the sketching chalk and tried to recall the shape of her eyes. What he had before him was not exact. He could not
see
the girl in the image he had created. He tossed down the nub of chalk and thrust back his chair. Outside, between the tall, narrow buildings, the sound of horses’ hooves echoed on the cobbled stone and broke the night silence.

Why would she still not allow him to paint her? When royalty was clambering after him to immortalize their images, what on earth did she fear? He had so little time left before the pope thought better of the commission altogether, and she was perfect for the Madonna. He stood then and paced the length of his room, with its broad windows of painted leaded glass, rich paneling overlaid with gold leaf, and heavily carved furniture. He ran a hand behind his neck and poured himself a goblet of Chianti from a jeweled decanter given to him personally by Cardinal Bibbiena. Staring at the decanter, opulent beyond measure, set with rubies and pearls, he wondered for the first time what this vessel that had sat here for nearly two years, silently serving him, was actually worth. He had taken so little time to consider it before because riches meant little. He could only imagine what a girl like Margherita Luti would think of it—or what it might buy for her family.

Alone with the silence and his thoughts, Raphael glanced down at his desk and a bronze medallion of Hercules given to him in Florence by Leonardo da Vinci. The medallion represented determination, the kind, elderly artist had told him. It would bring him good fortune. Beside it was an unopened letter from the secretary to the noble and beautiful Isabella d’Este, who still sought him to paint her portrait. Since Raphael had come to Rome, it had been all about the work. The process, and his success. Nothing more. And it was the first time he had realized that there was nothing more in his life than that.