The Ruby Ring

  “It is still my hope,” Agostino uncomfortably replied.

  “Where is Raphael now? Half the morning is gone already!”

  “I was told by one of them over there that he is taken up this morning at the Domus Aurea, but that he will be here.”

  “Something simply must be done about this disturbing new trend,” the cardinal said in a carefully modulated tone. “I don’t like it at all.”

  “He certainly is not the artist he was, not so long ago,” Chigi concurred with a tilt of his head. “It seems that Raphael’s dedication is at issue, if not his skill. Although the outcome of the fresco, even in this state, you must admit, is brilliant.”

  “Yet one must ask, is there nothing that can be done to set him back on the proper path for us? The unfinished works are mounting. He has yet to complete the stuffeta promised to me long ago, or to begin my portrait—never mind the things he has not attended to for the Holy Father.”

  Chigi stroked his black bearded chin as they stopped beneath a second arch and gazed out at the gardens. It was clear he had not seen it as the same mammoth artistic crisis Bibbiena had—until now. “I suppose it is the fault of that peasant girl he is rutting with, hmm?” said the cardinal.

  “Who else? She has changed much in his world—and by extension, in ours.”

  “Raphael seems to care about nothing so much these days as painting Madonnas.”

  “Rather a vulgar sort of irony, would you not agree?” quipped Chigi.

  “The Holy Father has told him more than once he may not marry her, yet it does not seem to have dampened his ardor.”

  “Perhaps that ardor shall lead to a bad end, which, given the scope of his enormous talent, would be a tragedy for all of us indeed.”

  “Something well worth stopping—if there were only a viable way.”

  “S. Would that he had never found the baker’s daughter for his model in the first place!”

  “Or,” said the cardinal, “that she had been possessed of the good sense to know that he was well out of her league.”

  They strode together back across the room, the cardinal’s arms linked behind his back, the still incomplete fresco like a punctuation mark above them. Bibbiena was immensely pleased with himself. He had played the part of a sage friend quite to the hilt, then planted the seed that sooner or later, God willing, would bring him, and his poor Maria, a bit of compensation. The timing was not important, so long as it happened.

  28

  RAPHAEL KNELT ALONE ON THE SOARING SCAFFOLDING in the grand loggia of the Chigi villa. Around him were dozens of lamps and flickering candles to illuminate the wall enough so that he might continue working through the night. Still, the lateness of the hour already had altered the way he saw the shades of color on the fresco. It was the Wedding of Cupid and Psyche, and the many faces of those attending the wedding party were painted lolling at the grand banquet table in their classical costumes.

  Giulio had done the outlines, the shapes of the figures, and their faces, and Gianfrancesco Penni had fashioned the lovely flowers and garlands as ornamentation. Now, this day before Chigi’s wedding, the work was still incomplete. The irony of Chigi’s marrying his mistress—happily sanctioned by Pope Leo, and officiated by Cardinal Bibbiena—was a bitter pill to Raphael as he worked.

  With only three weary assistants to aid him in this candlelit darkness, Raphael pushed back his anger and fought against the rapidly drying plaster. Dried streaks of color covered him up to his elbows and splattered onto his face and neck. Raphael worked with quiet intensity while a young apprentice knelt beside him to hand him pigments, water, and different brushes, and another waited below to quickly mix whatever he would require.

  Raphael knew that Agostino was less than pleased with his progress. As friendly as the banker seemed, Raphael was to Agostino Chigi as he was to Cardinal Bibbiena, to the pope, and to Cardinal de’ Medici: a creator of great works that would further their status and earn them immortality. They may pay him exorbitant rates, and tout him as a great artistic master, but, at the end of the day, Raphael was their servant.

  That cold truth made him think again of Margherita and long for her as he pressed daubs of pale pink into the slim cheeks of the frescoed mythic bridegroom. Since Margherita had come into his life, Raphael had seen a coarsening in those who had hired him, particularly Agostino, and a resistance from all of them to any sort of delay, no matter how explainable. To their minds, it was not an overabundance of work, but an overindulgence of lust for a girl that caused it. The peasant girl, they called her. The baker’s daughter. La fornarina.

  THE HUNT had been long, cold, and very taxing, and Pope Leo was hungry—a state that always put him out of sorts. Yet Agostino knew, as the pontiff pushed the first silver fork full of freshly cooked trout and almonds between his rosebud lips, it was the perfect time to launch the plan.

  “Ah, my son.” Pope Leo smiled as he chewed. “Tell me. Have you confessed and prayed, in preparation for your wedding tomorrow?”

  “I only hope my house is nearly as ready as I am, since there shall be so many there to behold it if it is not.”

  The pope looked at him, his blue eyes bulging, and now ate a pastry in two large, cheek-swelling bites. “There is a problem with your grand and lovely house?”

  “The fresco of Cupid and Psyche, to ornament the wall for the wedding party, perhaps will not be so grand. I do not mind telling Your Holiness that I left my Francesca in something of a state this morning, seeing that it was not yet complete.”

  “Not yet complete?” Pope Leo gulped. “Is it not being painted by Raphael’s team?”

  “It is . . . even as we speak.”

  “And still it is unfinished?”

  “The apprentices did what they could, but the mastro wished to complete the faces himself. It is my only hope now that it be at least dry by the time it is unveiled, so as not to embarrass my bride.”

  “This is a scandal, and not at all worthy of a mastro like our great Raffaello!”

  “Yet a mastro, I am afraid, increasingly taken up”—he grimaced as if the thought alone had physically struck him—“by his mistress. A woman so common she could never understand the rigors of a schedule like his.”

  “That baker’s daughter still?”

  “They say it is so, Your Holiness. He seems not to be able to work at all with her so present in his life, distracting and disrupting everything.”

  “He certainly has found many reasons these past months to miss your little dinners.”

  Chigi leaned toward the pontiff, who was brushing crumbs from his white brocade cassock. “I am loath to say it, Your Holiness, but Cardinal Bibbiena tells me that his commissions, too, have been stalled, and I have heard you say yourself that you are frustrated over the delays in the work at Saint Peter’s. It seems we all share in Raphael’s unsettled new life.”

  Pope Leo jerked forward, then sprang onto his feet in such an uncommonly energetic burst that it caused the tray of pastries, held above his shoulder, to fly up, then come clattering back down, crashing onto the tile floor. “This cannot continue! We have much work for him that he must complete!” He blustered, his heavy neck rattling beneath his red little hairless nob of a chin.

  “Perhaps if they were allowed to marry, she would become less . . . alluring. The bloom, as it were, being well off the rose.”

  “Out of the question! Absolutely not! I shall never permit it! If this is Raphael’s way of maneuvering me into a change of mind—by not working, as a means to threaten me—he shall see he is sorely misguided!” As the pontiff bellowed, bits of pastry flew forth onto his stiff cassock and across the room.

  “Such a girl is not suitable, nor will she ever be, no matter how he dresses her up, or in what manner he paints her!” He was angry now, blustering, a vein in his forehead pulsing as he raged. “More than that, allowing such a thing would be a great insult to poor grieving Bernardo. The cardinal’s niece, God save her innocent soul, is heartbroken be
cause of Raphael’s appalling preoccupation with a peasant! Och! I had hopes that this would play itself out, but this really is an abomination! It would be far better for him if she were gone from his life entirely!”

  Chigi lifted a finger to his neatly bearded chin, as though something had only just then occurred to him. “There is one way to be done with this entire business, and have our Raphael returned entirely to us, Your Holiness. Although it is arguably a way perhaps not altogether pleasing in the sight of God.”

  Pope Leo slumped back into his chair, his corpulent body spent by his sudden outburst. “Perhaps you should allow me to be the judge of what Almighty God might find objectionable.”

  Chigi nodded with a respectful smile. “It is as Your Holiness wishes.”

  IT WAS the end of autumn, late November, and the trees bristled with the sound of the wind through the last crisp, dead leaves. Shades of gold, red, and rich umber accented the rural areas of Rome as scattered patches of dandelions died away, their stalks bowing with the weight of the dead blossoms above them, yet still swaying them in a rhythm with the cool breeze. Clouds moved overhead like pillows across a richly azure sky as Giulio and Elena walked together away from the raucous clamor of the busy market at the Piazza Navona. Here they were far from the prying eyes of anyone who would know or care that Raphael’s chief assistant and his mistress’s companion were alone together on a Sunday.

  “You are happy with Signora Luti?” he casually asked her.

  “She is not as I expected,” Elena replied.

  “You mean that she is common?”

  “No, I had already heard that.” They stopped beneath an ancient stone archway where they were protected from the full force of the wind. “There is actually something quite uncommon about her.”

  “In that, you are not so very different from her.”

  Elena turned away from the sudden flattery, but he brought her face back with a gentle finger beneath her chin. It was the most bold move he had ever made toward a woman, and he felt his own uncertainty redoubled as he did.

  “You must not speak of such things,” Elena murmured.

  “But you are not married, nor do you belong to another.”

  She turned away again. “And yet I did, unalterably.”

  “You speak of Raphael.”

  “Who it was does not matter. What’s important is how unsuitable that foolish moment made me for the future.” She turned back around then to face him, her expression hauntingly sad. “You are a good man, Giulio, with many challenges of your own to face. I would not want to become a complication for you.”

  He took her hands as the buttery yellow sunlight, mixed with vibrant orange, played across their shimmering faces. “Elena, you are the first person to make it all seem perfectly simple. What I want in my life.” He felt himself exhale very hard after the words left his lips, realizing then that he had forgotten to breathe. “I have come to care deeply for you.”

  “This can lead to nothing honorable for you because of my past,” she warned. “And because we serve the same mastro.”

  “I bid you, let it lead only where it will.”

  “We are impossible. As impossible, some would say, as Raphael and his Margherita.”

  “I shall never believe that.” He moved to press a gentle kiss onto her lips. He had never kissed a girl before, and her mouth beneath his brought a surprisingly powerful sensation. As he pulled away, afraid of it, he was prepared to tell her that he was in love with her. But something else stopped his confession. From the corner of his eye, Giulio Romano saw, across the bridge, a figure and a face he knew. It was Margherita. She was on horseback, riding behind a man.

  “Not Sebastiano!” Giulio groaned, the expression on his face one of horrified shock. “And Signora Luti on his very horse! I recognize the cloak and hood! The mastro would kill him with his bare hands if he saw them together!”

  “You do not think that the signora and Sebastiano are—”

  “I know that she and the mastro had quarreled a few days ago, and that she sent him away. Beyond that, I know not what to think!”

  29

  RAPHAEL WAS TO BE A GUEST AT THE MARRIAGE OF Agostino Chigi to Francesca Andreozza, and he meant for Margherita to accompany him. Francesca and Margherita had become sudden friends, and so her presence would be accepted. But more than that, Raphael wished to prove to the world that his relationship with a common woman was no less worthy of papal sanction than Chigi’s. The ceremony would commence in the late afternoon, when the setting sun was pink and rich and at its loveliest, glittering upon the Tiber.

  He stood while being dressed by his valet in a rich doublet of wine-colored brocade with a jeweled chain at his waist. His dark hair and neat beard were tamed with fragrant Turkish oil. Raphael heard Margherita’s angry words again. They echoed through his mind . . . You do not know me at all!

  He could not vanquish the thought of her warning: I will not join you in your fear of everything and everyone who exists beyond the walls of this house . . . Still, he was giving her the time she wished, and the incident would soon be forgotten. He was certain of it. Raphael knew he had been foolish to express his fears about Sebastiano without her knowing the root of it. The artistic rivalry in Rome between himself, Sebastiano, and Michelangelo was a deeply complex thing to understand if one were not an artist. He knew that Sebastiano would like nothing better than to steal Margherita away. Her naive kindness would make her a splendid pawn in this vicious game.

  The motivation was evil, and the bitter battle had long since gotten out of hand.

  But she would not allow that, he reassured himself. Never. Not Margherita.

  Once dressed, Raphael reached for a small chest on a carved table beneath the window, and opened it. The curved lid, with leather straps and brass studs, squealed on its hinges. A pearl necklace glimmered on a bed of crimson velvet. It was not the ruby ring he was determined to give her, but until he could, the pearls would look splendid against her smooth, fair skin. The rope of pearls, with a diamond clasp, had cost a small fortune, but until they were free to marry, Raphael needed to keep reminding her exactly what she had come to mean to his life.

  When Giulio came in, Raphael turned and flashed a smile, feeling happy and in command, wearing his new, costly Florentine doublet with the fashionable silver braid. He looked, he knew, every bit the cavalier, the refined Raphael Sanzio whom the world believed him to be. But as Giulio neared, Raphael saw a flicker of something out of place on the smooth, handsome face of his trusted assistant. Something was wrong.

  Raphael closed the jewelry chest and set it back on top of his bed. The smile faded. “What is it, caro?”

  Giulio stepped back, his eyes narrowed. He seemed to want to say something. He began, there was a hesitation, then he said, “A long day only, mastro. I oversaw the finishing touches at the Chigi villa but an hour ago.”

  Raphael was not immediately convinced. “Is there something with your father again?”

  “I have not seen my father for many days, nor do I wish to.”

  Raphael studied his young friend for a moment, more anxious suddenly than before to leave for the Via Alessandrina to be with Margherita, to be reassured again that the words she had spoken had meant little. And yet he had known Giulio long enough to understand that there was something more to his mood than simply a difficult day of work. Raphael felt a cold rush of fear.

  “Very well then,” he stubbornly said, determined not to dwell on it. “If you have something to tell me, I trust you shall.”

  “It shall always be so, mastro.”

  “Then let us be off to fetch Signora Luti, and attend Signor Chigi’s wedding!”

  “HAS THE MATTER been seen to then?”

  Cardinal Bibbiena stood behind Agostino, who was admiring his own wedding ensemble before a long mirror framed in gold.

  Chigi glanced at Bibbiena’s reflection first, then turned to face him directly. They were in a large dressing room on the second floor of
his villa. A cool wind blew in through a bank of open windows. Beyond the heavy rounded oak door was the commotion of servants, clergy, family, and guests, all preparing for the ceremony that was to take place in less than an hour.

  “S,” he replied. But a hesitation filtered in through his reedy tenor. “It is only that . . . After all, Bernardo, Raphael does seem to love the girl.”

  My niece loved him, and knows great heartbreak because of it, Bibbiena thought, feeling that undesirable wrenching in his gut. But he chose not to say that.

  “Remember, Bernardo, I, too, fell in love with a woman of low birth. Certainly the woman I will marry today was not immediately seen as a suitable bride for one of your circle.”

  “You know well, Agostino mio, that this is very different. Raphael serves the Holy Father, who craves more than anything a legacy, and a bit of immortality only Raphael can give him. In that, you possess a freedom he does not. So it had to be this way,” Bibbiena reassured him as he clamped his cold, bony fingers on Chigi’s broad, silk-draped shoulder.

  “And if our plan is uncovered?”

  “The Holy Father believes the plan to be of his own design. That is best to protect both of us, having the pontiff involved so deeply as he now is.”

  “And I suppose it shall have been worth it, what we have done”—he shrugged, his tone full of reticence—“if we can have Raphael return to creating the volume of work we have all come to expect.”

  “I bid you not to look at things in so gloomy a fashion, Agostino.” The cardinal smiled his thin-lipped, menacing smile. “You know our Raffaello. Now that the deed is done, how long do you truly believe it shall be before he sees the baker’s daughter as but a pleasant little memory?”