The Ruby Ring

  “Sunday it shall be.”

  The pontiff seemed genuinely pleased with Raphael’s groveling, and with his promises. A more sedate smile now lengthened his small, thick lips. It broke the tension that had sprung so suddenly between them. “Well, I am most anxious to see it.”

  He put a hand on Raphael’s shoulder in a fatherly gesture. The square emerald ring on his last finger sparkled in the light through the long wall of leaded-glass windows. “And what of the women, Raffaello mio? Do I have your word that you will cease with your distraction there, at least until some of the outstanding commissions are complete?”

  His sharp Medici nostrils flared almost imperceptibly, but Raphael took the warning within the question. Perhaps it was true that Michelangelo had returned to Rome only to inquire after the Julius tomb. Or perhaps it was to advance Sebastiano’s claim. But either way, Raphael must take no chances with the lives and welfare of dozens of assistants who depended upon him, and on the good graces of their pontiff.

  “You have my word,” Raphael agreed. And the promise was not all that difficult, drawn as he was, not by the thought of women, but of one woman—the mysterious girl on Il Gianicolo—and his hope that by now Giulio had found out who she was, and where she lived.

  ONCE RAPHAEL had taken his leave, a tall, exceedingly elegant man with a thick black beard emerged from the collection of cardinals and clerics at the pope’s side. He was clothed in a pumpkin-colored silk tunic and hose, beneath a luxurious fur-trimmed cape of forest-green velvet. A heavy bronze medallion hung from his neck. On either side of the pontiff, yet another crimson-clad cardinal now stood. Like great ecclesiastical bookends, thought the wealthy banker, Agostino Chigi. But Giovanni de’ Medici had been his friend before he had taken the title Leo X, and Chigi owed a debt to that stroke of good fortune. He must never forget by whose grace he held a place at the pontiff’s very grand Vatican table, or at his musical parties, and opulent hunting events—those were the places where real policy was made. Chigi had given himself great wealth. Pope Leo had given him the power to use it.

  “I say let us enjoy the papacy since God has given it to us,” Pope Leo frequently said. Having been elected pope barely eight months before, he planned to make the most of his life’s appointment. And so he did enjoy it, from food, to music, to an exploration of the most glorious arts. Made a cardinal at age thirteen by the far-reaching powers of his infamous family, he had survived the first papal election, called the first scrutiny, by receiving only a single vote. His supporters bade their time and advised him well. Despite some concern that so youthful a pontiff might not be up to the burden, at the age of thirty-eight, Medici, nevertheless, became Leo X.

  Chigi, was a big man on a bull-like frame with a crown of dark, thick rings of hair. He bowed reverently, and kissed the ring on Leo’s plump finger in accordance with the custom. The pope’s hand smelled, not of the many pastries he consumed, but of chicken grease from an earlier meal, Chigi noticed, as repulsed as ever. Giovanni de’ Medici did everything in a grand way. He ate much, drank overly, and enjoyed life to excess, in spite of an inconvenient call to reflection and prayer.

  “You heard everything, I presume?”

  “Certainly far more than expected, Your Holiness,” Chigi replied in a well-schooled voice, dripping sincerity like honey wine. “I had no idea our dear Raphael was so behind schedule on his commissions for everyone else as well.”

  Pope Leo stood, stepped down from the dais, and took Chigi’s arm. They moved slowly together then out of the richly decorated room and into the corridor in time with the pope’s sluggish, shuffling step.

  “And it will certainly continue unchanged if he goes forward with more of his Madonnas. I had expected him to be finished with the frescoes for my family chapel at least by All Saints’ Day, since we missed the summer. And of course, Your Holiness awaits the completion of your audience chamber there, which craves the utmost of his personal attention before all else,” Chigi recovered with a deeply deferential nod. “Not to mention your formal portrait, which he has yet even to begin.”

  One of the papal secretaries, a balding, slightly stoop-shouldered man named Bembo, dabbed the pontiff’s glistening forehead with a white silk kerchief, edged in Venetian lace, as they walked. “He trusts you, does he not?”

  “I believe it is so, Your Holiness, for it was I who brought him to Rome in the first place.”

  Pope Leo imperiously stroked his chin with two of the fat fingertips. “Molto bene. Then we shall direct him to proceed with the works for you before all others.”

  “It must not be! Your Holiness is first in all things!”

  He held up a firm hand. “Patience, Agostino mio. It is the greatest of the virtues. Having Raffaello tied closely to you shall serve greatly to enhance your hold over him. And a trusting friend is one who speaks freely. A more approachable friend to him shall suit me. Only someone who has the benefit of his intimacy will know when it is his appetites, and his women, who stand alarmingly in the way of his production. We needs be apprised continually of where the center of his heart truly lies. For without Raffaello’s full attention, he shall never be able to give us the volume of work we desire.”

  “So we silently guide him to our own purposes then, just as a monkey on a leash. Is that not so, Holy Father?”

  “Precisely so,” agreed the pope.

  3

  “WELL? HAVE YOU FOUND HER?”

  Later that afternoon, Raphael met Giulio Romano at the rounded door of his busy workshop, the huge space he maintained on the Piazza Sant’Apollonia. He held on to the sturdy brass door pull, his eyes wide with anticipation, as though he were the boy he had been once, long ago, in Urbino.

  Giulio removed his cloak and walked with Raphael back to the paint-spattered worktable where he had been putting the setting resin onto a new portrait. Strewn across the table’s work surface were dozens of pen studies, layered with wash and traces of black chalk. Others on small bits of paper had been done in different mediums: black chalk over stylus or silverpoint done on gray, prepared paper. Pens, stubs of blue, black and red chalk and paintbrushes, their handles stained with a melange of colors, lay around them.

  “I found her.”

  “Has she agreed to come? Will she allow me to sketch her for the Madonna?”

  “I am afraid the girl would not see me.”

  “Porca miseria!”

  “She sent her father out to tell me that she was uninterested in being propositioned by any artisan.”

  Raphael flung down his wet brush, thick blue resin splattering the worktable and his own shoes. “Proposition? She speaks like a Campo de’ Fiori tart! I did no such thing, Giulio!” He raked the straight hair back from his forehead, feeling strangely undone. “Did you not make clear who I am? Or all that I wish from her?”

  “Forgive me, but she was most firmly set against any involvement. For what it is worth, you have taught me well, mastro. I saw her peeking out from behind a curtain as we spoke, and I do understand what you see in her.” He spread a consoling arm across Raphael’s shoulder. Giulio continued with a boyish smile. “That face of hers, mastro, the eyes most especially, are extraordinary, and if you will pardon me, the words of the man and not the artist, her body seems quite mattressable indeed!” It was uncharacteristically crude, and not in keeping with this boy.

  Raphael closed his eyes. Giulio was young and unpracticed in so many things. To work here, among these men, that would need to change, he reminded himself. It was an entirely different perspective, youth.

  In spite of her beauty, bedding the girl was not an option. To Raphael she was the Madonna—mother of Christ. One did not consider crossing the emotional chasm that would sully that vision and likely scar the very work he sought to create. Besides, she was nothing at all like the women who lured him and seduced him. But there was no use explaining that to his young, untried apprentice, who did his best to exist in a world of salty-tongued, harsh-tempered artists, far older and mor
e worldly than he. Especially when the young woman had so far refused his offer. And this wild, impetuous thing that had taken hold of him was something he could not allow, nor accept. He was, after all, Raffaello—painter to popes and kings. He could not—would not—be undone by a common woman!

  Raphael drew in a breath and felt dizzy, but he resisted the sensation. “Then I simply must go to her myself and explain the situation,” he said carefully. “What is the address?”

  “Twenty-one Via Santa Dorotea. Very near here. Just over the Ponte Sisto, actually.”

  “And her husband? Did he seem an impediment?”

  “I saw only the father, who was most anxious that she should reconsider.”

  “Then it is the father I must entreat to reason with her.” And then, almost as an afterthought, he asked, “Did you not ask her name?”

  “She is called Margherita, mastro.”

  Raphael felt a strange smile tug at his lips as if it suited her. “The pearl . . . Well, she certainly is that—luminescent . . . rare. And her family name?”

  “Luti. She is Margherita Luti.”

  “I know the name not. Ah, well. No matter. She is still my new Madonna, and I shall do what it takes to convince her of it.” She should be honored to be asked, he thought smugly. His work graced many of the great churches and villas of Rome, Florence, and beyond. He had the ear of dukes, princes, and the Holy Father himself. Could she truly turn away from an opportunity such as that? Tomorrow morning he would present himself in the impressive manner she expected, then, of course, he would convince her, and that would be that.

  RAPHAEL LEFT his house early the next morning. Dressed grandly in a slashed yellow doublet, scarlet hose, and scarlet velvet cap, a folio of drawing paper and sketches beneath his arm, he moved alone soundlessly along the wide Via dei Coronari. Amid the first slivers of pale pink sunlight, he pulled his cloak up around his shoulders to ward away the cold. A heavy dew had fallen during the night, and the wet streets and narrow alleyways around him floated in a kind of opalescent haze. It was too early for many to have arisen except an ambitious painter with more work than time. He made his way even before the shutters opened and servants began their own early morning task of tossing buckets of soiled water, slop jars, and the contents of chamber pots from open windows.

  Raphael had wanted at first to go to her alone, but apparently she had expected him to travel nobly, with an entourage. So to get what he wished, he would give her what she wished. Before him was the image of those deep, expressive eyes—eyes belonging to a young woman about whom he knew nothing, other than that he must paint her. And he must convince her husband that it would be worth their while.

  Walking with purpose, in long, bold strides, Raphael passed an old stone wall studded with brass rings to tie up horses. Beyond was a butcher’s shop, as yet unopened for the fast-approaching business day. He came out onto an open piazza. There, a team of his assistants—Giulio Romano, the older and more stoic Giovanni da Udine, and the potbellied, rosy-faced Gianfrancesco Penni, with his unruly red-gold curls—all garbed nearly as expensively as the mastro, waited for him. Together, the four well-dressed, important-looking men walked onto the next street and into the wisps of fog that moved around them all like great, illusive fingers of smoke—until Raphael came to a sudden stop.

  At 21 Via Santa Dorotea, they all stood before a slope-roofed, salmon-colored facade, with a little brick-colored door and a wooden sign printed with the word Panetteria swinging gently on two wide brass hooks above it. Giulio had not told him that his new Madonna model was a baker’s daughter. She had seemed to him too delicate, too elegant, for such a common existence. Nevertheless, Raphael drew back the weathered shop door, took a step down onto the rough stone floor, and stood amid a collection of early morning patrons and baskets of fragrant bread.

  “Is it a loaf of the fruit bread you are after?” asked the short, squat man with the green, wide-set eyes who held back the muslin curtain with a meaty hand. Behind the man, Raphael could see sacks of flour propped against the wall, and he could smell the rich, sweet scent of rising bread dough. “If you are, I’ve just told everyone else they’ll not be ready before—”

  The man, lightly caked in flour from neck to toe, but for the sheen of perspiration covering his beefy round face, stopped in midsentence. Raphael saw his lower jaw slacken as he focused on the four elegantly dressed companions, far too grand for this neighborhood bakery. Still, Raphael lowered himself into an elegant and courtly bow, tipping his scarlet cap as he rose again and stepped forward. Everyone else inside turned as well, and the chatter fell to an abrupt and noticeable hush.

  Beyond the smudged panes on the bakery window a crowd had gathered. “I am Raphael Sanzio, and I wish to speak to the husband of the girl called Margherita.”

  “Much to my great sorrow, Margherita has yet no husband. But I am her father, Francesco Luti,” he explained, his chest puffed up a little with hopeful pride as he wiped his floury hands on the apron tied tightly below his paunch. “I understand you wish my daughter to model for you.”

  “S, I do wish it very much.”

  “Per favore,” said Francesco with a sweeping hand, indicating the small back room. “Will you not come inside, Signor Sanzio, where it will be more private for us to speak?”

  Raphael followed Margherita’s father into the small, stifling kitchen, with its heavy oak beams, the room dominated by two fiery bread ovens and a scarred, flour-coated oak table. Francesco Luti drew out a chair and offered it to the man known as royalty by everyone in Rome.

  There was something in being here Raphael thought, some echo of his long forgotten childhood that struck him. The rich, sweet scent of baking bread brought it quickly back for him. His own father had been a painter at a ducal palace, yes, yet their life had been quite humble. As a boy, there had been trips to the butcher, the wine merchant, and the baker after the duke had gone to his own opulent table. Even in his fine silk doublet and elegant hose, he suddenly found, at this moment, that the world of his childhood did not seem so very far away.

  “So she is unmarried,” Raphael repeated casually, remembering the man he had become.

  “It is so.”

  “I assumed by the small child she carried that—”

  “Her sister’s youngest son, Signor Sanzio.”

  Raphael saw a glitter in Luti’s eye, as though his mind, and his coin pouch, were working faster than his mouth. “My daughter, Letitia, is blessed with four strong sons. Of course I wish the same for my Margherita, but at times, what the mind knows the spirit refuses—”

  “You would do well to hold your tongue further, Padre mio,” came a soft, slightly husky female voice from behind them. “I am certain the great Raffaello does not desire to be bothered with the inner workings of our family.”

  Seeing her standing in the door arch, with a narrow stairway behind her, Raphael rose, smoothing out the front of his doublet with both hands like an uncertain youth. For a moment, as before, he could not find the quick-witted banter she would expect. What the devil was it that made him feel so uncertain before her? Only women he was driven to bed had ever, even momentarily, had this same upper hand.

  Margherita stood looking mistrustfully at him. Her sable-brown hair, in this light, parted in the center and drawn away from her face, was glistening, the shades more vivid than he remembered. It would take days, he thought, to mix the precise paints to achieve the highlights there. Her neck was graceful, slim, and creamy olive. Because of her cloak, he had not noticed its indescribably delicate turn. She appeared even more rich and complex than the young woman he had first seen yesterday. But that spark of determination and spirit in her eyes was still his greatest draw.

  “On the contrary,” Raphael managed to say. “I find great insight in your father’s words.”

  She moved forward. “And, pray, signore, how is that?”

  “I hope it will explain why you have refused the offer from my assistant.”

  ??
?And why I shall refuse you myself. I am a decent woman, Signor Sanzio. I know my place in this world. I am meant to make an honest life.”

  He bit back the coming of a bemused smile as he glanced at his assistants, who were smiling with him. “And what has modeling to do with that?”

  “Is it not unseemly, and illegal, to position a woman’s body in a manner for study by a stranger who intends to survey every surface of one’s face and form?”

  She exchanged a sharp glance with her father, whose lower jaw had fallen open in disbelief at her brazenness. “Margherita!” Francesco interceded, his voice rumbling with anger even as he managed a humble bow before their important guest.

  “Would you ask that question, I wonder, of Isabella of Aragon? Or perhaps our Holy Father himself, both of whom have previously sat willingly for me?” He settled his eyes directly upon her. “There is modeling, Signorina Luti, and then there is portraiture.”

  “Per favore! Signor Sanzio, I implore you! Forgive my daughter!”

  “Forgive me?” Margherita gasped.

  “I am afraid she has too much of her mother’s haughty spirit for her own good! Believe me, it was a trait I cherished in my daughter for the nostalgia it brought—until today, that is!”

  “Tell me, Signor Sanzio.” Margherita took a step forward, hands clasped behind her back, her chin lifted, not with rudeness, but rather an unexpected confidence. “Was it your expectation that merely by your coming here yourself, cloaked in velvet and silver, and surrounded with your equally finely dressed minions, that I would be more easily convinced to change my mind?”

  The way she had phrased it, the circumstance seemed instantly tawdry.

  “I would not have guessed that a girl—” He stopped himself in midsentence. That tactic was not going to help things with her. But it was too late.

  “What was it, signore? You would not have guessed that a simple girl from Trastevere could keep pace with someone so grand and worldly as you?”