A Name in Blood (14 page)

‘Do you know how to do that?’

‘Yes, but once in a while I get it wrong. Annibale made no mistakes on this ceiling.’

‘Annibale?’

‘Carracci. The Maestro from Bologna who painted this work.’

‘Do you know him? What’s he like?’

It pleased him that she asked about the character of the painter.
She sees the humanity of what he’s done. For her, this work isn’t just decoration.
Then he looked down into
the garden. The remaining swordsmen funnelled towards the courtyard. He had the first intimation of having mistaken the situation. ‘We’d better go.’

They returned to the loggia. The bravos gathered around a massive statue of Hercules, the height of two men, in the arcade across the court.

He pulled at her arm, but she held still. ‘You said you’d tell me your reasons for being a bit crazy.’

He stared across the courtyard. ‘Annibale finished that fresco three years ago. It was the marvel of all Rome. All the painters thought it was the best thing ever done. He worked on it for
four years for Cardinal Farnese. The cardinal didn’t even thank him. He sent a servant to Annibale’s rooms with two hundred
scudi
.’

‘So much.’

To you, girl, yes.
‘You don’t understand. I get paid that much for a painting that takes only three months.’

‘He was cheated, then.’

‘Whatever a cardinal offers, it’s the deal you get. You can’t claim to be cheated by a prince of the Church. Annibale went crazy. Four years of intense work for almost nothing.
He sits alone in the dark now, doesn’t accept visitors to his home. He’ll be dead soon enough.’

‘What’d you do if one of these cardinals tried that with you?’

‘I keep waiting to find out.
That’s
what makes me crazy.’

The swordsmen strode towards the gate. Caravaggio recognized their faces from the tennis courts and the football game on the Piazza Navona. He hurried to leave the palace. He
wanted to be away before these men dispersed into the streets.

‘Painter,’ Ranuccio jogged out of the mass of men towards Caravaggio. ‘Is this your new slut?’

Caravaggio pulled Lena away. ‘I’ve no quarrel with you, Tomassoni.’

‘I beg to differ.’ Ranuccio’s brothers came to his shoulder. He squared up to his full height, a head above Caravaggio. ‘I don’t think I’ve seen this whore
before.’

‘Watch your mouth.’

Ranuccio waved his gloves as though Caravaggio had made a poor joke. He scrutinized Lena. ‘Nice big tits. Girl, did he tell you what happened to Prudenza, his last tart?’ He drew his
finger across his throat.

‘You’re no gentleman.’ Lena spoke with defiance, but Caravaggio heard the tremor underlying her words. He had to get her away from Ranuccio.

‘Your boyfriend certainly isn’t a gentleman. But surely you already know that.’

Caravaggio took Lena’s arm and hustled her to the entrance. Rounding the corner, he thought at first his way was barred, then he saw Onorio among the swordsmen crowding through the
gateway.

‘Michele, what the hell are you doing in there?’

‘He’s been educating me,’ Lena said.

Caravaggio laughed in relief now that the girl was away from Ranuccio. ‘Go home, Lena.’

She reached for him. ‘Michele, don’t —’

‘Quickly, before this fight takes off. I can’t leave, not after what Ranuccio said to me.’

She hesitated, as if considering what she might say to dissuade him. He shook his head and touched her chin with the point of his index finger. She kissed his cheek as she went.

‘She’s a nice little piece,
cazzo
.’ Onorio tapped Caravaggio’s behind. ‘So Ranuccio’s in the palace?’

They went into the courtyard, a dozen yards from the rank of Farnese men.

Caravaggio wondered at himself. An hour ago he had been as perfectly happy as he could have imagined, alone in the galleries of this palace with a woman who beguiled him. Now, one thrust could
be the end of everything.
Is that how your life will pass? Is that how it’ll be?

Ranuccio stepped out from among the Farnese men. ‘Where’s your strumpet gone, painter? I want to put my horn up her so that you’ll have the horns of a cuckold on your
head.’

Caravaggio lifted his hand to his mouth and bit at the knuckle of his middle finger, baring his teeth.

‘You bite your finger at me? You insult me.’ Ranuccio drew his blade and advanced.

Caravaggio withdrew his own rapier from its scabbard. A shimmering, glistening rasp vibrated from its edge up his arm and through his torso.

The first impact, a parry, as Ranuccio leapt forward and thrust. His blade was a half-dozen inches longer than Caravaggio’s and his reach was bigger, too. Caravaggio feinted at
Ranuccio’s sword, then he lunged and stabbed for the man’s bicep. His tip ripped the fabric of Ranuccio’s doublet. He felt flesh under the point of his sword.

Ranuccio spun away from him and stood apart, probing inside his shirt with his left hand, his eyes on Caravaggio, wary and angry.

Around them, the duel became general, thirty men on each side. The friction of steel edge against edge was like the pealing of illtuned bells in all the church towers of Rome at once.

Ranuccio took up his guard, and lunged. Caravaggio parried with a turn of his wrist, leaning forwards over his right knee to deliver his riposte. Ranuccio barely pulled his head out of the path
of the thrust and came at him again.

His attacker’s blade seemed to Caravaggio to be a claw, a snake, a tendril of some tropical grasping plant. His throat was dry and his feet willed him backwards out of danger. But the
sword in his hand pulled him closer. The urge to wound his man was irresistible.

The hilts of their swords locked together. Caravaggio stepped in low and punched Ranuccio in the throat. He lifted his foot and kicked down on Ranuccio’s kneecap.

He felt the big man sink. Grabbing Ranuccio’s sword hand, he pulled back his own blade for the coup.
Is it to be now? Am I to prove as murderous as they say I am?

A blow caught his temple with the force of a kicking horse. He fell and rolled. On his knees, he slashed blind so that his attacker might not approach until he had regained his senses.

Someone dragged him by his collar. Onorio spoke in his ear, ‘I have you, Michele.’

He blinked hard. A man he knew for Ranuccio’s elder brother, the soldier Giovan Francesco, was before him.
It must’ve been him who prevented the
coup de coeur
, the final
thrust home
. He felt reprieved, like a man freed on the gallows. He hadn’t killed.

Caravaggio was on his feet now, but he saw double and his head was heavy. Onorio steered him to the gate.

Ranuccio leaned against his brother’s shoulder. ‘It’s not over, painter.’ His voice was drawling, slurred.

‘We’ll fry your balls, you scum.’ Onorio gestured for the other Colonna men to withdraw. A few came to the gate, sucking at cuts or binding wounds. Most were laughing and
swapping insults with the Farnese men in the courtyard.

They crossed the piazza. ‘Quick, before the patrols arrive.’ Onorio called to a slim swordsman whose refined hauteur appeared undisturbed by the duel. ‘Ruffetti, our friend
needs a doctor.’

As he approached, the swordsman frowned with not a little horror. ‘Bring him to my house,’ he said.

Caravaggio lifted his hand to his temple. It came away red with blood.

The investigators from the criminal court found Caravaggio in bed at Ruffetti’s house with wounds in his neck and the left side of his head.

One of the officers pulled a chair up to the bed. ‘A Farnese man died of his injuries after the fight at the palace.’

‘What fight?’ Caravaggio touched the bandage on his throat and coughed.

The two investigators shared a glance. The seated one, small and spare and grey-skinned, raised his eyes. The other stroked his thick black beard. They were familiar with the direction this was
going to take.

‘A brawl, a swordfight at the Farnese Palace this week. Colonna men entered the courtyard. About two hundred took part.’

Caravaggio almost said there had been no more than sixty. He saw the thin investigator edge forward in his chair, waiting to be corrected. ‘That’s a lot of men. Was anyone
hurt?’

‘I told you, one of the Farnese men died.’

‘May God have mercy upon his soul.’

‘People said they saw you there.’

‘No chance. I’ve too much work to do. Who said I was there?’

‘Reliable witnesses.’

‘No one I know, then. Anyway, I’m too busy for such things. I’m painting a portrait of the Holy Father.’

The man in the chair hesitated, but his colleague craned towards Caravaggio, holding onto the bed post. ‘We heard you’d finished that portrait.’

‘The Cardinal-Nephew and I have been consulting over the frame for the portrait. You can ask him.’

‘We might do that.’ The bearded investigator jabbed a finger at Caravaggio, but the one in the chair clicked his tongue.

‘What happened to you?’ the little investigator said. He took a tablet from his pocket and scribbled a note with a stylus.

‘I hurt myself with my own sword.’ Caravaggio tried to conjure up a laugh of self-deprecation. ‘I fell down the stairs somewhere near here.’

The stylus scratched across the tablet. ‘Where?’

‘I can’t remember where exactly. I was a bit, you know – I was drunk.’

‘Boozing with the Cardinal-Nephew?’ the bigger man said.

‘By Jesu, Cosimo,’ his companion hissed. ‘Did anyone see you? Or come to your aid when you fell?’

‘There was nobody about at the time.’

‘Why did you come here?’

‘Luckily I realized I was close to the house of my friend Signor Ruffetti, the advocate.’

Another glance between the investigators.
That’s right, gentlemen
, Caravaggio thought.
I have friends who know the law.
‘There’s nothing more I can say.’

He listened to their gloomy descent on the stairs. When he swallowed, his throat felt as though it would blow out in every direction right through his neck.

In the afternoon, Onorio brought him a flask of wine. He sat on the edge of the bed, as Caravaggio drank.

‘One of the Farnese men died.’ Caravaggio rested the bottle against his thigh.

Onorio’s skin was flushed with excitement and his eyes were bright. ‘He was no one important.’

‘What would they say if I had died?’

‘They’d say you should’ve killed Ranuccio when you had the chance.’ Onorio slapped his leg. ‘There’s nothing wrong with a little blood on your hands. It makes
a man of you.’

Caravaggio blinked. ‘
You
killed the Farnese man?’

‘Give me the bottle,
cazzo
.’ Onorio’s voice twinkled with enthusiasm. He tipped the wine into his throat.

Caravaggio shivered. Onorio had taken a life. He seemed to have become unknowable to Caravaggio, to have passed into a world where his only companions were the dead. ‘I’ve been lying
here, thinking about how close I came to death,’ he said. ‘I could’ve been finished.’

‘You’re right. Dying is very easy.’ Onorio shoved open the shutters. The sun swept into the room as though the darkness had accrued like a layer of dust.

‘My father and grandfather died in a single day from the plague,’ Caravaggio murmured.

‘Everyone dies. You’d think that we died more than once, so much does dying abound. There hardly seem to be enough people living to satisfy all the dying that must be
done.’

‘Now I’ve died my first and second times,’ Caravaggio pointed to his throat and head, ‘I’ve fewer deaths to fear.’

When Onorio went whistling down the stairs, Caravaggio drifted into sleep. He dreamed that he fought Ranuccio again at the palace. This time, he was driven to his knees and Ranuccio thrust his
rapier through his chest. He fell, his head on the cobbles of the courtyard, watching the statue of Hercules as if it lay on its side. Ranuccio ran past, chasing Lena, laughing. He caught her.
Caravaggio awoke, screaming.

Footsteps on the stairs. He sat up, shaking, sweating, his throat rebelling against his cry.

Scipione entered, his moustache twitching with delight, like a thespian responding to his cue.