About the Author

KERRY POSTLE left King’s College London with a distinction in her MA in French Literature. She’s written articles for newspapers and magazines, and has worked as a teacher of Art, French, German, Spanish, and English. Kerry’s first novel, The Artist’s Muse, came out in 2017, followed by A Forbidden Love in 2019.

She lives in Bristol with her husband. They have three grown-up sons.

The Woman in the Painting is her third novel.

Praise for Kerry Postle

‘Richly entertaining, wry and funny, and at the same time dark, thoughtful and allusive’

‘A richly layered read, that delivers on many levels’

‘Postle has taken me into a world full of characters that jump off the page with life’

‘This novel evokes a time and a place with such power’

Also by Kerry Postle

The Artist’s Muse

A Forbidden Love

The Woman in the Painting
KERRY POSTLE

HQ

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2020

Copyright © Kerry Postle

Kerry Postle asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008331092

E-book Edition © May 2020 ISBN: 9780008310288

Version: 2020-04-20

Table of Contents

Cover

About the Author

Praise for Kerry Postle

Also by Kerry Postle

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Historical Note

Acknowledgements

Dear Reader …

Extract

Keep Reading …

About the Publisher

For Simon

for loving my books when he hates historical fiction.

Prologue
Raphael’s house, Rome, April 1520

The heavens opened and the rain poured down, making the streets of Rome look like streams. I was standing outside the studio I’d been working in for days, trying to dry off before entering, an ever-increasing puddle forming around my feet. I shuddered, wet and cold. The light was gloomy. I looked around. Outside, the clouds were dark, loud, threatening; inside, a sense of foreboding enveloped me like a cape. I never did like this weather. It always filled the air with sorrow, and now it gave me the uneasy feeling that I’d done the wrong thing.

The clouds clapped thunderously in agreement.

The door I was about to open was blown suddenly ajar by the wind. I stood still. Inside I could hear Cardinal Bibbiena, the man who, with flattery, had persuaded me to paint over my late master’s most precious work. He was talking to somebody. I waited. Listened.

‘The woman in the painting, who is she?’ The voice was accusing, the accent northern European.

‘Some whore he paid for.’ I winced at the Cardinal’s answer. ‘Look here. He’s even added a ribbon with his name on as proof of purchase.’ He laughed. His guest did not.

‘His reputation as the most …’ The stranger paused, looking for the right word. ‘… amorous artist in all of Rome was no idle boast then.’ The flames of his northern disapproval licked around the door.

‘No, indeed it was not. His nature was ever thus.’ The Cardinal adjusted his tone.

I hovered, afraid to enter, reluctant to retreat. The Cardinal’s fleshy ringed hand slipped round the side of the door, pulling it to, shutting me out. I put my ear up close to listen some more.

‘That must have been trying,’ the cold, faceless voice said. ‘For you. And your niece.’

‘No. All this—’ I imagined the Cardinal gesturing towards the painting, as I’d seen him do so many times before ‘—was nothing but lust, not love. Love. That was something Raphael shared with my dear Maria.’ The Cardinal sniffed loudly as if fighting back the tears. ‘He never recovered after she left this world. However, I have made plans to bury him in the Pantheon, in the same tomb as my beloved niece. They will be together at last.’

I reeled at the news and put a hand against the stone doorway to steady myself.

‘Fitting,’ came the reply.

‘Yes, they were perf—’ But before the Cardinal could finish the lie his guest cut him off. He had not come here to listen to how Raphael and the Cardinal’s niece were perfect for each other, or some other made-up story.

‘The world grieves to lose such a rare talent.’ The northerner’s voice now softened. I imagined him moved by the beauty of my deceased maestro’s work on the easel before him, admiration warming his eyes. I’d recently added the finishing touches to it, painting over the tell-tale foliage and ruby ring. ‘Even this rendition of a whore shows the scope of the artist,’ he said. My chest dared to swell a little with pride, my ear suddenly forgiving of his harsh northern consonants, strangely deaf to his slur on the model. But he hadn’t finished. ‘Though it is not as flawless as many of his other works. The background is …’ He paused to find the right word. ‘Clumsy.’

My hand shot up to my mouth in time to silence the splutter of surprise provoked by this foreigner’s damning summation of the changes I myself had made to the painting. The Cardinal had told me he found them sublime. I held on to that. What did this man with the guttural accent know of beauty?

‘And this hand,’ he went on, ‘it’s …’ He paused again. This time I wasn’t hopeful. ‘This hand, well, it’s so … unnatural.’ Though expecting the slight, I still flinched at the injury. Unnatural? The Cardinal had assured me the now ringless hand was so well executed as to be indistinguishable from any done by Raphael himself. But it made no difference; the stranger’s words cut too deep for me to be able to heal the wound they had inflicted on me. My chest hurt as if punctured, and my mind conjured up a vision of claw-like hands stab, stab, stabbing at the parts of the painting I had worked on with such devotion. That northern European accent was beginning to grate.

But not as much as the Cardinal’s deep, throaty laugh that followed. And not as much as the words that came after that.

‘Yes,’ he answered when he’d composed himself, ‘sadly those elements do detract from the rest of the work. It’s almost as if he’d allowed his least talented apprentice loose on it. That aside, Raphael was peerless – a prince among painters, brought down by this lowborn wench. That must surely be the reason for the angel tears falling from heaven down in the streets outside.’

It was still raining heavily – and ordinarily I would have wondered at the Cardinal’s quickness of wit in using the elements to convey his own sorrow. But the revelation that he thought me the least talented of Raphael’s apprentices came as a shock. My whole body shook and shivered, with cold, loss, then shame. Yes, an overwhelming sense of shame ran through me. I was drenched with it. It flushed out my vanity and ambition and presented them to me for what they were – ugly sins that had turned my head and seduced me into betraying one of the kindest people I had ever known.

‘So the woman in the painting,’ the grating voice started up again, ‘she is the one who killed Raphael? She is the baker’s daughter of whom everyone is talking?’

‘Yes. Base. Immoral,’ the Cardinal replied, the deep laugh now a lascivious sneer. ‘This is the woman who brought down one of the finest artists the world has ever known with her wantonness. This is La Fornarina.’

I lifted my ear away from the door. I’d heard enough. My mind searched wildly for a borrowed dignity with which to disguise the tatters of my own. I scraped together some well-woven deceits with which to cloak myself made up of my righteous indignation at the Cardinal’s undeniable duplicity. But it was no use. Thunder clapped outside once more. Yes, I had done the wrong thing and I did not need the elements to tell me so.

Chapter 1
Twelve years earlier

Rome, January 1508

The year was 1508, the month January, and it was a Friday. I remember it all too clearly. I was still innocent then. ‘Pietro! Get that weak arse of yours up now!’ My father’s rough hands dragged me from my sleep. He threw open the shutters, exposing me to the bright glare of the early morning sun. ‘If the Venetian throws you out too, I’ll …’

My body tensed as he bellowed at me. ‘S-s-s-s-sorry,’ I stuttered, waiting for the blow.

It didn’t come. Instead, my father looked out of the window, distracted by a commotion that had broken out down in the street below. ‘The lads have pulled something out of the Tiber!’ a voice called up to him. More voices joined in, urgent, excited.

My father looked back at me for a second, his eyes distressed at my attire. His knuckles twitched but they stayed at his sides; the sounds of men running towards the river was too great a lure even for him. He left the room, though his disgust remained.

I looked down at myself, at the white shirt and the yellow hose I still had on from the day before and that I loved so well. My legs hurt, my eyes felt swollen, my head ached. Yesterday.

Yesterday my father was proud of me; I was an apprentice in the workshop of the great artist Michelangelo. This morning I was not.

Artists. They weren’t popes or cardinals, kings or princes; in Rome they were better than that. At least in the eyes of people like my father – the common man. And that was because they walked among us, drank with us, sang with us, painted us. They even took us on as apprentices making our fathers proud.

Gifted, feted, popular, they enjoyed all the dishes at the rich man’s table without having to torture or kill for them. Though Michelangelo had seemed no less ruthless to me.

It’s true that most artists sang their happy song like a bird within its gilded cage, wings clipped, without the freedom to sing as they chose, fly where they might or most importantly paint what they liked. But one or two, whenever their patrons left the cage door wide open, soared high above and up into the heavens. And there they dazzled us.

Michelangelo was one such painter, though his temper was as brutish as his work was divine. And yesterday, talk in his workshop had turned to another: Raphael Sanzio. Though I’d not yet seen a single one of his paintings (he’d been working in Florence), I knew that as an artist he shone so brightly that nothing could subdue his brilliance, nor eclipse his perfection. Perfetto, ottimo, squisito, meraviglioso, eccellente, superior, divino. It was claimed that there weren’t enough superlatives in the whole of the Italian language to express how exceptional Raphael was. And rumour had it that as a man he was as sublime as his work, in both character and appearance.

And now he was coming to Rome. The prospect of his imminent arrival was causing the already full cups of the rich and powerful to bubble over. Lists were being drawn up in fortified palazzos around the city of all the artworks they would have Raphael paint for them. Of altarpieces, frescoes, birth trays, tondi, even going so far as to ponder which jewels and garments each family member should wear for that most essential object for the aristocrat hoping to dazzle with a show of wealth – the portrait. Prosperous families were coming to blows over whom Raphael would paint first.

And Michelangelo hated him for it.

That was why two starry-eyed apprentices, caught with Raphael’s name in their mouths, were beaten and dismissed with nowhere to go. Luigi and Federico had promise. They would never fulfil it now, the fools. Those of us suspected of the lesser crime of listening to them had received a good kicking but were not completely discarded. Michelangelo had handed us over to another artist who had recently arrived in Rome, this time from Venice.

‘That artist you’ve been passed on to, Sebastiano Luciani, he’s got a good reputation. But be careful. They say he’s another moody bastard.’ My brother Giacomo’s voice, deep with sleep, pulled me back to the present. He had still to get up. ‘So keep your head down, otherwise Father will have it.’ He yawned. ‘And don’t speak unless you have to. That stammer of yours can get you into trouble.’ Giacomo’s eyes studied my attire as I left the room. ‘And try not to draw too much attention to yourself,’ he called after me as I stooped down to pick my jacket up from the floor. I left, closing the door behind me.

I’d recently started grinding pigments at Michelangelo’s. I’d enjoyed it. I walked in disgrace to the workshop of my new maestro, Sebastiano Luciani. A great colourist, he would surely have pigment grinders of his own. So what of me? Only the idea of Raphael Sanzio, an artist beautiful in mind and body, or so it was said, prevented me from feeling like a condemned man. By the time I stepped over the threshold of my new maestro’s workshop I knew what I had to do – not say a word and try my best. I took off my jacket and ran a hand over my hose for luck before pulling on a white tunic and tying my leather apron at the back.

I had much to learn, from watching more advanced apprentices as well as observing Sebastiano himself. Yet as I and the other boys were taken round the workshop that first morning to admire our new maestro’s work, I for one saw nothing superior in it. Though I knew better than to share my opinion. With every flick of Sebastiano’s self-satisfied wrist as he presented another of his paintings to us, my face expressed wonder while my mind felt nothing but disappointment. The artist from Venice had some way to go before he even came close to deserving the reputation bestowed upon him.

It was said he had trained under the great Giorgione. If that was true he disguised it well.

‘And this,’ he said, standing in front of an unfinished work depicting a young, dark-haired woman, a fur-lined cape draped over her shoulder, ‘is a piece I call La Fornarina – The Baker’s Daughter – because she is the woman in the painting.’ He clapped his hands together with delight and gave a little laugh as though sharing a secret joke with someone. No one laughed back.

‘Note the composition … and the tones here … and here … And I say again, it’s of …’ He paused like an actor waiting for the crowd to finish his line. The silent horseshoe of apprentices grew bigger as each boy, bar one, breathed in. They wiped the palms of their hands on the leather aprons that protected their belted white tunics while taking a step back. Their wide eyes shouted respect and fear but not a peep came out of their mouths. Only Giulio Romano, standing at one end, an apprentice I’d known quite well at Michelangelo’s, seemed calm and composed enough to say anything. I was surprised to see him here. Giulio was older than me and more skilful than the rest of us, the equal of Giovanni da Udine, who wasn’t here; Michelangelo must have kept him on. Giulio appeared decidedly unimpressed as he looked at the unfinished painting before him. I caught his eye, distracting him from his silent assessment. He raised an eyebrow, mouthed: ‘You tell him what it’s called.’ I looked at him with foolish, trusting eyes and began.

‘La F-f-forn, f-forn …’ My mind swam, my face felt hot, and my eyes asked Giulio for guidance.

He mouthed: ‘La F-f-fornicatora.’ Desperate and horrified that I’d stammered, I took Giulio’s lifeline without caring to see what it was. Without thinking I threw it back out as quickly as I could.

‘La F-f-fornicatora.’

The moment I said it I knew. And the squeal of delighted horror that pierced my left ear made by the young boy standing next to me confirmed it. But it was too late to take it back. The new apprentices fizzed and frothed, unable to suppress their mirth, and as I searched Giulio’s face for an explanation I saw that his treacherous eyes had disappeared behind tears. Of laughter.

‘Stupid boy!’ It was Sebastiano who spoke.

Something ungovernable had been unleashed and the maestro of the workshop, the great Sebastiano Luciani, held me responsible for unleashing it.

He stood and waited, holding his head high like the grand maestro that he was. He coughed first, glowered second, and on the third count he attempted to beat the horseshoe of apprentices back into shape.

‘It’s called La Fornarina. FOR-NA-RI-NA!’

Squeaks and titters escaped from behind hands. The damage had been done. Sebastiano ranted and railed like a bad choirmaster unable to keep control. Squeaks became shrieks, the titters guffaws. Eventually, beaten, a pained expression settled on his face and his nose twitched as if displeased by a bad odour. ‘Let’s to work!’ he exclaimed with a clap of his hands. And then he walked away.

That was the end of our introduction to the workshop, and my first meeting with la fornarina, the woman in the painting. I did not like her.

Chapter 2

A flurry of prospective patrons with a penchant for portraits patrolled the workshop over the following days and weeks. Now there’s a sentence I couldn’t have said at the time. I kept my head down and worked hard. My father’s ire was – for the moment – appeased. And though, after that first day at Sebastiano’s, I’d been demoted to mopper-upper (all because I’d got the name of a painting wrong), I very quickly worked my way up to brush cleaner. Giulio said I was the best. The best brush cleaner he’d ever seen. And, very recently, I had been called on to grind pigments. At last. The job I’d had when I was at Michelangelo’s was mine once more. Giulio had seen to that.

Giulio had a very special talent when it came to drawing that was in great demand. And the guilt he’d felt at the humiliation he’d caused me had prompted him to use his particular drawing skills to help me out. He had an excellent hand and eye when it came to drawing the human form, and Taddeo, in charge of assigning jobs in the studio, had a greedy interest in Giulio’s particular line of work. He was so hungry to accept Giulio’s latest drawing of a young woman, undressed, that he overlooked the fact that I might need training for one of the jobs I was soon going to be called upon to do. That I was managing to grind Verona green, umber, sienna, until I could hide behind their undulating hills of colour, must have misled him. But for now, we had no idea what disaster lurked up ahead. For both of us.

It was a Tuesday, the day that wretched girl came. Or was supposed to. I’d seen her once or twice. She was more graceful than in Sebastiano’s, admittedly unfinished, portrait of her, her features less lumpen. She’d been unreliable of late, and her blatant lack of respect for the maestro divided the apprentices, shocking some (Taddeo and myself), entertaining others (Giulio and everyone else). Out of all the people to pass through the studio, she was the only one who’d ever said buongiorno to me. But I still didn’t like her.

And now Sebastiano was waiting for her to arrive. He paced the studio floor, starting each time a would-be patron came through the door. His face forced a smile as noble after noble looked round the studio with a view to securing a portrait of themselves. The rich and the vain of Rome, unlike the girl with the floury skirt, were queuing up to be painted. They had bags of money with which to pay, while la fornarina clearly paid in other ways. As I peered over my impressive mounds of ground pigment, I observed Sebastiano. His eyes smouldered like hot coals sparking angrily to life every time they caught an apprentice chatting, smiling, looking up from his work. I slumped further down behind my pigment piles. I could only imagine that the girl in the unfinished painting was late with her payment.

A common baker’s daughter, immortalised in paint by one of the finest painters in all Europe. At least, that was the reputation Sebastiano had. She did not realise her good fortune.

I looked on while the nobility of Rome jostled with each other to enjoy the same privilege, bombarding the maestro with questions.

‘Who have you painted?’

‘Him? Have you really?’

‘Her? Well I never.’

‘Them? How marvellous.’

‘Could I possibly see them?’

‘When can you start?’

‘When can you finish?’

‘How long must I wait?’

Interest was overwhelming. Portraits were easier and evidently more profitable than painting an elaborate fresco cycle for a church or a monastery, they needed less planning and were relatively quick to complete. Sebastiano must have been pleased when he’d turned his hand to them. But as I noticed the colour in Sebastiano’s face rising, caught the flames flickering in his eyes, it was clear portraits were not uppermost in his mind this Tuesday. I kept my head down. He could go off at any second.

‘Have you seen her?’ He drew close to Giulio, his eyes pulled to the door by invisible strings.

I clapped a pigment-covered hand over my mouth as I watched an interested patron reach out to touch a just-finished portrait left to dry on an easel in the corner. ‘The hair, it looks so real,’ he trilled with enthusiasm.

Sebastiano turned. The invisible strings snapped.

‘DON’T TOUCH!’

The nobleman jumped back. When the shock had subsided he glared at the artist.

‘Signore, it’s best you don’t touch it … per favore!’ Sebastiano added quickly, his good sense returning. It was one thing to shout at one’s apprentices and quite something else to shout at one’s patrons.

‘One drawback with portraits,’ he explained, his tone somewhere between apologetic and grovelling, ‘is the drying time of the oil paint … signore … and it’s a devil to get off one’s fingers.’

Still, portraits were durable (when ready), and easy to display. And fashionable. That made them desirable at any price. That’s why, shouted at or otherwise, this nobleman couldn’t hand his ducats over fast enough in order to seal the deal.

For the next few hours Sebastiano occupied himself with business matters. He needed to simmer down. He sat in a quiet corner with interested patrons, and in a special book he recorded names, measurements, family mottoes, interests, estimated completion times, costs.

But when the business had been settled, and the last of the noblemen had been shown out, it was clear that the maestro still had that girl on his mind.

‘Is she here yet?’

He stood before his painting of her and shouted. ‘Taddeo! I need— Fetch me— Don’t forget— Give me that—’

Sebastiano’s demands spread out across the studio like molten lava and not even my mountains of ground colour could stem the flow.

‘Here, boy. Pietro!’ Taddeo had found me. ‘The maestro needs lamp black.’

‘But I don’t know how to m-m-m …’

With consummate care and attention Taddeo trained me dutifully in the preparation of lamp black by considerately pointing to Cennini’s handbook, il libro dell’arte. Every artist’s workshop had a copy as it told you how to make pens, paper, brushes, work on frescoes, grind pigments – you name it, Cennini’s handbook could tell you how to do it.

‘Chapter th-th-thirty-seven,’ he yelled at me, with the stammer a cruel and unnecessary addition, I thought. There was no need to make fun of me. ‘Everything you n-n-n-need to know is in there.’

Sebastiano mixed lamp black with lead white to form the imprimatura for his paintings, the base for his portrait work. And so he needed it. Lots of it, as portraits were fast becoming his stock in trade. In itself lamp black was comparatively simple to make. And it was quick. The easiest way, according to Cennini, was to burn linseed oil in a lamp and collect the soot created by the process. It needed no grinding, and, once burned, the soot was as fine as powder. Even a fool could make it. ‘Lamp black. Sebastiano needs more lamp black!’ Taddeo shouted at me.

‘Is she here yet?’ the maestro’s plaintive cry reverberated around the studio like an echo. Giulio raised an eyebrow.

*

The following Tuesday the atmosphere in the workshop was even more tense.

‘The takings are down,’ Giulio whispered in my ear as he passed by.

‘B-b-but the p-p-portraits—’

‘I know,’ he said, cutting me off. ‘If he would only allow me to do them.’

I sniffed at Giulio’s arrogance. But he had a point. All Sebastiano had to do was work on the designs, start the drawings. The more experienced apprentices – Giulio among them – could do the rest. But the maestro would not entertain the possibility. Unfortunate, as he was experiencing artistic paralysis, the cure for which was that common girl. I willed her to appear.

‘That commission, the one from Pope Julius,’ Sebastiano barked at Taddeo, ‘is it here yet?’ That a papal commission Sebastiano had been promised had yet to turn up also did nothing to lighten the mood. ‘It should be here by now,’ the maestro muttered. Though apprentices nodded, they kept their eyes on their work, afraid to look up. Still, we all expected instructions from the Vatican to arrive at any moment.

‘Is she here yet?’ Sebastiano paced the studio. ‘Is she not here yet?’

A red velvet curtain divided the workshop in two: one area, closest to the entrance, for the apprentices; and the other, at the far end, for the maestro and his baker’s daughter. He had already pulled it up in anticipation of her arrival, ready to let it fall dramatically the instant she crossed from one side to the other. He had yet to finish his painting of her. Tongues had, initially, wagged with wanton excitement as to why that was. The maestro, it was said, was too busy fornicating with the fornarina during their sessions together to find the time to plunge his paintbrush in his paints and get the work done. But that wasn’t it, even though many of the younger apprentices held on to this illusion and even though, I suspected, the maestro would have wanted it so.

No, the reason he hadn’t finished his painting of her was down to the fact that she rarely turned up. And many of the apprentices were now beginning to lose interest in the girl, the maestro, their supposed relationship, and the painting.

Giulio was taking a break from grinding lapis lazuli to make pens, some fine, some broad. He’d been instructed to make six of each. I was tempted then to ask why he had twenty quills ready instead of twelve. But I already knew the answer. He was stealing them. Out of defiance. But also because he needed them. I’d seen him slip charcoal into his pockets before, that he’d used to pursue his sideline in unsavoury drawings. I wondered that his pockets weren’t bulging. I looked at them and saw that they were.

‘Where is she?’ Meanwhile Sebastiano’s frustration spread out over the studio like a barbed net, causing apprentices to jump and writhe and pray that the girl would arrive soon and put them all out of their misery.

Giulio breathed in deeply. Both eyebrows rose. He glanced at me. He’d had enough. Mischief danced across his features.

He rummaged round his bag and pulled out a miniature portrait – a copy, no doubt, that he had made himself. It was of a young man, handsome, and clothed. Giulio passed it round the squirming apprentices as if it had soothing powers.

‘Look. This is a portrait of Raphael of Urbino, the artist. He’s recently arrived here in Rome.’

At the mention of Raphael’s name, I felt the pain in my leg where Michelangelo had kicked me, imagined my father’s knuckles as they twitched at his sides. I kept well away. Taddeo’s beady eyes were everywhere and I could not afford to get into any further trouble. Giulio on the other hand seemed to laugh in the face of fate. And fortune seemed to favour him.

‘Giulio! You need to be quicker.’ Taddeo’s voice was all authority. Giulio’s face was all scorn. You couldn’t rush Giulio Romano and to do so made him slow down intentionally. He put down the quills he’d been working on, stretched out his arms high above his head then gave a yawn. Taddeo scuttled back to his place.

Meanwhile, the miniature portrait had made its way around nearly every workbench, dazzling the eye and mind of each apprentice and elevating them above Sebastiano’s net of barbs. Raphael. Quite the hero, and to see his likeness confirmed it. The apprentices at the workbench nearest to Taddeo had put down their tools in anticipation. Unable to resist, they huddled round the boy currently looking at it.

‘Is that him? Is that Raphael?’

It did not matter that the words were whispered, barely audible to the human ear. Sebastiano had heard them. Like a hunting dog, and Michelangelo before him, he sniffed the air.

‘That’s Raphael?’ ‘Is that Raphael?’ ‘Raph—?’ Excitement had rendered the apprentices oblivious.

Sebastiano threw his paintbrush to the floor and roared.

‘I never, NEVER, want to hear that name in here again. Understand?’ The voices of the young apprentices died instantly; the miniature was hastily pushed under a pile of sketches.

‘What’s the time?’ Sebastiano asked.

‘Half past ten.’

‘I know it is, Taddeo. I know what the time is, you halfwit!’ Sebastiano said. ‘But where is she? That’s what I want to know, you oaf. Where is she?’

The maestro stormed off, wearing his bad mood like an aura around his head. He stood before his portrait of the baker’s daughter, as if willing her to step out of the picture.

The apprentices pulled out the miniature again, the urge to see this now forbidden young artist more irresistible than ever. ‘Nature made him then broke the mould,’ one of them said with appreciation, taking care not to mention the artist by name. I was sure I’d heard that phrase somewhere before, but, while I struggled to place it, Taddeo, with eyes cruel and greedy as a tyrant’s, marched over to see what was going on.

That tyranny begets tyranny was never borne out so clearly. Within seconds he had prised the portrait from their hands and was holding it up. He shot a look of victory in Giulio’s direction. His mouth was open, about to chastise the apprentices for wasting time. Then he heard the cry.

‘Taddeo!’

Sebastiano’s faithful assistant glanced up at the portrait in his hand. He lowered his eyes. They met the maestro’s, recognised what was coming next. Taddeo’s eyelids flapped wildly, as if by blinking alone he could become airborne and escape. Beads of sweat broke out across his forehead.

‘It wasn’t me … It was them … They had it … I …’ He mumbled his excuses. A spurt of pleasure shot through me as I watched his suffering. At once unfair and so deserved.

Sebastiano thundered over and snatched the offensive image out of the faithful Taddeo’s hands.

He looked at it.

If the mention of the young artist’s name had irked him already, the sight of Raphael’s image up close put him in the foulest of tempers. Dark clouds marred Sebastiano’s features like flies on rotting flesh. I glanced over at Giulio. He had a knowing look upon his face. It gave me a secret thrill to see it.

Sebastiano, miniature in hand, went over to the far side of the workshop to where his easel was set up. He smashed the perfect image down on a nearby table. ‘Damn that wastrel from Urbino!’

He returned to pacing. This time we all hid behind our work.

‘Have we no letter from the Vatican yet?’ he shouted, pushing the miniature away. We’d heard a workshop was being set up for Raphael. He had wealthy patrons, said to be friends of the Pope. ‘Look at him!’ Sebastiano said to himself, glowering at the likeness as if it were alive, ‘as beardless as a young girl!’ Several of the apprentices came out of hiding. They dragged strange sounds from their mouths and nodded, thinking they’d been called on to agree. They had not.

‘Who asked you?’ Sebastiano growled at their forced laughter and nodding heads. ‘Go back to your work. Now!’

I looked towards the entrance, attracted by a sudden movement. And there, framed in the doorway with her eyebrows raised in mockery at the commotion, stood the girl. The girl the maestro had been waiting for. Here. In the studio. At last. Knowing I’d seen her, she glided in.

Sebastiano, his face blanching at the sight of her, ran to pull the heavy red velvet drape down, an action he had been waiting to perform for such a long time. She made her way to the table, intrigued no doubt to see the face of the man who had provoked the scene she’d just caught the tail of. She picked up the small portrait and gave an approving smile. Her face opened up like a flower in the sunshine at the sight of it.

Sebastiano noticed. His already cloud-eaten face turned blacker still. He tugged on the curtain repeatedly. It resisted his pull.

‘Damn! Damn!’

The atmosphere in the studio cranked up to thunderous; in an instant the velvet curtain had crashed to the floor.

‘Take it to the side, for heaven’s sake!’ At the flick of his wrist he conjured up two apprentices. They scuttled over and made the curtain disappear.

The girl was still waiting. Still amused. Still unperturbed.

‘It’s too warm to be wearing this,’ she said, as she picked up the fur-lined cape hanging over the back of her chair. She draped it over her left shoulder nevertheless, while stooping over to pick up a laurel wreath from her basket. She wore it on her head like a green crown. I watched her, grateful for the patches of light and pockets of calm she had brought in with her. The maestro’s bad temper, like a poison-tipped arrow, breached the walls of almost every other person in the studio, while she remained inviolate.

We had never observed Sebastiano paint this model before, though we’d occasionally heard them behind the velvet. We liked to imagine the scene, full of lust and desire. But today, with no curtain to shield our eyes, nor fuel our imaginations, we would get the opportunity to see Sebastiano and his model in the flesh. There was a sufficient whiff of excitement at the prospect to cut through the dark clouds of the morning.

We buried our heads in cleaning, grinding, planning, sketching. Every apprentice made the workshop seem busy. The noises of wooden brushes dropping on floors, paper tearing, knives cutting, chair legs scraping, had the space filled with life so that Sebastiano and his model would soon believe that no one was interested in what they were doing or saying.

But we were.

Whenever we looked something up in the Cennini, or asked a fellow apprentice for some help, we watched out of the corners of our eyes. Our maestro performed his role much as we’d envisaged, with the wandering hands of an attentive paramour. Yet his model seemed to have forgotten the yielding lines our heads had written for her, replacing them with some feisty ones of her own. She sat, her back straight, on a chair on a raised platform, bathed in the light that flooded in through the window.

Sebastiano went to hang a pearl drop from her ear.

‘Please don’t. I can do this myself,’ she told him, with a shrug. No, Sebastiano’s model was not responding in the way we’d expected at all. Sebastiano’s fingers dropped from her ear to stroke her face; she reeled her head back like an untamed horse. The maestro attempted to smooth down her dress; she brushed his hand away. He caught her hand in his; she withdrew it, a delicate hand from a coarse, ill-fitting glove.

‘I am the great Sebastiano!’ he said, smoothing his own dark hair back with disappointed fingers. His widow’s peak and pointed beard made his face look, in that moment, like a heart. Vulnerable, he cast his eye around the studio. Had we witnessed his humiliation as the girl rejected him? Overheard the girl’s insolence as she refused his help? Our studied concentration on the jobs in front of us, and our louder-than-usual discussions regarding work-related matters, reassured him. ‘The great Sebastiano!’ he repeated, as he returned to the task in hand: the painting of the girl.

‘Your hand needs to be pointing towards your heart,’ he said. Afraid to touch her now, he modelled the pose for this lowborn girl himself.

I stole a glance at Giulio. His eyes twinkled with tears of mirth. To see the power this model wielded over the maestro entertained him.

‘Now turn to the left and look at me. Look at me. Yes, that’s right.’

I too was amused.

Yet something niggled at the back of my mind. Who was this worthless girl to treat the ‘great Sebastiano’ so? And how could he let her?

There was no money in it. And, from appearances today, no profit of the sort Sebastiano was interested in either. Whatever he was hoping to get from her it was apparent that he wasn’t getting it. Nor ever would. I did not know whether to applaud or curse her but one thing was clear – she was not the girl we’d all assumed she was.

‘When can you come again?’ The sitting had come to an end and the maestro’s voice was little, beseeching.

‘I don’t want to sit for you again. You’ve finished.’

‘I haven’t. The hand, pointing to your heart. It’s not quite right.’

‘You are the great Sebastiano,’ she said, her voice mocking, ‘you don’t need me to finish your painting.’

‘You can’t stop coming. I forbid—’

The girl raised her hand. She looked around the workshop. It was silent. Conspicuously so.

‘Sebastiano!’ Her voice rang out like a warning bell. If she’d intended to bring the maestro to his senses, she hadn’t succeeded.

Lust and pride, a heady concoction, had got the better of Sebastiano the great. And it made for the most unedifying of sights.

‘You WILL come back … Powerful Romans pay a lot for a portrait by Sebastiano Luciani …’ Bitterness twisted itself around his words. ‘I have noble families queuing up for the privilege … yes, it’s a privilege … I paint you and receive nothing in return. Girls like you …’

She threw her head back and lifted her shoulders. She’d heard enough. ‘Remember, I did not ask to be painted.’ She was strong, proud.

‘I have an agreement with your father. I have paid him …’

‘To PAINT me,’ she said, giving way momentarily to exasperation. ‘And now you have. But as for—’ She broke off, aware that she had an audience. ‘As for all the rest, believe me when I say that I will not be bought.’

We silent apprentices listened on. Excitement crackled in the air.

‘Besides, my father needs me. There’s a grain shortage going on. It might not affect you, but times are hard for ordinary working Romans.’ She paused. ‘And you made a promise you’d be finished by now. A promise.’

‘Margarita. I can gi—’

‘Ssh!’ she hissed, trying to silence him. ‘It’s not about the money. All right, I will stay, for a little while longer, if you need to paint my hand. But trust me when I say I am deaf to all other entreaties.’ We waited.

But as maestro painted model, they said nothing more to each other. Pockets of chat and the sounds of work built up again. The show was over. For the moment.

Chapter 3

Giulio was the first to retake the floor. He had finished with the quills and was now back on the lapis lazuli. His eyes twinkled with mischief. ‘They found another body in the Tiber this morning, wearing nothing but a pendant of St Stefano.’ He waited for the gasp. Instead, just when Giulio thought it was over, the disagreement between Sebastiano and his feisty model bubbled up again. Apprentices’ eyes shot to the warring pair but Giulio drew them back again. He would not be outdone. He’d found the maestro’s humiliation as amusing as the rest of us, but what was a lovers’ tiff compared to the gruesome tale he had to tell? Lovers’ tiff? It wasn’t even that. No, Giulio had had his fill of listening to the desperate bleating of a lovesick fool chasing some girl the like of which he could pick up easily in one of Rome’s many brothels.

He clicked his fingers, gave a dismissive shrug of his shoulders to show his disappointment at the master’s performance, and carried on with his own story. He beckoned us closer. ‘Man. Young,’ he clarified. ‘Found with the remains of his hose wrapped around an ankle, a coin in his throat with a huge stone wedged in his mouth to keep it there, and a pendant of St Stefano wound one time too many around his neck.’

For a second Giulio looked straight at me, a knowing look on his face. I told myself I was imagining it.

‘He was a pretty boy, if you get my meaning,’ he added. I knew then I was not. My stomach lurched. My skin prickled. I felt threatened. But the other apprentices noticed nothing of the tacit communication that had passed between Giulio and myself. All they wanted was for him to go on with his grisly story and they strained their ears to listen some more.

‘Nose cut off.’ No longer interested in me, he threw himself into the performance, slicing the air with the side of his hand. While his audience made noises of pity for the pain of losing one body part, he hit them with another. He thrust his hips forward and slapped his two hands between his legs. ‘Cock too.’ This time he grinned like a fool. Smothered titters and horrified howls rippled around him. ‘I even heard that they cut off his …’

‘LAMP BLACK!’ Sebastiano’s roar, followed by the sound of something clattering to the floor, put an end to the morning news as told by Giulio. The maestro’s disagreement with his model was over, again, and the one with us was about to start.

My heart was still thumping against the prison of my ribcage, my mind imagining the dead body. But Giulio had been silenced. For now. And I was glad of it.

I looked over to discover what had brought about this change. A messenger from the Vatican had finished talking with a disgruntled Sebastiano. The messenger made apologetic gestures; Sebastiano exuded disappointment. The workshop had not secured the large commission after all. I watched him as he returned to his model. He whispered what I deduced from the look on her face was a question. It caused her to pick up the miniature of the artist Raphael that had been thrown down on the table earlier on while the maestro himself moved his head round the workshop like a lit torch in the dark. We looked down at our work.

‘You shouldn’t ask a question when you have no desire to know the answer,’ his model’s even voice replied. ‘I am no flatterer, nor will I ever be.’ What could Sebastiano have asked? My mind worked hard to fill in the gaps; all I could come up with were the vain enquiries of a self-deluding madman.

Sebastiano puffed up his chest. This could only end one way.

The girl gave her answer. Sebastiano let out a roar.

We worked hard, harder than ever. Lamp black, lamp black, lamp black, I told myself. The pressure was palpable. The maestro’s roar told us his model’s answer had not been the sweet consolation he was seeking after the papal disappointment. He was going to be taking his frustration out on us for the rest of the day. As I struggled to keep up with the demand for lamp black, the girl who was responsible for Sebastiano’s latest show of anger walked by. She passed in front of the bench I was working at, swinging her basket. She displayed none of the outward signs of a lover spurned or model chastised. If she was quaking with fear, she didn’t show it.

I looked up all the better to see what the attraction was now that she was so close to me. Though the clothes she had on now were not as fine as the ones she had been dressed up in by Sebastiano for the painting, and the pearl earrings were no longer hanging from her ears, and a single laurel leaf was all that was left of the wreath sitting on her head, the colour and style of her hair were the same, as was the shape of her face and the deep brown eyes.

I thought about the portrait. Close though the Venetian was in capturing this young woman’s likeness, I could not say that his art had in any way improved upon nature. The girl, though not of noble birth, as was clear from the way she dressed, was a beauty, her skin soft and plump, the light in her eyes warm and radiant. The light in the studio was good and to see her movements swathed in it made me question Sebastiano’s rendition. He acted like a man bewitched but there was no hint of this in his work. What he had produced was a lacklustre imitation, competent in that it was recognisable, but without expressing the life and energy of this bewitching creature who danced past me, skirts swaying, hair bouncing, and whose flesh, I couldn’t help but notice, quivered ever so slightly with every up and down sweep of her arm.

Not that I found this jiggling of flesh attractive myself, not even at fourteen, but I could see, in that moment, why many men would. She moved the way she spoke. There was something to be learned from her. She was rebellious yet not aggressive, confident yet not brash. Strength, grace and gentleness radiated from every step and turn of her head. Qualities I’d thought of as quite disparate harmonised within her. I was in awe and could do nothing to resist. Sebastiano, in the same moment, had noticed her movements too. They elicited an altogether different response in him. And it wasn’t the one we’d seen when he’d been painting her earlier.

‘Stop swinging your basket!’

He was cross with the girl. No longer the amorous artist. It must have been something she’d said.

Though usually changeable in temper, events of the morning had made his humour worse than ever. I looked over to see him push the miniature of the artist from Urbino across the table in a fit of rage. It scraped across the surface, flew off the end, and crashed to the floor.

Not satisfied the miniature was on the floor, he kicked hard at it, pushing it away still further. Giulio sucked the air in through his teeth. The girl with the basket reddened. For the first time she appeared vulnerable. I was surprised.

Then I understood.

Sebastiano was jealous.

I looked at his blotchy face. His nose was an angry red and his eyes were incandescent with a rage so strong it threatened to consume him.

As for the girl’s cheeks, they returned from flush red to a warm pink the nearer she got to the door. She sprang by, determined not to be cowed by Sebastiano’s display of bad temper. She gave me a wink.

‘STOP … SWINGING … THE BASKET!’

Sebastiano’s voice boomed across the workshop like a clap of thunder.

In my shock I jumped. I have no idea what the dancing girl without the pearl earrings did because I froze. It was my heart that now lurched into my mouth – preferable to the contents of my stomach that had threatened to make a reappearance in response to something Giulio had said earlier.

I’d knocked over the lamp and I watched in horror as hot linseed oil surged from it to create the most perfect of arcs. It slipped through the air and landed in the uncovered lapis lazuli dust on the neighbouring bench. Its globular heaviness made the precious pigment puff up. Thousands of specks of exquisite colour cascaded before my eyes. It was as if time had slowed down as I watched this disaster unfold. When I’d looked back up from the now settled ultramarine powder the girl was nowhere to be seen. The main door slammed shut. She’d gone.

I turned to look at Giulio. Mockery had vanished from his eyes. Arrogance had abandoned him. He was looking behind me. His mouth opened as if to speak but it was as if the deluge of the shock within had flooded him so completely that no sound came out.

Then I felt it. Sebastiano’s heavy palm, slap, on the back of my head.

I stumbled forward, gasped for air. I sneezed, my nostrils irritated by the dust Giulio had produced after hours of grinding. Celestial dust. Colour of the heavens and the Madonna’s sacred robe. The most expensive pigment in all the world. And now it lay over the bench like a fine covering of newly fallen snow. The hand that had struck me wrapped itself around my upper arm and squeezed hard. I felt the gold ring on one of his fingers dig into me. I sneezed some more, unable to stop. I watched, appalled, as moisture now clung to the lapis dust to form dark, wet dots. The same hand that squeezed me shook me. Pain and shock rendered me breathless. Sebastiano had achieved his aim: I stopped sneezing. But by then it was too late.

I looked at Giulio. In my naivety I hoped that he might be able to do something, say something, that would save me: it was clear he could not. Invisible ropes had already started to pull him back to his place of work. His eyes looked on me with sympathy but his work-worn hands were securely tied. He had no choice but to watch as Sebastiano dragged me to the heavy oak door of the workshop and cast me outside. He threw my jacket after me.

‘Think yourself lucky I don’t get you locked up for this. The money you’ve lost me! Now clear off! Talentless dog that you are!’

As the door slammed shut behind me, I imagined my father’s knuckles cracking.

Chapter 4

I could not believe what had just happened. The injustice of it burned the backs of my eyes. What would Father say? What would he do to me? I lay there sprawled across the street, too afraid to move.

Passers-by walked round my fourteen-year-old body as I allowed Sebastiano’s taunts (preferable to those I anticipated from my father) to still ring in my ears. Some walked over me, tripping as they went. But I remained there, eyes shut tight, not knowing what to do next.

I must have been lying there for ages by the time someone gave in to temptation and decided to have some sport at my expense. A full-blown hammer foot made its way into my side. Winded, my eyes shot open. I spluttered, gasping for air and feeling like a pig’s bladder. ‘Look at you in your yellow hose!’ a cruel voice mocked. ‘You look like a g—’ But before he could finish someone had pulled him back, causing him to thud, backside first, on the ground. Laughter rippled all around. The disturbance was attracting quite a crowd.

‘Get off him! What are you doing, you filthy worm-head? Leave the poor devil alone!’ It was the girl in the painting, the one with the basket, she of the flour-hemmed skirt, and she was yelling and pushing my attacker away. ‘Get off with you! Get away! Kicking a lad when he’s down. Some brave man you are!’ People’s sympathies changed direction like ears of wheat as this feisty girl vented her rage towards my attacker. Shouts of agreement came from people in the street. The brave man who’d kicked me when I was down scrambled to his feet.

‘If you was a man and not a girl you would not be able to speak to me so,’ he snarled, half standing and wiping his nose with the back of his hand.

‘Well I am a girl,’ my saviour announced, ‘and I will shame you all the same!’

Sounds of approval rustled all around.

The man who’d used me as a kickball looked at the angry faces. The fear that what he had done to me might be done to him was etched deeply on his face. He turned heel and took flight.

The girl stooped down.

‘Thought I’d come back and make sure you were all right. Lucky I did! Here, let me help you.’ Careful not to let her basket out of sight she dragged me up to sitting. I reached out for my jacket and pulled it to me. ‘Feeling better?’

I nodded that I was, though that I couldn’t bring myself to speak told her that I wasn’t. I felt as though I’d received a stunning blow to the head and a crippling kick in the ribs, probably because I had. And I was now in shock, unable to comprehend what had befallen me. Yet my faithful, unwanted friend, humiliation, was slowly spreading across my body like a rash as the whole sorry experience came back to me. I hoped she hadn’t seen everything. Her hand on my shoulder, gentle and caring, told me she had.

‘You’re not like all them – them inside.’ She gestured to Sebastiano’s workshop with a tilt of her head.

The girl with the soft brown eyes had a soft, sweet voice, and although she intended for her words to comfort me, instead they thrust the knife in, gave it a turn. ‘You belong out here in the real world.’ I rubbed my side, a reminder of how painful the real world could be. Understanding flickered across the girl’s face. ‘Oh, that’s not what I meant!’ She laughed. I winced. ‘No! It’s just, well, I could tell when I saw you in there. You’re well, you’re more like, well, more like me, I suppose.’ I looked at her. She was pretty enough, certainly prettier than Sebastiano’s portrait of her, but her clothes, I saw for the second time that day, gave away her rank; no matter how clean they were, no amount of care could stop flour from clinging to the edge of her skirt, and patching only drew one’s attention to well-worn cloth. My hand went to brush some of the dust off my brightly coloured hose.

‘It’s better to be honest and have your self-respect intact than allow another person to treat you like an animal.’ She patted me on the arm as she chatted on about the virtues of being what I could only presume was like her. This repelled me at the time. But in my defence, upbringing had a large part to play in how I was thinking that day. As well as fear. I had been brought up by a father who constantly told me how he had married beneath himself and had lived to regret it. He’d got married for love, to a lowborn woman who had gone and died. She’d brought him no dowry, given him seven sons. ‘And then she died, giving birth to you!’ My father had shouted this at me often enough to make me realise he’d never forgiven either of us for that. My mother for leaving him, and me for staying alive.

I looked at this girl with the passably pretty face and the dress that she’d made good and kept washed. And I imagined my mother. I quickly pushed the thought away. That way danger lay. The woman was dead. No good would come of softening towards a memory, nor towards a girl with little to her name.

But she had saved me from the ruffians; that much was true. ‘Thank you … for chasing off those thugs.’

‘Oh, that was nothing. And there was only one of them. Besides, did you not see how we all came together to support you?’ The crowd had now dispersed but with a flourish of her hand this girl presented every passer-by to me as if each one of them was a saint or an avenging angel. ‘It’s the likes of Signor Importante in there that we both need to be wary of. The great maestro.’

An old woman walked by, and, overhearing our conversation, shouted out, ‘Si, ragazzo, no shame in being one of us. The people of Rome are the best in the world.’

Then, as if to prove it, a man with a donkey smiled at me, his weather-beaten face as brown and shiny as well-used leather. I waited for him to offer himself up as one of the self-righteous rabble. He did not disappoint. ‘Si, ragazzo, plebeian.’ He chuckled. ‘That’s what we are.’ His voice was as gravelly as the dirt roads he walked along, albeit streaked with a pride that, in my newly fallen state, I was far from understanding. For me it was as if I had been expelled from the Garden of Eden, while plebeian was a word my father used when describing my dead mother – and he didn’t mean it as a compliment.

I stared with longing at the large oak doors, now firmly shut behind me. The thought that Paradise was on the other side and that there was no longer any place for me there bored a hole in my heart. That Sebastiano should be cast as God was one of life’s little ironies – earthbound paradises had their drawbacks.

I shuddered.

The girl’s hand, still on my shoulder, felt the tremor within. ‘Artists! Who do they think they are? Gods?’ she cried, as if reading my thoughts. ‘Look at you, with your bright eyes!’

I lowered my eyelids to stop her from seeing any more. I looked down at my lamp-black-stained hands, the soot in and around my fingernails. As I hid them in the folds of my shirt I discovered the holes at the elbows of my tattered sleeves. My fingers slipped through to the bones. They stung to the touch, felt wet and sticky. I guessed they were bleeding. My eyes drifted up towards the hands and attire of the proud plebeian leading away his trusty steed that was no more a steed than I was now an artist’s apprentice, never mind an artist.

What was that saying my father liked so well? Something about every ass thinking himself worthy to stand with the nobleman’s horses? Well, I was the ass. The man’s clothes were no worse than my own, and, in many ways better, I realised, as my fingers now covered the recently made tears in my sleeves. But I still couldn’t think of myself as a plebeian, no matter what I looked like, no matter that I’d been cast out. Ass, yes. Plebeian, never. I rubbed my shoulder blades, half hoping to raise angel wings from beneath the skin, for in that moment to be a fallen angel far outshone life as a common man.

‘All right! Take it easy! I only wanted to make sure they hadn’t hurt you.’ I’d brushed the girl’s hand off my shoulder a little too brusquely while checking for feathers. The indignation in her voice pulled me back to myself.

‘Thank you. For stopping,’ I said again, remembering the tens of Rome’s finest who hadn’t.

‘It was nothing,’ she said, her voice soft once more.

‘My name is Pietro,’ I told her.

‘Margarita,’ she replied. Although I already knew that.

She held out a hand, helped me to my feet, then led me to the side of the street. I staggered slightly and leant against the wall to steady myself. To hope she hadn’t noticed was too much to ask for, that I knew already, but I had hoped for a little sensitivity in the way she addressed it. Instead she went for the blunt approach. ‘You’ve had the wind knocked out of you right enough,’ she said. ‘Your eyes look like cockroaches on a bedsheet. Your hair’s gone grey with the dust and your …’ but then she stopped mid-flow. And for that I was truly grateful.

My eyes, screwed up and looking for the ground beneath to gape open and swallow me whole, lifted to see what or who had caused this direct-talking girl to desist. Striding towards us was a papal party, as intimidating as an invading army, and there, at the head of the group, was a fierce-faced Cardinal, red robes flowing, his band of mercenaries marching behind him. The Cardinal’s eyes swivelled left and right, sweeping all before him. The disgust they registered as he looked upon me turned to desire as they fell upon Margarita. I thought I saw recognition cross his face. But if I did, it vanished as quickly as it had arrived.

Besides, by the time he looked at her again she had turned her back towards him, a gesture of defiance so flagrant I expected one of his thuggish entourage to drag her away by the hair. I was relieved when they didn’t. She was uncouth and lowborn, and to accept charity from such a person did kindle some sparks of resentment, but I was starting to appreciate her kindness and recognise its value – despite her unchecked tongue – in this city that to me seemed now full of hostility and danger.

‘That was Bibbiena.’ She almost spat the words out. That she had failed to say ‘Cardinal Bibbiena’ did not surprise me. I was beginning to get the measure of the girl. ‘The man’s a worm-head,’ she continued as she arched her neck after Bibbiena and his men. ‘Good. The piece of filth has gone. Time I was going too. You’ll be all right?’ she asked.

‘Of course,’ I lied, strangely invigorated by her use of the local vernacular. ‘I’ll take myself home and I’ll be fine.’

She put one hand on my shoulder again. I did not recoil. She nodded, satisfied with my answer. ‘Look after yourself, Pietro, and if you ever happen to be in Trastevere, come and say hello. My father runs a bakery there, on Via Santa Dorotea. His name’s Francesco Luti.’

‘Many thanks … Margarita. And you too … l-l-l …’ I could not say ‘look after yourself’. I satisfied myself with a repeated ‘many thanks.’ She smiled. She’d touched me and she knew it and she plunged her fingers in my dust-coated hair to acknowledge the fact, giving it a vigorous, sisterly ruffle before setting on her way. And with that she was gone, dancing her way along the street, head bobbing and dark brown hair rippling behind like a stream as she swung her basket up and down, all thoughts of Cardinal Bibbiena gone.

It was in my mind that I would probably never see this girl again, and, for the briefest of moments, this saddened me. I was rubbing at my eyes with the back of my hand, when I noticed a growing din coming from an exuberant group of young men. You had to be careful in Rome, even in the daytime. A cardinal and his followers was one thing, the arrival of noisy groups of men charging along the street was something else. It could herald danger for a boy on his own, a boy like me, no matter what Margarita believed.

Margarita. For a moment I hoped she would come back; she seemed more than capable of handling thugs. But as the sounds grew clearer it was evident that the approaching group did not have violence on their minds. Artists and apprentices, wielding nothing more dangerous than paintbrushes, paint, and paper, were heading towards me. Relief and trepidation flooded my senses in equal measure.

I put a hand up to shade my eyes for fear of being recognised and to hide their tell-tale puffiness. I needn’t have worried. Not a head turned my way. Every boy in the group had eyes only for their leader and they jostled with one another to get close to him.

As heads parted I saw him for myself. Even from afar, I understood why these young men were leaping like spring hares. There he was, a handsome young man, surrounded by excited young men dressed in the latest fashions, with him the most fashionable of them all. His brilliant white shirt billowed like a dazzling sail, his black velvet jacket was slung over his shoulder as if that was the way it was meant to be; his perfect hose were well tailored and, as my eyes fought to find a break lower down in the wall of bodies around him, I caught sight of well-sculpted calves. As for his hair, topped by a black velvet cap, he wore it longer than most young men of Rome at the time but it looked all the more attractive for that. Long, dark, and neat, it framed the most luminous of faces out of which shone the most beguiling of smiles. I watched him, transfixed.

And the closer he got the more I felt sure I knew him. Who was this beautiful man? I racked my brains. I’d seen him very recently. But where? At one of the studios? Had I happened across a likeness of him? That was it: the miniature portrait, the one Giulio had passed round only that morning. ‘Likes to pose more than paint! Look at him! Steals the ideas of others. No originality. The man’s a pretty-faced apprentice. Nothing else.’ I recalled the fierce red patches of resentment on Sebastiano’s face as he raged against the likeness of the clear-faced person here before me. Yes, I knew this man: it was the artist Raphael Sanzio.

Awe, warm and comforting, flooded my soul as Sebastiano’s ‘pretty-faced apprentice’ drew near, rapidly followed by an unpleasant chill; I recognised two of the boys vying to get close to him. A sense of shame lapped all around me with its icy waves. Luigi and Federico had been kicked out of Michelangelo’s workshop the same time as me. They’d had nowhere to go. The memory of my having sneered at them stung like a newly opened wound. They would have the last laugh now, if they saw me. I averted my eyes.

‘Pietro? It’s Pietro!’

Too late. Luigi had spotted me.

I looked at him with a weak smile, a nod of the head, and a feeling akin to gratitude that he seemed to have no intention of breaking away from the group to talk to me further. But then …

‘Is this man one of your friends?’ The dazzling figure at the centre of the group stopped dead some distance away from me, his voice cutting across the street. His followers stopped too, squashed in a huddle. I made to get away but my foot had gone to sleep, causing me to trip up. I fell. My nose was in the dirt. When I turned around Raphael was looking down on me.

Then I understood.

I saw for myself why the fools jostled to get close. Yes, to my fourteen-year-old mind it was as if all the virtues radiated from him. He was grace, truth, and beauty. The smile he gave me was unwavering, and so bright that I had to lower my eyes.

‘So this is Pietro, you say? It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Pietro. My name is Raphael. From Urbino.’

I blinked up at him. Luigi, the boy who’d spotted me, nodded enthusiastically and pulled me up to sitting. Urbino. One word can evoke a whole world. Reputed to have the most civilised court in all of Europe, Urbino was where, it was said, manners, appearance, philosophy, and art had all combined to create this most perfect of artists. And here he was standing before me, the idea of perfection in human form. The white of his shirt dazzled me once more. I looked down upon my own apparel and saw the sorry tale it told. I had no need to say what I’d done, where I’d been, my dishevelled appearance said it all. I had tell-tale paint splashes all over, I was outside Sebastiano Luciani’s studio, I was covered in the dust and dirt of the street, and although I’d tried hard to swallow them back, tears had insisted on drawing lines down my face. I winced and wondered how this perfect courtier would manage to withdraw friendly overtures without the whole affair seeming awkward.

Instead he pressed me for my story. His followers listened attentively.

‘Your father is a potter? How interesting.’

‘Yes. And I-I-I …’ I felt the fire of embarrassment burn behind my cheeks. My infernal stammer!

‘He’s been apprentice to Michelangelo and Sebastiano.’ Luigi saved me.

‘Fine artists,’ Raphael said. ‘Two of the finest in all of Rome. The best, in fact,’ he continued, somewhat generously, I thought, as I knew both well enough to be certain that neither one of them would ever have said the same of him.

He placed a hand on my shoulder before retreating to confer with Luigi and Federico. I could not make out the words but their tone was gentle. When Raphael looked back at me, his eyes bore no trace of ridicule.

Their discussion was over.

‘It has been an honour and a privilege to make the acquaintance of such an experienced apprentice, Pietro. I hope—’ he placed a hand on my dust-stained shirt once again ‘—you might consider continuing your apprenticeship with me. With us.’

I smiled my gratitude as I knew words would fail me.

‘Now we’ll be off,’ Raphael said. ‘We will meet again very soon I hope, Pietro.’

I nodded – I could do nothing else – and I watched him as he led his followers away. When the last one of them had disappeared through the arch at the end of the street I noticed that the sky was clouding over. I’d better get home before the weather breaks, I thought to myself, and tell my father the good news.

Chapter 5

Most times you will hate me when I tell you my secrets and confess to the lies I have told, but once or twice, when I tell you what I have told no one else, you might find it in your hearts to pity me. What I’m about to tell you is one such time.

I should never have told him the truth, when I returned home, of what had happened to me that day. Or at least I should have told him the good news first. Either way, my story might have been very different, a tale of a potter father laughing, back-slapping and congratulating his talented son on being newly apprenticed to Rome’s most shining star. We would have celebrated carnival together, watched the processions trail past, and I could have pointed Raphael out to my father in the crowd. He would have showered me with paternal pride. I would have reciprocated with filial affection.

Instead, all that rained down on me was this.

‘You’re like her, like she used to be – weak! Useless! You take everything, give nothing.’ That was my father. I told you he’d never forgiven my mother for leaving him with seven sons to bring up. He went on. And on. I covered my ears to keep his brutal words at a muffled distance. But still his face contorted before my eyes. I closed them tight, turned them inwards desperately searching for somewhere to hide. But my father wouldn’t let me.

‘No more! You’re out! I’ll not have you here anymore.’ He screamed the words into my ears, causing a fire to rampage within. My eyes shot open.

‘Shut up!’ I wanted to scream in his face. ‘Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!’ Instead I begged my father not to cast me out. ‘P-p-p-please. Please d-d-d-don’t! I’m sorry, Father. Forgive me. Please. Father!’ But his clay-stained hand was already grasped tight around my arm, ready to throw me away and see me smash to the floor like a misshapen pot.

I’d told him how Sebastiano had treated me. His vice-like grip as his fingers pressed themselves into my flesh confirmed this had been a mistake. But if I told him about my good fortune in encountering Raphael from Urbino, I reasoned with myself, I could prevent the worst from happening. A threat to throw me out was, after all, just a threat.

‘But something g-g-g …’ I stumbled over my words again. I had a habit of doing so at times like this. It irritated me. But not as much as it irritated my father.

I dared not try to explain again. My only hope was to submit to his tirade and pray that he wouldn’t follow through and banish me from home completely.

‘Useless!’

My arm still in his grip, he shook me before releasing me with a savage push. Searing pain ran through my upper arm, across my shoulder and up my neck. I staggered forward. My instinct was to cry out but I knew I shouldn’t. I bit my tongue. Reined myself back in. I could hide my feelings, conceal how and who I was. I’d had to do so ever since I was small. And on the rare occasion when I’d failed to dissemble, silence had come to my aid. I prayed it would do so now.

This will pass, I told myself. This will be over soon.

I had no choice but to watch and wait. My father wiped at his palms repeatedly. It seemed as if, by touching me, he believed he’d sullied himself. He studied his hands with horror. I was unclean, a contagion. He went over to the water butt, thrust his arms in as deep as they would go, then tried to wash the imagined taint away. Water sloshed around, cascaded over the sides, formed pools on the floor.

I hurried to mop it up. I shouldn’t have.

‘Should have weighed you down with stones when you were a baby and thrown you in the Tiber!’

My father got hold of my hair. He plunged my head into the butt. It was no Tiber but he was going to have a good go at weighing me down in the next best thing.

My nostrils stung. My eyes screamed. My lungs burst. My arms were splashing, thrashing, now crashing against the sides. Heavy hands pinned me down, under the water. Every muscle in my body fought for survival as I bucked and bolted against the blackness. Heavy hands gave way. My head reeled backwards. I spluttered and gulped at the air greedily. Dirty-tasting water gushed out of my nostrils, got pushed up at the back of my throat. I collapsed on the newly sodden floor, gasping.

My father was wiping his hands on his dirty overalls by the time I looked up. His nose wrinkled as if at a bad smell. He picked up a jug full of wine and slugged it back before pointing a finger at me in condemnation. Hope, rekindled in my soul by the meeting with Raphael, was all but extinguished as I sat in the pool of clay water on the floor. My hair dripped. My nose ran. And my father hadn’t finished with me yet. He put the jug to his lips once more. Red wine trickled down his chin until it could trickle no more. He slammed the jug down, angry it was empty.

He turned to face me and snarled.

‘I cast you out upon the Burning Plain.’ This thinly veiled reference to Sodom made me shiver. I’d been with my father when we’d heard street preachers speak out against sodomy enough times to know what his opinions were on the matter. And also to know what he’d do if he ever found one of his own sons was a sodomite. But who could have told him? Giacomo. My brother Giacomo must have told him. My encounter with an older boy last summer came back to me, bringing with it feelings both happy and sad. It had seemed so right until Giacomo caught me and tarnished what I’d done with ugly words. I dragged myself up, opened my mouth to speak but no sound came out.

It wasn’t Giacomo.

Father put a hand in the pocket of his leather apron and pulled out … no. It couldn’t be. It was. ‘I’ll have none of Sodom under my roof.’ Father had my precious book in his hands, the one where I wrote down all my hopes … and secrets. He waved it around, nodding, his features ugly with disgust. It was my words Father had read. I had given myself away. I froze. He spat on the book before tearing it apart, scrunching page after page, then stamping each one into the filthy floor.

Outward silence belied my inner turmoil. Anguish raged and roared within my head, along with the watery memory of a story I’d heard (could it only have been that morning?) of a young, pretty boy and his gruesome demise. He’d been of Sodom too. Mutilated faces swam towards me. I pushed them away. But I could do nothing to stem the flow of tears that scorched my cheeks with searing rivulets of shame-coated anger. My father knew, knew what I was. I saw it in his eyes that burned into my flesh like hot needles. And I was the one who had told him by writing about it in my diary.

‘And now you can’t pay for your keep. When I found this last year …’

My heart missed a beat. He’d known about this last year and had said nothing. Until now. Why now? It was the money. It had to be. He didn’t care what I was as long as I could carry on putting coins into the family coffers. I should have told him about Raphael first. I still wanted to tell him. There was still a way back for me.

‘I-I-I … Pl-pl-pl … Y-y-y …’ But try as I might the words wouldn’t come. My senses had been flushed away, deaf to his cruel words though they continued to flow out of him like vitriol, blind to his hateful looks though he still tried to stab me with wild eyes. And though bony fingers seized me once more I could feel no pain.

I came back to myself some time later. I was sitting in the filthy street. Cast out, again. My head waterlogged, my soul crushed. My jacket had been flung out after me. The clouds had moved in and were lying heavy over Rome. And I had nowhere to go.

Chapter 6

I stumbled through the narrow streets, holding my jacket with its four metal buttons close to my chest. Traders hawked their wares, donkeys dragged their fat carts through narrow alleyways and street boys chased round stray goats and chickens, throwing the occasional stone at me. Men loitered. Prostitutes laughed. And dogs barked at people slumped in the shadows. I had nowhere to go. After walking round and round I slumped in the shadows too. I had arrived at my destination: this was nowhere.

I sat against a wall, my legs under me. I stared blankly into space for some time. Discordant thoughts ricocheted violently off the walls of my mind. Though seated, they made me dizzy. I closed my eyes.

I must have fallen asleep. I don’t know for how long but it must have been for a good few hours because by the time I woke up night had started to paint the street a darker shade of evening. It had also lured out a different sort of Roman. When my eyes had adapted to the lack of light I recoiled. Men still loitered, though more numerous than before, and several of them eyed me with interest. And now more desperate prostitutes laughed, forced and raucous, hoping to catch one of the many bawdy soldiers as they thundered past looking for another tavern to frequent. Everything seemed louder and more lurid than before. I’d woken up to a nightmare.

It was also starting to get cold. I put my jacket on.

A torch was lit a little further down the street. It drew my eye. And it was then I noticed a boy, propped up diagonally opposite. He hadn’t seen me yet. He was probably not much older than me though he looked as if he’d been suffering for all eternity. Even in the dull light he looked drawn. Sunken eyes, hollow cheeks, his entire body sucked in, his skin shrunken cloth on a skeleton, stick-thin legs splayed out before him like the roots of a tree. He was filthy – the torchlight could not disguise it – and his clothes were all rags.

I rubbed my face as if to clean it, dropped my hand to cover the bloodstained rip of my shirt so as to hide it. Knots of wealthy men and women threaded their way through and around, the strange, the louche, the destitute, and the desperate. Rapt by and wrapped in conversation, they chatted about some diversion they wanted to see or some person of note a friend of theirs once saw. They were oblivious to the loitering men and the excited prostitutes with their high heels, ribbons and bells. And I watched as one after the other, they stepped or tripped over the poor boy slumped against the wall. No one turned, stopped, or looked at him. Not one of them. The boy with the sunken eyes was invisible. Fitting, I thought to myself. A nobody. In nowhere. Just like me.

As tempestuous thoughts clouded my mind once more, I didn’t see the dark, short man slide past me. I wasn’t supposed to. He wore a black cloak, the hood pulled far over his head, obscuring his features. Only when I heard the invisible boy cry with fear as a wide column of black towered over him did I register the hooded man’s ominous presence. A chill ran through my already cooling blood. I felt the threat. People continued to walk past, unaware or uncaring, it was hard to say; even a person like me, whose mind was shouting ‘No,’ found myself unable to act.

I watched as the sinister figure crouched down. My body was numb with the icy coldness, though my mind still raced. ‘No! No! No!’ it was screaming. A man dressed in dark hose and patterned tights tripped over me. I waited for the rebuke or apology. Neither came. Only a laugh interrupted the flow of his conversation as he regained his footing. I watched as he walked away, the sight of his legs blocking my view of the hooded figure and the bag-of-bones boy.

The legs moved on. Now when I looked for the boy all I could see was the shifting hem of a black cloak. The sinister figure still had his back to me but was now standing erect, the voluminous folds of his garment drawn like a curtain around his prey. The hem slithered suggestively though the air was still.

I sensed evil was afoot. I wanted to stop it. But …

I looked around. There were so many people, all blind to what was happening in plain sight. They did nothing. Why should I? The memory of Margarita came into my mind unbidden, how she’d come to my aid. Then I realised. This boy could be me. If not tonight, then tomorrow, or the day after.

An instinct as quick and flaming as lightning scorched through me. It freed my ice-bound limbs, melted my snow-packed voice.

‘W-w-w- … LEAVE HIM!’ I failed to say one thing, managed to say another. It was the black cloak that froze now. I got to my feet.

The people walking by flowed away from me, on the whole undistracted from their conversations, though aware something was amiss. I’d attempted to throw a great boulder into the centre of their consciences; I’d succeeded in creating only the most imperceptible of ripples. But as the dark column turned his hooded head in my direction it seemed I had done enough.

Cruel eyes burned out of a shrouded face and stared at me. My heart went cold once more. I waited for the devil to come over and rip it out. Instead he placed something around the boy’s neck, and seemed to force something into his mouth. Then he swept around, the edge of his cloak flying up like wings.

I watched as he disappeared into the night.

*

‘Come.’

His name was Luca and I would never have befriended a boy like him. But I was on the streets. My circumstances had changed. And for these few hours at least I had a heightened sense of life. And death. Desperation was settling in my veins as well as the cold.

Sometimes vile events can make the good seem insubstantial and trivial. Or so it seemed to me then. My good fortune on meeting Raphael seemed ludicrous. No longer real. Terrible things had happened to me since then. My father had disowned me, and my descent into the underworld of Rome had been rapid. Absurdly so. Until that evening, I’d only known of its existence through a series of cautionary tales, not unlike the one Giulio had told us that morning in Sebastiano’s studio. Far-fetched fictions to frighten, about those who’d strayed from the right path.

I dragged my feet along Rome’s bloodstained gutters and dark passages. I was damned. The world inhabited by Raphael no longer existed for me. I followed Luca. It was my only choice. What’s right and wrong never really changes, I know. But I was learning fast that the colours often run between the two in an all too imperfect world.

*

Luca didn’t speak much. I walked behind him through labyrinthine lanes, accepted the food scraps he offered me that he picked up from outside rowdy taverns. I did not care about colour or taste; I snatched them from him and forced them down my gullet, thankful to be eating. We passed a man selling cooked rabbit. My insides ached at the smell of it. I was still hungry. To my surprise Luca stopped and held out his hand to the vendor. He exchanged a coin for the meat. I looked at him but, like a guilty man, he would not look me in the eye and he placed his free hand on top of his shirt as if he didn’t want me to see what was under it. When the transaction was over the vendor walked one way and we walked another, Luca the proud owner of a cooked rabbit.

‘Wh-wh-wh-where did you …?’ My stuttering voice was accusing.

‘You’re on the streets now,’ he said, as if that was answer enough.

‘B-b-but …’ I pushed.

‘Don’t you go giving me any fine words and fancy morality,’ he snapped, cutting me dead. ‘Keep ’em. I don’t want ’em.’

We carried on in silence.

‘We are nearly there,’ he said.

‘Where?’ I asked, but he did not answer.

Up ahead I saw an arch. It was as if Luca could see our destination beyond it while all I could make out was night as black as pitch. I walked carefully over uneven ground. A line of moonlight had traced its way around a dark cloud. It caught ripple tips as feral boys threw stones into water, tiny twinkles of light cascading out. We were near the river – a place I would never usually visit after dark. It smelt dank, dangerous.

The talk of that morning came back to me of a mutilated body that had been recently pulled from the tangle of riverweed. With that in my already gloomy mind, I jumped at every rustle of a leaf, every lapping of the water, every snapping of a twig underfoot, even when it was my foot the twig was under. I would have jumped at my own shadow if I’d had one. Thankfully Luca had the good sense to walk away from the feral stone-throwers. I followed him. He stopped near some bushes. We sat and ate the rabbit.

The sound of an animal scurrying towards us gave me a shock.

‘Throw the bones in the river,’ Luca said. The animal ran over my feet. It made me start. It plunged into the water. My hand rummaged through the dark to find Luca’s. I heard another animal run and jump. Then another. And another. ‘A rat,’ he whispered. ‘Only a rat.’ I clung on to his thin hand. It was cold. I took off my jacket, wrapped it around his shoulders, and moved so close to him that I could feel his breath on me. I rubbed his hands in mine, stroked his face with my fingers, put my hand inside his tattered shirt. My fingers found a pendant hanging down upon his soft, hairless chest. He raised it up to show me. In the moonlight I could make out the image of St Bartolomeo. So that was what the dark figure had placed around his neck.

‘I didn’t want it,’ Luca said, taking the pendant from around his neck and offering it to me, a sudden tremor in his voice. ‘He forced it on me. Take it, please!’

My instinct was to accept it and hurl it in the river along with the rabbit bones. But as I went to do so Luca caught my hand in his and guided my palm to his heart. To be this close to another human being strengthened my soul. Fear at the sight of the pendant had disappeared. I moved my fingers to a nipple. He didn’t pull away. I didn’t want him to.

Chapter 7

I was awoken by the cold the following morning. I opened my eyes, wondered where I was, looked around. I was on the banks of the Tiber. My jacket had been placed over me like a blanket. I pulled it on. A solitary silver button was hanging by a thread. Three were missing. Luca. Bit by bit the events of the day before came back to me. I breathed in sharply. Strange to think the skeletal waif of yesterday was the same boy who had made me feel so alive last night and was the same boy who had stolen three of my four silver buttons. And now he had gone.

But so had the clouds of the day before, and the bright light made me want to hide myself away. I moved out of the spring morning sun, into the shade of a nearby bridge. I sat down, legs pulled up, chin resting on my knees. I felt despair as I looked at the mud-coloured water of the river. I imagined myself lost in its depths, and as I did so green tendrils rose up to greet me, waving back and forth across the liquid surface. They looked enticing as they beckoned me, over and over. I closed my eyes, but there my father’s words tormented me as I pictured Luca’s face.

I forced my eyelids open. But there was to be no escape. Watery arms were still there calling me to them. I thought of the cool release they might provide. A cessation of this agony. No more worries about money. No more guilt about family. No more shame, no more fears about who I was.

‘This is it,’ a comforting voice whispered inside my head, ‘this is where you’re going to die.’ A physical urge pushed me to the river’s edge. This would be my choice. Soon I would be free, wrapped in loving green arms in a soothing watery bed.

I walked into the shallows. The bottom of the river was slippery. I proceeded carefully. The water lapped around my ankles, my calves, my knees. I welcomed its coldness as it took my breath away. I remembered Luca. He too had made me breathless for a few precious moments. I walked further in. I longed for the river to wash away the memory of his touch. Soon the agony of the burning plain would be extinguished forever. Sodom would be no more a part of me.

Slowly the fire raging within my head subsided and Luca’s face receded the deeper I went in. But the voices still plagued me. ‘You don’t belong here!’ ‘You’re not one of them.’ Voices. They swam round in my head. Familiar. Harsh. But then, a kind voice broke its way through.

‘Pietro! It’s Pietro, isn’t it? What are you doing down here?’

I heard the voice again. ‘Pietro! You’re in far enough. Don’t go any deeper. What are you doing?’ For a moment I thought it too was inside my head. But then a hand grabbed at my shirt. It pulled me back. The voice came again. ‘Do you have a wish to die, you fool of a boy? What are you playing at?’

I turned around to see the cross face of Margarita Luti. The feisty girl from the workshop, the gentle girl who had come to my aid. When was it? The previous day? It seemed a lifetime ago. Margarita Luti. A good person. Perhaps the only one who would be pleased to hear about my chance meeting with Raphael. But did I even care about that anymore? I’d been through so much. I couldn’t imagine how I would ever get back to what I’d thought of as my life. I fell back into the water. My head went under. I floundered for a while, splashing and spluttering, until this time my saviour threw an arm around my neck and dragged me to the riverbank. I crawled out and lay panting on the ground.

‘Lucky for you I came up here to wash!’ she said. ‘Most people like to go further down where it’s not so dangerous. But it’s too public for me there. Near the bridge, it’s more private.’ She went silent for the briefest of moments. She pulled down her sleeves, brushed down her skirt to make sure her ankles were covered. ‘You daft bugger!’

I cringed at the word but saw from her face that she meant nothing by it. She sat herself next to me, not caring if she soiled her skirt. She pulled me to her. Though my heart thumped in my chest I allowed her to cradle my head in her lap like a baby’s. I started to cry like one. I owed my life to her. ‘You daft little sod!’ she said.

*

When I woke up the blue of the sky had deepened but there was a chill in the air. My head was still in Margarita’s lap and despite my clothes and hair now being dry my bones felt damp. I gave a little shiver. I pulled myself up to sitting and mumbled an apology. ‘You should have woken me.’

‘I couldn’t. You were so peaceful. And I reckoned you needed the sleep.’

I twitched uncomfortably, my eyes staring down at the damp earth upon which we were sitting. ‘Well, thank you. Thank you again.’ I looked up at her. Kind eyes met mine.

She ruffled my hair like she’d done before.

‘So what happened?’

‘I … I … I …’

‘There’s no need to say a word,’ she said. ‘I can see you’re not made of the same clay as other men.’ I had a vague memory that she’d said I was like her only the day before, which I preferred. The mention of clay made me think of my father. It made me feel uneasy. Exposed. Unloved. ‘Now come with me.’

I pushed myself to my feet and followed her. I had nowhere else to go.

*

We went back up on the road. The sight of a band of men stopping well-dressed nobles caused me to clutch my one remaining silver button tightly in my grimy palm. Margarita laughed. ‘We’ve got no need to be frightened of them. Look at us. We’ve got nothing to detract from the glory of God. Not a bauble, bead or shiny buckle between us. My, you’ve even lost most of the buttons from your jacket.’

It was the sumptuary police, and they were having a word with a well-dressed woman. Margarita was right. We had nothing on her. The three rows of pearls and one gold chain that she wore around the fleshy cushion of her neck were impossible to miss. I looked at her clothes – a black velvet gown with an embroidered edge. Expensive. From her belt hung a large purse of crimson velvet embellished with tiny pearls. The sumptuary laws were strict – a citizen could not wear clothes or jewels that were overly ostentatious and that might be seen to distract the human eye from what should be its sole purpose: the contemplation of God. This woman was clearly flouting them.

We crept past. Not a soul, sumptuary or otherwise, turned to look at us.

‘Pass that necklace over to us. It will help feed the poor.’

‘But this is an outrage.’

‘As is your wearing such shows of wealth around your neck.’

‘You cannot take it.’

‘We can and we will …’

‘Being poor is not without its benefits,’ Margarita whispered. ‘Dressing like this,’ she said, taking her clean but well-worn skirt into her hands, ‘always grants us safe passage. And don’t worry about her.’ Margarita had mistaken my expression of alarm for concern. ‘Somebody will come by and pay off her fine soon enough. And think how she’ll have swelled the coffers of the Vatican in the process so that the Pope and his humble cardinals can carry on living like kings and princes. Sumptuary laws indeed! Out of one pot and into another.’

I followed Margarita over the Ponte Sisto, glancing down at the Tiber with relief. Life was drawing itself back into me as I breathed in the air. It tasted pleasant and sweet. I prayed it would stay that way. We trailed our way around winding lanes, full of pedlars, traders, carts, mules and assorted livestock. Stone-faced women barged into us, who, on contact with Margarita, changed from grumpy, old harridans to warm-hearted mothers. They gathered her to them and smothered her with their fulsome bosoms before rushing off in pursuit of their real offspring, who were weaving around the ankles of all and sundry.

This world was opening itself up, welcoming her in. She grabbed hold of my arm. She was taking me in with her. The smell was of spices, raw meat, cooked meat, cheese, unwashed bodies: a heady concoction. Sounds came from within buildings as well as without. Shouts, cries, laughter, singing, braying, tweeting, lutes playing.

‘Look out!’ At the sudden call from above, a space cleared in the street below. Margarita grabbed me by the arm and pulled me away just in time. Slop! The contents of a chamber pot steamed in the hastily made clearing. I glanced up to see an unkempt woman retreating from the balcony, offending chamber pot, now empty, in hand. ‘That’s mad Lavinia,’ Margarita explained. All human life was here. We were in Trastevere.

We made our way along Via Santa Dorotea. Progress was slow. This was Margarita’s neighbourhood – that much was clear. Everyone greeted her and wanted to find out how she was, where she’d been, and what she was doing with me. ‘I saved him from drowning in the river.’ She laughed, patting me on the shoulder. ‘Who would believe it?’ Certainly not them. They laughed back, shaking their heads. We carried on.

The sun was sinking in the sky and my stomach was empty. It was a long time since I’d had the rabbit. Margarita stopped under a wooden sign that swung ever so slightly in the evening air. Close by a cart had pulled up, sacks piled up on the back of it. A stocky man with a round belly was standing as if on guard, arms crossed, before his precious cargo. He pulled up his belt. It slipped back down.

I nodded at the portly fellow. He smiled at Margarita. He looked me up and down. I’d been expecting deference from this working man. As I followed his eyes over my ripped, bloody shirt, my mud-stained hose and my wild hair I understood why on this occasion I hadn’t got it. I looked as if I’d been dragged along the bed of the river, rolled along its bank, then given a good beating. His eyes lingered on the button dangling by a thread from my jacket that I held in my arms. He wouldn’t be describing me any time soon as a fancy man, though he was attracted by my one remaining shiny button.

‘We’re here,’ Margarita said to me. We were at her father’s bakery.

Chapter 8

‘Tell him he needs to come and get it himself. I got extra sacks for Easter for him and I did my back in while I was loading them onto the cart. I can’t afford to make it any worse. Have to be careful how I move. And if he doesn’t come out soon I’ll take it elsewhere. It’s as valuable as gold these days, tell him, and if yer father doesn’t want it, I knows of a hundred other bakers who do. And the rest. So he’d better be quick. The fancy man’s gone now and so he’s got no excuse.’

‘Good day, Giorgio.’ Margarita breezed up to him with a wave of her hand and a long-suffering smile – she’d heard his complaints before.

‘Come, let me do it.’ She wrapped her arms around a large sack and propped it on her hip before struggling with it to the doorway.

I followed suit while the gallant Giorgio said to her, from a seated position, ‘Stop! It’s no job for a girl like you.’ She breathed heavily and carried on. Giorgio didn’t move. Margarita didn’t moan. And I barely managed, dragging two sacks to Margarita’s four. I was relieved when we’d lugged all six sacks off the back of the cart. But we’d created a pile two sacks wide and three high and if the intention had been to go inside the bakery we’d scuppered our chances by blocking the way.

‘Thank you, Giorgio. You’ve performed miracles, getting us this much flour. These are hard times, but my father appreciates all you’ve done for him.’

‘He hasn’t paid me.’

‘He’s just coming.’

Margarita smiled patiently and turned. ‘Father? Father?’ she shouted. ‘Giorgio needs paying.’

A cross voice with a Roman accent as rough as Giorgio’s boomed loud from the other side. ‘How can I when his flour is blocking the way?’

Margarita went on tiptoes and peered over the top of the sacks.

She issued instructions to a small red-faced group of men congregated inside. Within minutes the sacks had been taken in and stored away. Her father had no choice but to come and settle up with the sedentary Giorgio. He sniffed and waved a purse around. It looked expensive: black velvet and decorated with fine pearls. It also happened to be bulging.

‘There!’ The baker hurled some coins into the back of the cart. ‘You’ve been paid.’ His churlish tone gave the impression that he could barely afford to settle his debt; the black velvet purse told a different story. Giorgio’s mouth opened, and not to say thank you. He gave me one last cursory glance before looking back at Margarita.

‘Goodbye, girl. You’re a good’un.’

Her father humphed.

‘He’s gone, boys,’ he said, returning to his friends.

I stood behind Margarita near the entrance. I swept back my hair anticipating an introduction. Instead, Margarita went to fetch me something to eat.

I peered inside the baker’s shop. The space was small and cramped, the ceiling low. There, squashed inside, Margarita’s father was deep in the conversation he had been pulled away from.

‘That poor sinner who got pulled from the river. You’ve got to feel sorry for the lad,’ he said, now cradling the fat purse like a distended stomach.

My hand felt for my nose, a body memory of what Giulio had told us at Sebastiano’s studio.

‘What?’ an indignant voice cried. ‘Sorry for a lad who likes to plunge his uccello in arseholes?’

‘Messy business!’ Margarita’s father replied. The group erupted into fits of raucous laughter. ‘That’s not what I meant, you dirty bastards. It’s hard … no, that’s not what I mean. Calm down, calm down … when you gets your extremities cut off for preferring peaches to figs, it don’t seem fair. It’s all fruit after all!’

‘Yes. Our Orlando,’ one of them continued, ‘found the poor bugger—’ titters bubbled up again ‘—not two hours since.’

So there had been another killing.

‘’Orrible, ’e said it was. Worse than before. This time the murderer had tried to flay the unlucky lad.’

I played with the silver button on my jacket. When I let it go it dangled by its thread.

‘Orlando said that whoever had done it couldn’t have wanted to rob him as the boy still wore some flashy pendant around his neck, I think of St Bartolomeo, if I remembers right.’ The man paused for the briefest of moments but it was enough to make me miss a breath. ‘And clutched in his hand,’ he continued, ‘he had hold of three silver buttons.’

My hand went to my chest, enveloping the only button I had left. My blood ran cold. It flooded my mind. Luca! For a while he was all I could think of. It had to be him. I turned and twisted the button over and over again. Luca had been murdered. The thread broke. The button fell to the floor and spun round and round like a coin. I picked it up to stop it. But it was too late. Suspicious eyes had already turned towards me.

‘Here. Something for you to eat and drink.’ Margarita was back.

‘Who’s this?’ her father asked, not waiting for a reply. ‘Who would leave a pendant?’ he continued, his fascination in the murder outlasting his short-lived interest in me. ‘They could have got decent money for it.’

The baker’s eyes grew round and greedy. Until they met the critical gaze of his daughter.

‘Stop your staring now, girl.’ He shifted the purse up level to his heart.

All faces were now set on the baker’s daughter.

‘Where did you get that?’ Margarita pointed to the bulging purse.

‘Now don’t you go all accusing on me, my girl.’

‘Where did you get that?’ she repeated.

‘This is from him.’ He stroked the velvet. ‘Came today. Has a right high opinion of you, he does.’ I wondered at what I was hearing. Rome was full of prostitutes, and the better ones came from almost illustrious dynasties. I’d heard of mothers training their daughters in music, poetry, and in some cases philosophy, as well as other essential womanly skills to please the eye, heart and body. Then they rented out their girls to men. Wealthy ones. Even cardinals sought solace in their arms. This girl knew Cardinal Bibbiena – that much I knew already. Was this what the baker had done? Accepted the purse of money to rent out his daughter?

Margarita’s father lifted the velvet purse in front of him and dropped it on the table. It made a dull, heavy thud.

‘What have you done, Father? I told him I didn’t want to do it anymore.’

‘Well, you won’t agree to accepting any of your suitors, and I can’t keep on looking after you forever …’

At this a low titter burned through the room; mutters of ‘you look after her?’ and ‘more like the other way around’ smouldered away at the edges.

Margarita clenched her fists. ‘Father!’

‘Lawless daughter!’ He banged his own fists on the counter in retaliation. He would not be shamed; flour flew up to prove it.

‘Isn’t she the most lawless daughter?’ he appealed to those present, his palms held high, his head cocked to one side. No one replied. ‘Where’s your respect for your old father?’ His voice wavered in the air, the bullish confidence gone.

‘Did he come here himself?’ she asked.

Her father looked sheepish.

‘He didn’t, did he? He thinks himself so high and mighty that he couldn’t bear to sully his fine clothes by coming here and asking for me in person.’ She was accusing.

‘He sent the money.’ Her father would not be deterred.

Margarita inhaled deeply. She closed her eyes and opened them on the outward breath, staring at her father with the most uncomprehending of expressions.

‘The lad he sent,’ he blustered, his eyes wandering over to me, ‘he was well dressed. Very well dressed.’

‘I will not be bought.’

Ah. The moment the words fell from her lips I remembered where I’d heard her use them before. And to whom: Sebastiano Luciani. So it was his messenger who had delivered the purse of money.

A tut of exasperation gave way to a sigh of the deepest disappointment.

‘But, Marg …’

‘Father, don’t you see? He sends someone as his errand boy because he sees it as beneath him to come and barter with someone … like you … like us. For pity’s sake. He may be able to afford to buy up whatever he pleases but it matters little to me how rich he is. He will never be able to buy me. Nor will anyone else for that matter.’ She looked deep into her father’s eyes. He ran flour-tipped fingers through flour-covered hair. White powder fell like snow on his shoulders.

‘There are more important things in this life than money. You taught me that. Or have you now forgotten?’

‘You’ll be the death of me,’ her father tutted as the look of shame that passed across his face showed he accepted the rebuke. No one said a word, though disturbing noises emanated from deep within each of them. Whether caused by hunger or emotion it was difficult to tell. Although as they belched, farted, and whistled their thoughts through sucked-in cheeks I deduced it was most likely a combination of the two.

‘Do virtue and good name count for nothing? Self-respect? Honour?’

Human once more, now that I’d let the pain back in, I was a confusion of emotions. Part of me was moved by the force of feeling in her voice and inspired by her beautiful words. But the greater part of me envied her deep sense of self because, after my long night of the soul spent down by the banks of the Tiber, I wondered if I still had one.

I played with my button some more. Thought about Luca. Remembered his words about fine clothes and fancy morality.

I possessed nothing other than the rags I was dressed in. The velvet purse was bulging and plush. My stomach rumbled like loose cartwheels over stony ground. What was the point in feeding my soul with words when my stomach cried out for food? I was starting to tire of my saviour’s show of self-satisfaction. I shook my head, dragged my thoughts to a better place. What was I thinking? I owed this girl my life. I coughed.

Margarita gave me a pat on the arm. Her father grimaced. He could not say of me that I was well dressed. He pulled his daughter to him and whispered something in her ear.

‘Fine!’ she said as she reared back like a wild horse. ‘I’ll do it. I’ll let him finish his painting of me. But when he’s done there will be no further transactions between us.’

The rumbling stomachs in the baker’s shop, mine included, breathed out as one, relieved at this compromise. Margarita pulled me after her. ‘I’ll light the candles,’ she said.

She sat me down on a stool and hummed a pretty tune while she poured me some watered-down wine.

‘Over here, girl!’

She shared it round as she lit the tallow candles. Their gentle light lifted her beauty from the natural to the heavenly; it made her father’s flour-dipped appearance seem soft, and refined.

‘You’ve made your father a happy man.’ He pulled Margarita to him and gave her a hug. His eyes were dancing with delight. Her father was not like mine.

‘Who’ve you dragged home now?’ I gave a start. It was time for introductions at last. I swept my hand over my hair again – it was still gritty but I hoped the candlelight would be forgiving.

‘My father, Francesco Luti. Baker,’ Margarita said to me. I stood up and bowed.

‘Pietro … Aaartist’s apprentice,’ I replied, managing to sink my stammer in one deep sound. The warmth from the ovens was starting to envelop me like a comforting blanket. The candlelit room felt inviting. I was glad to be here.

‘My Margarita’s brought home with her an artist’s apprentice,’ the baker said to his friends.

‘A young one, Margarita,’ he said to his daughter.

‘Are you shaving, boy?’

His friends laughed.

I fiddled with the button in my hand. The candlelight caught it. Margarita’s father scrutinised me as if calculating the weight of an invisible purse. His eyes ran over what I was wearing: dark green velvet jacket, white shirt and once brightly coloured hose. Creased, stained, ripped, and smelling of the river maybe, but in the gentle light some quality was still discernible. As I looked around at the attire of Signore Luti’s local customers I hoped that, even dishevelled, he might see me as a cut above. He did. I glimpsed a squint of appreciation in his eyes.

‘These two loaves are for you,’ he said to me.

I sensed hackles rise all around.

Sensing it too, Margarita intervened. ‘There’s enough bread for all of you. Take it and get yourselves home to your families.’ Her voice was authoritative but not unfeeling.

‘But I’ve not finished my …’ one of them started to say but the baker’s daughter was having none of it.

‘Come, Alessandro,’ she said, taking the cup from the man’s hand and replacing it with a loaf. ‘Olivia won’t thank me for letting you return home smelling of the grape, but she’ll be happy when you’ve come back with the grain. It’s as precious as gold in the city these days and you know it. Here.’

‘But they haven’t paid.’

Margarita went over and tapped the black velvet purse, immediately silencing her father.

‘Now isn’t this nice,’ he said, throwing a warm arm around my shoulder when the last of his friends had gone. ‘Just the three of us. No special woman in your life?’ Margarita glowered a warning at her father. I cast my eyes to the floury floor.

Chapter 9

‘She’ll make a good wife,’ her father told me as she cleaned the jugs of wine away and disappeared out the back.

‘God, it’s disgusting out here, Father,’ her voice shouted through. ‘You’ll kill us all off if you’re not careful!’

‘Place wouldn’t work if it wasn’t for our Margarita,’ the short, round baker with red cheeks told me. That he was Margarita’s father was hard to see. The years had not been kind to him.

‘Of course, I can’t leave it to her. All this.’ My heavy eyes followed his hand as it showed me his kingdom. ‘Not unless she’s married. I keep telling her. I won’t be able to hold on to it forever. I could go at any second, feeling a bit strange now as a matter of fact,’ and with that he sat on a bag full of flour propped up against the wall. ‘And then what would she do?’ I had no need to answer. The man rambled on, his voice strangely comforting after the horrors of the day. ‘I’ve got two girls. A blessing and a curse for a father. Her sister’s married. To a barrel maker. The man has a trade, can look after her. He’s no interest in taking over all this. Our Alicia got married at fourteen. Good age for a girl to get wed. Our Margi’ll be too old soon. I keep telling her that. Oh, she’s had suitors. That girl’s a pearl. Always was. Our precious pearl. Who wouldn’t want to be married to that? But that lustre won’t last forever. Oh no! Thinks she’s clever. But it doesn’t do to be clever for a girl. And she needs to be careful because she’s too clever. Soon she’ll be too old and too clever. Then what’s she going to do? A man doesn’t want a clever shrew for a wife. Though her mother was a bit of a shrew, God rest her soul, and I married her soon enough …’

Margarita shook me. I must have fallen asleep. She placed one plate of food in my hand and another in her father’s. We both followed her through to a small room situated at the back of the main bakery where we sat at a wooden table. In the middle was another candle that flickered as we breathed, so close were we to it. We ate in appreciative silence. I was back asleep within the hour, slumped over the table.

*

It was just before sunrise when Margarita woke me the following morning. My bleary eyes looked up to see her smiling down at me, her hair cascading in waves around her face. The ends tickled the tip of my nose. I swept them away and rubbed my eyes. I got up, surrounded by warmth and the smell of baking bread. I looked over towards the oven. It glimmered and bathed the entire room in a deep orange glow. I felt a thin layer of flour beneath my hands. I’d slept on the floor curled up like a cat in the corner of the kitchen. And I could hear singing. It was her father. It was neither sweet nor melodious. But it was confident and heartfelt, which gave it a charm that brought a smile to my face. He pulled a tray of freshly baked bread out of the gaping mouth of the furnace and slid another one in. I inhaled deeply and felt myself transported away on the wings of delight. And the pangs of hunger.

Margarita wrapped the small loaf my eyes had settled on in a cloth she’d taken off a hook. ‘Come!’ She grabbed my hand. ‘I’ll be back in time to help,’ she called back to her father as she stepped outside, pulling me after her. The street was silent and bathed in the deep blue-purple light that was somewhere between night and day. The air was fresh and alive. It licked my face with promise and I lapped it up. That morning was the closest I’d come to heaven. Lost in the moment, memories far away, the responsibilities of life set aside. The world seemed good and I was good in it.

And it was spring.

Spring in Rome is the prettiest season, a time for new beginnings, and so it was for me that April morning. As I walked past sleeping houses, hope surged in my heart.

‘Come! This way!’ Margarita led me down side streets. The countryside all around Rome was so rich and abundant at that time of year that farmers and peasants were already trickling into the city, their heavy carts laden with the season’s bounty. One such cart laden with the most magnificent blooms pushed us to the side. The colours dazzled; the fragrance made me dizzy. I followed on, drinking in the early morning, and watching the sky as it changed to a radiant purple canvas now streaked with flashes of deep pink and orange.

We passed merchants setting up their stalls, boys making deliveries to the taverns. Nobody noticed us as we floated by. It was as if the incidents of yesterday had never been.

When we came to the city walls, the trickle of traders and peasants had turned into a flood. Gateways bulged, not just with carts and beasts of burden laden with every imaginable commodity, but also with monks, pilgrims, adventurers. This was Rome after all. Soon all the streets of the city would be heaving with life. Margarita made her way along the wall’s perimeter. It was ancient and dilapidated, running to only several stones high in places. It was at one of these places that she stopped and clambered over. I did the same, falling into a shaded thicket on the other side. I did not know where we were, nor where we were going, but I did not care.

I looked up at the now blue sky above through wavering leaves and marvelled at the music of the birds. Gold-lined streaks of white now replaced the pink and orange of the breaking dawn.

We proceeded on our way through the trees, dancing over twigs and raised roots as the morning sun dappled the ground beneath. We said nothing. Margarita was lost in her own thoughts while my mind was empty of thoughts and memories of any sort. An overwhelming feeling of peace came over me as I tramped my way behind her through the glowing greenery. We wound our way round and up and over and up some more until she disappeared through an opening. I tumbled after her. New-born into the light.

We’d made it to the top of a hill. Out of the city. Into the countryside. Margarita threw herself down. I did the same. The ground beneath our hands was cool and damp, the air fresh. And there we sat and gazed in wonder at the view before us. A delicate mist lay over the fields that stretched out below, concealing the life burgeoning beneath. We watched, waited, in silent wonder.

The sun’s rays became stronger, the mist finer. Soon we could make out the water in the streams flowing fast, and, as the cover thinned still further, the earth, pulsating with new life after winter, gave itself up to our eyes. Juicy green leaves and blossom as heavenly as angels’ wings burst forth on the trees. They throbbed with life and filled the air with heavenly music. The mist had all but disappeared and the world was now vibrating with hope, life, and colour. So much so that it seemed to me that even the peasants, admittedly no bigger than ants in the distance, were happy. How could they not be?

‘One day, when I’m older, I’m going to live on a big estate in the country. Perhaps I’ll have a vineyard, and space for chickens, and I’ll have dogs to take hunting, and a horse.’

‘That’s a fine dream, Pietro,’ Margarita said to me. Dream? Yes. It was. A beautiful, beautiful dream, I realised. Hope had come back into my life. My winter was over. Spring had arrived.

*

‘You must go.’

When I’d told Margarita about the opportunity to work at Raphael’s studio she was pleased. For me. It was a new experience, to have someone care what I did for my sake. Not theirs. No one had ever wanted me to succeed before without bringing with it untold benefit to themselves. But this girl was selfless, different.

And it hadn’t taken me long to work out that she was not a prostitute, lowborn or otherwise, not even a woman of easy virtue. Indeed, she was a much-loved daughter, and, that most rare of jewels, a clever and beautiful woman much admired by men and women alike. I, by contrast, was an unloved son, and little admired by anyone. Giulio liked me, I told myself. But then, did he? I remembered how he’d tricked me into saying fornicatora … how I’d stammered, how he’d laughed, and then there was that knowing look he’d given me. Then there was Luca. I’d been touched in more ways than one by him. I’d truly believed that something meaningful had passed between us – until I’d woken up the next morning to find him gone, along with most of my silver buttons.

Fate had been kind to her, cruel to me.

The reasons for me not to get on with Margarita were all there at the start.

But against my stronger, if not better, judgement, part of me grudgingly liked her. And besides, I needed her – to feed me, put a roof over my head, and give me the confidence to walk into Raphael’s studio.

Chapter 10

I was fourteen, Raphael was twenty-five, when I walked into his workshop. Yes, you know already that I had Margarita to thank for that. She’d looked after me like the little brother she’d never had, much to her father’s disappointment. He’d wanted her to show a very different type of interest in me, one that would lead to marriage, babies, a secure future. But that was the last thing on Margarita’s mind when it came to me. Instead of blushing every time I entered a room, she took me to a barber’s, patched up my clothes, and, to put a stop to her father’s constant innuendoes once and for all, she got me a room in a nearby boarding house. And on the day I moved in she sent someone to pick up my belongings from my father’s house.

I would never have seen Federico’s message if it hadn’t been for Margarita because I was never going to go back there. Delivered to my father’s house and marked as important, the message had been thrown on top of a small pile of my possessions.

‘Here. You’ll want to read this,’ she said as she handed it to me. I trembled as I took it. I looked at her, my heart flipping between hope and despair. She placed a gentle hand on my shoulder, beamed at me, then nodded. ‘New home, new start,’ she said. I unfolded the message, my breath becoming easier as I read each wonderful word.

Dear Pietro,

My maestro has asked me to discuss terms of apprenticeship with you. Please be at Hostaria dell’Orso next Thursday, at 7.

Federico

But it was Thursday already. Panic replaced my newfound relief. What was I going to wear? What was I going to say? How? Where? Who? When? I walked back and forth, my mind racing. ‘Stop this.’ I looked at Margarita, saw her outstretched arms. I melted into her embrace. I shook. She calmed me. ‘There now. Everything is going to be all right.’

*

It was six o’clock when I heard the knock on the door. I sat up, bleary-eyed. I must have fallen asleep.

‘Time to wake up, sleepy head. Time to leave for the hostaria.’ It was Margarita. I opened the door and she took my arm. She’d come to take me to my meeting.

‘I-I-I-I c-c-c-can’t. It’s t-t-t-too late.’ Her hand tightened. She pulled me after her; she said nothing. She was taking me to the tavern. I ran my fingers through my hair, straightened my clothes. The sun disappeared, taking the warmth of the day with it. I was soon wide awake.

The tavern was down one of the streets where I’d met Luca. I shuddered at the memory of the sinister figure who had crouched over him. ‘Not far now,’ Margarita said, her voice reassuring. Her hand squeezed mine.

When we got inside, groups of men were playing cards and dice, roaring with every round and roll, while wine sloshed over jugs transported by big-armed men and round-cheeked women. A small band of musicians played in the corner, while lovers, the worse for wear, groped each other greedily, not caring who saw them. Laughter and loud voices filled the air while fat-stinking candles and flickering oil lamps kept the darkness at bay. I thought of the cloaked figure, of Luca, of Death. All outside. Life spilt over all around me. I gave Margarita a little smile.

‘Pietro! Over here!’ There in the corner stood Federico, waving at me. Luigi at his side.

Margarita pushed me towards them.

‘It was hell tracking you down,’ he said. ‘Spoke to your father.’ The background noise in the tavern masked my silence.

‘You’ve found him now,’ Margarita said. ‘When can he start?’ I was surprised at her audacious intervention and when Federico opened up to her, his mouth as round and red as a poppy in the morning sun, I was grateful too. And she continued to fire questions at the two apprentices in rapid succession, which revealed more to me than I’d ever thought possible about Raphael and his studio. ‘What is he like?’

He was talented, courteous, just, and good-natured.

‘What of the education you receive?’

The training both boys received was appropriate and thorough. They glowed like disciples as they regaled us with tales of the care Raphael took in teaching them. Margarita made sounds of appreciation.

‘This artist sounds perfect indeed,’ she mused. ‘There must be some catch.’ She laughed. ‘Don’t tell me that he’s hideously ugly with the body of a barrel and the jowly face of an old cockerel?’ This time the boys laughed. Luigi dug deep into his pocket and pulled out his own miniature portrait of Raphael – a copy of a copy, no doubt. Seemed to be a lot of them about. He presented it to Margarita. I watched her, knowing that she’d seen something similar before. She said nothing and raised her eyebrows in mock delight. But what she had seen had wiped the smile off her face.

‘Portraits tend to embellish,’ she added. ‘They often improve on nature.’

‘L-l-like Sebastiano’s of you?’ I’d found my tongue at last.

She laughed and struck me playfully about the ear.

‘He’s beautiful,’ Luigi added with a blush. ‘The most beautiful man you’ll ever see. And though this portrait is beautiful, the person is yet more so.’

‘We think that’s he’s perfection,’ Federico whispered. I had seen the artist and knew the words of his apprentices to be true. I sipped my wine, deep in thought. But the notion of perfection was too much for Margarita.

‘Please, boys. Stop this nonsense. You had me going there for a while with this fairy story. But you’ve gone too far. Perfection, indeed! Here, let me look at that likeness of him again.’

Luigi held it out to her. She studied it carefully.

‘He’s probably a vain, ridiculous creature, like all artists.’

Federico and Luigi looked crestfallen.

‘Sorry, I’m not talking about you,’ she said. ‘But you know what I mean.’ They didn’t.

At that moment a handsome young man, well-built and with thick, dark hair, caught my eye.

‘Margarita?’ He knew her. His eyes flicked from her to the rest of our group. Anger thrust him towards us.

‘Oh no,’ she whispered. ‘Come. Let us talk,’ she said, addressing the attractive fellow. She led him away. His large, manly hand caught her elbow. She pulled away. Her eyes flashed a warning. ‘I’ve never pretended,’ I heard her say to him, ‘I’ve never deceived you.’ Honesty. She unleashed it upon this would-be suitor and it wounded him. I looked on for a while but I soon lost interest.

‘Raphael …’ It was Luigi. ‘His only weakness is women.’

The two apprentices poured lively talk into my ears as keenly as I poured red wine down my throat. By the time the candles had burned to their bases I was happy, and completely intoxicated. Fear had released my soul from its ugly claws. I would soon be resuming my artistic training at the most exciting workshop in Rome.

I looked around. Margarita’s young man had long gone. ‘It’s time I got you home,’ she said to me, her arm now holding me upright.

‘Fortune favours the brave,’ I slurred, satisfied with myself.

‘Yes. It takes a man of exceptional valour to put away more wine than he can handle, and seize an opportunity when it’s handed to him on a platter,’ she said.

*

During the following days my skin tingled and my breath quickened every time I thought of Raphael. I would be there in his workshop soon. Luigi and Federico had told such marvellous tales about him. While I believed them, Margarita did not. She sniffed around like a hungry hound seeking to tear the meat from the bones of the apprentices’ extravagant claims. She was in a strange mood. Jealous, I told myself, of my good fortune.

She hunted around. Though she knew few people who mixed in artistic circles she knew a few who loitered around the edges. A servant friend of hers who worked for Cardinal Bibbiena was one of them. ‘She says there’s not a woman who hasn’t desired him,’ Margarita reported back to me, ‘nor, if she’s been lucky enough to get it, who hasn’t been satisfied more than by any other man before.’ This news seemed to appal her, though it thrilled me. ‘He’s a philanderer! Woe betide any woman who trusts him,’ she added, waving her finger up and down in my face.

‘And what’s worse is that Cardinal Bibbiena is one of the artist’s patrons.’

She paused to cough. She found the information unpalatable. ‘There. Your artist’s a bought man,’ she persisted with the finger wagging. ‘And when you’re a bought man you’re trapped. Only as good as the man who pays you. And believe me, Bibbiena is not a good man.’

Her words confused me. One minute she had a hand on my back pushing me towards him, the next she was doing all she could to keep me away from him. Raphael aroused strong passions. Even in Margarita. I hardened myself to her words. Her desire to besmirch Raphael’s reputation was starting to look a lot like need. ‘According to Sebastiano, he copies,’ she said, quoting the words of a man she despised, ‘… has no ideas of his own … is not serious …’ To be on the side of someone who bleated like a jealous rival did not sit comfortably on Margarita’s shoulders but she said it anyway. I decided she was desperate to keep hold of me and feared she would use any means possible to do so.

But I was wrong about that.

When the day came to go to Raphael’s workshop, she called for me at the boarding house, as she’d promised she would.

‘You look magnificent.’ She laughed as I opened the door. My hair was clean and neat, thanks to Margarita’s barber friend; my green jacket was fresh and stain-free, after she’d soaked it, scrubbed it, then scented it with lavender; and my shirt looked like new, whiter than when I’d first bought it, with the tears in the sleeves invisible after she’d spent hours sewing them up. I was wearing yellow hose. She cast her eyes over them quickly but looked away before I could see what she thought.

‘Now stand up straight and walk tall.’

I shuffled, my stomach churned, my head felt heavy. As I set off on the journey that would change the course of my life faces queued up within my head to torment me: Michelangelo’s, Sebastiano’s, my father’s. They tried to hold me back, but it was Margarita who pushed me forward. If she did not want me to go, she did not show it. Pilgrims, priests and monks flowed around us, buffeting us this way and that. I was all at sea within and without. But Margarita kept going, taking me with her.

‘I don’t want to go.’

‘Oh yes you do.’

‘No. I don’t.’

‘I’ve had a week of you telling me what an opportunity this is going to be. It was me, can’t you remember, who spoke against it.’

Margarita was right. I’d been the one overjoyed at the prospect, determined to succeed. But now my resolve had gone. My fear of failure had returned. I couldn’t face it. Not again.

‘I don’t understand why it means so much to you, to work there. But I know that it does. And I cannot deny that this Raphael sounds better than any other artist I’ve come across.’

I still resisted.

‘Now come on, Pietro. I’m not going to let your weakness cripple you.’

I was weak; I knew it. The scapular accuracy of her words left me exposed and wounded. I could say nothing back. I seethed.

‘Artists in my experience – granted it’s not wide – are parasites. They flatter the rich and powerful and are prepared to sway in any direction for the right price in the hope that one day they too will become rich.’ She stopped to apologise to a Dominican dressed in white whom she’d bumped into. ‘That’s not to say there’s no talent involved,’ she continued, ‘but I’ve not come across one who I think worthy of my respect.’

I felt nauseous. Did she know what she was saying? I lurched to the side; she dragged me on.

‘Want to buy a relic?’ A wizened old man placed his bony fingers on me, thrusting a red cross into my face. He sensed my despair. ‘I have no money,’ I told him as Margarita steered me out of his path. He came at me a second time.

‘A relic? Where is it from, this relic? Genuine, is it? Along with the tens of copies you have of it in that basket of yours?’ she challenged him. He did not try to sell me one a third time.

‘Come on, Pietro,’ she said, not to be put off. ‘You have to do what your heart tells you to do and I accept that you’re resisting it at the moment but that’s because you’re decent. You’re not like them. That’s what’s good about you. And who knows, when you’re a famous artist, you can be the first one I respect.’

The baker’s daughter from Trastevere gave my hand a sudden pull.

‘I think we’re nearly there.’

We were at the end of the street. The sight of apprentices filing into the workshop made my feet feel like blocks of marble. We watched, waited.

‘Look! Look! There’s Giulio. Giulio Romano.’ Margarita hit me in the arm at the sight of him. Joy and trepidation enveloped me. I had no idea why he was at Raphael’s but I was glad to see him. The power of a familiar face, no doubt.

‘Now go. Oh, and my father says there’s always a job for you at the bakery if this doesn’t work out. And come and let me know how you get on either way. As soon as you can.’

She shoved me in the back and I started to walk. She was calling after me, her voice loud and encouraging, but I no longer heard what she was saying. What she’d said earlier about weakness came to mind; it was a weakness that I should want to give in to the urge to return to her. I would conquer this feeling. I would need her no more. My back was now turned on this girl from Trastevere and although I felt sick at the thought of it I had my ambitions set on the glamorous world of art again. There I would envelop myself in the folds of its power, and power, I well knew, brought with it its own immunity.

I’d not been born into good fortune; the only way for me, and men like me, to climb high in the world, was to be prepared to sever ties with those who by association would tether me to the ground. If that meant doing bad things then so be it. All Margarita’s kindness, much like the kind words she was hurling after me, would soon become as insubstantial as a windswept cloud trailing across a clear sky. There. Then gone. Forgotten forever.

As I stood outside the workshop door I imagined my future. I was about to re-create myself.

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