The Ruby Ring (21 page)

“Your Grace spins an impressively creative tale,” dared Raphael.

“Yet a plausible one, nonetheless.” He held out his own heavily jeweled hand. “May I?”

With a furtive glance toward Raphael for approval, the stout workman surrendered the ring to the cardinal. Bibbiena’s thin-lipped smile broadened as he took it into the palm of his hand, turning it over until it caught the lamplight.

“Exquisite. This would be quite a valuable little relic,” he murmured, forgetting his reserve.

Raphael felt his chest tighten, and an odd sense of dread begin to seize him. What could a man like Bibbiena want with yet another piece of jewelry?

“The Nero connection seems highly unlikely after all of this time,” Raphael said with a feigned indifference that he fought to maintain, knowing instinctively how fate had led him to the ring, intending it for Margherita’s hand. “So many other emperors here since then, so many other years.”

“It was well buried,
signore,
perfectly preserved by pure chance,” Nicol reminded, unaware of the growing hostility between the two men.

The cardinal lifted a single eyebrow. “And stranger things have happened.”

“Perhaps. But, in either case, the Holy Father should be allowed to determine its authenticity and value for himself.” Raphael now held out his hand.

“I shall see it to the Holy Father, Raphael, when I dine privately with him this evening.”

“Your Grace’s offer is a gracious one, but
I
am the Holy Father’s commissary of antiquities. It is my responsibility to supervise its transport.”

Bibbiena lowered his eyes, setting his gaze on Raphael. “Do you not trust me, Raphael?”

“It is not a matter of trust, Your Grace, rather one of responsibility.”

“An odd stand to take, considering your stand on your
other
responsibilities.”

Raphael gritted his teeth. Bibbiena had meant his relationship with Maria, and the disquieting silence between them was charged heavily with animosity. “Still, Your Grace, I really must insist.” He held out his hand, his eyes leveled on the gaunt, harsh face, so like Maria’s.

There was a hint of malice in Bibbiena’s eyes that grew to something very strong. “Tell me,
Raffaello,
were it yours to give, would this be something you would intend for my niece? She is, after all, still your officially betrothed.”

“I intend nothing other than seeing it to the care of the Holy Father, to be dealt with at his pleasure, Your Grace,” Raphael said, his eyes narrowed.

“You have no idea of the value of something like this! You could not possibly!”

Raphael studied the cardinal for a moment, straining to remain calm. “But this is not about the ring—is it, Your Grace?”

“Precious things deserve to be in the care of those who understand their value.”

“Like your niece?”

A little gasp sounded, but Raphael did not know from where it had come.

“Very well,” Bibbiena conceded. A tense moment later, he surrendered the ring, then turned away in a whirl of crimson. “It shall find its rightful hand soon enough, pray God,” he declared with a slim, sardonic grin Raphael could not see, but one he certainly felt.

Raphael glanced back down at the ring, already warm and reassuring in his own hand. “
S,
pray God,” he repeated as the cardinal and his assistants turned and headed for the circular hole in the side wall, the only way to escape the dank, rubble-filled room. But it was clear as he went that the two men had very different intentions in mind regarding the future of this newly discovered gem.

17

R
APHAEL SAT WAITING FOR ELENA IN HIS OWN GRAND
kitchen on the Via dei Coronari until she finally appeared, her arms laden with food to prepare for the evening meal. The market had been hot and crowded, and now she was late, and weary.

Elena wore a white linen cap, a white collar, and an apron over her gray wool underdress. There was a leather belt and pouch at her waist in which she kept the market money. But no jewelry adorned her hands now. That had long ago been sold to see to her family’s survival. Hanging over her arm, once draped by rich damask, were a bag of potatoes and a large silvery fish. She looked up and saw Raphael settled into a wooden chair beside the newly lit kitchen fire with a goblet of wine in his hand.

It was clear to her, by his troubled expression, he was waiting for her. Only once had Elena seen the
mastro
here in this vast room, cluttered with stained copper pots hanging from a heavy, open-beamed ceiling, bowls, plates, and kettles. She was unnerved by his presence now. It had been many months since they had been alone together. And that one time had changed her life forever.

“It is not your custom to return home so early,
signore,
” she nodded and quickly turned away, busying herself with laying out the onions, fish, and cheese she had just bought. “Forgive me, but your supper is going to be a bit late this evening.”

“That doesn’t matter,” he said, his smooth voice changed by a slight tremor.

She was relieved he was not angry with her, but she feared what his being here again could mean. “Then have you come to request something special for your meal?” she asked thinly, praying silently that her hunch was wrong. “The market was particularly busy today, but there was some lovely—”

“It is nothing to do with food,” Raphael replied, interrupting her as he shifted uncomfortably on the stool.

Her heart began to race, and she felt ill. The kitchen suddenly became hot and close—this place held a memory she did not wish to revive. Elena felt her face flush. How could she tell the
mastro
that what had occurred only once—that foolish evening after her youngest sister had died so suddenly—had been the worst mistake of her life? Tell him that and she was certain to lose the employment that entirely sustained the rest of her family. Yet here he was in her kitchen, wanting things to be as they were, drinking his wine in great gulps . . . waiting for her.

Elena’s face must have been positively etched with panic because the moment she turned toward him, Raphael shot to his feet, the silver wine goblet tumbling from his hand and clattering onto the worn stone floor.

“
No!
Oh, no! I’ve not come about—” he declared loudly at first, then stopping himself in midsentence so that he would not need to speak the words. She saw his face pale, and an awkward moment of silence fell heavily between them.

“Pray, may we speak frankly?” he bid her in a lower, more strained tone. He moved a step nearer, across the chasm of the room, as well as through the awkward breach the past had created.

The throbbing beat of her heart still had not slowed, nor had her fear of what would come next. Wiping her hands on a kitchen cloth, she sank against the long wooden table topped with mixing bowls and a collection of wooden spoons.

“If you wish it,
signore
.”

Elena tried to look at him, at his self-assured stance, the breathtaking elegance of his clothes, which, every day, set him far above her life now. Yet she simply could not see anything but the rush of images. The two of them here in this kitchen, atop the long trestle table, entwined, where the bundles of onion and package of cheese now lay in a hurried heap.

Raphael ran a hand behind his neck and glanced around the vast kitchen that saw little use most days. “The fact of the matter is that there is a woman.”

Another?
she longed to ask him. But she wisely avoided saying that.

“I had heard it said,” she replied instead.

Elena carefully watched the instant expression of self-defense change his face. “Where do they speak of such things that you might hear? At the fish market beneath the Portico of Octavia? Or the vegetable stalls of the public market at the Piazza dell’Aracoeli?”

He was quickly defensive, bordering on the very edge of anger.

“They speak in many places of the girl who has won your heart. There is great interest in it,
signore.
And you are, after all, a most important man in the city.”

“So they repeatedly remind me.”

And then very suddenly she began to understand. Her heart beat very swiftly. She could not afford to lose this position. “I am no threat to her, of course.”

“The point is that Margherita is different. Special to me and—” Raphael stopped himself in midsentence, and she could see suddenly that he believed he had offended her. “Not that you are not special. You have kept a good house for me these past two years. It is just different with her.”

She understood, and within that lay her worst fear. “You do not wish her to know of all the other women? Of the diversity and number of us, perhaps?” she asked with a hint of resentment bleeding through her calm tone.

“It is one thing, Elena, to know of them, and she does. But it would be quite another for her to have to see one of them on a daily basis, once she enters more fully into my life.”

Elena grew very cold, as if an unexpected draft had swept through the room. He meant to relieve her of her employment here. She felt the burden of foolish navet weigh profoundly on her. Still there was the responsibility of her mother, her siblings, her duty, and in that she could allow herself no pride.

“Signor Sanzio,
per favore,
” she bid him, her mouth having gone absolutely dry with the panic. “You must know I would never speak a word of that. I do swear it. It is not a circumstance of which I am proud even to recall for myself, much less to speak of to others!”

When he looked away from her, she went on, feeling the words tumble out over her desperation, her hands extended before her in a pleading gesture. “I shall never be wanted as a wife now to any honorable man in Rome! There is nothing left for me!
Per favore, signore!
At heart, you are a good and decent man! I implore you not to take away the one means I have of feeding my family!”

She saw how struck he was by that. The small pained expression, the way his eyes narrowed, as if he had never fully considered the effect of his actions on any of the women he had bedded, until this moment.

“Forgive me,” he said in a deep tone, and she knew that he meant it as he ran his hand once again behind his neck in a nervous gesture. “There have been many things in my life I have not considered for how taken up I have been with finding success. I used you in a moment of my own weakness, which is an appalling excuse, I know, and yet, for it, I am still truly and completely sorry.”

She wanted to say that the weakness had been hers as well, that had shock and pain not clouded her judgment she would never have given him something so precious to her as her virtue. Especially not in the desperate, unthinking way that she had. But he loved another now, and the past could not matter to him. Being rid of the reminder seemed his greatest concern.

In the silence that had fallen once again between them, Raphael drew out a small wooden chest with leather straps and a silver clasp, which he then handed to her. “This should contain enough to help you and your family for a good while, at least until you can find another suitable circumstance. I really do wish you to have it.”

She felt the bile rise up into her throat with such force that she nearly vomited. Surprising even herself, Elena burst into tears. They flooded her gray eyes, clouding her vision as they rained down her round, pink cheeks.

“I am no whore to be paid off!” she managed to sputter, feeling her knees begin to buckle beneath the weight of so stinging an insult.

“I did not mean it like that!”

“If you had not taken me here in this very room, would you be offering me money?”

“I am
trying
to make amends, and perhaps not doing the best job of it, but you have entirely twisted my intent!”

“And
you
have misjudged my character!”

He gripped his forehead in frustration and wheeled around. “You have
no
idea how I regret what happened! What a dreadful mistake it was! But what can I give you? What will you take as restitution? You have but to name it!”

“I wish only what you have already agreed to with Cardinal Bibbiena! My position in this house, and my ability to care for my family!”

“Anything but that!”

“Then you do not regret it enough! I may now live in the poorest quarter of Rome, but I am not a whore, Signor Raphael, to be paid off for the regrettable use of my body! I am Elena di Francesco Guazzi, daughter of a once-great man!”

She used every ounce of courage she could call up, determined not to look away from him. “I have kept your house, lit your fires, bought your costly wine, and changed your linen after more nights of debauchery with women than I care to recall! I have only ever desired to make an honest living, and one day, by God’s grace, to marry a modest and
forgiving
man! But by one incident of my own foolish and sinful lack of judgment,” she cried, squaring her shoulders at him, “it appears I am meant to lose the opportunity for both!”

Elena did not give him time to speak another word. She had said, she knew, quite enough for one night. With the hem of her plain skirt swirling at her ankles, she turned and went out of the kitchen. She slammed the heavy door behind herself with a great punctuating thud.

G
IULIO ROMANO
sank against the wall of the corridor outside the kitchen, feeling as if he had just been hit suddenly in the solar plexus. He had suspected there might once have been something between Elena and the
mastro,
but he had not expected to learn the lurid details of it like this. He closed his eyes, trying to blot out the image of the pretty girl who shyly made his favorite broad beans and bacon, then insisted on leaving the room as he ate it. He had believed her shyness was because of him. Now all he could think was of her lying back on that wide, scarred kitchen worktable, over which he had spoken to her many times, her body surrendering to a man who had cared nothing for her.

Giulio had always loved Raphael, and more than that, he had respected him greatly, but now he felt the overpowering urge to do more damage to him than Luciani’s henchman had.

And yet what he had heard brought understanding. Now it all made sense. Why she refused to sit and speak with him for more than a moment here and there. He balled his hands into tight fists. He knew, of course, about lust and overpowering physical desire, because he had always so strongly denied himself, no matter how many temptations Raphael had set before him. He had never wanted the cheap whores of the Quartiere dell’ Ortaccio, but a real love to one day sate his passion. And for that, Giulio had always told himself, he could wait, no matter how much the
mastro
had said the opposite would improve the passion in his art.

Giulio had never loved anyone enough to be certain of precisely in what direction his true heart lay. What he felt now for Elena was not a matter of the heart, surely, but rather a strong urge to see her protected. That urge was rooted not in passion, but in compassion, he told himself. And yet it was enough to entirely occupy his mind at that moment. As he walked silently away from the kitchen, Giulio Romano felt compelled to do something about what he had heard beyond the door. The only question was what.