The Ruby Ring (29 page)

“And when you return here to the city, then what? Will you not have jeopardized all of your important commissions?”

“I care not a whit about any of them if it means they come before you!”

“The lives of your assistants then?”

“What of
our
lives, Margherita? What of us?”

“But you have me already.” She smiled comfortingly in the glow of the fire beside them. “And it shall be so, until you wish me in your life no longer.”

Her reassurance was not the balm she hoped. His expression still bore the torment of the uncertain and dangerous future he saw before them if they remained unmarried.

“That is not the point. What I wish is to honor you by our formal union.”

“I know. And I will wait for as long as it takes,” she said soothingly, running a finger along his cheek. “Perhaps the next pope—”

“His Holiness is only gluttonous, not old! There is no hope for us in that! And in the meantime, with all of the men of Rome, like Sebastiano Luciani, who see you as fair game—”

She tipped her head. “As if I have no control in that matter at all?”

“But they are men who know well how to manipulate!”

“And I am not wise enough to defend myself?”

“You could not begin to defend yourself against the clever words or intent of one of them!”

She stood then, stiff with indignation. “A victim, am I? A mere possession, allowing myself to be taken? If you believe that, Raphael, then you do not know me at all!”

He reached out for her hand but she jerked it away. His eyes were a color she had never seen, and frightening. “Sebastiano challenges me in all things! Many here in Rome do! I must remain vigilant to the daily threat, and I must protect you!”

Margherita’s face went ashen, something deep changing within her as she moved across the bedchamber, twisted the iron door handle, and drew back the door. “You brought me into this competitive world of yours! You entreated me to become a part of it, to learn it, and compete in it using my
own
skills, even knowing what determination that would take!” When she looked at him, her eyes were deep with sincerity. “Raphael, I love you with all of my heart, but you must learn to believe in me, and to trust me!”

He stood slowly, gazing at her with the distance of the room, and the weight of misunderstanding, between them. “You are putting me out?”

“It would be best if you returned for tonight to the Via dei Coronari, or to your studio, giving us both some time for . . . reflection.”

He went to her, arms extended. “Margherita. Do not do this—”

Her hand went up in defense. Tonight, she had walked among cardinals and bishops, and sat in the presence of the Holy Father himself, as one who was actually entitled to do so. It had taken her a personal strength she had never even known she possessed, and now she was entirely spent.

“Have we not both said enough for one evening?”

As they looked at one another in the silence of her question, Margherita saw the torment of a complicated man, besieged by people who only wanted to take from him. Even so, he had chosen to trust her, and to love her. She was, he said, his only bit of family now. But in their time together, she had also come to know the tumult of creativity and self-doubt that defined his world, and she could not allow herself to be caught up in that dangerous current. Her duty, she believed, was to be the light, the beacon, and the bit of reason he needed to keep him from his own dark demons.

“As you wish.” He nodded soberly, coming to stand before her at the open door. The lamplight from the corridor beyond, for that moment, bathed them both in a single cone of shimmering gold. Very lightly, Raphael pressed a kiss onto her cheek. “I shall speak no more now. But I do bid you, consider well what I have said, and do not trust those who have not
earned
your trust. I did not easily learn that myself here in Rome, but eventually I did learn it well.”

“This night,
amore mio,
I will be unable to think of anything else.”

27

E
ACH WEEK WHEN SHE RETURNED TO THE BAKERY AND
the little house in Trastevere to visit her father, Margherita came with baskets of gifts. There were always gold florins for each of them to spend as they chose, and sweets for her young nephews—especially little Matteo upon whom she doted. Fine new dresses were sent for Letitia, and new, well-made shoes for her father, along with a comfortable new bed brought in from Venice. Raphael’s personal gift to the family had been two young, able-bodied men he hired to help in the family bakery so that the burden might be lifted from Francesco.

While Margherita had offered her sister a position managing the new house, Letitia preferred being a big fish in her little pond in Trastevere, where she could boast about the family’s newfound fortunes. In addition, Raphael had offered to take Donato from the Chigi stables and give him the position of attendant and personal guard to Margherita for the long hours when he could not be with her himself. It was a position Donato gratefully and swiftly accepted.

In spite of the envy on her sister’s face, and her father’s growing avarice, Margherita felt honor bound to share her good fortune, not only with her family, but with Padre Giacomo and the little parish church that not so long ago had been the center of her world. As the months passed, the visits to Trastevere became shorter—yet their requests greater. And the time they all wished to spend on the Via Alessandrina was increasing as well. There was always much to discuss. Letitia petitioned for two new beds for her growing elder sons. And Donato could not possibly make do with only the two new doublets designed by Raphael’s own tailor—not now, when he was known to have an affiliation with the famous artist, Letitia insisted. And if Letitia was going to be expected to spend time socially in her sister’s company, the dresses she wore, like Margherita’s, would need to reflect her changing status. When she left the bakery, or they left her home, her head full of new requests, Margherita felt not regret or sadness, but only relief to be away from them.

Her world had changed, and now so had she.

As Raphael had warned her, there were actually very few whom she could trust, and, in spite of Letitia’s grating behavior, she was grateful to have Donato there as support as she tried to navigate in this new and far more complicated world.

After a visit with Hanno in the Vatican gardens, Margherita walked along the muddy cobbled street with her new companions, Donato and Elena. Margherita felt the safety in numbers and did not travel through the city without the constant companionship of them both. And she preferred walking, rather than riding the lovely horses Raphael offered. It was easier to maintain her dwindling anonymity by being among the people on the streets.

It was a pleasant day for so late in November, and a blaze of gold sunlight shimmered down on the cobbled stone piazza through which they passed on their way back home. Today had brought a more difficult visit to the bakery than usual, and thus her time with sweet-tempered Hanno, who still sank to his knees for her, and wrapped his trunk around her arm, had been welcome.

With so many things pressing on her mind she did not see the collection of finely gowned patrician ladies coming toward her. Nor did she, at first, hear their low, cruel whispers breaking the silence on the quiet square.

“By my troth, it
is
her!”

“No!”

“I would know that trollop anywhere!”

“Tart!” they tittered. “And out like this, as proud as you please!”

“They say Signor Raphael has bought her a fine house, and he spends more time there with her than at his work for the Holy Father!”

“I have heard it said that she has the impudence to continue posing as the great Virgin Mother while there is nothing left of the virgin about
her!
She is even called
signora
now!”

They cackled like hens, not looking directly at her, but speaking loudly enough to be certain she could hear them. Donato slowed his pace when a dirty-faced boy crossed their path, hand out, hoping for a coin from the finely dressed man. Margherita only wanted to be away from this place and from these women, knowing that they meant her nothing but harm. As the two factions drew ever nearer, and Donato was distracted searching for the coins, she felt her body tense.

When Donato kindly patted the boy on top of his head, handing him what coins he had with him, the ring of four women, all in their sweeping velvet finery, stopped, as if having cornered prey. It was a great irony, Margherita thought, that they had all just emerged from a little stone church at the opposite end of the square.

“She is not as comely as I would have thought,” said one of them, a stout, silver-haired woman with a long hooked nose and faintly pockmarked skin. “But she does have those eyes everyone speaks about.”

“Eyes or not, I would know Raphael’s harlot anywhere!”

Realizing at last the danger, Donato faced them head-on, tall and confrontational. “Is there a problem?” he asked in a deep, commanding voice that shook even Margherita with its implied threat. Surprisingly, once again, they laughed.

“Not for us. But then we are not making a sow’s ear into a silk purse!”

Again there was a chorus of cruel tittering that filled the peaceful square. Donato put a protective arm around Margherita’s shoulder, and Elena followed them as he steered her away.

“Flee if you will!” another called out in an acid taunt that echoed through the little piazza. “But you cannot outrun the gossip that has filled this town!”

S
HE WEPT
until there were no more tears. Then she vomited a vile mix of despair and frustration that came up through the depths of her innocent belief that love could solve all things, heal all things. Yet it was not Raphael who smoothed the hair away from her face and stroked her arm until the trembling ceased—it was Donato. Brother. Friend. Now confidant.

“I am a laughingstock in Rome!”

“They are old, bitter women. You must not take them as anything more.”

“It is all coming undone, Donato! There will be no marriage, no honor . . . no resolution to this! I should never have allowed myself to love him for what, in the end, it shall do to us both!”

Donato turned her away from the corner of the building and held her arms squarely as Elena waited silently beside him, her own expression grave with the shock of what had just occurred.

“Don’t speak that way! Raphael adores you, and you
do
love him!”

“The forces against us are great! I was a fool to believe anyone besides Raphael could ever accept me as I am! And where is the future in it for the two of us, Donato, if they cannot?”

“W
ELL, THEN?
Will it be completed in time?” Cardinal Bibbiena pointedly asked, gazing up at the mammoth fresco in the great hall of Chigi’s villa. Scaffolding was everywhere, with paint pots and draperies littering the elegant inlaid marble floor. A collection of apprentices were beginning to prepare the pigments with the wedding but a day away.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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