The Ruby Ring (40 page)

“
S,
they respect you now, but mark me, sister: If anything should ever happen to your beloved artist, you will be a pariah in Rome! Ridiculed, laughed at!” Letitia had cruelly blustered then, seeing Margherita just after her return from abduction. “Neither Father, nor Donato and I, can allow ourselves to be caught up in
that!
The bakery would not survive—nor would we!”

Margherita shivered now, remembering her sister’s words. After all she had done for them these past years, none of it mattered in the end.

Like everything else in her world, that was over as well.

She turned then and walked very slowly toward the door, remembering little Matteo’s face, and feeling her heart squeeze as she did. Such innocent sweetness still about him. Like the son she would never have with Raphael.
Dio,
how she missed that boy. He had wept the last time she had seen him. Had he known somehow that they would never see one another again?

Over her shoulder, Margherita said, “Make certain you burn all of them, Giulio.” Then she pulled the heavy door to the small studio closed behind herself for the last time, and for a moment everything was silent.

41

Good Friday, April 6, 1520

A
NOTHER FOUR DAYS PASSED SLOWLY AS RAPHAEL LAY IN
a continuously fevered state, waking briefly, only to fall sleep again without moving for hours at a time. Margherita sat beside him, holding his hand and mopping his brow with a series of cool cloths from a basin. She refused to leave even as one sour-faced papal physician after another consulted on his condition and spoke coldly of his imminent demise, as if she were not there.

Every hour the pope had an aide sent to the house and then ride swiftly to Florence so that he might be constantly apprised of Raphael’s condition. She could hear the physicians, in their low tones, speaking with the aides, as they stood near the door, knowing full well she could hear their every word. Repeatedly, they whispered that it was hopeless. It was overindulgence of physical pleasures, declared one. He had seen all of these signs before. The unrelenting fever was killing him, another was convinced. Certainly the severity and duration was sufficient to make it fatal.

But none of the physicians could be absolutely certain what it was that pulled Raphael steadily toward death.

They also spoke about the clerics who would not set foot in this room to give the pope’s favored artisan the last rites, unless he were to renounce his unholy alliance with a whore. If that woman were to leave him, it would be considered, they said. But if she remained, no cleric would go against the dictates of God. Not even for a pope’s favored artist.

The cutting words wounded her, but not half so much as the reality of seeing Raphael motionless in the bed beside her. He was not improving. As the days wore on, he had fewer moments of lucid consciousness, fewer moments of recognizing anyone. Much of the time, he called out to his father and spoke of Urbino, and works which he had assisted with as a boy. The Lord had relieved him of his pain by bringing back his youth, and for that she was grateful, but the part of him she had lost was the greatest part of her own heart.

As an ever-changing collection of Raphael’s assistants and apprentices, papal guardsmen, and Agostino Chigi himself held vigil at his bedside, his condition went unchanged. In desperation, and knowing no other effective treatment, the physicians continued to bleed him, hoping at least to release the poisonous ailment that was swiftly killing a young and vigorous man. Margherita had seen from the first that the treatments only weakened him the more. She held no power to stop them, but as long as he called out for her, they could not force her to leave his side.

Finally, on the sixth of April, Margherita was worn to sheer exhaustion. Giulio convinced her to take a few hours of rest in a quiet room next door. Unable any longer to function, she hesitantly complied and lay now, just before dawn, in a deep, unmoving sleep. As he had promised her he would, Giulio took her place and sat silently beside Raphael’s bed, watching the sun slowly begin to rise through the window shutters.

“What day is it, Giulio?”

Hearing the voice he had not heard for several days, at first Giulio believed himself to be dreaming. But it was Raphael, gazing over at him. “Good Friday,
mastro.
”

A weak smile edged up the corners of his mouth just slightly. “How ironic and fitting that I should die on the very day of my birth. I was actually born on Good Friday as well.”

“You will not die today,” Giulio trembled, reaching for Raphael’s now cold hand as tears pressed forward from the back of his eyes. “But you will go to live in the house of the Lord . . . ”

“S,”
he sighed, then closed his eyes for so long that Giulio believed for a moment that he had perished.

He looked so old and so weary. His youthful face had been ravaged already by this mysterious illness for which he had been repeatedly bled in a last desperate attempt to save his life. Yet in his weakened condition, the loss of blood had only hastened the outcome, which all now knew was imminent. He lay very still now, a full, dark mustache and beard disguising his once-handsome features, and his eyes sinking ever more deeply into their sockets.

“See her cared for,
caro amico.
I bid you with a heart that aches. Make certain she is safe,” Raphael pleaded hoarsely. “You are the only one I can ask . . . the only one I can trust.”

Giulio leaned more closely, fighting off a new wave of sorrow. “You must rest,
mastro.
”

He gripped Giulio’s hand with surprising force—the last he possessed. “She will not be safe if you do not find a way to protect her!” Raphael strained to say.

“Worry not. On my honor, I shall protect your Margherita with my own life.”

“Swear it, by your oath!”

“I do swear it.”

“I shall still worry . . . Peace cannot be mine until I know what will become of her . . . ” He drew in a crackling breath. “Her useless family will never have her back once I am gone, and she has nothing more but trouble and ridicule to bring them.”

“Another liaison perhaps. Someone to protect her?”

“You know well that no one with any authority would have her just now,” Raphael strained to say, and in his tone there was heartbreak. If he could not have her, he wanted someone else at least to protect her.

“There is another choice. For a time anyway. A choice that will surely make her safe, though not an easy one.”

“Then tell me, Giulio,” Raphael faintly bid him. “Before it is too late . . . I must know of it . . . ”

R
APHAEL LAY
perfectly still, his eyes closed, dreaming, sleeping, and feeling his body go slowly very cold as he was bound by thoughts he knew soon would be his last.
So much left to do . . .
So many moments to share . . . children. . . . paintings . . . Like any other dying man, he wished he had done things differently. Perhaps if he had lived a different way, this . . . Ah, but then this was exactly the end he was meant to have.

Pushing away the regret, he saw her face in his mind, sweet, soft, so exquisitely lovely, and he wondered what would become of her, where life would lead her. But he wished more than any other thing that he could go with her, that there could be a place for them, somewhere between this strange mortal world and heaven. Yet Raphael knew even in this hour that his life would live on in her . . . in the paintings they had made together . . . the images she alone had inspired. Margherita Luti was his slip of eternity.

M
ARGHERITA
had only slept a little more than an hour. But seeing Giulio’s stricken expression and Elena’s eyes flooded with tears when she woke, she knew that her decision to leave Raphael’s side was one that would haunt her for the rest of her life.

Dashing back into the bedchamber, she saw that the candles had only just been extinguished, their small trails of acrid smoke filling the silent air as the pale first morning light came softly in through the now half-open window shutters. Horrifying to her was the sight of Raphael’s empty bed.

As Margherita glanced sharply around the room, at the faces, the vacant bed, the smoking candles, everything began to move in slow motion.
If no one says it,
she thought desperately,
then it cannot be true.
Yet she knew by the way Giulio held Elena so tightly to him that the unimaginable had actually occurred. She was numb, yet her mind ran in circles. He could not be gone . . . He was meant to recover—they were meant to survive this as they had everything else that life had cast cruelly at them.

As Giulio moved back from the bed, Margherita went to him.

“
Signora,
I must—” Giulio tried to say, his voice breaking.

“Say nothing! I am not ready for condolences! Nor shall I ever be, because for me he shall never be gone!” Margherita felt them back away from the bed. She saw Elena’s tears, but she could not comfort her. She had nothing left to give to anyone.

When she heard the door click open, and saw Cardinal Bibbiena come into the room, her own blood went deathly cold. Of all the people in the world—all the clerics—he had the fewest reasons to be here. When she looked to Giulio for an explanation, she saw, to her horror, that his face had changed.

“Forgive me, Signora Luti,” Giulio began loudly enough to be overheard. “But I was not extending a condolence. Rather, it was an explanation as to where Signor Sanzio was taken while you slept.” She watched him draw in a deep breath, then exhale it. His voice was brittle, changed. This was not the man, the artist, or the friend she knew and trusted. “At the end, the
mastro
saw things more clearly. He renounced you in those last moments of his life and therefore was removed from this room in order to receive absolution.”

“No . . . ”

“He became convinced in his final moments that the fate of his immortal soul rested on that fact, and he did renounce you to me.”

“He would not have done that! Not ever!”

“How each of us sees things as we go to meet our Heavenly Father, alas, is known only to us,” Cardinal Bibbiena said quietly from across the room. “Surely you can see that it is better for his immortal soul, and your future, that Raphael disavowed this unholy alliance of yours. Surely you are not still so selfish,
signora,
that you cannot admit that.”

Giulio’s words were an echo in her mind.
It is protecting you . . .

Looking at the bitter cardinal, in his starched crimson robes, his face tight with hatred, then glancing over at Giulio, she understood why he had changed. Raphael’s dear friend was protecting her from Cardinal Bibbiena now that Raphael could no longer do it himself.

42

M
ARGHERITA WALKED ALONE TOWARD THE GIANT PANTHEON
on the wide, cobblestone piazza where it had sat majestically since the first century. With its massive white stone columns and arches, this great architectural marvel of another age still stood, the echo of emperors emanating from its very bricks and mortar. A light rain misted her face and hair as well as the dark cloak and hood that shrouded her in anonymity. She would allow no one to accompany her. She had forced even Donato to remain behind, relegated to the task of supervising the packing of her belongings for charity.

She had told them in a weakened voice, breaking with anguish, that she must see him one final time, in spite of the risk the crowds would bring. She had not been there with him to hold his hand or comfort him as he slipped quietly into death. For that, she would never forgive herself. Now, by order of the pope, Raphael lay in state in the very center of one of the most grand buildings in Rome. As she approached, his words of long ago were bittersweet in her mind.

Perhaps I shall have the Holy Father agree to bury me in the Pantheon one day, with you resting beside me, so that no one shall ever forget, unlikely or not, we two are forever lovers.”

She had smiled when he said it, thinking then that he must surely live forever. His work, after all, was timeless, and therefore he would be as well. The great Raffaello created magic and spun dreams. With him, her own had come true. For a time. Now, like the dust of angels, he was gone forever, and so were her dreams . . .

She pulled the dark cloak closer around her face and stepped into the crowd. They were waiting to move forward up the wide steps so that they might pay their last respects to a great artist most of them had never seen in life. She mingled among them—the devout, the curious, Rome’s poor and its elite—their grief a balm on her raw anguish. As one of them, she was a nameless, faceless woman hoping to pay homage. Yet she did so to the man rather than the artist.

Finally she was close enough to see beyond the doors. Upon a bier, draped in black silk, a body lay—her own beloved.
So he truly is gone,
she thought, seeing a finality in it now she had not allowed herself before. At his head, like a magnificent headstone, was the epic final work, sweepingly painted. It was the
Transfiguration,
with herself as a model in the foreground. Margherita felt her knees weaken so that she nearly collapsed beneath the weight of what never should have been. The culmination of his artistic life, he had called this work. And something more. The work was his last. Her heart squeezed so painfully that she felt she would faint.

As Margherita was pushed on a wave of anguished faces and outstretched arms, ever nearer the large carved doors, she caught sight of one she recognized. A face that caused the halting of the very breath in her throat. Anna Perazzi was looking directly at her, and beside her was her husband, Antonio.

“What is
she
doing here?” the woman called out in a rough tenor more befitting a man than any sort of comely woman, and loudly enough for others to hear. Instinctively, Margherita lowered her head, but it was too late. She had barely glimpsed Raphael’s body upon its bier, certainly gotten nowhere near enough to ease her broken heart, to gain one last sight of his beautiful peaceful face, to bid him a restful sleep.

“It is a horrible sin, her being here!” Antonio’s wife cruelly declared.

Rather than quieting her, Antonio merely looked away from Margherita, as if they had never known one another at all. The crowd turned angry, charging at her.
“Puttana!”
they called. “You did this to him!
You!
” They swept her up into their spiteful midst, as if the power of a wave had taken her over, swallowed her, and now cast her very forcefully down the steps and away from the Pantheon.

Cast onto the cobbled courtyard like a beggar, she collapsed into a heap on the paving stones. Someone kicked her as they passed, though she did not see who. Then she was spat upon from the same direction. Another blow, and another. But the pain in her heart was beyond anything they could do to her.

Just as suddenly, Margherita felt sturdy hands draw her up from behind and begin to tug her from the midst of the angry, swelling crowd. It was only when they were out of the piazza and onto the quiet and narrow Via Madalena that she turned and saw Donato.

“I knew I should have come with you,” he murmured as she sank limply against the protective depth of his broad shoulder. Trembling and weeping, she stood with him in a narrow shadowy street that smelled of urine and despair, so close to the place where Raphael lay in state with as much solemn dignity as any king. Raphael had been loved by Pope Leo. She had not.

Margherita Luti had come from nothing, and now she was nothing again.

In the end, as she had declared she would, even Francesca Chigi had abandoned her. She could not risk her standing, she said, or her husband’s. Although she had expected it, the loss of that friendship, to Margherita, was devastating.

Donato held fast to her as they slowly made their way along the Via Madalena back toward the house on the Via Alessandrina for what she knew would be the final time. She could not remain there. The place held too much of Raphael for her not to have seen his face, heard his voice, around every corner.

“Take me to Giulio,” she said flatly. “I am ready to go wherever he has arranged.”

Donato’s voice was reed thin, his expression grave. “You have Raphael’s riches, do you not, to buy yourself a new home? Begin a new life, without doing something so drastic?”

Margherita lowered her eyes, shook her head, and wrapped her arms tightly around herself, pain, loss, and despair moving through her, seizing her so forcefully that she almost could not breathe. “I took nothing like that from him.”

“You are not serious.”

She did not tell them that Raphael had drawn up a new will several months ago, leaving everything to her. Nor did she tell them that she had destroyed it, returning the original will, with Giulio Romano as principal beneficiary, to its rightful place among his papers. She would have no use for his money where fate was taking her, anyway.

“His final will was made before our meeting,” she lied. “When he fell ill, for their hatred of me, no one would amend it for him. So it is true. I have only the clothes on my back, my wedding portrait—grand irony there to torment me—and this ring.”

Margherita glanced down at the ruby ring glittering on her finger, a painful reminder of a time that was now as buried from the light as the ring itself so long had been. “I want to die with him,” she achingly whispered.

“You do not mean that.” He tightened the arm around her shoulder. “We shall work something out.”

“It does not matter now. The part of me that was worth anything Raphael created. That person is dead along with him. It is the end, and I wish it to be so. Simply that, nothing more.”