Immortal Muse (18 page)

“Ah, so that's how it is.” He set mallet and chisel down on the workbench, bending away quickly and moving back in almost the same motion. His hand stretched toward her; his forefinger curled under the silver chain around her neck and lifted the cameo from where it nestled between her breasts. “That's a beautiful piece,” he said. “Is it Roman?”

“French,” she told him. “And very old. It's been in my family for a long time.”

“It looks much like you.” He slowly allowed the cameo to slip back to its resting place. His forefinger brushed the slope of her breast, the barest touch.

She thought he might bend down to kiss her, but she saw a shadow on the archway and took a quick step back. Bernini's brother Luigi appeared a moment later. He stopped when he saw Costanza, and a knowing smirk appeared and vanished on his face. “Gia,” he said to Bernini, “Cardinal Barberini is here and asks to speak with you.”

“Ah.” Bernini took another step back from Costanza. “Tell him that I'll be right with him, as soon as I change my smock. Give him some wine and refreshments while he waits.”

Luigi gave a short bow of his head, then smiled at Costanza. “I'll inform His Eminence that you'll be there directly, then. Sorry to . . . interrupt.” The pause before the last word was tangible. Luigi bowed again and departed.

“I'll leave you to your business, Cavaliere Bernini,” Costanza said. She picked up her basket again and moved toward the archway.

Bernini called after her. “After I speak with His Eminence, I will probably take a walk to clear my head,” he said. “Perhaps if I walk toward your apartment, I might find a glass of wine waiting for me there?”

Costanza stopped. She turned and smiled toward him. “You might,” she said. “If you walk that way.”

“Y
OU ARE FANTASTIC,
il mio amore
. I am so fortunate that you came to me.”

Gia—as she called Bernini in their private moments—stroked her face with his hand: not her face of flesh, but one wrought in polished marble. They'd been making love on the couch in his private chambers. The afternoon was chilly for early September; Costanza pulled her chemise around her shoulders though Gia was padding naked around the room.

She'd sat for the marble portrait bust over several weeks a year ago, not long after they'd become lovers. Gia had first sketched her from several angles, then created a model from clay to use as a rough guide for the finished work. The clay model, now dry, cracked, and fragile, still resided in her and Matteo's house near the studio. She sometimes wondered if the physical reminder bothered Matteo, but he said nothing to her, as he said nothing when she took out her chemicals and worked with them, or when she painted the miniatures that she sometimes sold in the market, or when she sang as she walked to the market for bread and vegetables. Matteo, she knew, loved her even if she did not love him, and he wore Bernini's horns as gracefully as a man could. She suspected that Matteo somehow understood what she had done for him and his soul-heart, how it was her gift that had made him worthy of being in Bernini's studio at all.

The radiance of Gia's green heart enveloped them both, shot through with that deep and saturated blue, the hue she'd never glimpsed before, and which she was certain signified the true bond between them.
Perhaps this time it is love
, she sometimes told herself.
Perhaps this time that's what I'm feeling.

The thought nearly frightened her. She'd thought she'd been in love with Marlon back when she was Perenelle, but even before he'd died, she'd realized that she'd fallen in love with an idealization of him, not the man himself. She'd thought she'd found love with Nicolas, also, in those first days. She'd believed he was a kindred spirit who would treat her as a peer and an equal, but that, too, had been a cruel chimera. Since taking the elixir, she'd been with men—and a few women as well—who she liked and admired, but had that been love, or was she mistaking that emotion for the need to feed on their soul-hearts? The soul-hearts kept her healthy and active; without them, she quickly became frail, ill, and lethargic. Without them, her existence was a living purgatory.

It was easy to call something “love” when it was the nourishment that she must have.

She wondered if it was the same for Nicolas. She wondered if the elixir had demanded the same of him. She wondered where he was, if perhaps he regretted having left the threatening note in his coffin for her to find, if his anger and bitterness had been quenched in the intervening centuries.

Now, she breathed in Gia's glow as if it were the purest of air, and she gave it back to him replenished and strengthened. She imaged that they were two beings combined into a joyous, unified one during those long hours that she was sitting for him, even more than when they lay together afterward, her legs wrapped around Gia's hips and her arms clutching his head to her breast as they found release together.

“The world will look on you this way and fall in love with you as I have.” Gia smiled and came over to her. He took her hands and leaned down to kiss her. “You are happy?”

“
Sì
, I am very happy,” she told him.

Costanza and Bernini had been lovers for almost three years now. Matteo's cuckoldry was a quiet joke throughout the studio though no one dared mention it aloud in case Cavaliere Bernini might overhear and be angry enough to fire them—the master's temper was nearly as legendary as his skill. The marble bust he'd created of Costanza fairly shouted to the world that the two of them were lovers.

In the piece, her face stared boldly at the viewer, her chin lifted almost in defiance, her hair swept back as if in a soft wind, her lips slightly parted. Her chemise was open, a blatant invitation, with one side falling back to show a hint of her cleavage just above the base. She was depicted not as a saint or an angel, but as a sensual and erotic woman. Gia kept the bust in his own rooms; he had turned down, he claimed, a dozen offers to sell it. “I want you only for myself,” he told her. “No one else can have you.”

She laughed at that, pleased, and hugged Gia, kissing him deeply. She felt satisfaction in knowing that her image was so well received, that Gia had placed so much of his love and talent into crafting it. The two of them reveled in their love, in Costanza's role as Bernini's true muse. It was difficult to hide their affection, and they did so poorly.

There were artists in the studio who whispered that this was Bernini's finest portrait bust, the epitome of the craft. The gossip around the studio was that the latest patron to inquire about purchasing it was Abramo Maroncelli, who was said to be a distant nephew of Cardinal Antonio Marcello Barberini, Pope Urban VIII's younger brother.
“Luigi says that Signor Maroncelli offered the Cavaliere more than the Holy Father paid for his own portrait bust.”
That was the whisper that Costanza had heard; whether it was true or not, she didn't know, but the bust remained on Gia's mantel.

“I would like you to come with me in two days to Cardinal Barberini's
palazzo
,” Gia said. He was still looking at the bust, as if trying to see any flaws in the finish.

“Gia?”

He turned to her, smiling. “Oh, I know. Propriety. Matteo will also accompany us—the cardinal wishes to talk to me about designing a fountain for his gardens, and Matteo will be my chief assistant for the project; that will be reason enough for him to be there. I'll tell him later today after you've left.”

“He'll be pleased to hear that,” Costanza said. “But why am I to come?”

“His Eminence's nephew will be there as well.” He gestured back to the portrait bust. “He has said to me many times that he wishes to see if the face that I've sculpted truly matches the reality. Since I've refused to sell him the bust despite his entreaties, it would seem that's the least I can do for the poor young man.”

“I don't know, Gia . . .” She started to tie the neck strings of her chemise, but Gia came over to her and stopped her. He slid the sleeves down her shoulders once again, letting the chemise pool around her waist. He kissed her, his fingers sliding through her thick hair. “I'll give Matteo a few extra scudi for the two of you to buy some proper clothes. Can't have my assistant looking as if I can't afford to pay him, can I?—and especially not the woman who has given me such inspiration.”

The blue hue in his green heart deepened as he spoke the words. She could taste it, as sweet as a summer orange.

Yes,
she thought as she opened her lips to his.
This must be love. This time, it must be.

 * * * 

One
thing she could never get used to was the rapid change in fashions. Fancy dress for women just a decade before had required wearing a hooped and stiffened farthingale under the dress, with the high bumroll in back that, to Perenelle, made an exaggerated mockery of the female form. Men wore embroidered
justaucorps
, knee-length coats with ruffled, turn-back collars, worn over tight breeches and hose. Both men and women had worn huge ruffs, so that their heads seemed to be offered on a platter of stiff and intricate lacework, which forced the wearers to keep their chins lifted. Coiffures were high, with a woman's long hair drawn up through a wire cage on top of her head, and the wealthy adorned themselves with ostentatious jewels and pearls.

The wealthy still retained the ostentation, the jewels, and the pearls, but at least the fashions had relaxed somewhat. The manteau dress Costanza wore was looser and made of silk, with several petticoats underneath, the lacy ruff now lay over her shoulders rather than tight around her neck, and she could wear her hair down once more. Both Gia and Matteo wore large, plumed hats, shirts with laced cuffs under slashed and puffed coats, colorful breeches rather than hose, and boots of soft, supple leather, but the resemblance ended there. Matteo's outfit was plainer and more workmanlike, as befitted his status, but Gia shone and gleamed like a true noble. Gia's hat was especially large and ornate, and adorned with a golden brooch that lifted one rim, and the lace around his neck was pinned with a large pearl. He appeared comfortable here, as if he were used to the luxury that surrounded his patrons.

Costanza clung to Matteo's arm as they were ushered into one of the waiting rooms of the
palazzo
. Servants stood in their uniforms at either side of large double doors at the other end of the room. The molding around the walls and framing the door was gilded and intricately carved, the ceiling was arched and painted with a scene of the muses of arts and sciences gazing down from the clouds, done in a false perspective that made Costanza dizzy, glancing upward. “Orazio Gentileschi,” Gia said, following her gaze. “Competent enough, if a bit old-fashioned, but everyone says his daughter's actually the better painter.”

There was a quick rap on the doors, and the door-wards quickly pulled them open; Cardinal Barberini entered, accompanied by a secretary. The cardinal's robes were black, but he wore the red hat of his office. The goatee that hung from his chin was white and his face was thin, and he walked carefully with a slight stoop; Costanza imagined that he'd been a tall man in his youth. He walked up to Gia and extended his hand; Gia bent to kiss his sigil ring. “Your Eminence,” he said, “this is Matteo Bonarelli, who will be assisting me with your fountain, and his wife Costanza.”

“I'm pleased to meet all of you,” the cardinal said, as both Costanza and Matteo also kissed the ring. His voice was a pleasant baritone. “My secretary has prepared the plans and the contract, and I'd like to go over the sketches that you so kindly sent me the other day, Cavaliere Bernini. Perhaps Signora Bonarelli would like to wait on the portico overlooking the garden while we discuss my expectations? It's pleasant there, and I'll have someone bring refreshments.”

Gia gave her a surreptitious nod, and Costanza curtsied to the cardinal. “Thank you, Your Eminence. That's very kind.”

“Then let's get to work. Gentlemen?” Cardinal Barberini and his secretary left, and one of the door-wards bowed to Costanza.

“Signora, if you'll follow me . . .”

The portico was indeed, as the cardinal had said, pleasant and warm in the afternoon sunlight, and servants quickly brought out a pitcher of cold water and plates of fruits and vegetables, setting them on the small table next to her seat. The gardens the portico overlooked were splendid, bright with squares of flowers, predominantly in reds and purples, all arranged in a hexagonal pattern around a central court with geometrically-trimmed hedges and stone benches. Costanza wondered if that was where the fountain was to be placed.

A hedge-maze lay just beyond the court, and Costanza could see several workers in the garden: pruning and trimming, pulling weeds, watering the plants. She found herself wondering at the cost of maintaining such an extravagance. It was a raw display of power and wealth, to have this much land and be using it not for growing food but simply for pleasing the visual sense.