The Caravaggio Conspiracy (18 page)

Dempsey knew exactly what he was going to do when he got home after his
confrontation
with the head of the Secret Archive. He was going to have a glass of wine, watch the news, take a bath and wait for Maya to turn up. Beyond that, he hadn’t a clue. All he knew for certain was that he’d had enough of putting his own security on the line. His apartment, on the shabby but fashionable Via della Penitenza, at the bottom end of the Janiculum Hill, was one that in his past life he would never have been able to afford. But the renewed surge in land prices in Ireland, especially near Galway, the fastest-growing city in the nation, had changed everything. It was an irony. His father had worked long, unsocial hours all his life and rarely managed a night out, never mind a shot at getting married again. Yet if he had only sold the farm during the first land-boom that came in with the new century – the one that had ended in the crash of 2008 – he’d have been a millionaire twice over.

He hadn’t mentioned to Maya that he had money. For a start, she was from a Swiss banking family, which meant that her standards of what constituted wealth probably weren’t the same as his. In all likelihood, she’d just think he was
comfortably
off. But there was also the fact that he didn’t want to seem part of a world he despised, where money was what people valued about you and studying for a PhD in history was viewed as the equivalent of trying to improve your golf handicap.

Not that his doctorate was exactly at the forefront of his thinking right now. Walking down the Lungotevere Gianicolense, with its view across the river to the heart of the old city, he was wondering how he had allowed himself to be drawn into a dispute within the higher reaches of a Church that he no longer even believed in. What difference would it make if Bosani got his way and a new pope was elected who took a hard line against Islam? Europeans – indigenous Europeans, that is – were already up in arms about the huge growth in the Muslim population. There were articles in the papers every other day. Afternoon television, in the
interludes
between gameshows and soap operas, regularly featured debates involving academics, clerics, civil rights activists and Muslim spokesmen in which the
explosive
growth of Islam was the central theme. The rights of immigrants to live in their own enclaves governed by sharia law, or to convert churches to mosques, or to organize street protests against Israel and in favour of the Palestinians, were set against the demands of native Italians to be masters in their own country. There was no doubt that if the Pope raised his voice in support of a Christian Europe, it would make headlines. But would it really bring society closer to Armageddon that it already was? Dempsey didn’t think so. A thousand years ago, popes could launch crusades; five hundred years after that they were able to broker the Holy League. But today, well into the second decade of the twenty-first century, the vicars of Christ were powerless. They didn’t even enjoy the spurious glamour of being prisoners anymore, as they had been in the years after the
Risorgimento
. They were neither threatening nor tragic. If anything, they were a photo opportunity.

It was intriguing, yet deeply frustrating. Cardinals in Rome still thought of themselves as players on the world stage. That had to be force of habit. But it was the influence these same prelates had closer to home that was of deeper concern to him. The prefect of the Secret Archive obviously meant business, and now that the police had been called in, anything could happen. The last thing he wanted was to end up in court. On the other hand, Uncle Declan was depending on him and he couldn’t let him down. Who else was there to help? Not Father bloody Giovanni, that was for sure. So it came down, like some sort of third-rate Shakespearean play, to a matter of family honour: the Omali versus the Bosani. If he owed it to no one else, he owed it to his father to stick by the Father General. Besides, it wasn’t as if the Church was going to put him on the rack. They weren’t going to
murder
him. A fine and a rap on the knuckles was all they had left in their armoury. So his best plan was to organize himself and work out his next move. He’d talk to Maya about it. She’d help put him straight.

He had just passed the Carabinieri barracks in the old Palazzo Salviati, halfway to the Ponte Mazzini, when he became aware of shouting in the distance and heard the characteristic wail of Italian police sirens. Behind him, a column of police vans was powering out of the heavy stone gateway of the Salviati
courtyard
and wheeling right onto the embankment. They passed him, one after the other, in a blur of flashing lights. What the hell! He increased his pace, curious to know what was happening. Two minutes later, as the crowd noise ahead of him continued to swell, he found his path blocked by a police cordon. The vans that had passed him were discharging groups of riot police, wearing steel helmets and body armour and carrying shields, now making their way in formation through the barrier. Immediately behind the cordon, local residents had gathered, with that lynch-mob look about them that made Dempsey wonder at first if maybe the police had just arrested a child murderer. But it wasn’t that. Instead, a little way ahead, outside Rome’s main prison, the Carcere di Regina Coeli, built on the site of a seventeenth-century monastery, a demonstration of some sort was underway. He drew closer. Several thousand protestors, flying the distinctive black and white flags of the banned Islamist party, Hizb ut-Tahrir, were chanting and waving their fists. Some threw rocks at the the police, which bounced off their plastic shields. But when the crowd parted to allow a young man in a checkered mask to run forward and hurl a petrol bomb, the response was instantaneous. As a helicopter clattered overhead, the riot squad began drumming their batons against their shields and moved forward in a broad phalanx.

‘What is it? What’s going on?’ Dempsey asked an elderly Roman wearing a beret and smoking an evil-smelling Sicilian cigarette.

‘They arrested a load of Arabs,’ he replied, coughing and spitting the result onto the pavement. ‘It’s the gang that killed that poor gardener at the Lateran cathedral.’ He coughed again. ‘
Bastardi!
’

By now, as the police line continued to advance, the demonstrators were pelting them with anything they could find. The real threat, however, came from a group, chanting Allahu Akbar – God is great! They carried baseball bats and moved in a tight military formation. Aware of the danger, a senior officer directed a detachment of his men to move right and force a path through the protestors. As they did so, a hail of petrol bombs came down, one of which struck a police car, enveloping it in flames.

Things were getting serious. Dempsey was reminded of riots in Kirkuk involving rival mobs of Sunnis and Kurds. A crowd-control officer ordered the Italian crowd to move back. But it was obvious that some of the locals, women as well as men, wanted to pitch in on the side of the police.

One young woman in a short skirt and tight-fitting T-shirt was particularly vehement. ‘They come over here because their own fucking countries are shit. Then they tell us they don’t want our culture, they want theirs and they throw bombs into our churches. Now they’re attacking the police.’

‘
Esattamente!
’ said a man in his thirties, wearing a dark suit and sunglasses. ‘Fuck them!’ A roar of approval greeted his expletive, which he had delivered in English. Emboldened, the man turned to taunt the demonstrators. ‘Send them back where they fucking came from,’ he shouted, brandishing an extended
forefinger
. ‘We don’t want them here –
facce di merda!
’ 

At this, all the Italians raised their fists and surged forward.

Dempsey could tell that the situation was about to get out of hand. He backed away, saying nothing, and turned right, down the side of the jail along the Via delle Mantellate, where women prisoners were housed. As the first CS gas grenades exploded behind him, he made his way to the Via San Francesco di Sales, with its turnoff into the Via della Penitenza.

Relieved to have escaped the mayhem, he headed for a large, three-storey villa with a red roof. His two-bedroom apartment occupied the basement, the entrance to which was at the bottom of a steep set of steps. He squinted into the mail box by the front door of the main household – nothing, as usual – and descended the steps. Then he reached into his trouser pocket for his house keys. That was when he realized that the door was open, or at least ajar. Instantly, he was on his guard. There could only be one explanation. This was Rome after all.
Fucking hell!
he thought.
I’ve been burgled
.

He went inside, moving with caution in case the intruder was still inside. But whoever had been there was gone. Now he checked his possessions. It was as he feared. His laptop computer, his digital camera and €500 he’d left in the drawer by his bed were missing. So were all the notes he had taken in the Secret Archive. Whoever the burglar was, he was a professional. There were papers strewn around and every drawer in the apartment was open. But nothing was broken or
vandalized
, and he was sure there would be no fingerprints. The intruder had simply forced the locks on his front door, then conducted a systematic search until he found what he was looking for. The money would have been a bonus, nothing more.

He felt a complete fool. He hadn’t bothered to activate the alarm when he went out that morning. His view was that any half-decent burglar would have known how to deal with it, disabling the siren after its first piercing shrieks, to the general satisfaction of the neighbourhood. Even so, it might have been some sort of deterrent.

He reached into his jacket pocket for his mobile, discovering as he did so that he had missed a call fifteen minutes earlier, probably because of the noise of the street demonstration. He rang his voicemail. It was a detective from the Rome City Police, called Drago. He and a colleague from the criminal investigation
department
of the Vatican gendermerie wanted to interview him at police headquarters at nine o’clock next morning in connection with a suspected theft from the Vatican library. He was advised not to be late.

He sat down on the edge of the bed. Jesus Christ! That’s all I need. Then he called Maya to give her the latest bad news.

‘Do you still want to stay with me tonight?’ he asked her after he had finished.

‘I think someone should,’ she said. 

Fabrizio Sforza Colonna, the son of Costanza, Marchesa di Caravaggio, was the sort of man around whom legends grow. Descended from three of the most
illustrious
families in Italy, the Colonna, the Sforzi and the Doria, who combined in the 1570s to lead Catholic Europe in its defence against the Turks, he was both the brightest star of his generation and the errant son. Five years before, in 1602, he had been charged with a crime so grievous that it had never been uttered in public. Speculation had since rehearsed every possible malefaction, from the murder of a priest, to the rape of a nobleman’s twelve-year-old daughter, to incestuous relations with his mother. Yet so powerful was his family name and so glittering his own accomplishments as a young army officer that the Pope could not bring himself to put him to death. Instead, he was sent as a prisoner to Malta where he was placed in the charge of the Grand Master of the Knights of St John, Alof de Wignacourt.

A year later, after he had been released from jail and accepted as a novitiate, word came from Rome that, with the coronation of Paul V, Fabrizio once more enjoyed papal favour. He was appointed Joint Prior of Venice with his uncle, Cardinal Ascanio Colonna, and made an officer in the Hospitaller fleet. By the time he was instructed to pick up Caravaggio from Naples and bring him to Valletta, he had been promoted to the post of general of the galleys and was in the middle of a rebuilding programme aimed at repelling any assault by the resurgent Ottoman navy.

Two years younger than Caravaggio, with blonde hair and a flamboyant
moustache
, Fabrizio was to the depressed and despondent artist the very embodiment of hope. It didn’t matter that he was tired and rootless, hunted like an animal and uncertain of the nature of his own soul. Like Fabrizio, if he simply submitted himself to God and the Hospitallers, he could start afresh and remake himself in the image of a Christian Knight.

‘My mother is full of your praises,’ Fabrizio told the artist as he directed the loading of cargo onto the gallease
San Giovanni
.

‘The Marchesa is most kind. I am indebted to your entire family.’

Fabrizio placed a comradely arm on Caravaggio’s shoulders. ‘She believes in you, Michelangelo. We all do.’

‘She also believes in you, Fabrizio. She says you have a destiny.’

‘Then let us hope neither of us disappoints her.’

With only a light wind blowing, the voyage from Naples to Valletta on the new gallease took two days. Fabrizio had been promised a consignment of Turkish slaves to work the oars, but it turned out only twenty or so were available, and not all of these were strong, so he took the opportunity to test the new sails.

It was as they passed through the Straits of Messina, heading south, that Fabrizio caught his famous guest observing the performance of his second-in-command.

‘You’re wondering where you’ve seen him before – am I right?’

‘He does seem somehow familiar.’

‘Let me introduce you.’ He called the young man over. He could not have been more than twenty, slim and well-constructed, but with a haunted look in his eyes.

‘Michelangelo Merisi,’ said Fabrizio, indicating Caravaggio. ‘A fugitive from papal justice, under sentence of death for a murder he did not commit.’ Then he turned to his ship’s mate. ‘Bernardo Cenci – the only surviving member of his family, bound as a galley slave for life by Pope Clement VIII.’

Caravaggio gasped. ‘I was there! 11 September 1599. I saw your family die. I saw you faint and watched as you were carried off into servitude. I still have
nightmares
about it.’

‘As do I, Master Merisi,’ Cenci said. ‘But I have heard the story of your own misfortune from General Colonna and wish you to know that I am at your service.’

‘I am deeply grateful, but I do not deserve the honour.’

‘They say that you spoke to my sister as she was about to mount the scaffold.’

‘Yes. She asked me if I intended to draw her.’

‘And did you?’

‘I began to … but then I was sick.’

‘I pray for her every day. As well as for my mother and my brother.’

‘They will be rewarded in heaven.’

Cenci stared out in the direction of Reggio Calabria. ‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘But I must go now. I have have work to do.’ 

The
San Giovanni
berthed just before midday on 13 July. Caravaggio looked up at the mighty Castel Sant’Angelo, which jutted into the Mediterranean like the prow of a gigantic ship. Stone steps ran up from the Grand Harbour to the shops and houses clustered around the market place. On the wharf, groups of
weather-beaten
fishermen mended their nets. A couple of prostitutes sidled up to the water’s edge looking for business, but seeing Fabrizio on board with two armed constables moved them along.

As the artist and the admiral mounted the steps, above their heads the sound of a church choir drifted into the midsummer air from the nearby Cathedral of St John.

‘A new Knight is being initiated today,’ Fabrizio said. ‘Just think, Michelangelo, in another year that will be you. Then all your troubles will be over. The Pope will pardon you and you’ll return to Rome in triumph.’

‘I’ll believe it when I see it,’ was Caravaggio’s response.

Grand Master Alof de Wignacourt had rushed through the initiation of his latest Knight, a young Portuguese nobleman, so as not to be late for the arrival in his court of the most famous artist in Italy. The Frenchman, at the age of sixty-five, remained an impressive figure, strong enough to practice with a heavy mace and crush a walnut in his mailed fist. Broad-shouldered, with a deep chest and the legs of a prize fighter, he could still fit into the armour made for him ten years before and was vain enough to be bothered by a wart on the right side of his nose.

There were not many left who had fought during the great siege of Malta in 1565, when the Knights had held off an entire host of Ottomans for four months, with the loss of one-third of their number. De Wignacourt, from Picardy, was not one of the few. He had arrived in Malta the following year, brimful of the virtues of chivalry, and, having earned his spurs at Lepanto, spent years as captain of Valletta, then head of the order in France, before being installed as Grand Master in 1601. Most recently, he had been appointed a prince of the Holy Roman Empire, according him the right to be addressed as His Serene Highness. It was a style, or ‘dignity’ that he did not require of his brothers but that was expected of
ambassadors
, fellow monarchs and, most obviously, representatives of the Sublime Porte.

As a Frenchman, well acquainted with life in Paris as well as Rome, de Wignacourt was constantly looking for ways to add lustre to his remote island realm. The construction of St John’s Cathedral, as sovereign church of the order, was now all but complete. The Oratory, in effect the Knight’s Hall, was another matter. Still unfinished, its greatest lack, in the opinion of the Grand Master, was a painting commensurate with its status as home to the most illustrious order of chivalry. Caravaggio would fill that void with distinction, and he, Alof de Wignacourt, would take the role of Pope Julius II, the patron and protector of Michaelangelo. It was a pity, of course, that the painter was a murderer on the run from papal justice. But then, had not the same been true of Fabrizio Colonna? And look at him now: general of the galleys, preparing a fleet of the latest class of vessels to take on the Turks and repeat the glory of Lepanto. Perhaps, de Wignacourt said to himself, one of Caravaggio’s most magnificent works would yet be a
representation
of the destruction of the Ottoman fleet in which, beneath their banners and among the swirling smoke of battle, he and Fabrizio stood proud on the fo’c’sle of the
San Giovanni
.

He had been debating with himself over whether or not to descend from his palace to the harbour to welcome his guest in person. But then he thought, no, his elevated status required that the artist should come to him. Accordingly, he now stood next to the fireplace in his audience chamber, striking a pose – a pose he had to hold for some time as Fabrizio and Caravaggio drank a glass of wine at a nearby tavern.

But at length, his sergeant-at-arms approached and announced the arrival of ‘the artist Caravaggio’. De Wignacourt at once assumed his commander-in-chief look, which he liked to think combined far-sightedness and vision with a close attention to detail.

‘Master Caravaggio!’ he began. His voice was deep and resonant, for which he had always been grateful. ‘Please step forward. I bid you welcome to the
headquarters
of the Order of St John of Jersusalem.’

Caravaggio bowed. ‘Thank you, Grand Master. I am honoured.’

‘And you, General Colonna: welcome home. How is our new flagship?’

‘A miracle of engineering, Grand Master. The best I have ever seen. Once the others in her class are delivered, we shall be more than ready to take the fight to the enemy.’

‘I’m glad to hear it. And what of you, Master Caravaggio? What do you bring to our island fortress – apart from a rather interesting aroma?’

‘I bring my craft as a painter. Further, I offer myself in your service as a novice.’

‘As to that, I can as yet promise you nothing. There are, as you will be aware … complications. Yet I have some hopes of your preferment. In the meantime, we have a cell prepared for you and a studio with good light overlooking the harbour and cathedral. And the strand on the far side of the point offers most excellent sea bathing. If there is anything you need, you have only to ask.’

‘I am most grateful.’

‘Have you given any thought as to what your first subject might be?’

Caravaggio rubbed his nose with the back of his hand and looked thoughtful. ‘Naturally, I shall offer a work relating to the life and death of St John the Baptist, the order’s patron saint. But I was wondering, Grand Master, if you might accord me the singular honour of allowing me to paint your portrait, dressed as if for battle. I see there is a vacant space above the fireplace where you now stand. I would humbly suggest to you that such a space could best be occupied by a painting of one of the most illustrious Grand Masters the order has ever had.’

De Wignacourt, who had already decided that he should be painted in full armour, no matter how uncomfortable the experience, shut his eyes and plucked at his beard, as if pondering the option. ‘It had not occurred to me,’ he said, ‘that you might be interested in painting me, a humble custodian in God’s service. But by all means, if you think it would redound to the credit of the order …’

Caravaggio bowed again, this time more extravagantly than before. As he came up, his eye caught Fabrizio’s gaze. They understood each other perfectly.