The Caravaggio Conspiracy (12 page)

The heat in Rome was building but had not yet reached the intensity of high summer. Caravaggio and his friend Onorio Longhi were on their way to play racquetball at a court just off the Via della Scrofa, not far from the painter’s old lodgings by the Palazzo Firenze. They were among Rome’s best-known
racchetti
, difficult to beat on their home court. But as they approached the playing area, where they faced a challenge from the artists Guido Reini and Orazio Gentileschi, it wasn’t so much the game that occupied their thoughts, but their chances of coming out of it alive.

A bitter feud had existed between Caravaggio and Longhi on the one hand and the powerful Tomassino clan on the other for at least a year. The exact origins of the dispute were forgotten, though obviously rooted in gambling, women and drink. But in recent weeks the enmity had swollen to dangerous proportions, threatening to turn the quarrel into a vendetta. Following a dispute over the favours of Fillide Melandroni, Caravaggio – who had recovered something of his former verve following the discreet sale to Mattei of
The Betrayal of Christ
– found himself goaded on an almost daily basis by Ranuccio, the youngest of the three brothers, whose family controlled everything that went on in the Campo Marzio. Longhi had been attacked in the street only a week earlier, receiving a slight rapier wound to his shoulder. Caravaggio’s continued occupation of the apartment owned by the lawyer Ruffietto didn’t help. He should have been out by Christmas, except that the sale of the building had fallen through. The artist’s continued presence in the area was viewed by the Tomassoni as a deliberate provocation. It was an open secret that any further ‘insults’ would end in bloodshed. That was why Longhi had asked Petronia Toppa, a veteran army officer from Bologna, to join them as
backup
. Toppa was a burly fellow who liked nothing more than a good scrap – whether with swords or fists, it made no difference to him. He also owed Longhi fifty scudi, which helped. As the three men turned off the main street in the direction of the
teatro rachette
, a small crowd began to gather, keen to see what would happen next. A quartet of
sbirri
held back, knowing both sides to be well connected, biding their time.

What Caravaggio didn’t know was that Ranuccio had particular reason that day to vent his spleen. Twenty-four hours earlier, he had been approached by a
representative
of Cardinal Battista – a tall, hooded monk – who had given him one hundred scudi and the Camerlengo’s personal assurance that he would not be prosecuted were he to kill the artist Michelangelo Merisi.

‘His Eminence understands that Merisi has wronged you on many occasions in the past. He wishes you to know that his sympathies are with you entirely in your detestation of a man who is both a braggart and a heretic. Merisi is a man who must swiftly be brought to justice, and the Tomassoni, with their proud record in arms in service of the Church, are viewed as righteous in this matter. Absolution is assured.’

The emissary handed over the cash.

Rannuccio nodded. He required no further urging. He knew what he had to do. Placing the money in a strongbox, he alerted his brothers and fetched his rapier.

It was Toppa, following behind, who called out a warning. Caravaggio, his hand firmly on the hilt of his sword, spun round in time to see Ranuccio moving towards him, blade drawn, his brother Giovan Francesco and two cousins one pace to the rear. Straightaway, in a loud, theatrical voice, Ranuccio accused Caravaggio of carrying on an affair with the ‘little whore’ Melandroni, who, he observed, with a flourish of his rapier, was riddled with the pox.

Caravaggio took stock of the scene. He felt oddly calm. Ranuccio was a braggart, but no slouch with the sword. There was a definite glint in his eye, as if he meant business. Immediately behind him stood his older brother, Giovan Francesco, and a pace or two further back, two of their cousins, both aged around thirty, well known as ‘enforcers’. It was an ambush, no doubt about that. The
question
was, how far did they wish to press it? 

Ranuccio meanwhile had halted, standing with his legs apart, drawing a
semicircle
in the dirt in front of him with the point of his sword. ‘You are in Campo Marzio,’ he boomed. ‘That is Tomassoni territory, as understood by the Senate and People of Rome. And you, Merisi, are not welcome here. I advise you, as the coward you are, to leave at once or face the consequences.’

Following this, there could be only one outcome. Caravaggio sighed, looking to left and right to locate his seconds. Both nodded to him. He drew his sword and tested the point against his thumb, Then, in an equally oratorical voice, he answered Ranuccio, reminding him that he owed him twenty scudi from the previous year and that he would do better to pay his debts than slander a good woman.

The small crowd drew its breath.

There was no further preamble. With an oath, Ranuccio launched himself at his enemy. Caravaggio stood his ground, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, trying to anticipate the angle of the attack. His opponent’s opening lunge was hasty and amateurish, probably because of the rage he felt, and the price he paid was a swipe across his back that slit open his doublet, though without injuring the flesh beneath.

‘Olé!’ Caravaggio called out. The crowd laughed.

It would be the only flash of humour that day. Now the contest grew serious. Neither man was a mere
bravazzo
– a swashbuckler or ‘cutter’. Both were skilled with the rapier and neither was in a mood to grant quarter. In the subsequent exchange, it was Ranuccio who fared the better, opening a nick in his opponent’s throat and driving him steadily backwards. But then Caravaggio feinted to one side, catching Tomassino in the hamstring of his right leg with the point of his blade as, for the second time, he continued past at full stretch. Enraged, and ignoring the flow of blood that immediately stained his tights below the knee, the Roman halted, reversed direction and renewed his attack. Caravaggio parried, giving ground but confident that he had gained the upper hand.

The fight soon settled into a pattern, with each side advancing, retreating and riposting as if directed by a choreographer. Both were breathing heavily. It was becoming clear, though, that the injured Ranuccio was out of ideas. Caught unawares by a sudden change in the line of attack, he stumbled, missed his footing on a cobblestone, and fell heavily. Caravaggio’s nostrils flared as he looked down at his stricken opponent. Every fibre of his being called out to him to finish it. He wanted nothing more than to end the existence of a man whose slanders had made his life a misery. Instead, he stayed his hand. This was not out of generosity, but so that no one, most obviously the
sbirri
, could accuse him of reckless murder. His intention was to attack with renewed ferocity the moment Ranuccio regained his feet, ignoring any plea for mercy. This would add to the kudos that came his way. It was a decision he would regret for the rest of his life, for all at once, from a prone position, his enraged and humiliated opponent lashed out and stabbed him in the foot. Caravaggio winced. The pain was excruciating. Teeth bared, he uttered a throaty growl and, without further conscious thought, thrust downwards, driving his blade straight into his opponent’s stomach. A gasp rose up from the onlookers, who then fell silent, for they knew at once that the wound was mortal. Ranuccio swayed back onto the cobbles holding both hands to his stomach so that the blood spilled out between his fingers. The light in his eyes began to dim. But though he almost fainted with the effort, he still spat his venom at Caravaggio, taunting him that soon he would join him in hell.

‘The Camerlengo has put a price on your head, Merisi. If you are not … cut down like a dog in the street, you will die on the scaffold. Even now, an axe is being ground for you. There can be … no escape.’

Caravaggio’s eyes narrowed. ‘What are you saying? Did Battista pay you? Did he tell you why he wants me dead?’

Ranuccio tried to speak, but couldn’t. Instead, he started coughing blood. Caravaggio didn’t know whether to try to revive him or to throttle him. Before he could make up his mind, he felt a searing pain in his head. Ranuccio’s brother, Giovan Francesco, had attacked him without warning from behind, seeking instant revenge for the loss of Ranuccio. A cut three inches long opened up behind his right ear. As he fell, helpless, to the ground, it was the action of the
redoubtable
Toppa that saved his life. As Longhi hauled Caravaggio to his feet and pressed a handkerchief against his skull to staunch the flow of blood, the former army captain took on all three surviving Tomassoni, only giving up when his sword arm ceased to respond and he could no longer hold his weapon.

It was at that point that the
sbirri
intervened and arrested him.

Ranuccio died thirty minutes later, having being given absolution by his parish priest from the nearby church of San Lorenzo in Lucina. As Caravaggio, bleeding and barely conscious, was taken for emergency treatment to the shop of the barber Lucca, Longhi fled the city. Witnesses, paid in advance by the Tomassoni, testified to the papal police that Caravaggio had initiated the duel. Several pointed out that as Ranuccio lay prone, the artist had driven his sword into his body with the obious intent of killing him. Within hours, an official investigation was launched. Battista protested to the Pope that Caravaggio had finally shown his true colours. He was joined in his denunciation by the Farnese family, in whose service the Tomassoni had fought against the Huguenots in France. The artist, a suspected heretic, they said, was notorious for his brawling. Now he had murdered the scion of a valiant family and for that crime alone must pay with his life.

No one listened to those who said it was the Tomassoni who were to blame for what happened. A young
bravo
who volunteered that Ranuccio had brought his death upon himself by violating the gentleman’s code of honour was told to get about his business. A plea for mercy by Del Monte fizzled out when Battista drew His Eminence aside to point out to him that his frolics with boys could very easily be brought into the public domain, ‘with the most unfortunate consequences’. Everything then happened in a rush. By order of the Apostolic Palace, a hue and cry was ordered. Caravaggio was to be hunted down and brought to immediate account.

Before the
sbirri
could make the arrest, however, fate intervened. Alerted by Costanza Colonna, the Marchesa di Caravaggio, Prince Marzio Colonna offered the artist sanctuary on his estate in the Alban Hills.

The Merisi had been in the service of the Colonna for more than half a century. Marchesa Costanza in particular, on a visit to the family seat at the base of the Quirinal Hill, was convinced that the son of her longtime
uomo di fiducia
was a genius in the service of God and his protection a sacred trust. He was spirited away under the very noses of the
sbirri
, hidden beneath a pile of offal in the back of a butcher’s cart. Ranuccio had not exaggerated. Caravaggio’s failure to answer a papal summons had automatically rendered him a fugitive and a
banda capitale
was now in force – a death warrant that anyone could act on with guaranteed immunity from prosecution.

In the midst of what became a citywide manhunt, no one noticed the
unexpected
death, apparently from food poisoning, of the elderly Jesuit who
recognized
the fleeing man in
The Betrayal of Christ
. The late Father Alfonso di Conza was a modest man, who taught Latin and Greek to seminarians and was known for the gentleness of his sermons in churches around Rome. It was after twelve o’clock Mass on the Monday following his dinner at the Villa Mattei that he returned to the Jesuit residence on the Via Marco for lunch. The cook told him she had something special for him today left by an anonymous well-wisher – a delicious lamb stew, with tomatoes and basil, which he ate hungrily. One hour later, he complained of stomach pains. By mid-afternoon, his sickness had turned to diarrhoea, then to dysentery. By midnight, he was dead. Father General Acquaviva awarded his old colleague a Requiem Mass, but attributed his death to overwork and bad meat. No one asked, but if they had inquired they would have learned only that Di Conza was buried in the Catacombs, with none but his sister and a small group of
parishioners
in attendance.

As news reached the Curia of Caravaggio’s flight from the city, Cardinal Battista discussed developments with his fellow Muslim, Fra’Luis de Fonseca, now a
chevalier
of the Knights of Malta, who for the second time that year was visiting Rome from Valletta. The Knight was puzzled that Caravaggio had managed to get away. Battista scowled. ‘We picked the wrong people,’ he said, referring to Ranuccio and his brothers.

‘So it would seem. When choosing an assassin, Your Eminence, it is generally wise to exclude those who are reckless or who have an interest in the result.’

This cold analysis did nothing to improve the cardinal’s temper. ‘Let us hope you do not repeat the error, my friend. For I am informed that the fellow has long held ambitions to join your order and become a Knight. He believes apparently that membership will instil discipline into his life and give some structure to his faith.’

‘If you are right,’ Fonseca replied, ‘then his life is forfeit, for he will find me ready and waiting.’

Battista nodded, then glanced towards the window. ‘The sun is about to set,’ he said, ‘We should pray.’

The Swiss Guard sentry, in his dark blue uniform and beret, offered Maya a crisp salute and a shy smile as she approached the Cancello di Sant’Anna, the main commercial gateway into the Vatican. It was coming up to six o’clock in the evening and a steady stream of cars was crawling towards the exit. The gate itself,
overlooked
by stone eagles dating from the pontificate of Pius XI, was heavily shielded and reinforced, and though it might not have been evident to visitors, the sentries on duty were heavily armed. To Maya’s left as she crossed the invisible line that separated Rome from the sovereign territory of the Holy See stood the guards’ barracks. Her parents’ apartment was on the second floor. But she didn’t go left. Instead, she turned immediately right, off the narrow pavement into the church of Sant’Anna, to which Caravaggio’s
Madonna dei Palafrenierni
was taken after its removal from St Peter’s, before it was bought by the Pope’s nephew, Cardinal Borghere. She liked to sit in the church for a few minutes each day, and on this day in particular she needed time to think.

The previous night, after an afternoon spent walking from the Piazza Navona, by way of the Caravaggios in the French Church and drinks in some bar she had never heard of called the Scholars’ Lounge, she had gone back with Dempsey to his apartment, where they had made love for two solid hours before falling asleep, exhausted, in each other’s arms. It was the first time they had had sex together, which still surprised her. But where in the past the pleasure had been mainly physical, mixed, if she was honest, with the thrill of conquest, this time there had been an intensity that she had never previously experienced. It had made her cry. Maybe this was how you discovered love: not in an accumulated awareness of shared likes and dislikes, or the realization that you appreciated the other person’s sense of humour – which was how the women’s magazines liked to present it – but rather, as in the great nineteenth-century novels, like a burst of lightning or a sudden epiphany, in which your life and awareness of everything was heightened and transformed. When she woke up, hours later, she was surprised at first to find a man’s arm resting on the small of her back, just above the crease of her buttocks. Then it all flooded back. Dempsey was still asleep but Maya’s mouth was dry as a bone. She was desperate for a glass of water, followed by a coffee. She also wanted him to wake up so that she could tell him what she was feeling. It was like in that old movie,
When Harry Met Sally
: when you realized you wanted to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you wanted the rest of your life to start as soon as possible. But she knew it wouldn’t be easy. Drawing back the sheets, she saw for the first time in the light of day how terrible his scars were. He had told her on their second date about what happened to him in Iraq and she was fully prepared to be shocked. Yet the truth was that in candlelight, after two bottles of wine, several pints of Guinness and any number of grappas, she had hardly noticed. If anything, the ridges on his back had only added to the excitement.

But now, looking down, she was able to appreciate how close he had come to losing his life and now painful, and lonely, it must have been for him in that
isolation
ward in Marseille. As carefully and gently as she could, so as not to waken him, she replaced the sheet over his damaged flesh and went to prepare some breakfast.

She was not a good Catholic. Her tastes at school and university had run much more to boys, loud music and basement bars than priests and Mass. But today, sitting on her pew in the church, lit by the lanterns above set into the
eight-sided
dome, she found herself offering a small prayer.

Sant’Anna was more than a tourist attraction. It was the parish church of the Vatican. And when a loudspeaker informed those present that the next Mass, due to start in three minutes, would be conducted in French, Maya rose to go. Back outside in the street, a bespectacled Guard – from the village of Küssnacht, she seemed to recall – halted the stream of traffic heading towards the gate so that she could cross over to the barracks. Over his right shoulder rose the tower of Nicholas V, and then the massive bulk of the Apostolic Palace itself.

‘
Guete Obe
, Christian,’ she said, greeting him in Schweizerdeutsch, the almost impenetrable dialect of German spoken in the north and centre of Switzerland.

‘
Guete Obe, Fräulein
,’ he replied, blushing. He was, she realized, no more than twenty-one.

Maya had fallen in love with the barracks almost the moment she first set foot inside. The earliest portion of the building dated from 1492, when the Pope was Alexander VI, the notorious Rodrigo Borgia. But most construction had taken place during the reign of Julius II, the Warrior Pope, under whom the Guard became a permanent feature of Vatican life. Behind the front office, somewhat incongruously, was the dry-cleaner’s, specializing in the maintenance of the Guards’ elaborate costumes. Beyond that again was the refectory, its walls decorated with frescoes glorying mighty deeds with sword and halberd. The Armory was another favourite. This was where the steel helmets, two-handled swords and halberds carried in pontifical processions were stored, along with the Corps’ colours and drums. Upstairs were the dormitories, and beyond these again the officers’
quarters
, including the spacious apartment of the Commandant and his family.

The sergeant at the desk was from Unterwalden, one of the original cantons of the Swiss Confederation. ‘Guete Obe, Fräulein Studer,’ he said.

‘Good evening, Sergeant Weibel. Is my father home?’

‘I believe so. I saw the colonel head upstairs twenty minutes ago.’

‘In uniform or out?’

The question elicited a rare smile. ‘He was wearing a suit, Fräulein. I think he had just come back from a meeting at the Governorate.’

‘A busy week ahead. Lots to prepare for.’

‘Most definitely. But the election of a new pope is always a time for celebration, is it not?’

‘A chance to polish up your breastplates.’

‘Ja, ja. Of course. But also our 226s.’

The Swiss-made P226 Elite semi-automatic handgun, with its beavertail grip and short reset trigger, had become the standard issue of the Swiss Guard, which these days also trained with assault rifles and Heckler & Koch machine pistols. ‘Yes,’ said Maya. ‘But let’s hope the conclave doesn’t end in a shoot-out.’

The sergeant, a two-time pistol-shooting champion in the Swiss army, shrugged. ‘You know our motto, Fräulein:
Acriter et Fideliter
– Honour and Fidelity. These days, we must be prepared for anything.’

Upstairs in the apartment, as Frau Studer prepared supper, the colonel was reading his paper while keeping half an eye on the evening news in German. Maya went into the kitchen to say hello to her mother, then returned to the living room, where, for the third time that week, she turned down the air conditioning before taking a seat on the sofa next to her father.

‘You must have got home very late last night,’ he said disapprovingly. ‘I didn’t hear you come in.’

‘Actually, I stayed at a friend’s house.’

‘Have I met her?’

‘Him, father. He’s a “him”.’ 

‘Aah!’

Studer sighed. He knew better than to seek to impose his religious views on his daughter. At least, he reasoned, her overnight stays were few and far between, which was as much as any father could hope for these days.

Berlin, according to ZDF, had elected a new mayor, and for the first time his deputy would be of Turkish origin. She nodded in approval. That was progress, and long overdue. In Strasbourg, the European Parliament was acting to reduce national vetos in respect of the EU budget. Did that mean more democracy, or less? She wasn’t sure. The president of the United States, on a visit to Beijing, had confirmed that China would take the lead in the development of the next generation of short-haul jets by the jointly owned Boeing Corporation. In another development, an historic church in Würzburg had been deconsecrated and would shortly re-open as a mosque.

The world had changed so profoundly in the years since she was a child that the Europe and the Switzerland in which her parents grew up seemed almost as remote to Maya as the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Today’s Europe was
thoroughly
cosmopolitan and multi-cultural, governed increasingly from Brussels by the democratic equivalent of diktat. Switzerland continued to be an anomaly, on the margins of the EU. But with close to 40 per cent of its population now of Middle Eastern, African or East European descent, it could no longer claim to be the land of William Tell. Two of her father’s Halberdiers were ethnic Africans; five members of the national parliament were Muslim, and another a Hindu. As the old ways faded, it was to be expected that there would be a reaction by
traditionalists
to changes that seemed to cut across the very definition of Swiss-ness. Older people – but some younger people, too – were concerned especially about the huge increase in the country’s Muslim population, which had led not only to the widespread wearing of the hijab and a surge in Muslim-only schools, but also to demands for Muslim cantons, with sharia law.

Behind the high walls of the Holy See, none of this was visible. As
commandant
of the Swiss Guard, the colonel, like all of his predecessors, dating back to 1506, was considered a member of the ‘pontifical family’, holding the rank of a Chamberlain of His Holiness. Yet the Guardia Svizzera Pontifica was much more than a papal adornment. With his one hundred officers and men – the
Hundertschweizer
– Studer was responsible not only for ceremonial duties but for every aspect of papal security, which, ever since the attempted assassination by a deranged Turk of Pope John Paul II, included intelligence, crowd control and electronic surveillance.

These days, the Guards only wore their breastplates and steel helmets on solemn occasions. Their red, blue and yellow ‘gala’ uniforms, designed not by Michelangelo, but by a gifted commandant in 1914, were still very much in evidence, and remained a firm favourite with tourists. But in the twenty-first century, proficiency with small arms, keen eyesight and the ability to spot a potential threat, whether an individual or among a multitude, were what marked out the finest recruits.

Not that the Guards either looked or acted like a SWAT team. Life in the centuries-old barracks had a strict but seductive rhythm, not unlike that of a monastery. The Guardsmen, who normally served two to three years, were not only professional soldiers, but also practising Catholics, who viewed their calling as a great honour. Maya’s father regarded his own role as a rare privilege rather than a distinction. It was not that he lacked an ego or sense of self-esteem. It was more that as an army officer, then a director of the family bank, he had commanded respect for thirty years. This time round, virtue was its own reward.

As they watched the news, an item came on about the return of the heart of the late Cardinal Rüttgers to his cathedral in Freiburg. The cardinal’s sister was distraught. Her brother, she told an earnest young interviewer, had been in perfect health when he left for Rome. She couldn’t understand what happened to him. How could it be God’s will that a man of just fifty-one, newly elected to lead Germany’s Catholics, should have died so suddenly? And why, she wanted to know, had the Church prevented the return of his body to his family and homeland? She had written to Cardinal Bosani, the Camerlengo, to request his body for burial next to his parents. But Bosani said no, he must be interred in Rome. No explanation was given. There hadn’t even been a post-mortem. All they had been sent was her brother’s heart, filled with formaldehyde, ‘like a pickled peach’.

At the mention of Bosani’s name, Colonel Studer looked up from his
well-thumbed
copy of the
Neue Züricher Zeitung
. Maya noticed him twitching.

‘What’s the matter, father?’ she asked.

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘It is nothing.’

‘You don’t like Bosani, do you?’

He placed the newspaper next to him on the sofa, keeping half an eye on the television screen. ‘It’s got nothing to do with liking. He’s a hard man, but we live in hard times. I just wish that poor woman had been able to take her brother’s body back with her to Germany.’

‘I’d have thought she’d be proud of the send-off they gave him. Wasn’t there a funeral Mass in the Vatican? Didn’t Bosani himself preside?’

The colonel, relaxed for the evening in an open-necked shirt and chinos, curled his lip. ‘Oh there was a Mass all right, but the Camerlengo seemed merely to be going through the motions. He has a lot on his mind at the moment, of course. The conclave is just around the corner. But I still thought it could have been better done.’

‘Did you know Rüttgers?’ 

Her father made a face. ‘I wouldn’t say I knew him. But we’d run into one another every now and then. The first time, about three months ago, I noticed him talking to one of my guardsmen, which strictly speaking is not permitted when they’re on duty. But the young man seemed so uplifted by the conversation that I couldn’t bring myself to reproach him. Instead, I spoke with the cardinal himself, who told me he had been pleased by my appointment and asked after my family, you included.’

This surprised Maya. ‘He knew about me?’

‘And your brother. He grew up just over the frontier from us in Schaffhausen, near Singen. He even had a Swiss cousin, from Steckborn, married to a
watchmaker
. He told me he used to attend Mass at the Münster at least once a month when he was a teenager.’

‘So he would have passed our house on the way to the church.’

‘That’s what he told me.’

‘Interesting. How did he seem the last time you met him?’

‘That would have been shortly before he died. He was on his way into the Camerlengo’s office. Evidently, the two of them had a difference of opinion. He looked really downcast, as if something terrible had happened. I asked him if he was all right. Maybe he wasn’t feeling well, I thought. But he said he felt fine – never fitter. It was just that he wasn’t looking forward to the process of electing a new pope. “But Your Eminence,” I said, “it is surely a great honour to be able to choose Christ’s Vicar on Earth.” He looked at me, with a look that I won’t forget. He looked sad, but pained as well. “My dear Colonel,” he said, “you have no idea how desperate things have become. The Church these days is hardly even Christian anymore. It’s as if it has been infiltrated by outsiders pursuing their own agendas.”’