The Ruby Ring (18 page)

“I desired you from the first! In that, today will be like every other, before and after! You have known that all along!”

Drawing her onto the pallet, with its array of velvet pillows, Raphael deftly slipped her dress up over her head, then the unadorned linen shift beneath. Margherita felt his own body heat as he stood next to her, and her breathing quickened. She did not resist as his own slippers, hose, and shirt came away from his taut body and fell into a pool of color onto the tiled floor, and she battled a new shiver of pleasure that pulsed through her. Her heart was racing. Her skin was hot.

“I have never loved a woman,” he murmured. “Never
truly
loved a woman.”

“And now?”

“Can you not see that I am entirely besotted by you? I want every part of you! And I want—
Dio,
yes desperately—I want to love you!”

She let him kiss her again, knowing what would come next, and wanting that. Wanting him as he came fully down upon her then. She felt the shock of a sudden sharp pain, but then the pain became pleasure—became exquisite. And like that, so simply, yet profoundly, she had given herself over to him, to the man behind the image. Her body, her heart, and her soul.

A
FTERWARD,
lifting himself onto an elbow, he searched her face, waited a beat before he kissed her again. Raphael was not certain what was happening to him. Yes, he had boldly begun this with her, but he had not been prepared for what had just happened. The way she had so tenderly stroked his face, her fingers feather-light upon his skin as he entered her. Her eyes wide and adoring upon him as he had moved inside her. Oh, the indescribable pleasure of it! She was so beautiful, so desirable . . . and he found he wanted to bring her pleasure, along with his own. To actually feel something emotionally when he took a woman was entirely foreign to him. Her gentleness and her innocence, the simple, sweet smell of her untouched flesh, had quite literally rocked him to the core.

“You are so different,” he whispered, their bodies still joined—his own slick with perspiration. “So totally human . . . you are everything, and like nothing I have ever known, or touched, or craved. I want to paint you . . . to create you . . . to bed with you, over and over again!
Dio mio,
to possess your whole body and heart—yes, that most of all!”

“You speak now as if that were impossible.”

He let a pained and heavy sigh. “It is complicated.”

Outside, past the wall of windows, the sky, now darkened to pewter, emptied a stronger rain onto Rome as Raphael rose reluctantly and moved away from her. He could not lie with her when he told her the truth. And she deserved the truth. Only when he had dressed did he come back to her on the pallet to sit beside her, wrapped as she was in one of the model’s draperies that had covered them both only moments before.

He pressed another tender kiss onto her cheek, craving the assurance of her skin beneath his lips. “You must understand, this has nothing to do with my heart. But power is everything here in Rome.”

“Do you not have enough of that as most favored artist of the Holy Father?”

Raphael hedged for a moment, uncertain of how to say it to make it more palatable to hear. It had been such a long time since he had cared at all what anyone else thought or felt. Suddenly, he could not look at her. There was too much trust in her eyes. “I made a choice—a poor one, before I knew better.” The breath he exhaled then was painful. He had made so many poor choices regarding women. But this had been the worst of them.

“There is a cardinal. He is the dearest friend of the pope. Cardinal Bibbiena has a niece . . . ”

Margherita sat up slowly. “And so?”

“Her name is Maria.” He drew in another painful breath and let it out very quickly. “We are betrothed.”

Her voice was strident with the sudden shock. As the meaning slowly became clear her lower lip began to tremble. “You waited to tell me of this until I, until
after
we—”

Raphael closed his eyes, burned by the pained expression on the exquisite face that mattered to him immensely now. “I have never . . . Not with her, Margherita. It is a powerful match made by powerful men, not having anything to do with lust or love.”

She cast back the heavy modeling drapery and shot to her feet, scrambling for her shift and her dress, which lay in a heap beneath the window. “Why should it when you have poor models from Trastevere for that sort of thing?”

“Before now work has ever been my only real love!” He pleaded. “The match with Maria is one I have regretted from the very first! It is a betrothal I have sought to break even before I met you! That I do swear!”

Stunned, Margherita moved toward the door, but he blocked her path. “You are well schooled and well experienced with women! Everyone in Rome knows of your reputation. I don’t believe you!”

He caught her wrist and was gripping it with his good hand. “That was before I knew
you!
”

“How many have there been before me, Raphael, who heard the same protestations?”

“How many before you, I know not.” He brushed the hair back from his face in frustration. “
S,
I told you, there have been many women. I confess I have known too many even to count! But I have never spoken of the things with another woman I have spoken of with you, nor felt what I feel with you!”

She spun away from him in the other direction, but he held her tightly. “Let me go!”

“It would be easier to cut out my very heart!”

“As you wish! You haven’t a heart worth having anyway!”

“You don’t mean that!”

Her face flushed scarlet with anger. “I mean it entirely!” Margherita’s rich brown eyes glittered angrily at him, even as he held her tightly and very close to his own tall, ramrod-straight body.

“We sealed that together just now, you and I!”

“We rutted like animals! That was all!”

The flare of her spirit only bewitched him the more.“You are mine, as I am yours!” he murmured in a voice mixed with sincerity and sudden renewed lust. “And, by God, I’ll not give you up!”

Unable to control the tears that her anger had nearly hidden, Margherita tried to twist away from him, but he only held her more powerfully, kissing the tears away, tasting them seductively with his lips and tongue. “I loathe you!” she cried in a small, choking voice as his powerful arms encircled her once again.

“I know not how or why, or what made it happen so completely, but
I
worship
you!
” he volleyed, pressing her back toward the window seat as the salty taste of the tears on her cheeks became urgent kisses, his mouth parting her lips, his tongue driving a rhythm into her mouth, and the overwhelming passion rising swiftly within him again.

After all the years, a lifetime, of meaningless coupling, of the terrible things he had done with nameless women in places too seamy and dark even to recall, Raphael was desperate that this woman know she was different in his life—and that he was made wholly different by her.

“Margherita . . .
pearl
. . . luminescent . . . rare.” He whispered huskily the meaning of her name into her hair as he moved back with her onto the pallet, then arched over her again, trapping her beneath him. “My life begins with you, this I swear . . . I do swear it!”

As he touched her with his lips, his warm breath on her skin, he could feel her falter in her resolve against him.

“This cannot endure!” she softly cried.

“It well might.”

“There is everything against it! You yourself said that work was your only true love!”

He pulled her onto her side, then slid his arm around her, moving sensually down to the small of her back, and pulling her against him, wanting her to feel how aroused by her he was already again.

“I did?” he asked, suppressing a smile.

“You did.”

He tightened his hold around her and felt her suppress a little moan of pleasure. “But, alas, that was in a world before you.”

“She is a cardinal’s niece, your betrothed—a great prize. And I am a poor baker’s daughter.”

“You are a queen in my eyes. My paintbrush has not lied.”

He touched the planes of her face, the tip of her nose, then kissed her again, shocked by the tenderness he felt for her, along with the driving lust.

“And what shall happen when you come upon your next Madonna?”

“You shall be the last Madonna in my paintings,
carissima.
The most remarkable, the most unique—the one the world remembers . . . and absolutely, I do swear, you shall be my only, my last love,” he declared as he sheltered her once again in his powerful embrace.

L
ATE THAT NIGHT,
in a wooden bath set in the kitchen beside the warmth of the bread ovens, in water heated over flames by Letitia, Margherita sat alone and wept silently into her hands. Her mind spun from all that had happened—how her life had been changed forever in the space of a single afternoon. And she forced herself to accept the truth. She dare not love Raphael because he belonged to Signorina Bibbiena, not to her. She could not—would not—do battle against the niece of a powerful cardinal. And when he came to his senses, when he had known enough of her, Raphael would not allow her to do it.

In the end, she had done what she had sworn not to. She had given herself to a man, and to an overpowering love that was impossible. Still, she had desired that which had happened between them, as if it had meant life itself to a simple girl whose existence had taken this sudden and dramatic turn. And even now, after she had bathed, and sat alone back in her room, in the little house with the sloping roof, and the bakery beneath, she could think of nothing so much as the touch of his hands, the weight of his body above hers, the taste of his lips, and wonder, without ceasing, when they might be together like that again.

Part Two

Overcoming me with
the light of a smile,
she said to me:
“Turn and listen,
for not only
in my eyes is
Paradise.”

Dante,
La vita nuova

14

December 1514

A
S WINTER CAME IN ON A FREEZING WIND FROM THE
north, and Rome was blanketed with a heavy winter cold, the papal court was plunged into preparations for the Christmas festivities, and in celebration of a new peace with France. Giant banners proclaimed news of a great pageant that was to be held throughout the city streets.

As soon as his hand healed sufficiently, Raphael went back to work on more of the preparation sketches, using black pencil heightened with white lead, for the pope’s new
stanza,
which Giulio was overseeing on the
mastro
’s behalf. The hand that had been so injured in his fight with Sebastiano’s thug healed quickly with a combination of help from the pope’s physicians and an ancient remedy Margherita had made for him.

For the next three days and nights after they had first been together, Raphael never left his workshop, so pressing was the amount of work. At night, when the others had gone home, Donato brought Margherita there, returning each morning long before the other artists arrived or before she was required to help with the new loaves of bread that needed to be baked. And so the grand house with its many levels on the Via dei Coronari sat alone but for Giulio Romano, who watched over it for Raphael, and Elena, who cleaned and organized and kept order in case he should suddenly desire to return.

“May I get you anything?”

Giulio glanced up from his place in Raphael’s study, wreathed in flickering gold lamplight, where he had been trying for the past quarter hour to understand one of the deeply meaningful sonnets in
La vita nuova,
by the poet Dante. He had thus far read it three times and was glad for a reason to look away from it for even a moment.

“Thank you, no,” he said to Elena, who stood before him.

She moved a step nearer and he closed the book, settling its thick red leather binding on his lap. She was warmly pretty in this light, he surprised himself by thinking. Not angles and striking features, like models with whom he was familiar, but all warm curves and gentle shapes. Her eyes were big and clear and gray, with dark lashes, and she had fully defined lips, perfect for the skill of a painter’s brush. The desire to sketch her face for one of the characters in the marriage of Cupid and Psyche at the Chigi Villa came unexpectedly.

“You can read Dante?” she asked, vanquishing the moment, and the notion behind it.

“Apparently not very well.” He smiled. “Certainly not as well as Raffaello. You are familiar with Dante’s work?”

Elena was thoughtful, then she looked away. “My life was very different before I came here,” she said. “But you. Why do you try to read it? Surely you don’t need it for your painting.”

The open expression on her face told him that she was not being critical. Rather, she honestly wished to know. “Many of our commissions are classical or biblical themes, along with stories of love and loss, as in Dante’s work.
Mastro
Raphael believes that it is not enough to re-create an emotion. An artist must know it himself, and understand it, as well if not better than the story’s author does before he begins to paint.”

He could see that she had never considered that, but it was also clear from her expression that he had not spoken beyond her ability to comprehend it. She moved a little nearer still, and so he politely stood, facing her. She gazed at the wall of leather-bound books behind the chair in which he had been sitting.

“Is that so for all artists?”

“No. Before I came to work for the
mastro,
I had heard it declared by other artists that the masses would not understand it anyway.”

“But Signor Raphael believes differently?”

“He has never painted for the masses nor with the notion of idealized perfection. He works toward his own desire of re-creating the thing with honesty, in order to move the viewer.”

“You must be an extraordinary painter yourself for a
mastro
like Raphael to trust you as he does with these concepts.”

“I would not dream of comparing myself,” Giulio said honestly. “
He
is the genius. They are his ideas, his concepts, and his scrupulously detailed designs, which his assistants only see to fruition.”

“But is it not you, then, by so doing, who brings them to life?”

“Perhaps, on occasion,” he conceded with a small but proud smile.

“It was horrendous what happened to him. Thanks be to God that he had you to help him with all of those commissions until he had fully recovered, or no doubt everyone would be pounding at his door.”

“Thank you for the compliment, but Signor Raphael has many other able assistants who have been painting far longer and more capably than I.”

“Not ones he has trusted enough to invite to live beneath his roof. He told me what you did for him, staying with him by the hour at the studio those first few days, then finishing many of his sketches for him to give to the other apprentices.”

Unaccustomed to adulation, Giulio awkwardly nodded to her. He had indeed done precisely that—taken the sketches to Raphael for approval, then given them to the other artists as if they were Raphael’s directions—exactly in order to maintain the confident flow of the workshop.

“At a time when it is difficult for him to trust other artists,” Elena went on in a voice of simple honesty. “I think he is fortunate to have you, Signor Romano. In his studio
and
here in his home as well.”

As she turned to go out of Raphael’s library, Giulio wanted to say that he was the fortunate one, but he realized, as her face still shone with kind admiration, that she was absolutely determined to leave him for this evening with a compliment of his own lingering between them.

P
OPE LEO
sat regally on a canopied throne, having just dismissed the papal legate with a bored wave. Behind him stood a stone-faced page with powerfully set shoulders. The page bore the ever-present silver tray brimming with egg-washed, sugar-dusted pastries, one of which the pontiff was just then consuming with great relish. As the pope pressed the final bite between his lips, his cousin, Giulio, came through the door in a sweep of crimson, flanked by two lower-order priests, both wearing black cassocks. Cardinal Giulio de Medici stopped before his cousin, hands linked behind his back. He was younger than the pontiff, and more handsome, a fact he had worked to his advantage all of their lives. Leo’s bulging eyes, with heavy gray bags beneath, and ever-expanding girth aged him well beyond his thirty-nine years.

“Ah, good cousin! Do share a sweet with us,” Pope Leo said, his round cheeks bulging.

“Thank you no, Your Holiness. I have broken my fast already this morning.”

Leo was surprised at that and chuckled. “So have I and yet . . . these are sweets!”

He had been this way all of his life, Giulio thought. Nothing, not even devotion or papal responsibility, compared with food. For Pope Leo, the papacy had not been earned. It was a gift for being a Medici, and the son of Lorenzo the Magnificent. He had left the play of true power to other men with more ambition than he.

“Then why have you presented yourself this day, if not to share the fruits of my good fortune?”

He dipped his head. “It is not
those
fruits of which I desire to avail myself.”

The response was swift and direct. Leo wiped his mouth on a silk cloth and cast it over his shoulder at another liveried page, as if knowing he would be there to collect it. Pope Leo envied his cousin’s youth and beauty, and required his presence all the more because of it. It was rather how he felt about Raphael Sanzio, as youth and good looks were the attributes with which he himself had not been blessed. But Raphael he needed more for his incredible talent, to ornament his private world, and make his lasting mark on the Vatican Palace.

“Very well. Leave us,” he sighed, brushing away the bishops and cardinals who lingered near him, as if they were bothersome insects on a warm summer day. Only the page who bore the tray of pastries knew to remain.

When the cousins were alone enough for private conversation, he said, “What is it to be this time then? Another villa? More money to impress a new mistress?”

As the pope reached up, the page bent and pressed the tray forward, a single anticipated movement, as was the plucking of a new long pastry decorated with raisins and sugared almonds, which the pontiff began to consume with relish equal to the last.

“No, no. Nothing like that.” Giulio sank onto the small gold stool positioned before the pope’s throne, and fastidiously straightened the length of his own rigidly starched crimson cassock. Only then did he settle his eyes directly onto his cousin’s. “My own legacy is in a dire state, and I wish you to exert your powerful influence over Raphael to see that the commencement of my portrait shall be the next.”

“Raphael shall not be doing any more portraits, good cousin, until he completes the next
stanza!
” he declared with an imperiousness with which he was now, after a full year on the papal throne, fully versed.

“What the devil is the problem? I know for a fact he has a staff of assistants and apprentices as long as your arm to help with the details and lesser commissions!”

The pope cupped fat fingers around his little bulb of a mouth and swallowed the last of the pastry with an audible gulp. “I am told that his attention is taken up, not so much with art, as it is with an alluring and mysterious new mistress—one who is said to be far more serious to him than any of the others. But that need not get out to Bibbiena, or the Lord God alone knows what form of delays it will create for my
stanza!
”

“You speak of the betrothal of Raphael to Bibbiena’s niece?” the cardinal chuckled, sinking back and touching his own knee with a slap of incredulity. “Surely the poor foolish girl was told of Raphael’s reputation with women before she agreed to the match.”

“Indeed she was, and she desired him just the same.”

“Be assured that he is a lusty young man who shall
always
have a mistress or two tucked away to inspire him, no matter whether
you
warn him against it or not!”

“Such things concern me not at all,” the pope replied, not quite believably. “What
does
concern me is that Raphael keeps working without interruption. I have bestowed upon him enough commissions here to keep him busy for another two years at least! They are
my
legacy, the only bit of immortality I shall ever have. And my only way of blotting out the stain of my vile predecessor. And
that,
good cousin, takes precedence over all else in his life!”

“And what might Bibbiena do if he thought Raphael’s eye had strayed from his sallow-faced little bird of a niece?”

“Sallow-faced or not, Bernardo is devoted to the little chit. He thinks of her as the daughter he never had. And, moreover, he believes he has bestowed a rare honor on our good Raffaello by handing that simple son of Urbino a powerful cardinal’s very chaste niece on a shining silver platter. If Bernardo were to believe there was heartbreak in the offing for his little Maria, I do believe he might actually find a way to sabotage the great artist.”

“Forgive me, cousin.” The cardinal scratched his nose with a bejeweled finger. “But it is rather difficult to believe that a mistress, no matter how nubile and comely, could alter Raphael’s ambitions of greatness, or risk the alliance he has forged with Cardinal Bibbiena. Raphael was honored by the important betrothal. I heard him tell you as much myself.”

“Early on,
s,
it was so. But that was four years ago, and for some reason an ambitious boy like Raphael has not yet seen fit to formalize that honor with a marriage. Nor does he wish to.”

“Perhaps in the end he was looking for something more in a wife.”

“Well, he certainly shall not find what a man such as he desires in a peasant from Trastevere.”

“Trastevere! It is not so!”

“S.”
The pope nodded, doubling his chin.

They cackled then, putting their heads together like two old fishwives at the mere thought of two such oddly matched lovers. “And yet my spies report that for the moment, she has entirely won him. He has her installed each evening in his studio, where they remain together until dawn.”