The Ruby Ring (35 page)

He leaned very close to her. “These are dangerous words, Signorina Bibbiena, for a servant to hear from so noble a lady.”

“And in that, perhaps, I know a little of how Signor Sanzio feels about
his
love, after all.” Maria smiled up at his strong, kind face, etched with concern for her in a way she had never seen on any other. It seemed incomprehensible that this man, this guard, for whom she was unreachable, still could actually somehow have come to care for her, or she for him.

“I am weary now, Alessandro, and in need of rest,” she said, unable to spend another moment on so peculiar and unexpected an emotion. “But would you stay with me, here, like this, and speak softly to me until I fall asleep?”

“If it is your wish.”

“It is one of them at least, my good friend,” Maria said.

T
WO DAYS LATER,
Maria Bibbiena, the cardinal’s niece, and the woman once officially betrothed to the eminent papal artist Raphael Sanzio, was dead. Her premature death was a blow to her family, but most especially to her uncle. Cardinal Bibbiena blamed only one man, and thus sought to bar Raphael from the dignified and stately funeral he had arranged.

Raphael attended in spite of the directive against him.

Once the intimate Vatican chapel was packed to capacity, before an elegantly carved coffin, high on a velvet-draped bier, Raphael slipped inside through a carved side door and up into the balcony. Alone and attired in black, he had considered it his duty to be here amid the cold stone, the echoed whispers from the mourners, and the dark elegy sung from the choir stalls beside him.

He had not loved Maria, but he had always respected her. She deserved that respect now. Standing silent and still as the Holy Father began the funeral Mass, Raphael looked down, searching the faces in the front of the chapel. Shaken and pale, Cardinal Bibbiena stood beside Cardinal de’ Medici, cousin of the pope. Twice Bibbiena seemed to falter, and de’ Medici had reached out to steady him. The powerful cardinal had never seemed quite capable of tender emotion, Raphael had always thought. Looking at him now, with a tug from his own feelings, he knew that he had been wrong.

Maria had been loved deeply by someone after all.

After the funeral Mass, a throng of Roman nobility walked in solemn procession from the chapel to the shaded and lovely burial site within the highly private Vatican grounds. Amid them, a tall and dignified servant, unknown and unregarded by most of the mourners, stood well behind them. But Raphael recognized him immediately, for they had met at his studio once, when Maria had run off weeping. The man’s head was lowered, and his hands were clasped so that no one of importance would see the tears for Maria shining in his eyes. But Raphael saw them, and understood. Watching him now, it seemed to Raphael that in the end, Maria Bibbiena had actually come to know the great love of not one, but two devoted men.

36

April 1516

R
APHAEL WAS WORKING EXCLUSIVELY ON THE NUDE POR
trait of Margherita when he was summoned by guards to the Vatican Palace, to a meeting with the pope’s cousin, Cardinal de’ Medici. It had not been an invitation this time, but a command.

The cardinal’s spacious Vatican apartments were grand, vaulted rooms, scented with incense. The walls, decorated with religious portraits, were hung in heavy gold frames. Raphael made a necessarily deep yet perfunctory bow to the cardinal. Seated in a tall, leather-covered chair, studded in silver, the Medici response was direct and without flourish.

“It is the Holy Father, Raffaello.”

“This is not another plea for a reconciliation between us, I hope.”

“That is not why I have summoned you here.”

“When he stops his excuse making and agrees to a date to perform my marriage to Signora Luti, then I shall begin to entertain the
concept
at least of a reconciliation. But before that—”

“Raphael . . . ”

“His Holiness is not ill, I trust?” Raphael asked indifferently.

Even though it had been several months since Margherita’s kidnapping, he simply could not find it in his heart to reconcile with his former patron.

“It is his heart. Some say it is beyond repair over all that has happened, primarily with you. Following your estrangement, things began to go very badly for the Holy Father. There was the sudden passing of his brother and then the loss of his key alliance with Spain—and the threat which now poses following the death of King Ferdinand. He feels he is meant to lose everything dear to him as payment for what occurred. Now even his favorite Hanno has suddenly become ill.”

That alone surprised Raphael, and altered his tone. “The elephant is unwell?”

“His Holiness has come to favor dearly that gentle beast, almost as if he were a lapdog or pet marmoset. Since he was brought to Rome, the Holy Father has visited Hanno each and every day. The visits seemed to bring him a sense of peace through all of the turmoil and talk of war that has plagued him. Now that one last bit of joy is about to be taken from him as well.”

“Is there nothing that can be done for the creature?”

“The doctors have tried everything. He has been bled and given every purgative possible, but to no avail. The jungle beast, we are told, shall not survive this. Death is imminent.”

Raphael thought not of the pope but of Margherita’s affinity for the animal, and how she would feel knowing he would die. “I am sorry for the Holy Father,” he forced himself to say. “But there is certainly nothing
I
can do about his circumstances.”

“Pardon me, Raphael, but you
could
go to the pontiff. Visit with him as the friends you once were. You would help a great deal with the Holy Father’s outlook on all the more important matters. You could use the animal’s unfortunate circumstance as a beginning between you.”

“I cannot.”

“That simple?”

“He tried to take from me the thing most dear in my life!” Raphael said contemptuously, wholly unable to stifle the furious words pressing forth from his heart. “And still he refuses to allow us to marry for no other reason than his own dislike of the woman I have chosen!”

The cardinal shrugged. He drew in a measured breath. There was a moment of consideration before he replied in a voice full of piety. “His Holiness is not a well man, Raphael. The thing he craves most in the world now, at this difficult juncture in his life, is your forgiveness. He is not beyond paying you any price if it will return you to your former state with each other.”

“
That
state can never be. Not exactly as it was.”

Cardinal de’ Medici arched a brow, and drew a finger to his chin. “But some approximation, perhaps?”

Raphael wheeled around, hands on his hips, his voice full of contemptuous challenge. “Get me the ruby ring, which His Holiness knew well I desired, yet gave to Cardinal Bibbiena,
and
guarantee not only Signora Luti’s absolute safety, but her invitation to all events to which I am invited. Tell him that he must sanction our marriage as he sanctioned Agostino Chigi’s. If he will consent to do all of that, I will visit him.”

Cardinal de’ Medici nodded calmly. “I shall present your terms at once. I shall return to you with a reply by nightfall.”

“You do that,” Raphael replied, knowing what the response must be. Too much power, greed, and ambition swirled around the pontiff. His Holiness would never take away the ruby ring from one of his dearest friends.

T
HE RESPONSE
came long before evening fell. Two hours after Raphael left the Vatican Palace, a small leather box was presented to him, carried personally by a somber-faced Swiss guard in his brightly colored uniform and plumed steel helmet. Beside him stood Cardinal de’ Medici. The exquisite ruby ring from the house of Nero glittered up at him from a small bed of blue velvet. Raphael heard himself gasp.

“His Holiness wishes greatly for there to be an end to the animosity between the two of you,” de’ Medici announced. “He has sent me to say that if this act shall achieve that, he is exceedingly content at the prospect. And, after an appropriate time of mourning for Signorina Bibbiena, so as not to insult His Holiness’s dear friend, Cardinal Bibbiena, he will approve of, and sanction, your marriage to Signora Luti.”

Raphael took the small ring from the swatch of velvet and held it up. It glittered in the light with the same brilliant intensity it had the first time he had seen it. It truly was breathtaking, perfectly suited for Margherita’s slender finger, with the same rightness about it there had always been. He felt his rage begin to subside. The ring had been meant for her always, and it would be hers at last.

“I shall consider the matter,” he replied with a caution that he still could not vanquish. He must remain in control of all this until the day he took Margherita as his bride. It was not only for her protection . . . but his own.

“Excellent.” Cardinal de’ Medici nodded piously. “In addition, the Holy Father would have you consider the question of when you might be willing to return to work on the Stanza dell’Incendio.”

“I bid Your Grace not to press me. I shall inform the Holy Father when I will return to work.”

Raphael knew he was certainly pushing his luck, but he also knew he was the one who held all of the cards. The great and powerful Pope Leo, and all of his cardinals and henchmen, he had decided, should know it as well before he gave them what they wished.

N
OW THAT
Margherita was finally alone, with Raphael having gone to the Vatican, the entire group of them went to the Via Alessandrina and stood together on her doorstep, an unlikely lot. Potbellied Gianfrancesco Penni, with his unruly mass of red-gold curls and ruddy face, stood beside Giovanni da Udine, who appeared tall and awkward here, his silver hair smoothed away from his face. He especially was chafing. Behind them were all of the other artists and apprentices from Raphael’s workshop.

“While it is long overdue, we mean to apologize for our treatment of her. But will she see us?” Penni asked Elena, who held the front doorjamb and gazed in surprise at the great collection of men in their painter’s loose white shirts, hose, leather belts, and boots. “Knowing that the
mastro
has gone to the Vatican, hopefully to reconcile with the Holy Father, we saw an opportunity at last. We are here to plead for a fresh start with Signora Luti.”

“I would blame her not at all if she declined,” Elena replied. Giulio had told her how coolly they had all treated Margherita in the early days of her courtship with Raphael. “It has been months you have waited for this! And some debts as they mount are simply too high to be paid!”

“And some are better off simply forgiven.” The words had come from Margherita herself, stepping off her staircase, the hem of her dress clinging to the last stone stair. Elena turned to look at her, just as the men did. “Show them in, Elena,” she calmly directed, elegance defining her now, richly gowned as she was in amethyst-and-ivory brocade. “And see them to the library,
per favore.
”

The men, largely out of work since the kidnapping plot was revealed, shuffled across the glossy marble floor and the richly woven Turkish carpet. They stood bunched up beside the fireplace hearth, above which hung one of the small tondo paintings of Margherita as the Madonna. It was a silent reminder of her power, not only over Raphael, but over all of them.

“We would have come before now, and we should have. But we thought an apology for our behavior toward you would be precious little and far too late, especially after what happened,” said Penni, the designated spokesman. “But now, with things changing all over, and perhaps a new era beginning for us all, we
needed
to try,” he added as he stood a step forward, away from the others. “You deserved better than how we treated you,
signora.
”

In spite of the surprise, Margherita felt a smile tug at her lips. He was using the designation
signora
now, not in ridicule but rather in deference to her. Margherita took it as a show of respect.

“We will all simply go on from here.”

“Grazie, signora,”
da Udine nodded, surprising Margherita—and himself.

“Raphael has good men who care for his welfare. I did not fault any of you for that.”

“We should have shown courtesy to the lady whom the
mastro
loved.” Penni pressed the apology. “He certainly has been selfless enough with all of us to have expected that from us in return.”

“Well.” Margherita clasped her hands and searched each of their faces with a smile of her own. “We have all of the time in the world to change our course with one another now, do we not?” she asked, a gentle smile lighting her eyes.

Each of them nodded their agreement, and reached out in turn to take her hand.

M
ARGHERITA
was sitting at her dressing table when he came into her bedchamber very late that night. He saw her face reflected in the lamplight. It was freshly scrubbed, her hair parted in the center hanging long and soft around her face and across her shoulders. Raphael drew near and rested a hand upon her shoulder.

Seeing his reflection behind her, Margherita reached up to her shoulder and took his hand.

“Did it go well today?”

“Better than I expected. There is something we must speak of. But first, I must tell you of Hanno.” Raphael despised having to tell her the truth of this.

Seeing his expression, she dropped her gaze. Silence passed between them for a moment. “He has died.”

“Si, amore mio.
It is so.”

“Grazie a Dio.”

He watched her exhale deeply, as if a great burden had been released from her heart. “At last his spirit is free.”

“I believe that as well. I am relieved you are not upset.”

“Hanno has been imprisoned too long for that.” She shook her head and waited for a moment. “And the Holy Father, how is he about it?”

Raphael shrugged. “He is distraught, of course. I believe Hanno’s death, on the heels of his brother’s untimely passing, has softened him greatly. At least it appears so.”

“And how is that?” she asked him as he sank onto the bench beside her. Gently, he touched a long tendril of her hair and brushed it behind her shoulder, then he kissed the bare skin that had been covered beneath it.

“Cardinal de’ Medici came to see me today.”

“The pope’s cousin?”

“Through his visit, I believe I have at last found a way to forgive them.”

“If it is
your
desire finally,” she softly smiled, “then I am well glad of it.”

“There will be changes, however,” Raphael said, reaching into a pocket of his doublet, his lips curving into a slow smile. “And he shall agree to them.”

“Such as?”

“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,” he said wistfully.