The Ruby Ring Read online

  “I would not trouble you by asking,” Giulio stammered nervously. “I am fine on my own.”

  “It is never trouble that brings me here each morning. Signor Raphael has given my family and me a good life in circumstances far reduced from what they once were. I am honored to see to the needs of his assistant as well.”

  Elena was engaging and sweet, Raphael thought. He was pleased to see, by Giulio’s expression, that he agreed. He admired her for her ability to set everyone at ease, even someone as confused and inexperienced as Giulio was just now about women. It would be good for her to be here, to help settle him into a calmer existence that could only enhance his work at the studio.

  “Elena,” Raphael said, breaking the gaze between Giulio and her. “I am sorely in need of a bath. Would you see to heating the water? And fetch Ludovico from upstairs? I require a fresh costume laid out before I depart this morning.”

  “At once, signore.” She turned to collect a large iron pot. Then, as an afterthought, she pivoted back. “I am pleased you are here, Signor Romano. The mastro could do with a bit of good company in this grand old house. It has been a long time since he has brought anyone home who mattered to him at all.”

  Stung, yet knowing he had deserved the veiled sleight, Raphael paused for only a moment to glance over at her. Then he swiftly left the kitchen.

  8

  WHEN SATURDAY FINALLY ARRIVED, RAPHAEL WAS DIStracted. His decision about the sort of clothes he should wear when he saw Margherita again had made him late for his weekly supper. She would likely see the manipulation in something too plain. Something too elegant, on the other hand, would only alienate her. He felt like an uncertain boy again, and entirely on edge, even before he entered the vast dining loggia at Chigi’s villa, ornamented by his own magnificent Triumph of Galatea, and the overwhelming hulk of Sebastiano’s Polyphemus beside it.

  Attired in a moderately grand gray brocade tunic, with a slashed red silk shirt and hose beneath, Raphael moved easily into the crowd of invited Roman dignitaries, and was shown to his place. At the head of a table laid grandly with silver dishes sat Pope Leo in a large carved throne, draped in crimson, flanked by his cousin, Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici, and his brother, Giuliano, Duke of Nemours. Fanning out around him, like leaves on a tree, were several Spanish bishops and prelates. Raphael conversed politely with the duke’s courtesan, beside whom he had been seated, but his mind relentlessly returned to his own workshop and Margherita Luti.

  She was really such a simple girl, certainly one unimpressed with his life or his art. Modeling to her was not the honor it had been to his other models, or even to Maria Bibbiena, who had modeled for him once, in the early part of their courtship. To Margherita Luti, it was purely business. Money for her father’s bakery, and nothing more.

  Could it be her disinterest that intrigued him?

  In any case, he argued with himself, even if he did find her appealing in a sensually earthy, common way, anything personal between them was out of the question. Even from the little he knew of her, Margherita was not the sort to bed with him. And if that were not enough, Raphael Sanzio was a man promised to another.

  As if his thought of another woman had summoned her, Maria Bibbiena turned her head on her slim, aristocratic neck, and smiled her uneven smile. Immediately, she stood and began to move toward him on the arm of her powerful uncle, the crimson-clad Cardinal Bibbiena, in his cassock and skullcap. Maria was even thinner than the last time Raphael had seen her, her young face made gaunt and old now from illness and worry. She was an alarmingly frail girl, with wide owlish eyes and a tentativeness about her.

  Against his better judgment, he had given in and used Maria Bibbiena as a Madonna model two years ago. Her pleading with him to repeat the honor, and thus increase the intimate time they spent together, had been unrelenting since. Looking at her, the hope in her eyes, his heart lurched, then sank, as it always did.

  She came upon him clad in a gown of robins’ egg blue damask embroidered in pearls, with long bell sleeves. He stood politely, kissed her cheek, and embraced her. He then bowed reverently to the cardinal. Though his thin, straight hair was a darker shade than his niece’s, the cardinal had the same gaunt Bibbiena face, the same unsettling owlish eyes, long hooked nose, and hollow cheeks.

  “Your Grace is looking exceedingly well,” Raphael lied.

  “And you are looking successful as ever. Pray, tell us where have you been keeping yourself?” the cardinal asked.

  While you were not in the company of my niece was what he meant.

  “Yet more commissions have come into my studio, Your Grace, and even with a collection of skilled artists about me, it is a daily struggle to keep up with it all. You have heard, I trust, of my recent appointments as architect of Saint Peter’s, and also as the pope’s commissary of Roman antiquities?”

  “I have heard that, s. But many things in life, Raffaello mio, require effort and attention. Not only your work. You would do well not to let one go in favor of another.”

  Maria was looking directly at him. But the hope on her face, rather than the anger she should have felt from his indifference, rocked Raphael. Maria, quite simply, adored him, when he felt only affection and pity for her.

  “Your Grace always provides me with much food for thought.”

  “Consider well, my boy.” He lowered his gaze in warning. “Especially that which affects the house of Bibbiena.”

  Raphael nodded courteously. He walked a fine line with this man who held the ear of the pope and who had the power to cancel many of his commissions.

  “I thank Your Grace, as always, for your wise words.”

  Bibbiena smiled a dry, thin-lipped smile. “Buono. Now, walk awhile with your betrothed before you sit with the others to dine, and inquire after her world.”

  It was a command, not a request, so Raphael led Maria into the long, vaulted hall, which he was now commissioned to paint. A gentle breeze off the Tiber rushed in at them through the series of open glass doors.

  Maria linked her bony arm through his as they strolled, and he could feel her smile without actually looking over at her. He had no idea how he could extricate himself from their engagement if he meant to retain his many lucrative commissions, or even his life. No one crossed Cardinal Bibbiena without dire consequences.

  “I have missed you,” she softly declared as they walked, her soft voice straining with open affection for him.

  “Surely you know by now that my days are not my own.”

  “I know it well. But so long as your time belongs not to another woman, I am content to wait.”

  They stopped at a window with a stone seat and a painted embrasure. Raphael motioned for Maria to sit, then he sank beside her and took up her hands. “This existence can not be good enough for you. You are a fine woman who deserves a man who can be devoted only to you.”

  She ran a finger along the line of his jaw and smiled. “It is enough, amore mio, that I am devoted to you.”

  “But how can that be?” he blurted out.

  “When we marry finally this shall all have been worth it.”

  Frustration mounted within him. “But I am not prepared to marry anyone at this time, nor do I know when I might be! I have always warned you that my work is a jealous lover, Maria, requiring all of me!”

  The cardinal’s niece covered his hand with her own cold, heavily jeweled fingers—the extent, thus far, of the intimacy between them. He was unpleasantly reminded of how thin and brittle her small body was. “Work may be your only lover, Raphael, so long as I become your only wife. My uncle and the Holy Father are counting on that.”

  He needed a cup of wine. No. There was not enough wine in all the world . . .

  Raphael stood and faced her wearily. Maria remained calmly seated, her watery eyes cast up adoringly at him, her heavily embroidered skirt fanned out around her legs like the petals on a lush spring flower.

  “You have not answered my question, you know. The one I posed in
this very corridor the last time we were together in it.”

  When would he call her to model for another of his Madonnas? Raphael sighed at the inevitability of it as he gallantly helped her back to her feet. For a moment, he felt real compassion for her, a young woman willing to throw away her entire life for a man who could never love her.

  “As I have told you, I am swimming in commissions, Maria. I am barely keeping myself afloat. Forgive me, but I cannot consider such a generous offer as yours just now.”

  Her spine stiffened. “His Holiness has told my uncle that you have found time to paint one particular Madonna without my assistance.”

  So that was what this was all about.

  Raphael led her slowly back toward the loggia, where the guests were beginning, amid conversation and laughter, to dine.

  “It was a standing commission, Maria, one I am relieved is nearing fulfillment at last.”

  “And you find this new woman superior to me?”

  “Not superior,” he hedged. “Just more appropriate for the concept.”

  They were seated at the table now, and Raphael could not help but feel relief. What, he wondered, would Maria Bibbiena think if she knew he planned to leave this meal early enough to meet this other model? And, moreover, what would her uncle do?

  “Tell me only that you shall paint me again,” she pressed, grabbing his wrist with surprising firmness.

  Do not force me to lie to you, he was thinking. You deserve better than that.

  “I would be honored, of course, to have you model for me again when the project calls for a model with your style and particular beauty.”

  He could not tell her the truth. Cruelty had never been an option. He only hoped that in the end, time would wear away Maria’s hope of a future between the two of them, as well as relieve her uncle of his patience with delay.

  Right now, time seemed his only hope.

  Just then, with a great showy flourish, and in a swirl of burgundy velvet, edged in silver thread and striped hose, Il Sodoma entered the room through the tall, frescoed arch. It was a dramatic entrance, meant to be appreciated. He had a style and a presence Raphael long had admired, mainly for the attention it deflected from a reputation that otherwise might have been his downfall.

  Il Sodoma’s frescoes at the monastery of Monte Oliveto Maggiore were breathtaking. Raphael had traveled there especially to view them. His delicate and graceful piet, Saint Sebastian, and his Road to Calvary had fascinated Raphael, and their common artistic language had begun a friendship. But talent alone in a city of gossipmongers and ambitious power players was not enough. Bazzi had always expertly deflected the more serious consequences of his amorous adventures. His grand fresco upstairs, gracing Agostino’s personal bedroom wall, was a masterpiece.

  “Ah, Raffaello mio!” Bazzi exclaimed in an earthy baritone. His lips were full and feminine beneath a neatly trimmed swirl of umber-colored mustache. Large feather plumes adorned his hat. “You are the very picture of health and success!”

  “As are you.” Raphael smiled and embraced his old friend.

  “But if the rumors of a new Madonna are true, you shall once again have me at a distinct disadvantage.”

  “You have always held your own with me, Bazzi,” Raphael chuckled.

  “And you flatter me, Raphael.”

  “You make too much of my success, compared with your own.”

  “There is no comparison, Raffaello, especially not in the divine eyes of our beneficent Holy Father.”

  “Times can change,” Raphael volleyed, remembering Michelangelo’s meteoric rise under Julius II, and his subsequent fall from the pinnacle of papal grace in the eyes of Leo X.

  “So, apparently, has your model for the Madonna.”

  He sat in an empty chair beside Raphael, and filled his cup in almost a single fluid movement. “I hear you have found a new virgin.”

  A true courtier, Raphael merely smiled and nodded.

  “So the rumor is true.”

  “I shall only say that she shall make irrelevant every other Madonna I have ever painted.”

  “You’re in love with her?” Bazzi gasped, as though the thought was repugnant to him.

  “Don’t be absurd,” Raphael countered, adding a soft chuckle for effect. “She is only a girl.”

  “Yet a girl who has changed your vision of Madonnas!” Bazzi persisted slyly.

  Raphael was relieved when de’ Rossi, a doe-eyed cardinal with a low, straight fringe of bangs on his forehead, leaned toward him across the table and rescued him from Il Sodoma’s clutches. Yet still the damage had been done. In spite of a kind heart, sweeping talent, and an enormously engaging style, Bazzi was the biggest gossip in Rome.

  9

  WHEN RAPHAEL ARRIVED BACK AT HIS WORKSHOP, Margherita was waiting for him. As it was late on a Saturday, the other artists had gone and the door had been closed. Although it was unlocked, she had chosen not to enter on her own. Instead, Margherita waited in the outside corridor, as serene as ever. Her hair was parted in the center and pulled away from her smooth face, but otherwise it was unadorned. Her round, dark eyes eclipsed all else. It was a moment before Raphael realized that her brother-in-law, Donato, had once again escorted her. Margherita saw the recognition and then a momentary flicker of what looked like disappointment cross his face just before he opened the door fully and nodded for her to enter.

  Margherita moved inside first, her green wool skirt sweeping past them, along with the faint fragrance of chamomile from her freshly washed hair. She was surprised at the vast silence that had descended on the cavernous workshop without the hum of activity, posing models, and many busy assistants. Raphael took her cloak silently, and Donato’s gray wool cape, and set them on a model’s stool. After he lit a fire in the hearth, he came back and focused intensely on her. “I am so pleased that you have come.”

  “Did I not tell you I would?”

  Raphael tipped his head, and paused for a moment. “People have told me a great many things in this life, Signorina Luti.”

  “I shall only ever say what I mean, Signor Sanzio.”

  His lips lifted in a smile. “Well, then. That shall indeed be refreshing.”

  “It is pleasing to know that something about me shall make a fresh impression on you other than my appearance.”

  “Oh, you have made an impression on me in many ways, signorina. Do not doubt that.” He quirked another charming smile that she dared, just for a moment, to find appealing before reminding herself that this was purely business, and would only ever be.

  “Shall we begin?” he asked, removing his expensively beaded cape and moving toward the growing fire. Donato sank silently onto a stool nearby, and Margherita watched Raphael then don a black paint-stained smock, rub his hands together in preparation, and let out a heavy, cleansing breath. His smile faded. She saw the artist reemerging. He had such intensity, and she was drawn to it. Realizing it surprised and frightened her.

  Raphael seated her on a stool in front of the fire, the gold-and-crimson firelight dappling their faces. He moved her head from one side to the other, then tipped up her chin. Margherita clenched her hands at her sides so that he would not notice her discomfort. Being here was awkward enough, but having him study every nuance of her face and body was actually a bit disturbing. Margherita tried desperately not to let it show. She tried to be the confident model he believed her to be as she watched him move and flex and strain to pull an image from the paper. She saw and felt the unmistakable sensuality in it.

  Apparently satisfied at last, Raphael turned to spread out the previous sketches of her onto his own worktable, and studied them for body, neck, and head position. It was so difficult not to move as the time wore on. Margherita was unaccustomed to the long periods of remaining still, and she was not at all certain she enjoyed it, even with the look in his eyes.

  At this point he knew only some of the ways he would make her unique, he told her. This Madonna would be standing, of that he wa
s certain. She would be barefoot, and she would look directly at the observer with all of the grace and dignity that he had seen on Il Gianicolo that first day. This would be his most human representation ever.

  After an uncomfortably long period of silence in which Margherita fought not to shift the position of her face or the tilt of her head, Raphael turned to her again, and held out a hand to draw her back to her feet. Margherita felt a shiver of panic at the sudden desire in his eyes. It was all still so strange for a modest, working-class girl, this utter intensity—the complete concentration concerning her face and body—and she fought hard to control her fear of it.

  Next, he pulled the stool away and positioned her with her arms at her sides, though at a slight angle away from her dress, as if they were floating upward. Then he did something that surprised them both. She knew it by the way their eyes met for only an instant, and his were the first to cut away. Without a word, Raphael knelt, removed her black cloth shoes, and placed them neatly beside the stool. She was actually glad Donato was here, as the sensation of having Raphael Sanzio touch her bare skin slowly and tenderly, almost caress them, felt shockingly sensual. Yet she had begun to feel a new, odd thrill in this lack of familiarity. Something foreign, and dangerous.

  “Signor Perazzi, per favore, do help yourself to a glass of trebbiano,” Raphael called out in an uneven tone, cutting into what felt to Margherita like thick, nearly unbreathable air. “There is a silver decanter on the shelf behind you.”

  “And shall I pour one for you?”

  “Thank you, but no. I am unable to drink wine when I work. It clouds my perception,” Raphael explained, beginning another chalk sketch now that he had declared that the full concept for the painting had come to him. Margherita felt his eyes boldly upon her once again, and the same shiver of fear raced through her. Everything about this place, this moment, was unfamiliar to her, and that, most of all, frightened her into silent compliance. “Hold your hands just a bit farther from your body, and face your palms outward,” Raphael instructed with the slightest catch to his voice. “S, that is it . . . s . . . perfection.”