Sistine Heresy Read online

  “Maestro,” he said. “I am honored.”

  Michelangelo withdrew his hand and stood awkwardly. “I’ve heard you singing in the mass. Extraordinary. Sublime.”

  Domenico let his gaze linger on the artist’s face. “Thank you, Signore.”

  The older man seemed to search for words. “How did you come to the Papal Choir?”

  Domenico clasped his hands behind his back, revealing the wide expanse of chest that came, mysteriously, with the surgery that had made him a castrato. “That is the signora’s doing. She and Signor Borgia brought me here from Spain.”

  Adriana grasped his upper arm, claiming him. “He means my husband, Juan. We heard him singing in a little church in Jativa and convinced Alexander to admit him to the Chapel Choir.”

  Michelangelo had not taken his eyes from his face. “Then Signora Borgia has done us all a great service. Did she also give you the fine cross you wear?”

  “No, that is a gift from His Holiness.” Domenico fingered the jeweled gold at his throat. “But Signora Borgia gave me Rome.”

  Domenico took Adriana’s hand again. “Madonna, it’s so lovely to see you. And now that you’re back, you must not leave. The choirmaster’s waiting for me and I dare not offend him by being late. Will you come again tomorrow, after the mass?”

  “Yes, of course. Let’s meet at the fountain in the atrium.” Adriana embraced him once more and the two visitors stepped through the doorway, leaving him in the midst of the dull roar of the dining room.

  *

  Domenico Raggi watched the painter and the lady disappear along the dim corridor. The first person he had ever loved was the Lady Adriana Borgia. The shock of seeing her again sent his mind racing to his first overwhelming days in Rome where he had followed her, back to the last days in Jativa, where she obtained his release from the conservatory, and farther back still, to the life he led before singing took him from it.

  It was childhood alternately blissful and wretched, for he had been born illegitimate to a village girl and an Arab sailor. By the time he was five his mother had found someone who would marry her, although new children soon came and the stepfather openly abused her “Bedouin bastard.”

  But nature had cursed him in one way and blessed him in another, for half-caste though he was, he sang like an angel. In the choir school to which his parents gave him, or sold him, as he later realized, he finally had enough to eat and soft clean clothes to wear. In his innocence, he thought he would be safe forever.

  His knees weakened at the memory of his “rescue,” and he sat down on the nearest bench recalling the sound of soothing voices, the taste of opium-laced wine, the wicked pleasure between his legs from the warm milk in which they bathed him. Then, nothing. He had no memory of the actual violation, for while they soothed him, an unseen hand pressed on the pulsing artery at his throat and rendered him senseless.

  But he remembered the headache afterward, and the horror when he looked down under the blanket. The grotesque stories the boys had told were true. The blood that seeped along the edge of the bandages and the throbbing pain in his groin confirmed it. They had castrated him.

  In shock and terror he wet himself, the urine scorching the wound until he cried out in agony. The surgeon returned with his assistant to attend him. And after he was cleaned, the choirmaster came in and comforted him.

  “It is for God,” he said. “You belong to His Church now and this is your sacrifice.”

  Domenico chuckled bitterly to himself. He had only now learned what it meant to “belong to the Church.” It was not the way someone like Michelangelo belonged to it. He could tell by his firm handshake. A robust, self-sufficient man like that wouldn’t submit to being owned. Definitely not.

  A hand on his elbow caused him to turn to see a bearded face, ruddy and affable.

  “Oh, Bernardo.”

  The chorister tugged on his arm. “Come on. We have the new mass to learn, and you know how the choirmaster hates it if you’re late.”

  “You’re right. That’s all I need—another dressing-down.”

  He left the dining hall and hurried to the rehearsal, cheered by the coming reunion. Was the artist her lover? Perhaps she would tell him. She used to talk to him, in the last year before she left. He wondered how it would feel to be loved by her. Or by him.

  IV

  Lifting her skirt to avoid tripping, Adriana climbed the broad stone steps to the atrium of St. Peter’s Church. She had been stunned, as all of Rome had been, to learn that the new Pope had ordered the church razed and another one built in its place. But now she understood why. The ancient basilica was crumbling in vault and foundation.

  Inside the atrium she strolled around the arcade, noting the foundation that had been poured outside the current structure. The great court held planks and stacks of bricks in one corner and blocks of marble in the other. Between them the peddlers had set up their stalls, and the noises of commerce and construction competed with each other, filling the entire atrium. She wondered what inspiration the pilgrims could possibly have from praying to the saint’s bones in the midst of it.

  A crucifix was suddenly thrust in her face. The tiny figure of the savior sparkled in the sunlight. “Buy a fine rosary, Madama? Blessed by His Holiness himself on Good Friday.” The peddler tried to lay the circle of beads in her hand.

  “No. No thank you.” She brushed past him toward a row of booksellers.

  The first book merchant stepped in front of her, a smiling, red-faced man in a Jew’s hat. “A Bible, Madonna? Or perhaps a prayer book?” He pointed toward his table. “We have lovely volumes from France. Illustrated. Not expensive. Come, have a look.”

  “No. Please.” She raised a hand to block him.

  The crush of people only seemed to get worse. A few steps away men were hawking copies of the Veronica cloth, a dozen identical squares of cloth with the ghostly brownish imprint of an eyeless face. Behind the cloth hawkers, cabinets held carved wooden crucifixes of all sizes and flagellant whips in knotted leather. She shuddered, recalling the flogging she had witnessed the last time she visited St. Peter’s.

  “Make way,” someone shouted. Adriana glanced up to see two papal guardsmen emerge from the basilica. With their ceremonial pikes held out at a diagonal in front of them, they marched down into the square, opening an avenue for the funeral procession that followed. Not a grandiose one, but one for a lesser noble perhaps, a church functionary, possibly even a merchant. There were only two acolytes at the forefront, followed by half a dozen choristers in red soutanes and white surplices. All carried long poles with votive candles, their flames protected by cones of glass.

  They shuffled by murmuring, “Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine,” between sections of the prayer being spoken by the priest who followed them. Directly behind the priest, four pallbearers in white bore the bier on their shoulders, and Adriana suddenly sickened. The bier was nearly identical to the one that haunted her dreams. It was a sort of narrow bed, with a low wooden headboard, elaborately carved and surmounted by a cross. The cadaver was covered by a red shroud up to the chest. Where the shroud was folded back, withered gray-blue hands were tied together in the prayer position. The head, white-haired and beardless, rested on a tasseled white pillow, its jaw hanging slack, just like the cadaver of Piero Battista had done. Battista, a man whom she had scarcely known, but who would haunt her now forever. The man she had murdered.

  Behind the bier the widow walked, this one with sons, though Battista had only daughters, one a babe in arms, and the whole hideous scene rose up again in her memory. Seeing the children, she had grasped what a terrible thing she had done. Not even the death of her own husband had touched her as much as this act, which she herself had committed.

  It was supposed to be a small murder, of a small man, and by the laws of the Church, not even a sin. For the Pope had ordered it and she was merely his instrument, the poisoner. Obediently she invited the unsuspecting man to supper and did the deed. She watched
him slowly expire. Her stomach tightened at the recollection. She did not expect the convulsions, the deep rasping sobs, the foam that oozed from his mouth, or his final defecation. She did not expect that death would be so filthy.

  The Pope’s reaction the next morning had sickened her as well. She knelt before him and said “Holiness.” Only that, “Holiness.” And she waited for absolution. But so little was his interest in the matter that he simply waved her off, as if she had smacked a fly for him and the insect still stained her hand.

  Even now her mind was a jumble of questions. Could an act ordered by a Pope be a sin? She had taken a simple man’s life, impoverished his wife and children. She felt the need to confess to someone, to answer for a murder, yet the Church where she would have to confess her sin had commanded her to commit it. Opposing forces struggled in her: the need to ease the choking guilt and the soothing voice of a higher authority, which told her she was not guilty. Was evil something in itself, or only that which the Church condemned?

  “Lady Adriana, over here!”

  Domenico waved at her from the back of the crowd and she hurried toward him. She embraced him again with affection, noting that without the somber clerical garb of the choir he looked even more striking. He wore black hose and a black velvet doublet in the Spanish style. Tiny gold buttons ran all the way from the waist up to his throat between the ends of an upright collar. A small Greek cross hung at his throat, gold with tiny rubies at the four ends, jeweled droplets of blood. The severity of the dress only drew attention to his astonishing beauty.

  “The mass you sang, was it this man’s requiem?”

  “Yes, I thought I mentioned that. A merchant. His guild paid for the service.”

  “Ah,” she said neutrally, and drew Domenico quietly to her side. Dust had settled on his dark doublet, and she stopped to brush it from his shoulder as if he were still an adolescent. “Look at you. You’re covered with soot, and you smell of smoke.”

  “I’m sorry. It’s incense and candle smoke. It catches in the ceiling of the choir loft and stays for hours. The whole choir smells of it, but I’m the tallest, so I get the worst of it.” He laughed softly. “And now that you’ve hugged me, you’ll smell of it too.”

  “It’s good to see you again,” she said as they walked into the cool darkness of the ancient church. “Can you forgive me for leaving Rome so suddenly and for so long?”

  “There’s nothing to forgive.” He curled his fingers over her hand. “As long as you promise to stay this time.”

  “I promise.” She nudged him playfully with her shoulder. “So, tell me what’s new in the Sistine Choir.”

  He became animated. “Oh, a great deal. We have a new music master, and he’s teaching us the masses from Flanders in a new style of singing. Not pure polyphony. We sing all together. The high and low voices blend in layers.”

  She frowned. “Everyone sings at the same time? Isn’t that confusing?”

  He laughed again, a soft sibilant chuckle. “No. Not at all.”

  They strolled wordlessly under the long row of silver chandeliers where the air smelled pleasantly of the hot wax.

  “Have you had word from the other Lady Borgia?” he asked.

  “No, but I understand Lucrezia thrives now as Duchess of Ferrara, and has two sons. I must visit her one day.”

  “I always thought it would be lovely to have children,” he mused. “To be the head of a large family. I know that must sound ridiculous.”

  “No. Not at all. One wants family—of some sort. Mine are all gone now, but I understand the longing.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I was so self-absorbed I forgot you lost your father. Signor Buonarroti told me this morning before the mass.”

  “We were so estranged, I hardly knew him. Of course that doesn’t lessen the outrage of his death. Let’s not talk of that.” Adriana took his arm again as they reached the shrine over the sepulcher that held the bones of Saint Peter. Four columns of precious metals hammered together rose up, studded with gems, to a marble baldachin.

  “This is the center, the heart of the whole Church,” Domenico said. “A sacred place.”

  Adriana was less awed. “My father thought so when he arranged for me to marry here. At the age of fifteen, surrounded by a host of courtiers, I knelt there with Juan Borgia. But in fact, there was nothing sacred about the marriage at all. It was a financial transaction that involved the transfer of a significant amount of the Falcon fortunes into the Borgia coffers.”

  “I had not realized it was so…business-like.”

  “It was only business, on both sides. Juan’s father, Rodrigo Borgia, was still only a Cardinal at that time, but my own father was sure he’d be Pope one day and was willing to pay a lot to be connected to a papal family.”

  She drew him behind the shrine to the apse. “This is also where I became a widow, six years later. At least this is where they found Juan’s bloody gloves.” She pointed toward the steps that led down to the catacomb below. “His body was found the next day in the Tiber.”

  “Yes, I remember that. It must have been terrible for you.”

  She shrugged. “I was bereaved and frightened, but even then I knew that Juan’s death was business too. The business of power.”

  The high altar at the center of the apse had drawn his attention. Its silver surface, encrusted with countless precious stones, glowed with the reflected light of the surrounding candles.

  “Don’t you feel it, Lady Adriana? That God is close? Look, I’m so happy today that I want to make a sacrifice here on His altar.” He lifted his hand, revealing a thin silver ring on his last finger. He twisted it off with difficulty and held it up between them.

  “Ah, the child’s ring I gave you in Spain, just after we got you from the school. For your saint’s day.”

  “It was my first gift ever from a lady, and I treasure it. When my hands grew large, I wore it on the last finger all the years you were gone. But now you’re given back to me, and for joy and thanksgiving, I’ll return it to God.”

  He slid the ring toward the back of the altar, where the opulence of the altar surface rendered it nearly invisible.

  “What a strange man you are, Domenico. All right, if it pleases you, go ahead. We will see how long it takes before some altar boy finds it and you see him walking around with it on his finger.”

  They walked into the south transept. In the French chapel they halted before the white marble sculpture at its center. A young woman in voluminous robes held the angular form of a dead man draped awkwardly across her lap. His head cradled in her arm fell back, limp. A sash ran diagonally across the woman’s heavily draped chest and held the deeply engraved inscription “Michelangelo Buonarroti Florentine made this.”

  Domenico stared dreamily at the incandescent marble. “It takes your breath away, doesn’t it?”

  “Beautiful, yes, but it also seems cold. The face of the virgin looks empty.”

  “Empty?” His voice registered surprise. “Oh, no. It’s serenity, I’m sure. The Madonna has accepted God’s will. Don’t you see? If God’s will is perfect, then there’s no sorrow, only the peace of obedience.”

  She hated the word “obedience” but did not reply as they turned from the tableau and made their way around a wide column. Domenico looked back over his shoulder. “Does Michelangelo come often to the Sistine…oh—”

  He halted suddenly to keep from colliding with a man who knelt at the balustrade of a chapel. “Pardon me, Signore.”

  Domenico stepped back and bowed gracefully. Adriana caught herself in mid-stride and stopped behind him. A portly well-dressed man drew himself up with difficulty to a standing position and bowed in return. Adriana searched her memory. She knew him.

  “I am sorry, Signore, if I disturbed your prayers,” Domenico said.

  “Oh, no. We were not praying.” The familiar stranger picked up the sheet of paper covered with lines and numbers that had lain in front of him. “We’re only taking measurements.�
�� He held out his hand. “Donato Bramante. A pleasure, Signore.”

  As the men exchanged courtesies a young woman stepped out of a side chapel into view. Bramante summoned her with a brisk wave of the hand.

  “And this is my daughter Raphaela.”

  *

  Adriana concealed her surprise. How lovely Raphaela Bramante had become, with a slender frame that was somehow robust. The years had taken away the girlishness and added a certain solemnity to her face. She wore her hair differently too, or perhaps working alongside her father had caused it to fall loose. But the warm honey color was the same.

  Raphaela tilted her head back and her lips fell slightly open as if she were about to speak. But she did not. Her eyes merely swept over Adriana with focused interest as they had in the Sistine Chapel five years before.

  Domenico finished the introductions. “And this is Lady Adriana Borgia.”

  Bramante inclined slightly from the waist, a faint raising of his brow the only evidence of surprise at her name. He had changed too, Adriana noted. The top of his head was bald now, while gray hair curled upward over his ears, like Mercury wings. Yet something magisterial about him kept him from looking comical. His height, demeanor, and intelligent gray eyes could not be mocked. She reminded herself that this was Michelangelo’s rival, the man charged with rebuilding the basilica in which they stood.

  “Ah, Signora Borgia,” he said amiably. “I worked on several projects for His Holiness Pope Alexander before he died.”

  “Yes, he spoke of you once, and I recall seeing you at his requiem mass.”

  “Requiem mass? Ah, yes, a…disagreeable experience, if one may dare to speak so of a mass. Fortunately the new Pope is also in need of architects and so I am once again employed.”

  Adriana found the man charming, but wondered if even talking to him was a sort of betrayal of Michelangelo. She smiled back but did not continue the conversation.