Sistine Heresy Page 7

“A sign?” She laughed. “You reject the Catechism but believe in signs?”

  “The falseness of the Catechism does not mean there are no divine forces that deserve our scrutiny. Of course I believe in signs, wherever they come from. The trick is to distinguish them from our longings.”

  “So you think my medallion—he’s promised it to me, by the way—was directing you to Hadrian’s villa?”

  “Your medallion? Now I’m sure it’s a sign. In fact, your return to Rome without Cesare could also be taken as one. Don’t press me to say what it is a sign of, but I think it’s a good thing. In any case, I’m happy to see you again. We must get you out more.”

  They descended sharply in single file into a semicircular area. It appeared to be a theater or a stadium from which most of the marble had been stripped. Adriana’s mare was careful as she picked her way over the uneven ground.

  “Remember, I’m still a Borgia. I’d rather keep to my friends, people I can be sure will not poison my wine or hand me over to the Inquisition.”

  “Well, I can promise that I won’t poison you,” Silvio said amiably. “But if you’re nervous about the Inquisition, I’m not the best company for you. The Dominicans have their collective eye on me, and even having two popes in the family is no defense. Michelangelo can protect you better than I can. It’s true he’s always arguing with the Pope, but he’s valuable to Julius and both men know it.”

  “He’s a difficult man.”

  “Which one? The painter or the Pope?”

  “Both, actually. But I meant Michelangelo. We made a deal a few months ago, for him to engage Raphaela Bramante, but since I couldn’t uphold my part, nothing came of it, I suppose.”

  “It’s too bad, then. She’s a woman with an exceptional gift. One of these days she’ll marry some fat merchant and start popping out babies, instead of paintings. But until then, Michelangelo should try to make something of her.”

  Adriana winced at the image of Raphaela holding one babe in her arms and pregnant with another, a faceless man standing smugly beside her.

  “I should think Bramante himself would have something to say about his daughter’s future,” she remarked.

  “You’d think so, but he’s had to raise her alone and doesn’t seem to know how to control her. Not that she behaves immodestly or anything of the sort. When she was painting me, her father escorted her in the evenings, but during the day she was alone when she came and went, just like a man. She’s a bit wild that way.”

  Adriana tried to imagine someone like Silvio attending the young artist as she rode through the Roman streets. The faceless “gentleman” was scarcely more appealing than the merchant.

  “It’s too bad Michelangelo didn’t take her in hand. Would’ve done them both good. Have you seen the work he’s done in the chapel?”

  “No. My last visit to the Vatican was pretty disagreeable. I won’t go into Rome now unless I have a reason.”

  “Or a sign?” Silvio teased.

  She could think of no retort and so murmured limply, “Maybe so.”

  They rode awhile over hard-packed ground interspersed with patches of patterned mosaic tile. The quiet of the somber winter afternoon was punctuated by the cawing of crows and the clopping of their horses’ hooves on the ancient Roman stone.

  A man seemed to step up out of the ground suddenly before them. “Good day, Signor Piccolomini. The men are just below. We’re almost finished.”

  “Ah, here we are.” Silvio dismounted and assisted Adriana. His hands were comfortingly warm where they touched the chilled skin on her forearms.

  The workman led them down a narrow staircase into a subterranean chamber where two others worked by lantern light. Between them lay the discovery, mottled with dirt and algae, but unmistakable. The huntress Diana with her stag leaping at her side. Unbroken.

  “Well done!” Silvio took the lantern. “Come here, Adriana. Come and meet my lovely new lady.”

  One of the workmen made room for her while the other wiped away the dirt that still adhered to the pits and grooves of the face. He trickled water from a gourd over the surface as he wiped, each swipe gently removing another layer of clay. Finally only the nostrils and eye sockets remained caked.

  “There are still flecks of paint, Signore, here and there. It looks like her dress was gold.”

  “Magnificent.” Silvio knelt down. “And nothing broken but the bow. Isn’t she magnificent, Adriana?” he repeated. “You see, my signs were correct after all. Maybe this is your sign, to visit Rome again.”

  Adriana leaned over his shoulder just as the plugs of soil were washed from the two eyes. One eye was plain marble, its pigment lost, but the other still had its light green color. The goddess looked up at her, one-eyed and conspiratorial.

  “Signs,” Adriana murmured. “Yes, maybe so.”

  XI

  December 1508

  Adriana entered the Sistine Chapel from the great hall and stopped under the first platform, letting her eyes adapt. The overcast sky sent little light through the high windows. Only a few candles burned on the tall candelabras before the chapel screen, and the artists’ lanterns that hung at the top of the scaffolding shed scant light below.

  Hearing voices overhead, she stepped out from under the platform and craned to peer upward, searching along the row of lanterns on the balustrade for Michelangelo. The shadows cast by the workers danced eerily on the curve of the vault. She turned slowly in a circle, studying what he had accomplished in the months since their last meeting and her disastrous audience with the Pope.

  He had sketched in a fictive architecture supporting the vault, an intersection of illusionary columns with illusionary ribs, outlines of swags and medallions between them, and a few brooding figures in the lunettes. Hanging cloths, which presumably obscured the work during the services, were pulled aside at the moment, revealing the maze of chalk lines, strings, and sketches.

  “Adriana! Is that you?”

  She finally spotted him, or at least the toes of his boots jutting from the platform he stood on directly over her head. Between the feet, foreshortened, she saw the underside of his face, lit from below by lantern light.

  “What brings you into Rome again?” Michelangelo called down.

  “You do, of course. I came to see what you’ve been doing.”

  He made a wide arc with his arm. “Well, what do you think?”

  “I don’t know,” she called back. “From down here it’s all just lines and strings.”

  “I can’t leave off working right now. Do you want to come up?”

  She was startled by the invitation. Climb up? Ascend the scaffold to the vault of the holy chapel? She considered her dress, one of her more practical ones, for the days she rode horseback. She felt the devil grinning inside of her, urging her to dare it.

  Michelangelo pointed a dripping brush toward a ladder leaning against the base of the platform. “You can get up over there, in the corner.” One of his boys was just climbing down it with a bucket.

  Adriana gripped the hem of her skirt, wound it once around her legs, and tucked it into her belt. The boy held the ladder while she climbed. Committed to the ascent, she ignored the panic that rose with each step. At the top of the ladder Michelangelo grasped her hand and pulled her firmly up onto the platform. It creaked and swayed slightly as it caught her weight.

  Breathless with nerves and exhilaration, she glanced down at the floor far below, at the tile circles of the Papal Walk ending at the marble screen that divided the chapel in half. On the right wall was the choir loft where Domenico sang. Beyond the screen was the quadratura, in which only the Pope and the College of Cardinals were permitted. Stone benches were arranged around the square on three sides, where the Cardinals sat during mass. On the left was the papal throne, and at the far end, against the west wall, the altar. Sacred ground, and yet, in its murkiness, it seemed irrelevant to the work taking place where she stood, in the light-filled arc of the ceiling.

  S
he stood on the outermost of several footbridges that arched across the chapel in parallel to the ceiling and were just wide enough to hold two men side by side. On the two first platforms boys were spreading plaster on the exposed masonry of the ceiling. They applied it with trowels, smoothing it in wide rhythmic sweeps, occasionally glancing over their shoulders at her. In the heat and dusty air high under the vault, the sour mixture of wet plaster and the workers’ rancid sweat was oppressive. Holding her skirts close to her legs, she made her way gingerly to the innermost platform, where Michelangelo stood painting over his head. “It looks like you’ve found inspiration after all.”

  “Enough to start, at least.” He spoke to her without taking his eyes from his work. “Over there, the boys are applying the base plaster that will support the whole thing. It will take a day to dry and then I’ll move. I’m applying the intonaco now, the final layer.”

  He dipped a brush into a bucket of thin, creamy plaster and laid a smooth coating over the base plaster in a wide strip. When he was finished, he set down the bucket and stepped back to the previous band, which had begun to dry. He tested it with his thumb and found it satisfactory.

  “Now the transfer.”

  He unrolled a parchment the width of the painted strip. It held a cartoon of two figures and a tree stump, sketched in charcoal. The lamplight behind it revealed that the lines were perforated. He pressed the parchment against the intonaco, tacking it at intervals. When it was well anchored he took a cloth-covered ball of charcoal from his apron and pounced it lightly over the surface until every portion was covered with powdered carbon. Then he slowly peeled the sooty paper away, uncovering the entire drawing behind it, as if it had been sketched there.

  “I must work quickly now, while the intonaco is still damp,” he said, rolling up the parchment and handing it to one of the boys. “Otherwise the pigment won’t be fixed.”

  He picked up a palette made up of a ring of shallow bowls, each containing a different pigment, and with several brushes he began to paint in the scene he had just outlined. She was amazed at the speed and confidence with which he painted and then remembered that he was a sculptor. Compared to the blows of the chisel on unforgiving marble, paint, which allowed room for correction, must have seemed a relief. No wonder he was fearless.

  The scene showed people in flight from rising waters. On the right side, on a strip painted earlier, a cluster of the doomed huddled together under a blanket. In the center, a shallow boat capsized, while in the background, a closed vessel floated. The first fresco on his ceiling was the punishing Flood, the ark sealed and inaccessible, repelling all who tried to enter. There was no hint of rescue, only of damnation. Michelangelo had made good his threat to “wash it all away.”

  He painted directly over his head, moving from the lightest shades to the darkest with finality, never going back to the light shades again. With three brushes dipped into paint pots of brown, red, and white, he created endless variations in tint and shading, rounding off every muscle, giving substance and vitality to the painted flesh. Before her eyes, he cast upon the emptiness figures of clay and breathed life into them. It was as close to a miracle as the human hand could accomplish.

  She stepped back to study the gathering of refugees he had painted the day before. Among them, two men embraced, one hovering protectively over the other, whose head was loosely bandaged. The injured man reached up and held the other around the buttocks.

  Michelangelo saw where her eyes went and said, “Two of the doomed.”

  “Shall I continue painting the water, Maestro?” Behind her, an alto voice spoke, too soft for a man, too resonant for a boy.

  Adriana felt a shiver of pleasure even before she turned around.

  In trousers, smock, and plaster-spattered apron, the androgynous form of Raphaela Bramante stood solemnly in front of her.

  XII

  Michelangelo spoke without looking away from his work, obviously for the benefit of the other workers. “Adriana, my background painter, Carlo. Carlo…the Lady Adriana Borgia.”

  The two women stared at each other while Adriana recovered from her surprise. Michelangelo had obviously upheld his end of the bargain in spite of her failure with the Pope.

  “Honored, My Lady.” “Carlo” lowered her eyes.

  Adriana smiled at the lovely low register of the voice she’d wondered about for so long.

  Michelangelo set down his palette. “I am sorry, Adriana. Carlo must paint while the plaster is still damp, and the platform was not built for three. I am afraid you must leave now before we all go crashing down.”

  “Oh.” She looked down at her feet. “Yes, of course.” Suddenly obedient, she attempted to step past the young assistant but stumbled to one knee and was caught in Raphaela’s slender arms. The other woman’s breath was warm on her ear.

  “Madonna, I’ll help you to the ladder.”

  “I can manage, thank you.”

  Chagrined, Adriana regained her footing and stepped as quickly as she could toward the ladder where she descended, embarrassment giving way to a sort of intoxication. She had been under the vault of the chapel and seen the beginning of what the world would soon wonder at, Michelangelo’s vision of the Deluge.

  She was drowning in it.

  Dazed, she untucked the hem of her dress from her belt and moved to the door of the chapel. For several seconds, she stared out into the Sala Regia, then became aware of someone behind her. “Carlo” had followed her down the ladder.

  “Madonna…” That lovely voice again. “Maestro said to give you this.”

  The creature held out one arm, the paint-flecked hand closed in a fist around something small. Adriana accepted the object, studying the face of the “apprentice.” Amazing, she thought. The charade was of her own invention, yet her eyes could not decide whether she looked at boy or woman. Silence stretched between them again. Adriana wanted to talk, but the other workers were within earshot. She lowered her gaze to the marble medallion in her hand. The carved face of a woman looked up at her, haloed by a snake.

  “Thank you…Carlo.”

  With a silent nod, the lovely boy-woman returned to the chapel interior to paint the waters of God’s great punishment. Adriana watched her walk away, wondering what Michelangelo had told her. She was tempted to rush after her, to ask, but instead swept through the Sala Regia to the great stairs leading down and out of the palace.

  As she emerged from the doorway the first clap of thunder warned of a coming storm. Jacopo sat scowling on his horse, holding the reins of her mare. He pointed toward heavy clouds on the horizon.

  “We’d best leave right away, My Lady.”

  She mounted quickly and rode toward the Ponte Sant’ Angelo. The wind over the Tiber was already strong as they turned eastward along the Via Giulia. The horses were fresh, and they covered the distance at a comfortable canter. The sky darkened with evening and the coming storm, but the route was familiar and she was not worried. Her thoughts crowded in on one another. Michelangelo’s flood waters, a boy that was a woman, the strange medallion in her pocket. She felt no chill.

  Then, as they reached the Via Tiburtina the sky began to rumble and flare with sheet lightning. With each flash, the high cumulous-cloud masses lit up orange-red on one side and stayed black on the other. Jacopo slowed his horse and peered upward, holding his cap against the wind.

  “You might almost think the heavens were angry. Look, My Lady. When the sky lights, you can see the saints.”

  “What are you talking about?” Adriana reluctantly drew up next to him. The evening sky again flickered orange, causing her mare to dance nervously.

  “Over there.” He pointed toward the west. “Wait until the next flash. It looks like they’re standing at the foot of God’s throne.”

  She looked toward where he pointed in the darkness, waiting for the sky to ignite. In a moment it flashed again a jolt of yellow light and she saw it. The tall thunderheads did indeed look like colossal beings, gathered
around a central light, and the crack of thunder seemed to give them voice.

  “I see tall clouds. No saints,” she shouted between thunderclaps. The wind had increased in strength and whipped at her cloak, causing it to flutter wildly behind her. She clutched it closed with one hand.

  “Best to hurry now, My Lady,” Jacopo said, kicking his horse into a run. They galloped wildly, she and the warm creature between her legs fleeing the storm. Once more the ear-splitting thunder exploded and the whole sky lit at once, as though signaling an end to the world. Then silence fell and for a few moments she heard only the rushing in the trees, the panting of the straining horses, and the thudding of the hooves on the still-hard ground.

  An hour away from the cypress trees of the Villa Borgia they met the deluge. As if the vessel holding it had broken, the rain fell like a wall of water, drenching them.

  XIII

  She stood on the shore of the Tiber looking toward St. Peter’s. Inside the basilica, she knew, a requiem mass was being sung. They were in there, her father and all the Borgias, Alexander and his sons, and the doors were sealed. A storm began, the wind billowed her shawl and water pooled at her feet. Across the water the edifice that had been St. Peter’s melted into the shape of the ark. No port was visible and no ladder for the sinners thrashing in the water. At its prow, silhouetted against the sky at each lightning flash, was the form of Gian Pietro Carafa.

  The Tiber suddenly swelled and overflowed its banks, and the surging water swept something large against her leg. She looked down to see the corpse of Piero Battista, his dead eyes staring up at her.

  Shivering, she turned and fled the rising flood, joining a line of refugees that struggled up a steep hill. She clambered past them to the crest where two men embraced amorously at the foot of a dead tree. Michelangelo stood over them, the wind whipping his hair. He pointed to the refugees by the tree.

  “This is my secret which I offer to God. Now you must offer yours.”