The King's Agent Read online

  He jumped to his feet. “Of course, of course.”

  From behind the privacy screen Aurelia heard the tinkling of glass upon thin metal, and he rushed back, with a mug of heavily watered wine. With tender ministrations, he slipped one hand below her neck, lifting her gently, as he held the rim to her parched lips.

  Aurelia closed her eyes in the ecstasy of the liquid upon her tongue, its coolness as it slithered down her throat. He moved it away, but she raised a weak hand, pulling the small, stemless chalice in his hand to her lips once more, and drank deep.

  “Not too much.” He chuckled. “You have had little for a long time. You seemed to wake now and again, and we fed you water and broth, but not very much. You must not overdo.”

  Aurelia’s brows knit, a stab of pain her reward. She raised a hand, feeling the linen bandage across her forehead. “How long?”

  Battista’s shadow-rimmed eyes evaded her as he busied himself, refilling her drink behind the safety of the screen.

  “How long, Battista?” She pushed against the bed with her elbows, inching upward with a frail attempt.

  Rushing back, placing the cup on the lid of the coffer, he lifted her shoulders. “Eight days,” he mumbled, rearranging the pillows at her back and shifting her upward, allowing her to lie in a more bolstered position.

  “Eight days!” Aurelia did not know if he lied or if some terrible dream had manifested itself. But the pains coursing through her body gave hard testimony to her consciousness. She looked down at herself; a bandage covered her left arm, something thin, straight, and hard keeping it stiff at the wrist. With her right she lifted the covers, shocked to find herself clothed in nothing but a wisp of a chemise bunched around her buttocks, her legs and arms a mass of bandages and cuts, lumpy with dark maroon scabs.

  She shook her head at him, squinting. “I do not ... We made it out of the mountain, sì? With ... with the painting?”

  “Yes, yes.” Battista sat back down, scraping the chair closer to the side of the bed, and tucked her back beneath the covers with a motherly gesture. “You fell as we climbed down, down the side of the mountain.” He pinched his eyes shut, as if to block out the memory. “But only partway. I carried you ... we, Frado and I, brought you here. Michelangelo’s physician has been caring for you. I knew he would. He wasn’t sure if you, well, if—”

  “We are in Florence?” Aurelia frowned, the fuzziness and weakness obfuscating any recollections, but she could not reconcile the view from the window with her knowledge of Battista’s city.

  Battista shook his head. “No. We are in Rome, at Michelangelo’s house.”

  Her lips fell flaccid in a gaping maw, her head jutting forward on her slim neck, a turkey about to trot. “Rome, Michelangelo’s house ... is he ... is he here?”

  With a low-throated chuckle, Battista nodded. “Sì, he has been here for the whole of your convalescence. He has been quite worried about you.”

  Aurelia flumped her head back upon the pillows with a flush of pure joy, mitigating, if only for a moment, the marks of injury and illness. “I am to meet Michelangelo, at last,” she muttered with the profundity of a prayer.

  “He will delight in your beauty,” Battista told her, then shrugged. “As he does mine. It is his way.”

  Battista’s words piqued her, and she lifted her head off the pillow with a raised brow. He smiled at her almost sheepishly, but said not a word in further explanation, and yet she understood. With the curve of his lips and the veiled salacious look, she grasped, then, all the unspoken intentions of the artist’s great works, of the troubled life she had heard he led. No talent so vast could overcome the misery of living a life in constant conflict with itself.

  “I thought I heard voices,” the slightly hoarse greeting hailed them from the doorway; in it stood the slight form of the man himself. “I am so relieved to see you awake, cara mia. Battista and I have worried much for you.”

  Aurelia’s chapped lips formed a soundless O. She knew this man, recognized at once the flat forehead, the thatches of dark chestnut hair shot with grays falling forward upon it, and the heavy-lidded, amber-colored eyes.

  “Signore Buonarroti,” she breathed with unbounded amazement. “I ... I know you.” Aurelia blinked wide eyed, at the same man she had shared those poignant moments with at the foot of the Giant, his Giant.

  The artist nodded, face showing no surprise and but a little dabble of amusement. “Sì, I recognize you as well. It is a strange world we live in, my dear, is it not?”

  “Most certainly.” If she possessed the strength, she would most surely have laughed. All this time, all her desire to meet this man, and it had already taken place. She may think herself wise, but knew, in that moment, she had much to learn.

  Michelangelo narrowed his eyes at her with a tilt of his head; she saw a puzzling thought cross the high-boned ridges of his face, but he gave it no voice. Stepping away from the door, he gave her a shallow bow.

  “I will have Agniola bring you some broth. And then you must sleep some more. I want you well so you may tell me of all your adventures.”

  “Grazie mille, Signore Buonarroti,” Aurelia called as he left them.

  He turned back with that ghost of a smile and shook a finger at her, one covered in paint and roughened skin. “No, per favore, I am Michelangelo, your most humble servant.” He bowed again and disappeared, a ghost vanishing with the coming of dawn.

  “He wishes to hear of our adventures?” Aurelia whispered. It was a question not of Michelangelo’s desire, but of his knowledge.

  Battista met her uncertainty straight on. “There are few men who walk this earth that I would trust as much as Michelangelo.”

  He knocked upon the threshold, tilting his head around the doorjamb before an answer came.

  “May I come in?”

  “Sì, Battista. I am ready.”

  Aurelia sat on the edge of the bed, the middle-aged Agniola hovering around her, tucking in a strand of hair, checking the laces upon Aurelia’s back, squinting at Aurelia’s just-plucked forehead for any stragglers.

  It was the first time she had been dressed in a fortnight, and though she looked stronger than he had seen her since her tumble down the mountainside, the plum silk gown he’d purchased hung on her thin frame. He had loved the fullness of her, and though there remained some hints of it in the fine curve of her hips and the roundness of her breasts, they were not as voluptuous as they had been when first she and Battista had met. He promised himself he would see them fleshy and vivacious once again; if he had to hand feed her for the next month, it would happen.

  “Bellissima.” He smiled at her, seeing the anxious question in her eyes.

  She dipped her head, now free of bandages but not scars, a lovely blush spreading across her cheeks. With her own strength, she rose and approached him. “Grazie, Battista. Shall we go?”

  Battista laughed, wrapped her good arm around his, and led her to the door and the top of the stairs. Though she had been up and around for a few days, she had not left the confines of her room, gaining her strength with short walks from one side of the chamber to the other. Tonight would be the first meal she would take at table, with Battista and Michelangelo as her companions. Excited energy radiated from her, a firefly peeping with light.

  As Battista led her down the stairs, taking one slow step at a time, hesitating between each, he gave her a friendly warning. “Michelangelo is the most amiable of companions, but you must not look overlong at his nose, nor speak of it.”

  Aurelia quailed. “His nose?”

  In the few instances she had seen and spoken to the artist, it had been impossible not to notice the crooked shape of his nose, but why Battista thought it imperative she not comment upon it puzzled her.

  “It is but a symbol of his vanity, and his broken heart,” Battista said with a whisper and a shrug. “Pietro Torrigiani did it to him, both in fact.”

  “Torrigiani, another sculptor, yes?” Aurelia felt certain she had read
of the man. “He studied in Florence, did he not?”

  Battista nodded, concentrating for a moment as he helped her across a small landing, turned them to the left, and onto the next section of stairs. “Yes, a fellow sculptor. Michelangelo met him at the age of fifteen, when they were both apprenticed to the great Bertoldo.”

  “What was it between them?” she urged Battista on his tale with an insistent whisper.

  “I believe Michelangelo loved him.” Battista flicked a shoulder. “Or perhaps it was just lust. Torrigiani is, or at least was, a beautiful man, tall and powerfully built, with the face of a god. Whatever they shared, for a time it was mutual, though Torrigiani was envious of Michelangelo’s talent.”

  Aurelia slowed, rapt fascination holding her feet upon the step.

  Battista held back with her and finished his tale. “Michelangelo outgrew Torrigiani, who used the slightest offense of words, one some say was no offense at all, to punch Michelangelo savagely in the face. He shattered Michelangelo’s nose, desecrating it beyond the repair of even the Medici’s physician, for it was in the sculpture garden of Lorenzo the Magnificent that they were both apprenticed.”

  “How awful!” Aurelia put a hand to her mouth.

  Battista nodded. “Unfortunately, our waiting friend always thought himself ugly, long before the accident.”

  “Physical beauty is but a curtain to anyone’s truth,” Aurelia protested with almost-fanatical vigor. “It has nothing to do with who we are.”

  “For the most part, I agree,” Battista replied, blinking at her vehemence. “But not for an artist, not for one who lives to create beauty upon the stone and the canvas.”

  “I suppose,” Aurelia mumbled as they continued. “But he must know his name will live on, not for the shape of his nose, but for the beauty he has created.”

  Battista smiled down at her, at this beauty of a woman who had so little value for her own loveliness. “Perhaps you should tell him, without actually mentioning his nose, of course.”

  Aurelia laughed softly. “Of course.”

  They reached the first floor of Michelangelo’s house, one given to him by his most powerful sponsor, Pope Clement, a modest house with a courtyard and another building at the back, set in the valley near the foot of Trajan’s column between the Quirinal and Capitoline hills. The aroma of roasting meat and baking sweets reached for them as they crossed through a small but well-furnished sitting room and into the dining room.

  Michelangelo jumped from his chair at their approach, pulling down his finely fitted tunic, a muted marigold matching his eyes, and smoothing his hair forward upon his brow with an unconscious gesture.

  Aurelia released Battista’s arm and rushed to the artist’s side, aches denied in her zeal, a greeting hand reaching out.

  Battista held back, watching joyfully as they delighted in each other’s company, two souls of such significance in his life.

  “Monna Aurelia, how splendid you look!”

  Of almost the same height, though Aurelia stood perhaps an inch or two taller, they looked perfectly paired for their dance of greeting as one bowed with a flourish and the other curtsied deep.

  “It is most splendid to see you,” Aurelia replied as her host led her to a chair, one set between two others at each end of the table, and helped her into it.

  “You are feeling very much better, sì? I can see it in the glow of your lovely face.”

  “Much better, grazie.” Aurelia turned to Battista, as if suddenly remembering his presence. “You have all taken such very good care of me. I can never thank you enough for your efforts and your hospitality.”

  Michelangelo waved a hand, dismissing her gratitude. “Think nothing of it, my dear. And now that you are up and about, I can truly play host. Agniola! Antonio! We are ready!”

  At his command, the door at the back of the room swung open and the housekeeper rushed out, hands braced on the handles of a large silver platter, a young man behind her, each hand carrying two more heaping salvers.

  “Monna Aurelia, this young fellow is Antonio Mini from Pon-tassieve. He once kept house for me, but now, with dear Agniola here, he assists me in my studio.”

  The lanky young man bobbed his dark-haired head as he placed the overflowing dishes on the table. “Piacere, signorina.”

  “Nice to meet you as well, Antonio.” Aurelia smiled. “You must feel honored to work with the great master.”

  “Oh sì, of course,” Antonio nudged Michelangelo as he passed him by on his way back to the kitchen, a mischievous grin to palliate his sarcasm. “Exhaustion is not so hard to take when levied by the hand of a master.”

  “Michelangelo is finishing work on the great Julius’s tomb,” Battista told Aurelia as Agniola served him first, the male guest, from the deep dish of cannelloni stuffed with chopped beef and mushrooms.

  “Finishing, yes.” Michelangelo laughed. “I have been finishing it for many years now. And many more will pass, no doubt, before the work will come to an end.”

  He smiled up at Antonio, thanking the young man for filling his goblet with thick and pungent garnet wine. “The Holy See has called me off the project, yet again, to work on his library.”

  A deep furrow formed between Battista’s brows. “You are not well pleased. I can understand.”

  “Whatever you create, you must know it will be a masterpiece, now and hundreds of years from now.” Aurelia leaned toward the artist, bruised face scowling with ardor, laying one hand gently upon his.

  Battista lowered his head and smiled; she did as promised, assured Michelangelo of his true legacy, and did it with grace and elegance.

  The blush rushed across the artist’s wizened face. “Grazie, donna mia. You are most kind.”

  “I mean no kindness by it,” Aurelia said with startling brusqueness. “I speak the truth. Do not doubt it.”

  Both men looked at her, both surprised and intrigued; what was in her to speak with such authority neither could say, but it was there and they both knew it. Battista caught Michelangelo’s gaze, saw the question in the dark amber eyes, and turned from it, unable to answer.

  “You liked my David, did you not, Aurelia?” Michelangelo asked her as Agniola filled her plate with pappardelle alla lepre, the aromatic hare sauce drenching the thick, wide noodles.

  Aurelia smiled, peering at him mischievously from under her lashes. “You know very well how beautiful I think him to be.” She laughed. “You really should have made yourself known.”

  “I feared it would have changed the way you looked upon him,” Michelangelo replied candidly.

  “Will you tell me about him?” Aurelia put her fork down, clearly having little appetite for anything save this man and his words.

  Michelangelo shrugged modestly, yet still the pride showed through upon his lined face. “I often wonder if I managed to convey all I wanted to say with him. I wanted him to be a real man, not some boy with a man’s face. It is the curse of so many sculptures. I wanted him to be fully realized, fully functional in a rational world. He is a man who triumphed over evil, one much larger than himself, but I wanted you to look at him and believe it, not as a miracle, but as truth.”

  Battista smiled at Aurelia as she flicked him a besotted gaze, one of wonder and gratitude.

  “I believed it the moment I saw him.” Aurelia turned again to the artist. “In fact I wondered, as I stood at his feet, just how you came to render him so realistically.”

  Michelangelo glanced at Battista with a jaunty, if barely perceptible, waggle of his bushy brows. “Shall I tell her my secret?”

  “I think you must,” Battista said, smiling into his cup.

  Michelangelo leaned toward her, one conspirator to another. “I dissected them, bodies I mean.”

  Aurelia’s face shifted with emotions, crumpled confusion opened to startling awareness. “You did not?”

  “I most certainly did, donna mia,” Michelangelo preened. “I would creep down to the hospital morgue in the wee hours of
the night. The Prior Bichiellini believed in me, you see. His belief allowed him to turn his eyes.” Michelangelo almost smiled. “I almost died of exhaustion, working night after night, after long days at the studio. But there, beneath my knife, the spirits of the bodies told me their secrets.”

  Aurelia sat back with astonished surrender. “It explains much of your Giant. Though”—she cupped her chin in her hand and tapped her lips with thought, regarding the artist narrowly—“I see some of you in him, the forehead and the brow, the scornful manner of your lips.”

  It was Michelangelo’s turn to sit back in his chair, for a fleeting moment held captive, his secrets exposed. “You are frighteningly perceptive, Aurelia. I did indeed pour all of my disdain and melancholy into him as I worked. But the Giant’s proud nobility, his almost-barbarous vulgarity, that is the David’s alone. And I did make a few mistakes with him.”

  Aurelia shook her head. “I do not believe it.”

  “No, ’tis true. His great face is set in a small head and his thin arms are at odds with his enormous hands and heavy fingers.”

  “It only makes him more human, for are not all humans unique and flawed?”

  Michelangelo accepted her grace and looked to Battista, a light in his eyes Battista had not seen in a long while.

  “You have brought me a great gift, amico karissimo,” Michelangelo said humbly.

  Battista raised his goblet in reply. “To you, my friend, may you return to your chisel very soon.”

  “I will drink to that.” Michelangelo tossed back a gulp. “True painting never will make anyone shed a tear. Good painting is religious and devout in itself. Among the wise nothing more elevates the soul or raises it to adoration than the difficulty of attaining the perfection—with sculpture—which approaches God and unites itself to Him.”

  “B-b-ut ... b-b-ut ... ,” Aurelia stammered, stunned by his critical assessment. “The Sistine Chapel ... oh!”

  Her bottom lip sagged; her hands slapped the table.

  The men eyed her, waiting.

  She gaped at one, then the other, then back to Battista again. “May we see it? While we are here? Per favore? ”