The Passion of Artemisia (32 page)

26
Paola

T
he coach delivered me to the central livery station in Rome. Only two weeks, and I was already missing Palmira fiercely. Until her wedding, there had not been a day in all her life that we'd been apart. I stored my trunk and carpetbag at the station, and from there, I walked to Santa Trinità.

Paola answered the bell. Her face turned white. She didn't step back so I could enter.

“What's wrong?”

“I have something to tell you.”

“About Graziela?”

She nodded and looked to the right and left. “There's nowhere we can go,” she fretted. Apparently she wanted a place where Graziela wouldn't discover us.

“To the church?”

“No. Over here, I guess.” She pointed to the cloister and we sat on the L-shaped bench. She inhaled deeply, as if gathering energy or fortitude.

“Just tell me.”

“She died.”

I was stunned. I couldn't comprehend it. Nothing prepared me for this.

“When?”

She waved her hand backward over her shoulder.

“How?”

Paola's whole face puckered. “She went outside.”

“And that killed her?”

“Out of the convent. More than once.”

“How often?”

“Many times. Usually between matins and lauds. To see Rome.”

My part in this crept into my consciousness like a snake.
Come, taste the forbidden pleasure. Disobey your holy order.

“But how did that kill her?”

“The pestilence.”

“I can't believe it. The plague? Didn't she know?”

“She knew. But her need outweighed her fear. Once she went out the first time, she couldn't stop. She saw things that made her happy.” Fear that I wouldn't understand flooded Paola's eyes. “She was always better for a while afterward.”

I felt dizzy, and braced myself with my hands on the bench. I tried to comprehend the magnitude of her yearning, and the effects of my feeding that passion.

“Why didn't you write me?”

“My shame, Artemisia. I couldn't.”

“How did she get out?”

Paola fingered her rosary. “I heard her weeping at night. Such gasping, choking sobs. She tried to muffle them. I couldn't bear to hear her.” Her voice took on a tinge of defensiveness. “She was my dearest friend for twenty years. The purest spirit I ever knew. How could I deny her?”

“So you let her out?”

Her head tipped forward. “I prayed every minute she was gone.”

“And stayed awake to let her in again?”

A cry burst from Paola's pale lips. “I did penance the very next day, and haven't missed a day since.”

“The plague—and you didn't get it from her.”

“Not by my own will or wishes. I would rather it had been me,” she cried.

“I didn't mean that as a recrimination,” I said softly, put my arm around her, and let her weep against my bosom. “Just the strangeness of it.”

“Our Father has seen fit to chastise me with sleeplessness, and a festering conscience.”

A weight bore down on my chest. “You are not the only one responsible.”

“She saw Michelangelo's
Pietà,
” Paola said with a hint of her usual brightness, lifting her head. “And Bernini's new altar canopy in Saint Peter's. Imagine, as tall as an eight-story building. And your father's ceiling.”

“Bless her, that she wanted to see that too, for my sake. Then she had to go in the daytime.”

“Between tierce and sext.”

“Was she punished?”

“For a long time no one knew, as long as she went at night, but when she went in the daytime she was caught. The punishment of confinement and silence only allowed her the privacy to think over every detail of what she saw. She was always calm afterward.”

“That's good. At least we have that.”

“The last time, she stayed out all night and walked all the way out the Via Appia. It was a full moon. She thought she found the spot where Peter saw Christ. She said her feet felt the warmth of his love. On the way back she saw a dying man under the Arch of Constantine and crouched next to
him to say the Lord's Prayer in his ear and touch him with the sign of the cross.” Paola's voice rose high and thin as a thread. “I think that's what killed her. Her own charity.”

All the air leaked out of me and I felt crumpled in on myself, like a dress in a hump on the floor without me in it.

“Did she suffer horribly?”

“Just three days.”

“Wasn't she treated by a doctor?”

“For the first two days I kept the buboes covered so Mother Abbess wouldn't see.”

“And then?”

“I had to tell her. Mother Abbess feared any doctor coming into the convent would bring the plague with him. Besides, if a doctor knew, he'd have to report it. They would have quarantined us, and might even have boarded us in.” She spoke more quickly and softly. “If Graziela were the only one to die in the convent, we could call it a natural death by divine will and bury her here and not have to give her up to the House of Plague—or the trench.” Her voice cracked on the last word, and she squeezed her eyes shut.

“No priest gave her last rites?”

“The Mother Abbess did. We buried her between matins and lauds. Within the hour. On her straw mattress. By lantern light. Ourselves. I didn't let anyone else touch her.”

“So she's here? In the cloister?”

“No. In the herb garden. Unmarked, in case inspectors come.”

“Show me where.”

Silently we walked under the arcade, through the ground floor corridor to the enclosed herb garden in back. Paola's hands covered her mouth and pressed palm to palm. “Forgive us, Artemisia. She's under the oregano.”

I knelt down and smelled its earthy, spicy scent, an aroma I knew I would never smell again without grief. I stroked
several of the spade-shaped leaves with my thumb, picked off a sprig, and tucked it into my bodice lacing. My tears bounced on the leaves.

“See? I planted a row of rue all around her.” Paola knelt down next to me. “I'll never forgive myself, even if Our Gracious Lord does.” Her voice was a mere squeak. “Never.”

“You acted from compassion. Remember that. And she always advocated forgiveness. Graziela told me once not to pray as a penitent. I think she meant not to pray in abject self-hatred. Don't punish yourself with this, Paola. She wouldn't want that. She did what she wanted, knowingly.”

Paola nodded, her round face pinched. “She would have touched the leper's hand just the same as the Virgin's.”

“Remember what you taught me when I was young? ‘Charity suffereth long' . . . ?”

“ ‘And is kind . . . Charity beareth all things.' ”

“It just takes a lifetime to learn how.”

The world seemed to stop, and we were quiet for a long time.

“Maybe she did touch the Virgin—in marble. Michelangelo's
Pietà.
You should have heard her describe it.” Paola smiled sadly at the memory. Then words poured out in a flood. “ ‘A Heaven ordained sculpture, the Passion of Christ. The deep, sad, helpless love in Mary's face looking down at him on her lap. His smooth, unperturbed cheekbone bearing all selflessly. The stiffness of his marble arms so freshly taken from the cross. Her tender, strong fingers supporting his riven side. The sweet, small folds of cloth at her neckline.' Graziela was so full of rapture describing it, she could have been lifted to Heaven right then.”

Paola's thinking made me smile. A certainty settled over me. “That's what great art is supposed to do—help us to live in the spirit and die at peace.”

After a long pause, Paola murmured, “Thank you for saying that.”

“What about the letters I wrote to her since?”

“I read them to her. Right here, just before I go in to vespers. Beautiful letters. I read them more than once. I've saved them all.”

“Then I'll keep writing.” We stood up and stepped out of the garden. “I'm going to England. I'm on my way now. To see my father.”

“You have forgiven him?”

I lifted my shoulders. “How can I be sure?”

“By going. You'll know when you see him.”

“I hope I won't disappoint you.”

“You won't if you remember the rest of what Paul the Apostle said. Charity is not easily provoked. It comes naturally with the putting away of childish things so we can see face to face.”

I nodded, still doubtful that I could achieve that.

She tipped her head toward the herb garden. “Tell her,
cara.
”

“I'll leave that to you.”

We took a few steps back toward the building and she stopped. “One thing Graziela wanted you to know. She prayed for Signor Galilei.”

“I knew she would.”

“He was kept just there,” she pointed over the wall, “in Villa Medici, except when he was in a cell in the Holy Office of the Inquisition. And later he was at the Convent of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva.” She lowered her voice. “Don't worry, Artemisia. I have taken over praying for him.”

“Thank you.”

Putting one foot in front of the other was never so hard as now, walking out through the cloister, seeing again every crack that Graziela knew like the veins in the back of her
hand. Slowly, to the door, and the dark key in Paola's hand, the instrument that let Graziela love the world, and leave it.

“One more thing,” Paola said at the door. “When she died, she passed silently into the Lord's arms. With ease, at the last. I do believe at that moment she saw the city of God and she thought it beautiful. Full of domes and spires and loggias with marble angels.”

“How do you know?”

Paola's chin quivered. “There was a tiny, lovely gasp, hardly a breath. Her eyes opened brightly, and then she was gone.”

27
Orazio

F
or the second evening I lay down with strangers on a single-deck packet boat at anchor off Calais waiting for fog to lift so we could cross the British Sea. A faint flicker of light from a refuge tower brooding over the ashy gloom made me conscious of the frailty of human craft. There was no certainty in this world. Shrouded forms emerged and then retreated, playing wicked tricks. Across the deck, was that a stanchion or a crouching nun? A mast and spar or a crucifix? Was this vagueness the way Graziela remembered Rome before she took her nocturnal walks? Did one dear thing after another become hazy until the oppression of blank, foggy sameness grew too much for her? The creak and wallow of the vessel and the clanking of wooden blocks against the rigging were the most melancholy sounds I'd ever heard.

I wrapped my cloak around me, but still I shivered in the dampness. A man emerged from the fog and came toward me. With words I couldn't understand, he draped his blanket over me. Or was it only the trick of the fog? The feel of the
wool against my palms and its weight on my shoulders were real enough. Were we enacting a parable from the Bible urging me toward Christly charity in a time to come?

The third day was clear enough to make the crossing, but night descended so early it seemed only half a day. How could Father paint here at all after midday meal? Despite my fear of the passion that might boil up in me when I saw him, I felt pulled across the water by an invisible bloodline, a vein strong enough to tow the boat.

The next morning I boarded a river craft to sail up a broad, muddy estuary. The land lay flat and uninteresting, the trees leafless, the air thick, heavy, and cold. This, the great Thames River of a proud nation with a glorious history, was foul-smelling and sluggish in brown and gray. The croaking of monstrous ravens did nothing to welcome me. Raw wind cut through the threads of my cloak. The craft beat up the river against all impulses of the land to repel it. Now that I had come this close, I faced a wind, a river, a nation that did not want me to enter.

Ships and barges moved slowly past brick warehouses and shipbuilding yards. Farther inland, sheep grazed in meadows surrounding country estates. Where was the famed city that ruled the seas? Only a single man-of-war was anchored opposite a tall, brown, heavily turreted palace on the south bank, dark and forbidding, more like a fortress than a residence.

“Greenwich, madam,” the steward said.

Was Father in there? Maybe I was too late.

“Is that the Queen's House?” I asked in the only language I knew.

The steward stared at me, not comprehending. I showed him the outside of Father's letter where he'd written in English, “The Queen's House, Greenwich.” Wind threatened to snap it out of my hand.

He pointed beyond the dark, turreted palace to a small white building upon a rise, the only white building visible. While my trunk was being unloaded onto a dock, it started to rain. The steward carried my carpetbag weighted with jars of olive oil, artichokes, olives, and a bottle of wine. I followed him down the gangplank and he showed the letter to a hackney driver, spilling out words I couldn't understand.

A short carriage ride on a glistening cobbled street took me past the brown stone palace, up the rise to the white building. I leaned out the carriage window, and showed a guard the letter. He nodded and pointed to the white building behind him. “Orazio Gentileschi?
Pittore italiano?
” I asked. He shook his head and directed the driver back to the brown palace near the river.

By now, torches were being lit at the palace gatehouse. What would I do if they wouldn't let me in here either? I leaned out the window again. “Orazio Gentileschi?
Pittore italiano?
” This time a guard repeated the name to a porter who went inside.

Somewhere in that wet stone building Father breathed and painted, but he could not see through walls. I could tell the driver to turn around. No one would know. I could go home, back to warmth and people I knew. To Genoa. To apologize to Cesare and Bianca. To take Renata to Florence, to the academy. Look Signor Bandinelli straight in the eye and say, “Pay attention. Train her. Nurture her. She will do great things.” I could give her Michelangelo's brush.

But that was not what one did. Instead, one muddled through, fretting about what to eat each day, trying not to think of one's last brushstroke. What color would it be? What brush? What effect?

The porter returned and allowed me to enter and the trunk to be set down in the gatehouse. I picked up my carpetbag and, with a stride that belied my uncertainty, I went
inside. A woman led me upstairs, chattering words I didn't understand, harsh sounds echoing against the bare stone walls of the staircase. Her expression seemed a reprimand for not coming earlier. We passed through room after room until she finally opened a door and he was there.

Orazio Gentileschi, with his shapeless coat draped over his shoulders, coughing and holding his chest. Something between a grunt and a whimper escaped when he saw me. He took a few steps toward me, then stopped.

“You did ask that I come,” I said, my pulse beating in my throat.

“I had given up thinking that you would.”

“I couldn't come earlier. Palmira wanted to get married. It took me a long time to earn a dowry.”

“You should have asked.”

Our sentences came between awkward pauses. We stood apart from each other. I was still holding my carpetbag. He gestured for me to set it down.

“She married a nobleman. For love. They chose each other. She'll never lift a brush. She hates painting.”

He looked hurt. “She was a beautiful bride, I imagine.”

“Yes, but beauty isn't everything. It's better to have a hunger and appreciation for beauty than to be merely beautiful. In the end, life is richer that way. She may learn that.”

He puffed air out his nostrils. “So, the years have made you wise.”

“They've made me realistic, and content. I'm glad she's happy.”

“And Palmira's father? Was he at the wedding?”

“No.”

“Pity. It would seem an opportune time for a reconciliation.” Judgment shone in his eyes. “Did you try?”

What business is it of yours, I wanted to say. “It's not as simple as you think.”

“He didn't help with the dowry?”

“I didn't ask him to.”

We looked at each other warily, as if we both recognized that any misstep might unleash fire.

“Can't I sit down? I'm exhausted.”

He emptied a chair of paint rags and dragged it toward the fireplace. Not a word of thanks for my coming.

“The palace is so empty. Furniture and tapestries, but no people. Just a few servants and caretakers. You live here all the time so . . . alone?”

He closed his eyes, screwed up his face, lifted his chin.

“What's the matter? Are you in pain?”

“Just hearing Italian again.” He blew his nose on a rumpled handkerchief.

“You said that fellow with the strange name speaks Italian.”

“Inigo Jones.
Uomo vanissimo,
” he said scornfully. “The expert of all arts. He is everything and everywhere. Clever, with a good sense of design, but mightily full of himself. Flaunts his position as a favorite of the king. So does a Flemish painter. Van Dyck. An ill-mannered and jealous boor lapping up the king's luxury.”

He stirred the fire roughly, and placed more wood on it.

“So there are people here?”

“The king and queen hold court here in the palace twice a year, for hunting. The queen comes more often to follow the progress of the decoration of her own house.”

“That white building?”

“Yes.”

“What's her name?”

“Henrietta Maria. Her mother was Marie de' Medici.”

“You can speak French to her?”

“Five years in that court ought to have taught me something.”

“And English?”

“Some. Badly.”

Now what? What to say next? I couldn't tell him about Graziela. No stories of dying. Not with how thin he was.

“I brought you olives and artichokes.” I dug into my carpetbag for the jars, happy to have something for him that he'd like. “I saved them for you from Palmira's wedding supper.” He pried open the wax seal on the olives with a palette knife and ate one, then two more.

“Do you have any bread?” I asked.

“Yes. Awful stuff.”

I brought out the wine and olive oil. He drew over a chair for himself, and watched my every move, curious, it seemed, about what was in my carpetbag. He poured the wine and we huddled by the fire and ate artichokes on the moistened bread. He closed his eyes when he chewed, to concentrate on the taste.

“Too many years I have lived here. And in France. Too many.”

“Yes. I know.” I felt the warming path of the wine in my body while the fire thawed me from the outside. I held my hands up to the flames and let out a slow, deep breath to try to relax from days of cold.

“And for what? For hard-hearted courtiers swarming here twice a year?” he continued. “Men of duplicity who eat the king's meat and then plot against him? They wear quilted doublets here, but not for warmth in this frozen land. They're to ward off poignards.” He made a gesture with his bread in his hand, and an artichoke fell off. He picked it up and ate it. “For a scheming, supercilious queen?”

I didn't expect such bitterness. “For all time, Father.”

“No, Artemisia. Most of the world's people will eat their bread while watching whippings, hangings, burnings, spectacles of any kind”—he drummed his fingers on the wooden arm of the chair at every word—“and not care a whit that
there are painters in the world quietly working, for all time.”

“But you wrote that the court was friendly to you, and would be to me.”

“To get you to come.”

“You mean you lied to me?” I felt my back become rigid.

With a disdainful wave of his hand he disregarded my question. Was this another betrayal? Would there be no work for me here? If I reacted, we'd surely get off to a bad start.

“They tolerate me because I can bring them a little visual drama instead of their stiff, boring portraits.” He took a draught of wine, stretching out his neck to savor it. “Artemisia, there's none of
la dolce vita
here.” He balled up his fist and brought it to his heart. “No conscious, appreciative enjoyment of fine things. Their gentility is self-serving and manipulative. They don't care about art. They care about hunting and horses and ships.”

“But we care. Every painting gives us joy.”

He looked up from his wine as if the thought startled him. “You're doing . . . well?”

“It varies. I have a clerk now who acts as my agent. He sold my first
Judith
.”

“Finally someone smart enough to recognize your genius. Who bought it?”

“Prince Gennaro of San Martino.”

“Lucky for him that fools before him passed it up.”

“I still have to explain again and again that I charge the Roman way, a set price. They think I operate the Neapolitan way, asking thirty scudi and then settling on four.” It was an odd thing to say, but I was tense. We didn't trust each other. And I didn't trust myself.

“I've been working for a patrician from Sicily, Don Antonio Ruffo, and for the Count of Monterrey. But only portraits for him. Nobody wants
invenzione
. All they want is
ideal femininity. I haven't done any heroic women since I came to Naples. Time bled the torture out of me.”

His eyes flashed resentment that I'd said that word, that I'd reminded him so soon after arriving. I only meant . . . I didn't know what I meant. I just said it.

“Still angry?” His voice turned icy.

“No. I've stopped painting violent Judiths. I guess that shows I'm not angry, except when mean-spirited people in Rome brought it up in front of Palmira when she was younger. But that was only feeble, short-lived anger at them, not at you or him.”