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He leans back to glance at the portrait, but his hands do not leave her face, and now his finger traces her upper lip “I aht,” he says, “but I fear that I have not given enough ripeness to your botto slightly; the finger catches and tugs on the lip She is quaking now, and her breath is fast and ragged He takes the lip between his thuasps, then whie, “I know I did not get that wrong But these wisps of hair on your neck, I could not see theloom” Both his hands now float across the loose tendrils of hair; he does not touch the skin of her neck, only the down, and it feels to her as if a spring breeze is caressing her His hand returns to herthe front of her lips, then grazing her teeth, then easing between their edges “If only the Mass had made you smile,” he whispers, “I could have shown your teeth” He presses the edge of his hand against the in the roan Her face is flushed, her breath is ragged, and her pupils dilated ale of her irises He slides his other hand down her arain and tell me now: Is this a woman of stone, or of flesh and blood and fire?” She stares at the ie she sees there; her breath catches, her knees buckle, and she sags against him He lifts her with his paint-stained hands and sinewed arms, carries her to the table, and with exquisite tenderness begins to undress her
Hebare chested as she cleans herself with a damp cloth he has handed her Near the corner of her mouth, he adds the mole, and on the bodice of her dress, between her breasts, he adds a sue of flame As he finishes the flame, she buttons her dress, smooths the silk, and repins her hair She inspects herself onceherself with the portrait This tilass back into the hidden pocket They do not speak She takes the paintbrush froe of the easel, then places his hand on her breastbone, exactly where he has portrayed the flaainst her, she kisses him on the mouth, and then on each cheek, and then she slips out the door and into the street that will carry her from him
The final, fading notes of the Car with the dissipating scent of her perfume and their musk He wanders to the table, picks up the cloth she has used, and presses it to his face, inhaling their scent It is the scent, he thinks, of forbidden fruit The fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil
The next day he bundles up the portrait and sends it to Petrarch He puts no note in the package; nothing but the picture Besides breaking faith with Giovanna, Simone has broken faith with the man who is both his client and his friend He knows this, and he suspects there will be a price to be paid, a penance to be done But it must be a private penance, he resolves, one that he must impose on his of those he has wronged Inextricably bound to his ht fire beneath his touch, Siuilt
Teeks later, a courier brings hie from Petrarch It contains twenty-five florins — the balance of the fee for the portrait — and a poem Petrarch has actually done it: taken Si the portrait Si lines, which declare that if all the best painters competed for a thousand years, they could capture only a fraction of Laura’s matchless beauty The next lines proclairacious lady comes from; there he saw her, and portrayed her on paper, to prove down here — where souls are veiled in bodies — that such a lovely face exists”
Martini reads it a second time, and then a third “Where souls are veiled in bodies,” he says aloud, shaking his head and adding, “foolish , stained hands that gripped her ardent flesh
A few days after receiving Petrarch’s poem and money, Simone receives a new commission, for a project he hopes will distract hiuilt: frescoes in the papal palace — in the pope’s own bedrooels, the massive stone fortification that Pope Benedict’s ar the past year Just fourteen o they notched the massive foundation blocks into bedrock; now, thethe toith crenellated battlements Curious, Martini thinks Siena’s cathedral, dedicated to God, took fifty years to complete, but this immense structure dedicated to the pope — papal palace, fortress, and strongbox — has sprung up overnight
Siuard at the tower’s entry portal The guard inspects hi or distasteful in some way — perhaps it’s the odor of turpentine, or perhaps it’s the scent of foreigner that the French guard detects Nevertheless, the guard waves hi to the back of the room “Go see Monsieur Poisson Architect and master of the works” Poisson is hunched over a s, invoices, receipts, and notes He looks up, weary and bleary, as Simone bows and announces himself in French “Simone Martini, painter of Siena, at your service”
“Martini? Ah, yes, Martini — you’re here to help the French painters in the pope’s chamber”
Sis “I prefer to think that the French painters are helping me,” he jokes, but Poisson doesn’t notice
He leads Martini up two stories via a spiral staircase built into one corner of the tower The pope’s chamber, the fourth floor of the square tower, h: room for buckets and buckets of paint Martini counts two dozen workers — a third of them masons and plasterers, a third of them painters, and a third of them spectators or bosses, he can’t tell which Scaffolds scale every wall, fro At floor level, painters weave in and out of the legs of the scaffolds, covering a blue background with loops and swirls of golden vines, their branches populated by legions of birds A level higher, a troop of plasterers has just finished applying a fresh coat of ser to apply the blue background paint They round but also the vines and birds, before the dahest platforh plaster to the top courses of bare stone It is this level, the last five feet of wall below the ceiling, that Martini has been hired to paint — this, plus the deep recesses where s have been notched into the massive walls
Si disappointest, lowest portion — has been given over to the French painters, and clearly it’s being wasted on theold on blue Child’s play! Simone could paint vines and birds left-handed — with his eyes closed!
He cla — his level — and surveys the bustling room from there He has not yet settled on the the farwith depth, detail, and dra that willus the painter who has done these, that we may reward him and exalt him above all other artists!”
His reverie is interrupted by a shout froent of French painters, Jean d’Albon, is waving to catch his eye “We need to s? Twenty eggs?” Si yolk to lue the paint to the plaster; indeed, the pots are nearly e him this
order? — but, in fact, all the French painters appear to be busy, and d’Albon puts his hands together in prayer posture, bows slightly, and adds, “Soon, when you are hurrying to finish your s to you” Si — d’Albon will almost certainly never play the errand boy; he has apprentices for that — but the good-hues that Simone is d’Albon’s equal, and the other painters cannot fail to have noticed the gesture
Si, “And where will I find these twenty eggs, laid by twenty pious hens to glorify God, His Holiness Pope Benedict, and French fresco painters?”
D’Albon laughs and er in a doard spiral “All the way down, at the bottom of the tohere it’s nice and cool Soon it will becoold, silver, and jewels But for now, it’s the egg cellar Eggs and plaster and rags”
Sih the doorway into the spiral staircase and starts down, but then — on impulse — he stops and looks overhead The stairs continue upward, apparently to the roof, and Sis He jogs up the first spiral, walks briskly up the second, and lu by the time he steps onto the rooftop
The view fro To the west, the arches of Saint Bénézet’s Bridge cascade across the Rhône to Villeneuve At their far end is another square tower, this one built by the king of France to collect bridge tolls…and to renon who holds the real reins of power in this part of God’s world Froetting a scolding for his clumsy plasterwork, and Simone turns from the view and scurries for the cellar
Spiraling down turn after turn, he feels his head begin to spin, and he stops near the bottom and leans on the wall to steady himself It’s cool and dark down here — there are no s in the tower’s lower levels, only narrow slits that provide stingy hints of light and air In the cha sound, punctuated by grunts of exertion Curious now, he descends the final few stairs and peeks into the cha cellar that will soon bri la a heavy chest into a deep niche in the wall, then wedging a flat stone over the opening and slatheringtechnique appears oddly aard, and his work looks shoddy Si the stone in place; when he stands, Siarth white robe A Cistercian monk’s robe The kind of robe favored, as everyone knows, by Pope Benedict himself: the White Cardinal who has become the White Pope
Suddenly Si in the stairwell spying on so back up the stairs one level, Simone ducks into a dark, vacant roo place, he sees the white-robed figure pass by like so have faded, Sis and hurry upstairs with the out of tempera any minute now, if they haven’t already — but his curiosity triu to the far wall, he squats beside the mortar bucket and studies the crude handiwork, as if close inspection of the wall’s surface ht reveal what’s hidden inside Hidden by the pope himself! But why? Why hide a treasure chest inside the wall, when the entire roo, is meant to be heaped with riches? In any case, why not order a real mason to do the work?
Astonished by his own sudden boldness, Simone picks up the trowel and uses the tip to scrape out the line ofthe flat stone in position Then he pries the panel free, leans it against the wall, and tugs the chest from its niche The chest, a stone box, is wired shut, and the wires are criether with lead seals — the seals of Benedict XII! — to protect the contents Rubies and emeralds? Gold florins? Perhaps even the Holy Grail?