Free A Name in Blood by Matt Rees Page A

as she waited for Caravaggio’s eye. She jerked her neck, signalling to him to join her in the palace.
    Prospero disputed the legality of the Farnese victory with the man in green, refusing to make good his wager. Caravaggio laid his hand on the winning better’s face and lightly shoved at
his eyes with his fingertips. So soon after witnessing a blinding, the man forgot his bet. In a panic, he dropped onto his backside, groping for a way to rise amid the press of the crowd. Prospero
punched Caravaggio’s arm and made his escape.

    A groom led Caravaggio across the courtyard of the Colonna Palace and into the summer apartments. The ground-floor rooms faced the mandarin grove in the secret garden. A
fountain shot pale blue splashes of moonlight through the fruit trees.
    Costanza entered the chamber. To Caravaggio, it was as though a familiar portrait had come to life. She stepped out of his memories. Her hair remained so black that it took her skin beyond white
into a realm of pallor that Caravaggio thought he might not be able to mix on his palette. Perhaps if he ground up pearls and dove’s feathers, he could match it, though that seemed more
appropriate to a sorcerer than a painter. The texture of her skin was the work of a magician too, barely lined. When she came towards him across the terracotta floor, her eyes were a purple brown
in the light of the double-branched candelabra.
    ‘Michele.’ She reached her hands towards him. They were scented with jasmine and he lingered over them as he kissed them. He had grown accustomed to women whose fingers savoured of
filth and toil.
    ‘My lady, I’m delighted to see you back in Rome. It’s been a long while.’
    ‘My visit was not planned.’ Her voice was uneasy. ‘Since my last time here, I see that you’re no longer Signor Merisi. They have started to call you after your home
town.’
    ‘I’m known as Caravaggio now, it’s true. Though that title really belongs to you.’
    ‘It does me honour, as Marchesa of Caravaggio, that your art should place the name of my town on the lips of everyone in Rome.’
    You mightn’t think so, if you heard what they said about me , he thought. ‘Your estates prosper?’
    ‘They do. And your sister Caterina has another child, a girl. Named Lucia, after your mother, God rest her soul.’
    ‘You were more of a mother to me.’
    She cleared her throat, like someone trying to cover another’s faux pas. Her breath shivered and the flames on the candelabra stuttered, as if her indecision sucked the oxygen from the
room. ‘When you were a child, you were like my child. Now you’re a man, I love you still.’
    He squeezed her hand and rubbed the pad of his thumb on her knuckle. ‘I think of your generosity whenever Rome gets – oh, I don’t know – too wild.’
    She lowered her eyes. ‘I need your help.’ The candles glimmered on the gauze that covered her breast.
    ‘At your command, my lady.’
    ‘Fabrizio’s in trouble, Michele.’
    Caravaggio’s tension seemed to reach into his throat and cut off his air. He croaked out his words, ‘Is he in Rome?’
    ‘He is.’
    ‘What happened?’
    ‘A fight.’
    ‘Don’t you have people to take care of these things? A purse for the injured man. A bribe for the arresting officer.’ Even as he spoke, he understood. This is too serious
for the usual remedies. There’s a great danger here. But for whom?
    ‘It’s a Farnese,’ she whispered.
    Fabrizio, what have you done? He made a quick calculation of his connections, of men who might help Costanza’s son. Her urgency communicated itself to him; he felt it pulse in his
neck.
    The two wrestlers in the piazza had represented the battle between these great families, each with their monumental palaces on either side of Rome and their armies of retainers ready to take up
cudgels and daggers and to shed their blood. He thought of Fabrizio and some hot-headed young Farnese duke. The same violence, but with nobler