Light in the Shadows Read online

  ALSO BY LINDA LAFFERTY

  The Bloodletter’s Daughter

  The Drowning Guard

  House of Bathory

  The Shepherdess of Siena

  The Girl Who Fought Napoleon

  ALSO BY ANDY STONE

  Aspen Drift

  Song of the Kingdom

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2019 by Linda Lafferty and Andy Stone

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781542044080 (hardcover)

  ISBN-10: 1542044081 (hardcover)

  ISBN-13: 9781542044097 (paperback)

  ISBN-10: 154204409X (paperback)

  Cover design by David Drummond

  First edition

  Dedicated with love and respect to Stella Goldstein Daniels and Dorothy Ann Lafferty Lee, two wonderful, strong, elegant women who have been inspirations to both of us and our entire families

  Contents

  Authors’ Note

  COMUNE DI PRIZZI, SICILY 2015

  VILLAGE OF CARAVAGGIO, LOMBARDIA, 1577

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Epilogue

  Historical Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Authors

  Authors’ Note

  This is a work of fiction. While it is based on historical events, liberties have been taken for creative license.

  COMUNE DI PRIZZI, SICILY

  2015

  Weathered trees stand guard over the cemetery, their backs to the wind, their branches’ sharp elbows raised against the harsh Sicilian sky. High on a hillside scorched in the summer, windblown in the winter, no one lies easy in these graves, but the living trudge up the steep path from the village below to bear witness to the perseverance of the honored dead. Almost every day of the year—saints’ days, birthdays, anniversaries—summons men, women, families who know their presence is expected.

  Today is a rare gentle moment for the quick and the dead. The heat of summer has faded and the first sharp edge of winter is yet to come.

  Two men stand by the wrought iron fence of a family plot, watching while others tend the graves. One man lights a cigarette. He’s wearing a suit, no tie, open collar, snap-brim fedora, black-and-white shoes. His suit jacket blows open for a moment in the breeze.

  “She’s here.”

  “Here?” The other man, older, keeps his jacket and collar buttoned.

  “Up north. Chianti.” An inquisitive shrug. “So? What do we . . .” His voice trails off.

  “Watch her.” The older man raises a finger to the side of his eye. “Only that.”

  A silence.

  “But why should we—”

  The older man cuts him off with a gesture, lifting his chin sharply. It is enough. “She is family. There is history. This much we owe her.”

  “Only to watch?”

  The older man narrows his eyes, impatient at having to explain. “Watch and make sure nothing goes . . .” His hands, held in front of his chest, rise slightly, juggling possibilities.

  “All right. I can go—”

  The older man turns his head sharply to look at the other for perhaps the first time in this conversation. He flicks his fingers in impatient annoyance.

  “Not you. Someone who can be . . . unseen. Why do I have to tell you this?”

  Another silence. Finally, the younger man nods, finds the courage to speak.

  “A friend might know someone. Family. I’ll take care of it.”

  The day is ending. The wind picks up. The men trimming the hedges and the women cleaning the gravestones and tending the flowers hurry to finish.

  The men in suits nod to the graves, cross themselves, and walk back down the hill.

  VILLAGE OF CARAVAGGIO, LOMBARDIA,

  1577

  A dark-haired boy sat on an overturned bucket, staring at the two dead men.

  His grandfather had died during the night, his mouth open, gasping, choking on his hideously swollen tongue. Now the tongue had retreated back into his maw, hiding behind his brown, broken teeth like an eel.

  The boy’s father had lingered a bit longer, but his death had been just as painful.

  In the dim light of the terra-cotta oil lamp, a flea skipped across his father’s hairline and then disappeared into the folds of his wrinkled tunic, stained brown with sweat.

  The two men had traveled back the forty kilometers from Milano just days before and had carried the plague with them to the hamlet of Caravaggio. Now they lay side by side in death.

  The boy could not cry. He sat stunned, playing the scene of the dying men over in his young mind. He shut his eyes but still saw the mottled colors of their skin, their mouths twisted in agony, the silver translucence of their tears and sweat.

  He saw dark browns and red, the palette of the night.

  Michelangelo barely opened his eyes, his sight only a slit through his thick eyelashes. He studied the sunken lines of his father’s face, his lifeless hand. Every minute detail of his father’s corpse was branded in his memory with searing permanence.

  His father had a raucous laugh and a swagger. He would throw his son in the air, making him laugh. He did the same with young Fabrizio, the marchese’s son, only a few years older than Michelangelo.

  Fermo Merisi. Bigger than life, a commoner who had charmed nobility.

  Michelangelo opened his eyes once more to look at his father, at the hands and arms that had launched young Michele so gleefully in the air. They were as still as stone. And blackened—especially the fingertips. The forearms were puckered with purple welts.

  The boy stuck his fist in his mouth, sinking his teeth into his fi
rst knuckle. Still, he did not cry, but stared hard at the dead men.

  “You are the man of the family now,” his mother had told him, grasping his shoulders minutes before. The raw crimson of her eyes had shocked him. They were the color of bloody meat.

  The holy water that his mother had fetched from the town’s spring, the fount where the apparition of Mary had appeared a hundred years ago, proved useless even after the priest’s blessing. His mother laid her cheek against his father’s chest after the death rattle. Then she fled sobbing to the Sforza palace to plead for succor from the widow Marchesa Costanza Colonna of the powerful Sforza family, rulers of Milano. Michele’s older sister, Margherita, swept up his three younger siblings, taking them along with her as she fetched the gravedigger.

  “Stay here, Michele,” his mother had told her eldest son.

  Michelangelo was alone in the room with the two dead men. The boy’s mouth curled up in a snarl, his features pinched in rage. He hurled the flask of useless holy water, dashing it on the stone floor.

  He watched the stone darken, the contrasting shadows etched at his feet. Then he looked up, staring at the corpses in the dark room.

  Where is God? Where is Mary, mother of God?

  He curled his small fists tightly, his dirty fingernails biting into his flesh. The hurt felt good, real. He could control the pain by releasing the pressure or make his flesh throb by contracting his fingers.

  He wanted the hurt to match the pain in his heart. To match the black abyss of despair that seized him.

  He stared down at his filthy nails and the little red gouges he had made in his tender palms. Faint traces of blood tinged his skin. A shiver rocked his body, and he realized how cold he was in the room with no fire. A darkness enveloped him, a curtain descending over his eyes.

  He fought against the blinding rage. Inside his eyelids, he saw the image of the two dead men in sepia. Then, a splash of scarlet.

  He felt warmth, a radiance. His eyes opened.

  The slanting sunlight of October shone through the canvas-covered window. The light touched the face of his father, leaving his grandfather’s open mouth in shadow.

  He heard voices outside. The Marchesa Costanza Colonna had sent men to carry the bodies to the graves.

  The little boy blinked in the sunlight at the warm glow that bathed him and his dead father.

  There is God. The light.

  Chapter 1

  Roma

  1600

  A gust of wind whistled down through the ragged hole in the roof of the tiny apartment on Vicolo San Biagio, a few minutes’ walk from Piazza Navona. Dry leaves skittered down a gap in the rafters, the wind teasing flames to leap in the lanterns hoisted above a boy sitting on the floor with a bedsheet twisted around his shoulders and stomach.

  Twenty-nine-year-old Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio uncurled his finger from the paintbrush to rub soot from his eye. The blackened ceiling, thick with carbon from smoking oil lamps and torches, showered black flecks onto the artist and his subject.

  “Stai fermo, Cecco,” he said, raising a bushy eyebrow. Hold still.

  “The wind,” said Cecco, shivering in the makeshift white toga. “A rainstorm, Maestro.”

  The artist looked at the prickled skin of the thirteen-year-old, the fine hairs standing on end. Rain wept down through the hole in the roof, the droplets plastering the gauzy bedsheet against the boy’s body.

  “Al diavolo!” growled the artist, flinging his paintbrush across the room. To the devil! “I’m finished for the night.”

  The boy’s eyes grew wide but he remained silent, scrambling to retrieve the paintbrush.

  “Wash up the brushes and cover the paints. I’m going to the tavern,” said the master, throwing a tattered velvet cape over his shoulders.

  “Sì, Maestro,” said the boy. The toga slipped from his body, and he set about his duties, still nude.

  Caravaggio studied the boy’s thigh where it met his buttocks, the indentation at his flank of muscle under the white skin.

  God’s perfection.

  He felt himself stiffen under his coarse linen britches.

  “Put on some clothes before you catch cold,” he told the boy. “It won’t do to have Bacchus with a red nose and phlegm, you shivering brat!”

  He slammed the door, leaving Cecco alone in the drafty room.

  To hell with this. Caravaggio strode down the Via d’Agostino.

  Cecco is no Bacchus! Bah, Mario Minniti with his ruddy complexion as a youth—there was beauty! How can I improve on that image? Yet the bedsheets become the boy. Who am I searching for?

  A sword clinked at his side. He ran the risk of being arrested for carrying a weapon without a permit. He was no longer under the Cardinal del Monte’s roof and had lost his protection—the local guards knew that. But he would not go out without his sword.

  The Via della Scrofa—Street of the Sows—ran by several shops shut tight against the night’s storm. The streetlight, an oil torch, cast a pocket of light on a stray dog licking at the bloody cobblestones where the butcher displayed his meats during the day. Above the dog, a skinned rabbit hung in the shop window, its pinkish-white flesh both innocent and lurid. The image caught the artist’s eye—the naked meat exposed in the burning light.

  John the Baptist!

  He stopped in the pelting rain and laughed. The cur bolted away, tail between his legs.

  Again? Why does the saint come to me over and over again? Does he have some prophecy to unveil?

  His stomach growled, remembering the delicacies at the table of Cardinal del Monte, his early patron. Caravaggio had lived in his palazzo for four years. During that time, he and Cecco never worried about food or drink or punching holes in the roofs. At Del Monte’s Palazzo Madama, he was a part of the pampered lifestyle of the cardinals, their vices beyond imagination to the simple poor of Roma.

  “Who goes there?” said a voice in the night.

  Michelangelo put his hand over the hilt of his sword. “A citizen of Roma!” he shouted. “What business is it of yours, pezzo di merda?” Piece of shit.

  “Is it you, Michelangelo Merisi?” said a jovial voice. A pale face emerged in the light of the corner torch. The man’s blond hair was plastered against his skull from the rain, a prominent blue vein pulsing on his forehead.

  “Onorio!” said Caravaggio as the man embraced him. “Your swaggering would have invited a fight, bastardo!”

  “As would yours. Pezzo di merda is your middle name!” said Onorio Longhi. “I’m dining at Osteria del Turchetto. Come along. Join me.”

  “Con piacere, stronzo,” said the artist. A pleasure, you shit.

  As Caravaggio opened the tavern door, a hot blast of moist air enveloped him. The patrons’ warm breath mixed with woodsmoke, roasted meat, and sour wine.

  A few painters grunted greetings as Caravaggio and Longhi pushed their way into the crowd, securing the end of a plank table.

  The owner of the tavern plunked down an earthen jug of wine and two clay cups.

  “Grazie. Cena per due,” ordered Onorio. He turned to his companion. “I’m inviting you, Michelangelo.”

  “Perché?”

  “Why? For not murdering me in the darkness!” said his friend, clapping the painter on his back. “Besides, everyone knows you have short arms when it comes to paying.”

  “Fuck you, Onorio.”

  “And because I have been offered a commission today to design a new building, one that will feed me for a year. We’ll eat off it, brick by brick—”

  “Michele, you dirty cur!” slurred a voice, clapping him on the back. “And you, Longhi! The two most scurrilous villains of Roma!”

  The pair turned to see a very drunk Giambattista Marino, the most celebrated poet in Italy, swaying above them with a loose-lipped smile.

  “You, Marino—you accuse us of mala fama?” said Caravaggio. “You who fled Napoli after filling the mayor’s daughter with child? I compete for space in Sant’Angelo cells
with you, you butt-fucking scoundrel.”

  “It’s a good thing you can paint,” said Marino, “or I would have to kill you.”

  “As if you could!” scoffed Caravaggio. “In verse, perhaps.”

  “Ah, but your portrait of me,” said Marino, wagging his finger, “forbids me to murder its creator.”

  “Write me a poem and eulogize me, cuckold-maker,” said Caravaggio.

  “Comportati bene, Michele. Behave! I think I have a new commission for you, you cock-lover.”

  Longhi laughed. Caravaggio shoved him with his elbow.

  “Sit down, poet, before you fall down,” said Caravaggio. “My ambition is to be as drunk as you are within the next hour.”

  Marino barely managed to swing his leg over the bench.

  “Now tell me about this commission,” said Caravaggio.

  “The papal clerk—Melchiorre Crescenzi. I’ve recommended you to paint his portrait.”

  “Crescenzi!” said Longhi, rubbing his chin. “Now that’s a rich bastard.”

  “And Virgilio Crescenzi’s portrait too,” said Marino. The poet squinted hard, trying to focus his eyes. “Is that a Knight of Malta sitting over there?”

  Everyone at the table turned and stared at a bearded man in a black tunic, the eight-pointed Maltese cross emblazoned on his chest. He sat with two well-dressed nobles, guzzling wine.

  “Slumming with the House of Farnese,” said Onorio over the rim of his cup. “They must be out for a night of whoring.”

  One of the Farnese looked up. He tapped the knight on the back, saying something to him. The knight turned around, his mouth pulled in a sneer.

  “Ugly face,” said Caravaggio, staring back. “He’s got eyes like a reptile.”

  The two men locked eyes. Caravaggio spat on the floor.

  Marino pulled the artist’s sleeve. “Don’t get into a brawl with him, Michele. I know that one. He’s a Roero and mean as a snake. The family shipped him off to Malta to get rid of him.”

  There was a sudden commotion and shouted obscenities as three women, lips and cheeks painted with red beetroot, pushed their way through the crowd of men.

  “Ah, ecco le puttane!” growled one man. “The whores arrive!”

  Caravaggio focused on one with long red hair. So did a drunken painter at the table next to him.