They had gone for a walk, discussing the past they shared together and the future they would spend apart. Old love and dying friendships.
Lena dismissed her bodyguards so that she and Ranuccio could speak in private.
They took a walk down to the harbor. They went down to the dock and stood looking out at the waters. Time seemed to stand still as they bathed in their affections.
Then, out of nowhere Scipione, a rich, selfish man who adored Lena's sensuality, ran into Lena and shoved her over the dock's railing. She cracked her head against the dock before crashing lifelessly into the waters.
Ranuccio screamed and dove in to save her, but she had broken her neck in the fall. Lena was dead.
When he got her out of the water, Scipione had disappeared.
So was the story.
I didn't know what to think. So numb were my emotions that I had nothing to say.
Jerusaleme sobbed quietly as he washed her hands and feet.
I took a comb and carefully cleaned the gobs of mud and debris from her hair.
Ranuccio watched us with striken, black eyes. He twisted his fingers together again and again, rubbing his hands and his face. He was covered in dirt and grime. His hair still dripped with the thick, dirty water. He was trembling, but I hardly noticed.
Lena... My beautiful Mary. Christ's own mother. Dead. My mind still refused to process the thought, even as I stared down into her glossy, pale blue eyes. I wanted to kiss her lips, taste her warmth and sweetness, but I knew she'd be cold as ice and taste like dirt.
...
The guards seized Ranuccio and began dragging him away.
"Micheli!" Ranuccio cried.
Suddenly Francis came in the room, lead by Jerusaleme. I called out his name, but he raised his hand to silence me. The guards stopped and held Ranuccio still, watching Francis respectfully.
Francis kissed a wooden crucifix, hung it around his neck, then bent over Lena's body. Very gently, he closed her eyelids, and Jerusaleme, who held a lantern over her, began to weep.
Francis knelt, and I knelt with with. The guards pulled Ranuccio down as they followed suit.
Francis clasped his hands together and quoted a passage from scripture.
I turned my head to look at Ranuccio, who shifted uncomfortably and shouted as soon as Francis was done speaking: "I'm innocent!"
"I ain't killed her! I never touched her, never!" He went on, struggling against the guards who held his arms behind his back. "She was killed by Scipione Borghese!"
Something snapped inside of me, and I went at the guards and tried to pull them away from Ranuccio, whose eyes sparkled at me with adoration.
"Take your hands off him, he's innocent!" I growled hatefully.
"Micheli!" Francis interupted.
I hesitated, then stepped away.
Ranuccio gave me one last, sorrowful look, before the guards took him away.
I hung my head and sighed.
"He will be executed for this," Francis said after a moment of silence.
"What if it really was Borghese?" I asked.
"You know that man could buy his way out of anything, murderer or not." Francis scoffed.
I shook my head in disbelief. "I for one am not going to let him die."
I raised my head to see Jerusaleme staring at me. He nodded shortly, as if to say he would stick with me til the end. I tried to smile, but my heart was not in it, so I grimanced instead.
Francis' eyes lingered upon me long after me and Jerusaleme left the room.
...
In my mind, the things I have done pass before me like clouds blowing across the sky.
I see my hands, reaching out, painting with golds and whites and reds. Crafting the perfection of Mary Magdalene, who lay sleeping on a cot. Men, women, and children loom over and around her, mourning and grieving. Praying over Lena's lifeless shell of a body.
I see her there as if I am painting her once more, her delicate, pale face. Her smooth, pink lips. I go to her on the table and gently squeeze her hand, as if she really is sleeping, and a simple squeeze will wake her. But no. I am greeted not by warmth and pulse, but by coldness and stiffness.
I turn back to my canvass and see my painting of John the Baptist, almost complete, but not quite. I turn back around to see Ranuccio pushing another gold coin into his mouth, moving them around with his tongue.
"Be still," I order.
He flicks his eyes at me apologetically, then stands still. Lena looks up from the corner where she knits a scarf. Her eyes search Ranuccio's face before looking back down.
I dip my paintbrush in the black paint, only to realize it is not a paintbrush I am holding, but my knife.
My shirt drips with blood, and I raise it up to see my scar has opened up as if I had just been wounded.
Ranuccio grins down at me, holding his blood-stained knife. I rub my hand across my bleeding gash, then I lift my hand and smear it down Ranuccio's face.
"Blood brothers," I tell him fiercely.
He steps up to me and kisses me softly on the lips.
I open my eyes to see Jerusaleme standing over me, pressing a bowl to my lips. I gaze up at him, dazed, before parting my lips and drinking the warm, flavorless soup.
...
I sold myself to the very man Ranuccio said murdered Lena, who in turn sold me to the Pope.
I wanted him back. Ranuccio was innocent.
Perhaps Scipione Borghese did kill Lena, and perhaps he didn't. None of that mattered. Scipione was a coward and a lech if it truely was him who murdered her.
He deserved to suffer, but not yet. First... I had to win back my John.
I made for the Pope one of my finest, and also most rushed works of art yet. But he was also a self-centered, conceited bastard, and he knew nothing of the beauty and the craftmenship of art.
He accepted it and promised Ranuccio be returned to me, as long as I promised to make him go to church every week.
I kissed His Holiness and thanked him humbly and took my leave.
...
When all you love is yourself, your love dies when you do.
When you love others, your love lives in them, and their love lives in you, and that loves gets passed on to your children and your children's children, so on and forever. Never dying, and never truely gone.
I see my child, my sweet, innocent child, holding blankets and food and drinks and candles. Holding something different each time I blink.
My body is full of mist and steam, and I float along the shores of death, drifting in and out with the ebb and flow of the tide.
Somehow the current catches me and drags me into the sea. I scrap along the rocks and sand invades my ears. My mouth is clogged with seaweed and my eyes burn shut with salt water. My arms and legs hold me down, and I cannot reach the surface.
The sun glitters from above, mocking me with its constant cheerfulness. The depths of the waters make me cold. I shiver and moan as my lungs fill with icy water.
My nose is pinched and I open my eyes. I feel something on my tongue and so I swallow.
Jerusaleme smiles and offers me another pill. I turn my head away, but he pulls me back and forces the pill between my lips.
...