The Woman in the Painting. Kerry Postle

humiliation, was slowly spreading across my body like a rash as the whole sorry experience came back to me. I hoped she hadn’t seen everything. Her hand on my shoulder, gentle and caring, told me she had.

      ‘You’re not like all them – them inside.’ She gestured to Sebastiano’s workshop with a tilt of her head.

      The girl with the soft brown eyes had a soft, sweet voice, and although she intended for her words to comfort me, instead they thrust the knife in, gave it a turn. ‘You belong out here in the real world.’ I rubbed my side, a reminder of how painful the real world could be. Understanding flickered across the girl’s face. ‘Oh, that’s not what I meant!’ She laughed. I winced. ‘No! It’s just, well, I could tell when I saw you in there. You’re well, you’re more like, well, more like me, I suppose.’ I looked at her. She was pretty enough, certainly prettier than Sebastiano’s portrait of her, but her clothes, I saw for the second time that day, gave away her rank; no matter how clean they were, no amount of care could stop flour from clinging to the edge of her skirt, and patching only drew one’s attention to well-worn cloth. My hand went to brush some of the dust off my brightly coloured hose.

      ‘It’s better to be honest and have your self-respect intact than allow another person to treat you like an animal.’ She patted me on the arm as she chatted on about the virtues of being what I could only presume was like her. This repelled me at the time. But in my defence, upbringing had a large part to play in how I was thinking that day. As well as fear. I had been brought up by a father who constantly told me how he had married beneath himself and had lived to regret it. He’d got married for love, to a lowborn woman who had gone and died. She’d brought him no dowry, given him seven sons. ‘And then she died, giving birth to you!’ My father had shouted this at me often enough to make me realise he’d never forgiven either of us for that. My mother for leaving him, and me for staying alive.

      I looked at this girl with the passably pretty face and the dress that she’d made good and kept washed. And I imagined my mother. I quickly pushed the thought away. That way danger lay. The woman was dead. No good would come of softening towards a memory, nor towards a girl with little to her name.

      But she had saved me from the ruffians; that much was true. ‘Thank you … for chasing off those thugs.’

      ‘Oh, that was nothing. And there was only one of them. Besides, did you not see how we all came together to support you?’ The crowd had now dispersed but with a flourish of her hand this girl presented every passer-by to me as if each one of them was a saint or an avenging angel. ‘It’s the likes of Signor Importante in there that we both need to be wary of. The great maestro.’

      An old woman walked by, and, overhearing our conversation, shouted out, ‘Si, ragazzo, no shame in being one of us. The people of Rome are the best in the world.’

      Then, as if to prove it, a man with a donkey smiled at me, his weather-beaten face as brown and shiny as well-used leather. I waited for him to offer himself up as one of the self-righteous rabble. He did not disappoint. ‘Si, ragazzo, plebeian.’ He chuckled. ‘That’s what we are.’ His voice was as gravelly as the dirt roads he walked along, albeit streaked with a pride that, in my newly fallen state, I was far from understanding. For me it was as if I had been expelled from the Garden of Eden, while plebeian was a word my father used when describing my dead mother – and he didn’t mean it as a compliment.

      I stared with longing at the large oak doors, now firmly shut behind me. The thought that Paradise was on the other side and that there was no longer any place for me there bored a hole in my heart. That Sebastiano should be cast as God was one of life’s little ironies – earthbound paradises had their drawbacks.

      I shuddered.

      The girl’s hand, still on my shoulder, felt the tremor within. ‘Artists! Who do they think they are? Gods?’ she cried, as if reading my thoughts. ‘Look at you, with your bright eyes!’

      I lowered my eyelids to stop her from seeing any more. I looked down at my lamp-black-stained hands, the soot in and around my fingernails. As I hid them in the folds of my shirt I discovered the holes at the elbows of my tattered sleeves. My fingers slipped through to the bones. They stung to the touch, felt wet and sticky. I guessed they were bleeding. My eyes drifted up towards the hands and attire of the proud plebeian leading away his trusty steed that was no more a steed than I was now an artist’s apprentice, never mind an artist.

      What was that saying my father liked so well? Something about every ass thinking himself worthy to stand with the nobleman’s horses? Well, I was the ass. The man’s clothes were no worse than my own, and, in many ways better, I realised, as my fingers now covered the recently made tears in my sleeves. But I still couldn’t think of myself as a plebeian, no matter what I looked like, no matter that I’d been cast out. Ass, yes. Plebeian, never. I rubbed my shoulder blades, half hoping to raise angel wings from beneath the skin, for in that moment to be a fallen angel far outshone life as a common man.

      ‘All right! Take it easy! I only wanted to make sure they hadn’t hurt you.’ I’d brushed the girl’s hand off my shoulder a little too brusquely while checking for feathers. The indignation in her voice pulled me back to myself.

      ‘Thank you. For stopping,’ I said again, remembering the tens of Rome’s finest who hadn’t.

      ‘It was nothing,’ she said, her voice soft once more.

      ‘My name is Pietro,’ I told her.

      ‘Margarita,’ she replied. Although I already knew that.

      She held out a hand, helped me to my feet, then led me to the side of the street. I staggered slightly and leant against the wall to steady myself. To hope she hadn’t noticed was too much to ask for, that I knew already, but I had hoped for a little sensitivity in the way she addressed it. Instead she went for the blunt approach. ‘You’ve had the wind knocked out of you right enough,’ she said. ‘Your eyes look like cockroaches on a bedsheet. Your hair’s gone grey with the dust and your …’ but then she stopped mid-flow. And for that I was truly grateful.

      My eyes, screwed up and looking for the ground beneath to gape open and swallow me whole, lifted to see what or who had caused this direct-talking girl to desist. Striding towards us was a papal party, as intimidating as an invading army, and there, at the head of the group, was a fierce-faced Cardinal, red robes flowing, his band of mercenaries marching behind him. The Cardinal’s eyes swivelled left and right, sweeping all before him. The disgust they registered as he looked upon me turned to desire as they fell upon Margarita. I thought I saw recognition cross his face. But if I did, it vanished as quickly as it had arrived.

      Besides, by the time he looked at her again she had turned her back towards him, a gesture of defiance so flagrant I expected one of his thuggish entourage to drag her away by the hair. I was relieved when they didn’t. She was uncouth and lowborn, and to accept charity from such a person did kindle some sparks of resentment, but I was starting to appreciate her kindness and recognise its value – despite her unchecked tongue – in this city that to me seemed now full of hostility and danger.

      ‘That was Bibbiena.’ She almost spat the words out. That she had failed to say ‘Cardinal Bibbiena’ did not surprise me. I was beginning to get the measure of the girl. ‘The man’s a worm-head,’ she continued as she arched her neck after Bibbiena and his men. ‘Good. The piece of filth has gone. Time I was going too. You’ll be all right?’ she asked.

      ‘Of course,’ I lied, strangely invigorated by her use of the local vernacular. ‘I’ll take myself home and I’ll be fine.’

      She put one hand on my shoulder again. I did not recoil. She nodded, satisfied with my answer. ‘Look after yourself, Pietro, and if you ever happen to be in Trastevere, come and say hello. My father runs a bakery there, on Via Santa Dorotea. His name’s Francesco Luti.’

      ‘Many thanks … Margarita. And you too … l-l-l …’ I could not say ‘look after yourself’. I satisfied myself with a repeated ‘many thanks.’ She smiled. She’d touched me and she knew it and she plunged