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over her
cleavage. ‘One of her gentleman clients?’
    She clipped her knuckles against the crown of his head.
    Caravaggio entered with Gaspare. Scipione recognized Fillide’s portrait. Did he buy her these rich clothes? he wondered. He surveyed the room, apprehensive, as though the hedonistic
Cardinal-Nephew might be reclining voluptuously on a divan.
    A silver candelabra dripped wax onto the Oriental carpet spread across the table. The paintings and wall hangings floated in darkness. In the far corner, a heavy white curtain shrouded the side
of the bed. A convex mirror at the foot of the mattress disclosed the elongated form of a reclining man. He wore a loose white shirt and red hose and he rested on one elbow, attentive to the
newcomers. He caught Caravaggio’s stare in the mirror. At first, his face was like a dangerous animal at bay, then a scornful recognition leeched out of it.
    ‘The one who gave you that dress –’ Caravaggio spoke directly towards the mirror ‘– is no gentleman.’
    The man on the bed flicked his index finger against his earlobe twice. You faggot .
    A black-haired woman came from the kitchen. Her skin was so pale the candle painted it like red cadmium on a new canvas. She carried a tureen of boiled mutton.
    Gaspare helped her set it on the table. ‘Allow me, mia cara Menica,’ he said.
    ‘Are you going to write a poem about how you’d like to stick your boiled meat in her soup dish?’ Fillide took Gaspare’s chin in her left hand. Her ring finger hooked
upwards, its unnatural angle a memento of a dislocation by a rough client. ‘Spare us, eh, Gaspare.’
    Fillide’s round face had the slight fatness of a girl. Curling at the temples, her amber hair glowed against her skin. A fresh rose pink bloomed along the flesh of her collarbone and in
the hollow at the bottom of her neck. Her underlip was so full that it alone would have made the fortune of any other courtesan. She had been Caravaggio’s Judith and his St Catherine. She was
the Magdalene he was working on now. As she doubled over in harsh laughter, he thought her more human than the paint he had spilled for her. But only just.
    Menica came to Caravaggio and stood on his feet with her arms around his neck. Stretching up on her toes, she brought her mouth close to his ear. ‘Ranuccio’s on the bed, Michele. He
was talking about a fight – with you.’
    He stroked Menica’s cheek. Her skin was growing rough after her six years as a whore. Kissing her forehead, he called across the room: ‘Prudenza was looking for you at the inn,
Ranuccio.’
    Onorio stiffened and reached for his dagger. Fillide glared at Menica. A taut laugh came from the bed as the curtain drew back.
    Ranuccio swung his feet to the floor. He scratched inside his hose and found something that he flicked away with long slim fingers. His beard and hair were brown with yellow highlights, like
straw rotted to damp silage. He reached for the bottle in Onorio’s hand. ‘Give it up, Longhi,’ he said. He gave another tug before Onorio let the bottle go.
    ‘It’s funny, see.’ Ranuccio held Fillide from behind, smelling her hair. ‘This one tried to cut Prudenza up.’
    ‘What do you expect?’ the girl said. ‘I found you naked in the strumpet’s bed.’
    ‘ “Whore, I’m going to scar you everywhere,”’ Ranuccio bellowed in a mocking falsetto. ‘You should’ve heard her, ragazzi . She was a fury.
“You dirty whore, I want to cut you. I want to cut you.”’
    Caravaggio interrupted their embrace. ‘You’ll leave her be.’
    Ranuccio slipped his hand slowly out of Fillide’s dress and moved her aside. ‘You owe me, painter. Remember your debt?’
    ‘He’ll pay you.’ Onorio slapped Fillide’s backside. ‘But now let’s have some music and a dance.’ He picked up a Spanish guitar from the corner and
tossed it to Caravaggio.
    As Caravaggio tuned up, Ranuccio peed loudly in a bucket beside the door. With the first notes of ‘