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Ti parti, cor mio caro ’, he hauled up his hose and moved over to Fillide. He
kicked into the villanella with a showy step and took her with him. Gaspare rounded Menica, courtly and stiff. Onorio pulled Prospero laughing to his feet and they spun across the
boards.
    Caravaggio picked at the strings and sang the old Bolognese song in a clear, deep voice:
    To part from you, my dear heart
    Leaves me with bitter tears
    And my soul without you
    Cannot be healed.
    Ranuccio whistled and nuzzled Fillide’s neck. That buffoon would reel about like this to a funeral dirge, Caravaggio thought.
    Do not leave me,
    Oh my dear heart,
    For your faith.
    Ranuccio slowed his step and drew Fillide to him.
    If you want to leave me
    Remember to return.
    I cannot remain alive
    One hour without you.
    Do not leave me.
    Ranuccio and Fillide went to the bed. She pushed him onto the mattress and climbed on top of him, pulling the curtain shut.
    Onorio stamped and clapped. ‘Play louder, Michele.’ Caravaggio lifted his voice above the grunts and cackles from the bed.
    Their love-making was soon done and the curtain drawn back. Ranuccio drowsed contentedly. Fillide arranged her breasts and her neckline. Menica spooned out bowls of meat for Gaspare and Caravaggio. The stew steamed with the aroma of nutmeg and cloves and cinnamon.
    ‘I have a mind for some poetry now,’ Fillide said.
    Gaspare bowed. ‘Your heart lies on the bed, but your soul deserts it, following love and poetry to me, my Lady Fillide.’
    ‘I meant some of your poetry. Not a codswallop rehash of Petrarch. I hate that weepy old milksop.’
    ‘Hear, hear.’ Ranuccio slapped his hand against the wall.
    Discomfited that a mere courtesan had noticed his plagiarizing, Gaspare cleared his throat. ‘You recall the painting our friend Michele did a few years ago? Love
Victorious ?’
    ‘The little Cupid smiling like he was game for anything?’ Onorio twisted the cork from a new bottle and set it to his lips.
    Gaspare took up the pose of an actor declaiming, and recited his madrigal. It warned that Caravaggio’s representation of love was so true that it was like the real thing – in its
most extreme form.
    ‘Don’t look, don’t look on Love,’ he concluded. ‘He’ll set your heart on fire.’
    ‘Not bad.’ Onorio belched. ‘You ought to publish it.’
    ‘It was published in Venice two years ago.’ Gaspare put a hand on his hip, affronted. ‘I presented you with a copy of the book.’
    ‘I don’t recall it.’
    Prospero nudged him. ‘It’s the one you put on the table in your bedchamber to make your pisspot just the right height.’
    Gaspare raised his hand, but Menica caught at it.
    Onorio’s pout quivered with vicious humour. ‘Michele, does love turn your heart to ashes, as in the words of our companion, the great poet of the Most Serene Republic of
Genoa?’
    Caravaggio put the guitar on the floor. His eyes were wide and staring, as though he observed the phantom of something dead approach him. ‘Love?’ He reached for the wine and took a
pull. ‘Do you really think that’s what sets me on fire?’

    The morning light found its way deep into his brain, as if it were the stiletto of the stealthiest assassin. Caravaggio groaned.
    ‘Time we were going, Michele.’
    He opened his eyes. Vermilion slivers of the dawn shimmered through the motes of dust. Rubbing his face, he stood, caught at his head, and gasped.
    Onorio slapped his cheek lightly. ‘A good night, wasn’t it, cazzo ?’
    The curtain on the bed was only half drawn. Fillide’s pale breast bore a livid scratch, no doubt from her companion’s attentions during the night. Ranuccio snored beyond her.
Prospero rose from his couch, picking at his scalp and wiping the lice against his hose.
    ‘Come on.’ Onorio gestured for haste. ‘Let’s be off.’
    The air of the early morning was clear, free of the foul odours that would rise from the littered ground in the day’s heat. Prospero blew a