The Passion of Artemisia Read Online Free PDF Page B

was to be announced, I opened the door to the street to buy bread from the baker’s boy, and there, leaning up against the house, was a painting wrapped in a dirty cloth. I brought it inside and unwrapped it. “Papa! The stolen painting!”
    â€œAre you sure?” He rushed into the room and grabbed it from my hands. “It could be a copy.” He took it into the light, scrutinized the brush strokes, and saw something he recognized. “The very one. This changes everything. Hurry. We’ve got to get there early!” He threw on a sleeveless doublet over his shirt as he strode out the door.
    We arrived at the Tor di Nona before the doors were open so we had to wait outside under that horrible noose, smelling the foulness of the Tiber’s stagnant water. All summer and into the fall and not a drop of rain. Clouds of mosquitoes billowed up from the river.
    Once inside, Papa demanded to see the Locumtenente. He pressed a coin into the bailiff’s palm. “Before court convenes, if you please.” Without a change of expression, the bailiffleft. “You’ll see now how things are done,” Papa said. His pacing irritated me. The bailiff returned and ushered him down a corridor. I tried to follow but a guard stepped in my way and directed me back to the courtroom where people were being admitted. I took my usual seat.
    The notary arrived, so prim and cold it made me sick. With his lips pursed, he began trimming his pens. Agostino was led in, and then immediately called back. Then the notary was called out too. People in the courtroom murmured and grew restless, arguing their predictions. I tried to shut out their gloating voices.
    Only Porzia and Giovanni Stiattesi in the front row were silent. Porzia lifted her chin to give me courage. Giovanni picked at a sore on his lip. When he had testified a few weeks earlier, he revealed all that Agostino’s sister had told me. Agostino had denied it, saying that his wife had disappeared. Giovanni insisted. Porzia testified the same. Nevertheless, the trial had gone on, sucking in more witnesses—other neighbors, Papa’s plasterer, the apothecary from whom we bought our pigments, and a host of Agostino’s friends all claiming to have had me. I’d had to deny each testimony, pierce the charade of one falsehood after another that tried to make my character the issue and not Agostino’s deed. And Rome enjoyed it all.
    A mosquito kept buzzing near my ear and I couldn’t get rid of it. The room was stifling with all those people, and the wooden chair I sat in seemed much harder than it had before. Someone in the back shouted for court to begin. Others joined.
    â€œGuilty. Hang him,” someone shouted.
    â€œHang the whore,” another voice bellowed.
    â€œHang them both together.”
    The whole room laughed. My face flushed hot, and I felt dizzy and faint in the airless room.
    A door opened and the bailiff entered, then the Locumtenente, Papa, Agostino, and the notary. The court fell silent. Sweat dampened my shift.
    I held my back rigid as His Lordship spoke. “In the foregoing case of Orazio Gentileschi, painter, versus Agostino Tassi, painter imprisoned in Corte Savella, not disputing the claim and testimony of the girl Artemisia Gentileschi that she has been raped repeatedly by Signor Tassi, whereas the missing painting has been returned, and whereas the plaintiff has consented, and whereas the accused has already served gaol for eight months during the proceedings, the prisoner is pardoned. Case dismissed.”
    Shouts pulsed in my ears. Approval or outrage, I couldn’t tell.
    â€œHowever,” the Locumtenente raised his voice, “due to his interference with the true and honest testimony of witnesses, the defendant Agostino Tassi is banished from Rome.”
    Pardoned? Did I hear that right, buried in all those words? I was struck dumb. Whereas the plaintiff has consented  . . . Had