The Ruby Ring Read Online Free PDF Page A

late in returning home.”
    He tried to think, to breathe, but he found himself unable to do either. “I . . . I am Raphael Sanzio,” he blurted, not with the confidence he had intended, but with the sudden abandon of a much younger, and less-experienced, man. “Would you allow me at least to make a sketch of you? I would be willing to pay you quite handsomely for it!”
    She looked up at him again. The silvery sun hit the bit of her hair above her forehead, and he saw that it had the exact color and sheen of sable.
    “Do you mock me, sir?”
    “I mock you not,
signora.
”
    “Would not the true Raffaello have a grand collection of companions or, at the least, a magnificent horse on which to ride? I doubt the great artist would walk a pathway alone as the common rest of us.”
    Raphael glanced around. He willed himself to slow the delivery of his words, so as not to frighten her away.
    “Perhaps it is so,” he said in a measured tone that he struggled to find. So she was possessed of a natural sort of spirit as well. The astonishment intensified. “And yet the man they call
mastro
might also take this quicker route alone if he were in need of a moment’s reflection from all the pressures placed upon him.”
    Her smile was a fleeting gesture. “If that is true,
signore,
then I am a contessa.”
    He moved a step nearer to her, desperate for her to feel the same sweeping power of the inevitability that he felt. “If you told me you were such, I would be obliged to believe you.”
    Someone called out to him then, shattering the moment. As she clutched the wide-eyed boy to her chest, Raphael turned and saw his youngest assistant, Giulio Romano, out of breath and running down the hill toward him.
    “
Buon giorno
to you—Signor Sanzio,” he heard her say with just the slightest hint of mocking. It was clear that she had not believed a single word. When he turned back to her, she had already stepped away from him and was moving toward a crowd of other strollers heading back down into Rome. Raphael went after her and had nearly caught up with her when he felt a hand clamp down on his shoulder. He spun around angrily, preparing to cast off the youth’s hand as though he were an assailant.
    “Dio!”
Giulio panted. “His Holiness is nearly out of patience with you! He has held his schedule all morning! I came to find you before any more damage could be done!”
    Raphael glanced back down the hill but the girl, his Madonna, had disappeared into the growing crowd. For an instant, he thought of going after her, but his priority must be the Holy Father.
    “You must go the other way! I will go to the pope but you must find the young woman with the blue cloak, carrying a child! Find out where she lives! She must not be allowed to get away!”
    The young man smiled, knowing the
mastro
’s penchant for beautiful women, having seen the many who had crossed the doorstep of the workshop. Giulio Romano nodded to Raphael and dashed down the hill, moving quickly toward the daunting shadows, the walls of weathered stone, and the many magnificent ruins of ancient Rome.
             
    P RESSING BACK the odd sensation of the man’s gaze on Il Gianicolo, Margherita walked beneath the swinging sign above the door, and back into the family’s small bakery on the Via Santa Dorotea. She kissed her father’s fat, stubbled cheek as he stood wiping his hands on a soiled apron, tied at his stout middle. Francesco Luti was rough and pagan, a little bullfrog of a man, with wide-set green eyes flecked with brown, a thick neck, and a large mouth. His shirt collar was stained with a brown ring of perspiration and he stood, wide-legged, on a floor covered with a thin patina of flour. He smelled of the familiar fragrance of flour and sweat. It was the only fragrance that had ever been about him, Margherita thought. She drew back the hood of the blue velvet cloak, and gently set Matteo at her feet. The child clung to her leg for a moment, then