The Woman in the Painting. Kerry Postle

was desperate to keep hold of me and feared she would use any means possible to do so.

      But I was wrong about that.

      When the day came to go to Raphael’s workshop, she called for me at the boarding house, as she’d promised she would.

      ‘You look magnificent.’ She laughed as I opened the door. My hair was clean and neat, thanks to Margarita’s barber friend; my green jacket was fresh and stain-free, after she’d soaked it, scrubbed it, then scented it with lavender; and my shirt looked like new, whiter than when I’d first bought it, with the tears in the sleeves invisible after she’d spent hours sewing them up. I was wearing yellow hose. She cast her eyes over them quickly but looked away before I could see what she thought.

      ‘Now stand up straight and walk tall.’

      I shuffled, my stomach churned, my head felt heavy. As I set off on the journey that would change the course of my life faces queued up within my head to torment me: Michelangelo’s, Sebastiano’s, my father’s. They tried to hold me back, but it was Margarita who pushed me forward. If she did not want me to go, she did not show it. Pilgrims, priests and monks flowed around us, buffeting us this way and that. I was all at sea within and without. But Margarita kept going, taking me with her.

      ‘I don’t want to go.’

      ‘Oh yes you do.’

      ‘No. I don’t.’

      ‘I’ve had a week of you telling me what an opportunity this is going to be. It was me, can’t you remember, who spoke against it.’

      Margarita was right. I’d been the one overjoyed at the prospect, determined to succeed. But now my resolve had gone. My fear of failure had returned. I couldn’t face it. Not again.

      ‘I don’t understand why it means so much to you, to work there. But I know that it does. And I cannot deny that this Raphael sounds better than any other artist I’ve come across.’

      I still resisted.

      ‘Now come on, Pietro. I’m not going to let your weakness cripple you.’

      I was weak; I knew it. The scapular accuracy of her words left me exposed and wounded. I could say nothing back. I seethed.

      ‘Artists in my experience – granted it’s not wide – are parasites. They flatter the rich and powerful and are prepared to sway in any direction for the right price in the hope that one day they too will become rich.’ She stopped to apologise to a Dominican dressed in white whom she’d bumped into. ‘That’s not to say there’s no talent involved,’ she continued, ‘but I’ve not come across one who I think worthy of my respect.’

      I felt nauseous. Did she know what she was saying? I lurched to the side; she dragged me on.

      ‘Want to buy a relic?’ A wizened old man placed his bony fingers on me, thrusting a red cross into my face. He sensed my despair. ‘I have no money,’ I told him as Margarita steered me out of his path. He came at me a second time.

      ‘A relic? Where is it from, this relic? Genuine, is it? Along with the tens of copies you have of it in that basket of yours?’ she challenged him. He did not try to sell me one a third time.

      ‘Come on, Pietro,’ she said, not to be put off. ‘You have to do what your heart tells you to do and I accept that you’re resisting it at the moment but that’s because you’re decent. You’re not like them. That’s what’s good about you. And who knows, when you’re a famous artist, you can be the first one I respect.’

      The baker’s daughter from Trastevere gave my hand a sudden pull.

      ‘I think we’re nearly there.’

      We were at the end of the street. The sight of apprentices filing into the workshop made my feet feel like blocks of marble. We watched, waited.

      ‘Look! Look! There’s Giulio. Giulio Romano.’ Margarita hit me in the arm at the sight of him. Joy and trepidation enveloped me. I had no idea why he was at Raphael’s but I was glad to see him. The power of a familiar face, no doubt.

      ‘Now go. Oh, and my father says there’s always a job for you at the bakery if this doesn’t work out. And come and let me know how you get on either way. As soon as you can.’

      She shoved me in the back and I started to walk. She was calling after me, her voice loud and encouraging, but I no longer heard what she was saying. What she’d said earlier about weakness came to mind; it was a weakness that I should want to give in to the urge to return to her. I would conquer this feeling. I would need her no more. My back was now turned on this girl from Trastevere and although I felt sick at the thought of it I had my ambitions set on the glamorous world of art again. There I would envelop myself in the folds of its power, and power, I well knew, brought with it its own immunity.

      I’d not been born into good fortune; the only way for me, and men like me, to climb high in the world, was to be prepared to sever ties with those who by association would tether me to the ground. If that meant doing bad things then so be it. All Margarita’s kindness, much like the kind words she was hurling after me, would soon become as insubstantial as a windswept cloud trailing across a clear sky. There. Then gone. Forgotten forever.

      As I stood outside the workshop door I imagined my future. I was about to re-create myself.