All I could picture was Michelangelo charging at me with a cocked marble hammer. “Why would I want to go up there?”

“To see what he’s painting, so that you can best it.”

“I’ve already seen what he’s putting up on that ceiling. Does his Flood jangle a bell? If you think I can’t beat that panel of slop, I might as well quit now.” I crossed back to bed. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m tired and have already lost the day, so . . .”

He was across the room faster than I would’ve thought capable for a man his age. His grip on my shoulder was tight. Architecting must keep a man fit. “He’s improving. The rumors about the new paintings . . .What’s going up now is . . . you need to see it,” Bramante hissed with a panicked look that I recognized: desperate, fearful, awed, the same feelings I had after seeing Michelangelo’s city hall cartoon up in Florence.

I grabbed my jacket and said, “Andiamo.”

Chapter XXV

Chapter XXV

She was a gargantuan female figure—twice as tall as I, even though she was sitting down. She looked like a sculpture, but when I touched her, she was flat. I never would’ve thought to mix those colors—that sea green gown with highlights of yellow, terra-cotta orange drapery, sky-blue cape, and gray head covering should’ve clashed—but together, they were extraordinary. She was sitting in a painted niche holding a scroll, and her eyes were wide and earnest, looking off to her left, lips parted as if spotting some future menace. She was afraid, she was knowing, she was a sibyl— Delphica, according to the nameplate. My mythology knowledge is acceptable, but I sometimes confuse mystical seers. I believe the Delphic sibyl is a daughter of a sea monster who predicted the Trojan war in riddles, but don’t quote me on that. From so close to the fresco, I could see the lines separating each giornata. Uno, due, quattro . . . otto . . . dodici? It had taken him twelve days to paint that single figure? Twelve? Every hour was worth it. Under Michelangelo’s brush, she was sculptural, urgent, alive.

While Bramante stayed on the floor to keep watch, I propped my torch in a burned-edged bucket and sat down with my sketchbook to copy. Michelangelo’s two completed pictorial panels— one of the repainted Flood and the other a scene of Noah’s sons finding him naked and drunk—were both cluttered, unbalanced, ugly. But when Michelangelo focused only on a single, large-scale figure . . . Che roba.

A bang jerked me out of my copying. I said, “What’s that?”

“While I’m gone, fix that fresco.” Bramante’s voice echoed from far away. Was he down on the floor?

“What?” I called.

“Not the one you’re under,” he called. “The one of Zechariah. Over the entrance wall.”