Don’t judge me. That thumb was hardly visible; it would only take a few strokes to cover it. It would be good for my career. Felice was right. His Holiness didn’t deserve to be mocked on his own ceiling; isn’t protecting the pope a worthy cause? And yet, I couldn’t stop thinking about how I was marring someone else’s work, someone who wasn’t there to defend it, someone who might die and never make another mark of paint ever again . . .

I lowered my arm. I didn’t touch even one bristle of paint to that ceiling.

Like I said, don’t judge me.

I hurried back down to the lowest platform of the scaffolding. All of the ladders were—as Bramante had said—lying on the floor, and I was too far up to jump. Any other scaffolding would’ve required plenty of rope to secure it, but up that ingenious contraption, there wasn’t even a single length of rope. Grazie mille, Michelangelo. There were, however, plenty of tarps, hanging over railings, around each platform, between each section of fresco. I pulled one down and, with the help of a trowel, ripped that tarp into long strips, which I tied together and then tied one end to a plank. (All right, I tied it six times around that plank; I’ve never been a trustworthy knotter of rope; only tongues.) I’d lose my nerve if I looked down, so I lay on my stomach and scooted my legs off the edge until my hips hinged down. My feet fumbled to latch on to the first knot. I yanked on the line of tarp—Martha, sister of Lazarus, let it hold—and then counted to four before finally closing my eyes and lowering off the platform. I didn’t expect the line to sway so much, but still, I shimmied, one knot after the other, down. My forearms were burning and fingers throbbing—I couldn’t hold on much longer—when my feet finally hit the floor. I didn’t look up; I didn’t want to think about where I’d been. I ran across the chapel, unbolted the door, and . . .

The door was chained shut. I had to crouch down and contort my body to squeeze through a slender crack under the loop of chains. How long had it taken to escape? I don’t know. I only hoped that I could still make it to Michelangelo in time.

Chapter XXVI

Chapter XXVI