It was still onyx dark when I arrived at Michelangelo’s studio. I tried the door, but it was locked. “Michelangelo?” I called. No answer. I worked my father’s paintbrush in the lock like I’d seen Margherita Luti do at the Pantheon but couldn’t make it click. How did she do it? The only window was far up, and even if I found a ladder, how would I squeeze through such a small space? So, I did what any reasonable man would do: I ran to mia cara for help.

As I climbed the thick ivy up to her window, the lady across the street waved hello; she was accustomed to me by then. “I think it’s charming that you need so much rescuing,” Margherita said as she climbed out her window and followed me back down the ivy. At Michelangelo’s, she used my father’s paintbrush to unlock the first door with ease, and we raced up the stairs, where she unlocked the second door. The workshop was dark and silent.

“Michelangelo?” I hurried through the dimness toward the room’s other door—the one leading to that windowless corridor. “Help me move that chest in front of this door.”

“Why?”

“It leads to the Vatican.”

She not only helped me move a chest, but a table and trunk, too.

The workshop smelled of sweat and dust. I checked under the table, behind a chair, inside the wardrobe . . . Then, Margherita gasped and stumbled away from a corner. I pushed past her and yanked back a blanket to find Michelangelo lying in a corner. He was unconscious, pale, shivering, clothes soaked through with sweat. “Go get rags, wine so watered down it’s almost translucent, and candles,” I said tossing her my money bag. “Lots of candles.”

“Leeches?”

“I don’t think they work.”

While she was gone, I wiped Michelangelo’s forehead, lips, and hands with a rag, but then, with nothing else to do, I had to find some way to calm my nerves, so I sat down to sketch from memory those prophets and sibyls from his ceiling. My chalk lengthened out the bodies of those strong, sculptural figures, smoothing their curves, pushing them toward tender. I drew and drew until Margherita returned. “My friend, a midwife and herbalist, will be here in a couple of hours. Why all the candles?” she asked.

“I don’t know, but the priests always burn lots of them.”

That afternoon, the midwife came with stocks of fish broth, elder, and peppermint and ordered me to leave; she needed to treat Michelangelo’s body with herbs, and in order to do that, she had to strip him.